Naming and simplicity

Max Weiss March 16, 2012

Introduction

As is well-known, Wittgenstein holds in the Tractatus that a propositional sign is a fact. More specically, such a sign is the fact that its elements stand in a certain relation to each other. Among the propositional signs are ordinary sentences, whose elements are words we bring into determinate relations by writing or speech. However, in a special kind of case, the elements of the propositional sign will all stand for objects; in this case the proposition is said to be completely analyzed. The names of the Tractatus are the elements of completely analyzed propositions. A name, therefore, stands for an object.1 It is also well-known of the same book that Wittgenstein there holds that objects are simple.2 We nd here much less explanation. But it may be inferred that an object consists of no further objects, and requires of no further objects that they be arranged in this or that way. From these two doctrines follows a third: that only what is simple can be named. Such a view seems to be dicult to accept. For it appears to be an ordinary phenomenon of human language, not to mention a major convenience, that some things are named that have parts: nations and artifacts, molecules and organisms. Wittgenstein holds of such things that either we cannot name them, or they do not consist of parts. I will refer to this view as the problem of the complex. Wittgenstein claims in the preface of his book to have found the solution to the problems of philosophy. It would be disappointing if this were not intended to imply that the Tractatus contains the solution to any further problems it introduces: hence, in particular, a solution to the problem I just mentioned. Here Wittgenstein is widely held to have borrowed heavily from the theory of denite descriptions that was propounded by Bertrand Russell in 1905. Accordingly, although the words of sentences appear to correspond to complex objects, these words are not really names but covertly complex descriptions that break apart on analysis. The centrepiece of such readings is a widespread treatment of 3.24. In what follows I will try to show that this treatment of 3.24 is mistaken. The heart of my argument is a detailed consideration of a pair of passages in the 1914-1916 Notebooks in which Wittgenstein struggles with the problem of the complex for himself, almost two years after he wrote in a letter to Russell, your theory of descriptions seems to me to be quite certainly correct.3

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A central aim of my reading of 3.24 is to show how this passage articulates the conception of analysis in the Tractatus. I hold that the so-called Context Principle is essential to the development of this conception.4 My aim is to show that 3.24 and related passages culminate Wittgensteins struggle to reach a point of view from which ordinary language, while obscuring the forms of thought that we express by its means, is nonetheless perfectly in order as it is.

Background

Before beginning the constructive interpretation let me summarize the reading of 3.24 that I mentioned in introduction, and present some objections to it. The background to this reading is the shift from 1903 to 1905 in Russells interpretation of so-called denoting phrases such as the queen of England, the king of France or the dierence between A and B . According to the Russell of 1903, what such a phrase contributes to a proposition, or what it indicates, should be distinguished from what the phrase eventually stands for, or denotes. The phrase indicates a denoting complex, which is a structured entity built up out of the meanings of the meaningful constituent words of the phrase. Thus, for example, the indication of the queen of England contains the queening relation, and the country of England, combined together under some kind of a form that bets the logical behaviour of denoting complex as a term. On the other hand, if there is exactly one person who bears the queening relation to England, then this person is said to be the denotation of the indicated complex, and therefore also the denotation of the phrase itself. Now, a proposition like that expressed by the queen of England is lonely will consist of the indication of the phrase the queen of England together with the property of being lonely. If in fact the complex has a denotation, then there is an associated proposition whose constituents are that person and the property of being lonely; the truth of this correlated proposition explains the truth of the proposition that contained the original denoting complex. In 1905, Russell rejects this view, on the grounds that there is no proposition to the eect that the denoting complex has a property itself, since in trying to construct one we always fall through to the underlying denotation.5 Since Russell identied true propositions with facts, it followed that denoting complexes would not have properties at all, a disastrous consequence. So, as is well known, Russell renounces this view in On Denoting, deciding instead that a complex noun phrase has no meaning in isolation but contributes systematically to the meaning of the sentences in which it occurs. So much for alleged the background to passage 3.24 of the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein writes: A proposition about a complex stands in an internal relation to a proposition about its constituents. The complex can only be given by its description, which will be right or wrong. A proposition that mentions a complex will not be nonsensical, if the complex does not exist, but simply false.

