Sentences and facts, sense and dignity

Wittgenstein published the Tractatus logico-philosophicus in Ostwald’s Annalen der Naturphilosophie in 1921. In this blog I usually cite from the Tractatus according to the translation by Ogden and Ramsey (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung. Side-by-side-by-side edition, version 0.42 (January 5, 2015), containing the original German, alongside both the Ogden/Ramsey, and Pears/McGuinness. London: Kegan Paul. http://writing.upenn.edu.library/Wittgenstein-Tractatus.pdf).

The Tractatus is structured with the help of decimal numbers. Numbers 1 and 2 treat the elements that constitute a sentence. Wittgenstein uses the word sentence, in German “Satz”, 326 times in the Tractatus. I translate the word “Satz” with the word “sentence” and not with the word “proposition” as do Ogden/Ramsey and Pears/McGuinnes. Both words, “sentence” and “proposition” can be used as synonyms; for the sake of a better understanding, I prefer using ordinary language.

Wittgenstein understands the sentence as a kind of state of affairs. Since the numbers 1 and 2 treat the subject in quite an abstract manner, I turn to a vivid example that Wittgenstein uses for how we form a sentence. In 1914 Wittgenstein suggests in his Notebooks to compare the construction of a sentence to the way a judge views the evidence and constructs the case: “In the sentence a world is, as it were, put together experimentally. (As when in a law-court in Paris a motor-car accident is represented by means of dolls, etc.)” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1961. Notebooks 1914–1916. Edited by G. H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe with an English translation by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Harper & Brothers.7e).

The judge reconstructs what had happened, what the case is; he reconstructs the state of affairs of the car accident. The speaker of a sentence puts together words and expressions and constructs a sentence. Wittgenstein understands the words and expressions we use for building a sentence as facts, not as things. The dolls in the reconstruction of the motor-car accident represent facts, the facts of the case, which form a state of affairs. Similarly, facts – words and expressions of language – form the facts of the case, the state of affairs that the sentence shows and affirms. The facts, the facts of the case and the state of affairs of the sentence constitute the basis for the logical investigation of sentences. The speaker of the sentence puts the facts together, “experimentally” she or he constructs a whole “world”. On September 9, 1914, barely two months after the beginning of World War I, Wittgenstein compares the sentence to a whole world. Right after the war he takes up this sentence from the Notebook with a significant correction. In Tractatus 4.031 Wittgenstein writes with a sense of realism, that the speaker of a sentence puts together experimentally a “state of affairs”. Describing the world after the suffering, terror and catastrophes of World War I has become a priority but the description would engage promethean efforts. The first, and one of the most important and popular sentences of the Tractatus mirrors Wittgentsein’s matured understanding of the world as the immeasurable multitude of all possible facts, “The world is everything that is the case” (Tractatus 1).

In Tractatus 4.031 we miss the very helpful explanation with the example of the reconstruction of a car accident by a judge who needs to know what the case is. The example from the law-court in Paris helps any reader of the Tractatus to understand easier and better what Wittgenstein is talking about. He himself did not need anymore the example of the law-court to clarify his thinking in the Tractatus. The example of the law-court once was elucidatory for understanding the construction of sentences but is not necessary for understanding any more. I am reminded of the penultimate number of the Tractatus. In 6.54, Wittgenstein encourages the reader to climb up the ladder of the sentences of the Tractatus and “throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.” Wittgenstein at the end of his Tractatus speaks of growing insight, of the consequences of understanding and in some way of such a thing as wisdom. My personal state of wisdom has not jet reached the point of throwing away the ladder. I am still excited reading the sentences of the Tractatus and I am still trying to heal the ominous confusions of my thinking with the bitter medicine of philosophy.

Wittgenstein omits in Tractatus 4.031 a reference to the case in the law-court but adds a sentence from the Notebook from October 2, 1914. This very important predication has significant consequences for the critique of language. The second sentence in Tractatus 4.031 reads: “One can say, instead of, This sentence has such and such a sense, This sentence represents such and such a state of affairs.” Wittgenstein presents a definition of the term “sense”. Sense is the facts of the case, the final state of affairs that puts all the facts of the sentence together. Tractatus 4.064 tells us that the sense of a sentence does not depend on assertion or denial. Affirmation or negation is not a criterion for being able to understand or to not understand a sentence. “Every sentence must already have a sense; assertion cannot give it a sense, for what it asserts is the sense itself. And the same holds of denial, etc.” (Tractatus 4.064). Sense is given together with the sentence; the sentence shows its sense, and sense is a priori to any logical investigation.

