Part I: Essays

This extensively revised second edition of Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind is the sequel to the second editions of Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (published in 2005 in two parts: Part 1: Essays, and Part II: Exegesis §§1 – 184) and Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (published in 2009) comprising essays and exegesis of §§185 – 242. The purpose of these revised editions was fourfold: (i) to incorporate materials from primary Wittgenstein sources and from derivative primary sources (correspondence, notes taken by Wittgenstein’s students and notes of conversations) that were unavailable when the first editions were published between 1980 and 1996; (ii) to benefit from the Bergen electronic edition of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, the first edition of which was published only in 2000, and to make use of its search engine in order to track down further relevant passages; (iii) to correct mistakes; and (iv) to explore in a generalized manner new objections to, and misunderstandings of, Wittgenstein’s arguments and conclusions.

Here, in Part I: Essays, two essays of the first edition have been removed, and four new ones have been added. The opening essay was replaced not because of mistakes, but because I had thought of what seemed to me to be a preferable way of introducing §§243 – 315, namely, by clarifying its place in the development of Wittgenstein thought, by elucidating its position in the developing argument of the Philosophical Investigations, by describing its relation to what I have called the Great Tradition of Western Philosophy, and by sketching the persistent misunderstandings of the nature of the mind and of mental attributes that hold us in thrall.

The second essay, ‘Privacy’, has been replaced by two new and much more detailed essays: ‘Only I can have’ and ‘Only I can know’. Again, my reason for replacing the old essay and greatly extending my discussion of the two themes of private ownership of experience and of privileged knowledge of experience was not because of error. Rather, it was because these two problems and the misunderstandings to which they give rise have such a tenacious grip on almost all who turn their mind to the questions. It seems natural to us to think that ‘You can’t have my experience’ because only I can have my experience. It seems equally evident that I know immediately or directly what experience I am undergoing, whereas someone else can only believe or guess what experience that is and what it is like. After all, I don’t have to wait to see what I do before I can say what I feel, want or think. Having encountered numerous students and colleagues who go along with these ways of thinking despite Wittgenstein’s counter‐arguments, it seemed to me well worth probing much deeper in order to demonstrate the power of his radical ideas.

The first of the two new essays ‘Only I can have’ tackles the matter of private ownership of experience in far greater detail than hitherto, and examines a wider range of objections to Wittgenstein’s assertion that, of course, two people may have the same experience – neither numerically the same nor qualitatively the same, but just the same.

The second new essay, ‘Only I can know’, investigates comprehensively Wittgenstein’s averral that, whereas others may know that I am in pain, what experience I am undergoing, or what thought I am thinking, I cannot be said either to know this or to be ignorant of it. This seems to go against common sense; it clashes with all our ‘intuitions’; it challenges centuries of reflection. Most philosophers, otherwise sympathetic to Wittgenstein, reject this radical claim. They think it can be excised from the body of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy without massive scarring. I believe them to be wrong, and have accordingly examined the question, its ramifications and its consequences at length.

The other new essay is the ninth, ‘An overview of the achievement of Wittgenstein’s private language arguments’. It seemed to me that Wittgenstein’s private language arguments, rehearsed in slow motion, so to speak, in the first eight essays, are so difficult to take in, and are so radical, that an overview of the whole was warranted.

All the other essays have been modified in a variety of different ways. As in the first edition and in the previous volumes, I have allowed a moderate degree of repetition between the essays in order to make each essay as fully comprehensible in its own right as I could. For this is a work of reference for students of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, not a monograph to be read through at successive sittings.

Like Volume 1 of the Commentary Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Volume 3 has two parts. Part I: Essays, has a companion: Part II: Exegesis §§243 – 315. I have tried to ensure, at the cost of some degree of repetition, that each part can be read and studied independently of the other. Nevertheless, they are complementary. The essays provide the depth and background for the exegesis, and the exegesis guides the reader through Wittgenstein’s text. There are cross‐references between the two parts.