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When a propositional element signies a complex, this can be seen from an indeterminateness in the propositions in which it occurs. In such cases we know that the proposition leaves something undetermined. (In fact the generality-sign contains a prototype.)6 According to the reading I contest, Wittgenstein here follows the Russell of 1905 in a rebu of the Russell of 1903. Thus Black and Ricketts: [Wittgenstein] is following Russells theory of description, according to which any statement about the King of France is counted as false if the king of France does not exist.7 Wittgenstein embraces Russells theory of descriptions to analyze away appearances of explicitly or implicitly complex names.8 Similarly, on Harts reading, if a proposition apparently mentions a complex, then it contains a denite description, which must be analyzed away following the approach of Russell in 1905.9 The three authors extend their 1905-Russellian account toward an interpretation of the indeterminacy that Wittgenstein attributes to propositions that mention a complex. In the Tractatus, the paragraph 3.24c that mentions this indeterminacy follows the statement of 3.24b that propositions about nonexistent complexes are false. So, these commentators trace the indeterminacy of propositions that mention a complex to their behaviour under negation. Since a proposition that mentions a complex must do so by description, its negation has the form F ( x)(Gx). But for the negated proposition there is not just one but rather two ways in which it can hold. It may be true because the ( x)(Gx) is improper, and it may be true because the denotation does not satisfy F . The truth of the negation is therefore essentially disjunctive, and for this reason the negated proposition is indeterminate. Since a proposition cannot be determinate unless its negation is determinate as well, it follows that there would be an indeterminacy in any proposition that mentions a complex. Let me conclude the section by recording some prima facie objections to this reading. None of the objections is decisive, but together they demonstrate the need for another approach.

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(1) The reading reduces the relevant notion of indeterminacy to a feature of arbitrary conjunctions. So it founders on the absence of any mention of indeterminacy in the setting of a general discussion of truth-functions. Rather, the notion of indeterminacy appears in the context of discussions of generality.10 (2) Wittgenstein says that the analyzing proposition will be about the constituents of what the analyzed proposition is about. However, before a Russellian analysis, a statement involving the queen of England would be about the queen, and afterwards it would be about queening and England. I do not know of any fears recorded by Wittgenstein that the nation of England might be eaten by its regent.11

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(3) The reading attributes to Wittgenstein a fairly technical point about a logical property of the Russellian analysis. For this reason, the interpretation does not lend proper voicing to the remark we know that this proposition does not leave everything determined. The we of the passage should not be understood as we who analyze with Russell but rather as we who understand the unanalyzed. (4) The reading does not square itself to the hard problem of 3.24, namely the parenthesized comment that concludes it: the sign for generality [Allgemeinheitsbezeichnung ] already contains a prototype.12 My impression is that the Black-Hart-Ricketts reading gathers most of its plausibility from the fact that in the Tractatus, the mention in 3.24c of indeterminacy immediately follows 3.24bs mention of falsehood of propositions about complexes. Wittgensteins notebooks contain ancestors of these two paragraphs at 15.5.15 and 21.6.15 respectively. In other words, the ancestors are separated by more than a month, and, as well see, the context of the ancestor of 3.24c indicates an entirely dierent understanding of indeterminacy in which generality plays the central role. My impression is that the suggestion of an explanatory link between 3.24b and 3.24c is purely an accident of Wittgensteins cut-and-paste method of composition.13

The Notebooks contain two sustained discussions of the issue, separated by a couple of weeks. The rst one starts to creep in around 25.4.15, and then breaks o at 1.6.15; the second resumes at 14.6.15 and continues until W ran out of space at 22.6.15. The discussions circle around what appears to Wittgenstein as a kind of paradox: he seems to be constantly reawakening himself to each of the forces that hold it in place, trying as he changes register to detect any shift in their balance. The central refrain is the investigators acknowledgment of what he calls a feeling that he can give a name to seemingly ordinary objects. He mentions for example the feeling that he can name his watch (15.6.15), a knife or a letter (19.5.15), a copy of a book (23.5.15), even the landscape around him or the motes in the air (30.5.15). This kind of feeling, he remarks, is completely natural, so there must be some truth in it. He also considers related cases to dismiss them as logical contrivances, for example: that he can name an object together with its motion, as with the-moonorbiting-the-earth orbits the sun, or again, perhaps, as with quotation of tunes or sentences (19.5.15). But, although such marginal cases can perhaps be explained away as tricks of language, Wittgenstein nds himself bound by the authority of a feeling that certain kinds of everyday thing can be named. The question therefore arises how this acknowledgment could ever seem to constrain us. The counterpoint to the central refrain is Wittgensteins insistence that everyday objects are complex. Thus, he asserts that what is complex must include his aforementioned watch (7.5.15, 15.6.15, 22.6.15), a copy of a book (23.5.15), also for example a pencil-stroke and a steamship (25.4.15). For Wittgenstein it would seem

