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Wittgenstein on context and philosophical pictures

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Abstract

In this paper, I will investigate Wittgenstein’s idea about the context-sensitivity of utterance. It is the idea that there is a big gap between understanding a sentence in the sense of knowing the idioms and discerning the grammar in it, and what is said by using it in a particular context. Although context-sensitivity in this moderate sense is a familiar idea in Wittgensteinian scholarship, it has mainly been studied as an idea in “Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.” However, Wittgenstein’s interest in language is always connected with his interest in the treatment of philosophical problems. Therefore, what is lacking in those preceding studies is the study of the relation between Wittgenstein’s engagement with the idea of context-sensitivity and his philosophical therapy. Therefore, I shall investigate that relation and show that (i) Wittgenstein’s philosophical method cannot be intelligible without taking context-sensitivity into consideration and (ii) Wittgenstein’s focus on context is deeply connected with his method for treating philosophers’ “pictures.” Below, I will examine recent debates on grammar, and argue that the standard interpretation is untenable once proper consideration is given to context-sensitivity (Sect. 2). Next, I will argue that context-sensitivity is important because it gives us a good grasp of the process of a philosopher’s being caught in a picture by citing the discussion about mental process (Sect. 3) and about the Augustinian picture and rule-following (Sect. 4) in Philosophical Investigations. Finally, I will talk about the significance of my interpretation for contemporary arguments about philosophical methods (Sect. 5).

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Notes

  1. Wittgenstein’s works are refered by the usual abbreviations, which are indicated in References.

  2. For the contrast between word by itself and in use, see PI 432. The target of the quotation is Cantor’s transfinite set theory, whose appeal comes from our tendency not to see the details of the uses but some picture associated with the word “infinite.” (LFM 141–142) See Rodych (2000) for a good explanation of Wittgenstein’s criticism of set theory.

  3. See the discussion of “It’s five o’clock on the sun” in PI 350–351 and the “feeling in my hands of water being three feet under the ground” in BB 9–11, the point of which also is that, while these phrases are constituted by familiar English words, “customary” uses of those words are not helpful for understanding what is said by using them in each context. See also PI 117 and Z 9.

    Some interpreters argue that there is something unique in the philosophy of the post-Investigations period that includes remarks in On Certainty. (Glock 2009b; Moyal-Sharrock 2004, 2013) Although I admit that there is some significant development there, I do not see any change in his method for treating philosophical problems. Therefore, I cite remarks from On Certainty for arguing my interpretation of his method. Conant (1998, pp. 240–241) also cites OC 348 to note Wittgenstein’s focus on the particular contexts.

  4. See Conant (2002) for a related discussion.

  5. My conception of context-sensitivity may seem to exclude minimalism, according to which context does not affect the semantic content of a sentence except when it contains some pure indexicals such as “I”, “here”, “now”, or “this.” (See Cappelen and Lepore 2005 for a defense.) However, unless the semantic content is identified with what is said, which identification LePore and Cappelen explicitly deny (Cappelen and Lepore 2005, p. 4), there still is a gap between the meaning of a sentence and what is said in minimalism. Therefore, although I believe Wittgenstein will be inimical to the minimalism’s idea of positing a proposition as a semantic content of a sentence apart from what is said by it, at least for the purpose of my paper, the context-sensitivity need not exclude minimalism.

  6. Hacker may say that the context-dependency is not a side-issue, but an important point that supports the dynamic conception of language as something that is interwoven into our practices rather than a static calculation system (see Hacker 2013a). However, even if we admit this point, there still remains the question of why it is important to offer a dynamic conception of language if it is not intended to present “Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.”

  7. A similar contention by a standard interpreter is found in Glock (1991, p. 84).

  8. One might think that we can say that we have two different sets of grammatical rules for the uses of “mother,” so that grammatical rules are context-sensitive. That is, different sets of rules are operative in deciding the standard sense of “mother” in different context. (Cf. Whiting 2010; Dobler 2013)

    However, although I believe this is a promising direction for the interpretation of grammar in Wittgenstein, the standard interpreters will not take this proposal. For, if a grammatical rule is context-sensitive, context-sensitivity must play a significant role in the grammatical investigations of Wittgenstein, which idea, as we saw, Hacker explicitly denies.

  9. One might think that the default authority is a kind of “ground.” It may be correct. In that case, we should say that the problem with Hacker is that he sticks to the inference-based and observation-based models of “ground” and ignores the default authority model without justification.

  10. I owe the following argument to a discussion with Oskari Kuusela.

  11. A metaphysician in this context is conceived as someone who intends to use “I know that I am in pain” in an epistemic sense. So, denying the possibility of its use in an epistemic sense results in rejection of his or her project.

    I take it that “Metaphysics” is used as an umbrella term that refers to Wittgenstein’s various targets. Therefore, I do not commit to the claim that there is any essential core of metaphysics in this paper. See Baker (2002), Putnam (2007), and Schulte (2007) for the relevant discussions.

  12. The importance of so-called interlocutors, and, hence, the conversational character of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, is also pointed out by Floyd (1991) and Hanfling (2002).

  13. Some interpreters who project “resolute reading” of Tractatus onto the later Wittgenstein argue that words are nothing outside meaningful utterances. For example, Phil Hutchinson says, “there is no such thing as a word outside some particular use.” (Hutchinson 2007, p. 706) However, I think this is wrong. My argument against the standard interpretation is that it misconceives the role of the conventional meaning of a word, and I do not deny its existence outside a particular use.

  14. Cf. RFM, pp. 238–239. There, Wittgenstein makes a contrast between “compulsion” and “guidance” in reference to mathematical proofs.

