Language, Mind, and Value: Essays on Wittgenstein

Part I

LANGUAGE

Chapter 1

WITTGENSTEIN ON GRAMMAR, RULES, AND NORMS

1. Grammar: the rules of language

‘Grammar’ is Wittgenstein’s preferred term for the workings of a language: the system of rules that determine linguistic meaning. A philosophical study of language is a study of ‘grammar’, in this sense, and insofar as any philosophical investigation is concerned with conceptual details, which manifest themselves in language, it is a grammatical investigation.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein offered a mathematical picture of language, presenting language as a calculus. The essence of language, supposedly found in the general form of the proposition, was given by a simple formula (TLP 6). Like a calculus, language was claimed to be governed by syntactic rules: (i) formation rules about the licit combination of names to form elementary propositions; (ii) formation rules about the licit combination of elementary propositions to make complex propositions; and finally (iii) truth-table rules, which enable us to identify logical truths and entailments. Notoriously, the existence of the first type of rule remained a postulate. As no examples of actual names were given, the rules governing their use could, of course, not be presented either. Moreover, Wittgenstein insisted rather perversely that no syntactic rule could be meaningfully stated.

When Wittgenstein grew dissatisfied with this view of language, it was not the idea that language was essentially rule-governed that he found fault with. On the contrary, that idea he held on to emphatically, at least until about 1936, only correcting his account of what those rules were and how they functioned. In fact, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that Wittgenstein’s break with his early philosophy was largely due to a careful reconsideration of the role of rules in language. Roughly speaking, while the author of the Tractatus thought that rules could work in secret and that their workings had to be discovered and analysed (just as one has to discover and analyse invisible chemical processes), the Wittgenstein of the 1930s realised that language is an artefact and, to the extent to which it is governed by rules, those rules must be made and applied by us (BB 27–28; BT 268). Hence the idea that those rules could to a large extent be unknown to competent speakers and awaiting to be unearthed by future logicians (cf. TLP 4.002) must be absurd – ‘a hellish idea’, as Wittgenstein now called it in conversation with Friedrich Waismann (WVC 129–30) – just as absurd as the idea that nobody yet knows exactly what the rules of football are. Indeed, the comparison between language and a game becomes one of the leitmotivs of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, as suggested by his concept of a language-game. The title of Chapter 45 of the so-called Big Typescript makes his new view explicit:

Language functions as language only by virtue of the rules we follow in using it, just as a game is a game only by virtue of its rules. (BT 196)

Rejecting the idea of postulated ‘subterranean’ rules that are not known to those who follow them and focusing instead on rules that are actually manifest in our ordinary language use, Wittgenstein became aware of the contingency of some of those rules: the fact that different languages with significantly different rules are at least conceivable. By contrast, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein presented logical syntax as the essence of any possible language (see Hacker 1986, p. 181).

Moreover, attention to actual linguistic detail made Wittgenstein realise that ordinary language is a good deal less tidy, less precisely regulated, than a calculus. While the author of the Tractatus had insisted on the determinacy of sense and on perfect linguistic precision, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the later Wittgenstein rejected this ideal as a prejudice and declared that our grammatical rules are often vague. He now states explicitly that there is no logical calculus underpinning our language, although we may conveniently use such a calculus as an object of comparison:

remember that in general we don’t use language according to strict rules – it hasn’t been taught us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus proceeding according to exact rules. (BB 25; cf. PI §81)

Indeed, the rules that could be written out to reflect the meanings of our words are not only vague; our lists of such rules would also remain incomplete. The game which we play with words ‘is not everywhere circumscribed by rules’ (PI §68). For example, we have no rules by which to decide how the word ‘chair’ is to be applied to chair-like objects that keep disappearing like hallucinations (PI §80).