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A 1915 puzzle

that such objects inherit their complexity from the complexity of what is spatially extended (7.5.15, 13.5.15, 24.5.15, 14.6.15, 17.6.15, 18.6.15, 19.6.15) or of what is massive (22.5.15, 20.6.15).14 Thus, at the heart of Wittgensteins problem is a conjunction: (i) that an ordinary thing can be named, but (ii) that ordinary things are complex. To my ear, the rhetorical structure of the NB passages suggests that the conjuncts stem from grounds that are rm but disparate, so that they could meet to strike us with their transparent consequence: that sometimes, what can be named is complex. The two NB passages that interrogate the notion of the complex are bookended squarely by explicit formulations of this datum (25.4.15 and 30.5.15; 14.6.15 and 22.6.15; cf. also the precursor to 3.24 at 13.5.15). Its because the datum presents a problem that Wittgenstein resolves it into its component vectors (i) and (ii) and restates them repeatedly, like someone in disbelief that he has hands. The conjunction of (i) and (ii) presents a problem for Wittgenstein for the following reason: he takes up his investigation of the complex from the point of view (iii) that what can be named is simple. Taking for granted that nothing simple is complex, between the principles (i-iii) there is an immediate contradiction. The pressure he acknowledges explicitly: When I say x has reference do I have the feeling: it is impossible that x should stand for, say, this knife or this letter? Not at all. On the contrary (19.5.15; cf. also 6.5.15 and 15.5.15). It is probably fair to say that the principle (iii) is not self-evident; nor is it a truism like (i) or a metaphysical banality like (ii). How was he driven against them? I want rst to try to understand the genesis of Wittgensteins attachment to (iii); Ill then turn to the question whether in NB we nd a resolution of the problem of the conjunction of (iii) with (i) and (ii).

Genesis of (iii)

It is natural to suppose that the doctrine of the simplicity of the nameable descends in a straightforward way from Wittgensteins Russellian heritage. Most obviously, in Principia, Russell uses the device of contextual denition to reduce Freges broad, mathematically acculturated notion of a function to his idiosyncratic notion of a propositional function. In this way, he excises the category of syntactically complex terms from his foundations for mathematics. However, the developments of OD transpose the site of ontological commitment from the conditions of sense to the conditions of truth; before OD we could not perhaps acknowledge the sense of the dierence between Brookline and Brooklyn is large without admitting something indicated by the dierence between Brookline and Brooklyn at least into the domain of being; afterward we must still accept the existence of some such entity as

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the dierence between Brookline and Brooklyn if we maintain, as seems reasonable, that they dier greatly. Moreover, according to Russell, we must then think that the propositional function (x is large) is true of that entity; taking the entity to be a, then this amounts to acceptance of truth of a proposition a. But I have just given an explanation that proceeds by assigning a name to the dierence between Brookline and Brooklyn. Such an entity would be a prime case of a complex; and to the explanation given there does not seem to be any clear alternative. So, in fact OD very nearly requires the naming of complexes. Furthermore, later developments in Russells philosophy maintain some role for the notion of a complex, most saliently in the explanation of truth that subserves the multiple relation theory of judgment.15 , 16 It seems to me implausible that the Russell of the multiple relation theory would deny that a complex could have properties, that it could be constituent of truths, and also that it could be named. So, the doctrine of the simplicity of what can be named seems rather inimical to Russells own thinking. Perhaps, however, this conclusion should be qualied by considerations of Russellian acquaintance. Russell decides in 1905 that to give a complete analysis of a proposition is to reveal its composition from items with each of which were acquainted already. He also maintains that the use of a name contributes its bearer as constituent of the proposition expressed. From these two theses it follows that we must be acquainted with the bearer of a name whose use we understand; this conclusion is if anything only reinforced in the shift to the multiple relation theory. But now the simplicity of the nameable would follow from the further premise that only what is simple can be an object of acquaintance. In Wittgenstein, however, this suggestion is quickly scotched: even though we have no acquaintance with simple objects we do know complex objects by acquaintance, we know by acquaintance that they are complex (24.5.15). It would run beyond the scope of this paper17 to develop a full account of the origin of the doctrine in early Wittgenstein that only what is simple can be named. However, I take it to be at least coeval with the theory of propositions as pictures. Certainly, the doctrine is not an obvious consequence of that theory. For example, when we arrange blocks on a table to represent a conguration of cars, it seems unreasonable to object that the blocks do not have carburetors. Wittgenstein seems to hold from very early on that a representation of complexity is a representation that things are a certain way. Hence, the representation of complexity involves agreement or disagreement with the way that things are. Now the picture theory, as applied to atomic representations, interprets this agreement or disagreement as a commonality of form between the representation and the state of aairs represented. But then, a representation of complexity must share the form of the state of aairs it represents. In practice, representations appear to fall short of this rather dramatically. They do not perfectly mirror the complexity of the situation; they are somehow incompletely articulated. However, their sense lives o of the possibility that their complexity be spelled out in full. They are propositions only by courtesy of the promise of their complete articulation.

