Eternal Possibilities: A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence

2. Two Kinds of Possibility: Material and Eternal

Two Kinds of Possibility Material and Eternal 2 THE IDEA of logical space is often mentioned in the Tractatus as Wittgenstein explicates his picture theory of meaning and truth; but no clear statement of its value for his theory appears there. My interpretation of the Tractatus requires that logical space be acknowledged as the fundamental idea from which the picture theory is derived. This is so, because I believe that Wittgenstein is determined to confute those idealist and subjectivist theories which deny the independence of objects of knowledge from the mind. He argues that the referents of knowledge are not intentional objects; likewise, he challenges the idea that differences among properties are founded only in the differing rules for using predicates within a language. These rejected ideas entail that the objects of knowledge accrue as mind attends to the contents of awareness, or uses language to ascribe certain properties or relationships of properties to the world. Wittgenstein insists to the contrary that the existence and character of the world are independent of the fact that we may talk about it. Sentences, in their reportorial use, represent states of affairs; they do not, in any respect, make them. It is this starting point that gives such importance to the idea of logical space. Matters of fact that are independent of language are captured as objects for knowledge in the sentences representing them. Wittgenstein must tell how the sentences make contact with the states of affairs they represent. He finds that point of contact in logical space: the facts in logical space are possibilities ; every possibility is expressible in a state of affairs and 57 Eternal Possibilities in the sentence which represents that state of affairs; the co-expression of a possibility in a state of affairs and a sentence results in that correspondence relation which is truth. With reservations about the reputed isomorphism of the sentence and state of affairs, I accept this formulation. I need to establish that possibilities have a reality which qualifies them to be the neutral ground between language and the world, available for representation in the one, and instantiation in the other. These eternal possibilities are easily confused with material possibilities. I shall distinguish the two kinds of possibles before taking up the status of the eternal ones. 1. WITTGENSTEIN supposes that a sentence is fit to represent a state of affairs because of being an expression of the same form that is expressed in the state of affairs. But that form, expressible in these two facts, is distinguishable from both of them. Wittgenstein encourages realist accounts of form, and I have supplied one: the form is a schema, or sense, represented by a sentence; it is the possibility expressed in the sentence and a state of affairs. There are two aspects of the schema so described: its distinguishing identity as this or that form; and its mode of being as a possibility. 1.1 Would Wittgenstein endorse my suggestion that the schema is, in some respect, real? He seems to agree when writing that the facts for logic are possibilities, and that the facts in logical space, meaning possibilities, are the world. Still, there are degrees of realism, and as I want to argue now, there are two respects in which the reality that Wittgenstein would accord to possibilities is carefully circumscribed . First, Wittgenstein apparently believes that a possibility for form has no reality apart from its expression as a proposition, meaning sentence, or as a state of affairs. Two Kinds of Possibility 59 Second, he allows that a possibility might not have expression in a sentence or state of affairs; but then he identifies the possibility with the internal properties of objects, and, we may infer, of names. Notice that states of affairs and sentences are the evanescent actualities in Wittgenstein's ontology; and that objects, the substance of the world, are the enduring ones. Accordingly, Wittgenstein alleges that possibilities, whether expressed or not, have no reality apart from actualities. I want to describe and evaluate these constraints upon his realism. Let us begin by considering the form as it is expressed in a sentence or state ofaffairs. Is the form distinguishable from all of its expressions? That it is is apparent in the consideration that the form may be represented by a propositional function, what Wittgenstein calls a propositional variable (3.313). Sentences that are values for such a variable may...