Wittgenstein

Opening Investigations

Michael Luntley

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118978498
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

In this provocatively compelling new book, Michael Luntley offers a revolutionary reading of the opening section of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

• Critically engages with the most recent exegetical literature on Wittgenstein and other state-of-the-art philosophical work
• Encourages the re-incorporation of Wittgenstein studies into the mainstream philosophical conversation
• Has profound consequences for how we go on to read the rest of Wittgenstein's major work
• Makes a significant contribution not only to the literature on Wittgenstein, but also to studies in philosophy of language

1
Beginning with §1

1.1 Starting with Augustine

One of the hardest things is the beginning. Wittgenstein opens with a quotation from Augustine’s Confessions. Two questions seem to be unavoidable: (i) Why use Augustine? (ii) What is the role of the Augustine passage in the structure of Wittgenstein’s opening remarks? The second question is key. Once we can answer that, the first question mostly takes care of itself. The second question has received different answers since the Investigations was published, but most readings give an answer that fits within the following broad schematic:

A Augustine gives voice to a model of what it is for language to have meaning and what it is to learn language meaning and that model is then the object of critique by Wittgenstein.

Baker and Hacker present Wittgenstein as using Augustine to bring into focus an underlying model of linguistic meaning that they call the “Augustinian Conception.” They see this as foundational to most extant philosophy of language. They then present Wittgenstein as arguing against this conception and thereby undermining the philosophy of language. This provides, in passing, an answer to question (i): Augustine is used, rather than a more recent author, because this reveals the profundity of the critique that Wittgenstein is about to launch. He is setting out to critique something that is so basic to theorizing about linguistic meaning and language acquisition that it can be sourced in the autobiography of a fourth-century monk. Hacker is now less persuaded that the Augustinian conception is quite so dominant in the structure of Wittgenstein’s text, but he still holds, as do most commentators, that the Investigations opens by criticizing something.¹ Furthermore, Augustine is the source for what is being critiqued. It is the idea that the book opens with a critique of something that is, I think, the fundamental mistake. I shall present the case for denying A and, more importantly for denying that the opening sections of the Investigations are a critique of something, regardless or where it is sourced.

I start by providing a detailed commentary on the first two sections of the Investigations. Patience is key in this territory. Whatever assumptions we make in reading the beginning will shape what we think happens next. There is an enormous amount at stake. I think it is important to try to step back from the interpretations found in the main commentaries and concentrate, in the first instance, on the text. I shall then lay out the basic structure most commentators ascribe to the text and sketch out the main points on which I disagree.

Whether or not it is Augustine or something drawn from Augustine, most commentators take Wittgenstein to be critiquing something, furthermore, something fundamental to the very enterprise of the philosophy of language. And the criticism is organized so that it develops into the critique of ostensive definition. The discussion of ostensive definition does not start until §27, so the idea that it is, somehow, implicated at the very beginning is, at best, contentious and stands in need of clear textual support. Some commentators take it as implicitly in the frame from the beginning (Hacker, 1975; Stern, 2004). Some are a little more guarded, although, if ostensive definition is taken as part of the Augustinian Conception and that is supposed to be under critique from the start, then one must assume that ostensive definition is also implicitly under critique (McGinn, 2013). Williams does not have ostensive definition under critique at the beginning, but she does see the early discussion as setting out a view about language learning that is subject to a bootstrapping problem. It is that problem that she wants to solve with her account of the master/novice relationship. Her account of that relationship is of a piece with what she thinks is problematic with ostensive definition. So, although her reading is in many respects different to many others, she still shares the conception of the opening sections as setting out problems or ideas that stand in need of critique. To get a handle on whether the book opens with a critique we need to determine what Augustine says and what Wittgenstein says in the first section.

Augustine is describing language learning. More specifically, he describes learning the names of things. It is useful to distinguish three parts to the Augustine passage that Wittgenstein quotes. The first part is the claim about grasping that grown-ups name things by making sounds and turning towards things. This is the first sentence of the quotation:

When grown-ups named some object and at the same time turned towards it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signified by the sound they uttered, since they meant to point it out.

Part 2 is the next two sentences that comprise the bulk of the quotation. These sentences explain how the young Augustine “grasped that the thing was signified.” I’ll come back to part 2 shortly. Part 3 is the final sentence that expresses the result of finding out that sounds can signify things – it enables Augustine to express his wishes:

And once I got my tongue around these signs, I used them to express my wishes.

For the moment, I concentrate on parts 1 and 3. What status should we accord such remarks? As many people have observed, prima facie, Augustine’s remarks are unremarkable. It seems banal to say that language learning involves learning the names of things and that, once equipped with language, one can then ask for things! Of course, one thing that makes this seem unremarkable is the scope of such remarks. If taken as something that goes on in language learning, it is unremarkable. If taken as constituting the essence of language, it is more contentious. Augustine does not say that the naming of objects and the expression of desire is the essence of language. Indeed, such a claim is questionable in the light of what Augustine says in part 2 of the passage. But before saying any more about Augustine, let us look at what Wittgenstein takes from the Augustine quote.

