Syntactic Metaphor: Frege, Wittgenstein,

and the Limits of a Theory of Meaning

H a n s Julius Schneider, T h e University of Geoqyial

Universitat Erlanpi-Niirnbeyq

1.
There are some authors in the current discussion of niatters of
culture, who believe that we are presently living in a period of
post-modernism that can be characterized by the fact that many
different and unintegratcd ways of thinking, producing art and
architecture, etc. exist side by side.* Its advocates say that there is
no chance o r even a need to integrate or relate them to one another,
except in a superficial way, e.g. when their products appear at the
same building or in the pages of the same journal. In philosophy,
for example, Richard Rortys book about the mirror of nature
(which is quite sympathetic to some ideas of Wittgenstein) has been
taken by some readers to encourage a general Anything-goes-
approach in matters of the philosophy of language, since it says that
all approaches to language that have claimed to be of epistemologi-
cal relevance so far have been illusions; there arc, Rorty seems to
say, as many language-games as subcultures, and philosophical
thinking can offer no criteria for a critical assessment of them. By
those readers Rortys book is taken to answer a question raised by
Michael Dummett some years ago, namely, the question whether
analytical philosophy can and should be pursued in a systematic
way, and it is taken to answer it with a simple no, it cannot.
To some extent the answer to this (I think still open) question
about the possibility or impossibility of proceeding systematically
* This is a revised version of a lecture 1 had the honour to present at the
Universities of Georgia, Emory, Boston, Texas, Rice, and the Autonomous
National University of Mexico. I want to thank all participants in the discussions for
their valuable comments and suggestions. - A more comprelie~~sive treatment of the
issues raised here will he found in my forthcoming hook Phantasie iind Kalkiil.
1. Richard Horty, Philosophy arid tlic, M i r r o r of Natrirc, Princeton 1970.
2. Michael Dummett, Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought it to
Be? In: I h n i m e t t , Trrrfharid orlicv Eti[qrnas, Cambridge, Mass. 1978, pp. 437-458.
138 Philosophical Investi~qatiotis

in a type of philosophy to which language was taken to be of a

special methodological relevance, depends on a more concrete
question about language itself, namely: H o w much theory can
there be in a philosophical treatment of meaning; can there be a
theory of meaning at all, and if so, in what sense of theory? In
this paper I shall try to contribute to an answer to this question, and
in order to make it manageable in an appropriate time, I will further
restrict it by focusing on one particular problem, namely: How
can an undeniable and constitutive property of languagc, its
semantic complexity, be accounted for in a philosophy that agrees
with those ideas of Wittgenstein that can for short be hinted a t by
the terms language-game and form of life and by the slogan
meaning is use? I admit at the outset that I myself am sympathetic
to these ideas, but I would like to combine them with systematic
thinking.
As the given formulation of my question indicates, I am taking it
for granted that language is semantically complex. This entails two
claims, namely: language is complex, and (secondly) its complexity
is of semantic relevance. Let me give a very simple illustration of this
point: The two sentences Lucy is calling Linus and Linus is calling
Lucy have different meanings, although they contain exactly the
same words. The difference in meaning stems from a difference in
the combination of the elements of the sentences, so the complexity,
constituted by the fact that elements are combined and can be
recombined in a way that makes a difference, is of semantic
relevance and in this sense is a semantic complexity. What 1 am
asking, then, is this: Can semantic complexity be dealt with from a
perspective that feels in debt to Wittgenstcins later philosophy,
especially to his basic insight that speaking should in the first place
be seen as doing something, and that this doing something should
not always and not necessarily be seen as an act of picturing or
representing?
The following anecdote may illustrate why I think it is necessary
for someone sympathetic to Wittgenstein and to systematic
thinking as well, to work on this question. A few years ago a
philosopher from Canada, whose essays have always impressed me

2a. Michael Ihmmett, What is a Theory o f Mcatiing? In: S. Guttenplan (cd.),

Mirrd atrd Loqrra~qe.Oxford 1975, pp. 97-138; M. I>umniett, What is a Theory of
Meaning? (11); in: G. Evans, J . Mc1)owcll (cds.), Trirfh nrrd Mcnrrirr,q; E.<.soys irr
Scrnarrrics; Oxford 1976. pp. 67-137.
 H a n s J n l i i ~ sSchneidev 139

as clear, important, and far reaching, was giving a course on

theories of meaning a t a German university, explaining basic tenets
about language in the writings of Humboldt, Hegel, Heidegger,
and Wittgenstcin. When he was asked by a linguistics student, how
these accounts of language would deal with the phenomenon of
language structure, he confessed to be unable to provide even a hint
of an answer. This, of course, was completely disappointing for the
open-minded student who was ready to learn something new about
language structure in addition and possibly as an alternative to his
training in formal logic. And indeed I think that if silence would be
the last word of the Wittgcnsteinians about the topic of semantic
structure, they could not claim to have a philosophy of language.
The other philosopher that I have mentioned in my title is
Gottlob Frege. In his work we do find a treatment of semantic
structure, even if his object of study, his concept script, is in
important respects different from natural language, as he himself
was well aware. Michael l h m m e t t even claims that Freges treat-
ment of semantic complexity, although it surely is in need of
improvement in details and in need of certain additions in order to
become appropriate for natural languages, basically is the only one
we have. Without it, I ~ u m m e t tsays, we would have nothing,
especially we would have no account of how a hearer can work out
the meaning of a new sentence from the meanings of its parts and
the way of their composition. But without such an account we
would be forced to hold that all sentences, together with their
meanings or uses, are learned one by one. Given the fact that the
mastery of a language surely does not consist in the mastery of only
a finite number of specifiable sentences that the speaker has learned
how to use in a surveyable number of particular situation-types,
this claim, as Duinmett points out, obviously is absurd. So the
alternative we find ourselves confronted with seenis to be: Frege or
absurdity .
If one subscribes to the ideas of Wittgenstcin behind the
meaning-is-use -. formula and at the same time sees a point in
Dummetts claim that we do not know how to handle semantic
complexity, except in Fregcs way, one will tend to conclude that
what is needed is a combination of the approaches of these two
philosophers. A step towards such a combination would be to try
140 Philosophical In vestiqations

