Early and Later Wittgenstein's conception of the world, ethics and later analysis of language.

Senior Thesis

12/12/03

Prompt: The essence of early Wittgenstein’s philosophy is that we are to go about a life dictated by facts, facts and more facts. He is not able to talk about the “most important things in life,” namely, ethics. This absolute view of the world softens in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. I believe the methodology that the later Wittgenstein uses may be able to benefit from a consideration of a transcendental phenomenological plane (or something similar) as that given by a similar philosopher, Sankara.

Comparing Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to that Sankara’s, we can see how similar philosophies treat the placement of “the most important things in life” within their linguistic sphere and possibly examine the treatment of one of those “non-speakable” items: Ethics.

In the end, I think that Wittgenstein has a distinct problem with reference and meaning that I hope to explain and perhaps examine to find a way to ethics in his own terminology.

I. Early and Later Wittgenstein’s conception of the world, ethics and later analysis of language.

There are, for Wittgenstein, "hard" and "fluid" propositions and the relationship between them can change over time so that fluid propositions could become hardened and hardened ones could become fluid. However, the nature of these propositions, the ones that serve as foundations, is unlike ordinary propositions. The propositions or core beliefs that constitute a form of life cannot be enumerated as a set. This would constitute the set of our beliefs, which ground our human ways of living. However, propositions that stand fast for us, such as the claim that the earth existed long before my birth, cannot, it seems be listed as a set. In fact, Wittgenstein claims that the expression "I know" is misused if we think we can enumerate all the propositions that we know. I am aware that certain things stand fast for me but they are not articulated as propositions. I can formulate them into a set if pressed, for instance when doing philosophy, but even then it is not clear that the set is complete. The best evidence for what I hold fast to is how I live. Wittgenstein’s conception of language is essentially related to the structure of the world. His conception of the world is determined by his views of language. He firmly believed that the essence of language mirrors the essential structure of the world. The constituents that make up the world are, according to LW, “atomic facts” and not “simple things.”LW makes it clear that though the objects make up the substance of the world, they are such that they cannot exist apart from facts. The Tractatus states in many ways that objects cannot exist apart from facts. In fact, Wittgenstein concludes not only that facts can exist independently of anything else, but also they are the primary units of language. If there are not facts by the guise of “ethics,” then it cannot have existence in a world of facts. However, ethics is something that Wittgenstein very much would like to speak about. A similar philosopher, run across a similar problem but is able to circumvent it by ascribing to a transcendental reality. By analysis of Wittgenstein’s use of meaning and reference in his world of facts compared to Sankara’s conception of the same, I hope to provide a meaningful step for Wittgenstein in his quest to speak of ethics.

“Language, I should like to say, relates to a way of living.” It is this relation between languages and living that Wittgenstein is concerned with in the concept of language-games. A successful treatment of any aspect of Wittgenstein's later philosophy must include, if not begin with, a well-informed analysis of the analogy between language and games. Languages are not games themselves but they do share some important qualities with games. What I propose to do in this chapter is to point out those aspects of the analogy, which are most important for Wittgenstein. While the points I make may seem intuitively obvious, they bear repeating, because so many problems arise in interpreting Wittgenstein by going wrong on the finer points and these mistakes are easily avoided. There are at least three points to gather from the analogy between language and games. First, language use is an activity. it is important here to stress the active nature of language, which is not simply something we use; it is an integral part of human activity. Second, language is complex. Its complexity is due partly to the fact that it is a uniquely human activity. This complexity is sometimes hidden from us because so much of what we do with language appears Similar. Words do not appear differently when they do different work and this leads to problems for those who wish to analyze language. Third, uses of language are not isolated from one another. We do play different language-games and the rules of discourse do change, but not in such a way as to leave us with incommensurable games.