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The turning point

The rst surviving sustained discussion of complexes breaks o after 31.5.15 for two weeks foray into the nature of the a priori and the tautology. Abruptly Wittgenstein resumes with an announcement: We have become clear. . . that names may and do stand for the most various forms, and that it is only the syntactical application that signalises [charakterisiert ] the form that is to be presented. Now what is the syntactical application of names of simple objects? (14.6.15) The face of the Notebooks thus evinces a feeling of progress on Wittgensteins part but why? There is no obvious connection of the 1-14 June discussion to the issue of complexes: in those two weeks of entries, the words Komplex , Gegenstand , and Name occur a total of zero times. On the other hand, the last two weeks or so of May nd him circling obsessively around the contradiction of theses (i-iii). But then the entry of 30.5.15 famously begins: words are like the lm on deep water. Wittgenstein continues: It is clear that it comes to the same thing to ask what a sentence is, and to ask what a fact isor a complex. And why should we not say: There are complexes; one can use names to name them, or propositions to portray them?

But if there are simple objects, is it correct to call both the signs for them and those other signs names? Or is name so to speak a logical concept? [. . . ] (30.5.15) This passage contains the seed for the resolution of the problem in its concluding sentence. Here Wittgenstein decides that name is a logical notion, a characterization of expressions that depends on their syntactical employment. For convenience, I shall refer to this result as the discovery.18 It is evident from the texts that Wittgenstein does not take his discovery to aord any immediate resolution of his problem: here we can see only that Wittgenstein alights on a program for understanding what a name is. At just this point he breaks o his discussion in apparent condence that the framework is set for the problem to unwind itself. Wittgenstein resumes the discussion two weeks later by continuing to press his doubts against the thesis that complexes cannot be named. Indeed, the mid-June recapitulation shows that Wittgenstein takes the moral of his discovery to be that we need to attend to syntactical application in order to distinguish various names as standing for various formsnot just for simples but for other forms as well, i.e., also for complexes. Even the last sentence of the notebook reads: the name compresses 7

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The name of a complex functions in the proposition like the name of an object that I only know by description.The proposition that depicts it functions as a description.

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Unpacking the discovery

Let me summarize where we are. We found Wittgenstein to be struggling with an antinomy: that ordinary objects can be named, and ordinary objects are complex, but nothing complex can be named. Then he discovers a principle for resolution: that the syntactical application of a name determines entirely the form of the object signied. To understand the principle, we need to understand the relevant notions of syntactical application and of form. Now, I think it is clear that Wittgenstein takes the form of what is signied at least to decide the question of whether what is signied is simple or complex. Moreover, it seems even that further formal variety determines the details of internal composition of what is signied. Thus, for example: When I say this watch is shiny, and what I mean [meine ] by this watch alters its composition in the smallest particular, then this means not merely that the sense of the sentence alters in its content, but also what I am saying about this watch straightaway alters in its sense. The whole form of the proposition alters (16.6.15). By what I mean by this watch Wittgenstein means his watch: thus what he is saying is that as its internal changes occurperhaps, even, for example, as the hands sweepso the sense of what he says changes too, for the form of the