Finally, it is noteworthy that in the Tractatus account there is no mention of semantic rules. Logical grammar, for the young Wittgenstein, is only logical syntax (TLP 3.325), and logical syntax can be determined without paying any attention to the meaning of the signs (TLP 3.33). The connection between a name and its meaning, that is, the object named, is not fixed by a rule but by a mental act of meaning (NB 104, 130; cf. PG 97). (Hence, Wittgenstein will spend a lot of time in his later philosophy exorcising this idea that linguistic meaning depends on mental processes of meaning something.) In the 1930s, by contrast, Wittgenstein’s concern with linguistic rules was mainly focused on semantic rules, explanations of the meanings of words, which are now emphatically included in grammar:

There is not grammar and an interpretation of signs. Rather, in so far as one can talk about an interpretation, i.e. an explication of signs, it is grammar itself that has to take care of that. (BT 58)

Even ostensive explanations, such as ‘This colour ⇨ ■ is called black ’, are now regarded as rules of grammar (BT 199, 234; PG 88), which is not an entirely felicitous use of the term. An ostensive explanation can perhaps be called a ‘rule’ if it involves a canonical sample (such as the standard metre in Paris). Ordinary ostensive explanations, however, that explain a word by pointing to whatever suitable instance of the concept is at hand are more plausibly regarded as explanations by example than as rules. The difference between these two types of explanation is that statements of rules, unlike instantiations, are not themselves ‘moves in the game’. Thus, explaining the waltz by giving a list or diagram of the correct steps can be called ‘giving a rule’. The explanation is not itself a performance of the dance. But one can also teach the waltz by giving the learner a demonstration of it. This would not be a rule, but an explanation by example. For the instructor’s teaching is itself an instance of dancing the waltz, a ‘move in the game’. Similarly, a casual ostensive explanation of the word ‘purple’ by pointing at and naming the colour of a violet is simply an instance of a correct application of the word (‘This flower is purple’), and as such, it is already a move in the language-game (teaching by doing) (cf. Schroeder 2001a).

Wittgenstein admits that the way he uses the term ‘grammar’ differs from common usage (MS 110, 195; AL 31). Explanations of word meaning, as given in dictionaries, are not normally subsumed under grammar. On the other hand, the usual morphological concerns of grammarians – declination, conjugation of irregular verbs, tense, gender and word order – the stock in trade of school grammar, are quite irrelevant to philosophical investigations of language. The key difference lies in the aims for which the study of language is pursued by the linguist and the philosopher. The philosopher does (or should) not attempt to give a comprehensive and detailed picture of language for its own sake. Rather, philosophical attention to language is just a means to resolving philosophical problems. Hence, philosophical accounts of grammar can ignore most areas of school grammar but have to focus on the relations between some interesting concepts and their criteria of application. Thus, a philosopher’s grammatical investigation bears more resemblance to the work of a lexicographer than a grammarian, yet it is extremely selective and often pays attention to aspects of a word’s meaning that are not spelled out in a dictionary.

2. The autonomy of grammar

‘Grammar’, writes Wittgenstein in an important passage in the Big Typescript, ‘is not accountable to any reality. The rules of grammar determine meaning (constitute it), and therefore they are not answerable to any meaning and in this respect are arbitrary’ (BT 233). In the early days of developing his conception of grammar (1929–33), Wittgenstein suggested the following argument for the arbitrariness, or autonomy of grammar:

The conventions of grammar can’t be justified by a description of what is represented. Any description of that kind already presupposes the rules of grammar. (BT 238)

This is a rather odd way of putting it: if something is a convention, then of course it can’t be justified as being true to the facts. The idea seems to be that one may mistakenly think that such supposed conventions are in fact metaphysical truths. Wittgenstein gives the example ‘There are only four primary colours’ (BT 236; Z §331), which is however difficult to assess as there are different concepts of a primary colour. But in the same passage, he considers the idea that colours must be classified together because they are similar, ‘as opposed to, say, shapes or tones’, and he suggests the response that this similarity is only the result of our classification and so cannot be invoked to justify it (BT 237). But that is hardly convincing. The obvious difference between red and green, on the one hand, and C and D, on the other, is that the former can only be seen and the latter can only be heard. Understanding this distinction does not presuppose the concept of a colour. Of course, it would be possible, as Wittgenstein suggests in the following sentence, to have a concept of something’s being red, green or circular. But even familiarity with such a classification, instead of that of a colour, would not change the fact that there is a difference between red and green, on the one hand, and circular, on the other: if a surface is entirely red (or green), every visible part of it is red (or green); yet if a surface is circular, it doesn’t follow that a part of it must be circular too. Moreover, red and green are mutually exclusive, while they are both combinable with circularity.

