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The Linguistic Turn

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DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10382.08004

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 The Linguistic Turn

Michael Sidiropoulos, MEng

A new philosophical movement began to develop in late 19th century and blossomed through the
entire 20th century. It became known as analytic philosophy and focused on clarity, argument,
and a logical, linguistic, and mathematical formulation of philosophical ideas. Although this new
school dominated the philosophy of English-speaking countries, its forerunner is a German
mathematician and philosopher named Gottlob Frege.

A Revolutionary Aristotelian
Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician, generally
regarded as the father of modern philosophy of language. Working on the borderline between
philosophy and mathematics, Frege discovered the fundamental ideas and invented the entire
discipline of mathematical logic. Frege has been called “the greatest logician since Aristotle”,
and one of the most profound philosophers of mathematics ever.

Frege believed that one could prove all the truths of arithmetic deductively from a limited
number of logical axioms and, in fact, he demonstrated all the basic laws of arithmetic within his
own system of logic. He set out to learn if proofs in arithmetic rest on pure logic, or do they need
support from empirical facts. The answer which he gave was that arithmetic is a branch of logic
and can be formalized without the use of non-logical axioms.

Frege opposed Kant’s idea that the truths of mathematics were synthetic
a priori, and that our knowledge of them depended on intuition. He postulated that arithmetic is
analytic and can be proved from purely logical principles.

One of Frege’s concerns was to remove intuition from the structure of logical inference. If there
was an intuitive element in the logical structure, he isolated it and represented it as an axiom.
This brings up an interesting question: is intuition a set of undeclared axioms?
 In his two-volume book Foundations of
Arithmetic, Frege presented a system which
derived all arithmetic from the rules of logic.
This was to be a crowning achievement of
Frege’s work until mathematician and
philosopher Bertrand Russell proved that Frege’s
reliance on classes and value ranges is
impossible. Russell’s argument is known as
Russell’s Paradox and was accepted by Frege.
Another blow to Frege’s system came after his
death, when Kurt Gödel discovered his
incompleteness theorem which proved that there
can be no consistent formal system with a finite
number of axioms in which it is possible to
derive all the truths of arithmetic.

Frege revolutionized and modernized

Aristotelian logic into a quantificational and fully
axiomatic system. He showed that mathematical
truths are logical truths and formalized the notion
of proof in a logical system that is still accepted
today. He developed a comprehensive system
Gottlob Frege
relating and merging logic, mathematics and
language that continues to provide valuable
insights to philosophers.

Frege’s work laid the foundation for a whole new system of analytic philosophy that would bring
linguistic concepts and mathematical symbolism into philosophy and would begin to blur the
distinction between philosophy and science. Frege is often called the founder of modern logic,
and even the founder of analytic philosophy. He had a profound influence on scholars such as
Russell, Carnap and Wittgenstein.

The Intellectual Aristocrat

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British polymath, academic, philosopher, mathematician,
logician, historian, political activist, social critic, and political reformer. Russell’s work had a
considerable influence on mathematics, logic, the philosophy of language, epistemology, and
metaphysics. Russell wrote on every major area of philosophy except aesthetics and is generally
regarded as one of the founders of analytic philosophy.

In 1901 Russell discovered a paradox which is known as Russell’s Paradox and became a
significant problem in logic. The paradox arises when we consider the set of all sets that are not
members of themselves. Such a set, if it exists, will be a member of itself if and only if it is not a
member of itself. Russell developed his Theory of Types in response to his own paradox.
In his early period Russell defended logicism, the view that mathematics is reducible to logic, an
idea introduced by Frege. This theory implies that all mathematical truths can be translated into
logical truths and mathematics constitutes a proper subset of logic.

Russell believed that religion is born of fear and is a source of misery to humans. Religious
beliefs are intellectually and morally harmful and the religious point of view itself is a
conception unworthy of free men. Russell criticized arguments favoring the existence of God and
observed that through the ages
religion had impeded the
advancement of knowledge.

Russell was very interested in

educating the public on
difficult topics in science and
philosophy. He wrote The
ABC of Relativity, an
excellent introduction to
Einstein’s theories in plain
language. His 1945 book A
History of Western
Philosophy is still widely read
and has educated generations
of scholars, philosophers, and
students alike.
Russell and wife Edie in anti-nuclear march
Russell’s legacy as scholar,
intellectual, critic, educator,
and political reformer transcends his important contributions to mathematics, logic, and
philosophy. The reading of Russell’s biography reads like a review of 20th century history. He
was one of the foremost personalities of the century.

A Class by Himself
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was an Austrian philosopher, regarded by many as the
greatest philosopher of the 20th century and the most important philosopher since Immanuel
Kant. Wittgenstein is one of the main drivers for a linguistic turn in philosophy, a new focus on
language and its relation on reality and human perceptions.

