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Is there a science of time?

There is a metaphysics of time, as well as a grammar (in Wittgenstein's jargon: a description of the use of language) of the word 'time'. But whether there is a science of time, I don't know (and my skepticism is not knowledge).

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Context: these are logic of language questions: How is language with meaning distinguished from nonsense in philosophy? (Words that follow "Query" directed or misdirected Internet searches to this site.)

What then is a cow?

Query: Wittgenstein, what is a cow?

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus a cow would be a mass of sense data analyzable by God-knows-what-scientists into absolutely simple elements [if 'absolutely simple' is not nonsense (PI § 46 ff.)] -- i.e. atoms, "uncuttables" in the Greek sense, not further analyzable, "logical atoms" -- called 'objects' in TLP jargon (2.021, tr. Ogden) which "somehow" bear names and are arranged in a constellation [like stars in the sky] called a 'fact' which "somehow" our language mirrors in structure [i.e. arrangement. A "proposition", a statement of fact, has the "general form": "Here is the way things stand" [TLP 4.5], and "somehow" arranges itself to mirror this constellation]. In other words, a cow is an endless sea of "metaphors", and I don't know whether these can be restated in prose without distorting them (or how much of this is simply disguised nonsense [PI § 464]).

In the Philosophical Investigations the word 'cow' -- not the object cow -- is defined ostensively, that is by pointing at cows (or illustrations of cows) ["... And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer" (PI § 43)]; and, as is the case with the word 'thunder' (children learn to use the word 'thunder' in the presence of thunder) that is as far as the definition of the word 'cow' goes; this and the like are called 'cows'. The Philosophical Investigations does not make hypotheses about the nature of the bearer of the name. (An example of an hypothesis about the nature of the thing named by the word 'cow' would be 'Cows are herbivores', a proposition that does not belong to the logic of language; it belongs to a "real definition", not a convention for the use of a word.)

The Relationship between the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein's project in philosophy is stated in TLP 4.112: philosophy is not about constructing theories of reality but about clarifying thought.

Philosophy aims at [The objective of philosophy is] the logical clarification of thoughts.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine [not a theory] but an activity.

A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

Philosophy does not result in "philosophical propositions", but rather in the clarification of propositions. [The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.]

Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries. [Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.]

(Tr. Pears & McGuinness, 1971 [tr. Ogden, 1922, but I have added 'ive' to Ogden's 'object'])

But how that project is to be carried out will be understood very differently in the Philosophical Investigations. Clearly a statement such as "The world is the totality of facts, not of things" (TLP 1.1) is a "philosophical-metaphysical proposition", a statement about what the world "really" is (It is certainly not a verbal definition of the word 'world').

... the task of philosophy is ... to clarify the use of our language, the existing language. Its aim is to remove particular misunderstandings; not to produce a real understanding for the first time. (PG i § 72, p. 115)

Well, but philosophy does aim to produce understanding where before there was only misunderstanding. Our language itself, not philosophy, caused the misunderstanding: we did not start out seeing things aright. "What is the mind?" "What is time?" People who know nothing of philosophy also ask these questions -- and imagine shadows for an answer. Pace Wittgenstein, philosophy is not the cause of this wound to the understanding, but its healing. The question of the logic of language is the beginning of philosophy as we have it from Socrates. (But it is not also the end of philosophy.)

Wittgenstein, despite the criticisms he made in the Philosophical Investigations, had of course far more regard for the Tractatus than I have expressed above. He thought it ought to be republished side-by-side with the Philosophical Investigations; in the latter's Preface he wrote: "... that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my old way of thinking."

In contrast, for me the TLP, in my view of it, is an only historically interesting work of logico-metaphysics. Why? Maybe because I do not understand it -- or maybe because I began with Wittgenstein's criticisms in the Philosophical Investigations of the Tractatus's critique of language, namely that words are names of things, rather than instead beginning with the Tractatus and only later studying the Philosophical Investigations' criticisms of it.

Paul Engelmann has explained the point of the Tractatus: which is that "what cannot be put into words" [because it does not belong to the propositions -- the "picture [picturing] language": "This is how things stand" -- of natural science (Physics' classical mechanics)] is what is most important in our life, but at the same time [because it cannot be put into words] it must be "passed over in silence" -- because the alternative is to talk nonsense, which may even be damaging to "keeping wonder secure" (M. O'C. Drury); "If you do not try to say what is unsayable then nothing gets lost".

