§39
Wittgenstein explains why it is that someone might be tempted to say that words that are clearly not names, such as 'this' are names (and also claim that words that clearly are names, e.g. Walter Scott, are not in fact names). - Wittgenstein has people like Bertrand Russell in mind here, I assume.
What is the explanation?
- It is explained by someone (e.g. Russell) thinking that names ought really to signify simples (something is simple if it is unanalysable/not complex).
- Why think that names ought to signify simples? - 'Nothung' case. Nothung is a sword. We think that 'Nothung' still names something even if the sword named by it is shattered. - The word must still correspond to something, we might think. One way in which we might get started along this route is to think that the role of words in general is to refer to something beyond themselves - words don't 'stand alone' - they stand for something, always.
I'm still confused by this section. It seems to me that the worry which leads Russell to his theory about names is about how "Nothung has a sharp blade" can have a sense when Nothung no longer exists. A similar worry comes up with "Nothung does not exist".
ReplyDeleteThese sentences seem puzzling if you assume-
(1) the meaning of a name is its bearer ("as no object would then correspond to the name, it would have no meaning")
(2) a sentence containing an empty name is senseless
But I don't see how the view that names really signify simples can help here. What would help is to insist that names only apply to necessarily existing things.
I'm not sure how simples help with this problem, unless we think that simples can't be destroyed (because destruction means breaking something down into its parts).
Wittgenstein says something like that in §50 '...it makes no sense to speak of the destruction of an elements if everything that we call 'destruction' lies in the separation of elements. - But this would be to make elements indestructible by definition - it's a grammatical claim rather than an empirical/metaphysical claim about the way that the world is.
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