But a closer look to the Wittgenstein’s theory of language, centered on his theory of meaning, discovers that, in the frames of “Tractatus”, it is impossible for him to develop the consequences of the “transcendental” element involved in his view of logic. Through a weird mixture of lapidary, common-sense claims, and highly sophisticated, technically formulated theoretical statements, Wittgenstein is, in fact, promoting a variant of the referential theory of meaning, in the form of so-called “picture theory of meaning”. According to Wittgenstein, the proposition is a picture of reality (4.01)15F.
Although the common element between the picture (thought, expressed in a proposition) and the reality (“states of affairs”, “atomic facts”) is found in picture’s “form of representation”, i.e. the structural correspondence between the elements of the picture and those of the represented reality, this doesn’t alter the essence of the problem. Without any hesitation, Wittgenstein is apodictically speaking of “simple objects” that form the substance of the world, which exists independently “of what is the case”; moreover, his theory of thought as logical picture of facts and of proposition as logical picture of thought is clearly establishing the primacy of an independent, structured, sharply determined reality over its mental or linguistic “representations”. From an epistemological point of view, the referential theory of meaning, even in the version of “isomorphism”, goes along with the correspondence theory of truth, which takes for granted the mutual independence of the two different entities (proposition and fact, language and reality) whose correspondence, through comparison, is to be established. Wittgenstein explicitly states that: reality is compared with the propositions (4.05)16F; propositions can be true or false only by being pictures of the reality (4.06)17F; the picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false (2.21)18F.
But, from the other side, how can we ignore Wittgenstein’s talk about the world’s being totality of facts in logical space (1.13)19F, or about “the logic of the world” which the propositions of logic show in tautologies, and mathematics in equations (6.22)20F? It is almost impossible to erase the transcendental seal from Wittgenstein’s conception, according to which logic represent a very important element in the theoretical construction of the world. But this line of thought can hardly be harmonized with the rest of the “Tractatus”. In spite of the detalised structure and the rigid style of exposition, the argumentative side of this work, in the sense of forming a consistent theory, seems highly problematic. The line of transcendentalism (no matter how “weak”, “unstressed”, and “modified” it may be) just doesn’t go together with the “correspondence theory” or “picture theory of meaning”; it can’t accept the supposition of an independent, unmediated reality “in itself”, taken as an objective instance in respect of which the truth or falsity of pictures/propositions can be claimed. On the other side, the claim of the absolute primacy of ontologically granulated reality, a world already “divided into facts”, whose structure is simply reflected in the form of proposition, would jeopardize the autonomy of logic, its privileged transcendental status, its “filling the world”, making it dependent of some “matters of fact”. The objection that, perhaps, logic’s being transcendental doesn’t imply that the language is supposed to posses the same feature, would create a deep gulf between logic and language, which also seems unacceptable, having in mind the alleged identity of the “limits” of logic, language, and world. One of the many heterogeneous suppositions present in the deep structure of the “Tractatus” have to be sacrificed.
So, the intense “mental cramps” characteristic of Wittgenstein’s way of thinking, seen as the feature of an “heroic”, autonomous, unguided venture into the conceptual jungle of philosophical problems, can also represent a by-product of a very specific form of intellectual vanity, a lazy indifference towards “other’s thinking of the same thoughts as me”. The categories used by Wittgenstein (“world”, “reality”,
“existence”, transcendental”, “a priori” etc) in a very easygoing way, often in metaphorical contexts, but with pretension to ultimate truth are, in fact, fruit of a long, laborious, detailed and systematic investigation of other thinkers. To be unaware of the subtle hermeneutic “fusion of horizons” which is already present in the language we speak, is to ignore the fact that thinking in a language is always thinking somebody other’s thoughts, because of the very nature of “doing philosophy”. That kind of indifference, besides the risk of inconsistency, also implies staying closed in one’s own autistic world, whose limits are petrified as the bars of an intellectual cage.
#b
15. Wittgenstein, op.cit., p.36.
16. ibid., p. 71.
17. ibid., p.71.
18. ibid., p.43.
19. ibid., p.31.
20. ibid, p.169.