[On the meaning of 'meaning' in the TLP versus the Philosophical Investigations, and on "Philosophy is not a theory": Russell's view versus Wittgenstein's view of philosophy.]

In the view of Rush Rhees (1905-1989)

... it is wrong to suggest [as Russell does (in My Philosophical Development (New York: 1959) p. 216-217)] that Wittgenstein ever turned away from the interests and questions which had occupied him particularly in his early days.

[Wittgenstein] returned again and again to the question[s] which had occupied him from the beginning.... And as he did so he saw that other methods were needed for the study of them. In all this, I must repeat, he was going more deeply into the problems he had studied at the time that Russell admired [his work]. ("Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Symposium", 1960)

Rhees wrote that Wittgenstein "no longer thought that a special logical symbolism had the importance he once gave it". If "a special logical symbolism" means a calculus like mathematical logic -- and if the meaning of language is the foundational question of philosophy, and if the meaning of natural language is not a mere function of syntax -- then how could a logical symbolism which is a matter of syntax be of use to philosophy? Mathematical logicians have invented challenging calculi or games -- but what has their work to do with the vital questions of philosophy (from the distinction between sense and nonsense to "no small matter, but how to live" (ethics) to the riddles of existence)?

"Sentence structure"

Again, the reason to reject a "formal language" for logic (what are we calling 'logic'?) is precisely that it would be a formal language -- i.e. one concerned with form (formulas for arranging words, sentence structure) rather than with meaning. But the meaning or lack of meaning of language -- which is after all what matters to philosophy -- is not determined by the form of language but by the use that is made of language. The substitution rules of syntax allow nonsense combinations of words, suggesting that if 'Where is the book?' makes sense (has meaning, a use in the language), then so does 'Where is the mind?' (Although the problem isn't only syntax: 'book' and 'mind' are both nouns, and doesn't every "person, place or thing" have a location?) These rules suggest false analogies which in many cases create philosophical problems which are really no more than conceptual confusion, i.e. confusion about the logic of language = what gives language meaning.

What Rhees does not mention, however, is that Wittgenstein never again wrote about the Wesen der Welt ("essence of the world"), nor about the riddle of existence, God, "value" (except in the "Lecture on Ethics"). Indeed, were it not for the few remarks collected as Culture and Value and his conversations with M. O'C. Drury, it would be reasonable to believe that Wittgenstein forever maintained that "the riddle does not exist" [TLP 6.5]. (If 'problem in life' = 'the riddle', then there is evidence that he did not, as he later wrote: "But don't we have the feeling that someone who sees no problem in life is blind to something important, even to the most important thing of all?" (CV p. 27, remark from 1937))

The statement of an idea, the exact words in which it is expressed, can be essential to the idea. Or so it often seems to me when I am struggling to remember an exact form of expression that has occurred to me a moment ago and is now lost.

Reminders about Similes

Note: this supplements the discussion "Grammatical remarks: the logic of comparison."

A simile is not a statement of identity. Were this not the case, it would be nonsense to speak of "the eye of God" (although it would not be nonsense to speak of "the eye of Zeus"). A simile points to similarities, but it is not an assertion that there aren't also dissimilarities. Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" simile: what doesn't it mean?

Games of Deductive Logic

Query: is geometry like chess?

The question is ill-posed, because all things are like all other things in some way or another (Protagoras 331d) -- but we must say in which specific way or ways. Well-posed the question is: In what ways is geometry like chess and in what ways is it not like chess (If it were in all ways like chess, then it would be chess). That is the grammar or logic of 'comparison'.

One way in which geometry of the kind entirely deduced from axioms is like chess is that both are played according to a closed set of rules that strictly allow or disallow all moves in the game. But one way in which geometry is unlike chess is that geometry proves theorems which suggest hypotheses about the natural world, theorems which if verified in the natural world result in discoveries about the natural world. And in this way geometry may lead outside itself, whereas chess has no application outside itself: chess is a game; geometry is only in this way like a game: it is governed by very strict rules.

The comparison between maths and playing a game, where what defines a game is its rules, belongs to the Philosophy or Foundations of Mathematics. And the simile is not a simple one: we must be very careful not to overlook the dissimilarities. Another comparison would be between the board and chessmen of chess and drawings in geometry -- is either one essential to the game?

Query: is there anything after death?

