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Wittgenstein and Brouwer
Author(s): Mathieu Marion

Source: Synthese, Vol. 137, No. 1/2, History of Logic (Nov., 2003), pp. 103-127
Published by: Springer
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MATHIEU MARION
WITTGENSTEIN AND BROUWER*
ABSTRACT. In this paper, I present a summary

of the philosophical relationship between
and Brouwer, as myof departure Brouwer's lecture on March 10,
Wittgenstein taking point
1928 in Vienna. I argue that Wittgenstein having at that stage not done serious philosoph
ical work for years, if one is to understand the impact of that lecture on him, it is better to
compare its content with the remarks on logics and mathematics in the Tractactus. I thus
show that Wittgenstein's position, in the Tractactus, was already quite close to Brouwer's
and that the points of divergence are the basis to Wittgenstein's later criticisms of intu
itionism. Among the topics of comparison are the role of intuition in mathematics, rule
following, choice sequences, the Law of Excluded Middle, and the primacy of arithmetic
over logic.
During the 1920s, L. E. J. Brouwer promoted his foundational standpoint

through a series of lectures at meetings of the German Mathematical Soci
ety; his Berlin lectures in 1927 were very well received. On March 10,
1928, he gave a lecture in Vienna on 'Mathematics, Science and Lan
guage', which was followed, four days later, by another one on 'The
Structure of the Continuum'.1 It is easy to imagine the atmosphere of
intellectual excitement that must have surrounded his visit. Brouwer held
a radical stance about mathematicsthat entailed, as he would himself put
it in his first lecture, the "collapse" of "considerable portions of the pre
vious mathematical edifice" (1996a, 1185).2 Brouwer's intuitionism was
perceived at the time by many as revolutionary and dangerous: in Cam
bridge Frank Ramsey had written about a "Bolshevic menace" (1978, 207),
while David Hilbert, the doyen of German mathematics, spoke of a "coup"
(1998, 200) and waged throughout the 1920s a war against it; this Grundla
genstreit was
to turn very bitter later on that year, with the somewhat illegal
expulsion of Brouwer, at Hilbert's request, from the editorial committee of
Mathematische Annalen.3
Thesense of excitement provoked by Brouwer's presence was not only
due to his polemical stance about foundations: Brouwer was one if not
the founder of modern topology; not only did he introduce fundamental
notions of twentieth-century topology such as that of a simplicial approx
*
To the memory of Michael Wrigley.
t4 Synthese 137: 103-127, 2003.

W% ? 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in theNetherlands.
104 MATHIEUMARION
imation or the Kronecker-Hadamard index, he also obtained fundamental

results such as his celebrated invariance of dimension and fixed-point
- a few years, in 1912-14.4 Brouwer was
theorems all this within thus
already a mathematician of justifiably great fame when he came to Vi
enna. Contrary to a widespread belief, Brouwer's work in topology was
of an essentially constructivist nature and his intuitionistic (logical) idio
syncrasies can be seen as intimately connected with his topological work.5

Most topologists of the day, such as Blumenthal or Carath?odory tended
to be, if not intuitionists themselves, more sympathetic towards Brouwer
than the more ideologically minded Hubert.
As a result of this sense of excitement, many members of the Vienna
Circle attended Brouwer's first lecture: Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Kurt
G?del, Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, Kurt Reidemeister, Moritz Schlick, and
Friedrich Waismann. Acting on a suggestion by Menger, the topologist,
Waismann and Feigl had also convinced a reluctant Wittgenstein to attend.
As I already mentioned, Brouwer gave a second lecture on the 14th on 'The
Structure of the Continuum'. Although it has sometimes been claimed, for
example by van Peursen (1970, 96), that Wittgenstein also attended that
lecture, there seems to be no proof that he actually did. I shall therefore,
in what follows, ignore this second lecture and focus on the first. It should
be said that Brouwer told Henry Le Roy Finch that he met Wittgenstein
subsequently "two or three times Privately" (Finch 1977, 260), presumably
during Brouwer's stay in Vienna. Alas, Brouwer provided no details about
these meetings and there are no traces of them in his posthumous papers; as
for Wittgenstein, any notebooks dating from 1928 are presumed destroyed
or forever lost.
Wittgenstein had been in Vienna for already a year in order to help with
the construction of his sisters' house on the Kundmanngasse, and already
had some contacts with members Circle. Feigl's account of
of the Vienna
these encounters and of Brouwer's is rather telling. Wittgenstein's
lecture
state of excitement after the lecture contrasted sharply with the utter lack of
interest he displayed earlier, during meetings with members of the Vienna
Circle:
Wittgenstein himself, though he lived inVienna from 1927 to 1929, never joined theCircle.
He emphatically told the few of us (Schlick, Waismann, Carnap and myself) with whom
he occasionally met (either in caf?s, at Schlick's apartment, or that of my fianc?e, Maria
Kasper, then a student of philosophy) that he was no longer interested in philosophy. He felt
only on relatively
that he had said all he could in the Tractatus. Moreover, rare occasions
could we get him to clarify one or another of the puzzling or obscure passages in his work.
He seemed himself unclear on the ideas he had developed during the First World War. On
occasions, he would read poetry to us (e.g., that of Rabintranath Tagore). (1981, 63)
WITTGENSTEINAND BROUWER 105
One more incident stands out in my memory. When the Dutch mathematician Luitzen
Egbertus Jan Brouwer was scheduled to lecture on intuitionism in mathematics in Vienna,

Waismann and I managed to coax Wittgenstein, after much resistance, to join us in at
tending the lecture. When, afterwards,

Wittgenstein went to a caf? with a great event
us,
-
took place. Suddenly and very volubly Wittgenstein began talking philosophy at great
length. Perhaps this was the turning point, for ever since that time, 1929, when he moved
to Cambridge University was a philosopher again. (1981, 64)
Wittgenstein
In a letter to George Pitcher, Feigl also wrote that, after Brouwer's lecture,
Wittgenstein "became extremely voluble and began sketching ideas that
were the beginnings of his later writings" and that "that evening marked
the return of Wittgenstein to strong philosophical interests and activities"
(Pitcher 1964, 8n.). Karl Menger's autobiography contains an interest
ing description of Wittgenstein's attitude during Brouwer's lecture, which

lends support to Feigl's account:
Hahn, who was to introduce Brouwer, was notified

by Waismann and Feigl when Wittgen
stein entered the auditorium. [... ] From a distanceI watched Hahn walking down the aisle
to introduce himself and to welcome the guest. Wittgenstein thanked him with an abstract
smile and
eyes focused at infinity, and took a seat in the fifth row or so. I have always
tried to avoid making of someone
the acquaintance who appeared to be not interested in
making mine and thus stayed far away. But Iwas curious to see how the guest would behave
during the lecture which he attended, probably unbeknownst to him, at my suggestion. So