Wittgenstein’s purpose in the Tractatus is to distinguish “what can be said” from “what cannot be said,” not in order to deny what cannot be said, but in order to mean it. What is important for him is about “what cannot be said.” He wants to point to the “unsayable.” The important characteristic of language lies in the distinction between what can and can’t be said. What can be said has to do with language, logic and the world. Specifically in the case of what can be said, Wittgenstein implies that verification is impossible. In other words, it is capable of being true or false, so that one of the two possibilities is can be decided by comparing it with reality. Ethics are concerned with what cannot be said, i.e. what transcends the world. Wittgenstein observes, “There are indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest.” According to him, we can say things with sense only within the limits of language. He says that attempts to say anything about the limits of language result in senseless proposition and attempts to say anything about what lies on the other side of the limit end in non-sense. For Him, the task of philosophy is not to express the logical form of propositions, but to analyze in such a way that their logical form is uncovered, revealed and displayed. In Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, the logic of linguistic expressions is construed in altogether different terms. Language is not to be examined in terms of truth-functions of elementary propositions as the essence of language nor are propositions in their basic constituents made up of names. Language is ordinary language, vernacular. It is not to be delivered from something more fundamental in the form of elementary propositions. Language, being ordinary, is to be explored in all its great variety and complexity. It is to be described and understood as it is found, and not to be reduced to some basic structure. It has multiples uses, not simple one of describing reality and picturing facts. It seems to me that Wittgenstein adopts a realistic view of meaning and shifts to the adoption of a broadly conventionalistic usage of language. The meaning of linguistic expressions is determined by rules of use that people devise and adopt. Grammar is autonomous; thought has its internal structures as articulated by the grammatical rules that belong to it. The choice of these rules and the grammar of thought are not to be determined by establishing some isomorphic realm to reality. For the later Wittgenstein, reality does not have some language-independent structure to which our language conforms to, rather, thought is structured by human conventions; it brings to reality its own structure. This curious shift in ideology seems to be dealing with a novel approach for really explaining the linguistic device that such modules as “ethics” or “morals” may apply. If it is clear that reality as the later Wittgenstein saw isn’t of a language-independent structure, then perhaps there is some sort of wiggle-room to employ a meaningful analysis if not interpretation of statements to for the sphere of ethics.

II. Sankara’s conception of the world and his resolution of ethics.

Sankara's claim applies to linguistic judgments and the criteria for those judgments that determine certain kinds of concepts, such as the spatiotemporal boundaries of a false atomicity – the particularity of concrete things. If Reality is unitary, then the plurality of the world is claimed mistakenly; certain arbitrary criteria that the use of language imposes upon experience are mistakenly taken to be really experienced.

Sankara's philosophical inquiry therefore turns to an examination of the powerful maya of language (what Wittgenstein called the "bewitchment of language") in order to free ...

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II. Sankara’s conception of the world and his resolution of ethics.

Sankara's philosophical inquiry therefore turns to an examination of the powerful maya of language (what Wittgenstein called the "bewitchment of language") in order to free his inquiry from dominance of the false notion of the separate existence of things. The goal of this task, for Sankara, was to realize the Real: a fullness of experience that is untranslatable as an eidos – beyond language, space, time, thought and difference. The main purpose of that positive goal is to orient the mind. Its pragmatic success is beyond language. For Sankara, it is indicated in an intuitive self-revelation of Reality itself, which does not depend upon perception, and other criteria of knowledge. This intuition of totality and non-differentiation is the concrete result of a movement of thought losing itself in the depths of undifferentiated consciousness. The statement "Thou art that," shows a movement of thought from one ontological level (of particularity), through another (of universality), to yet another (of unity), where in the attainment of the latter negates the distinctions between the former. One begins with individual consciousness (tvam), passes on to universal consciousness (tat) and arrives at non-differentiated consciousness which overcomes the separated reality of both the individual and the universal, and which constitutes their ground. This is what Sankara has in mind as the aim of his philosophical inquiry.

Sankara, like Wittgenstein, feels that the mere fact of being human traps man within the linguistic games devised by his culture. Though both philosophers part company in their conclusions, they remain very close in their analysis of language, and of the magic spell it casts over man. Sankara, also like Wittgenstein, aims at liberating philosophy from the strongly atomistic emphasis that language impose upon experience and thought in every sentence. Nonetheless, man cannot live without language and its conditioning effects. Therefore, both philosophers take it to be the role of philosophy to provide a liberating knowledge – although, of course, the Eastern tradition takes this liberating activity to further lengths than does the West. Sankara starts his Brahman Sutra by investigating the nature of language usage:

It is a clear fact that the object and the subject, whose respective areas are the concepts of Thou and I, and whose natures are opposed to each other as much as light and darkness, are irreconcilable. So also their respective qualifications…

Yet language functions in such a way that we can only make meaningful statements by "superimposing upon the subject the qualities of the object and vice versa ... and this is false (mithya)." The resulting confusion is no more than this characteristic linguistic superimposition of natures and attributes, "thus mixing reality and unreality by saying things like: "That I am" or "this is mine."

