ABSTRACT
With a few notable exceptions formal semantics, as it originated from the seminal work of Richard Montague, Donald Davidson, Max Cresswell, David Lewis, and others, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, does not consider Wittgenstein as one of its ancestors. That honor is bestowed on Frege, Tarski, Carnap. And so it has been in later developments. Most introductions to the subject will refer to Frege and Tarski (Carnap less frequently)— in addition to the pioneers just mentioned, of course-and discuss the main elements of their work that helped shape formal semantics in some detail. But Wittgenstein is usually conspicuously absent whenever the history of the subject is mentioned. Of course, if one thinks of Wittgenstein’s later work, this is obvious:
nothing, it seems, could be more antithetic to what formal semantics aims for and to how it pursues those aims than the views on meaning and language that Wittgenstein expounds in, e.g., Philosophical Investigations, with its insistence on particularity and diversity, and its rejection of explanation and formal modeling. But what about his earlier work, the Tractatus? At first sight, that seems much more congenial, as it develops a conception of language and meaning that is both general and uniform, explanatory and formal. In view of that, the general lack of reference to Tractatus is curious. The central claim of this chapter is that, actually, this is an oversight.
Perhaps Wittgenstein was no conscious influence on the minds of Montague et al. at the time, but he did play a major role in establishing the fundamental principles and philosophical assumptions that helped shape formal semantics and make it such a successful enterprise, in linguistics and in philosophy. The actual channel through which this transmission of concepts and ideas has taken place is not what we will be focusing on here. That is another story, and a complicated one, which requires more historical knowledge and skills than we can muster. Rather, we will be content with discussing some systematic analogies (and differences, for there are those as well, of course) between Wittgenstein’s conception of language and meaning in the Tractatus, and the one that was prevalent in formal semantics at its
inception and that continues to exert a major influence in the field until the present day. The reasons for being interested in these connections are twofold. First of
all, it appears that formal semanticists do not always appreciate what philosophical assumptions are behind their enterprise. This is deplorable, since an awareness of that part of its legacy could help formal semantics answer questions regarding its proper status as a scientific discipline. The diversity that is characteristic of the state in which formal semantics finds itself today, raises the question how this came about, and how it can be justified. And part of the answer may well have to do with diverging ways of dealing with the problems caused by these philosophical assumptions. The second reason why tracing some systematic connections between Wittgenstein’s early work and the origins of formal semantics is of interest stays closer to home, i.e., closer to Wittgenstein. At many points in his later works Wittgenstein formulated penetrating criticisms of his earlier ideas. Inasmuch as formal semantics incorporates some of the latter the former might apply to it as well. These are related but distinct considerations, that each in their own way put formal semantics to the test: Is it really an empirical discipline? Or does it remain rooted in its philosophical ancestry? The approach taken in what follows is by and large systematic. In sec-
tion 9.2 we will review the main characteristics of the Tractatus’s architecture of meaning (what meaning is, how it is structured, how it relates to language and to the world), isolating three aspects that are particularly relevant for a comparison with formal semantics. Section 9.3 contains a brief sketch of the way in which some ideas from the Tractatus were transmitted through the work of Rudolf Carnap. Then, in section 9.4 we turn to a detailed analysis of the conceptions that are prominent in the work of the pioneers of formal semantics. The focus will be on the work of Richard Montague and Donald Davidson, but where relevant we also refer to the writings of other authors such as David Lewis and Max Cresswell. After this exposition we turn to an exploration of resemblance and difference between the Tractatus and formal semantics in section 9.5. Finally, in section 9.6 we will address the two issues identified above: the consequences for the nature of formal semantics as a scientific discipline, and the potential relevance of Wittgenstein’s own criticisms on the Tractatus framework for formal semantics.