What is death to be compared to -- a wall e.g.? What pictures do we have of death? A ghost leaving a body (Phaedo 64c) for someplace else? A sleep without dreams? (Apology 40c-41c) The picture, the simile, we choose (or bring to the enquiry) will "answer" -- i.e. respond -- to our query: the "possibilities" we are willing to consider. (Is this response nonsense: "No one knows"? What would we mean by 'know' here? That this is an eternal question without an answer? if there are questions of that kind.)

Is there a science of time?

Query: Wittgenstein, time.

When Augustine is quoted in Philosophical Investigations § 89 ("something we need to remind ourselves of"), Wittgenstein is talking about our everyday concept 'time', i.e. a word that has its meaning in our everyday life regardless of any meaning that word may have in physics. And, indeed, a connection to theoretical physics will not be found here (or in Wittgenstein's own writings). Nor is such a connection required, because the page about the Philosophy of Time is about our everyday concept 'time', not about physics.

As we normally use the word 'time', that word has no meaning apart from how time is measured. The meaning of the word 'time' is the method of measurement. That word is not the name of an invisible "something" (PI § 36), say a fluid of some unknown type; that is not that word's meaning or use in the language.

Is there a natural science of time? That is, in contrast to a metaphysics of time, i.e. to idle pictures -- "idle" because there is no way to compare those pictures with reality (the conceived facts) or for them to come into conflict with (and thereby be falsified by) reality. Metaphysics is metaphysics regardless of whether it is written by a philosopher or by a physicist.

"Philosophical investigations -- conceptual investigations" (Z § 458). What I suspect (but I do not know) is that all investigations of time are philosophical investigations. "Time as a fourth dimension" was a re-conceptualization -- i.e. a new way of looking at things -- not a scientific discovery; it was rationalism not empiricism.

Query: time in philosophy as a concept.

In contrast to what -- time as a phenomenon? Why, isn't there such a thing? A "thing", no, but the perception of change would be time as a phenomenon, I imagine.

Query: time as a dimension, nonsense.

From the point of view of everyday language, it is nonsense. It is grammar stripping in reverse, as in 'The number 3 is blue' -- in which case we would say: Physicists talk about numbers as if they were talking about cows -- i.e. they try to apply the grammar of one part of speech to a different part of speech (as if numbers were "abstract objects" as cows are physical objects) -- just as they talk about time as if they were talking about space. Is 'the fourth dimension' a metaphor then? A metaphor must be restateable in prose (or it is not a metaphor). Unless we wish to mislead the ignorant (me e.g.), or even ourselves (of which we should be even more wary), we will not use metaphors in science.

When we do philosophy we are like savages, primitive people, who hear the expressions of civilized men, put a false interpretation on them, and then draw the queerest conclusions from it. (PI § 194)

That is always a possibility, of course; cf. "finite but unbounded space". But unless you are deliberately trying to confuse the public, why invent expressions like 'solar storms', 'black holes', 'curved space', 'the fourth dimension'? (Remark about the charm such language has for physicists.) All those expressions achieve is to suggest pictures to the public which have nothing to do with what physicists mean by those expressions.

Classifying by Method of Measurement

As we normally use the words 'dimension' and 'time', we won't call time a dimension unless we want to confuse, because time is not measured with a yardstick. Whether or not a thing is a dimension depends on how the thing is measured.

As commonly defined, the word 'noun' does not refer to syntax (although syntax refers to parts of speech)

But isn't Wittgenstein's use of the word 'grammar' just as confusing, because the word 'grammar' may suggest 'syntax' (or 'word order') if it is not explained? It is his "jargon", as Wittgenstein told G.E. Moore, but as we define 'noun' as 'the name of a person, place or thing' -- that is not a remark about syntax, but about the meaning of language, and therefore Wittgenstein's use of the word 'grammar' does not do violence to our everyday use of the word 'grammar'; instead it corrects the error of that far too-simple -- and philosophically misleading -- definition of the word 'noun' by showing that not all nouns are names.

"Is a word's meaning really nothing more than its use in the language?"

Query: why man must have religion in his life?

That is not in form a philosophical question, because its proposition, namely that man "must have" -- i.e. needs -- religion in his life, comes at the beginning of the investigation, not at its end, like a question that is already answered before it is asked. A philosophical question might be: Does the good for man, or what is the same, the specific excellence that is proper to man's nature, include religion (a religious view of life)? As stated the query appears to belong to an (uncritically accepted) community of ideas or way of seeing things regardless of what is there to see. Why does man need religion? The reply from Augustine is "Our hearts are made for Thee, and our hearts are not at rest until they rest in Thee." Is that an empirical proposition?