to incorporate a Fregean treatment of semantic complexity into a

Wittgcnsteinian framework of a philosophy of language. T o
accomplish this, one would (among other things) have to cut off
from Freges theory of sense its authors tendency to ontological
realism in the domains of sense and reference, and instead supply a
pragmatic or constructive foundation for Freges theory. The task
of this foundation would be to explain the concept of sense and
the phenomenon of semantic complexity in a way that is
compatible with the already mentioned insight that speaking is a
kind of doing something, not of naming or expressing prc-existing
units of sense and reference. Additionally one would have to give
(in Dummetts words) an account of the forces and points of
natural language utterances-in-situations. For both of these parts,
the foundational and the supplementary one, one could try to draw
on ideas of Wittgenstein.
But this projcct is difficult to work out. Dunimctt reports that he
has never found a Wittgenstcinian who was able to explain to him
what he takes as this philosophers rejection of Freges abstract
concept of the sense of a sentence, in which move he sees a
complete rejection of Frcges philosophy of l a n g ~ a g eThe
. ~ role of
this concept of sense, as Dummett perceives it, is to enable us to
speak about the content of a sentence in a neutral way, i.e.
independently of the particular types of use one can make of its
utterance. T o have such a neutral way of talking about the content
of a sentence is necessary for two reasons: The first is that one
sentence can bccome a part of a longer sentcncc (e.g. he is under
the shower or he is not a t home) without the use of a constituent
sentence becoming a part of the use of the whole sentence. The
second reason is that sentences used differently can stand in obvious
semantic relationships, like e.g. a question and an explicit answer.
If this concept of sense is an illegitimate one, Dummett says, we
have no level on which a Fregcan theory of semantic complexity
could work, and consequently we cannot account for a hearers
ability to understand new sentences.
Let me give an example. How would we explain the ability of a
hearer to understand the complex sentence if it is raining, she will
not come? In a Fregcan framework the hearers understanding is
reconstructed by assigning neutral senses to the two component
4. Michael Ihmmctt. Frege and Wittgenstcin in: J. Block (cd.), P(wpc,rrivc~s~ I I
rlrc Pltilosoiplry qf W ; q y s r & , Oxford 1081, pp. 31-42; ref. p. 40.
sentences, which then can be combined to form the sense of the
whole sentence. So imagine that a hearer has assigned a sense to the
first component of o u r sentence (it is raining). T h e important
thing to note n o w from 3 Frcgcan perspective is that this s w s c o f the
component sentence will be different from its I ~ S Yin the case where
it is uttered alone, i.c. without being embedded in an if-then-
clause. This difference between the abstract sense o f a scntence on
the one hand and any particular use of its utterance on thc other can
be seen e.g. in the fact, that by uttering the complex if-thcn-
sentence the speaker does not (as a first step) assert that it is raining,
which h e o r she typically would d o by uttering a sentence
consisting of the same words, but without the second part. So the
part-whole relationship on the level o f sounds docs not correspond
to a part-whole relationship 011 the level of speech acts. Therefore
the sense o f the component sentence cannot be specified in terms o f
the illocutionary role o f its utterance when it appears alone, and for
this reason the setrse of the sentence has to be something niorc
abstract than its 14se.
This abstract sense w e call in non-philosophical contexts the
meaning o f a sentence (and I will use this word hcrc in an
unterminological scnsc). When doing so w e d o not differentiate
between sentences and component sentences; both can have thc
same meaning which we take to be independent of any partic-irlar use
and as something that is for that reason able to contribute to thc
meaning of a complex sentence, in case it happens t o be a part o f
one. If this picture of what happens in the process of building up
(and, conversely, understanding i.c. analyzing) complex sentences
is invalidated by a denial of (Freges) abstract senses o r (our
colloquial) meanings (because, as Wittgcnstein seems to say, only
uses can be allowed as meanings, and uses arc always particular
uses), w e are, according t o Dumniett, forced to accept the absurd
conclusion that w e learn the uses o f sentences, including complex
sentences, one by one.
So thc first question that has to bc answered is whether
Wittgenstein does indeed deny the existcnce of an abstract level o f
the sense o f a sentence. I think that in a way he docs, and
furthermore that he is correct in doing so. But then the projected
combination of his views with those o f Fregc seems to be in
5. Cf. H.J. Schneider, O n Language U s e and Language Structure; in: Kodikasi
Code 2, 19x0, pp. 77-95.
142 Philosophical Iuivestiqations

dangcr, bccause thc approaches of Frege and Wittgenstcin scem to

exclude onc anothcr. This imprcssion of irreconcilability one not
only gets from the way Dummctt scts out thc problem, but also
whcn onc hears from Gordon P. Baker and Peter M.S. Hacker,
authors confessing a strong alliance to the philosophy of Wittgcnstein,
that there is no such thing as a Fregean philosophy of language.
According to them, natural language is so diffcrent from Freges
conccpt script, that our understanding of the former is in no way
cnhanccd by a comparison with the latter. But unfortunately these
authors, like thc Canadian collcague I have mentioned, have, to my
knowledge, so far not offered an account of semantic complexity of
their own.
So much then for the general background of the problem I am
dealing with. In the remaining parts of this papcr I shall move on in
three steps: First I shall propose an interpretation of what Dummctt
describes as Wittgensteins denial of sense; then I shall ask what
damage this denial is doing to a Fregcan conception of semantic
complexity; and finally I shall indicate some consequences that can
be drawn from the given interpretation of Wittgenstein for the
project of a theory of meaning.

2.
Therc are a number of paragraphs in the Philosophical Investigations
that Dummctt is rcferring to when he speaks of Wittgensteins
denial of the level of sensc: PI 304, 317, and 363. The most
important one for him is para. 363. In the text preceeding it,
Wittgenstein has been talking about words like to think, to
mean, and to imagine, and then he goes on to say:
But when I imagine Something, something certainly happens!
Well, something happens - and then I make a noise. What for?
Presumably in order to tell what happens. - But how is telling done?
When are we said to tell anything - What is the language-game of
telling? (German: mitteilen)
1 should like to say: you regard it much too much as a matter of
course that one can tell anything to anyone. That is to say: we are so
much accustomed to communication through language, in con-
versation, that it looks to us as if the whole point of communication

6 . G.P. Baker, P.M.S. Hacker, Dummetts Frege or Through a Looking-Glass

Darkly; in: Mitid 92 (1983). pp. 239-246.
7. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosoplrisclir U r ~ t e r s ~ ~ ~ / ~ : ~ r ~ ~ ~ c . r ~ Iwrsri~qatiorrs,
/PI,ilor~~ppl~i~al
New York 1953. Henceforward quoted as PI and paragraph no.
 143

lay in this: soniconc clsc grasps the sense of niy words - which is
something mental: he as it were takes it into his own mind. Lfhc then
docs something further with it as well, that is no part of thc
immediate purpose of language.
O n e would like to say Telling brings it about that he kr~owsthat I
am in pain; it produces this mental phenomenon: everything else is
inessential to telling. As for what this queer phenomenon of
knowledge is - there is time enough for that. Mental processes just
arc quccr. (It is as if one said: The clock tclls us the time. What time
is, is not yet settled. And as for what one tells the time.for - that
doesnt come in here.) (PI 363)

There are a number of points Wittgenstein is making or alluding

to in this paragraph, and I shall sort out the ones that are relevant for
the present discussion. He has been talking about phrases like I said
to myself. . ., I meant, and I imagine. He then investigates the
commonsense understanding his fictional interlocutor expresses by
saying that in these cases the speaker is tellin? or informing a hearer
about what is happening or has happened. The commonsense
understanding of I imagine takes it to be parallel to 1 am making a
fist in my pocket or I am shivering. something happens, and
language is used to tell or inform a hearer about what happens.
Instead of discussing directly the purported menial actions or
events that seem to be designated by these verbs (this he has done in
other paragraphs), Wittgenstein here turns our attention to the
concept of telling or informing someone about something: Is there
a language game of telling? In an effort to relate this formulation of
Wittgensteins to the way Dummett has set out the problem, we
could ask: Does it make sense to speak in general terms about a
language-gamc of telling in the sense of only conveying a content?
If this were meaningful, it would be possible to separate the
question what has been told or what content has been expressed
from the further questions what speech-act has been pcrformcd
and what was the point of this particular utterance, expressing this
content. This separability of a level of pure content-expression,
neutral with respect to use and point, seemed to be necessary for a
Fregean account of semantic complexity. Does Wittgenstein in fact
deny that such a separation is possible?
If it is taken in isolation, the quoted paragraph could be read in a
way that allows a negative answer; it could be read as saying that an
act of grasping the sense of the words and the sentence in the sense
of picking up the information does occur, but is not the whole
144 Philosophical Investigations

point of communication; after having grasped the sense of what

someone says, we usually do something with the information
received. But this reading would trivialize the paragraph, and 1
think Dummett is correct in giving it a more radical interpretation.
By his mocking remarks about the queer mental phenomenon of
just grasping -and then knowing the pure content of an utterance,
Wittgenstein indeed wants to question whether it is possible to
isolate a level of content-transportation from all questions concerning
the use and the point of the utterance the content of which we
grasp. The specific claim that Wittgenstein is making here, is that
the form or forms that suggest to us that a unit of content or sense is
being transported, can only on a superficial level be mistaken as
indicating that a universal type of a potentially self-sufficient
linguistic act is being performed, an act that could be described as
telling somebody something or informing somebody about
something by first naming it and then predicating something of it.
What the hearer will later d o with the information is then seen
(mistakenly) as a secondary question.
This point might come out in a sharper light if it is stated in
terms of John Searles theory of speech acts that he devised in an
effort to make Wittgenstein more systematic. What Searle calls the
formulation of the propositional content, according to Wittgenstein, is
not a uniform linguistic act-type, common to all explicit illocutionary
acts, regardless of the specific syntax used to realize them; but this
is stated by Searle and suggested by his standard form of notation.
Wittgenstein claims that it is only the form of representation that
is uniform, not what is happening in terms of doing something by
saying something, not even on the level of the so-called propo-
sitional act. And in this sense Wittgenstein claims that there is no
language-game of telling or informing or just making known a
content.

8. John Scarlc, S p d i Arf.s; AIJ Essny iri die P/ii/osop/ry ctf Lnr~~qrrqc; Cambridge
1969. For his systematic claims cf. B. Magcc, T/rr Grmr Plrilosoplicrs, Oxford 1988,
pp. 342 ff. For criticism cf. H.J. Schneidcr, 1st dic Iridikation cine Sprcchhandlung?
Zuni Zusarnmenhang zwischen pragniatischcn und syntaktischcn Funktionsbestim-
mungcn; in: K. Lorenz (cd.), Korrsfrrrkti~~ric~rr v ~ r r r r s Poritioricrr; Beitrhjy x r
Bd. 2, Bcrlin 1979, pp. 23-36; and:
Diskussiuri i r r n dic korrstrrrktivc~Wisr~rrsclr~ftrtlrr~~ric.,
Schneider, l k sprachphilosophischen Atinahmen dcr Sprechaktthcoric; in:
M. Dascal, D. Gcrhardus, K . Lorcnz, G. Meggle (eds.), Sprnt/rp/ri/osupl~ir; riri
Forsrhrrii~q;Bcrliii (forthcoming).
irrtmratiotra/rz Hurrdhrrc-k rcif,c(c,rriissis~/rcr
 Most of the examples he uses to argue his case arc from the
domain of the so-called mental terms. In addition to the already
quoted case of I imaginc, I shall mention here only one more
example that impresses me as being among the most convincing; it
is the locution I remember having meant him, uttered as a
comment or explanation e.g. of an act of silently beckoning.
Rhetorically Wittgenstein asks: Am I remembering a process or
state? - When did it begin, what was its course; etc.? (PI 661). By
asking these questions he brings the reader to see that the
expression to mean somebody is in its function quite different
from an expression such as to touch somebody, although both
expressions show the same surface grammar (PI 664). It is not
just that an inward action instead of a n overtly visible one is
reported or told about, but actually there is no process, state, or
action, no object that is reported or described when the expression
is used. Only what Wittgenstein calls the form of representation
suggests that there is an information about something; if we stop
and think, we will find that this something does not exist. - O n
the othcr hand, saying this does not mean to imply that these words
are vacuous; if they were, they would not constitute a problem for
the philosophy of language, because they could simply be
discarded. But since these words arc in a sense about nothing,
they may appear to be vacuous. Wittgenstein calls this situation a
paradox, and he says about it in an earlier paragraph:
(it) disappears only if we make a radical brcak with thc idea that
language always functions in one way, always serves thc same
purpose: to convey thoughts - which may be about houses, pains,
good and evil, or anything else you please. (PI 304)
Since I do not have the time here to discuss more examples, I can
only state that on this point I agree with Wittgenstein; he is right in
his specific way of denying that language always functions in one
way, and this is not only the case in the domain of mental terms,
as can be seen from so different sentences as fourteen is even and
God is merciful. Supposing that this is so, and further supposing
that this is not just a matter of a few particularly colourful or poetic
ways of speaking, (ways of speaking, that can easily be translated
into their so called literal counterparts that would express directly
what the objects are that the sentence in question is really about):
what are the consequences of these facts for the concept of sense
and the possibility or impossibility of a theory of meaning?
146 Philosophical Investi,qations

3.
I can think of two extreme answers to this question. The first
would be motivated by the necessity to give a systematic account of
semantic complexity, and in order to accomplish this, it would
adopt a very restricted and technical use of the word sense, and
with it a very restricted theory of meaning (and this latter point is
my reason for calling it extreme). This restricted use of the term
sense would be established by confining it to the level Wittgenstcin
calls surface grammar. To speak of the sense c.g. of the expression
I meant him would in this case not include mention of the fact that
it does not refer to an inner action, process, or state. Whatever
grammatical fictions (11 307) a particular language makes up will
be treated by such a theory of sense as being of the same order as
other, more regular, objects or actions. No distinctions will be
made as to the existence of numbers, feelings, inner actions, values,
etc., and in a framework of this kind it would be quite correct to
say that in using language we are giving information about all these
things.
The advantage of this answer is that it can handle semantic
complexity; its disadvantage is that it stops short of what we
normally call the meaning of an expression. Contrary to what
Wittgenstcin recommends, such an approach would not break with
the idea that language always functions in one way; or, more
precisely, if such an abandonment were made, it would have no
effects on the level of sense. If such a restricted approach were the
whole theory of meaning, obviously the result would be philo-
sophically uninteresting. I will explain in a moment that I do think
we need a restricted concept of scnsc, but for a theory of meaning
we need more.
The second radical answer I can think of would not fare much
better philosophically. It would follow Wittgenstcins urge to give
up the idea of a homogenous functioning of language, but it would
do so to such an extreme that it would abandon the project of
providing any general account of how we come to understand new
sentences. I t would refuse to make any general statements about
language a t all, and by avoiding them, it would disable itself for the
task of giving a convincing treatment of semantic complexity.
Somebody interested in language structure could not expect to get
any answer from this type of a philosophy of language.
The path that I myself would try to take is one between these
 Huns Julius Schneidw 147

two extremes. T o my judgement, one of Wittgcnsteins basic

insights concerning semantic complexity is the following: The
nieans that we use to build up complex expressions, e.g. the forms
proper name + verb or the philosophically more prominent
referring expression +
predicating expression arc, contrary to
their outer appearance, not uniform in their meaning. In opposition
e.g. to what John Scarles theory of speech acts states, referring to
something is not an act like touching something, that is in
principle always the sanie type of an act, the tokens or realizations
of which are only different in so far as different objects are touched
or referred to: some, as it were, material, some mental, some
spiritual, etc. And in a parallel fashion, the act-type of predicating is
not like the act--type of sorting things out, of putting an object into
one of a number of prefabricated boxes, only that the boxes and the
individual objects are different from token to token.
This multiplicity in meaning in those devices of our language
that we use to build complex expressions is quite pervasive and,
possibly for this reason, nearly unrecognized. In order to highlight
the otherwise inconspicuous character of the phenomenon and to
draw attention to it, I propose to call it syntactic metaphor. This
expression is meant to indicate two things: The first is that
language here is looked at under a genetic perspective that tries to
understand o w language by comparing it to a gradual development
of fictitious language-games from simple beginnings to ever more
complicated forms. In Wittgensteins words: We see that we can
build up the complicated forms from the primitive ones by

gradually adding new forms. In this diachronic perspective,
processes appear as metaphoric that we would normally not
recognize as such because of their familiarity. The second point to
be mentioned about the proposed label is that the term syntactic
here is understood as having its old, i.e. wider meaning of related
to sentence building, not the narrow and by now widespread
(Carnapian) meaning of related to the formal properties of
concatenations of graphic o r acoustic elements, the meanings of
which are (presently) not considered. Calling the described
phenomenon a riwtupliov is furthermore meant to imply that in an
account of the working of natural languages attention to it is
unavoidable. It cannot be circumvented by a project that wants to
0 . Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies for the Philosophical Invcstigdtions,
generally known as thc Blrtc orrd Bnircw Books, New York 1958, p. 17.
148 Ph ilos ophica 1 i v i ves t iga t io n s