In a related passage, it is claimed that:

If I could describe the purpose of grammatical conventions by saying that I had to create them because, for instance, colours have certain properties, that would make these conventions unnecessary. (PR 53; BT 238)

Here one could object that if a convention were prompted by certain similarities, it would not, for that matter, be superfluous. The fact that colours have something in common that justifies grouping them together doesn’t mean that conventionally doing so (classifying them under one label) isn’t a useful convention. After all, there are plenty of cases of things having features in common that we do not bother to pick out by a single word (e.g., trees and bushes with serrated leaves).

However, the continuation of the passage quoted suggests that Wittgenstein had a different kind of case in mind, namely that of a convention laying down, or implying, what combinations of words do and don’t make sense:

That would make these conventions unnecessary, because then I could say precisely what it was the conventions were excluding. Conversely, if the conventions were necessary, i.e. if certain combinations of words had to be excluded as being nonsensical, then for that very reason I couldn’t name a single feature of the colours that would make the conventions necessary, for then it would be conceivable that the colours might not have that feature, and that could only be expressed by contravening the conventions. (PR 53; BT 238)

To begin with a different example, it is surely correct that one cannot justify the semantic convention that the word ‘bachelor’ applies to unmarried men by insisting that bachelors really are unmarried men. The fact that all bachelors are unmarried men by definition can obviously not explain why we chose that definition of the word. However, Wittgenstein’s example of the concept of a colour is less straightforward since it is not defined in terms of certain features but by a list of instances: red, green, blue, yellow, etc. are colours. Now the question may arise as to why, for example, heavy or circular are not classified as ‘colours’ as well, and one may suggest the answer that colours are perceptible by sight only, which rules out weight or shapes. Arguably, this feature of being perceptible by sight only is not a defining feature of colour: we do not present it as a criterion when teaching the word. Rather, it is something we realise afterwards when considering the familiar instances of particular colours. Hence, it can appropriately be cited to justify the list of particular colours that serves as a definition. That list is indeed more natural and practical than an alternative list of classification subsuming: red, green, blue, heavy – for these do not all share the feature of being perceptible by sight only.

But to this Wittgenstein might object as follows: We cannot say that colours have the feature of being perceptible only by sight, which makes our classification sensible, ‘for then it would be conceivable that the colours might not have that feature, and that could only be expressed by contravening the conventions’. – However, this objection appears to be based on the Tractatus dogma that for a statement to be meaningful its negation must be meaningful, too, and that therefore you cannot really express any necessary truths. But that is a dogma we should not accept. Of course, you can meaningfully say, for example, that colours are visible. That the negation of such a claim is nonsense doesn’t make it unsayable; it only shows it to be a characterisation of the concept of a colour rather than an empirical claim. Admittedly, such a characterisation of a concept must be a consequence of the way that concept has been defined or fixed, but since it need not be explicit in the concept’s definition or explanation, it may well be licit to invoke it in order to justify the concept.

Even if Wittgenstein’s argument for the autonomy of grammar fails to convince, there are three other considerations that strongly support the view that grammar is not determined by reality and cannot be faulted by it, even though it may be possible to justify some concepts as more natural and more useful than others. (That experience can in a certain way be said to justify our grammar, contrary to some of Wittgenstein’s earlier remarks, is shown by his account of arithmetical equations as grammatical rules (see below: ‘Mathematics as grammar’). If the objects we count were so unstable or evanescent that after adding 7 of them to 5 others, we did not regularly count 12 in all, the equation ‘7 + 5 = 12’ would be useless as a grammatical norm (RFM 52). Hence, the empirical fact that such counts do almost always yield the result that the corresponding equation makes us expect provides some justification for holding on to the grammar of our arithmetic.)