  15. One might wonder how my description of Wright’s suggestion, according to which he tries to offer us the default authority model of self-knowledge, fits my explanation of “model” here. I take it that what Wright is doing is to argue that the situation in which we say “I know that I am in pain” emphasizing the default authority of the subject (“I know that I am in pain. It’s my pain, not yours!”), hence the model in my sense, makes some token utterances of self-knowledge ascription of one’s mental states understandable as epistemic claims.

  16. Note that a situation we conjure up in relation to a sentence is a “model,” so that the guidance it offers is a point of analogy to understand an utterance. Therefore, my suggestion is not that in a particular context we select a correct interpretation from alternative interpretations suggested by a sentence.

  17. It seems to me that, contra Hacker’s self-image, his description of the standard use is best understood as a clarification of a model to which we tend to commit when we use a word. Unlike Hacker, I do not think that what he offers as grammatical rules is to be used as a philosophical weapon against metaphysicians. However, if it is regarded as a clarification of a model to which philosophers often unwittingly commit, we can learn much from what Hacker says. For example, from Hacker’s description of the standard situations in which “I know A is in pain” is used, we can learn a lot about the model to which a philosopher commits. Although we cannot conclude automatically from his description that a philosopher who says, “I know I am in pain” is speaking nonsense, we can ask if that model can be reasonably used in order to understand the utterance.

  18. Kepa Korta and John Perry propose the distinction between what they call locutionary content and reflexive content, which roughly corresponds to the distinction between a sentence and a proposition. (Korta and Perry 2008) As for (a) “I will take it,” for example, its locutionary content is what is said by a particular speaker in a particular situation. On the other hand, its reflexive content is the content that can be extracted solely from the semantic information of the sentence without considering the context of its utterance. It is something like this: \(\exists \)x, y, R, x uttered (a) & x referred to y with “it” & x meant R with “will take” & R (x, y) & R=will drive or R=will choose or R=will steal. (Korta and Perry 2008, pp. 350–351) Although I believe that the meaning of “take” should be represented not by disjunctive lists but by multiple models we associate with “take,” their theory is close to Wittgenstein’s view in that the grasp of something like reflexive content suggests to us alternative truth conditions of what is said.

  19. These studies are concerned with the concept of “picture” in the later works, and it does not have any obvious relation to the “picture theory” of the Tractatus.

  20. The corresponding German word is “Mitteilung,” which can also be translated as “report.” In fact, Hacker and Schulte translate “Mitteilung” as “report” in PI 525 cited above, where the contrast is obviously that between a proposition and a sentence, understanding of the latter of which, I shall argue, is the basis of our having a picture.

  21. The subject of these remarks is clearly philosophical pictures. Wittgenstein contrasts “pictorial representation” (PI 295) or “illustrated turn of speech” (PI 295) with “information (Mitteilung),” (PI 298) “assumption,” (PI 299) and “insight or knowledge” concerning a state of affairs. (PI 299)

  22. In this remark, Wittgenstein talks explicitly about the process of a philosophical problem arising. Therefore, it is important for understanding his philosophical method. However, it has not been paid the attention it deserves. For example, Mulhall (2008), which puts its focus on Wittgenstein’s methods, does not contain any substantive argument of it, despite its title.

  23. In this paper, I concentrate on the pictures that arise from rough or unclear uses of words. However, I do not exclude the possibility of purely mental pictures. A picture can both be linguistic and mental in the similar way a proposition can be a semantic content of a sentence and a mental content of, say, a belief. I think we can think roughly as well as speak roughly.

  24. See Fischer (2006, pp. 472–473) on this point.

  25. Kuusela (2008, p. 38) uses the expression “rough conception” in characterizing Wittgenstein’s notion of picture. However, he does not distinguish what I call rough conception from fixed model in his discussions.

  26. See also PI 411 where Wittgenstein contrasts philosophical applications of words with practical ones. Also, see LFM p. 15 for Wittgenstein’s discussion on “imaginary number.” According to Wittgenstein, the phrase “imaginary number” can give a misleading impression, but, in the end, it does not cause a serious philosophical confusion because practical purpose of talking about “imaginary number”—the applications in physics—is supplied for it.

  27. This example is from Travis (1989, pp. 18–19).

  28. When Wittgenstein says “the crossing of different pictures” (PI 191) concerning the picture about rule-following, he refers to models as “pictures,” and this phraseology does not completely correspond to mine. I call rough conceptions given by rough uses of sentences “pictures,” too. However, because Wittgenstein himself sometimes identifies pictures with words themselves (PI 222, 295; PPF 55) and my phraseology would give a better grasp of what he has in mind, it has some justification as an exegesis of his view on pictures.

  29. I think there is a connection with “the correct method” (TLP 6.53) in the Tractatus here. We can say that later Wittgenstein practices what the Tractatus merely recommended to do.

  30. Wittgenstein’s conclusion is not always that the philosophical pictures are worthless. For example, he thinks that the picture of “all the steps are really already taken” is worth being committed to if it is used for highlighting a difference between causal and logical dependence. (PI 220).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25370029). I am indebted to Musashino University for a sabbatical leave, which enables me to write this paper. I am also indebted to the University of East Anglia for accepting me as an academic visitor during my sabbatical year. I am grateful to Tamara Dobler, Eugen Fischer, Oskari Kuusela, Mihai Ometita, Yoshino Sugasaki, Timur Uçan and the audience at the Wittgenstein Workshop of the University of East Anglia, 2015, for helpful comments and/or discussions.

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Ohtani, H. Wittgenstein on context and philosophical pictures. Synthese 193, 1795–1816 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0809-y

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