Doesn't an aphoristic style require a strict, section by section examination of terminology to avoid misunderstanding?

Wittgenstein's style is too aphoristic to yield to interpretation simply by the terms of the section alone. — Isaac

I agree. If you read my comments you will see that I have been making connections with earlier sections as well as with the Tractatus. I have held off making connections with later sections since they have not been discussed, with the exception of a general comment about not confusing paradigms, which are said to be an instrument of language, with something private, something in the memory because this relates to the later discussion of a private language.

I'm specifically arguing against a strict section-by-section exegesis of terminology, — Isaac

I think we are in agreement on this. The details do not come into proper focus until the larger picture is seen. From too close a painting may look like blobs of paint, from too far away the details are lost. But this does not mean that there is one correct perspective. Seeing blobs of paint is not the problem and may be of value, but if all one sees are blobs of paint then one missed the big picture.

The big picture with regard to the sections under discussion is the rejection of Tractarian objects and analysis of simples and compounds. From my first post:

As has been mentioned, Wittgenstein’s discussion should be viewed against the background of the Tractatus. The basic assumptions of the Tractatus is that there are simple objects and simple names that correspond to them. Underlying the relations between simple objects and simple names is a logical scaffolding that determines how they can be combined. In the PI he rejects each of these assumptions - simple objects, simple names, and the underlying logic of relations.

Instead of a transcendental, invariant logic that underlying both language and the world it pictures he is now investigating rules - rules of games and rules of language games. Rules do not exist independently of the game of which they are the rules. There are no rules for rules - that is, no rules that allow or disallow what can be a rule of a game, and no rules for how rules are to be followed. Games do not simply follow rules they can create rules as the game is being played. Language is not simply a rule following activity, it is also a rule making activity, an activity determined by the activities we are involved in. — Fooloso4

§65. Wittgenstein now anticipates criticism that despite all his talk of language-games, he has not yet defined a clear boundary of what is and is not language; of what is essential and inessential to language; or of "what is common to all these activities, and makes them into language or parts of language". Wittgenstein expects his critics to complain that he has let himself off the hook regarding the concerns of his Tractatus and his attempt to find the general form of the proposition. Wittgenstein concurs. He has not defined a clear boundary, because there isn't one. "Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common...but there are many different kinds of affinity between them". This leads into the discussion of family resemblances...

Doesn't an aphoristic style require a strict, section by section examination of terminology to avoid misunderstanding? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure I see how, but perhaps I'm missing something. An aphorism is supposed to evoke something in the reader. That something is not 'hidden' in the terminology, it arises in the reader as a result of their 'seeing' what the author means.

This is a point which dogs the elucidatory reading in general. We cannot 'get outside of language' to discuss language. We cannot determine that we understand the meaning of a discussion about meaning. These things must be shown, words are used to evoke the same sense the author has, not to relate it directly in a one-to-one correspondence of word and meaning.

It seems we're largely in agreement then, I simply got confused by your original response that "I don’t think we can forgo a careful reading, an “exegesis”, of the text. The aphoristic nature of his writing does not preclude but demands just such a reading.", which sounded to me like the solution to textual confusions lay in a closer examination, as if the meaning were hidden within the text.

I'd say the same to this as I said to MU above. The aphorisms are meant to evoke a sense in the reader, we cannot 'wring' sense out of them.

But maybe you already share this notion and I simply misunderstood the intent behind your approach.

He has not defined a clear boundary, because there isn't one. — Luke

This may just be a turn of phrase and carry no indication of your thought on the matter, but I'd dispute the idea that Wittgenstein is making any ontological claim here. He's not saying that there is or is not a clear boundary, as if this were a fact of the world. He's saying that he is not defining a boundary, because there is no need. One could define a boundary, it's not that some state of affairs prevents this from being possible, just that it is not necessary.

Yes, I was also questioning this while writing the post. However, it seems to me that there is no clear boundary unless/until we decide to give it one for some purpose.

For I can give the concept of number rigid boundaries in this way, that is, use the word “number” for a rigidly bounded concept; but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a boundary. And this is how we do use the word “game”. For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game, and what no longer does? Can you say where the boundaries are? No. You can draw some, for there aren’t any drawn yet. — PI 68

it seems to me that there is no clear boundary unless/until we decide to give it one for some purpose. — Luke

Yes, you're right, I see what you mean by it now.

§58

§58 is a dialectical nightmare. Here’s what I think is going on in it. It seems to me that there’s a kind of thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure going on here, where the thesis and antithesis are, respectively,

[Thesis]: the idea that “red exists” is a statement about Red qua Thing; and
[Antithesis]: the idea that “red exists” is a statement about Red qua meaning. Hence the ‘opposition’:

(eg. 1) §58: "If “X exists” amounts to no more than “X” has a meaning a then it is not [Thesis:] a sentence which treats of X, but [Antithesis]: a sentence about our use of language, that is, about the use of the word “X”."

(eg. 2) §58: "[Thesis]: It looks to us as if we were saying something about the nature of red in saying that the words “Red exists” do not make sense … [Antithesis]: But what we really want is simply to take “Red exists” as the statement: the word “red” has a meaning.”

Having posed these two ‘opposing’ takes, Witty then runs through some resulting ‘contradictions’, both of which follow from ‘taking the side’ of the Antithesis [‘red exists’ = meaning of red], against the Thesis [‘red exists’ = red Thing]:

§58: [Contradiction 1]: "the expression actually contradicts itself in the attempt to say that just because red exists ‘in and of itself’”.

§58: [Contradiction 2]: "Whereas the only contradiction lies in something like this: the sentence looks as if it were about the colour, while it is supposed to be saying something about the use of the word “red”."

The end of the section - what might be called synthesis, or maybe even better, dismissal - rubbishes the whole enterprise above, by simply acknowledging that "In reality … we quite readily say that a particular colour exists, and that is as much as to say that something exists that has that colour.”

The open question then is what this whole dialectical movement between thing, meaning, and then dismissal/synthesis is meant to show. I think that the point is to show that there is no ‘opposition’ between existence and meaning, and that insisting on the one does not preclude the other: it is both perfectly possible to say that ‘red exists’ - we do it all the time, ‘in reality’ - and that in doing so, we can still talk about our use of the word.

The last puzzle (for me) I want to address is the lemma that closes the discussion, the qualification: "particularly where ‘what has the colour’ is not a physical object.” - I think the idea is that 'existence’ here is not at all tied to ‘physical objects’ - we may well speak of ‘fictional objects’ and still employ the expression ‘red exists’ - this again being related to the ‘non-opposition' between existence and meaning’, and the attempt to ‘de-metaphysicalize’ the notion of existence.

—

Sorry this is a long one - disproportionate to the length of the section - but its a really tough one so I’ve had to try and dig at it. Still not totally happy with the exegesis and I think I’ve missed some details (particularly with respect to the ‘contradictions’ - I still don’t quite get how they are derived), but I think I got the general structure and motivation right, hopefully.

§59

§59 replaces the ‘elements’ of §48 with ‘constituent parts’: this vocabulary has the advantage of being a lot less metaphysically loaded than ‘elements’ which tend to carry with them connotations of ultimate-bits-beyond-which-one-can’t-go. ‘Constituent parts’ by contrast are a lot more ambiguous insofar they are relational: a constituent part of something is only a 'part' in relation to the thing it is a constituent of: thing being the case even if it is a ‘simple constituent part’, like the chair leg which is not said to be ‘composed of different pieces of wood’, unlike the chair back.

—

@“fdrake”: appreciate the appreciation :D

§60

§60 is long, but its quite a bit of fun. The basic question is this: is it the same to say that ‘the broom is in the corner’ as it is to say that ‘the stick of the broom and the brush of the broom are in the corner’? Witty’s answer is kinda like this:



Before veering more like this:



I like to think that this 2nd gif captures the PI's general orientation to metaphysics as a whole.

Jokes aside though, I would say that the question of motivation, of 'the point' of making such a distinction (and identification), becomes the central theme of the next few sections.

I'm not sure I see how, but perhaps I'm missing something. An aphorism is supposed to evoke something in the reader. That something is not 'hidden' in the terminology, it arises in the reader as a result of their 'seeing' what the author means. — Isaac

Notice that it requires the reader "seeing" what the author means, And since an aphorism is brief, there is a need for strict passage by passage interpretation to see them all.

Sorry this is a long one - disproportionate to the length of the section - but its a really tough one so I’ve had to try and dig at it. Still not totally happy with the exegesis and I think I’ve missed some details (particularly with respect to the ‘contradictions’ - I still don’t quite get how they are derived), but I think I got the general structure and motivation right, hopefully. — StreetlightX

I think that's very good, considering the difficulty of the passage. Did you read my interpretation from a few days ago: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/242060 ? I focused on how the attempt to say what the phrase must mean, to be meaningful, appears to contradict itself. Witty offers a resolution, which you say 'rubbishes the whole enterprise", and this is a sort of compromise situation, that "red exists" means that there is something which has the colour.

But as I discussed with Fooloso4, this doesn't really capture the imaginary scenario. In the imagination one might say "there is a colour named red", and therefore "red" would have meaning as an unseen colour, without there being something which has that colour, even in the imagination. So "red" can be given meaning through a logical necessity (definition) without needing that there is something which has the colour, even in the mind.

its a really tough one so I’ve had to try and dig at it. Still not totally happy with the exegesis and I think I’ve missed some details — StreetlightX

I feel the same way you do about 58. I've read it several times, and I still feel as though I'm missing something. It's probably just about use, as opposed to some ontological meaning we're attributing to a particular context (not sure). It would be interesting to see how this applies when philosophizing.

§58 is a dialectical nightmare. — StreetlightX

Agreed! This section was difficult. I'm not sure about the thesis-antithesis reading, even though that's how I originally read it. I wasn't satisified with my previous post on §58, so I've had another go. Hopefully this adds something to further clarify the matter.

§58. “I want to restrict the term ‘name’ to what cannot occur in the combination ‘X exists’.

Note that the opening paragraph is in quotation marks, (possibly) signalling that it is being spoken by Wittgenstein's interlocutor and/or by someone with a metaphysical/Platonist attitude.

Wittgenstein's interlocutor appears to be using the term 'name' in the Platonic sense given at §46. Wittgenstein says at §46, quoting the Theaetetus: "...everything that exists in and of itself can be signified only by names; no other determination is possible, either that it is or that it is not ... But what exists in and of itself has to be ... named without any other determination."

And so one cannot say ‘Red exists’, because if there were no red, it could not be spoken of at all.”

'Red' is therefore a name (which signifies a simple) in the Platonic sense. Note also that the meaning of the name is being (illicitly) identified with its "object" here.

More correctly: If “X exists” amounts to no more than “X” has a meaning - then it is not a sentence which treats of X, but a sentence about our use of language, that is, about the use of the word “X”.

Is this Wittgenstein's or Plato's view? Is Wittgenstein applying his concept of 'meaning is use' here? Or is he simply following Plato's metaphysical assumption that we are unable to attribute existence and non-existence to simples, which therefore leads him to say that ""X exists" amounts to no more than "X" has a meaning"?

Or, is this instead a natural inference from the previous statement that "if there were no red it could not be spoken of at all"? Therefore, if there is red then it can be spoken of, i.e., if "X exists" then (this amounts to) "X has a meaning".

I tend to think it is the latter.

It looks to us as if we were saying something about the nature of red in saying that the words “Red exists” do not make sense. Namely, that red exists ‘in and of itself’. The same idea - that this is a metaphysical statement about red - finds expression again when we say such a thing as that red is timeless, and perhaps still more strongly in the word “indestructible”.

The view that "the words "Red exists" do not make sense" leads us to think that this has metaphysical implications regarding "the nature of red" (the "object") itself.

But what we really want is simply to take “Red exists” as the statement: the word “red” has a meaning. Or, perhaps more correctly, “Red does not exist” as “‘Red’ has no meaning”.

Instead of adopting the metaphysical view, what we really want is to replace the empirical statement with the grammatical statement.

Only we do not want to say that that expression says this, but that this is what it would have to be saying if it made sense - that the expression actually contradicts itself in the attempt to say that just because red exists ‘in and of itself’.

Platonists do not take "Red exists" to be saying "the word "red" has a meaning"; Platonists instead want it to be a statement about the nature of red (i.e. about the colour itself). However, the expression "Red exists" actually contradicts itself in the attempt to say that ("Red exists") precisely because the Platonic view does not allow the attribution of existence to red ("in and of itself").

Whereas the only contradiction lies in something like this: the sentence looks as if it were about the colour, while it is supposed to be saying something about the use of the word “red”.

Clear enough, I think.

In reality, however, we quite readily say that a particular colour exists, and that is as much as to say that something exists that has that colour. And the first expression is no less accurate than the second; particularly where ‘what has the colour’ is not a physical object.

In reality - which the metaphysical viewpoint is not - there is no problem in saying that red exists, where this is used to mean that something exists which is red. Saying "Red exists" is no less accurate than saying "something exists which is red", particularly where that something does not physically exist (e.g. it may exist as a memory, or as a fictional object). [This stumped me at first but I think StreetlightX may be right about the reference to fictional objects.]

Okay okay okay wait I think I understand the movement of the passage: here’s something that struck me while reading your replies and §58 again: the reason the section is such a bitch to read is that Wittgenstein is trying to make sense of a statement that he starts off admitting makes no sense!

The ‘steps’ in the argument are kinda like this:

(1) “Red exists” makes no sense [opening statement, in quotation marks].
(2) [Unstated]: Therefore, we shouldn’t even be able to say anything meaningful about this, even in the negative, in the same way in which we wouldn’t be able to say anything meaningful about “mcfluffly mcglumpglumps”. This kind of thing is ‘not even wrong’.
(3) But we do want to say something about “red exists” - there is a point we want to make about it, and that point is that “red exists” ‘means’ that ‘red has meaning’ (and conversely, ‘red doesn’t exist' ‘means’ that ‘red has no meaning’).
(4) But we can’t say this because we just said that ‘red exists’ doesn’t have a meaning! So ‘red exists’ can’t mean ‘red has meaning’.
(5) So all we can say is that if ‘red exists’ did mean something, it would mean that ‘red has meaning’ (But of course “red exists" doesn’t mean anything!).
(5.1) So we can’t say that red exists 'means' red has meaning. This ‘contradicts itself’. [It can't both have a meaning, and not mean anything].
(6) So the “only contradiction” lies in the attempt to claim that the statement “red exists” ‘really means’ “red has meaning” [because the whole premise is that “red exists” has no meaning!].

—

Therefore! Forget the either/or choice between either ‘red exists is about red itself’ or ‘red exists’ is about the meaning of the use of the word red’. We can simply say, in all innocence, that ‘red exists’, and all this is to say is that something is red - and this ‘something’ need not commit us ontologically to anything in particular - it doesn’t have to be a ‘physical object’.

I'm much more comfortable with this reading than with my previous one. Could have got here earlier had I read the thread more closely. This is close to @Metaphysician Undercover's reading, but deviates from the conclusion MU draws: Witty doesn't opt for 'red exists = red has meaning' - the whole point is to show the error in this approach.

---

[Wrote this before I wrote the above:] Also, I completely missed the conversation about §58 on the previous pages though I was looking out for one. @Luke's point, about how the existence or not of red is analogous to the Paris rule being neither a meter nor not a meter long, is one I wanted to make as well, but left out in order to emphasize other things. Glad someone made it explicit:

[§58 is] analogous to the standard metre example, it is a means of representation rather than something that is represented, and so it yields no sense to say either that red exists or red does not exist. — Luke

Flittering in and out of the discussion is likely to make me miss nuances and make inaccurate analogies, so please treat this post as an attempt to parse §58 into my own views of how stuff works - with my idiosyncratic and externally motivated abstractions - rather than an attempt to accurately reflect the text.

The open question then is what this whole dialectical movement between thing, meaning, and then dismissal/synthesis is meant to show. I think that the point is to show that there is no ‘opposition’ between existence and meaning, and that insisting on the one does not preclude the other: it is both perfectly possible to say that ‘red exists’ - we do it all the time, ‘in reality’ - and that in doing so, we can still talk about our use of the word. — StreetlightX

Reading §58, the first thing that jumps out to me is how the context of W.'s discussion changes over the passage. The first paragraph with scare quotes around it looks to me as a first attempt at covering W's desired ground provisionally, to show what he intends by means of an approximation. This approximation is successively refined and worked out over the course of §58. The shifts in context are what make it difficult, I feel.

"I want to restrict the term 'name* to what cannot occur in
the combination 'X exists'.—Thus one cannot say 'Red exists', because if there were no red it could not be spoken of at all."—Better: If "X exists" is meant simply to say: "X" has a meaning,—then it is not a proposition which treats of X, but a proposition about our use of language, that is, about the use of the word "X". — Wittgenstein

I think we have a reference to bipolarity in the first bit with the scare quotes. We cannot say that red exists in usual contexts involving the use of the word red because it would make no sense to say that it did not exist. 'Exists' and 'not exists' are the two poles, each the negation of the other, which are providing the litmus test of sense here. I think it's similar to the meter stick example. In the meter stick example, we have the Paris meter providing the paradigm of what it means to say that an object is 1 meter long in a language game of measurements. In this example, which does not have a specifically attached context/language game, it seems that 'red exists' and 'red does not exist' analogise to 'the Paris meter is 1 meter long' and 'the Paris meter is not 1 meter long'; red serves as a paradigm by which we represent placeholders which count as red. Counting as red meant in a deflationary sense of simply counting as red in a language game involving colours. So it looks to me as if the first paragraph is scoping over various colour language games, and generalises from these implicitly treated language games that 'red exists' is senseless; an illegitimate move in most language games involving red.

Another way of putting it, the kind of language game in which the statement 'red exists' is a legitimate move is not a typical language game involving red! @Luke highlights that considering the statement 'red exists' introduces an on-the-fly context change to make sense of, we are no longer considering most practical uses of language involving red, we're playing a more abstract game using the same word. Wittgenstein highlights this shift too in the second paragraph, and the 'it looks as if' the second paragraph begins with seems to me to highlight that Wittgenstein's thoughts are covering a variety of language games involving red. So onto the second paragraph:

It looks to us as if we were saying something about the nature of red in saying that the words "Red exists" do not yield a sense. Namely that red does exist 'in its own right'. The same idea—that this is a metaphysical statement about red—finds expression again when we say such a thing as that red is timeless, and perhaps still more strongly in the word "indestructible" — W

Saying something about the nature of red is not something done or doable in typical language games involving it. Playing the move 'red exists' is something we can understand however; there are language games in which it has a sense; but we only give it sense here (illegitimately) through the fungibility of context which accompanies uses of language. What is illegitimate, I think W. thinks, is to situate 'red exists' within typical language games involving red.

It's at this point that §58 really grows its teeth, attempting to destroy the ground of the philosophical transformation that occurs to red when unmoored from language games in which it serves as a paradigm.

But what we really want is simply to take "Red exists" as the statement: the word "red" has a meaning. Or perhaps better: "Red does not exist" as " 'Red' has no meaning". Only we do not want to say that that expression says this, but that this is what it would have to be saying if it meant anything. — W

What philosophical move does Wittgenstein want to prohibit and why? I think Wittgenstein wants to prohibit the following line of thought:

We see when we look around that things have colours, and one of these colours is red. If we subtract away the things which are red, we are left with the same underlying conception that applied in each instance. That underlying conception is the meaning of red, but the use of that underlying conception requires a really existing colour type, red, independent of every red object. — me with my Platonist type-token distinction hat on

which is a rephrasing of what the interlocutor says in W's §57:

"Something red can be destroyed, but red cannot be destroyed, and that is why the meaning of the word 'red' is independent of the existence of a red thing." — W

How he seeks to prohibit this is to show that the inference 'if we subtract away the things which are red, then we are left with the same underlying conception that applied in each instance' is illegitimate. It is illegitimate because it requires a conflation of red when serving as facilitator of representation (a paradigm) and red when serving more abstractly as a concept. This conflation is specifically undercut by the bipolarity principle: how can we say red can or cannot be destroyed when serving as a paradigm? Simply by forgetting that it is serving as a paradigm in one instance; the 'colour ascription' context inherent in 'subtracting away the red things', in the antecedent of the inference... And no longer treating it as a paradigm in the consequent of the inference. Red 'could not be destroyed' in the first instance because of how red is used in that context, and we arrive at a red type independent of language use precisely through the elimination of exemplars of the paradigm.

It is as if we removed all objects to be measured from the Paris meter stick measuring game, then inferred the a-priori, use independent existence of the meter as a standard. Perhaps we can forget the use of the meter as a standard in some instances of mathematical calculation involving dimensionally consistent lengths, but that calculating language game does not use the meter as a paradigm for/during its moves.

The whole issue deflates when treating red in a deflationary, entirely sortal manner, what red is is what counts as red; what roles red serves in our language games. W. closes the discussion in §58 by showing us contexts in which it does, however, make sense to say 'red exists'.

3) But we do want to say something about “red exists” - there is a point we want to make about it, and that point is that “red exists” ‘means’ that ‘red has meaning’ (and conversely, ‘red doesn’t exist' ‘means’ that ‘red has no meaning’). — StreetlightX

This is because meaning is use, and we cannot neglect that premise. We do use "red" in this way, as if it names something, e.g. "red is a colour". That is what causes the appearance of contradiction, we must submit to the fact that the word is used in such a way that "red" refers to an existing thing. Wittgenstein offers a resolution to the contradiction.

In the next section is an extensive discussion of the nature of concepts. here is what I consider to be exemplar passages:

65 ...For someone might object against me:
"You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games,
but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language.
...
I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,—but that they are related to one another in many different ways.

66...And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.

67...And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And
the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.
But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions—namely the disjunction of all their common properties"—I should reply: Now you are only playing with words.
One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread—namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres".

68 And this is how we do use the word "game". For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No.

69.We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary—for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at alll (Except for that special purpose.)

70. "But if the concept 'game' is uncircumscribed like that, you don't really know what you mean by a 'game'."

71. One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges.—"But is a blurred concept a concept at all?"—
...Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all.
...But is it senseless to say: "Stand roughly there"? Suppose that I were standing with someone
in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand—as if I were indicating a particular spot. And this is just how one might explain to someone
what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way.—I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I—for
some reason—was unable to express; but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way.

72.Suppose I shew someone various multicoloured pictures, and say: "The colour you see in all these is called 'yellow ochre' ".—This is a definition, and the other will get to understand it by looking for and seeing what is common to the pictures. Then he can look at., can point to, the common thing.

73.Though this comparison may mislead in many ways.—One is now inclined to extend the comparison: to have understood the definition means to have in one's mind an idea of the thing defined, and that is a sample or picture.
...Which shade is the 'sample in my mind' of the colour green—the sample of what is common to all shades of green?

75. What does it mean to know what a game is? What does it mean, to know it and not be able to say it? Is this knowledge somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition?

76. If someone were to draw a sharp boundary I could not acknowledge it as the one that I too always wanted to draw, or had drawn in my mind. For I did not want to draw one at all. His concept can then
be said to be not the same as mine, but akin to it. The kinship is that of two pictures, one of which consists of colour patches with vague contours, and the other of patches similarly shaped and distributed, but with clear contours. The kinship is just as undeniable as the difference.

77. And if we carry this comparison still further it is clear that the degree to which the sharp picture can resemble the blurred one depends on the latter's degree of vagueness.
...In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good" for instance)? From what sort of examples? in what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.

One could define a boundary, it's not that some state of affairs prevents this from being possible, just that it is not necessary. — Isaac

One could define a boundary --- for a particular purpose.

I think that this reading actually brings to completion a line of thought that Witty himself only half finished in §58, because he got caught up in a different but related 'second' line of thought relating to the 'contradictions'. My feeling is that there are two intertwined lines of thought in §58, one more clear than the other, which is yet another reason it's so confusing.

The first line, one I think I brought out above and more clearly articulated by Witty, is that of the pendular movement between claiming 'red exists' = 'red has meaning', and the rubbishing of this claim.

The second line is the one both Luke and you are bringing out, which is the limited linguistic scope of a phrase like 'red exists', which only makes sense in a certain context - much like the claim about the length of the Paris rule. This helps alot in understanding the motivation behind the otherwise curious argument in the first line of thought.

Good stuff!

Just to throw in my two penneth on 58, since it's raised quite an issue. I think it's actually an indication of what is spelled out more clearly in 124 "Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it."

Wittgenstein's interlocutor (and Wittgenstein at times himself, I think) want to restrict language in some way. To lay down a rule that such-and-such simply can't be said (or at least not meaningfully) but this steps outside of the role Wittgenstein has assigned to his philosophy, and he ends up saying that the expression must have meaning - because it is used. The philosophical task is to determine how it could mean something by what role it plays. Hence Wittgenstein ends up with that it means something exists which is red. But of note, to me, anyway, is the lacklustre way in which the way "red exists" can have sense is presented. What should (in an elucidatory manner) be the answer is tacked on to the end like an afterthought. Its reads to me as if Wittgenstein is saying "oh, and" red exists" can mean something if you look at it like this, but that doesn't really matter". What matters is how we dealt with the interlocutor, not the answer derived in so doing.

↪fdrake I think that this reading actually brings to completion a line of thought that Witty himself only half finished in §58, because he got caught up in a different but related 'second' line of thought relating to the 'contradictions'. My feeling is that there are two intertwined lines of thought in §58, one more clear than the other, which is yet another reason it's so confusing. — StreetlightX

There were a couple of things I wanted to add, I'll also take that response from Street as an invitation to spell out explicitly the 'contradiction' referenced in §58.

So, I'm a bit confused by the precise sense in which Witty diagnoses the contradiction; what conceptual machinery does he have going in the background that makes 'contradiction' an appropriate choice of word here? First to spell out the contradiction as I see it.

Witty posits that red is used as a paradigm in most language games in which red plays a role. The existence of red is not the kind of thing that makes sense to ponder or raise when, say, matching tins of paint to colours on a chart or describing someone's hair. This means that 'red exists' and 'red does not exist' play no role in those language games, and thus can be said to be senseless in their native contexts. Wittgenstein leverages this insight to block an inference from a 'game of subtraction' of red exemplars to their supposedly underlying/grounding type of red, or the 'indestructible' redness. This inference is blocked by, as Wittgenstein calls it, a contradiction.

For more detail about how I see the rest of §58 look at this post. Now I'm focussing only on the contradiction which blocks the inference. The inference, as I construed it in the previous post, was:

If we subtract away the things which are red, we are left with the same underlying conception that applied in each instance. Then that underlying conception is the meaning of red, but the use of that underlying conception requires a really existing colour type, red, independent of every red object.

In the antecedent, 'If...instance', red is treated as a paradigm in the language game of colour subtraction. This means that 'red exists' and 'red does not exist' equally do not apply. However, red loses its status as a paradigm in the consequent of the inference because 'red is a really existing colour type'. In the consequent, the requirements of sense are that red is not playing the role of a paradigm, in the antecedent, the requirements of sense are that red is playing the role of a paradigm. In moving antecedent to consequent, we necessarily suppress the requirement that 'red exists' is senseless which is encoded in treating red as a paradigm.

The bit I'm having trouble with is whether we can actually treat the requirement that 'red exists' is senseless as a typical premise in a syllogism. Wittgenstein seems aware that this isn't quite right in how he introduces the logic of the 'contradiction'

Or perhaps better: "Red does not exist" as " 'Red' has no meaning". Only we do not want to say
that that expression says this, but that this is what it would have to be saying if it meant anything.

we have a modality in the presentation here, that we must make the equivalence between 'red does not exist' and 'red has no meaning', conflating existence and having sense as Street focussed on in his exegesis. But that modality - of necessity - seems to operate on something like an a priori register with respect to the language games considered; on the conditions of sense making in the considered language games; so this is really a 'philosophical' move Wittgenstein is making. It's a conceptual link forged with a certain logical (grammatical?) necessity.

So Wittgenstein sees the contradiction as necessarily arising in going from the antecedent to the consequent, it 'comes along with' and 'acts as a guarantor of' the inference, speaking very loosely. Nevertheless, there are ways at 'arriving' at 'red exists' without making this abuse of a logic of sense, at the end Wittgenstein highlights that:

In reality, however, we quite readily say that a particular colour exists; and that is as much as to say that something exists that has that colour. And the first expression is no less accurate than the second; particularly where 'what has the colour' is not a physical object.

so the sense of necessity Wittgenstein looks to be dealing with isn't something that blocks the sense 'red exists' in all contexts, it just blocks it in the sense he was dealing with. A very circumscribed sense of necessity, in contrast to the haphazard forging of necessary conceptual links that he's literally criticising in §58!

It looks to me like there's a lot going on 'under the bonnet' in §58, and we might do well to return to it once we have other examples of Wittgenstein making similar conceptual links.

Related to this, I think anyway, is that there's a real 'screw you philosophy' feel to §58, I think this comes from the two things W. thinks he's established:

(1) That we cannot infer the independent existence of red the colour from its examples without the previously discussed deaf ear for context.
(2) Nevertheless, we absolutely can say the things which were philosophically illegitimate to derive from the considered context. 'Red exists as an independent type' in the philosophical sense derived from the 'subtraction'/destruction exercise? Nah. 'Red exists' from a different point of departure? Sure!

