Practical Logicism and Language-Game

Kant can be classified as not only a 'Theoretical' Logicist, but a 'Practical' one, as well.  For, he posits that not only are Cognitive propositions derived from Reason, so, too, is the Moral Law.  Therefore, insofar as, according to the Investigations, Logicism is a kind of Language-Game, so, too, is Kantian Morality.  However, Kant could argue that, in terms of the Investigations, Morality is, more precisely, a Meta-Language-Game, in which the formal conditions of the Language-Game in which Maxims are used are formulated.  Furthermore, he could argue that those conditions are that of any Game--that the rules of a Game be consistently observed, and that the independence of its Players be respected.  Now, corresponding to his distinction between 'Perfect' and 'Imperfect' Duty, is that between two interpretations of those Game-conditions--Regulatory, i. e. what a Player must not do, and Constitutive, i. e. what a Player must do.  But, in the latter case, the Meta-Language-Game becomes a first-order Game in its own right, i. e. 'Treating Others With Respect', arguably a universal Game.  Thus, while the Investigations exposes the subordinate status of Theoretical Logicism, it tends to reinforce the priority of Practical Logicism, by facilitating an illustration of the subtlety of Kant's concept of Pure Practical Reason.

Critique, Theoretical Language, Practical Language

Though he does not explicitly explain it as such, Wittgenstein's use of the phrase 'Critique of  Language', at #4.0031 of the Tractatus, seems a likely allusion to Kant, with the implication that his limitation of meaningful Language to empirical Experience is comparable to Kant's of Reason, to the same.  But, if so, he ignores there, at least, that in Kant's case, that limitation applies to Theoretical, not to Practical, Reason.  So, the Investigations can interpreted as a study of what can be called, correspondingly, 'Practical Language', i. e. in which Language is freed of the constraints specifically applicable to the function of describing the World.  However, he does not go so far, as Kant does with Practical Reason, to posit the possibility that Practical Language can be more than a mere means to some ulterior end.

Critique of the Critique of Language

Wittgenstein's apparent obliviousness to the previously discussed equivocation--the term "logic" in #4.0031 of the Tractatus--is perhaps ironic, given that the passage is prefaced by the assertion "All Philosophy is 'Critique of Language'".  Still, a Russellian analysis of that assertion can be instructive.  For, underlying what appears to be a preposterously false proposition, i  e. Wittgenstein offers no explanation as to how, e. g. The Republic or The Meditations is a 'Critique of Language', is a faulty inference--from 'A Critique of Language is a Philosophical procedure', to 'All Philosophy is Critique of Language'.  Now, given that Wittgenstein eventually transcends and dismisses the significance of this and other assertions, it might be taken lightly.  However, that claim is the fundamental principle of Analytic Philosophy, which has come to predominate in Anglo-American academia.  Thus, the only exposure to Philosophy that much of the general public has been getting for the past several decades is insular and internally incoherent.  In contrast, a less irresponsible curriculum might incorporate, for example, Nietzsche's examination of Truth and of the Subject-Predicate structure of Language.

Transcendental Logic and Description

Kant and Husserl each draw a distinction between the Logic of Thought and the Logic of Propositions--for the former, it is expressed in the contrast of the 'Table of Categories' and the 'Table of Judgments', respectively, to which correspond designations used by Husserl, 'Transcendental Logic' and 'Formal Logic'.  Now, while Wittgenstein never explicitly distinguishes the two, the contrast is implicit in his statement, from #4.0031 of the Tractatus: "Russell's merit is to have shown that the apparent logical form of the proposition need not be its real form."  For, he is alluding to Russell's theory of 'Descriptions', which is based on the distinction between 'S is P' and 'There is an x, such that x is S and x is P", with the latter the "real" version.  Now, as Kant characterizes it, a bare 'x' is the 'Transcendental Object".  So, in the absence of an alternative derivation of the 'there is an x' locution, e. g. from an advocacy of the Existentialist principle 'Existence precedes Essence', the Logic of the Tractatus, and of Russell's Logicism, is fundamentally that of Thought, not of Propositions.

World, Thought, Language

While the ostensible primary topic of the Tractatus is the relation between Language and World, the combination of #3, #3.1, #4.002, and #4.0031 suggests that, rather, it is that between Language and Thought.  For, to summarize those passages: 1. Thought is the Logical picture of the World; 2. A Proposition is a sensible representation of a Thought; 3. A Proposition can misrepresent the Logical structure of a Thought; and 4. The function of 'Philosophy' is to clear up such misrepresentations.  Now, given the detailed and contentious history of Epistemology, #1 is superficial and questionable.  But, the heart of the sequence is the uncritical Platonism of #2, which ignores examples of  Thought needing to be 'worked out' on paper.  Such cases tend to confirm, instead, a Derridean inversion of the traditional concept of the Thought-Language relation, i. e. according to which Logic consists in Articulation, Articulation requires Spacing, and Spacing is uniquely effected by Writing, on the basis of which a Thought is either an inchoate Proposition, or a copy of one already formulated.  So, ignored in #4 is another function of Philosophy--to debunk dogmatic assertions, i. e. prejudices presented as categorical truths.

Proposition, Narration, Description

As is familiar to most, Experience is constituted by episodes that terminate after they have started.  In other words, the fundamental elements of that World are not Facts or States-of-Affairs, as Wittgenstein asserts, but Events, each of which is constituted by an internal Temporal structure.  Accordingly, the Language with the greater fidelity to that World is that composed by Propositions that are, more accurately, narrative, not descriptive.  Thus, for example, inappropriate representations of an Event include, a Causal Proposition analyzed as an a-temporal conjunction, and Function notation, in which the Subject-Predicate relation is symbolized as static.  So, both of these features of Wittgenstein's ideal Language in the Tractatus are inadequate to a different Ontological presupposition.

Causality, Induction, Deduction

Wittgenstein's phrase "causal nexus", in #5.136 of the Tractatus, continues and amplifies a profound confusion in the Humean tradition of the concept of Causality.  For, as the text surrounding that phrase indicates, there are two nexuses in Hume's original formulation--1. Past Constant Conjunction and 2. Inference from Past to Future--the latter of which is often ignored, by others.  But, the denial that the Future necessarily repeats the Past does not entail that some Past event was a continuous process governed by Necessity, i. e. that the 'conjuncts' are the product of a previous Disjunctive analysis of an originally continuous process.  For example, from the uncertainty that swinging a hammer at some glass will break, it does not follow that a completed actual breaking of glass by swinging a hammer at it was, in fact, constituted by a contingent concatenation of two originally distinct moments.  So, as is typical in the Atomist-Empiricist tradition, Wittgenstein does not consider that while the 'Logic' governing tenseless general Causal Propositions might be Inductive, that of Past Singular ones may be Deductive, i. e. he ignores that the inference from Present to Past is as dubious as that from Past to Future.