Abstract

Wittgenstein represents one of the main figures in what has been called the “linguistic turn” of contemporary western philosophy. This article will focus on his views (mainly on the early Wittgenstein’s works) concerning the limits of language. In order to reveal the limits of language, I will explore various puzzles involved in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) .

The first puzzle begins with the explicit metaphor of climbing ladder. When Wittgenstein suggests, as in TLP 6.54, us to throw away the ladder (those propositions in TLP), does he mean to include (and so to throw away) the very proposition itself (i.e., the proposition TLP 6.54)? If the answer is “yes”, then we don’t really need to throw away the ladder as being suggested. If the answer is “no”, then we should wonder why the proposition TLP 6.54 can have this special privilege and be immune from its own critical suggestion?

The second puzzle refers to the implicit rules involved in how we can use the language to project our thoughts and how we can form our thoughts to represent the world. For Wittgenstein the “cardinal problem of philosophy” is to explain what can be said in a language and what cannot be said but can be shown in the thoughts. What can be said is a significant proposition that can project what can be thought, and what can be shown is a logical picture (or thought) that represents (or corresponds to) the reality. But, if we want to truly project what logical pictures are shown in our thoughts and rightly represent what facts exist in the world, do we have to follow the rules lying behind the projections and the representations? If we need to follow the rules, then we have to explain what kind of rules they are and how we get to know these rules. If there are no rules there to be followed or if we don’t really need to follow them, then we also have to explain how projections and representations are possible and how we can guarantee the correctness of them.

In order to grasp Wittgenstein’s famous distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said but can be shown, it is necessary to exhibit how he connects our uses of language to the world we are talking about. I will set up a threefold cord—that is, world, thought, and language—in which the common logical structure between them can be shown by the common logical forms between the atomic facts (in the world), the logical pictures (in the thought), and the elementary propositions (in the language). I will explain that it is the thought that represents the facts in the world (and the picture of the fact is formed in the representation of our thought); and that our language projects what we think (and the proposition says what the basic picture is in our thought). The sense of a proposition is the picture of the fact represented (rather than the proposition itself a picture of the fact), because if a proposition has any sense at all, its sense is the picture formed in our thought and the picture is a picture of the fact. Strictly speaking, the proposition itself is not a picture, but the representation of fact in our thought is. To grasp this threefold cord is important for further understanding how the semantic concepts of truth and meaning can be derived, how our thought can be justified in believing things as they are, and how the logical structure of the world can be shown to us.

Based on the logical form and the logical structure, a criterion can be drawn for distinguishing what can be said from what cannot be said (also distinguishing what is thinkable from what is not thinkable). When we are sufficiently equipped with these concepts, it will be shown how we can climb or ascend the Tractarian ladder:

What can be said can be expressed by a proposition.
What can be expressed by a proposition can be true or false.
A proposition that can be true or false is a proposition that has sense.
A proposition that has sense is a significant proposition.
A significant proposition stands for (projects) what can be thought.
What can be thought can be represented by a picture of thought.
What can be represented by a picture of thought can be represented rightly or falsely.
A picture of thought that can be represented rightly or falsely is a picture that has logical form.
A picture that has logical form is a logical picture.
A logical picture stands for (corresponds to) the reality.
The reality is the existence or non-existence of an atomic fact.
The existence or non-existence of an atomic fact is a possibility in logical space.

Further, I want to clarify that not everything that cannot be said can be shown. There is only some limited range of what cannot be said that can be shown—for examples, the limits of language, the formal or logical properties of language, the common form between the fact and the proposition, the logical form of reality, the existence of objects, and the existence of the world, etc. I will also argue that what cannot be said but can be shown must be shown on what can be said, that is, on the significant propositions (tautologies are the limited cases that can be said, because they say nothing). For what cannot be said and cannot be shown, we must be silent.

Finally, we need to ask “what is the purpose of climbing the Tractarian Ladder?” As Wittgenstein has indicated at the end of his work, “He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.” (TLP 6.54) But why do we have to throw away the Ladder in order to see the world rightly? When we throw away the Ladder, do we have to throw away the rules (the logical forms) too? What can be seen in the world after all?