How this resonates with me is that it introduces a certain mutilation of conceptual inferences, and something like a 'relativisation' of the a priori to an a priori for a (family of?) language game(s?) (I'm referencing this 'locally circumscribed' sense of necessity W. seems to be using). The access to the eternal and the true realm of abstraction through philosophical contemplation of essences is not an adequate take on what it means to think philosophically. The inquiry's point of departure; more generally how it interfaces with the contexts and content it uses as grist; matter a lot. So much so in fact that it's easy to wind up in a dead end of malformed questions that aren't a jot relevant to their supposed subject matter.

The last paragraph should be taken with a whole pood of salt.

See also and .

There really is a lot going on in §58 huh.

I have been working on a more detailed reading of §58. Trying to make some of the connections clearer:

"I want to restrict the term 'name’ to what cannot occur in the combination 'X exists'.—Thus one cannot say 'Red exists', because if there were no red it could not be spoken of at all." — PI §58

If we want to understand §58 we first need to understand the assumptions that inform the opening statement. A name according to this view signifies an element of reality (§59). The elements of reality, simples, are not things that exist but that out of which what exists is constructed. (§50). Just as the world is constructed logically from the combination of simples, language is constructed logically from the combination of names, which picture or represent simples. The name ‘red’ signifies just such a simple. If there were no red there would be no things that exist that are red and no statements about red.

—Better: If "X exists" is meant simply to say: "X" has a meaning,—then it is not a proposition which treats of X, but a proposition about our use of language, that is, about the use of the word "X". — PI §58

W. is rejecting the Tractarian logical connection between the world and language, the connection between names and simple elements.

It looks to us as if we were saying something about the nature of red in saying that the words "Red exists" do not yield a sense. Namely that red does exist 'in its own right'. The same idea—that this is a metaphysical statement about red—finds expression again when we say such a thing as that red is timeless, and perhaps still more strongly in the word "indestructible". — PI §58

It looks as though the rejection of the statement “Red exists” entails a metaphysical statement, an affirmation of the independence of red from things that exist. In addition, an affirmation that red is one of the timeless, indestructible, simple objects. But W. wants to dispel these metaphysical assumptions.

But what we really want is simply to take "Red exists" as the statement: the word "red" has a meaning. Or perhaps better: "Red does not exist" as " 'Red' has no meaning". — PI §58

We know what ‘red’ means. If red did not exist it would have no meaning. We might say that a square circle does not exist, but this is to say that a square circle has no meaning.

Only we do not want to say that that expression says this, but that this is what it would have to be saying if it meant anything. But that it contradicts itself in the attempt to say it—just because red exists 'in its own right'. — PI §58

If red exists in its own right then the rejection of the combination of the name/element and exists is contradictory. Again, §50 shows the underlying assumptions that led to the rejection of the existence or being of elements:

What does it mean to say that we can attribute neither being nor non-being to elements?—One might say: if everything that we call "being" and "non-being" consists in the existence and non-existence of connexions between elements, it makes no sense to speak of an element's being (non-being); just as when everything that we call "destruction" lies in the separation of elements, it makes no sense to speak of the destruction of an element. — PI §50

Whereas the only contradiction lies in something like this: the proposition looks as if it were about the colour, while it is supposed to be saying something about the use of the word "red”. — PI §58

Once the simple/complex and name/object relations are rejected, the distinction between existence of "red" and meaning or use of "red" are disentangled.

In reality, however, we quite readily say that a particular colour exists; and that is as much as to say that something exists that has that colour. And the first expression is no less accurate than the second; particularly where 'what has the colour' is not a physical object. — PI §58

There is nothing problematic about saying that red exists or that things exist that are red. As to what has that color but is not a physical object perhaps he is referring to pigments or light. There is a collection “Remarks on Colour”, but I don’t know how much light it will shed on the current sections of the PI.

Yes. I won't quote it all, but the Hacker and Baker exegesis of 58 opens with:

58 draws together the elements of the preceding remarks and diagnoses the roots of the misleading metaphysical picture of the Theaetetus (quoted in §46) and hence too of logical atomism

.

and concludes:

sentences of the form ‘Red exists’ do have a role, but it is neither to make metaphysical statements nor to make metalinguistic ones. It is merely to note that there are things thus coloured.

So I think StreetlightX and yourself got it just about right: Wittgenstein rejects both the metaphysical and metalinguistic roles. In reality, "Red exists" is used to denote neither that red exists (in and of itself) nor that "red" has a meaning, but "merely...that there are things thus coloured".

There is a collection “Remarks on Colour”, but I don’t know how much light it will shed on the current sections of the PI. — Fooloso4

I also skimmed through this collection prior to my first post on section 58, and I agree that it sheds little light on these concerns. Thanks for the detailed reading :up:

Witty posits that red is used as a paradigm in most language games in which red plays a role. — fdrake

Red itself is not the paradigm here. The paradigm is a sample, an example of a red thing, which gives meaning to the word "red". This paradigm may be a physical object, or in the mind. That is Wittgenstein's resolution to the apparent contradiction. "Red" has no meaning unless there is a paradigm to demonstrate red. So "red exists" has no meaning, because "red" has no meaning, unless there is an example of something red, be it a physical object or in the mind. The appearance of contradiction is avoided, because that's all that "red exists" means, that there is such a sample of red, to give the word "red" meaning .