I took a seat two rows behind him and well to his left. Motionless from beginning to end,
Wittgenstein looked at the speaker first with a slightly startled expression which later gave
way to a faint smile of enjoyment. (1994, 92)
Now not only did Feigl's account lead to the belief that Brouwer's lecture
marked the return of Wittgenstein to philosophy, it has also lent support,
in the mind of some commentators, to the more substantial claim that
the fundamental impetus for Wittgenstein 's later philosophy came from
Brouwer's philosophy.6 (Indeed, these two claims have their origin Feigl's
letter to Pitcher quoted above.) For example, in a section of the first edition
of Insight and Illusion entitled 'ANew Inspiration' (1972, 98-104), Peter
Hacker argued that the inspiration for Wittgenstein's later philosophy was
indeed to be found in Brouwer's lecture. Hacker was just fleshing out an
idea due to Dummett, namely that the later Wittgenstein seized upon the
intuitionist idea that the meaning of a mathematical statement resides in
its proof and generalized it to the whole of the theory of meaning, thus
moving from the truth-conditional semantics of the earlier philosophy of
the Tractatus to the verification-conditional semantics which supposedly
characterized his later philosophy. Noticing that Wittgenstein's state of
intellectual excitement after the lecture was a rather meager piece of
evidence and that there were no real signs of this alleged influence in
Wittgenstein writings until much later, Hacker wrote that
106 MATHIEUMARION
The general convergence off ideas between Brouwer's [1928 lecture] and Wittgenstein's
later work, whether causally explicable or not, is crucially important from the point of view
of interpreting Wittgenstein's notoriously controversial later philosophy of language. For
it suggests that we should look at the transformation of Wittgenstein, the theorist of formal
semantics, into Wittgenstein, the theorist of communication-intention, as being merely one
aspect of a deeper and more general transformation. The convergence and affinities suggest
that we view Wittgenstein's later philosophy as a generalized intuitionist theory, and that
we view his transformation as being from realism in semantics to constructivism. (1972,
104)
There is, of course, much which is plainly false in this picture; I shall not
spend time refuting it here as it has been done elsewhere.7

Now, considering the alleged importance of Brouwer's influence on
the development of Wittgenstein's
philosophy, it is surprising to find very
few discussions in the secondary literature. G?ran Sundholm, writing on
this topic some fifteen years ago, pointed out that he "found only two
discussions by British philosophers" (1985, 268); today's count is not
substantially higher. One noticeable difference, however, is that today's
commentators would certainly not claim thatWittgenstein was spurred into
coming back to philosophy by Brouwer's lecture or that the fundamental
impetus for Wittgenstein's later philosophy came from it. They would, on
the contrary, claim, as Hacker did in the second, much revised, edition
of Insight and Illusion, after the lecture
that Wittgenstein's "excitement
may just as well have been a reaction to Brouwer's misconceptions'" (1986,
120).8 Indeed, by the time he wrote the second edition of his book, Hacker
had radically changed his mind on this issue:
In the first edition of this book I discussed Brouwer's lecture [...] and very tentatively
that the parallelisms between some of the features of Wittgenstein's later
conjectured
philosophy might have their source in inspiration
derived from Brouwer. I am now very
sceptical about that conjecture, and in the absence of further evidence I should repudiate
it [... ] [Wittgenstein] viewed intuitionism as an aberration, a perversion in mathematics
that stands in need of philosophical therapy, not as a source of inspiration in philosophy of
mathematics, let alone as involving an insight that can be generalized to the whole domain
of philosophical logic and philosophy of language. (1986, 120-121)
There is, of course, much which is also plainly false in this passage. At
all events, Hacker's opinion certainly is, as one might say, the 'received'
view or the current 'orthodoxy' about Wittgenstein. To give merely another
'
example, in a paper on the same topic, "Die Wende der Philosophie":
Wittgenstein's New Logic of 1928', Jaakko Hintikka, who was looking for
the spark that caused Wittgenstein to move towards his later philosophy,
similarly claimed that:

... the most doctrines of Brouwer's were
important specific rejected by Wittgenstein.
Unlike Brouwer, mathematics was not taken by him to be a matter of intuitive mental con
structions; indeed, few ideas would have been more repugnant to the mature Wittgenstein
[... ] Thus Brouwer's influence [... ] cannot serve to explain Wittgenstein's initial change
of mind. (1996, 81-82)
I should like to think that those, such as Hacker

and Hintikka, who be
lieve that there was no influence on Wittgenstein
of Brouwer are right,
albeit for the wrong reasons. To simplify matters, it looks as if one
proceeds as follows: Brouwer's philosophical views are to begin with
summarily caricaturized and dismissed as a crass form of psychologism,
and then unfavorably and anachronistically contrasted with Wittgenstein's
mature views on language and mind, as found in, e.g., Philosophical
Investigations.9 A sense of discomfort remains: it feels as if the interpret

ation of Wittgenstein's mature views is brought to bear on the issue and
this seems to me to be
inappropriate inasmuch as it credits Wittgenstein,
at the time of hearing Brouwer's lecture, with much more than a vague
inkling of his fully-blown mature views; one is left with the impression
that it was the author of the Philosophical Investigations which was react
ing to Brouwer's lecture, not a man who had not seriously thought about
philosophical issues for years and whose last major intellectual output had
been the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Why should one assume that,
in 1928, Wittgenstein was already equipped with his later philosophy in
order to explain his reaction? After all, he had barely done any philosophy
since publishing the Tractatus in 1921. Shouldn't one assume instead that
it was Wittgenstein qua author of the Tractatus who listened to Brouwer's
lecture? I think that insufficient attention has been paid to these basic
chronological matters and that much previous work on this issue has been
marred by this oversight.
In what follows, I shall assume that it was indeed the author of the
Tractatus who listened to Brouwer inMarch 1928 and I shall argue that
Brouwer could not have influenced him simply because Wittgenstein's
conception of mathematics to be found in the Tractatus
is indeed, when
properly understood, very close to that of Brouwer; there could not have
been an influence where Wittgenstein already shared much of Brouwer's
conception. To exaggerate, I should like to claim that there hardly was a
philosopher that could have been more sympathetic to Brouwer at the time.
I should make it emphatically clear, however, that I do not claim thatWit
tgenstein's Tractatus was a piece of proto-intuitionism; there are numerous
remarks of a negative nature on Brouwer's intuitionism inWittgenstein's
Nachlass that I shall review here and I shall argue further that the very
points where the Tractatus and Brouwer diverge are precisely at the source
of these negative - I
remarks think that the exegetical rewards are here
rather substantial, because one may reach a perspicuous overview of the
relations between Brouwer and Wittgenstein.
108 MATHIEUMARION
Brouwer opened his lecture, on March 10, with a distinction between three
"modes of operation of the will-to-life of the individual man": mathe
matical contemplation, mathematical abstraction, and the imposition of the
will by the means of sounds (1996a, 1175). The first mode, mathematical
contemplation, was said by Brouwer to arise in two phases, the "temporal"
and the "causal" attitude (1996a, 1175-6). Temporal attitude is described
as "nothing other than the intellectual of the falling apart
ur-phenomenon
of a life-moment into two qualitatively distinct things; one sense the one
thing as yielding to the other while nevertheless being maintained in the act
of memory" (1996a, 1176). Furthermore, Brouwer claimed that the "tem
poral twoness" that has thus arisen "can then itself be conceived as one of
the members of a new twoness, thereby creating the temporal threeness,
and so on" and, in this way, "the temporal appearance-sequence of arbit
rary multiplicity arises by means of the self-unfolding of the intellectual
ur-phenomenon" (1996a, 1176).
It is on this notion of "self-unfolding" of the ur-phenomenon that, ac
cording to Brouwer, natural numbers are generated. This is perhaps not so
clear in the Viennese lecture but the idea was expressed earlier (1912) in
'Intuition and Formalism':
[Intuitionism] considers the falling apart of moments of life into qualitatively different
parts, to be reunited only while remaining separated by time, as the fundamental phe
nomenon of the human intellect, passing by abstracting from its emotional content into the
fundamental phenomenon of mathematical thinking, the intuition of the bare two-oneness.
This intuition of two-oneness, the basal intuition of mathematics, creates not only the num
bers one and two, but also all finite ordinal numbers, inasmuch as one of the elements of
the two-oneness may be thought of as a new two-oneness, which process may be repeated
this gives rise still further to the smallest infinite ordinal number co. (1975,
indefinitely;
85-86)
This idea also embodied what Brouwer called on many occasions, after
wards, the 'first act of intuitionism'. For example, one finds the following
presentation in the Cambridge lectures, after the Second World War:
FIRST ACT OF INTUITIONISM Completely separating mathematics from mathematical

