Some Problems Connected with Language 1

the widespread recognition of the importance in philosophy of an investigation of language is largely due to the influence exerted by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The central thesis of that book is summarized in the statement that “all philosophy is ‘critique of language’ ”. ² Critical examination of the language we use is no longer to be regarded as a precautionary measure against ambiguity, vagueness and rhetoric, as a mere preliminary to the serious business of philosophy. In the new interpretation, philosophy or, to be more exact, the subject which replaces the “inextricable tangle of problems which is known as philosophy”, ³ is identical with the investigation of language. This programme has been elaborated in great detail by the movement sometimes known as “Logical Positivism”, of which Carnap is a leading representative. In the book from which the last quotation was taken Carnap urges that “once philosophy is purified of all unscientific elements, only the logic of science remains”. ⁴ The “logic of science” would not commonly be thought to mean the same as “the critique of language”. But Carnap explains that by the “logic of science” he means “the syntax of the language of science”. ⁵ By the “language of science” again he means not the technical vocabulary of scientists but the “universal” language in terms of which every fact, whether of common knowledge or of scientific knowledge in a narrower sense, can be expressed. The differences in method and purpose between Carnap’s “logical syntax of the language of science” and Wittgenstein’s ¹ “critique of language” are less important than the agreement that “language” is the whole subject-matter of philosophy. A similar view is implicit in Ayer’s remark “that philosophy provides definitions” ² or Wisdom’s remark that “all philosophic statements mention words”. ³ But of those who have been influenced by the Tractatus, Schlick has expressed the importance in philosophy of an examination of language with most emphasis. “The whole history of philosophy”, he says, “might have taken a very different course if the minds of the great thinkers had been more deeply impressed by the remarkable fact that there is such a thing as language.” ⁴