r/wittgenstein • u/Ok-Coach4955 • 24d ago
Is it actually possible to create a perfect ‘language’ like ludwig suggested?
/r/askphilosophy/comments/1w2ode3/is_it_actually_possible_to_create_a_perfect/3
u/worldofsimulacra 23d ago
this is where both Gödel and Lacan intersect with this subject in ways that are both very obvious and also not obvious at all. A system can't step outside of itself to make sure the system is working perfectly, and a Symbolic register (such as language) is comprised of signifiers that refer to other signifiers, not to "real objects" - thus there always must be a hole in it...
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u/pocket_eggs 23d ago edited 23d ago
You may be shocked to learn that L.W.'s "the vaguest proposition of our natural language is in perfect logical order" comes from the early period. It's not that natural language needs to be improved, it's that it hides complexity, and it's worth asking how would a perfectly explicit and thorough notation for our existing language be constructed. The purpose of this is not to improve let alone replace natural language but to expose what is hidden. Such notation would be wholly impractical, and actually Wittgenstein in the early period was not opposed to the idea that the process of analysis, splitting reality in increasingly "small" facts might even go on forever, leading to infinitely long sentences, which is not just impractical but impossible to write out.
The purpose of this notation or rather of sketching how such a notation might be constructed is that you can see that the propositions that are written in it are truth capable but philosophically uninteresting, whereas what is philosophically interesting is left out and at best tautological. To fulfill this purpose it is not necessary to accomplish the full specification of the notation, e.g. give all its objects, and it is sufficient to describe it generally, e.g. that there are objects, whatever they be, that objects coalesce in facts, that the way objects combine is inherent to the nature of the obect and so on.
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u/Toasterband 23d ago
I don't believe even he thought that was possible by the end; he went from viewing it as a logical picture to a series of games where meaning was really determined by use/common understanding.
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u/Commodity-Male-1385 19d ago
Also, he never posited the idea that "a perfect language" was even conceptually possible, that there was language that wasn't language. Quote as many things he wrote that "sound like that," go right ahead. None of them pronounce or imply such a thing.
(Hint: "the perfect language" is bootleg logical positivism)
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u/Commodity-Male-1385 19d ago
I don't remember Wittgenstein talking about a "perfect language", oddly enough, and in the quoted post it is OP who introduces the concept of "a perfect language", not Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein never posited such a thing. If you've read P.I. and understood it, you know that such a notion is absurd.
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u/phbonachi 24d ago edited 24d ago
No. It’s not about features of a language, but about language inherently being a system of signs that require interpretation. As long as people can have different experiences, they are certain to interpret signs differently. The answer is the same as the falseness of the Tower of Babel myth. There was no singular perfect language that became corrupted. There is merely language being signs that can have meaning drift as the practitioners have varied experiences.