Why does Chaerephon ask?

Query: why does Chaerephon ask if there is any man wiser than Socrates?

(1) Because Chaerephon is an enthusiastic student, companion and friend of Socrates, or (2) because he is an impulsive madcap, or because both (1) and (2); or (3) because he is asking the very Socratic question at the beginning of Plato's Protagoras, Have I found the best teacher to entrust myself to? For if anyone is wiser than Socrates, Chaerephon should seek to be that person's student instead; or (4) because it is a wager among friends. The last I don't know, although of course I doubt: 'madcap' does not entail 'irreligious' ('impious'); the oracle's words were, after all, the words of Apollo.

Query: use leads you to word meaning, Wittgenstein.

No, the use does not lead you to the meaning of the word; rather, in many cases, the use is the word's meaning (PI § 43). There are not two things here -- the use and the meaning.

Query: Wittgenstein said the meaning of a word is its use in the language. Is the meaning really only the use of a word?

No, not the meaning, but rather a meaning of a word is its use in the language. There are many meanings of the word 'meaning'; Wittgenstein chose one for his work in philosophy, one that makes the distinction between sense and nonsense objective, verifiable as a human activity rather than as "a thought in the mind". (Looking at language-meaning this way is learning to think in a new way, a completely new way, like a Gestalt-shift, a new point of view.)

In these queries "the meaning" = "meaning really is" or "meaning really only is". But this word 'really' belongs to metaphysics, not logic. Wittgenstein's later work is not a theory of meaning as Plato's "theory of Forms" is -- for what do we mean by 'theory' in Plato's context? That reality lies behind the appearances, whereas for Wittgenstein "nothing is hidden" (PI § 435).

Query: why was Socrates seeking a man wiser than himself?

To show that the apparent meaning of Apollo's oracle's words "no man is wiser than Socrates" could not be their meaning, because (1) Socrates knew that he was without wisdom, and (2) because God does not tell lies.

Query: why did Socrates apologize?

The early distinction between sign and symbol; in Wittgenstein's ideal language, ambiguity would be impossible, as would apparently historical changes in meaning. (Socrates "apologized" -- i.e. defended himself -- because he was called upon to defend himself in a court of law.) Plato's Apologia = Plato's Defense [of Socrates].

Query: geometry, name an everyday object that represents the term point.

The only thing that can "represent a term" is another term, in this case 'address in the plane'. (The word 'point' in geometry.)

Note: there is a later and fuller discussion of this topic in Monstrous Gods (Graham Greene), and there is a far later understanding of this question (q.v.) concerned with the God of faith rather than with the "God of the philosophers and scholars".

Is anything logically necessary to love and pray to God, e.g. must the word 'God' be a name?

The way you use the word 'God' shows not whom -- but what you mean. (CV p. 50, remark from 1949)

"The starry sky above, the moral law within" (Kant, quoted by Beethoven). "... not whom" -- i.e. the word 'God' is not a name; that is not its use in our language, according to Wittgenstein which is different from the use of the word 'god' when we talk about the Olympian gods. And if we accept that account of the grammar of the word 'God', then perhaps we can not be "furious with God" over the existence of evil (ibid. p. 46). However --

What sense has the word 'God' except as an Olympian, i.e. a personality? Answer that and we'll grant you all the rest .... If God is conceived, the word 'God' defined, as all-powerful, then clearly God cannot be all good -- as our experience of the all-powerful "will of God" shows -- or be identified with the Good (which is an identification made by Plato). And in the Old Testament, God is amoral, no more good or evil than the meter-standard is long or short (a standard cannot be used to measure itself) -- rather, the good is whatever God happens to command that man do, e.g. honor his parents or cut the throat of a child (as Abraham, "our father in faith", i.e. obedience, is commanded to do).

But if God is not conceived as omnipotent, can God -- i.e. the concept 'God' -- be the answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (That God cannot be both all-powerful and all-good is no more than grammar -- of faithfully following the rules of a game -- plus our recognition of the reality of evil in existence.)

If by 'God' we do not mean an omnipotent Olympian god -- i.e. the God of Nature -- that is, if we reduce God to a metaphor for love -- then of what use is that metaphor? That is, of what use any longer is the word 'God'?

I have sometimes wondered if it was not Plato who invented our concept God = the Good.

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