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its whole complex reference into one. So even in the throes of the discovery, he writes that the components are to the complex as a plan of a town is to a map of a country. He seems initially to nd that the discovery if anything bolsters the case that complexes can be named. For it appears that names of complexes satisfy everything the discovery leads him to require of names of simples (14.6.15). That the discovery nonetheless recongures his perspective can be seen by comparing the earlier remark: we have acquaintance with complexes. We know by acquaintance that they are complex (24.5.15). For although at 30.5.15, he seems to advance a weaker claim that determining the form of the signied object requires appeal to syntactical application of a name, Wittgenstein resumes the topic with the seemingly strengthened formulation: it is only the syntactical application that signalises the form.19 However, the strengthening here is only apparent: in both cases, what Wittgenstein is saying is that to discover the form of the object signied, we cannot consider only the sign by itself, but must consider the application too.20 In neither case does there arise any question of, as it were, summoning up the object signied for personal inspection; rather, this is just what Wittgenstein intends to exclude. Thus, in return for an escape route from his antinomy, Wittgenstein trades away any independent, properly epistemic purchase on the notion of complexity. The concept of a name becomes a logical concept, and the question of the form of the object signied by a name reduces to that of syntactical application. It is no surprise to nd him on the heels of his discovery to be wondering: but what about the denotation [Bedeutung ] of names out of the context of the proposition? (14.6.15).

watch characterizes what he says. Simplicity, then, is a kind of limiting case. Just as the form determines any structure there is, so it determines no structure.21 The other term of the discovery is the notion of syntactical application; here I can make out two passages to indicate sources of its character. At 17.6.15, Wittgenstein repeats that the complexity of the object signied by a name characterizes the sense of a proposition expressed by means of that name. But, a proposition is not fully articulated until it reects its sense in such a way that the parts of the sense stand apart form each other in the expression. Hence, in a proposition whose sense is characterized by reference to a complex object, the constituents of that object must nd themselves expressed apart from each other as discernible segments of the proposition itself. Thus, the demand for simple things is the demand for deniteness of sense (18.6.15). Wittgenstein now raises an objection: he thinks he cannot rule out a priori that the complexity of ordinary objects be innite. Then, it would seem, not only does ordinary language elide by biological exigency what in real sharpness we would distinguish: rather, nothing adequate to an object could be said by us in principle. But then the deniteness of sense could not be underpinned by appeal to full articulations mere possibility. So he writes: does not this possible innite complexity of the sense impair its deniteness? Wittgenstein takes the syntactical application of a name to include the logical relationships to other propositions that are borne by propositions containing the name. Thus, for example: perhaps we assert of a patch in our visual eld that it is to the right of a line, and we assume that every patch in our visual eld is innitely complex. Then if we say that a point in that patch is to the right of the line, this proposition follows from the previous one, and if there are innitely many points in the patch then innitely many propositions of dierent content follow logically from that rst one (18.6.15e). Wittgenstein summons here an idea he recorded nine months earlier as (a).(b).aRb = Def [aRb] at 5.9.14. This is evidently a symbolic anticipation of the slogan a proposition about a complex can be analyzed into statements about its constituents and a statement that describes the complex completely (2.0201). Thus, the discovery leads Wittgenstein to redeploy this idea from a new angle. Previously, one inspected the internal constitution and reported the results as an analysis, thereby discovering an instance of the consequence relation. But now instead, the consequence relation discloses the analysis, and only thereby do we make out complexity in the objects. One might thus even say: what articulates the proposition is not its internal structure but its position in the system of logical relationships. Wittgenstein now transposes his objection to the new framework. He takes the logical conception of deniteness to require that the syntactical application of the sign be decided in advance, so that it must in particular be decided already for each consequence of the given proposition that it is indeed a consequence. For example, there would be no sense to the investigators saying that his watch is in the drawer unless it had been decided already that from this it followed that some wheel of the watch was in the drawer too. But of course, perhaps he had not the 9

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least knowledge that the wheel was in the watch; so how could he have meant by this watch the complex in which the wheel occurs (18.6.15i)? How could a proposition treat of innitely many points without being innitely complex? In the next section, I will argue that the allusion to prototypes of 3.24 summarizes Wittgensteins response to this objection. I promised to state a second mentioned source of syntactical character. Following 22.6.15i, lets suppose that A is a rod and B is a ball. We can straightforwardly nd reasoning that treats A and B interchangeably: for example, from the hypothesis that everything massive is spatially extended, we may conclude of each of A and B that it is extended if massive. However, Wittgenstein claims that it is only A that we intelligibly describe as leaning against a wall. Here, Wittgenstein remarks, the internal nature of A and B comes into view. By internal nature Wittgenstein means internal complexity. Thus, an apparent irregularity of logical type is like a telltale seam that unmasks the simplicity of A and B as merely constructed.22 To discover the internal complexity of meaning we must attend not only to networks of implication but also to what has been called logical grammar.23

Generality and the prototype

Wittgenstein ties the determinacy of sense to the possibility of full articulation. But, since he cannot x any a priori bound on the complexity of meaning, therefore he cannot yet presuppose that full articulation would be possible even in principle. Though, following the discovery, he traces the complexity of meaning to the syntactical application of signs, this by itself promises no solution. The discovery simply rotates the problem by ninety degrees, recasting the subtleties of truth-making as subtleties of inference.24 The underlying predicament is familiar. A speaker may utter a proposition yet be unable to distinguish exhaustively the cases in which the proposition is true from those in which it is false. Indeed, if syntactical application of the sign were supposed to reside in the power of the speakers discernment, then the discovery would threaten to undermine the determinacy of sense. I think there are two issues here to be untangled. First, there is a threat of in-principle impossibility of full articulation, which would imply that the notion of determinacy of sense, as construed by the picture theory, is outright incoherent. Second, there appears to remain a mystery how through syntactical application the determinacy of sense could be secured. It is to address the rst issue that Wittgenstein invokes the notion of generality: When we see that our visual eld is complex we also see that it consists of simpler parts. We can talk of functions of this and that kind without having any particular application in view. For we dont have any examples before our minds when we use F x and all the other variable form-signs. (19.6.15a-c)

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All invisible point-masses, etc., must come under the generality notation. (21.6.15f) In very broad contours, the idea is this. Nobody can run through the totality of distinct situations which are sucient for a watch to be on the table.25 So instead, Wittgenstein proposes, the relevant features of such situations must be projected by means of a variable into a single surveyable formula. A formula subsumes such variety by means of an abstraction embodied in the prototype. For example, by means of a prototype we can represent that a region w overlaps with the interval (0, 1) on the real line in the following way. Suppose that the relation Pos(x, y ) holds between x and y i y is a point in the region x. Such propositions as Pos(w, .5), Pos(w, /4), etc., express disjoint classes of possible situations in which w overlaps with (0, 1). By applying the N -operator26 of the Tractatus to a prototypical representation of all those propositions, one obtains a proposition N {N {Pos(w, y ) : 0 < y < 1}}. which would say that w overlaps with (0, 1). The analysis Ive indicated is incomplete, because the instances of the prototype are not themselves independent. But moreover, the example begins the analysis of a proposition that is already precise. Wittgenstein considers instead a proposition like the watch is on the table which seems to be vague. Nonetheless, Wittgenstein holds that, when applied and thought out, such a proposition draws through the whole space of possibilities a sharp cut. Of this or that borderline situation, there may arise a challenge to say whether or not the proposition would truly describe it. Everybody knows that nobody who speaks any ordinary language could meet every such challenge. Or, as Wittgenstein puts the point: when it comes to a proposition containing an element that signies a complex, we feel that not everything is yet determined. This is to be explained by the underlying prevalence of prototypes. An ordinary proposition is a picture of reality, but only by courtesy of its complete articulation, whose possibility the appeal to prototypes is intended to certify. Syntactical application embodies the network of implications that constitute a representation as a prototype. This is why it is only in conjunction with its application that a proposition achieves determinacy of sense. Thus, on a theoretical level, Wittgensteins appeal to the notion of prototype in 3.24 serves to immunize alethic responsibility against the frailties of our cognitive control. This is what it is for us to know of a proposition containing a prototype that it leaves not everything determined. It is the perfectly ordinary recognition that we cannot meet every challenge to decide a borderline case. What is extraordinary is Wittgensteins insistence that the proposition itself meets the challenge. In this way, the appeal to the prototype is intended to defuse an apparent conict between the pictorial conception of the determinacy of sense with the a priori unbounded complexity of ordinary things. However, there was a second problem, namely that the discovery implies that the complexity of ordinary things is reected in the syntactical application of the signs for them. Yet this complexity must be supposed to outstrip our actual knowledge and competence by far. It

