Q&A: Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein
Question
Good evening!
I’m completely unable to understand Wittgenstein’s statements in several respects:
1- He claims that all signifiers developed in a completely arbitrary way, and that there is no natural connection to the signified.
So it is hard for me to understand how the first vocabulary began, since there was no connection that one could initially point to and say, “this is what I mean”?
2- If there is no natural connection, then how do animals communicate?
3- He also claims that if everything is language and subjective imagery, then value has no meaning at all, since what sustains it is only the human being’s invented world (and likewise, for example, what sustains any social rule is only the subject).
So the question is: how does he conceive of the world in terms of why a person upholds values? After all, Beit Shammai Darwinians would say that value is only an instrument and nothing more, but he does not even say that, so what exactly does he mean by the existence of the relation between a person and the other and the world?
And what does he add beyond the existentialists? After all, even if they claim that the making of value comes from within the person himself (and is not heteronomous)?
4- What does he add beyond Kant, that everything is only in the phenomena? Is it that even within the phenomena there are no categories, but only language and imagery?
5- If I understand him correctly, his intention is not specifically to innovate about language, but also about imagery in general; am I right?
6- According to him, what would happen in a world without language and without the possibility of imagery? Would there be no thoughts? What would there be? If I understand correctly, it doesn’t seem to me that one should connect me with Berkeley, that there is no noumenon, but only phenomenon sustained by language; so if that is not what he means, then what does he mean?
Thank you very much!
Answer
I assume you are talking about the Tractatus (the early Wittgenstein).
1. I agree regarding human beings.
2. I did not understand the question about animals. Beyond that, animals do not communicate; they merely react without awareness and without deliberation. Therefore no explanation is needed there.
3. I did not understand the question about values, but I am not familiar with his position on this.
4. In Kant there is a connection between the phenomenon and the noumenon. The phenomenon is the expression of the noumenon, and that is exactly what he disagrees with.
5. I did not understand.
6. I’m not sure I understood. But it seems to me that this is connected to the question whether we think only linguistically, or whether there are non-linguistic / non-verbal thoughts. I do not see why this is connected to Wittgenstein.
Discussion on Answer
Sometimes this and sometimes that.
Hello,
I didn’t understand the sentence —
Beyond that, animals do not communicate; they merely react without awareness and without deliberation. Therefore no explanation is needed there.
If you search Google for phrases like: “Do animals communicate,” there are many examples showing that animals communicate.
For example, you can see dogs behaving differently toward their owners than toward strangers, and so on.
What I am claiming is that the “communication” being discussed is not real communication, for two reasons: lack of awareness and lack of deliberation. In an animal, this is instinct (and not a decision to react). The animal does not “understand” something and respond accordingly; rather, some instinct is aroused in it as a response to a stimulus it receives. Do computers communicate with one another? Or telephones? My claim is that they do not. People communicate by means of telephones. See my columns 35 and 175 on this.
Especially when we are speaking about communication between animals as an indicator of the connection between terms and reality, then it is certainly something bound up with understanding.
Tell me, Michi, do you read philosophical literature in the original or only secondary literature?