1.2 Three Things in Section 1

Wittgenstein does three things in §1: he provides a summary of claims about meaning taken from Augustine’s words in a two-step distillation (1a); he notes that the claims provided in (1a) treat all words as nouns or assumes that other categories of words provide no real challenge (1b); he provides an example of language use that appears to run quite counter to the claims he has summarized (1c). I start with the two-step distillation from Augustine’s passage.

Wittgenstein says that Augustine gives us a “particular picture of the essence of human language” although this remark is qualified with “it seems to me.” The picture that Wittgenstein suggests is given by Augustine’s words is that

words in language name objects – sentences are combinations of such names (1a)

The second distillation comes in Wittgenstein’s extraction from this picture. The picture provides the roots of the idea:

Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. (1a)

The first distillation – the Augustinian Picture – provides an instance of the idea that there is such a thing as the essence of language: it takes naming as the essence of language. The second distillation provides an instance of the detail of a theory of naming: the meaning of a name is the object for which it stands. It is the second distillation that has become known as the Augustinian Conception. One could endorse the Augustinian Picture and deny the Augustinian Conception if, for example, one provided a different theory of names. It is important to be clear on the relations between the Augustinian Picture, the Augustinian Conception and the underlying idea that language has an essence.

The first thing that Wittgenstein extracts – the picture in which words name objects – is already an imposition on Augustine. For sure, the only type of word that Augustine mentions is the category of names, as Wittgenstein himself notes (1b). But even if it is right to assume that Augustine holds that all words are names, this leaves untouched a range of issues about how names work, what their meaning is and how their having meaning does or does not influence or get influenced by issues concerning their combination into complex structures like sentences. The first distillation is, therefore, neutral on a range of substantive philosophical issues. This is not, however, to say that it is banal, for the first distillation is a picture of the essence of language. Even if the view that all words are names is neutral with respect to issues about how names get meaning, how we learn their meaning, what the relative significance is of the role of names and the role of the combininatorial structures into which they fit to form sentences, and so on, nevertheless, the Augustinian Picture makes plausible a very basic assumption that can seem to underpin much philosophical theory about language: there is such a thing as the essence of language. So this very first move to the Augustinian Picture is a move that manifests the idea of a general theory of language, a theory that states the essence of language.

The idea of a general theory of language is the idea that there is such a thing as the essence of language. It is a natural development of this to suppose that if there is an essence of language, there is a theoretical enterprise to articulate that essence. Such a theory might take any number of forms depending on what is taken to be the essence of language. The Augustinian Picture provides a model for such a theory in which all words are treated as names. This is a model that has clear historical precedent in Russell’s work and in Wittgenstein’s own early work. The Augustinian Picture is one model of what a general theory of language might look like. Clearly, one might object to such a model while still holding to the enterprise of providing a general theory of language.

Similarly, the Augustinian Conception is one instance of the model of a theory of language in which all words are names, for the Augustinian Conception provides an account of the meaning of names: the meaning of a name is the object for which it stands. This is referentialism. Other theories of names are available. So one might object to the referentialism of the Augustinian Conception but still endorse the idea that all words are names and thereby also subscribe to the idea of a general theory of language. One might think, for example, that referentialism only applies to certain categories of names and that for others a different theory of naming is required. Or one might think that referentialism is true of no names but some alternative theory is.

There is a hierarchy of theoretical options at stake here. At the most general there is the idea of a general theory of language – language has an essence and it is the job of a philosophical theory of language to articulate that essence. Next there is the level at which one finds models of the essence of language. The Augustinian Picture can be taken as providing one such model – all words are names and sentences are combinations of names. Finally, there is the detailed theory of how the essential elements of language work. So, if all words are names, a theory of naming would be an instance of a theory of this third level. The Augustinian Conception provides an example of a third level theory – referentialism.

Clearly, a critique of a third level theory such as referentialism does not, of itself, critique the second level thesis that all words are names, let alone the first level thesis that there is an essence to language. Criticizing referentialism might undermine one’s confidence in pursuit of a second level theory and indeed the very idea that language has an essence. But matters cannot be straightforward and the connections between the levels are potentially subtle and complex.

Wittgenstein is standardly read as critiquing the Augustinian Conception and, in so doing, undermining the whole edifice of philosophical theories of language, or at least critiquing the opening resources for philosophical theorizing and thereby undermining philosophical theories of language.² Some commentators have noted that, given the significance of the critique that is supposed to be on offer, his arguments are quite slight if not naively formulated.³ It matters that we consider the potential foci for critique. The two main candidates are the very idea of the essence of language and the Augustinian Conception.

The idea that there is an essence to language is a very abstract idea. I suggest that it is this idea alone that Wittgenstein critiques. It is what he calls, at the end of §1, the “philosophical conception.” He does not criticize the idea that words are names (many are), nor does he deny that for some cases the meaning of a name is the object for which it stands. In so far as these second and third level claims are criticized it is only ever in so far as they are offered as part of a theory of the essence of language. I will suggest that it is not the specific details of the Augustinian Picture and the Augustinian Conception that Wittg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Beginning with §1
• 2 Ostensive Definition: The Shape of the Argument
• 3 Linguistic Regularity, Grammar and Autonomy
• 4 Explanations
• Appendix: What Happens to the Private Language Argument?
• Bibliography
• End User License Agreement