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would be even more preposterous to try to ground the forms of meaning in actual linguistic precedents, for those are nite. In the Notebooks, Wittgenstein wants to turn such skeptical challenges aside. Nothing we can say would exclude every possible misunderstanding. But this is not the relevant standard. The speakers powers to anticipate legalistically every such challenge will at some point give out. Then we fall back on the determinacy of sense. It is clear that I know what I mean by the vague proposition. But now someone else doesnt understand and says: Yes, but if you mean that then you should have added such and such; and now someone else again will not understand it and will demand that the proposition should be given in more detail still. I shall then reply: Now that can be taken for granted. (22.6.15d)

Conclusion

In the previous section I argued that the indeterminacy of ordinary propositions stems from the pervasiveness of prototypical representation. This interpretation receives support from a comparison of 3.24c with its ancestor passage. That a name signies a complex object is seen from an indeterminacy in the proposition in which it occurs, which results from the generality of such propositions. We know that by this proposition not everything is yet determined. The sign for generality contains a prototype. (21.6.15) That a propositional element signies a complex can be seen from an indeterminacy in the proposition in which it occurs. We know that by this proposition not everything is yet determined. (The sign for generality contains a prototype.) (3.24) Another change in the passage reveals the resolution of the antinomy that vexed Wittgenstein in the May and June of 1915. The name of the Notebooks gives way to the propositional element of the Tractatus. At this point it might be wondered whether this isnt just a verbal dodge. If it is impossible to correlate a name with a thing, doesnt this also exclude the correlation of propositional elements? This response underestimates the force of the discovery that the forms of meaning of signs are determined by syntactical application. One can surely correlate a sound with a speck of dust, by emitting the sound in the presence of the speck. But according to the discovery, such a correlation confers no meaning. The investigator of the Notebooks felt, in mid-May, that he could assign a name to a thing. The discovery strips this feeling of its logical authority. Granted that an ordinary propositional sign is not a concatenation of names, on the grounds of the indeterminacy that everybody detects, it must be noted that the sign is still a concatenation, not of names, but of propositional elements. And what are these? As Wittgenstein asked: does the logic of PM apply to our propositions just as they are? As he struggles with this problem in the Notebooks, he

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hits on the idea that underlying ordinary language there are tremendously complicated conventions, with a certain generality of form. The reference is to the Prefatory statement of symbolic conventions in the second volume of Principia, where Whitehead claims any result that is proven to hold of the lowest type holds of the higher types as wellsubject, that is, to certain complicated provisos. I take it that the allusion is intended to illustrate a possibility that logic has application to propositions just as they are. It is scarcely conceivable that the grammatical segmentation of ordinary language is without logical signicance. The idea seems to be that logic applies to propositions as they are, but that the application is subject to complicated provisos that, like telltale seams, reveal the incompleteness of analysis. What would constitute the completeness of analysis? What, for that matter, gives substance to the now highly attenuated notion of a name? The completion of analysis would simultaneously reveal every proposition to be a truth-function of elementary propositions, in such a way that all necessity gives way to truth-functional validity. But why should we suppose that the elementary propositions are elementary, that is, that they are genuine concatenations of names? The incompleteness of analysis manifests itself through indeterminacies of implication: must the crown of the watch be in the drawer if the watch is in the drawer? No such indeterminacy aicts a class of propositions each of which can be true or false while the truth or falsehood of the rest of them remains unchanged. The independence of elementary propositions gives content to the notion of a name. Let me conclude, then, with a suggestion. The independence of elementary propositions follows from the discovery that the forms of meaning depend on syntactical application, because the account of propositions as pictures expresses the determinacy of sense like this: that what is named is simple.

