Lancaster, M.Sc., Feb 2001

 

WITTGENSTEIN'S 'GRAMMATICAL INVESTIGATIONS

 

Misleading 'pictures' embedded in our language:

 

-               The connections between our spontaneously responsive background activities are not sustained by us rationally deciding voluntarily what to do next; neither are they sustained by a natural causal necessity. There is a strange element of "non-rational impulsiveness" (Goffman, 1967, p.115) in how we 'go on' in our dialogically structured spontaneous activities with each other, which cannot be explained either in terms of reasons or causes.

 

-               To explore its linguistic nature, we must explore the relations between our actual use of words in this, that, and other situations; that is, we must explore what spontaneously suggests itself to us as following from what - with the hope that if we do this with enough care, we will discover that on many occasions our forms of expression, our ways of talking, have misled us.

 

-               As an example of what he means here, Wittgenstein (1965) discusses the question St. Augustine asked himself: "How is it possible to measure time? For the past can't be measured, as it has gone by; and the future can't be measured because it has not yet come. And the present can't be measured for it has no extension" (p.26).

 

-               The contradiction which seems to arise here, Wittgenstein points out, can be seen as a conflict between two different uses of the word "measure," one to do with measuring time, and the other to do with measuring length. St. Augustine seems to have a picture of time as "flowing by us, - as logs of wood float down a river" (1965, p.107). With such a picture of time as this in mind, no wonder St. Augustine ends up puzzled. But it is a puzzle which "arises when we look at the facts through the medium of a misleading form of expression" (1965, p.31).

 

-               In fact, the mental discomfort we feel, says Wittgenstein, is a puzzlement arising from contradictions in the grammar of "time," that is, from the different uses we make on different occasions of the word "time."

 

Searching for a substantive:

 

-               In confronting us with the character of the difficulties we face here, we can see Wittgenstein making a number of characteristic moves. He first points out that the very formulation of our question about time as a "What is...?"-question, leads us to look beyond language for "'a thing corresponding to a substantive'" (1965, p.5) to fill out the blank.

 

-               Having set off in this direction, it seems only appropriate to look for "an object co-existing with the sign" (1965, p.5) - yet, time seems to us "a queer thing... something we can see from the outside but which we can't look into" (1965, p.6). But, "it is not new facts about time which we want to know. All the facts that concern us lie open before us. But it is the use of the substantive 'time' which mystifies us" (1965, p.6).

 

Searching for definitions:

 

-               So, failing to make progress in this direction, we can return to the "What is...?"-question, and now find that "at first sight what this question asks for is a definition" (1965, p.26).

 

-               We can then get ourselves into the sequence where we first offer a mistaken definition - say, time is the motion of celestial bodies - and then, seeing that this is a wrong definition, "we are tempted to think that we must now replace it by a different one, a correct one" (1965, p.27).

 

-               But there are many words that have no strict meaning, and this is not a defect. Indeed, there are words of which one might say: "They are used in a thousand different ways which gradually merge into one another. No wonder we can't tabulate strict rules for their use" (1965, p.28). And in any case, Wittgenstein asks: "'What should we gain from a definition, as it can only lead to other undefined terms?' And why should one by puzzled just by the lack of a definition of time, and not by the lack of a definition of 'chair'?" (1965, p.26).

 

-               We are wafted this way and that in our thought by "the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us" (1965, p.27).

 

-               It is in this sense, then, that he suggests that his investigation is best characterized as "a grammatical one" (1953, no.90). And in it, he draws on just that same sense that we all have when, in our interactions with the others around us, we sense what is fitting and what is not.

 

-               Except, when we do have a sense of dis-ease, of puzzlement, he asks us not to respond so spontaneously as a problem requiring an immediate solution, without first questioning ourselves as to the picture implicit in our way of formulating it as such, and whether there might be other, perhaps less misleading options available to us - thus to identify it as a grammatical problem, rather than one of a theoretical or empirical kind.

 

-               "Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language" (1953, no.90) - forms of expression 'carried in' our practices of inquiry that we 'carry over', so to speak, from one sphere of language use inappropriately into another.

 

Reference:

 

Wittgenstein, L.W. (1965) The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell