Essay 01

Instructions

A hardcopy (typed, printed) essay is due in class Tuesday, 9/04. I do not mind students working on the essays in groups--it is, in fact, encouraged--but your answers must be your own. Be sure that each answer is as complete, well-expressed, clear, and precise as you can make it. If you have any question, puzzle, or require clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me (berkich@gmail.com; 3976, 944-2756). Finally, the following maximums and minimums must be scrupulously observed:

• No less than 10pt font.
• No less than 1.5 line spacing.
• No less than 1 inch margins on all sides.
• No more than 1 side of 1 page for this problem set.

Note that these are maximums and minimums only. You may, for instance, write less than one page or use greater than a 10pt font.

In light of these admittedly serious constraints on the space available for answers, it is extremely important that you excise any and all extraneous or redundant material. For example, the phrases "It can be argued that", "I claim that", "I think that", or their kin preceding a sentence add absolutely nothing to the sentence, take up valuable space, and are in fact wholly redundant. Of course it can be argued that, claimed that, or thought that, or you would never have written it!

Every word must count for answering the question. Philosophical writing is thus austere, but terribly precise. Such is its virtue. That said, writing philosophy can be jarring at first, especially for those who have labored and suffered under the delusional five-paragraph essay regime.

Please not that no quote from the text ever stands on its own, unexplained. Quoting should be judiciously, even cautiously done in light of the laughably short space you have in which to write.

For additional advice on writing philosophy, I encourage you to study some of the advice linked at the bottom of the resources page. Not all of the advice applies directly to these problem sets, as even in philosophy they are atypical. Nevertheless, there is much sound and helpful advice to be had about writing in general and writing philosophy in particular.

If you worry about what to avoid doing, you could do little better than to review James Lenman, "How to Write a Crap Philosophy Essay: A Brief Guide for Students (pdf). It is, as he says, brief, and hilarious.

One final note of caution before getting to the question for this essay. It can be tempting to delve into the secondary literature on Wittgenstein in an attempt to get 'the right' answer. I invite you, though, to think not of getting the right answer--as if there could be one--and instead focus on getting the most comprehensive and defensible answer as you can conceive. It need not be 'right' to be a damn good answer, in short.

Question

Very early on in his Introduction, Russell attributes to Wittgenstein the project of divining an ideal language. As Russell puts it,

In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise. Thus, logic has two problems to deal with in regard to Symbolism: (1) the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in combinations of symbols; (2) the conditions for uniqueness of meaning or reference in symbols or combinations of symbols. A logically perfect language has rules of syntax which prevent nonsense, and has single symbols which always have a definite and unique meaning. Mr. Wittgenstein is concerned with the conditions for a logically perfect language—not that any language is logically perfect, or that we believe ourselves capable, here and now, of constructing a logically perfect language, but that the whole function of language is to have meaning, and it only fulfills this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate.

The conversational implicature of Russell's claim that "the whole function of language is to have meaning, and it only fulfills this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate" must be that ordinary natural language is an untidy, ungainly, and frequently useless affair the further it falls short of the ideal he and Wittgenstein envision.

Well, is that true?

We don't have to believe it ourselves to wonder why Russell and Wittgenstein did.

Using your own examples and arguing as best you can, justify the claim that natural language, as it were, often keels over and twitches, dead on the floor--or, if you prefer, shits the conceptual bed, confusing us while foiling (fouling?) the very reason for its own being, communication.