language and hence for the phenomena
of language described by theoretical logic, recog
nizing that intuitionistic is an essentially
mathematics languageless activity of the mind
having its in the perception of a move of time. This perception of a move of time
origin
may be described as the falling apart of a life moment into two distinct things, one which
gives way to the other, but is retained by memory. If the twoity thus born is divested of
all quality, it passes into the empty form of the common substratum of all twoities. And it
is this common substratum, this empty form, which is the basic intuition of mathematics.
(1981, 4-5)10
I shall come back to the idea that mathematics

is essentially a languageless
activity. I should
like, for the moment, to focus on the 'basic' or 'basal' in
tuition. I am not interested in easy criticisms of Brouwer's philosophy as a
-
form of psychologism although this was one of Wittgenstein's criticisms,
as I shall point out below - or as based on a well-criticized Cartesian theory
of knowledge.11 To my mind, it is a quite natural reaction -and one may
was - to
easily assume that it Wittgenstein's wonder how one gets from
- to use an expression
this 'basic' intuition to Number taken from Bill
-
Tait (1981, 529) that is how does one gets from the individual numbers,
as obtained by repetitions of the basic intuition to the very form of finite
sequences. There may be an intuitionist answer to this, but the text of the
Viennese not give much of a clue
lecture does to it. That my reaction is
a natural one and that itmight very well have been Wittgenstein's is born
out by a remark by G?ran Sundholm, when discussing this very passage
of the first Viennese lecture, in a paper on 'Brouwer's Anticipation of the
Principle of Charity' :
My difficulty is that I can understand (?) how one reaches each individual number through
successive repetitions of the Urintuition, I do not see how one gets the notion [of 'the
temporal appearance-sequence of arbitrary multiplicity']. That is, I do not see how one
from the individual numbers, or pure forms, 0, 1, 2, 3,... to the grasp of Number,
proceeds
without the use of something more. In fact, if [self-unfolding] means iteration (and if it
does not, I don't even see how to reach the individual numbers), then the notion of Number
is already built into the [self-unfolding]. (Cf. Wittgenstein, 'A number is an exponent of an
operation', Tractatus, 6.021). (1985, 269-270)12
I find this remark more

than helpful, since Sundholm points to the
definition of numbers as exponents of an operation in the Tractatus as
being precisely the sort of missing link here. Lello Frascolla and I have
independently argued that Wittgenstein's definition at 6.02 is (almost)
perfectly in order; it is in essence that of the 'Church numerals' in ?
calculus.13 There seems to me to be no reason to believe that, since he
had one in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein didn't feel that an account of how
to grasp Number was lacking. In what follows, I shall argue that Witt
genstein's negative stance on intuitionism hangs on this very point, since
Wittgenstein clearly but perhaps wrongly perceived Brouwer as implying
instead that a new intuition is needed to provide every new individual
number.
However,before marshalling all the differences between Brouwer and

Wittgenstein that hang on this point, I would like to get the reader to real
ize how close their conceptions are. One will obviously not find anything
resembling Brouwer's 'basic intuition' in the Tractatus. Nevertheless, I

think that itwill pay to take a closer, albeit very brief, look at the theory of
signs that underlies his 'operationalist' or 'pragmatic' conception of both
110 MATHIEUMARION
logic and mathematics, in the Tractatus. I shall take it for granted in the
following that the notion of operation is understood as playing a pivotal

role in the Tractatus, as it underlies both the introduction of the calculus
of truth-functions as based on "truth-operations" (5.234, 5.2341, 5.3) and
the definition of natural numbers at 6.02 as "exponents of an operation"
(6.021).15
According to 3.12, the "proposition is the propositional sign in its
projective relation to the world". Therefore, a proposition has two com
ponents: the method of projection, which is "the thinking of the sense of

the proposition" (3.11) and the prepositional sign, which is a "fact" (3.14).
Transposed in the jargon used by Wittgenstein and some members of the
Vienna Circle, the propositional sign in itself is a "physical" entity, while
the method of projection is a "phenomenal" or, to be accurate, a "phe
nomenological" entity. In fact, "method of projection" is here just another

name for "intention".16 To use this jargon, a proposition is thus both a
physical entity, as it is qua propositional sign a fact, and a phenomen

ological entity, because the propositional sign must also be interpreted
and the interpretation is but the "thinking of the sense of the proposition"
of 3.11. Actually, although it does not appear clearly in these passages,
Wittgenstein is merely talking about one thing, namely the propositional
sign. It can be seen as either a 'fact' (3.14), which is perceptible by the

senses (3.1 & 3.11) or a 'proposition', when projected as the picture of a
possible fact (3.12), or as a 'thought', when applied (3.5). It is crucial that

one realizes here that the 'perceiving', the 'projecting', the 'thinking', the
'applying', etc. are all here operations by a (generic) user of (the system
of) signs. These operations, however, are never captured by Wittgenstein's
ontology, as laid out in the l's. They are not part of the furniture of the
world. To use a terminology foreign toWittgenstein, operations pertain to
the domain of "doing", not to that of "being". The key idea of the 'theory'
of operations is expressed in 5.25: "an operation does not assert anything;
only its result does". If one has a proposition p, stating, say, that it rains,
one can use the operation of negation and turn it in ->/?, which states that
-
it is not the case that it rains. Both p and /? assert something. Both are
also propositional signs, hence facts, but operations are never facts. At this
stage, one should also bear in mind that, according to Brouwer, "the two
stages of mathematical contemplation are not at all passive attitudes, but

are on the contrary acts of the will".17 In the Tractatus, operating with signs
an agent, and to this agent the propositions are also
obviously requires
'phenomenological' entities. I contend that this conception of phenomeno
logical acts which underlies the conception of logic and mathematics in the
Tractatus brings Wittgenstein very close to Brouwer. I would not exactly
describe this conception of mathematics as "an essentially languageless

activity of the mind", to use Brouwer's own words, but this is certainly
rather close to it. I should like to make this point even more patent by
discussing further aspects of Wittgenstein's conception of mathematics.
To begin with, Iwould like to make a brief remark concerning proofs in
logic. This is not a topic discussed in Brouwer's lecture but it is impossible
not to mention the close relationship between Brouwer's ideas, as they
are now embodied in the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation of
logical connectives and the conception of logic in the Tractatus. I tend to
agree with Per Martin-L?f 's interpretation of Brouwer's idea that a proof
is a mental construction in terms of acts:
Thus a proof is, not an object, but an act. This is what Brouwer wanted to stress by saying
that a proof is a mental construction, because what is mental, psychic, is precisely our acts,
and the word construction, as used by Brouwer, is but a synonym for proof. Thus he might
just as well have said that the proof of a judgement is the act of proving, or grasping, it. And
the proof is primarily the act as it is being performed. Only secondarily, and irrevocably,
does it become the act that has been performed. (1982, 231)
I have pointed out elsewhere, in (2001), the strong parallels with Witt
genstein's conception of logic in the Tractatus, where one read, e.g., that
"in logic, process and result are equivalent" (6.1261).
According toWittgenstein, "the propositions of mathematics are equa
tions" (6.2); one may speak of Wittgenstein's "equational conception".
The propositions of mathematics are not, truly speaking, propositions but
Scheins?tze; they merely appear to be propositions. Indeed, an equa
tion such as 7 + 5 = 12 reads "seven plus five equals twelve" and
the later has certainly the appearance, grammatically speaking, of being
a proposition. However, propositions picture facts or express thoughts,
"
but [mathematical propositions express no thoughts" (6.21). Wittgen
stein wanted to do away with the Platonism of Frege: there could be
no "objects" for which arithmetical terms go proxy and a fortiori no
connections between such putative "objects" into facts that would be pic
tured in mathematical "propositions". Mathematics is based instead on
the 'phenomenological' notion of operation. I have discussed at length in
my book the finitist and anti-logicist aspects of Wittgenstein's equational
conception.18 These aspects bring indeed Wittgenstein's conception closer
to Brouwer's.
Furthermore, one fundamental consequence of the claim that math