First, ‘the rules of grammar determine meaning (constitute it), and therefore they are not answerable to any meaning’ (BT 233). Of course, if the meaning of a word is its conventional use in the language (PI §43; cf. Schroeder 2006, Ch. 4.4), then a rule suggested to capture that use can be found to be correct or incorrect. But taking ‘the rules of grammar’ to be the norms that inform our use, there is no meaning independent of them (BB 28). In particular, where on different occasions or in different contexts, a word is used according to different rules, it makes no sense to suggest that some are and some are not in agreement with the word’s true meaning. Thus, the meaning of the word ‘not’ does not compel us to take double negation as affirmation; we could also take it as emphatic negation. Each option gives the word ‘not’ a slightly different meaning (BT 234).

Secondly, there is no extra-linguistic purpose determining the correct rules of language. One can, of course, say that language is a means of communication. A system of vocal sounds to be produced according to certain rules, but unsuitable for any communicative purpose, we would probably not call a language (it might be a kind of phonic game). But then, not every use of language is an act of communication (soliloquies are the most obvious counterexample), and communicative success is not by any means the only thing that matters to us about language (various aesthetic considerations are taken very seriously too). Hence, suitability for communication may be a minimal requirement for any kind of language, but the concept of communication is immensely wide and compatible with an endless range of different grammatical rules and conceptual schemes. It would certainly not allow us to determine any specific set of concepts as the correct ones.

At one point, Wittgenstein contrasted grammatical rules with the rules of cooking, suggesting that ‘ cookery is defined by its end, whereas speaking is not’:

You cook badly if you are guided in your cooking by rules other than the right ones; but if you follow other rules than those of chess you are playing another game; and if you follow grammatical rules other than such-and-such ones, that does not mean you say something wrong, no, you are speaking of something else. (BT 237; Z §320)

But the contrast is not as neat as this passage suggests. Which are the ‘right’ rules of cooking? There is an endless variety of culinary procedures. Of course, where the result of applying a rule is something absolutely unfit for human consumption, we wouldn’t call it a rule of cookery. But then, similarly, a rule for producing certain vocal utterances would not count as a grammatical rule if those utterances were just meaningless sounds. In fact, the relation between rules of cookery and nutrition is fairly similar to that between rules of grammar and communication. In both cases, the former are restricted but not determined by the latter. (The rules of chess are of course not to be compared to the rules of cooking, but, say, to the rules of cooking a Mushroom Stroganoff according to a particular recipe, for instance, Jamie Oliver’s Wild Mushroom and Venison Stroganoff for Two Lucky People (2008) – and again, the analogy holds: if you don’t follow the recipe, you don’t necessarily cook badly; you’re just preparing a different dish.)

Thirdly, contrary to a widespread philosophical view, our concepts are not determined by the essences of things. This ought to be self-evident, simply a consequence of the trivial fact that language is man-made and conventional (BB 27–28). We are obviously free to decide that all objects of a certain description are to be called by a label of our invention. Thus, I could stipulate that whatever is either red, green or circular is to be called ‘gog’ (cf. BT 237). As a stipulation, this may be criticised as impractical or useless, but not as false (BT 236). Unlike propositions or declarative sentences, concepts are not truth-apt. That, however, is contradicted by the widespread idea of a natural kind concept. To describe a concept as being of a natural kind is to make the implicit claim that the classification it specifies is scientifically correct. So-called scientific realists believe that on the micro level (of DNA or atomic structure), nature herself determines how things are to be correctly classified. But that is naïve, for apart from the fact that it is still our decision to take anything on the micro level into account (and for many purposes we don’t), down there we are just as overwhelmed with data and still have to decide which ones (e.g., of an animal’s 30,000 genes) are to be relevant to classification. There is no getting away from the fact that words and their meanings are our artefacts, and we have to take responsibility for them.