In 1922 Wittgenstein published Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which he believed he had

answered all the essential problems of philosophy. At a later stage Wittgenstein abandoned some
of the logical forms as they appeared in Tractatus. His later writings were collected and
published after his death as Philosophical Investigations. This is regarded as his most mature and
important work and is the most authoritative source of Wittgenstein’s ideas.
In the preface to Tractatus, Wittgenstein says “What can be said at all can be said clearly and
what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” It is obvious that Wittgenstein regards
language as a central aspect of knowledge.

A central doctrine in Tractatus is the picture theory of meaning. According to this theory,
language consists of propositions which picture the world. Thoughts and propositions are
pictures in a literal not just a metaphorical sense. Language statements are meaningful only if
they can be defined or pictured in the real world.

In Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed

a comprehensive system of logical
atomism, a philosophical view that
originated in the early 20th century
with Bertrand Russell and led to the
development of analytic philosophy.
Russell and Wittgenstein believed
that mathematical logic could reveal
basic structures of reality that are
hidden beneath the cloak of ordinary
language. Logical atomism is the
idea that the world is made up of
facts, which are complex structures
consisting of objects (particulars). A
fact may be that an object has a
The Wittgenstein family with Ludwig furthest right
property or that it stands in some
relation to other objects. In addition,
there are judgments (beliefs), which are in a relationship to the facts, and by this relationship
either true or false.

Logical atomism was part of the larger idea of ideal language, which would be the creation of a
language free from the ambiguities of ordinary language. Wittgenstein later abandoned the
theory and scholars divide Wittgenstein’s philosophy to distinct early and later periods.

Wittgenstein attacked the very nature of philosophy. He believed that philosophy is an activity,
not a theory, and what we find in philosophy is trivial. It does not teach us new facts, only
science does that. But the proper synopsis of these trivialities is enormously difficult and has
immense importance. Philosophy is in fact the synopsis of trivialities. Wittgenstein is hostile to
metaphysics which is, above all, grammar masquerading as science.

Philosophy creates problems out of an inflexible use of language. For example, we use the word
“mind” in our everyday language without any difficulty until a philosopher asks, “what is the
mind?” We then imagine that this question must be answered by identifying some “thing” that is
the mind. If we remind ourselves that language has many uses and words can be quite
meaningful without corresponding to things, the problem disappears.
The later Wittgenstein held that the meanings of words reside in their ordinary uses and that
many philosophical problems are rooted in misunderstandings when philosophers take words in
abstraction. Philosophers create non-existent problems by using words outside of the context of
their use in ordinary language.

Wittgenstein believed that language derives its meaning from the way that it is used and from
context which adds flexibility to language. Context allows the mapping of a flexible set of
linguistic variants into an idea. Context adds different meaning to the same words and its role has
been overlooked in philosophy.

What is required, according to Wittgenstein, is not a correct doctrine but a clear view, one that
dispels the confusion that gives rise to the problem. We often mistake grammatical rules for
material propositions and that adds to the philosophical confusion. For example, the expression
2+3=5 is a rule of grammar, not a proposition that describes reality.

Wittgenstein followed the idea, espoused by Russell and others, that the problems of philosophy
are logical in nature. He became interested in logical necessity, the idea that certain statements
are logically necessary if we can prove that they are true because "it could not be otherwise”.
These are analytic truths and are true with absolute certainty. Their being false is not merely
improbable, it is inconceivable.

Wittgenstein was an exceptionally intellectual thinker and was certainly not the scholar
stereotype. His work has been tremendously influential in the twentieth century. His great
contribution to philosophy is that he opened a whole new area of exploration, the philosophy of
language. The new linguistic focus would rail philosophy into new tracks and would distort and
blur the boundaries between philosophy, logic, mathematics, and science.

Positively Logical
Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) was a German-born American philosopher, a leading exponent of
logical positivism, with important contributions to logic, the analysis of language, the theory of
probability, and the philosophy of science. Carnap’s combination of empiricism with the logical
forms provided by Frege and Russell set the foundation of logical positivism, also known as
logical empiricism.

Carnap held that the misuse of language can create pseudo-philosophical problems. Recognition
of the choices we make between different linguistic schemes can help resolve these problems.
Because of the ambiguities of ordinary language, Carnap proposed that philosophical issues
should be studied in artificial languages, governed by the rules of logic and mathematics.

In his 1926 book The Logical Structure of the World, which became a landmark in modern
epistemology, Carnap laid out the philosophical thesis of logical positivism. Symbolic logic is
concerned with the logical analysis of propositions, while science is based on empirical
observations and is the only source of knowledge of the natural world. Statements about the
language of science aren't true or false. They consist of definitions and conventions about the use
of certain concepts. Scientific propositions, however, are factual statements about the reality of
the natural world. The truth or falsity of those propositions can be verified by testing against
further observations.