Not only is the individual man caught in this trap; Sankara sweepingly concludes that this faulty superimposition, "is the presupposition upon which are based all distinctions of practical life, of the Vedas, (in the religious and ritualistic sense), between the means of knowledge, objects of knowledge and the authority of Scripture." Furthermore "the means of right knowledge cannot operate without the aspect (nature) of knower, which is of the sense of "I" and "mine" imposed or united with the body and the senses. For by taking away the use of the senses immediate perception does not occur nor do other activities of knowledge." Even more, action itself would be jeopardized without this superimposition: "Nor does anyone act without having the aspect of the self superimposed on the body."

Sankara concludes this introduction by stating clearly his philosophical aim:

With a view of freeing one's Self from this wrong notion, the cause of all misery, attaining thereby knowledge of the absolute unity of the Self, the study of the Vedas is begun.

What does Sankara really mean by this? Does he imply that you are not really: reading this article, that I did not really write it, that the chair you are sitting on does not really exist, etc., and that all these things are only apparently so and a result of linguistic games? Indeed, that is exactly what Sankara claims. In terms of the Real, there are no plural individual minds, no plural individual objects, no privacy, no this, no that, no here, no there. All we have is sense experience. The structures with which our experience is imbued are secured by certain grammatical rules we write into our language-games. These games are commonly played by superimposing objectivity on subjectivity and vice versa, denoting individuals, classes" privacy, multiplicity, this, here, etc.; but none of these denoting terms is a factual property of experience as such. No singular sensation-denoting term is a fact, which we empirically discover; it is conventional and culture-bound, or context-bound. Sankara states it thus in his commentary to the Gita:

“That awareness which does not vary with its object is “real,” that which does vary with its object is “unreal.”

What varies with sense experience are the objects and subjects of sensation; that is to say, to use his own example, in the successive judgments "real (sensed) pot," "real (sensed) cloth," "real (sensed) elephant," the objects (pot, cloth, elephant) constantly change, whereas the reality of the sense experience does not. What Sankara seems to have in mind when explaining the superimpositions of language in statements like "I am in pain," and "This is mine," is not the obvious explanation that these statements do not refer always to the same subject or object, but rather that they do not necessarily refer to any subject or object at all, even though at times they do. The boundaries of "I" or "Pain" or "this" or "mine" are not given by any of the terms language uses when it says "this is mine," or "I am in pain." In the Philosophical Investigations (404, 405), Wittgenstein brings out this same point when he suggests that any decision on identity-making has no one factual answer but rather depends on a great variety of criteria for determining personal (or other) identity. It is up to every language user to decide which criteria to employ. The simple use of terms like "I" or "mine" does not prescribe in any way which criterion we are to use. In fact it presupposes none. It is entirely up to us to decide the type of game we are going to play with sensation-terms so that we may decide, even while suffering the pain, which kind of "candidate" we wish to have as "sensation-owner."

We will examine the criteria under which the Real is called “real” and multiplicity is called “illusion.” Sankara uses the word “unreal” to mean everything other than Brahman (the Real). At times, however, he uses the word “real” to mean the commonly perceived world, in order to oppose this meaning to the “unreality” of dreams and hallucinations, like the water-mirage and the rope taken for a snake. He also uses the word “unreal” to mean the “non-experienceable,” giving as illustrations examples common to all Indian philosophy: “hare's horn,” “sky-flower,” “a barren woman's son.” At other times, he uses the word "completely unreal" to refer to such imaginary entities. [Note that no distinction is made between a null class (empty) and a self-contradiction.] Indian philosophy is pragmatic: speculation for speculation's sake is avoided or corrected; the aim of speculation is to convince the listener that the particular system presented could develop a discipline leading to moksa (liberation). Sankara, therefore, seems to imply a four-fold distinction between (a) the real, (b) the pragmatically real, (c) the illusory, and (d) the completely unreal. Later Advaitins presented Sankara's position more systematically, thus:

Unreality is not the contradictory of reality, whose nature cannot be negated in the three times (past, present and future), but rather is that which never forms the object of cognition as reality in any substratum whatever.

The "real," then, is that which can never be negated or destroyed, the "unreal" is that which has "no perceived instance at all," and the category termed "false" (mithya, or illusion) is everything else – what is neither real nor unreal, including both the "pragmatically real" and the "illusory. Having in mind the criteria for the real discussed above, we can come now to certain conclusions both about the criteria for experience and the linguistic claims to "reality" of all terms. In the minimal sense of the word "real," we may say with Sankara that nothing experienced is absolutely unreal; hence there must be levels of reality beginning and ending in Brahman as the substratum of all experienced subjects and objects. Strictly speaking, only Brahman is real, since only Brahmanjnana (intuition of Brahman) sublates all other experiences. Therefore, in the strict sense of the word we may say that "reality" is (1) independent, for Brahman alone is independent of relations; (2) unlimited; (3) non-partite and (4) unchanging, without limits and relations; (5) indivisible, in so far as it is non-partite; (6) non-acting, in so far as it is unchanging; (7) unitary, in so far as it is indivisible; and finally (8) eternal, in so far as it is non-partite and unchanging.