3. From rules to norms

It has already been mentioned above that in his later discussions, Wittgenstein no longer believes that language is, like a calculus, a complete system of exact rules. Indeed, he becomes increasingly critical of the idea that language is, like a game, strictly rule-governed, raising some further important reservations:

(i) Linguistic rules are not normally part of the game (‘an instrument of the game itself’ (PI §54; cf. §82)) in the way they are in some of Wittgenstein’s simplified language-games. He imagines, for example, that someone is given a table correlating letters and movements and then a sequence of letters as an order to move in a certain way (EPB 139). To carry out the order, one consults the table, that is, the rule. By contrast, if someone directs me in English (‘Right. Straight on to the traffic lights, then second left.’) I do not consult a rule to derive my movements from his words.

(ii) We have not been taught our mother tongue by rules (cf. PI §54). And this is an important point for Wittgenstein, for he identifies as a typical philosopher’s mistake an inclination to describe our learning of language in a way that already presupposes linguistic competence, like the learning of a foreign language (PI §32). Therefore, he emphasises that at the basic stages language teaching cannot be explaining, let alone giving rules, but must be training or drill (‘Abrichtung’) (PI §6; cf. MS 179, 7v: ‘To follow a rule presupposes a language’ [‘Einer Regel folgen setzt eine Sprache voraus’]). And even at later stages, language is for the most part learnt by picking up a sufficient number of examples of correct usage rather than by rules or explicit explanations. ‘One learns the game by watching how others play’ (PI §54).

(iii) Hence, linguistic rules for natural languages are not necessary for the actual use of a language; they are only summarising descriptions of that use (PI §54). As such, they can still be called ‘rules of grammar’, but then the latter word is taken in a different sense: referring not to the actual workings of language but to a systematic account of those workings. ‘Grammar’, Wittgenstein remarks, using the word in this derivative sense, ‘is a description of language ex post’ (‘Die Grammatik ist eine nachträgliche Beschreibung der Sprache’: MS 110, 110). It is of course true that linguists’ systematic descriptions of a language in dictionaries and grammar books will subsequently have a normative and stabilising impact on certain aspects (usually fairly subtle aspects) of the use of language by educated speakers, but this is a feature of a highly advanced and sophisticated literary culture. It is clearly not essential to the phenomenon of language and, from a historical point of view, would not have been relevant for most speakers of most languages for most of the time.

(iv) Taking the points made so far into consideration, Wittgenstein withdraws his earlier claim that ‘language functions as language only by virtue of the rules we follow in using it, just as a game is a game only by virtue of its rules’ (BT 196). In a handwritten note, he comments:

That is not correct, in so far as no rules have to have been laid down for language; no more than for a game. But one can look at language (and a game) from the standpoint of a process that uses rules. (BT 196)

The rules of a language, he now suggests, are a useful fiction, like that of a social contract:

‘Contrat social’ – here too no actual contract was ever concluded; but the situation is more or less similar, analogous, to the one we’d be in if … And there’s much to be gained in viewing it in terms of such a contract. (BT 196v)

It is, after all, a fact that language involves normativity. We do not only use certain expressions, we regard them as correct, and we criticise and reject others which we regard as incorrect. This important feature of language is rightly emphasised by comparing language to a rule-governed game, even if the comparison does not give an accurate picture of the way linguistic normativity is conveyed and implemented.

(v) Wittgenstein’s reservations go further still. Acknowledging that linguistic rules need not actually be consulted but may be nothing but summary descriptions of people’s use of words, he writes (in 1933–34):

But what if observation does not enable us clearly to see any rule, and the question [put to a speaker as to what rule he follows] brings none to light? – For he did indeed give me an explanation when I asked him what he understood by ‘N’, but he was prepared to withdraw and alter it. – So how am I to determine the rule according to which he is playing? He does not know it himself. Or, more accurately: What meaning is the expression ‘the rule by which he proceeds’ supposed to have left to it here? (PI §82; cf. BB 25)