Empiricist philosophers before Carnap had developed ideas of verifiability, holding that a
statement is meaningful only if it is empirically verifiable. Carnap sought a switch from a
verifiability to a confirmability criterion, which would not require conclusive verification but
allow for degrees of confirmation on a probabilistic basis.

Carnap rejected metaphysics as meaningless because metaphysical statements cannot be proved

or disproved by experience. Metaphysics is made of empty verbiage and meaningless discussions
of pseudo-problems which do not have any empirical consequences and implications. They can
influence feelings and beliefs but cannot be shown to be either true or false. Carnap’s view of
metaphysics was shared by many other scholars of his generation, such as Wittgenstein, Popper
and Ayre.

Carnap articulated a constitution theory, which is a conceptual structure that systematizes

scientific knowledge according to forms of symbolic logic. He argued that this constitution
project would make possible the definition and unification of scientific concepts in a single
conceptual system based on a few fundamental concepts.

Language, Truth and Logic

Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-1989) was an English philosopher who made important contributions
and became a fervent popularizer of logical positivism. Ayer says that something has meaning
only if it can be tested to be true or false. In essence, logical positivism leads all knowledge to
logical and scientific foundations. In endorsing these views
Ayer saw himself as continuing along the British empiricism
of Locke and Hume and the most recent representative of that
empiricism, Bertrand Russell.

Ayer published his first book in 1936, under the title

Language, Truth and Logic. Ayer’s crisp writing and clear
logical sequences make the book excellent philosophical
reading. Ayer says that the views in LTL derive from the
doctrines of Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, which are
themselves the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley
and Hume.

To test whether a sentence expresses a genuine empirical

hypothesis, Ayer adopts what he calls a verification principle.
He requires of an empirical hypothesis, not that it should be
conclusively verifiable, but that some possible sense
experience should be relevant to the determination of its truth
Professor A.J. Ayer or falsehood. If a proposition fails to satisfy this principle,
 and is not a tautology, then it is metaphysical, and therefore neither true nor false but literally
senseless.

It is rather obvious that Ayer does not have much use for metaphysics. He thinks much or all of it
meaningless, as none of its theories can be verified. Ayer frequently attacked metaphysics and
was a strong critic of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s vast and all-embracing
theories about existence. These, he felt, were completely unverifiable through empirical
demonstration and logical analysis. This useless philosophy was an unfortunate strain in modern
thought and Heidegger, according to Ayer, was its worst example.

Statements of fact or value have meaning only insofar as they are verifiable. Even ethical and
aesthetic judgments are meaningless unless they can be subjected to empirical testing. An
empirical test may be practical or theoretical. The a priori statements of logic and mathematics
do not claim to provide factual content. Those statements can be said to be true only because of
the conventions which govern the use of the symbols that make up the statements.

Ayer accepts the existence and need for a priori knowledge of necessary propositions but rejects
Kant’s idea that any of these necessary propositions are synthetic. They are without exception
analytic propositions or tautologies. These propositions do not make any assertion about the
empirical world and cannot be refuted by experience. They simply record our determination to
use words in a certain fashion. According to Ayer, all mathematics consists of tautologies and
cannot contain any empirical knowledge derived from the natural world.

Ayer further believes that much of philosophy is analytic and therefore has no meaning of its
own. Other parts of philosophy, such as metaphysics, theology, ethics, and aesthetics, focus on
ideas which cannot be judged as being true or false and it is therefore meaningless to discuss
them. Ethical and aesthetic statements are expressions of feelings, have no factual content that
can be empirically tested and cannot therefore be argued for or against.

Ayer does not see philosophy as a metaphysical concern that attempts to speculate on unsolvable
ontological problems. Instead, philosophy is an activity of defining and clarifying the logical
relationships of empirical propositions. Ayer also criticized the opinion that metaphysics is a
form of “intellectual poetry”. His work restricts the role of philosophy in metaphysical areas and
expands it in other unforeseen areas, such as artificial intelligence.

The distinction between a conscious man and an unconscious machine resolves itself into a
distinction between different types of perceptible behaviour. The only ground we can have for
asserting that an object which appears to be a conscious being is not really a conscious being, but
only a dummy or a machine, is that it fails to satisfy one of the empirical tests by which the
presence or absence of consciousness is determined. In his distinction between a conscious man
and an unconscious machine Ayer anticipates the 1950 development of the Turing Test to
determine a machine’s capability of human-like intelligence.

©2021 by the author — Open Access

Author Contact: Michael Sidiropoulos, msid790@gmail.com
Citation: Sidiropoulos, M. (2021).

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