By this account, we can start to talk about a definite place for ethics with the Vedantin scheme. I would like to bring to the forefront of discussion that this discussion of an ethics is a phenomenological one and that values in the Advaitin system serve only in so far as to help the seeker of Brahman in the phenomenologically real world and serve no function after brahmanjnana (realization of Brahman) is achieved. The bottom line here is that ethics that are inherently present within Advaita Vedanta. The way to achieve brahmanjnana is based on integration, not a negation, of both knowledge and consciousness. The critical point to realize is that for Sankara the Real is life, human life, as lived. This is what we count on in order to be conscious. The rest is imagination; all we can do with the rest is interpretation. It is, however, through this interpretation that the intuitive experience of reality is possible. The reason why this interpretation is necessary is that man, because of the superimposition and wrong identification, suffers on account of the ontological unity where he incorrectly establishes himself as the entity that completes an action. The empirical world emerges because of the emergence of the apparent individual consciousness. Correspondingly, liberation of personal existence is achieved by sublating (categorically and phenomenologically replacing a conscious idea or scheme with a better one) individual identity with that of Brahman. Sankara denies this ontological identification through his analysis of language, and establishes, as the goal of his method, the only ontological identity possible: the identity between intuition, vision, and action. Sankara’s philosophical methodology tries to uncover the truth (satya) of what hides behind language, while this same methodology in turn becomes the disciplined condition (ethics) for liberation from suffering (moksa). The very concept of this process is rooted in the action of mind and the use of speech in the spirit of welfare. The truth really means that one should act in a straightforward and honest way that will promote the welfare of all. In cases where telling the exact truth will harm others, then satya means to say what is best for the welfare of others rather than to tell the exact facts. Adherence to satya brings about tremendous strength of mind and is extremely important for spiritual and ethical success. Advaita Vedanta professes and expresses a profound love of and for wisdom and true knowledge, and this love combined with the state that the vast majority of humanity finds itself in (whatever we can understand that to mean in light of the unitary nature of Brahman) is the source of the one moral commandment of Advaita Vedanta: “strive for liberation from ignorance through the discipline of self-knowledge.” As this shows, there is a very structured and solid ground for ethics within this system. Advaita Vedanta wants to teach those that want to seek brahmanjnana the way of the sage where one is peacefully disconnected from the phenomenal world. There may be a discussion made towards the understanding of how every other person beside myself is treated in my illusory world, emphasizing the critical notion that other people may be regarded as illusions themselves according to this philosophy. Defining something as an illusion does not automatically deny them any sort of empirical existence within our empirical world, but on the same note, how can we possibly be calling these “illusions” as such when we do not have any other basis to cast them as such other than our psychological state. These illusory people can also have the same sort of existential experience where we could be a possible part of their illusory world. We can perhaps examine this implication upon the goal of liberation from this illusory world. The process of liberation is an educated process that is an articulated endeavor. The process of education to lead to moksa really involves one to be content with the world and the notion that the world is in fact not the end of one’s perception, that is, the world isn’t ontologically real and this idea will drive one to discover Reality. The process of seeking moksa isn’t one that serves to be an active endeavor, rather, it is a passive element in an Advaitin follower’s life that can be chosen to be discovered if one is ready. There is only knowledge and acceptance which serves to be a much more passive element since it involves one to listen and to understand rather than to actively seek for an answer. The answer is present within the scope of education and it is the responsibility of the sage that wants to be liberated to passively read and involve himself in the processes necessary to achieve Brahmanjnana. The notion of free-will and action takes on a completely different facet when being dealt with in the Advaitin system because the notion only applies to the phenomenal self. The realized self is above all moral judgments in the Advaitin system and as a result is not able to even judge him. Values are a phenomenal judge and cannot transcend the barrier of the ontologically real. The being that has achieved realization of Reality could not be judged to have performed acts that are immoral mainly because the actions of the realized being are above the needs and desires of the empirical self. The realized being can perform actions without any sort of phenomenological implications.

