Solipsism in the Tractatus

in the Solipsism Tractatus RICHARD W. MILLER READERS OF THE Tractatus usually adopt one of two views of the discussion of solipsism . According to the first, dominant among writers on the Tractatus, Wittgenstein's apparent endorsement of solipsism is really an extravagant statement of quite nonsolipsistic doctrines. On such accounts, the remarks on solipsism and related passages, such as the discussion of death, are uncharacteristically, almost perversely overblown. According to the other view, the apparent endorsement of solipsism is seriously meant, but marks a surprising and frustrating turn in the book's course, in which Wittgenstein leaves behind the solid, if obscure, terrain of the philosophy of language for flighty speculations, divorced from his previous arguments. I shall argue for a third response to the remarks on solipsism. Wittgenstein really means what he says. The remarks on solipsism are what they seem to be--a bold endorsement of a linguistic version of solipsism. But this solipsism is utterly dependent on what came before. It is forced on Wittgenstein by a general view of reference as based on mental representation that is a theme of earlier sections of the book. Besides unifying the Tractatus, my argument will suggest ways to unify the Investigations . The attempt to base reference on mental representation which I shall discuss is obviously a target of the first half of the Investigations (especially remarks 139-242). Solipsism is one of the absurdities about other minds attacked in the second half (see, for example, remarks 300-302). If the former distortion of language gives rise to the latter absurdity, the Investigations does not, as it might seem, break down into two independent books, one on philosophical theories of reference, the other on independently tempting absurdities concerning other minds. Tractatus Solipsism In remark 5.62 of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein says, What the solipsist wants to say~is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. This proposal that the complete correctness of what the solipsist wants to say is manifest in the limits of language follows soon after remarks suggesting that the logical analysis This rendering of "meint'" is due to Rush Rhees's review of M. Comforth, Science and Idealism, Mind 56 (1947):388. Except as otherwise noted, passages from the Tractatus will be given in the D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness translation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961). They will be identified by their decimal remark numbers. [571 58 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of language determines what objects there are: "Empirical reality is limited by the totality of objects. The limit also makes itself manifest in the totality of elementary propositions [5.5561] .... The application of logic decides what elementary propositions there are [5.557]." Remark 5.62 is followed, in turn, by a number of other remarks of an extremely solipsistic tendency: 5.261: "The world and life are one"; 5.63: "I am my world (the microcosm)"; 5.632: "The subject does not belong to the world; rather it is a limit of the world"; 6.431: "So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end" (cf. Notebooks, 1914-16, 2 p. 82: "What is all history to me? Mine is the first and only world!"). In 5.62, Wittgenstein seems to express a preference for solipsism among traditional ontologies. I shall argue that this preference is not just apparent, but real, and that it was forced on Wittgenstein by fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of thought and language. A solipsist who says, "The world is my world," is naturally thought to mean, "Everything is mental, and there is nothing mental that is not mine." Wittgenstein , I shall argue, held that the validity of this utterance must be manifested in any complete analysis of one's language. When one's language is fully analyzed, everything to which a word refers must be mental, and nothing referred to can be part of the mental life of another. On Wittgenstein's view, the only thing wrong with a strict and general...