Abstract
It may be said that the single track of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is the discernment and elucidation of grammar—its nature and its limits. This paper will trace Wittgenstein’s evolving notion of grammar from the Tractatus to On Certainty. It will distinguish between a ‘thin grammar’ and an increasingly more fact-linked, ‘reality-soaked’, ‘thick grammar’. The ‘hinge’ certainties of On Certainty and the ‘patterns of life’ of Last Writings attest to the fact that one of the leitmotifs in the work of the third Wittgenstein is the grammaticalization of experience. This reflects Wittgenstein’s realisation that grammar can manifest itself as a way of acting. In moves that exceed anything in Philosophical Investigations, the third Wittgenstein makes grammar enactive. We shall see that Wittgenstein’s hesitant but unrelenting link of grammar to the stream of life in no way infringes on the ‘autonomy of grammar’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I borrow the term ‘reality-soaked’ from Bernard Harrison, who uses it to speak of a ‘reality-soaked language’ (1991, 58).
- 2.
An expression I coined to denote the post-Investigations corpus. See Moyal-Sharrock (2004).
- 3.
For my present purpose, it is not necessary to mark the distinction made in the Tractatus between ‘nonsense’ and ‘senseless’, which dissolves in the later Wittgenstein. See, for example, PI 247 and pp. 175, 221 for cases where sinnlos is used for reasons which would have, according to the Tractatus, required the use of unsinnig. But this indiscriminate use of the terms is already present in Philosophical Grammar (1931–1934), e.g. PG 129.
- 4.
For a full-blown argument, see Moyal-Sharrock (2007a).
- 5.
See Crary and Read (2000) passim in which so-called ‘Ineffabilists’ (philosophers who, like Peter Hacker, view some nonsense in the Tractatus as ‘illuminating’) are rebuked for ‘chickening out’, for not being ‘resolute’ enough to recognise that Wittgenstein viewed all nonsense as ‘plain nonsense’; i.e. gibberish.
- 6.
Ethics, aesthetics and the mystical ‘cannot be put into words’ (TLP 6.421; 6.522).
- 7.
‘… what can be said; i.e. propositions of natural science—i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy’ (TLP 6.53).
- 8.
Note also Wittgenstein’s acknowledgment, in a letter to Fricker, that the important part of the Tractatus was the silent part: ‘My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one’ (EL 143).
- 9.
See also PI 23.
- 10.
For a discussion of the presence of the saying/showing dichotomy as late as On Certainty, see Moyal-Sharrock (2007b), 94–97, and passim.
- 11.
For further discussion on the ineffability of basic certainty see Moyal-Sharrock (2007b) 65–71; 94–99.
- 12.
Note that I will be using the terms ‘reality’, ‘nature’ and ‘the world’ interchangeably to refer to unconceptualized or raw reality—what Wittgenstein refers to as the ‘reality lying behind the notation’ (PI 562); where I mean a conceptualized world or reality, I will speak of ‘my world’, ‘our world’ or ‘human reality’.
- 13.
For further discussion, see Moyal-Sharrock (2016).
- 14.
For example: ‘How can I be taught to recognize these patterns [in the weave of life]? I am shown simple examples, and then complicated ones of both kinds. It is almost the way I learn to distinguish the styles of two composers’ (LW II 42-3); ‘When he first learns the names of colours—what is taught him? Well, he learns e.g. to call out “red” on seeing something red—But is that the right description; or ought it to have gone: “He learns to call ‘red’ what we too call ‘red’”?—Both descriptions are right. … What I teach him however must be a capacity. So he can now bring something red at an order; or arrange objects according to colour’ (Z 421); ‘As children we learn concepts and what one does with them simultaneously’ (LW II 43).
- 15.
As Wittgenstein makes clear: ‘We do not see facial contortions and make the inference that he is feeling joy, grief, boredom. We describe a face immediately as sad, radiant, bored, even when we are unable to give any other description of the features—Grief, one would like to say, is personified in the face. This is essential to what we call ‘emotion’ (RPP II, 570).
- 16.
The mind is often directly observable, thus obviating the need for a Theory of Mind to attribute mental states—thoughts, perceptions, desires, intentions, feelings—to others. The notion of the mind as ‘something inner’, accessible only to oneself, has been seriously undermined by Wittgenstein. For an excellent discussion, see Vaaja (2013).
- 17.
‘Grammar is not accountable to any reality. It is grammatical rules that determine meaning (constitute it) and so they themselves are not answerable to any meaning and to that extent are arbitrary’ (PG 184).
- 18.
Note that though one of Wittgenstein’s most persistent philosophical concerns is to make the distinction ever clearer between grammar and the use of language (BT 38), he does not always mark that distinction. Where he is more preoccupied with distinguishing word and world rather than grammar from propositions, he often speaks of language where he means grammar [e.g. ‘If I want to tell someone what colour some material is to be, I send him a sample, and obviously this sample belongs to language’ (PR 38)]; or speaks of them quasi-interchangeably [e.g. ‘The calculus is as it were autonomous—Language must speak for itself’ (PG 63)]. But the distinction between language and grammar remains a logical distinction: grammatical rules govern our use of language; they are not language, but are essential to language; make language possible.
- 19.
These—‘grammar’ and ‘concepts’—are often used interchangeably by Wittgenstein. A conceptual elucidation is a grammatical elucidation.
- 20.
