COMMENTS ON DEBORAH SMITH`S PAPER
``WITTGENSTEIN`S EXPANDING NOTION OF OBJECTIVE
CERTAINTY FROM THE TRACTATUS
LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS
TO
Professor Smith has identified a feature of Wittgenstein`s philosophy which is the most radical and most readily ignored feature of his work. The feature is the distinction between the concepts of sense/nonsense on the one hand and true/false on the other. Most philosophers, not merely positivists, hold a common unnoticed assumption that a philosophical proposition describes the universe and is, accordingly, either true or false. Philosophers, then, like scientists, produce descriptions of the universe and refute each others propositions when they are false. ``The grass is green``; ``Water freezes at 32 degrees F.`` and ``There is a hole in the ozone layer``; are like the philosophical propositions: ``Forms exist apart from sense data``; ``There are sense-data``; and ``All actions are done for the sake of pleasure.`` Such propositions of science and philosophy are thought to be true or false. It may be noticed by one philosopher or another that philosophical propositions are somehow different Ð the positivist, for example, notices that they are not verifiable Ð but the real nature of the difference generally escapes notice. It is the essential mark of Wittgenstein`s later philosophy that he identifies the real nature of the difference. His work reflects a long struggle to understand the roots of sense and nonsense. In this he has come to command a grasp of the difference between a philosophical proposition`s being false and its being nonsense. Professor Smith`s paper reflects a grasp of this essential difference.
When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge around 1930, the gear driving his lectures was the question: What goes wrong with philosophy? Why is the history of philosophy the history of positing and refuting propositions with no resolution? It is because the statements of philosophers look and sound like propositions Ð they are true or false for example Ð when they are not. Wittgenstein`s discussion in the Blue Book, P.I..., and On Certainty are discussions aimed at grasping a clearer view of language so that one might come to appreciate the concept of nonsense and its undervalued place in philosophy.
I my years of discussing Wittgenstein and reading about Wittgenstein, I would have to identify this distinction as the least well appreciated and, at the same time, most important feature of Wittgenstein`s later work. A philosophical proposition is not a sensible proposition which is false. It is a proposition of nonÐsense. It is not a proposition at all.
Many contemporary readers of Wittgenstein, for example, read his discussion of private language as an argument against Descartes` thesis that mind and mental states are entities existing separately from the body. If Wittgenstein refutes this thesis as false, then he must be asserting the truth of the opposite thesis: that only body and physical states exist. Wittgenstein might become a behaviorist under this reading. The only thing that exists is the body and its sets of physical behavior. This proposition in turn becomes a candidate for its own refutation. Perhaps functionalism, then, is seen as its replacement. And so, on it goes, as if Wittgenstein had never struggled with the project of uncovering the roots of nonsense.
Professor Smith calls our intention to this important distinction of sense and truth in her well written paper: ``This enlargement of the extension of Wittgenstein`s notion of the objectively certain will be seen to be the direct result of Wittgenstein`s move away from a realistic, truth-theoretic theory of meaning towards a more holistic view of meaning in the later works.`` Professor Smith shows that even in Wittgenstein`s Tractatus, some objectively certain propositions Ð tautologiesÐ cannot be doubted and ``cannot be said`` Ð they are nonsense. Later, she rightly points out, Wittgenstein expands the set of remarks that belong to nonsense to include, among others, Moore`s apparently empirical proposition: ``I know that this is my hand.`` What is important in the notion of expanding the set of sentences which are nonsense is grasping the reason for why they are nonsense. Unlike the positivist whose criteria for meaning is verifiability, Wittgenstein locates nonsense in the absence of actual language occasions in which a sentence is spoken. What are the surroundings? What are the other sentences that are spoken in connection with this one? What are the circumstances under which the speaker is speaking? And what is the speaker intending to accomplish in saying what he or she does? Wittgenstein: To understand a sentence is to understand the whole language. To understand a sentence is to grasp not only the language-game, but the form of life in which it is spoken. Who but a moron or a philosopher goes about identifying his body parts without an occasion to do so? ``This is my hand.`` This is my nose.`` ``I wasn`t born yesterday you know!`` And who thought you were?
The misunderstanding that Wittgenstein`s own philosophical remarks can also be framed as true propositions can appear in his epistemology as well as his philosophy of mind. ``The meaning of a word is its use,`` for example, can be misunderstood as a true proposition defining meaning Ð as if there were such a thing as the meaning of a word. And, as Professor Smith, points out, we should not read Wittgenstein as having clear cut claims distinguishing empirical from logical propositions. It is important to remember in reading Wittgenstein that a ``grammatical remark`` (his replacement expression for ``logical proposition``)is an observation of the ways in which we use a word or sentence. A grammatical remark is not like an empirical proposition or a tautology which are themselves true or false Ð either of the physical world (empirical) or of the mental world of logical relations (tautology). A grammatical remark may be true, if it accurately describes the way a word is used, for example. ``The word `hand` names a body part`` is a grammatical remark which is true. So also is: ``A bachelor is an unmarried man.`` We might also observe that ``This is my hand`` may be used in teaching a child the word ``hand.`` And so the remark: ``The sentence: `This is my hand` may be used in teaching is a grammatical remark,`` is also a grammatical remark. Grammatical remarks are about the way we use language and, when relevant, are of great value in doing philosophy. To say, for example, `` `This is my hand` is not an ordinary empirical remark`` is a grammatical remark which illuminates Moore`s debate with the skeptic.
My only reservation in reading Professor Smith`s paper is that certain expressions may blur this very distinction to which she rightly calls our attention. For example:
Ð ``[Wittgenstein] viewed Moore`s claim that he [Moore] knows these propositions as a mistake of the same caliber as the skeptics doubt regarding them.``
Ð ``Wittgenstein`s main disagreement with Moore ... lies in the fact that Moore seems to believe that the proposition that I am objectively certain that X, entails that I know that X.``
Ð By contrast: ``Wittgenstein wants to say that it is an error for Moore to claim ... This is an error, thinks Wittgenstein, precisely because the fact that a proposition is objectively certain entails that it is unthinkable.``
Do some of these expressions suggest that Wittgenstein is asserting propositions which counter the propositions of Moore? Does it seem as if Professor Moore is making Wittgenstein sound as if he is refuting Moore rather than pointing out the nonsense of Moore`s proposition? Professor Smith`s Wittgenstein appears to be an ordinary philosopher making an ordinary philosophical argument. It is as if Wittgenstein had asserted the proposition: ``What is objectively certain is indubitable`` over against Moore`s proposition: ``I know that this is my hand.`` Professor Smith would, I take it, regard the remark: ``What is objectively certain is indubitable`` as a grammatical remark [logical] remark. But does such talk of ``propositions,`` ``disagreement,`` ``errors,`` and ``mistakes`` cover the distinction between false and nonsense which she has aptly taken note of in the core of her paper? Does her use of ``logical`` rather than ``grammatical`` in some of her sentences also have the same effect? My uneasiness with these expressions notwithstanding, her paper is to be commended for calling our attention this important distinction. I also found the tracing of the distinction into the Tractatus especially helpful in seeing the continuity and development of Wittgenstein`s thought.