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.

Nature, Mathematics, Language-Games

Mathematical Physics can be interpreted either as the quantification of the cognition and/or the description of Nature, or as entailing the Ontological thesis, originated by Pythagoras--that Nature is essentially constituted by quanta.  So, for example, since Husserl ascribes the latter to Galileo, the pioneer of modern Mathematical Physics, his later de-quantization of Nature, resulting in a 'Life-World', corresponds to his earlier de-Mathematization of Science.  Likewise, the Logicism of Russell and early Wittgenstein is indistinguishable from Pythagoreanism, i. e. that classification follows from these premises: 1. Language describes the World; 2. The inner Logic of Language mirrors the structure of the World; and 3. Logic and Mathematics are identical.  Accordingly, Wittgenstein's later concept of a World constituted by Language-Games could reflect a repudiation of Pythagoreanism as much as does Husserl's Life-World.

Logicism and Mathematics

The prototype of the Proposition in modern Science is the Newtonian Law, and, hence, entails the application of Mathematics.  Accordingly, in both Kantian and Russellian Logicisms, Mathematics mediates between Logic and Empirical propositions.  In the former, that mediation is effected by the Temporalization of the Categories, which, concomitantly, facilitates the enumerability of Experience.  In the latter, Logic and Mathematics are conceived as identical, e. g. Conjunction and Disjunction are equated with Arithmetical Multiplication and Addition, respectively, and with Set Theoretical Intersection and Union, respectively.  In remarkable contrast with both, in his project of founding Science, Husserl asserts that "the mathematician is not really the pure theoretician, but only the ingenious technician" (Logical Investigations, Prolegomena, #71).  So, not only is Mathematics extrinsic to his Logicism, his Instrumentalism predates that of both Heidegger and Wittgenstein by decades, contrary to standard interpretations of those relations.  Furthermore, this affinity with the later Wittgenstein is another indication of the greater hospitability of his Logicism, than of Russell's, to a Semantics of 'ordinary language'.

Intersubjectivity, Life-World, Language-Game

Towards the end of his career, Husserl, in the Crisis of European Sciences, modifies his Logicism, by rooting his 'I' in a 'Life-World', and briefly deriving what might, correspondingly, be called 'Intersubjective Logicism'.  He therein examines what Wittgenstein bypasses in his encounter with Solipsism--that 'the' world is 'our' world, and not merely 'my' world.  Still, Husserl's goal in this later phase remains, as the title of the book suggests, to provide a foundation for scientific theory.  His development, thus, is not as radical as Wittgenstein's approximately contemporaneous metamorphosis, i. e. the Life-World does not become a general arena of the actual interaction of the multiple Subjects, and, hence, of Language-Games, and, so, does not complete a repudiation of Logicism.

Meaning, Expression, Intention

Husserl's primary ambition for his Subjective Logicism is to provide what he believes that its Objective rival cannot--a foundation for the set of Propositions that constitute any scientific theory.  But, with its concept of Intention, derived from Brentano, it also offers a more versatile ground than does it rival for a Semantics of ordinary discourse.  For, it can accommodate a formulation that conforms to the latter--'The Meaning of an utterance consists in its expressing the intention of its speaker'.  On that basis, Russell's segregation of an 'attitude', such as an intention, from a Proposition, empties the would-be symbols that comprise the latter of any Sense or Reference.

Subjective Logicism, Objective Logicism, Expression

Two varieties of Logicism can be called 'Subjective' and 'Objective'.  In both, Language is conceived as derived from Logic, but in the latter, the locus of Logic is the inner structure of the World, while in the former, it is the I.  Thus, in Objective Logicism, Language 'refers' to that locus, whereas in Subjective Logicism, it 'expresses' it.  For example, Russell implicitly subscribes to OL, Kant and Husserl to SL, and both are to be found in the Tractatus--the initial premises are that of OL, but the brief emergences of Constructivism and Solipsism can be classified as SL.  Now, as Husserl, in the Logical Investigations shows, SL, unlike OL can accommodate Expression as a type of Meaning, in the process of which he recognizes Communication as the fundamental context of Language.  Still, rather than further exploring the latter topic, his focus remains that of Russell--a concept of Language as primarily functioning to represent what is true, the necessary conditions of which are expressed, in his version, in the formal structures of Language.

Communication, Expressing, Meaning

Each of the following three are commonly accepted characterizations of someone's smile: 1. 'Happiness causes them to smile'; 2. 'The smile means that they are happy'; and 3. 'The smile expresses their happiness'.  Accordingly, 'H causes S', 'S means H', and 'S expresses H' are interchangeable in the context.  In contrast, Wittgenstein's equating of "expression" and "symbol", in #3.31 of the Tractatus, is unrelated to, and is perhaps abstracted from, the use of 'expresses' in the third formulation above, since a symbol is not an effect of its object.  Likewise, Meaning qua Expressing has no place in Fregean-Russellian Logicism, because in that respect, the 'meaning' of an utterance is some condition, e.g .volitional, of its utterer, whereas the concept of Language is abstracted from speech-acts.  In other words, Expressing is the most personal and least mediated semantical relation, i. e. is the variety of 'Meaning' that is most fundamental in Communication.

Language and Communing

The closest Wittgenstein seems to come to formally defining 'Language-Game' is in #7 of the Investigations: "I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the 'language-game'.  Implied in this formulation is a distinction between Language and some associated activity.  However, there is no such distinction in cases in which people converse simply to socialize.  In these experiences, Language is not so much used as, rather, expressing the togetherness of those involved.  Therein, the essence of Language as not merely Communication, but as a mode of Communing is laid bare, and exhibited as prior to any ulterior activity into which it might be woven.

Language-Game, Work, Play

In a sequence beginning at #65 of the Investigations, Wittgenstein addresses an objection to his concept of Language-Game, that is advanced on the ground that he fails to justify the classification with a demonstration that that concept entails an essential property of the concept of Game.  His response is that since no such essence can be gleaned from the ordinary use of 'game', that Language-Games share "family resemblances" (#67) with those activities suffices to justify the subsumption.  However, he does not seem to consider that that response also implies that if some activity more closely resembles what are commonly recognized as non-games, then, the subsumption is unjustified.  For example, one ordinary indication of the distinction between Game and non-Game is the distinction between the uses of the terms 'play' and 'work', and not only the activity that he describes in #2, but also many involving tools, are commonly regarded as work-activities.  Accordingly, the use of Language in the latter cannot be easily characterized as a 'Language-Game'.  Thus, while his empirical argument against the formal objection may sufice, it is seemingly does not against a related empirical alternative.

Grammar and Morality

That the laws of Geometry are in themselves theoretical does not preclude that the geometrical properties of a tool, e. g. a hammer, do not reflect its usage.  Similarly, the grammatical structure of a sentence can reflect its Moral status.  For example, while the utterance of a Rogative sentence, i. e. 'Will you do X?', respects the independence of its addressee, that of an Imperative implicitly suppresses it, and that of a Declarative sentence is indifferent to the existence of anyone other than the utterer.  Thus, on the basis of the Rogative formation, the privileging of Imperatives, and of Declaratives, is each inherently Morally deficient, regardless of the ambitions of, say, Kant and Russell, respectively.

Language-Game and Evaluation

'Gamesmanship' can be defined as 'Respect for the integrity of some Game', and, hence, can be classified as a Game-Playing 'Virtue'.  Accordingly, in Competition-Games, cheating and deliberately losing are vices.  Now, such valuations are Game-specific.  For example, while bluffing is a virtue in Poker, it is a vice in Promising, as Kant insightfully argues, in contrast with which Wittgenstein's classification of Lying, in #249 of the Investigations, as merely one other Language-Game, is superficial and inadequate.  Likewise, while solipsistic behavior can be a virtue in Solitaire, insofar as any Language-Game involves at least two players, it is a vice in any of them.  Thus, insofar as the Logicist concept of Language is solipsistic, as the Tractatus shows, the use of it is not a Language-Game, but a vice, from the perspective of the Investigations.  So, even if Wittgenstein does not recognize it, by expanding the scope of Language in the later work, he expands that of the evaluation of it, as well,

Philosophy of Language and Morality

Wittgenstein's break with Logicism begins not sometime in between the Tractatus and the Investigations, as is widely believed, but right at the outset of the former.  For, as soon he introduces a concept of a 'World', he transgresses the usual parameters of the Logicist treatment of Language, i. e. by relating it to the easily recognizable principles of that concept--Empiricism and Atomism.  In other words, he exposes the systematic Epistemological and Metaphysical presuppositions of Logicism, thereby dissolving its presumed insularity.  Furthermore, the consequent, as Wittgenstein shows, Solipsism is more than merely a Metaphysical or Epistemological problem--it is a Moral one, as well, i. e. it seems difficult to deny the classification of a Solipsist as an 'Egoist'.  Accordingly, the transition to a World inhabited by a plurality of Language-Game-Players, i. e. which entails the recognition of the independent existence of others, is, similarly, a Morally significant development.  However, if #77 of the Investigations is any indication, Wittgenstein seems unprepared to appreciate the wider implications of his new perspective.  For, in that passage, seemingly the only one in the book that attends to the topic, he treats Morality as a type of Language-Game, which makes it difficult to recognize the inherent Moral significance of any Language-Game.  So, he misses an opportunity to encourage a study of his works that transcends the typically insular purview of Philosophy of Language.

Private Language and Logicism

Starting at #243 in the Investigations, Wittgenstein presents a sequence often characterized as his 'private language argument', a potentially misleading formulation, since he opposes, not defends that possibility.  His analyses in those passages show that while experiences, such as pains, may be private, the language associated with them is not.  such demystification seems to exemplify what he calls 'showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle', i. e. it functions as a corrective to an extant problem.  In contrast, a preemptive approach, i. e. what might be characterized as 'preventing the fly from entering the bottle to begin with', argues, as has been proposed here, that all Language is essentially a medium of Communication, which entails that essentially no Language is private.  Now, it seems difficult to deny that the language of a Solipsist is private, and, furthermore, it seems to follow from the sequence of #5.62 to #5.6331 of the Tractatus that the Language examined in that work is that of a Solipsist, i. e. a language of one for whom "the world is my world".  Thus, even if the Private Language Argument presented in the Investigations does not explicitly cite Logicism, it seems, at minimum, applicable to it.  In contrast, the preventative alternative proposed here leaves no doubt in that regard.

Solipsism and Objectivity

The Solipsism that emerges in Wittgenstein's exposition of the World, at #5.62 of the Tractatus, has a three-fold origin.  First the equation of "the" world with "my" world echoes the result of the progressive reduction by his Empiricist predecessors--Locke, Berkeley, and Hume--of sense-objects to mental data.  Second, as has previously been discussed here, presumed 'objective' states-of-affairs are actually those of a 'third-person', from the perspective of an implicitly present 'I', the recognition of which Wittgenstein articulates at #5.632 as "the subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world", like an eye to its field of vision.  Finally, the negation of  'interpersonal' is 'private', not 'impersonal', contrary to what is taken for granted in the Logicist abstraction of 'Language' from the context of Communication.  Accordingly, these passages expose a profound flaw in Logicism--a concept of Language that is Solipsistic, rather than Objective--one occasional manifestation of which is the blindness of Logicists to their own prejudices.

Solipsism and Language

In 5.62 of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein asserts that "the world is my world", in the context of considering in what respect "solipsism . . . is quite correct".  In contrast, from the outset, the environment of the Investigations is social.  Accordingly, the transcendence achieved by the end of the earlier work is not an ascent into some mystical realm, as some interpret it, but an escape from the Solipsism-bottle.  Analogously, the transition is from conceiving verbal Language as the description of one's World, to realizing that it is a means of interpersonal Communication.

Fact, Action, State-of-Affairs

The Tractatus begins with the statement, "The world is everything that is the case", and follows with the elaboration that in each instance, what 'is the case' is a Fact.  Now, the word 'fact' is rooted in the Latin for 'to do'.  Thus, at least at the outset, there is the potential in that project for a study of a 'world' constituted by Actions, from which the Language-Game of the Investigations can be derived, i. e. the initial definition of it, at #7, includes the term "actions".  However, it emerges in the course of the Tractatus that by 'fact' he means 'state-of-affairs', which is, in contrast with 'action', both impersonal and literally static.  So, the Tractatus is informed by a prejudice that is extra-linguistic, a concept of 'world', and, hence, by one that can be classified as 'Metaphysical'.

Atomic Fact and Language-Game

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein asserts that there exist Atomic Facts in the World, without specifying which states-of-affairs they are, e. g. Cogitos, Sense-Data, etc.  Now, one candidate is the oral speech-act, for, as has been previously discussed, such an Utterance is inseparable from the process that produces it.  Furthermore, it is similarly arguable that any instance of one is inseparable from its circumstances, which includes, at minimum, an utterer, an addressee, and some purpose which it serves.  In other words, an Investigations' Language-Game can be conceived as a Tractatus' Atomic Fact.  Thus, one transition from the Tractatus to the Investigations need not involve some mystical epiphany--it is merely a road not taken within the earlier work from one of its premises.

Fact and Utterance

According to #2.141 of the Tractatus, "The picture is a fact."  So, since Wittgenstein classifies the Proposition as a Picture, a Proposition is a Fact, in this scheme.  Now, while a written sentence, like a painting, survives the process that first produces it, an oral utterance is no more separable from the uttering of it than a sneeze is from the expulsion of it.  In other words, an Utterance originates not as a Fact, but as an Element in a Fact, as the Fact-Element relation is conceived in the Tractatus.  Thus, either some Utterances are not Propositions, or else some Propositions are not Facts, a difficulty more easily avoided after the abstraction of 'Language' from the context of Communication.