III. How Later Wittgenstein may be able to help his pursuit of ethics by examining Sankara’s philosophy.

Early Wittgenstein would have some problems with these premises in respect to his conception of the world let alone any discussion of ethics. It is clear that for Early Wittgenstein there is a world of facts and then everything else. We can have a comparative stance by grouping the liberated self and the phenomenologically real into Early Wittgenstein’s real world and the “unreal” and the “illusory appearances” into his everything else category. That is:

However, on closer introspection, we saw earlier that the Later Wittgenstein is where the money is. His later conception of the world leads to a picture of a world where we correctly use language and are able to absolve the “unreal problems” presented by the misuse of language. He seems to leave the door open ready to speak of ethics if we can do it correctly. Of course it is His goal throughout his career to make a philosophy that is precise for the philosopher so that the philosopher may be able to use language correctly. Both Sankara and Wittgenstein are concerned about “freeing people.” Their aim is to free people from a view of the world in which what had looked like information turns out to be nothing but grammar treated as science. Though both of them give some information or instructions about the world and philosophy, their main intentions follow a universal salvation track of thought. Sankara is concerned about everybody’s salvation while Wittgenstein is concerned about philosophers. In the case of Sankara, when ignorance is removed, then one attains salvation. For Wittgenstein, when language is not misused, then all the philosophical drop-offs are removed and the philosopher is able to use language correctly. On could say that Sankara is speaking of religious salvation and Wittgenstein is concerned with academic salvation and as such are pointed to two skew paths, however, this is not so. For both philosophers. When the difficulties presented by language and reality have been absolved, the problems vanish and we see language and reality, as we should. The problem of ethics has been shown and empirically solved above for Sankara, so we shall focus on Wittgenstein here. The main mistake made by philosophers, according to Wittgenstein, is that when language is looked at, what is looked at is a form of words. In the Philosophical Investigations, he remarks: “What confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For this application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially not, when we are doing philosophy.” He says that traditional philosophy is looking for a handle, or a scaffold to hang on to and build on. He says that this eventually leads a a puzzlement that will in the end completely obliterate out capacity to truly understand language. Philosophical problems arise when we take words out of their actual contexts and consider them in isolation. While doing philosophy, we do not care to look at the actual uses of a word. Wittgenstein says that a philosophical puzzlement arises from our misunderstanding of language and that we should strive to absolve such misunderstanding. He then goes to say that sound philosophy liberates us from these language traps that we may encounter. The solution to the philosophical problem lies in discovering how and why the logic of language has been misunderstood. “The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.” What Wittgenstein is aiming at here is a conceptual clarification. This is achieved through studying various actual and possible uses of puzzling words. This then leads us to the idea that the results of philosophy will uncover pieces of plain nonsense and bumps that the understanding has got by pushing the analysis to the limits of language. “ These bumps make us see the value of discovery.” We can clearly see that the actual definition of ethics may need to be clarified in order to actually have a place within Wittgenstein’s terminology, but it is evident that if we strive to clarify those linguistic items that would have given us a problem in interpretation in that past, then we may perhaps be able to see a way to define a cogent interpretation of ethics. Without any previous barrier on interpretation, I believe that Wittgenstein has opened a pseudo-transcendental plane on which to encourage meaningful analysis. Since the focus is on the proper use of one’s vernacular, ethics could hold a very important place in Wittgenstein’s conception, namely it could be thus defined as how we are. Our everyday life could be our “ethics” and thus the notion of obscure reference is lost. We are our own best interpreter and if we choose to view our language in a rule-book fashion (I am going to do X because or the belief Y), then the world of ethics is much closer to us that Wittgenstein first thought. I think that this would satisfy Wittgenstein’s earlier need to speak of come “unspeakable” items, namely ethics.

It has been apparent that in fact Advaita Vedanta doesn’t have any reasons to be backed into any sort of ethical corner; it seems Sankara helped to bring about the epitome of linguistic analysis as a method in philosophical investigations, which emerged much later in the Western tradition (1200 years later!), through the works of Wittgenstein. It is my impression that Wittgenstein and Sankara were both working on similar philosophical problems: problems of meaning and reference. The notion of Brahman was involved in the solution espoused by Sankara. Wittgenstein seems to want to iron out interpretation to better understand the prior unspeakable items. Philosophically, the more reliable and enlightening view takes it as merely a logico-linguistic condition that must be met for epistemological communication to be possible.

Tractatus: 1.1

Tractatus: 2.011, 2.0121, 2.0123, 2.013

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, VI, 34

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, I, 132