I'm not sure whether your views have changed in the interim, Meta, but here's my belated response.

The problem is that meaning is use . And, we use "red" in this way, as if the word refers to a thing, "red exists", "red is a colour", etc.. So if we claim "red exists" doesn't really say anything about a thing named red, it only says something about how we use the word, then we must look to the use of the word for its meaning and we find that we use the word as if there is something called "red" which exists, So that's what "red exists" actually means. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see that we ever really say "red exists", though. At least, I've never used the phrase outside of a philosophical discussion... However, Wittgenstein is not saying that we don't use this phrase (at §58); just that if we do, then it is typically used to mean that there is something which has that colour.

He seems to propose, at the end of 58, that what "red exists" really means is that there is something existing which has the color red. And when he suggests "what has that colour" is not a physical object, he must be referring back to the "mind's eye", or memory, at 57. — Metaphysician Undercover

What he suggests is that "what has that colour" can also include non-physical objects, i.e., in addition to physical objects. He is neither excluding physical objects from being coloured, nor implying that only memory-images can be coloured.

However, I would say that it's doubtful that he has proved at 55-57 that for "red" to have meaning requires that there is something which has that colour. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not what he is trying to do. He is demonstrating problems with the metaphysical/Tractarian view of names; a view which can be traced back to Plato. For example, from the Tractatus:

3.2 In propositions thoughts can be so expressed that to the objects of the thoughts correspond the elements of the propositional sign.
3.201 These elements I call “simple signs” and the proposition “completely analysed”.
3.202 The simple signs employed in propositions are called names.
3.203 The name means the object. The object is its meaning. (“A” is the same sign as “A”.)

3.26 The name cannot be analysed further by any definition. It is a primitive sign. — Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ogden translation)

It appears to me that the word "red" could still have meaning when there is no red physical object, nor such a colour in anyone's mind, as this is the case when we create imaginary scenarios. So one might say "red is a colour", while there is no red physical object, nor the image of a red colour in any mind, and "red" would have meaning in this imaginary scenario. This is demonstrated by Fooloso4's example, "greige" is a colour. In this case "greige" has meaning, as a colour, and there is nothing, in the physical, nor the mind, which has that coulour. The word "greige" receives its meaning from the context of use, "is a colour" — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that the word "red" gets its meaning from its use in the language. However, with regards to your example, the statement "red is a colour" is typically something that might only be said when teaching somebody the meaning of the word "red" (or "colour"). Per Wittgenstein's remarks in On Certainty, it would in most cases be highly unusual and out of place to utter this statement amongst a group of fluent speakers (again: outside of a philosophical discussion).

don't see that we ever really say "red exists", though. At least, I've never used the phrase outside of a philosophical discussion... However, Wittgenstein is not saying that we don't use this phrase (at §58); just that if we do, then it is typically used to mean that there is something which has that colour. — Luke

It is implied that red is a thing which exists when we say things like "red is a colour". So we do use red in this way, like if I were to say "I know what red is", or "red is my favourite colour", etc.. I agree that Wittgenstein's solution is to say that what this means is that there is something which has that colour.

But as per my discussion with Fooloso4 on this subject, I am not convinced of this solution. We can say "red is a colour", and "red" can have meaning, in that context of being designated as a colour, without there being anything which has that colour. We can know "red is a colour" without there being anything which has that colour. So it appears like we can give words like "red" a meaning through a definition like that, so that the word has meaning within that logical structure, without the necessity of there being a thing which has the colour red. So it seems to me that Wittgenstein's solution doesn't really capture what it means for "red" to exist in the imagination. There doesn't need to be a thing which has the colour red, for "red" to have meaning, because "red" can have meaning by definition (or context within a logical structure).

However, with regards to your example, the statement "red is a colour" is typically something that might only be said when teaching somebody the meaning of the word "red" (or "colour"). — Luke

I disagree. I think we commonly use "red", as well as the other colours in this way. For example: "Red is my favourite colour". "I pick red as the colour to paint my room." "What colour is it?" "The primary colours." "The colours of the rainbow." "Blue is the colour of the sky". And so on.

But notice that there seems to be a special requirement. "Red" is used here in the context of "colour", and it is this context of usage which gives the impression that red is an independent thing. It isn't an independent thing though, because it relies on this necessary relation with "colour" for its existence (via usage) as a thing.. This is the "essentialism", or necessity within a concept, which Wittgenstein may be trying to reject, or at least showing that it can be rejected. When red is defined as necessarily a colour, it gets existence as a thing, by being restricted to being a member of that category, "colour". We see this with the numerals, 1,2,3,4, they signify individual things because what they signify is necessarily a number, a definite thing, and nothing else. In Wittgenstein's upcoming discussion of concepts, he removes all of this nonsense of a constructed necessity, (boundaries are constructed for a purpose), to get down to the bare bones of what a concept really is.