Monty Python and Philosophy, Gary Hardcastle [portable ebook reader TXT] 📗

any use of sentences to go beyond the facts makes no sense. What philosophers say, in short, is nonsensical.

In addition, philosophers typically believe not only that they can talk significantly about what makes the world possible but that they need to do so: how else to make such issues clear? But Wittgenstein also thinks we don’t need to use sentences this way. The conditions that make sentences (and facts in general) possible are implicit in their structures.

For example, in using the sentence ‘My brain hurts’ we exhibit different words (‘hurts’ and ‘brain’) having different functions (denoting a property, standing for an object, and so forth) and occurring in a particular kind of structure (a subject-predicate one). What functions and structures occur on any occasion will vary according to the language used, but in any language there are some that are constant, and this shows us something very general about what makes facts, and a world of facts, possible.

None of this has to be said, because language inevitably shows it. Since what philosophy does is talk about what makes any world, or set of facts, possible, it follows that philosophy is unnecessary—its job is already done by language itself.

In short, if philosophers persist in talking philosophically they utter nonsense, but in any event they also aren’t needed.

Ouch!

Do You See It?

Looking back at “Spectrum: Talking About Things,” it seems that our presenter and his guest need to consider whether the (purported) question ‘What is going on?’ is about any particular fact, or whether it amounts to a philosophical attempt to use language to transcend all the facts. And if the latter, it seems that both characters need to stop what they’re doing—they need to stop asking these questions and stop thinking there ought to be answers for them.

Perhaps if Wittgenstein explained to them what I’ve just relayed to you, they’d sit up and start talking sense. But can Wittgenstein explain this to anyone? Can I?

Follow me carefully here.

First, recall that Wittgenstein believes sentences are nonsense if they attempt to talk about what makes facts—of language or the world—possible.

Next, go back to the second line of the second paragraph of the section “Making Sense,” which repeats Wittgenstein’s view that “it is possible for sentences to mean facts because sentences are facts.”

Now ask yourself: Isn’t this assertion a statement about the conditions under which meaning is possible? But what did Wittgenstein say about such statements? He said that they’re nonsense.

Do you see it? The problem, I mean?

Through Them, on Them, over Them

That’s right: by his own accounting of it, Wittgenstein’s theory of sense and nonsense is nonsense—it can’t be said. According to his view of sense and the limits on what we can say, he cannot express that very view itself without speaking nonsense.

Now THAT’S a philosophical cramp-and-a-half!

So what’s a guy to do? How can Wittgenstein make his point if he can’t say what he means?

Imagine yourself in his shoes. You can’t just waggle your eyebrows at people, affecting a mysterioso profundo expression. Well, you can, but they won’t get your point, and they’ll think you’re an ass. Seeing this, Wittgenstein bites the bullet and admits that he cannot say what he means to say without speaking nonsensically. Yet he seems to assume we can learn from his nonsense, or at least he seems to hope someone will get behind his mode of speaking to his point. The assumption that we can somehow understand nonsense is evident in the penultimate line of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus:

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsense, when he has climbed through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §6.54)

You’ve just witnessed what’s peculiar about (the so-called “early”) Wittgenstein’s view of philosophy. Let’s see why his hope to cure philosophy is ambitious by contrasting that aim with the more modest one he expresses in mid-life. To do so we need to get into the head of the so-called “later” Wittgenstein by returning to “Spectrum: Talking About Things.”

An Exercise for the Reader

Consider the presenter’s “vexed question.” How might we evaluate the query, ‘What is going on?’

Is it grossly ungrammatical?

—No. It’s fine.

Is it full of obscure words?

—No. It contains just four words, each of which is perfectly commonplace.

Does it make sense?

—It depends! Or so says the mature Wittgenstein, with his eye on the way meaning exists in our use of language. Here are two ways to use the words ‘What is going on?’ and make perfect sense:

Situation A:

The day before your birthday you witness your best friends plotting and whispering. You say: “What is going on?”

Used in this situation, the sentence ‘What is going on?’ means something like: “You can’t fool me, you guys; what are you up to now?” In this context the sentence ‘What is going on?’ makes perfect sense. It makes equally good sense used in quite different ways, too:

Situation B:

You walk in on your lover in bed with your best friend, and you say: “What is going on?”

The words ‘What is going on?’ have meaning used in this context too! [What meaning exactly is left as an exercise for the reader.]

Now suppose that instead of asking, you’re asked, out of the blue, ‘What is going on?’ Even then the question makes sense so long as you can guess how the questioner intends it to be understood. Here are two examples:

Situation C:

You hear ‘What is going on?’ and ask, “Going on where?”

By wondering this, you indicate that you take your questioner to be using ‘going on’ in the sense of happening at a place, as in the question, “What’s going on at Jean-Paul Sartre’s tonight?”

Situation D:

You hear ‘What is going on?’ and ask, “Going on what?”

This question shows that you’ve understood your interlocutor to mean going on in the sense of being placed on (to), as