describe the hidden structure of natural language by constructing a

language that follows the maxim always use a new linguistic
means if you are using languagc in a ncw function.
This latter point is worth elaborating. As it is thc case in the field
of metaphor traditionally so called, if one would try to follow such
a maxim, one would soon find it a task impossible to fulfil. The
first obstacle would bc the prospect of a vocabulary growing to an
incomprehensible size. The second and more important obstacle
would be the recognition that the task cannot be fulfilled by
mirroring the structure of the objects one is going to talk about.
This point can be illustrated with the help of Wittgcnsteins
examples: How would onc go about devising a literal or
unmetaphorical equivalent for the expression I meant him? It
would have to be a locution with a syntactic structure that would
not suggest any inward action or proccss, but would still probably
mention the speaking person and the object that in the old
expression is referred to by the word him. 1 am not denying that it
is possible to invent a new expression to servc the old function, an
cxprcssion that will perhaps be different enough from our normal
verbs not to suggest any wrong conclusions about the nature of
what it is that the speakcr is doing by uttering the expression. What
I do not see is what it would mean to say that this new cxprcssion is
a literal one, about which onc could say that it truly mirrors the
type of fact that it is about. So supposing for thc sake of
argument that somebody has comc up with a proposal of thc kind
described (i.e. he is not claiming any directly mirroring quality for
it, but only a differentiating quality with respect to other
expressions of the same language): does the possibility of making
up a new expression of this kind show that we have a general
solution for our task to show the real or deep or speech act
structure that has been hidden behind our imperfect means of
realization and that we so far have only implicitly grasped in cases
where we used language without being misguided?
I think thc answer is no, because whcn a gencral process of
substituting our old ambiguous expressions by new and unambig-
uous ones would rcally be put into operation (supposing for a
moment that this is possible), it would be beside the point, as long
as it remains our goal in the whole endeavour to arrive at a theory
of mcaning for our language. For thc result of thc imagined proccss
would be a new language; it would ncithcr be more adequate to any
alleged language-independent facts (facts o f the outside world or
facts of the realm of thought), nor would it explain how w e arc
able to use and understand o w owii language.
T h e first of thesr points, namely, that it makes n o sense in the
cases he has in mind to speak o f a true form o f representation that
would picture the real structure of the underlying reality, I have
n o space to elaborate in this paper. Wittgeristcin makes it e.g. in
P I 402, where hc imagines his interlocutor proposing anothcr
expression instead of the usual now I a m having such-and-such an
image (Vorstellung). H e says:
You arc inclined to say it should really have been expressed
differently, perhaps simply by niaking a sign with ones hand and
then giving a description. - When as in this casc, w e disapprove of
the expressions of ordinary language (which are after all performing
their office), w e have got a picturc in our heads which conflicts with
the picture of our ordinary way o f speaking. Whereas we arc
tempted to say that our way of speaking docs not describe thc facts
as they really are. As if, for cxariiplc the proposition he has pains
could be falsc in sonie other way than by that mans r i o f having pains.
As if thc form of exprcssioii were saying somcthing falsc even when
the proposition jiirre d~ tnicwx assertcd something true. (11 402)

Concerning the second point, that it is the goal of the whole

endeavour to get a better understanding of our owt? language, I
think that w e have to accept a polarity that cannot be straightenrd
out by clinging to one of the poles only, and excluding the other
one. I n the same general context that I have taken the examples
from, Wittgcnstein characterizes this polarity in the following way:
O n e can n o w say that the words I wanted N. to conic to me
describe the state o f m y niind at that time; and again one may riot say
so. (PI 662)

One may say so (I a m interpreting these words) on the restricted

level of sense that I havc tried to characterize above. This level of
sense is indispensable for the philosopher as well as for the ordinary
user o f language, but it is hardly illuminating if it is treated in
isolation. There can be no account of semantic complexity without
it, and conseq~~ently no throry of meaning. I regard it as a mistake
by Wittgenstein that he tends to neglect this level in his later work;
he gives us only very few hints, e.g. when he talks about our
calculating with words (PI 449, 559) or of making use of a n
identity of words in the calculus (PI 565).
150 W i ilosop h ical Investigations

