The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy

"This book was written as a result of cooperation between Wittgenstein and Waismann from 1929-1936. It began as an endeavour commissioned by Moritz Schlick who was the leader of the Vienna Circle, a famous group of logical empiricists in Vienna. They thought that the Tractatus was one of the greatest books of all time and wanted Wittgenstein to produce a simplified version that would be intelligible to people who hadn’t specialised in Fregean or Russellian logic. It rapidly grew into something quite different because Wittgenstein’s ideas were changing very rapidly between 1929 and 1933. Waismann took extensive notes and, over the next years, wrote up an overview of Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy and his conception of language and linguistic philosophy, covering a very wide range of central themes. He was able to synthesise Wittgenstein’s ideas into straightforward, clear, and elegant prose. It may lack the magic of Wittgenstein’s own later style but it has the great merit that all is in view. In Wittgenstein’s later style, every sentence he writes is perfectly clear—there are no technicalities and no formalisation—but it’s very unclear why he’s saying what he’s saying. Nine tenths of the thought is, so to speak, buried under the surface and you have to dig it up for yourself. With Waismann, it’s all upfront but it loses the power and the mesmerising character of Wittgenstein’s later writing. You might say that you’ve lost the magic, but you’ve gained clarity and detail. So, I warmly recommend this book. The only thing that’s important to realise is that this is a book that represents a phase in Wittgenstein’s development, up to about 1936. I don’t think there’s a lot here which Wittgenstein would have later repudiated, but there are many developments in Wittgenstein’s thought which occur after 1936 and are not evident here. Many of the remarks in the Principles of Linguistic Philosophy pick up features that are aspects of the Tractatus and shows why they’re wrong. Other than that, he gives a picture of Wittgenstein’s views on language in the mid-30s, including the notion of a language game and the relation between language and activity , as opposed to language and calculation. And he does a good job of it. It’s a wonderfully reliable and engaging book that makes clear the importance and character of Wittgenstein’s later view of the nature of language and thought. By now there are very few people who understand what he is talking about. It’s very sad indeed. The casual criticisms of Wittgenstein that are thrown off are often by people who have no idea what he’s talking about. Professor Timothy Williamson here in Oxford has written critical articles about Wittgenstein in which he displays ignorance of what Wittgenstein was actually saying as well as ignorance of the history of the subject from 1919 to 1950. This is important because these leading philosophers are very influential. In my opinion, they corrupt the minds of the young. There are many accidentally converging reasons for the current neglect of Wittgenstein’s ideas. One is the development of a subject that calls itself cognitive science, but is neither cognitive nor scientific. Cognitive science was supposed to be a fruitful combination of theoretical linguistics, philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. In fact, it’s an unholy mixture of incompatible elements. I don’t believe that it has produced anything worth attention. It fosters a form of scientism that is inimical to Wittgenstein’s philosophy. “Those who by-pass Wittgenstein do so to their own detriment, for they are neglecting the most original philosopher of our times” The second reason is a reaction against the kind of linguistic philosophy that was practiced in Oxford, not only under Wittgenstein’s influence but also under the influence of J L Austin. Now, I don’t think there’s any incompatibility between Austin’s and Wittgenstein’s views on language—they are consistent—but they are certainly not the same. But there was a general reaction against it, precisely because it didn’t spin theories. People were craving for theories. Why? Well, largely to emulate the sciences. Science had come to dominate our culture and our civilisation to a degree hitherto undreamt of. The general idea was that if there’s a serious problem then science can answer it. If science cannot answer it, then it can’t be a serious problem. That is a terrible view. The most serious problems that human beings have to face are precisely the ones on which science can say absolutely nothing. For example, what it is to find meaning in one’s life, or the nature of good and evil, or the differences between causal and teleological explanations. There cannot possibly be a scientific solution to any philosophical problem for the simple reason that philosophical problems are conceptual, and they are concerned with the structure of our conceptual scheme, which is quite independent of the truth or falsehood of scientific statements. Conceptual investigations determine what does or doesn’t make sense. Science presupposes the conceptual scheme; it doesn’t clarify it and it doesn’t resolve entanglements it. A third reason was the dominance of the USA in the world of philosophy from the 1970s. The USA is a scientific civilisation. American philosophy has a deeply pragmatist bent, alien to European thought. Partly as a result of the influx of members of the Vienna Circle in the 1930s, philosophy in the USA acquired a taste for formalization that is alien to Wittgensteinian thought. Noam Chomsky’s theoretical linguistics made a great impact on American thought in philosophy of language, and his preoccupation with rules of depth-grammar deeply buried in the unconscious mind, of universal grammar, and of the role of what he called the mind-brain are diametrically opposed to everything Wittgenstein had to say on the nature of language and linguistic representation. Wittgenstein showed that it is unintelligible that there be rules embedded in the brain, or that the brain might be said to follow rules. In his later work, he was wholly sceptical about there being any such thing as depth-grammar, let alone as universal grammar. A fourth factor was the invention of computers. Computers mesmerise us, and tempt us to suppose that computers are intelligent, that they can think. This has led to wild speculation concerning ourselves. Are we biological computers? Is our brain analogous to a computer? This too clashes with Wittgenstein’s thought. He argued that there can be no thought without experience, and computers do not experience anything. Thought, one might say, is essentially a biological phenomenon. It is sad to see these trends in contemporary philosophy. Those who by-pass Wittgenstein do so to their own detriment, for they are neglecting the most original philosopher of our times. But I am confident that his star will rise again."