Eternal Possibilities: A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence

1. Platonism in the Tractatus

1 Platonism in the Tractatus ETERNAL possibilities are the common ground for meaning and existence: they are the metaphysical root and condition for knowledge. This first chapter introduces that hypothesis. 1. WITTGENSTEIN once held views about mind and knowledge that are like Plato's. Those ideas are expressed in the Tractatus under the guise of the picture theory. The correlates to Plato's Forms are possibilities in logical space. As a Form may achieve partial realization in the flux and in our thought and perception of its expression there, so may the possibility be expressed in a state of affairs, and in the sentence representing that matter of fact. My reading of the Tractatus is antithetic to the one of Anscombe, Black, and Copi. They suppose that Wittgenstein treats the relation of a sentence to a state of affairs as the rule-governed association of one fact, the marks or sounds which comprise the sentence, to another one, the state of affairs. They ignore the idea that the sentence is fit to represent the state of affairs just because both are expressions of the same possibility for form. For that reason , they miss the radical implications of Wittgenstein's picture theory. The undisputed outlines of that theory are as follows. Wittgenstein has argued that every state of affairs is a configuration of objects. States of affairs, be they actual or possible, differ from one another because, first, one or 17 Ilrving Copi, "Objects , Properties and Relations in the 1'1"0(tatus ," Essays on Wittgensteill 's 1'ractatus, edited by 1. Copi and R. Beard (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 179. 2Ibid., pp. 16H-69. Eternal Possibilities more of the objects which are or would be constituents of one state of affairs differs from objects which do or would comprise any other state of affairs; or because, second, the configuration of objects in one state of affairs differs from the configu!"ations of all other states of affairs ; or, because, third, both of the first two conditions hold. If ABC is a state of affairs, it differs from ABD, from ABC, and from ABD. Wittgenstein requires that every state of affairs be representable by a sentence. Its terms are to be proper names designating objects; the assembly of names is to be isomorphic with the configuration of objects in the state of affairs represented. Every proposition will be a kind of mirror image of the state of affairs it represents. Accordingly, the sentences differ among themselves in ways corresponding to differences in states of affairs. Sentences differ, because, first, one or more of the terms which comprise a sentence differs from the terms comprising every other sentence; or because , second, their configurations differ, or because, third, both conditions obtain: 'ABC' differs from 'ABD', from 'ABC', and from 'ABD'. Copi has discussed certain obstacles to Wittgenstein's program. Sentences in most natural languages are linear, and this restricts the flexibility that is required if the indefinite variety of configurations in states of affairs is to be duplicated in the sentences which are to represent them. Copi has argued that this flexibility is available if we introduce such devices as sub- and superscripts, so that an indefinite number of configurations may be produced by manipulating a finite set of terms.1 Copi believes that Wittgenstein would favor stipulations which provide the required flexibility of expression. He writes: "The Tractatus contains several definite proposals for improving ... symbolism by altering it in the direction of greater artificiality.... I understand Wittgenstein to be primarily concerned with specifications for an artificial symbolic language which would conform to 'the rules of logical grammar'."2 Wittgenstein has said that states of affairs are facts, and Platonism in the Tractatus 19 that sentences are also facts. His picture theory requires that one fact should represent another. Anscombe believes that our success in duplicating the configuration of a state of affairs in a sentence is not enough to make the sentence a picture of the state of affairs.3 Facts, she thinks, are mute: no one of them can, in itself, represent another fact. Picturing will occur only if the sentence-fact is correlated with a state of affairs by the application of one or more rules. Black speaks of these rules as "conventions of designation."4 The pairing of a sentence and state of affairs, by the application of a rule, is a mental activity. Anscombe writes...