Eternal Possibilities: A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence

5. Carnap, Goodman, and Quine on the Relation of Language to the World

Carnap, Goodman, and Quine on the Relation of Language to the World 5 WITTGENSTEIN'S picture theory invites us to suppose that a sentence is fit to represent a particular state of affairs because there is one possibility for form instantiated in both of them. The picture theory is open to criticism at two places. First, it may be denied that the relation of language to the world is such that matters independent of language for their existence and character are nevertheless representable within language. Second, we may object that the sentence which represents an instantiated possibility is not itself an instantiation of that possibility. Chapter 6 takes its direction from this second point. It develops an alternative explanation for the fact that sentences represent possibilities which mayor may not be instantiated. This present chapter defends the realism of Wittgenstein's theory against those who argue that it is meaningless to speak of the independent reality possessed by the matters represented in language. 1. LANGUAGE is an instrument for the representation of extralinguistic matters of fact; but language is incidental to the world as a photograph is incidental to its subject. That is the attitude of critical common sense. For we do normally believe that the matters of fact to which language draws our attention are independent oflanguage in respect to their existence and character. We might reasonably declare that this view is the outcome of our experi189 1 Benjamin Lee Wharf, Language, Thought and Reality, edited by J. B. Carroll (Cambridge: M. 1. T. Press, 1956), p. 221. Eternal Possibilities ence as language users: we find that talking about things does not, in itself, change them. Perhaps this is the appearance of our experience with language, but not its deeper truth. Language may shape the world, not by changing it in some gross physical or behavioral way, but instead by determining what qualitative differences may be imputed to the world. There is Whorfs hypothesis: the language used in describing the world determines what differences shall be perceived as present there.! Philosophers who accept the prescriptivist implications ofWhorfs hypothesis have not had to wait for the data that would confirm it. For if Whorfs claim is an empirical one about the way that language is used, we may restate it as an a priori claim about the relation that the world need have to language. We may give that cast to Wittgenstein's remark which he did not intend. He said that the limits of my language mean the limits of my world (Tractatus, 5.6). He meant that the world, like language, is restricted to the expression of possibilities which are independent of, but available to both of them. We shall mean instead that the range of predicates within our language is, and must be, used projectively to fix the range of qualitative differences that may significantly be ascribed to the world. The descriptive vocabulary of our language will constitute a universe of discourse; and we shall be unable to imagine, so long as we operate within our language, that the world has or might have properties other than those designated by the words of this vocabulary. Sentences formulated within our language will sometimes be true, but truth will not be a relation between a sentence and a state ofaffairs that is independent ofthe sentence in respect to its existence and character. The sentence will be true for reasons intrinsic to language alone. These will be formalistic reasons expressed as stipulations concerning the relatedness or co-assertibility of sentences. But notice: we ordinarily suppose that sentences are true just because they represent or designate something actually present within the world. We take for granted that the character and existence of the fact are independent of the ways we talk about it. But now, it is only the resources ofour Carnap, Goodman, and Quine 191 vocabulary and the rules governing relations of sentences which have certified the meaning and truth ofthe sentence. We may construe the sentence realistically as pointing beyond itself to an independent state of affairs. But paradoxically , the 'facts' ascribed to the world are present there only in the respect that there are sanctions in language for saying that they are present within it. This inverts the relation of language to the world, as we normally understand it. This prescriptivist view of language in its relation to the world has a decisive effect upon the...