Both parts use the 4th edition of the Philosophical Investigations with its modified translation and its insertion of the Randbemerkungen (remarks printed as footnotes in previous editions) into boxes in the text in the location where they belong. References to what used to be known as Philosophical Investigations, Part 2 are now to Philosophy of Psychology — A Fragment which is published in the same volume. All references now employ the Bergen system of reference (von Wright numbers, and Bergen pagination).

I hope to produce a revised edition of Volume 4 of this Analytical Commentary in due course.

While writing this book I have been generously assisted by institutions, friends and colleagues.

By electing me to a two‐year Research Readership, which relieved me of teaching, the British Academy made the initial research on the Wittgenstein manuscripts easier and more efficient than it would otherwise have been. I am grateful to my College, St John’s, for the many facilities it offers to its Fellows. Its support for research and the pursuit of scholarship is heart‐warming. I am indebted to the Bodleian Library, in particular to the staff of the Western Manuscripts Department, for many services. The publishing team at Basil Blackwell Ltd, especially Mr S. Chambers and Mr A. McNeillie, have been most helpful in planning and executing this difficult publishing project. As in the past, so too now, it has been a pleasure to work with them in close cooperation. I am most grateful to Miss Jean van Altena for the excellence of her copy‐editing.

Professor N. Malcolm, Dr S. Mulhall, Professor H. Philipse, Professor J. Raz, Mr B. Rundle, Professor S. Shanker, Mr T. Spitzley and Professor T. Taylor kindly read and commented on various drafts of essays or exegesis. Their criticisms, queries and suggestions were of great assistance. I am especially indebted to Dr H.‐J. Glock and to Dr J. Hyman, whose comments on essays and exegesis alike were invaluable. Dr Glock and Mr Spitzley kindly checked my German transcriptions and translations. Participants in the university seminars which I have given together with Dr G. P. Baker over the past three years have contributed greatly to the clarification of my thoughts. Their questions were challenging and a stimulus to further efforts. I am most grateful to them all, but especially to Dr O. Hanfling, who both curbed some of my excesses and spurred me on to improve my arguments.

For various reasons it was not feasible for Dr Baker to join me in writing this third volume of Analytical Commentary.¹ However, despite occasional disagreement in interpretation and deeper disagreement over nuance (and it is the chiaroscuro that finally makes the sketch), he read the whole manuscript and joined me in giving the university seminars. His painstaking and helpful criticisms as well as his constructive suggestions saved me from error again and again.

I am grateful to Hanoch Benyami, Hans Oberdiek and Thomas Oehl for their comments on the new essays in this volume, and for their encouragement and advice.

Volume 1 of this Analytical Commentary: Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (1st edition 1980, 2nd edition 2005) laid the groundwork for understanding the trajectory of Wittgenstein’s thought in his second great masterwork. It explained and gave due prominence to the Augustinian conception of language as informing a multitude of philosophical theories about the nature of language, all of which Wittgenstein aimed to undermine. Conceiving of the essential function of words as naming and of the essential function of sentences as describing stands in the way of an unprejudiced view of the manifold techniques of using words and of the diverse functions of sentences in the stream of human life. These misconceptions give rise to philosophical mythologies of the so called name‐relation, logically proper names, sentence‐radicals and semantic mood operators, of the idea of a truth‐conditional theory of meaning for a natural language, of the notions of determinacy of sense and of the general propositional form. The Augustinian conception of language generates misguided pictures of the relation between language and reality, sentence and fact, proposition and truth‐maker, and of ostensive definition as forging a connection between word and world. This in turn contributes to the pervasive illusion that grammar is answerable to reality, or that it reflects, and must reflect, the essential structure of the world. Against this backdrop of Wittgenstein’s demythologizing, his radical conception of the nature, scope and limits of philosophy was displayed. He held philosophy to be therapeutic and descriptive, not theoretical and hypothetico‐deductive. It destroys idols, but does not replace them. It is a quest for an overview of a segment of logical grammar – of the conceptual network of our language – that gives rise to conceptual questions. The purpose of that quest is the solution or dissolution of the questions. Achievement in philosophy consists in the resolution of philosophical questions, not in the acquisition of new empirical or putatively metaphysical information that provides answers to them. Understanding is indeed attained; but it consists in arriving at a clear vision of what is known and familiar, namely the common grammatical, conceptual, connections of our language. Philosophy contains no theories on the model of the sciences. In its questions, methods and results, philosophy is wholly distinct from science. No scientific discovery can resolve the a priori questions of philosophy, any more than a discovery in physics can resolve an a priori question in mathematics.