See Malcolm: ‘The notes for 1930–1932, edited by Desmond Lee, exhibit at first a striking continuity with the Tractatus: language consists of propositions; a proposition is a picture of reality; a proposition must have the same logical multiplicity as the fact which it describes; thought must have the logical form of reality. But new concerns soon appear. What is the relation of the logical grammar of language to reality? The application of grammar to reality is not shown by the grammar; a picture does not contain its own application. “In all language,” Wittgenstein says, “there is a bridge between the sign and its application. No one can make this for us; we have to bridge the gap ourselves. No explanation ever saves the jump, because any further explanation will itself need a jump.” ‘Can grammar be justified? Can we say why we use just these rules of grammar and not other ones? Is the logic of our language to be justified on the ground that it fits the nature of reality? No. “Our justification could only take the form of saying ‘As reality is so and so, the rules must be such and such.’ But this presupposes that I could say ‘If reality were otherwise, then the rules of grammar would be otherwise.’ But in order to describe a reality in which grammar was otherwise I would have to use the very combinations which grammar forbids. The rules of grammar distinguish sense and nonsense and if I use the forbidden combinations I talk nonsense’ (1980, online).
- 21.
PI Part II (1946–49) is roughly contemporaneous with RPP I (1946–47).
- 22.
With the help of fertility goddesses.
- 23.
‘[A child] doesn’t learn at all that that mountain has existed for a long time: that is, the question whether it is so doesn’t arise at all. It swallows this consequence down, so to speak, together with what it learns’ (OC 143). 237. ‘If I say “an hour ago this table didn’t exist” I probably meant that it was only made later on. … If I say “this mountain didn’t exist half an hour ago”, that is such a strange statement that it is not clear what I mean’ (OC 237).
- 24.
For more detailed discussion, see Moyal-Sharrock (2007b).
- 25.
Wittgenstein uses the German word Muster, which can be translated both as model or pattern.
- 26.
There are also culture-bound, or ‘local’ thick grammars—conditioned by the different forms of human life. For more on this distinction, see Moyal-Sharrock (2015).
- 27.
To consider the thick rules that are reality-soaked but not strictly speaking experiential [e.g. ‘Napoleon existed’ (cf. OC 185)] as part of the ‘grammaticalisation of experience’, we would need to either understand the term ‘experience’ in this phrase in a broad (culture-inclusive) sense, or say that not all of thick grammar is part of Wittgenstein’s grammaticalisation of experience. I would opt for the first.
- 28.
See note 18.
- 29.
‘If I want to tell someone what colour some material is to be, I send him a sample, and obviously this sample belongs to language; and equally the memory or image of a colour that I conjure by a word, belongs to language’ (PR 38). ‘We can put it like this: This sample is an instrument of the language used in ascriptions of colour. In this language-game it is not something that is represented, but is a means of representation. … And to say “If it did not exist, it could have no name” is to say as much and as little as: if this thing did not exist, we could not use it in our language-game—What looks as if it had to exist, is part of the language. It is a paradigm in our language-game; something with which comparison is made. And this may be an important observation; but it is none the less an observation concerning our language-game—our method of representation’ (PI 50). Although Wittgenstein speaks of samples as being part of, or belonging to, ‘language’, strictly speaking, he means to ‘grammar’. See note 18.
- 30.
David Lewis sees ‘the mere possibility’ that a person might switch bodies as real or serious enough to require refutation (1971, 47).
- 31.
And, I would add, nothing more time-wasting for scientists to engage in experiments to try and (dis)prove philosophers’ time-wasting thought experiments: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/physicists-confirm-that-were-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation/.
References
Boghossian, P. (2006) Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Crary, A., & Read, R. (Eds.). (2000). The New Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 2000).
Diamond, C. (1989) “Rules: looking in the right place” in Phillips, D.Z. (ed.) Wittgenstein: Attention to Particulars: Essays in Honour of Rush Rhees. L, Macmillan, 12–34.
Gaita, R. (1990) Introduction to Value & Understanding: Essays for Peter Winch (New York: Routledge).
Hacker, P.M.S. (2000) ‘Was he trying to whistle it?’ in Crary, A. & Read, R. The New Wittgenstein (London: Routledge), 353–388.
Harrison, B. (1991) Inconvenient Fictions: Literature and the Limits of Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Lewis, D. (1971) ‘Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies’ in Philosophical Papers: Vol. 1. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983), 47–54.
Monk, R. (1991) Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Vintage).
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2004) (ed.) The Third Wittgenstein: the post-Investigations works (Routledge, 2004).
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2007a) ‘The Good Sense of Nonsense: A Reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as Nonself-repudiating’ in Philosophy 82:1, 147–177.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2007b) Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2015) Wittgenstein’s Forms of Life, Patterns of Life and Ways of Living in Nordic Wittgenstein Review, October, 21–42. http://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/issue/view/NWR%20Special%20Issue%202015.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2016) ‘Wittgenstein, No Linguistic Idealist’ in Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language, eds S. Greve and J. Mácha. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan), 117–140.
Vaaja, T. (2013) ‘Wittgenstein’s “Inner and Outer”: Overcoming Epistemic Asymmetry’ Nordic Wittgenstein Review (2:1), 107–129. http://wab.uib.no/nwr/index.php/nwr/article/view/1012/pdf.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2020). Wittgenstein’s Grammar: Through Thick and Thin. In: Wuppuluri, S., da Costa, N. (eds) WITTGENSTEINIAN (adj.). The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27568-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27569-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)