Wittgenstein seems to envisage two reasons why, in many cases, no rule can be given. One is illustrated in the following section by an analogy with games:

Doesn’t the analogy between language and games throw light here? We can easily imagine people amusing themselves in a field by playing with a ball so as to start various existing games, but playing many without finishing them and in between throwing the ball aimlessly into the air, chasing one another with the ball and bombarding one another for a joke and so on. …

And is there not also the case where we play and – make up the rules as we go along? And there is even one where we alter them – as we go along. (PI §83)

The idea seems to be that a variety of different language-games can be played with the same words and that (unlike the builders of §2 of the Investigations, who always use the same words in the same way) we tend frequently to move between them, mix them up, and introduce new variations (cf. BB 28: ‘there are words … which … are used in a thousand different ways which gradually merge into one another’). Picking out one of those uses, we might well be able to produce something like a rule, but then it will not be applicable to what we do with the same expression in another context. So we’d have to ‘withdraw and alter’ our explanation, and we will do so again when considering yet other uses. Our grip on linguistic normativity is essentially piecemeal, and the explanations that we can give manifesting our linguistic competence are always just provisional, read off from some language-game which on another occasion could easily shade into, or be developed into, a slightly different one.

The most telling expression of Wittgenstein’s claim that linguistic normativity is often piecemeal is, of course, his introduction of the idea of a family resemblance concept. He suggests that when we try to formulate a comprehensive rule, that is, a definition, for the use of the word ‘game’, we draw a blank (PI §66). Here, as in many other cases, what is subsumed under a given concept cannot be derived from a general rule, for it has not been decided once and for all but case by case, reflecting the way the concept was first introduced with only some applications in mind and then applied or not applied to new kinds of cases as people saw fit. Thus, for example, tennis is called a game, whereas judo is not, although they both are competitive rule-governed sports.

Taking stock of Wittgenstein’s qualifications of the idea of language as rule-governed, we should, however, be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. The essential normativity of grammar is never called into question. It is certainly true that our use of language manifests linguistic norms. Often, though not always, they can be given in the form of rules: general statements summarising how an expression is to be used (e.g., definitions). But such rules are, for the most part, only ex-post abstractions from actual usage (unlike the rule for a calculus, laid down beforehand). In order to acknowledge all the qualifications and reservations Wittgenstein had about speaking of rules of language while holding on to his crucial insight into the normativity of language, it may be better to speak of the norms of language, with the proviso that norms can be piecemeal and implicit in a practice and need not be laid down as general verbal expressions, that is, as rules.

4. Rules of grammar and the discussion of rule-following

One may well wonder why, if by the mid-1930s Wittgenstein had so many reservations about regarding language as rule-governed, he should have spent so much time in Philosophical Investigations discussing what it is to follow a rule.

Trying to answer this question, we should first of all note an important point about Wittgenstein’s use of the word ‘rule’ in the Investigations, which is clarified by a passage in ‘The Brown Book’. There he distinguishes between two kinds of (what he calls) rules, namely: semantic rules and instruction rules (BB 96, 98; cf. EPB 140, 143). A semantic rule gives the meanings of signs. For example, in the form of a table:

amove to the right

bmove to the left

cmove forward

dmove backward

Using those signs to give somebody an order (e.g.: ‘c a d a’) would rely on the previously given rule, but it would not itself be a rule. However, where such an order is meant to be followed again and again, say, in drawing a continuing ornamental pattern, Wittgenstein is happy to call it a ‘rule’, too. It is what may be called an instruction rule:

In this case I think we should say that ‘cada’ is the rule for drawing the design. Roughly speaking, it characterizes what we call a rule to be applied repeatedly, in an indefinite number of instances. (BB 96)

This, I think, helps us to understand what is going on in the rule-following discussions in the Investigations. What I presented above were Wittgenstein’s misgivings about the idea of semantic rules, but what occupies him in the Investigations under the title ‘following a rule’ is something different: It is not semantic rules, but instruction rules, that is, orders to continue doing something in a regular manner, for example, writing down a series