Once this had been explained and clarified, it was possible to put Wittgenstein’s discussion of understanding into the right perspective. Meaning, explanation of what a word or utterance means, and understanding constitute a triad of key concepts in philosophical investigations into language and the nature of linguistic representation. Reversing the direction of fit between these concepts that was (and still is) presupposed by the prevailing philosophical tradition, Wittgenstein elaborated the consequences of the grammatical propositions that meaning is what is given by an explanation of meaning, and that it is what is understood when the meaning of an utterance is understood. Understanding (which is akin to an ability, rather than being a mental state) and the criteria of understanding assume a dominant role in his description of the network of grammar in this domain. Clarification of the internal relations between meaning, understanding and explanation also illuminates their complex connections with truth, evidence, justification, definition, rules of use, grammatical propositions and so forth. This network of conceptual connections is put to use in elaborating an anthropological, ethnocentric conception of language as opposed to the calculus conception of language that Wittgenstein had embraced in the Tractatus.

Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity, Volume 2 of the Analytical Commentary (1st edition 1985, 2nd edition 2009) examined the complexities and problematic interpretation of Investigations §§185 – 242. Wittgenstein’s conception of a rule needed much clarification, especially against the backdrop of the ideas of syntactic and semantic rules advanced by logicians, theoretical linguists and philosophers throughout the twentieth century, and especially in the last thirty years of the century. His animadversion to hidden rules of depth‐grammar (prominent in the Tractatus and among contemporary linguistic theorists) needed explaining. His insistence that one cannot follow a rule without knowing and understanding the rule one is following, that a rule is a reason for doing something and not a mere regularity, that rules do not compel but justify, needed elucidation. His insight that, in order for one to be following a rule, the rule and its consideration need not enter into one’s action, required clarification: all that is necessary is that one cite it, or would cite it if challenged, ex post actu, as a reason for acting in accordance with the rule. Wittgenstein’s elucidation of following a rule and of the connection between rules and practices had to be made clear in order to explain how an internal relation between rule and what accords with it is forged. This led naturally to an examination of Wittgenstein investigations into the internal relations in general, into the nature of logical, mathematical and grammatical internal relations, as well as to his demystification of necessity and demolition of metaphysics.

Volume 3, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind (1st edition 1990) is here presented in an extensively revised 2nd edition, which brings it to the same level as that of the previous two revised volumes. It takes the Commentary forward from §243 to §427. These sections are no less controversial than the preceding ones. To be sure, the rocky ground already traversed should have taught one much. But, as one plunges into the tropical undergrowth of the private language arguments, it is all too easy to lose one’s bearings. The path is overgrown with prevalent misinterpretations and misunderstandings, and dark distorting shadows are cast across it by the disposition to extract theories from Wittgenstein’s descriptions and grammatical statements. Following in his footsteps is not made easier by his ever increasing tendency to dart down a side‐path in order to show one a bog here and quicksands there.

The first task is to clarify the position of these arguments in the overall structure of the book. Why is the question of the possibility of a private language raised at this point? In what ways and to what extent do the private language arguments presuppose Wittgenstein’s previous arguments and conclusions? In particular, how is the discussion of the possibility of a private language related to the antecedent investigation of rules and following rules?

