Wittgenstein's Thought in Transition

6. Philosophical Pseudoproblems

CHAPTERI I S . I x Philosophical Pseudoproblems The picture theory of meaning avoids many classical philosophical problems. The Tractatus logic is not subject to standard selfreferential paradoxes like the Liar or Russell's, because the picture theory forbids any sentence in a correct logical symbolism from saying anything about itself. The most nagging conceptual puzzles about the nature of mind in its relation to body, the immortality ofthe soul, solipsism, freedom ofwill, and the principles ofethics and aesthetics are eliminated as nonsense by the general form of proposition and the extraworldly transcendence of the metaphysical subject and the extraworldly transcendence of value. The history of philosophy has been a mistake. Its questions cannot be intelligibly asked or answered. Philosophers suffer from the delusion that they are involved in meaningful inquiry. Wittgenstein believes that when properly analyzed all philosophical discourse is literally nonsensical, unsinnig. The only genuine propositions to be found in anylogically correct language are those that express true or false factual statements, ultimately reducible to conjunctions of atomic space-time-color predications of the form 'Red here now', 'Blue there then'. The range of meaningful thoughts and expressions is limited internally by the boundary of thought and language defined by the general form of proposition. What pas·ses for meaningful philosophical discourse, including the sentences of the Tractatus, is beyond the pale ofwhat can meaningfully be said in any logically possible language. The apparent engagement of thought with traditional philosophical problems is logically meaningless, a tangled web of nonsensical pseudopropositions (Scheinsatze) about nonsensical philosophical pseudoproblems. I 134 135 I Philosophical Pseudoproblems The Tractatus is not so much another contribution to philosophy , on a par though in doctrinal disagreement with the great systems of the past. Wittgenstein offers a refinement of (pseudo-) philosophical methods aimed at ending philosophy as traditionally conceived by silencing its nonsensical questions. Philosophical problems disappear into the semantic outland of nonsense, and with them all of traditional philosophy. Wittgenstein then turns the attack on his own labors in articulating the metaphysics oflogical atomism and the picture theory ofmeaning. The Tractatus implies its own meaninglessness, a result Wittgenstein willingly embraces. When Wittgenstein pulls the rug out from under traditional philosophy in the concluding passages of the Tractatus , he does as much to his own pseudopropositional exposition. Working through the development oflogical atomism and the picture theory of meaning with their consequences nevertheless serves an important heuristic purpose, by nonpropositionally communicating an understanding ofthe logic oflanguage through which the problems of philosophy can at last be put to rest. Mter this, having assimilated insight into the limits of thought, language , and the world, we can discard philosophy, including the meaningless pronouncements of the Tractatus, and trade its confusions in for more practical concerns, in the appreciation and cultivation ofvalue in theoretical silence, and in the only productive uses of language in the expression of everyday nonphilosophical thought and the advancement of empirical science. An overview of Wittgenstein's dismissal of philosophical problems as pseudoproblems provides a framework for understanding the details of his conclusions. Wittgenstein traces philosophical pseudoproblems and philosophical pseudopropositions to the sign-symbol distinction. He lays the groundwork for a picture theory diagnosis of the origin and avoidance ofthe traditional problems of philosophy in the fact that the same perceptible linguistic sign can be used equivocally:' 3.32 The sign is the part of the symbol perceptible by the senses. 3.321 Two different symbols can therefore have the sign (the written sign or the sound sign) in commonthey then signify in different ways. 3.322 It can never indicate the common characteristic of two objects that we symbolize them with the same signs but by different methods ofsymbolizing. For the sign is arbitrary. We could therefore equally well choose two different signs and where then would be what was common in the symbolization. 136 I C HAP T E R S I X Wittgenstein illustrates the difficulty posed by the conventionality of signs in semantic confusions that pervade traditional philosophy. Analysis must look beyond the arbitrary application of signs to the methods of symbolizing facts, where philosophical problems do not arise. Wittgenstein offers the example of multiple uses of the term 'is' as subject-predicate copula, identity, and existence predicate. The pseudoproblems that result are due to the accident that some modern European languages permit the verb of being to serve all three roles. But this latitude is not encountered in every language...