The apriori of the sense of a sentence is a kind of philosophical thesis, a creative insight that characterizes philosophizing in the Tractatus. Today we see the conviction of the a priori of the sense of the sentence in connection with Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell) and with Wittgenstein’s later teaching, like his lectures on aesthetics and on religious belief in and around the summer of 1938 (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1966. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Edited by Cyril Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell. vii), where Wittgenstein writes on the use of words, on language games and that we are taught to use words. When we speak, we use words as we have been taught to use them and at the same time, we create our own pictures using words in a way that makes sense again (ibid. 1-2). Making sense with sentences can be considered as a kind of teaching the listeners a new kind of use of words, a kind of combination of words that not necessarily has been taught to the speaker, but that is rather made up by the speaker. The use of a new combination of words - old words or new words – creates sense. Once again, I turn to the second sentence in Tractatus 4.031: “One can say, instead of, This sentence has such and such a sense, This sentence represents such and such a state of affairs.” The validity of the sense of a sentence is understandability. We understand a language when we can use words in a way that makes sense, and when we are capable of listening and understanding the sentences of speakers. In both cases we understand what sense is shown.

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein is convinced of the existence of elementary sentences, that can be understood as something like atomic facts, that is a state of affairs that consists by nature of one fact only. “The simplest sentence, the elementary sentence, asserts the existence of a state of affairs. These elementary sentences need not be investigated further because they are fully analyzed by nature” (Tractatus 4.2). In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein does not present one example of an elementary sentence. Later, Wittgenstein corrected his view on elementary sentences that would determine the logic of the sentence and of language. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein found the parallel between the processes we use when we construct sentences and when we play a game; in both cases we follow the rules of language. The use of language is a language game (Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations, paragraph 108). When we learn a language, we learn how to use words. The naming of an object by someone, who already speaks the language, and the listening by someone, who does not yet know how to use the word she or he just heard and who repeats what she or he just heard, can be called learning the language. By repeating, she or he practices the use of the word she or he just had heard and thereby learns the rules of the language game concerning the use of the word. “And the process of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might be called language games. Think of much of the use of words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses. I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, a ‘language game’” (Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations, paragraph 7).

Learning or teaching a language is doing something, is an action. When children play the circle game ring-a-ring-a-roses, they dance in a circle around one child of the group while singing the song. At the end of the song the slowest child stopping to dance has to take the place in the center. Wittgenstein considers the singing and dancing a language game, the language and the actions form one language game. J. A. Austin (1911-1960) recognizes that speaking or singing are performances on their own and acts of doing something. He insisted that the use of sentences enables us to do many things (Austin 1971. How to do Things with Words). Statements are sentences, but they do not simply describe state of affairs; sentences are doing something, better: We are doing something with sentences. We are performing with speech; with speech we are performing. There are sentences that express questions and exclamations “and sentences expressing commands or wishes or concessions” (ibid. 1). Austin was the philosopher, who dared to understand that we act in that we use words, because “to say something is in the full normal sense to do something” (ibid. 94). Austin calls, for example, “The utterance of certain words … with a certain sense and with a certain reference … the act of ‘saying something’ … the performance of a locutionary act” (ibid.). As a general term for all these performances Austin uses the expression “speech-acts” (ibid. 149). By introducing the term “speech-act” Austin bridged the gap between ancient Greek philosophy speaking of human acts and modern language philosophy speaking of speech acts. The philosophical tradition speaks of human acts to assess the qualities of human behaviour, to judge single acts of a person, to reflect deeds and examine conscience. The result of an examination of one of my acts is a clean conscience or a guilty conscience or something in between. For the investigation of cases of conscience freedom, free will and the gravity of the object of the case are of importance. The liberty of conscience is one of the oldest human rights. The term “speech-act” helps me to assess human dignity, which cannot be separated from the liberty of free expression and the freedom of speech.

Before Austin, we were not used perceiving the speaking of sentences as a kind of behaviour or as a human action. With Austin I describe the fact that a person starts to speak as a performance; this performance is an act of free will, or a speech-act. We call a free decision on the part of the individual person a social choice. Starting to speak must be considered as a choice. Speaking is the realization of a social choice. With Amartya Sen I use the terms realization and social realization for describing what happens, for what is the case, and not based on a perfect imaginative setting, a veil of ignorance for interests, a social contract or an ideal discourse situation (Amartya Senn. The idea of justice. London 2009). Starting to speak demonstrates the agency of making a free decision. Freedom of speech and my social realization of free speech concern my dignity fundamentally. My speaking a sentence – a speech-act - expresses a sense and shows the agency of making sense. The a priori of the sense of the sentences is a demonstration of the dignity of the speaking person.

Since I want to say something and be understood, the question whether my sentences make sense is very important. It is easy to answer my question about whether my sentences make sense or not: I simply ask my listener if he or she understood what I said. I ask her or him if she or he understood the sense of my sentence. If I doubt that I was understood, I politely ask my conversation partner to please repeat to me what I said. In ordinary language, we have sufficient instruments to make sure that we make sense, because we can check whether we were understood. I call a speech-act a realization of a social choice to speak. The speech-act, a fact of the case, is real. The sense of the sentence is the case or is not the case. If nobody understands my sentence, I must affirm that I spoke nonsense. Nevertheless, the capability to speak sense or nonsense is a condition for my dignity.