ematical equations are not propositions is that, if the calculus of truth
functions only applies to propositions, then it does not apply to math
ematical equations. In other words, one does not speak of the truth or
falsity of mathematical equations.19 There is thus a divorce between logic
112 MATHIEUMARION
and mathematics which

partly overlaps Brouwer's divorce between the
"phenomena language of
described by theoretical logic" and (intuition
istic) mathematics understood as "an essentially languageless activity of
the mind". As I shall point out below, Wittgenstein will draw from the
claim that the calculus of truth-functions does not apply to mathematical
equations criticisms of Brouwer (and Weyl).
Further evidence for this comes from the fact thatWittgenstein
speaks
instead of the correctness
(Richtigkeit) of mathematical equations. In
6.231, he points out that "[i]t is a property of "1 + 1 + 1 + 1" that it can
be conceived as "(1 + 1) + (1 + 1)"" and in 6.232 he further
points out that
Frege would have said of the equality "1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = (1 + 1) + (1 + 1)"
that its two members have the same Bedeutung but not the same Sinn. It
is well-known that Wittgenstein would have none of the Sinn-Bedeutung
distinction in the Tractatus. Here, he argues that
-
6.23 [... ] what is essential
about equation is that it is not necessary in order to show
that both are which
connected the have the same meaning
expressions, by sign of equality,
[Bedeutung]: for this can be perceived from the two expressions themselves.
Furthermore, Wittgenstein adds,
6.2321 -[...] that the propositions of mathematics can be proved means else than
nothing
that their correctness can be seen without our having to compare what with
they express
the facts as regards correctness. (6.2321)
(My emphasis in both cases.) Admittedly, Wittgenstein's argument is a bit

difficult to understand. Clearly, Wittgenstein wishes here to short-circuit
the Sinn-Bedeutung distinction by pointing out that the correctness of an
equation can be perceived or seen, that is one can see am Symbol allein
how one expression can be transformed into the other. So, when Wittgen
stein adds in 6.2313 that an equation merely characterizes "the standpoint
from which I consider the two expressions, that is to say the standpoint
of their equality of meaning", he is not speaking of Bedeutungsgleichheit
in the sense of Frege. There are no "objects" for which arithmetical terms
go proxy and to speak of the Bedeutungsgleichheit of the left- and right
hand side of an equation merely means that one sees that one side can
be transformed into the other, and vice-versa. The method by which one
proceeds is the method of substitution:
-
6.24 For equations express the substitutability of two expressions, and we proceed from a
number of equations to new equations, replacing expressions by others in accordance with
the equations.
This is the method used inWittgenstein's sole example, his proof of the
arithmetical equation 2 x 2 = 4 in 6.241. The emphasis on the 'visual'
or 'perceptual' is quite pervasive. Internal relations themselves have to be

seen:
An internal relation holds by virtue of the terms being what they are. Inference is justified
by an internal relation which we see; the only justification of the transition is our looking at
the two terms and seeing the internal relation between them. (1980, p. 57) (My emphasis.)
It is also fitting to notice here that the method of truth-tables was conceived
by Wittgenstein only as a "mechanical expedient to facilitate the recogni
tion of tautology, where it is complicated" (6.1262). That one must be able
to decide mechanically whether a proposition is tautological or not implies
that one ought to be able, at least, directly to see, am Symbol allein, that
some expressions are tautologous:
-
6.113 It is a characteristic mark of logical propositions that one can perceive [erkennen]
in the symbol alone that they are true; and this fact contains in itself the whole philosophy
of logic. (My emphasis.)
A decision procedure is needed only when expression is too complex for

one to be able see that it is a tautology.
The following passage, presumably dictated to Waismann in 1929,
contains clear expression of Wittgenstein's views:
In mathematics of an equation
the proof corresponds to the method of tautology. The very
-
feature that we
employ in tautologies namely their making evident the agreement between
-
two structures this very same feature is also employed in the proof of an equation. If
we prove a numerical calculation, we transform its two sides until their equality shows
itself. This is in fact the same procedure as that on which the use of tautology is based.
Mathematics and logic share this feature, that a proof is not a proposition, that a proof
points something out. Logic uses propositions to point something out, mathematics uses
numbers. (1979b, p. 219)
One ought not be surprised by this pervasiveness. It has to do with the

saying-showing distinction (4.121-^.1212). According to this distinction,
in a symbolical system, formal properties (formalen Eigenschaften) are
exhibited but cannot be asserted in turn. Someone has to see the formal
properties that are thus exhibited; they don't show themselves in a void but
to the user of the symbolism, who sees or perceives them.20 Mathematics
may not be, according to Wittgenstein, as an "essentially languageless
activity of the mind"; he nevertheless assumes that an element which
shows itself but can't be said (languageless?) is at play in his equational
conception.
114 MATHIEUMARION
There is, however, an essential difference between Brouwer and Witt

genstein, a difference that must have struck Wittgenstein when hearing
Brouwer in Vienna. This difference is embodied in 6.233 and 6.2331:
- we need intuition
6.233 To the question whether for the solution of mathematical prob
lems itmust be answered that language itself here supplies the necessary intuition.
-
6.2331 The process of calculation brings about just this intuition. Calculation is not an
experiment.
In a passage from his 1931 manuscript that made its way into the Philo
sophical Grammar, he expressed his puzzlement about the notion of
'basic' intuition in terms that are reminiscent of these passages:
-
When the intuitionists speak of the "basic intuition" is this a psychological process? If so,
how does it come into mathematics? Isn't what they mean only a primitive sign (in Frege's
sense); an element of a calculus? (1995, 28; 1974, 322)
In this passage, Wittgenstein blended in a rejection of intuitionism as being

a form of psychologism; an obvious feature when one looks at it from his
own quasi-formalist vantage point.
One should also keep in mind 6.126, which concerns not mathematics
but logic:
- a proposition to logic can be calculated
6.126 Whether belongs by calculating the logical
properties of the symbol.

And this we do when we prove a logical proposition. For [... ] we form the logical
out of others by mere symbolic rules.
propositions
To prevent an objection. These somewhat cryptic passages ought not to be

read as counting against a 'phenomenological' reading of the Tractatus,
since the process of 'calculation' is, as is the case with 'operating',
'thinking', 'projecting', precisely what has to be understood 'phenomen
ologically'. What these passages show is that Wittgenstein adopted a
quasi-formalist stance, and it is clear that, although there is a mental com
ponent at work here, mathematics is thus not, for Wittgenstein, an entirely

languageless activity, it is calculation with symbols, in accordance with
a
appears to be mental
given rules. To speak in crude terms, mathematics
manipulation of signs, but the signs themselves have a life of their own, so
to speak. That they have a life of their own comes out clearly in passages
such as these, where Wittgenstein presents a rather Leibnizian conception
of logical consequence:
-
5.122 If p follows from q, the sense of'/?" is contained in that of "q".
- a world are true, he creates
5.123 If a god creates in which certain propositions thereby
also a world in which all propositions consequent on them are true. [... ]
(It is this very conception which will be abandoned and criticized later
in the famous 'rule-following' arguments.) Therefore, although Wittgen
stein founded his philosophy of mathematics on 'acts', he never saw these
acts as entirely 'free'. This point of divergence is of great importance
for the understanding of Wittgenstein's later criticisms of Brouwer and
intuitionism.
It seems to me
very clear that, from Wittgenstein's standpoint, reliance
on a 'basic intuition' could only be a mistake, precisely because, to repeat,
it does not provide one with a grasp of Number. This much comes out
clearly in his manuscripts for the year 1929, where he suddenly claims that
he is "better able to understand intuitionism" (1994a, 101). He then states
that intuitionism means that "all numbers have their individual properties"
(1994a, 107) and he describes Brouwer's Urintuition incorrectly as the
view that every application of a rule has its own individuality (1994a, 101?
102). Against this, he predictably insists in the same passage that what is
fundamental is "the repetition of an operation" (1994a, 101, 102). That this
is a misunderstanding of Brouwer's position can be seen from, e.g., the
following footnote from his doctoral dissertation, which presents a view

rather similar toWittgenstein's:
The 'and so on' means the indefinite of one and the same object or
expression repetition
operation, even if that object or that operation is defined in a complex way. (1975, 80)
To my mind, such remarks shed light on Wittgenstein's attitude towards

both the role of intuition in 'rule-following' and the notion choice se
-
quences. It could be argued and it has been in fact argued by Hintikka
- believed that in order to understand what
that Wittgenstein originally
following a rule consists of, he had merely to look at himself whilst
applying a rule once.21 Later, Wittgenstein developed his famous set of

inter-related arguments on 'rule-following' in order, inter alia, to reject
this 'phenomenological' conception. It is clear, from the above passages,
that Wittgenstein believed that Brouwer and the intuitionists did not even
think that the analysis of the intuition needed indefinitely for one
repeat
able application of the rule was all that was needed, because they believed
instead that a new intuition of the rule was required for every application.
So, in developing his 'rule-following' argument, Wittgenstein moved in a
direction diametrically opposed to what he took the intuitionist doctrine to
be. This comes out clearly in Philosophical Investigations ?213, where he
described intuition as an "unnecessary shuffle" and this is exactly why he
rejected intuitionism flatly in passages that are often quoted, such as this
one, in his 1939 Cambridge lectures:
Intuitionism comes to saying that you can make a new rule at each point. It requires that we
have an intuition at each step in calculation, at each application of the rule; for how can we
116 MATHIEUMARION
a rule which -
tell how has been used for fourteen steps applies at the fifteenth? And they
go on to say that the series of cardinal numbers is known to us by a ground-intuition-that
is, we know at each step what the operation of adding 1 will give. We might as well say
-
that we need, not an intuition at each step, but a decision. Actually there is neither. You
don't make a decision: you simply do a certain thing. It is a question of a certain practice.
Intuitionism is all bosh-entirely. (1976, 237)
My point here is not to deny that these further developments ever took
place or to cast doubt on the soundness of these later views, but simply to
point out that in 1928Wittgenstein did not hold such views; he held instead
a view of rule-following is closer to intuitionism,
which in the sense that
both were 'phenomenological', the only difference being thatWittgenstein
believed at the time that following a rule was merely a matter of repeating
the intuition to grasp on one occasion
needed the requirement of the rule,
whilst he believed that the intuitionists were claiming that a fresh intuition
is needed for each new application.
The above remarks about the difference between Brouwer and Witt
genstein on the freedom inherent in the basic acts has also ramifications
inWittgenstein's remarks about choice sequences.22 Wittgenstein's views
about the continuum are based on his conception of infinity, which can be
summarized by this sentence: "Infinity is the property of a law, not of its
extension" (1980, 13). Since real numbers are defined as infinite sequences
of rational numbers, they must be given, according toWittgenstein, by a
- -
law or it amounts to the same recursively. There are numerous passages
to this effect, such as these:
A real number yields extensions, it is not an extension.

A real number is: an arithmetical law which endlessly yields the places of a decimal frac
tion. (1975 ?186)
The true nature of real numbers must be the induction. What I must look at in the real
- we may so on".
number, its sign, is the induction. The "So" of which say "and (1975
?189)
Is an arithmetical experiment still possible when a recursive definition has been set up?
I believe, obviously not; because via the recursion each stage becomes arithmetically
comprehensible. (1975 ?194).
There is no room therefore for real numbers given in an extensional manner

and therefore no roomarbitrary in eitherexpansions decimal or 'random'
real numbers. By definition, arbitrary infinite sequences are generated not
by a law but by an arbitrary selection of one term after another. The usual
example of such arbitrary sequences is that of a binary decimal expansion
whose digits are obtained by successive tosses of a coin. These sequences
are not in accordance with Wittgenstein's fundamental view of mathe
matics as being essentially a 'calculus' and he saw random real numbers as
"something empirical" (1979b, 83) and spoke in their case of an "arithme
tical experiment" (1975, ??190 & 196). The conception ledWittgenstein

openly to reject the idea that "freely proceeding" or "choice" sequences
could be bona fide mathematical objects. The extent of Wittgenstein's
knowledge of the literature on this topic is not clear but he does refer
at times, in conversations with Schlick and Waismann, to papers written
by Hermann Weyl, '?ber die neue Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik' and

23
'Die heutige Erkenntnislage in der Mathematik', It is possible and, at
any rate, excusable, thatWittgenstein confused Brouwer's notion of choice
sequences with that presented in, say, Weyl's '?ber die neue Grundlagen
krise der Mathematik'.24 Weyl argued, inter alia, that choice sequences are
admissible objects because is
it possible to carry out lawlike operations on
them. Wittgenstein flatly rejected this argument:
A freely developing sequence is in the first place something empirical. It is nothing but the
numbers that I write down on paper. If Weyl believes that it is a mathematical structure
because I can derive a freely developing sequence from another one by means of a general
law, e.g.,
mi, ni2, ni3,...
mj, mj + m3, m\ + m^,...
then the following is to be said against it: No, this shows only that I can add numbers, but
not that a freely developing sequence is an admissible mathematical concept. (1979b, 83)
In this, he may be right against Weyl. Wittgenstein shared, however, with

Weyl, the idea that sequences can only be individuated by law, while
Brouwer, who believed that they are individuated by their moment of be
ginning, rejected this.25 So Wittgenstein stands, on this issue, even further
from Brouwer thanWeyl. There is no need to discuss these matters further,
only to emphasize that, according to Wittgenstein a description "is not
arithmetic" (1979b, p. 83), it lawless, hence unacceptable. The very idea
of such a description, that is the idea of an "arithmetical experiment", was
seen as absurd: "A number as the result of an arithmetical experiment, and
so the description of a number, is an absurdity. The experiment would be
the description, not the representation of a number" (1975, ?196). It is
quite fitting to notice that in the above argument against choice sequences
Wittgenstein comes back to the very thought expressed in 6.2331: "calcu
lation is not an experiment", i.e., there is no room for intuition. One can
clearly see this as the major source of disagreement between Brouwer and
Wittgenstein.
118 MATHIEUMARION
To come back to Brouwer's lecture. Brouwer goes on explaining how

mathematical abstraction can interact with the "causal attitude" in order to
formulate scientific laws. This
part of the lecture is of little interest within
the context of this paper. More important is the next part, where Brouwer
launches in his critique of the Law of Excluded Middle.
critique is done in roughly two steps. The first step consists of an

The
argument to the effect that logical principles are likely to be unreliable in
the mathematics of infinite systems. Brouwer points out first that mathem
atical contemplation and mathematical action, which at first "functioned in
the service of the individual man" can be "placed as labour in
of the will
the serviceof a commanding will"; in other words it can be used by the
"individual man" not only for his own purposes, but also through the use
of language to impose his will on that of others (1966a, 1178). We now
reach the third of the "modes of operation of the will-to-life of the indi
vidual man", namely the "imposition of the will by the means of sounds".
Language, Brouwer argues, is "absolutely a function of the activity of the
social man" and, as Brouwer claims:
Elementary signals are correlated to the elements of the system of pure math
linguistic
ematics which belongs to the scientific theory that grows out of this mathematical
organized language operates with them according to grammatical rules

contemplation;
-
that are taken from the same scientific theory and this allows the great majority of the
necessary transmissions of the will in the cultural community to be carried out. (1996a,
1179)
Brouwer points out that, however, "for transmissions of the will, and in
particular for transmission of the will mediated by speech, there exists

neither exactness nor certainty" and
[... ] this state of affairs remains unaltered if the transmission of the will is concerned with
the construction of systems of pure mathematics. Thus for pure mathematics as well there
exists no certain language, i.e. no language that excludes misunderstanding in conversation
and, when it is being used to prop up the memory, protects against errors. (1996a, 1180)
Now, a suitable language was developed early for the "mathematical
contemplation of finite groups of things":
... in Antiquity man a very perfect (i.e. one that practically

already possessed language
excluded misunderstandings) for the mathematical contemplation of finite groups of things
of the objective spatio-temporal world [... ] For this language there are certain forms of
transition from correct statements (i.e. statements that indicate actual mathematical con
to other correct statements; these forms of transition were as the
templations) designated
laws of identity, contradiction, the Excluded Middle, and the syllogism, and were gathered
under the name of logical principles. (1996a, 1181)
Mathematicians, according to Brouwer, recklessly trusted this classical lo
gic (1996a, 1181). These logical principles of finite mathematics proved

themselves to be on the whole reliable in human affairs, whenever one
remained within the domain of the finite. But mathematicians committed
the error of applying these in the study of infinite systems:
[... ] the mathematicians [... ] took the logical principles of the language of finite mathem
atics and applied them without scruple in the pure-mathematical study of infinite systems.
In this way, statements of 'ideal truths' were also derived for the mathematics of infinite
systems (and of the sets that appear in set theory and that are created by means of the
comprehension axiom), and mathematicians took these statements to be more than empty
words. (1996a, 1182)
Thus, Brouwer believed that the logical principles were illegitimately

transferred from the domain of the finite to that of the infinite.
Brouwer then proceeds to show, in the second step of his argument, how
the Law of Excluded Middle is "not correct" in intuitionistic mathematics
of the infinite but "consistent" if one "presupposes it for finite species" of
properties". In order to show the Law of Excluded Middle is "not correct",
he argued with a counterexample to it, presenting his famous pendulum
or "binary oscillatory shrinking" number and showing that it is "neither
rational nor irrational, in violation of the principle of the excluded middle"
(1996a, 1185).
There are many remarks about the Law of Excluded Middle inWittgen
stein's writings, after 1929; I have argued in my book (1998, chap. 6) that
Wittgenstein also rejected that Law but on other, independent, grounds. In
a nutshell, Wittgenstein's own finitist standpoint led him (and Goodstein
after him)26 to reject quantification theory altogether, while Brouwer and
the intuitionists would merely refrain from applying the Law of Excluded
Middle in certain contexts, e.g., to quantified statements about choice se
quences. All this can be verified by looking atWittgenstein's reaction to
Brouwer's argument that I just laid out. To the affirmation that the pendu
lum number is "neither rational nor irrational, in violation of the principle
of the excluded middle", Wittgenstein replied in a passage dated 1929 that
made its way into the Philosophical Remarks:
Brouwer is right when he says that the properties of his pendulum number are incompat
ible with the law of the excluded middle. But, saying this doesn't reveal a peculiarity of
propositions about infinite aggregates. Rather, it is based on the fact that logic supposes
-
that it cannot be a priori i.e. logically-impossible to tell whether a proposition is true or
false. For, if the question of the truth or falsity of a proposition is a priori undecidable, the
consequence is that the proposition loses its sense and the consequence of this is precisely
that the propositions of logic lose their validity for it.
Just as in general the whole approach that if a proposition is valid for one region of math
ematics it need not necessarily be valid for a second region as well, is quite out of place
120 MATHIEUMARION
in mathematics, completely contrary to its essence. Although these authors hold just this
approach to be particularly subtle, and to combat prejudice. (1994a, 155, 156; 1975, ?173)
Wittgenstein's reasoning seems to be this: if the applicability of logic re

quires that it is a priori possible to tell if the proposition is true or false, then
where that requisite is not fulfilled, logic does not apply. Recall that the
idea is already present in the Tractatus that the calculus of truth-functions
applies to propositions but not to mathematical equations. This is why
Wittgenstein wrote this oft-quoted remark:
I need hardly say that where the law of the excluded middle doesn't apply, no other
law of logic applies either, because in that case we aren't dealing with propositions of
mathematics. (AgainstWeyl and Brouwer.) (1975, ?151)
One may choose to read Wittgenstein as saying that the idea of an undecid
able proposition is thus nonsense and that Brouwer's conception must be
plainly incorrect: if there are mathematical propositions, and there are, then
logic mustapply. It is, however, this reading which is plainly incorrect. It is
clear thatWittgenstein holds Brouwer to be right but for the wrong reason.
The above passage says no more than this: Brouwer is right that the Law
of Excluded Middle does not apply but errs in believing that it is the case
because of a peculiarity of infinite sets that he has uncovered.
In another paragraph from
1929 manuscript the same which made its
way this time to the Philosophical Grammar, Wittgenstein clearly agreed
with Brouwer's stance on the Law of Excluded Middle but not with the
way he defends it:
When Brouwer attacks the application of the law of excluded middle in mathematics, he
is right in so far as he is directing his attack against a process analogous to the proof of
empirical propositions. In mathematics you can never prove something like this: I saw
two apples lying on the table, and now there is only one there, so A has eaten an apple.
That is, you can't by excluding certain possibilities prove a new one which isn't already
contained in the exclusion because of the rules we have laid down. To that extent there are
no genuine alternatives in mathematics. If mathematics was the investigation of empirically
given aggregates, one could use the exclusion of a part to describe what was not excluded
and in that case the non-excluded part would not be equivalent to the exclusion of the
others.
The whole approach that if a proposition is valid for one region of mathematics it need not
necessarily be valid for a second region as well, is quite out of place in mathematics, is
completely contrary to its essence. Although many authors hold just this approach to be
particularly subtle and to combat prejudice. (1994a, 155, 156; 1974, 458)
Against those that think for ideological reasons that Wittgenstein could
not have rejected the Law of Excluded Middle, let us merely note here
thatWittgenstein is on the record for saying of Brouwer that "he is right".
But Wittgenstein is clearly disagreeing with the argument that Brouwer
put forward in his Vienna lecture. He disagrees with the allegedly false
dichotomy finite and infinite regions of mathematics:

between Brouwer
incorrectly spoke as if he had just discovered some special fact about a
certain class of propositions (those about infinite sets) in the same way as
a physicist would speak of discovering the laws of nature.
My aim here is merely to reach a perspicuous overview about the con
nections between Brouwer and Wittgenstein, not to discuss the validity of
the latter's criticism of the former. It is important, however, to realize that
Wittgenstein's claim in such passages is that the real reason why the Law
of Excluded Middle is not valid is, again, that the applicability
logic of
requires that it is possible to tell a priori if the proposition is true or false
and that otherwise logic does not apply, a claim which he expressed in
the above quotation by saying that there are "no genuine alternatives in
mathematics". Wittgenstein's stance is thus more radical than Brouwer's
for he claims in both passages that the lack of validity of the Law of
Excluded Middle in mathematics is a distinguishing feature of all math
ematical propositions (as opposed to empirical propositions) and not only
a particularity of the mathematics of the infinite that the Law of Excluded
Middle. If anything, Wittgenstein was all along not so much doubting the
reason set forth by Brouwer against the universal applicability of the Law
of Excluded Middle as he was arguing for its universal inapplicability.
In order to conclude, I should like to comment on a further quotation

'
from Hintikka's paper, "Die Wende der Philosophie": Wittgenstein's New
Logic of 1928':
[... ] we can see what struck Wittgenstein in Brouwer's views. It was not primarily
Brouwer's constructivism. Indeed, Wittgenstein seems to have arrived at his version of
finitism on his own, and it is unconnected with, and indeed to Brouwer's
foreign conception
of mathematics as being based on intuitive mental constructions. (Certainly Wittgenstein
could not have been any kind
of intuitionist after he had given up phenomenological
languages.) [... ] No, what struck Wittgenstein was Brouwer's idea that mathematics is
more fundamental than language, that the "logic" of constructive mathematics is more
fundamental than the logic of tautologies. (1992, 87-88)
To my mind, Hintikka is perfectly right to claim that "Wittgenstein seems

to have arrived at his version of finitism on his own", but I believe that I
have shown that he was mistaken in claiming that Wittgenstein's finitism
was "foreign to Brouwer's conception of mathematics as being based on
intuitive mental constructions". I have argued further that, on the contrary,
the finitist and anti-logicist conception of mathematics in the Tractatus is
far from being foreign to Brouwer's. I am also intrigued by Hintikka's
122 MATHIEUMARION
claim that "what struck Wittgenstein was Brouwer's idea that mathematics
is more fundamental than language, that the 'logic' of constructive math
ematics is more fundamental than the logic of tautologies". As Hintikka
pointed out, Wittgenstein does write in one of the earliest manuscripts
surviving, in January 1929 that "It seems that I am thrown back, against
my will, to arithmetic" and that "one could surely replace the logic of tau
tologies by a logic of equations" (1994a, 7), He also described this "logic
of equations" thus, in the same passage: "one could get from a proposition
to the next one through substitutions. And the rules according to which the
substitutions are carried out are codified in equations" (1994a, 7) And he
argued a a
few pages later, in passage that made its way into the Philosoph
ical Remarks that it looks "as if a construction might be possible within
the elementary proposition. That is to say, as if there were a construction
in logic which by means of truth-functions"
didn't work (1994a, 56; 1975,
?76). Towards the end of 1929, he was also to write: "one could now say:
logic deals with propositions, and hence itmust comprise arithmetic at its
root level, which is where it originates from the essence of a proposition
and pertains to it" (1994b, 15).
One can very well see that in 1929 Wittgenstein believed that arith
metic is more fundamental than logic. Was this the result of having heard
Brouwer? To my mind, the "construction in logic" which doesn't work by
means of truth-functions is precisely the "logic of equation" alluded to and
this "logic of equation" is, as I hope to have shown, essentially laid out
already in the Tractatus. The conceptions of the Tractatus nowhere imply
a primacy of logic over mathematics since the equational conception of
mathematics does not logic, but there is no support in that book
involve
for the claim that mathematics is more fundamental than logic. (On the
contrary, Wittgenstein wrote cryptically that "Mathematics is a method of
logic" (6.234).) However, it would be too rash to claim the influence of
Brouwer here, since Wittgenstein's reasons for his change of mind in 1929
have nothing to do with anything Brouwer said in Vienna, they have to do
with his changing conception of analysis.
Nevertheless, even if he did not believe in it at the time Wittgenstein,
whose Tractatus wasso staunchly anti-logicist, was probably pleased to
hear Brouwer claiming that, to use Hintikka's words, "the "logic" of con
structive mathematics is more fundamental than the logic of tautologies".
This, again, might serve to explain not an alleged influence of Brouwer that
might have been at the origin of Wittgenstein's later philosophy but, rather,
his excitement after the talk. At last, Wittgenstein heard a mathematician
whose views were not wildly at variance with his.27
NOTES
1
These lectures are reproduced in Brouwer (1975, vol. 1, 417^28, 429-440). English
translations, resp., Brouwer (1996a) and (1996b) are also reprinted in Mancosu (1998,
45-53, 54-63).
2
This was also Arend Heyting's opinion: "As to the mutilation of mathematics [...],
it must be taken as an inevitable consequence of our standpoint" (1956, 11). Of course,
such polemical claims did not help the cause
of since most
mathematicians
intuitionism,
are quite naturally reluctant to give up results. (However, G?del, who attended Brouwer's
lecture, was to show a few years later that this belief, which is still widely shared, is largely
unfounded. See, e.g., the concluding remarks in G?del (1986).) Wittgenstein came close
to making an almost similar claim in Philosophical Grammar. "What will distinguish the
mathematicians of the future from those of today will really be a greater sensitivity, and
- as
that will it were-prune mathematics; since people will then be more intent on absolute
clarity than on the discovery of new games. Philosophical clarity will have the same effect
on the growth of mathematics as sunlight has on the growth of potato shoots. (In a cellar
they grow yards long.)" (1974, p. 381). But one should notice that, although he spoke
of "pruning" mathematics, Wittgenstein did not speak truly of a "mutilation" of current
mathematics but merely of a slower growth in the future.
3
On these points, see van Dalen (1990).
Onthe importance of Brouwer's work in the development of modern topology, see, e.g.,
Alexandroff (1961,30f.).
5
On the constructivism implicit in Brouwer's
work in topology, see Dubucs (1988). It is
worth noticing a very interesting remark
by Kreisel in his obituary: "[Brouwer's] logical
ideas which he published several years before his topological work, were not only novel,
but almost detailed to deduce some of his innovations from
enough rigorously topological
them" (1969, 41).
One not forget
should that Wittgenstein already knew about Brouwer and intuitionism
from reading Ramsey's 1925 paper on 'The Foundations of Mathematics' (1978,152-212),
and from prior discussions with members of the Vienna Circle. On this, see McGuinness
(1991, 114-115).
7
See, e.g., Wrigley (1989). Richardson (1976) defends a viewpoint related to that of
Hacker (1972).
8
For a similar claim, see Monk (1990, 249).
9
I must say that this is not
exactly true of both Hacker and Hintikka, from whom I just
quoted, whose positions have more nuances than they appear to have from these very quo
tations. However, it is worth noticing that, in the course of making four points against the
idea of an influence of Brouwer on Wittgenstein, Hacker (1986, 125) uses only references
posterior to 1936.
10See also Brouwer
(1975, 509-510, 523).
11
For this, see, e.g., K?rner (1960, 136f.).
12
In order to ease the reading of this passage, I have replaced Brouwer's terms in
Sundholm's text by their translation by William Ewald in (Brouwer 1996a).
13
For reasons of space, I shall have to take this important point for granted. See Frascolla
(1994, chap. 1) and (1997) andMarion (1998, 21-29), much of which is taken up and
slightly amplified in (2000).
124 MATHIEUMARION
14
For reasons of space, I shall take much for granted here. The reader who wishes to know
more about my interpretation of the Tractatus should consult Latraverse (2001) and Marion
(2001), which, taken together, form the basis of a new interpretation.