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Notes
1 This 2 2.02. 3 Reprinted at p.57 of Cambridge letters, ed. Brian McGuinness (Blackwell, 2008). McGuiness dates the letter to November-December of 1913. 4 Here, my interpretation builds on work of Michael Kremer in Contextualism and holism in early Wittgenstein (Philosophical Topics 25(2), 1997). Although I do not argue the point directly, I take my conclusions to testify in several ways to the suggestion of Goldfarb (Wittgensteins Understanding of Frege, in E. Reck, ed., From Frege to Wittgenstein, Oxford UP, 2002) that by starting from a Russellian framework and thinking through the problems of logic for himself, Wittgenstein reaches some anities with Frege. 5 On Denoting, 485., in Mind, New Series 14(56), 1905. Cf. On Fundamentals, esp. 380 in the Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 4. 6 This is the translation of Pears and McGuinness (Routledge, 1963). Pears-McGuinness does not align well with Anscombes translation of the Notebooks 1914-1916 (Blackwell, 1961). 7 Max Black, A Companion to Wittgensteins Tractatus, p.112 (Cambridge, 1964). 8 Wittgenstein against Frege and Russell, p.237n20, in Reck. Cf. also Pictures, logic, and the limits of sense, p.85n41, in The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (Cambridge UP, 1996), where Ricketts signals deference to Harts paper on on the issue. Although I disagree with Ricketts here, it should be noted that his writings played a big role in shaping my conception of how to think about early analytic philosophy. 9 The whole sense of the Tractatus , p.279, in the Journal of Philosophy 68(9), 1971. Hart also maintains the converse view, that a proposition contains a denite description only if it mentions a complex. In my opinion, the converse is not quite so wild an attribution as one might be led to suppose by comparison with, for example, 2.02331. But in any case, it is not essential to Harts reconstruction of the argument for the existence of simples, nor to the line of criticism I pursue here. 10 For another instance of the linking of generality with indeterminacy, see Philosophical Remarks pp.275-276 (ed. Rush Rhees, Blackwell, 1975). The distinction of generality from truth-operation is sharp in the Tractatus ; cf. 5.521. 11 In other words, Russells analysis is directed toward ordinary extrinsic descriptions, which do not specify their object by articulating its internal structure. It seems more likely that Wittgenstein has in mind instead the problem of phrases like the dierence between A and B , the death of Caesar and so on. Russell in 1905 attempts to treat these intrinsic descriptions uniformly with the extrinsic ones. But this attempt does not even pretend to eliminate statements about complexes; it rather presupposes them. I pursue this line in section 4. 12 I want to show how the parenthetical comment is the decisive one, but for now let me just observe that it is not parenthesized in the antecedent paragraph 3.210106 of the Prototractatus. Black (ibid.) mentions as a second-line account of indeterminacy the idea that generality is always indeterminate, but he does not spell out why this should be, nor why we should feel it. 13 In the Prototractatus the two paragraphs have antecedents at 3.20105 and 3.20106. 14 This metaphysical banality is not the sort of thing one naturally seeks out in Wittgenstein. I confess to struggling for weeks to read my way around these passages, but they stand up for themselves. 15 Cf. Kremer (ibid.), p.95, makes this point in Contextualism and holism in the early Wittgenstein. 16 Although the text is not so clear on this point as is, for example, the Grundgesetze, it is natural to interpret truth-functions in PM as predicates that attribute properties or relations to propositions, and to take Russell at his word when he says that p q says of p and q that one implies the other. Moreover, in Theory of Knowledge (Allen and Unwin, 1984), Russell considers various examples of properties of complexes: for example, as expressed by A precedes in the complex (111) or A and B and similarity form a complex of the same for as (113). 17 Or: of this version of this paper. 18 I would like also to avoid for the time being the very complicated issues involving the relationship of Wittgensteins discovery to the so-called context principle that is attributed to

paragraph summarizes 3.14, 3.2, and 3.201, 3.202.

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Frege. 19 Cf. also 16.6.15: the syntactical employment of the names completely characterizes the form of the complex objects which they denote. 20 See 18.6.15: not the propositional sign by itself, but it together with its syntactical application. 21 I dont know of any passage here where Wittgenstein mentions formal variety among the simples themselves, as we might understand Freges distinction between function and object. But cf. 16.6.15: Relations and properties, etc. are objects too. 22 Wittgenstein gives another example that falls amusingly at in translation: The watch is sitting on the table is senseless! 23 This passage raises further questions I cannot deal with here. How does it align with the discussion in T of related themes? E.g., Green is green, the good is more or less identical than the beautiful and all that. Note, furthermore, that in the nal analysis, if two expressions can each sensibly occur in some context, then every context in which the one sensibly occurs is a context in which the other does too. This feature cannot be broken by composition of expressions with the featureeven if we include something like -abstraction to allow certain kinds of contextual denition. So, an analysis of the ordinary expressions may need to posit some kind of ambiguity. I think there is constant tension here with the impulse of 3.3442. 24 To be precise, the rotation is 90 counterclockwise, according to Per Martin-L of (Truth of a proposition, evidence of a judgment, validity of a proof, Synthese 73 (1987), p. 411). 25 As Russell puts it: practically, if we were to attempt it, Death would cut short our laudable endeavour. . . (PoM, p.70). 26 Supposing X is a class of propositions, then N X is equivalent to a conjunction of all negations of elements of X .

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