Language and Constructivism

According to the Tractatus concept of it, Language isomorphically pictures the World.  However, Wittgenstein is generally no more than vague about how that principle applies to the relation between the internal structure of a Proposition and the elements of the state-of-affairs to which it corresponds, beginning with the combined yet sharply distinguished Subject and Predicate.  For example, that distinction is not immediately evident in the event that 'John is running' typically describes.  It is, therefore, in that regard that #4.0131, "In the proposition a state of affairs is . . . put together", is briefly illuminating, for it suggests that a Proposition incorporates a combination of Analysis and Synthesis that is analogous to the operation of the Understanding in Kant's theory.  Hence, the passage expresses a concept of Language that can be similarly dubbed as 'Constructivist'.  That is not to make the stronger claim that such processes likewise immediately affect the Fact to which a Proposition corresponds,  But, they can influence both how it is interpreted, and conduct towards it, e. g. 'John' can be abstracted from the event of running, and associated with an earlier robbery at a nearby jewelry store.

Atomic Facts, Propositions, Proposals

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein defines an 'atomic fact' as a "combination" of simple objects (#2.01-02), but without specifying what those objects are, e. g. minds, sense-data, etc.  Similarly, his model of Language is based on the Propositions that correspond to Atomic Facts, without a specification of which Propositions in, say, German or English, are the simple ones.  Now, for the most part, the relation of correspondence between a Proposition and a Fact in the Tractatus seems to be that of Description, i. e. he regularly characterizes the former as a "picture" of the latter.  However, a subtle, but important, alternative is suggested by #4.031--"In the proposition, a state of affairs is, as it were, put together for the sake of an experiment"--which formulates a Constructivist concept of Language, i. e. the passage implies that even an Atomic Fact is "put together" by the Proposition which corresponds to it.  Furthermore, "for the sake of experiment" indicates that the sequence of words that 'puts together' the facts of the world is, more precisely, a Proposal, not a Proposition.  Accordingly, all the components of the Language of the Tractatus, starting with the pictures of Atomic Facts, are Proposals.  Whether or not Wittgenstein recognizes that he is advocating Constructivism in the Tractatus is unclear.

Argument, Logic, Showing a Way

The influence of Russell's principle, previously discussed here, that the essence of Language is Assertion/Denial, is evident in the more recent predominance of the 'Argument' as the mode of Logicist expression.  From that perspective, Wittgenstein's later concept of the "aim of philosophy--to show . . . the way" (Investigations, #309), as a solution to the prototypical philosophical problem, "I do not know my way about." (Investigations, #123), is commonly regarded as deviant, if not unacceptable.  However, a 'Proof', as defined by Logicists themselves, is constituted by a sequence of Propositions, beginning with 'Premises', and ending with a 'Conclusion'.  In other words, a Proof shows a way from the former to the latter.  So, if there is a deviation from the essence of Logic, it is the result-oriented Argument of contemporary Logicism, not Wittgenstein's later concept of Philosophy.

The Business of Language

Wittgenstein's lists, in the Investigations, of the variety of Language-Games suffice as not merely a divergence from, but a disproof of Russell's statement, from his introduction to the Tractatus--"The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts."  But, while Wittgenstein's evidence pertains immediately to the attribution of 'essentiality', it bypasses the more telling weakness in Russell's formulation--the term "business", which is anomalous in the context of an exposition of Language.  In the absence of any other clarification, the inclusion of that term in the statement, instead of more rigorous terms, such as 'use' or 'function, for example, can be interpreted as an attempt to fortify the implication that 'language' possesses, as an inherent property, operations  of the assertion and the denial of facts.  For, in contrast, 'use' or 'function' in that place would imply that 'language' is a grammatical object, not a grammatical in the sentence, i. e. that asserting or denying facts is a purpose that Language serves, with a speaker as the implied grammatical subject.  So, it is easy to conclude that Russell, who is among the most careful speakers in the history of Philosophy, is, in that statement, attempting to obscure the groundless of a basic principle of his concept of Language--that independent of the context of interpersonal Communication, it is more than a concatenation of empty symbols. 

The Ladder, The Fly-Bottle, Proposal

Wittgenstein's comment, in #291 of the Investigations, "What we call 'descriptions' are instruments for particular uses", suggests not that he repudiates his Tractatus concept of Language as a 'picture of the World', but that he now recognizes that function as one among a plurality of uses.  That may be why his image of his effort in the Tractatus--leading somewhat up an eventually disposable ladder, from #6.54 of that work--is similar to its correlate in the Investigations, at #309--"To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle": common to the two is a procedure that can guide a reader to a kind of liberation.  In other words, both works are prescriptive, and, hence, are constituted by Proposals, not by Propositions, with the main difference that by the later project, he recognizes his procedures as such, with the result a re-conceiving of Language that accommodates that reflective insight.  So, ultimately, his divergence from his apparent earlier Logicism is based on a difference in what the term 'Language' denotes, not connotes--the example of his own writings vs. the contrivances of his erstwhile fellow Logicists.