No less pressing is the need to clarify exactly what a private language is supposed to be, and how that misconceived idea relates to the tradition of Western philosophy and reflection on the nature of public language. More specifically, given that all human languages are public languages, why should anyone be interested in a language that is of necessity intelligible only to its speaker? Wittgenstein’s purpose in examining the idea of a private language has itself occasioned much dispute. Was he trying to demonstrate the essential social nature of language, to show that it is not merely an empirical truth that only a social creature can speak a language but that it is an a priori truth? Or was he trying to refute a bizarre form of scepticism about knowing what one means by one’s words and whether words have any meaning? Or is his purpose much deeper?

If the subject is disputed, so too is the conclusion. Is he arguing that there can be no private ostensive definitions, or rather that there can be private ostensive definitions but only in the context of a shared public language? How can he argue that there can be no ‘private’ language, given that the form of words ‘a “private” language’ is as meaningless as ‘a square circle’? Moreover, how can a philosopher who repudiates theses and proofs in philosophy go on to try to prove that there cannot be a private language?

The tactical moves in Wittgenstein’s argument are equally subject to divergent interpretation. The mistaken idea that he relies on some version of the verification principle continues to be advanced by critics. The equally misguided idea that he was advancing a form of logical behaviourism is still common. And the supposition that he was defending a form of anti‐realist, assertion‐conditions semantics as opposed to realist, truth‐conditional semantics is still being advanced. These misinterpretations need to be eradicated.

As one moves beyond the private language arguments of §§243 – 315, further, quite different problems arise. How could anyone suggest that ‘thinking’ is not an activity verb? Is thinking not a paradigm of a mental activity? How can anyone assert that thinking is not an incorporeal process? And how can Wittgenstein say that although I can say what I think, I cannot know what I think? This seems absurd. Similar alarm is raised by his discussion of the imagination. Does one really not see one’s mental images with one’s mind’s eye? Is a mental image of red not a red mental image? Does Wittgenstein really hold that one cannot compare one’s mental image with reality?

By this stage in the book it is clear that Wittgenstein has moved deep into the domain of philosophy of psychology. But what determines his curious choice of subjects? There is no discussion of the emotions, no investigation of pleasure or happiness, no analysis of perception or of the causal theory of perception. Why not? Thought and imagination are examined at some length, with radical results, followed by a brief investigation of the first‐person pronoun and consciousness. Here he goes so far as to intimate that ‘I’ is not a referring expression – a claim that is bound to set philosophers’ teeth on edge, and that consciousness is not in the least mysterious – a suggestion that will seem astonishing to philosophers in the twenty‐first century who hold the hard problem of consciousness to be the greatest mystery in the universe.

Wittgenstein is here grappling with philosophical problems that are, for the most part, as old as philosophy itself. His results, at first glance, seem astonishing – indeed shocking. They go against the grain. They seem to challenge common sense. Wittgenstein appears to traduce the whole philosophical tradition. It was indeed his purpose to challenge received ways of thought. If one wants to solve philosophical questions, one must change one’s way of thinking, no matter how difficult that may be. One must cease thinking of such statements as ‘It visually seems to me that things are thus‐and‐so’ as the unchallengeable given, as the most certain of all empirical propositions, as the foundations of empirical knowledge. One must relinquish the supposition that knowledge, belief and understanding are mental states that may be identical with states of the brain. One must abandon the supposition that ‘I’ is a super‐referring expression, like an arrow that cannot fail to hit its target. If one is not willing to change the way one thinks about such questions, then one should give up philosophy and declare that its great problems are unsolvable.

However, those who study Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations seriously must take seriously his avowal that he was destroying ‘houses of cards’ and ‘clearing up the ground of language on which they stood’ (PI §118). This commentary is written for those who are willing to follow Wittgenstein in his meandering journeys through the philosophical landscape. Its aim is to assist them in tracing his footsteps, to show them the direction of his thought, and to enable them, with the aid of his sketches, to find their own way and to fend for themselves in the jungles, deserts and mountains of philosophy.