15
Furthermore, the elementary arithmetical functions of addition and multiplication are
also defined in terms of the notion of operation. I have argued for this in Marion (1998,
chap. 2) and (2000) see Frascolla (1994).
6
We have here what Jaakko Hintikka has called the "phenomenological" conception of
language. See Hintikka andHintikka (1986) and Hintikka (1996).

17
Much has been made of the fact that remarks such as this one are reminiscent of
- see Brouwer
Schopenhauer who is mentioned in the second but not the first lecture,
(1996b, 1186, 1191)- and about the fact that this may have been toWittgenstein's pleas
ing. (Take, for example, Hacker's remark: "To someone like Wittgenstein who found in
Schopenhauer both inspiration and insight, there is a.prima facie likelihood that Brouwer's
on the primacy of the will would be of interest and may well have struck a
emphasis
sympathetic chord" (1986, 124).) There seems to me to be a straightforward reason for
this, over and above an easy rapprochement through a common reading of a third author:
if I am right in seeing an essential connection between the metaphysical subject and op
erations, then Schopenhauer is not very far at all, since the metaphysical subject is the
Schopenhauerian "will" (1922, 6.423, 6.43, 1979a, 79f.). In the Notebooks, Wittgenstein
wrote: "The act of the will is not the cause of the action but is the action itself" (1979a, 87).
One could paraphrase Wittgenstein: "The will is the operation itself" and the operation, like
the will and the "I", is, as Wittgenstein would say, "not an object" (1979a, 80).
18
See Marion (1998, chaps. 4-7).
19
This consequence has been overlooked because of widespread, erroneous belief that
Wittgenstein held the view that mathematical are tautologies. However, Wit
equations
tgenstein's conception is anti-logicist not just in that it is devised to do away
equational
with classes (see, e.g., 6.31): it nowhere implies that equations are tautologies.
Incidentally, it should be pointed out that Wittgenstein would certainly not say that
no form of theorizing is possible when formal properties are involved, since this would
mean that there is no room for a 'theory' of operation and hence no possibility of deriving
arithmetic. If a further refutation were needed, this fact could be used for a reductio ad
absurdum of the preposterously called 'new' Wittgenstein, created out of the writings of
Cora Diamond, James Conant et al. (Crary and Read 2000). Their interpretation, supposing
that it would extend to something else than the 'framing' passages, would necessarily
misrepresent entirely what Wittgenstein had to say about mathematics.
21Hintikka cites
(1996, 321) theMS 116, on understanding a word: "Earlier I thought at
one time that grammatical rules are an explanation of what I experience on one occasion
when I use once the word. They are as itwere consequences or expressions of the properties
which Imomentarily experience when I understand the word".
221 have discussed Wittgenstein's criticisms inMarion (1998, chap. 7), from which the
material from the next paragraphs is taken and to which the reader is referred for more
details.
23 for English
Respectively, Weyl (1968, II, pp. 143-180; 1968, II, pp. 511-542);
translations, see Mancosu (1998, pp. 86-118, 123-142).
24 see van
For a clear presentation of Weyl's notions and the differences with Brouwer's
Atten (1999, pp. 37-44).
25 See van Atten
(1999, p. 43).
26
For Goodstein's views, see H. E. Rose's obituary (1988) and the references therein.
27 on
An ancestor to this paper was read at the conference 'History of Logic' University
of Helsinki, Finland, in June 2000, and earlier versions of it were read at the Boston Col
loquium for the Philosophy of Science, Boston University, inNovember 2000 and at the
University of Leiden, Holland, inMarch 2001. I would like to thank the participants and,
in particular, Mark van Atten, for their comments. Research for this paper was funded by
a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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D?partement de Philosophie
Universit? du Qu?bec ?Montr?al
C.P. 8888
Succursale Centre-Ville
Montr?al (Qu?bec)
Canada H3C 3P8
E-mail: marion.mathieu@uquam.ca

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Wittgenstein and Brouwer

Author(s): Mathieu Marion

WITTGENSTEIN AND BROUWER*

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I present a summary

During the 1920s, L. E. J. Brouwer promoted his foundational standpoint

t4 Synthese 137: 103-127, 2003.

imation or the Kronecker-Hadamard index, he also obtained fundamental

syncrasies can be seen as intimately connected with his topological work.5

Egbertus Jan Brouwer was scheduled to lecture on intuitionism in mathematics in Vienna,

tending the lecture. When, afterwards,

ing description of Wittgenstein's attitude during Brouwer's lecture, which

Hahn, who was to introduce Brouwer, was notified

during the lecture which he attended, probably unbeknownst to him, at my suggestion. So

way to a faint smile of enjoyment. (1994, 92)

semantics, into Wittgenstein, the theorist of communication-intention, as being merely one

spend time refuting it here as it has been done elsewhere.7

coming back to philosophy by Brouwer's lecture or that the fundamental

similarly claimed that:

I should like to think that those, such as Hacker

Investigations.9 A sense of discomfort remains: it feels as if the interpret

presentation in the Cambridge lectures, after the Second World War:

FIRST ACT OF INTUITIONISM Completely separating mathematics from mathematical

I shall come back to the idea that mathematics

operation', Tractatus, 6.021). (1985, 269-270)12

I find this remark more

However,before marshalling all the differences between Brouwer and

resembling Brouwer's 'basic intuition' in the Tractatus. Nevertheless, I

following that the notion of operation is understood as playing a pivotal

ponents: the method of projection, which is "the thinking of the sense of

nomenological" entity. In fact, "method of projection" is here just another

physical entity, as it is qua propositional sign a fact, and a phenomen

Wittgenstein is merely talking about one thing, namely the propositional

sign. It can be seen as either a 'fact' (3.14), which is perceptible by the

possible fact (3.12), or as a 'thought', when applied (3.5). It is crucial that

stages of mathematical contemplation are not at all passive attitudes, but

describe this conception of mathematics as "an essentially languageless

Furthermore, one fundamental consequence of the claim that math

falsity of mathematical equations.19 There is thus a divorce between logic

and mathematics which

Furthermore, Wittgenstein adds,

(My emphasis in both cases.) Admittedly, Wittgenstein's argument is a bit

or 'perceptual' is quite pervasive. Internal relations themselves have to be

A decision procedure is needed only when expression is too complex for

One ought not be surprised by this pervasiveness. It has to do with the

There is, however, an essential difference between Brouwer and Witt

In this passage, Wittgenstein blended in a rejection of intuitionism as being

properties of the symbol.

To prevent an objection. These somewhat cryptic passages ought not to be

quasi-formalist stance, and it is clear that, although there is a mental com

ponent at work here, mathematics is thus not, for Wittgenstein, an entirely

following footnote from his doctoral dissertation, which presents a view

To my mind, such remarks shed light on Wittgenstein's attitude towards

applying a rule once.21 Later, Wittgenstein developed his famous set of

A real number yields extensions, it is not an extension.

There is no room therefore for real numbers given in an extensional manner

"something empirical" (1979b, 83) and spoke in their case of an "arithme

tical experiment" (1975, ??190 & 196). The conception ledWittgenstein