O n the other hand, Wittgenstein says, one may not say that the
words I wanted N. to comc to me describe a state of my mind, if
(so I am interpreting him) one takes this cxpression to liccnsc
qucstions such as where is your mind; has it ever been in exactly
the same state bcfore; ctc.. The capability to recognize the
inappropriatencss of this kind of question is also, like an under-
standing on the levcl of scnse, an indispcnsablc part of a persons
linguistic compctcncc; any picture of languagc that does not
account for this ability, is in a serious way incomplete. I take it to
bc onc of Wittgcnstcins important merits to have shown that thc
problem of telling for an expression, which moves arc legitimate
responses to it in the language-game under way and which are not,
cannot be solved by a formal procedure. As is the casc in
traditionally so callcd metaphors, the hearers imagination has to
close the gap between a given form of representation and a
particular function that a use of this form has in a particular (type
o f ) situation.
What thcn docs follow from thcse considerations for the abstract
notion of sense? It seems to me that two conclusions have to bc
drawn. The first is that Dummett is right when hc says that we
need the conccpt of an abstract sensc of c.g. a constituent sentence,
in order to be able to account for our ability to understand
sentences we have not encountered beforc. But the second con-
clusion is that a concept of sensc that is compatible with thc point of
Wittgcnsteins remarks about the languagc-game of telling, would
have to be even more abstract than Fregc and Dummctt would like
it to be. Its proper place is on the level of surfacc grammar; and this
means that to grasp the scnse of an expression does not necessarily
entail to grasp its meaning. As Dummett observes, it normally
docs not entail grasping the force of the speech act performed, nor
its point. But additionally, it seems to me that in many cases
grasping the sense of an exprcssion does not even entail grasping its
meaning.
Accordingly, an account that tries to combine basic ideas of
Frege and Wittgcnstein, will present thc following picture of
semantic complexity: To know the meaning of a complex-building
device of a given language is, parallel to the case of single words, to
know some of its uses. If we now think of a particular utterance of a
sentence, a hearer may know some uses of all the component words
and some uses of all the complex-building devices of the sentence
 Hans Julius ScCzneidev 151

uttered. What Wittgenstein pointed out is that there are cases in

which this knowledge docs not by itself constitute a knowledge of
the full meaning of the utterance, or of all sentences that arc
constructable with the help of these components. In such a case we
will now say that the hearer knows only the abstract sense of this
particular sentence (and not its use), although he knows the meaninqs
(i.c some uses) of all the elements of the sentence, including the
complex-building devices. The knowledge of the abstract sense of
the sentence includes his grasp of its semantic complexity, but still
there would (in the cases we have in mind) be something missing in
his or her understanding of the whole sentence.
What is missing can be of two kinds. In the first case the
restricted understanding would be very restricted indeed, because it
would not suffice for the hearer or speaker to be able to take part in
any language-game by using the sentence in question. He or she
would know its abstract sense (and this would include knowing
some use for every constituent), but would be unable to use the
sentence as a whole. An example belonging to this category is the
expression I said to myself . . . when the hearer belongs to a
culture in which the function that in our language is served by the
picture of talking invisibly to oneself is taken care of by some other
means. I am not claiming that such a person-will be unable to guess
how we use this form of words; one can observe children guessing
at such meanings and finding these ways of talking funny when
they first (when learning their first language) encounter them. I
only claim that it is not possible to derive the meaning of the
sentence from what I have called the knowledge of its abstract
sense.
In the second case we have a quite different kind of an incomplete
understanding of an expression, and this is the one that Wittgenstein is
most concerned about. Here the speaker knows some uses for all
constituents and all complex-building devices, and he knows the
regular use of the whole expression when it is at work. What he or
she fails to see is the (as I proposed to say) metaphorical character of
the ,syntactic devices, and this failure leads him or her to ask
misleading philosophical questions. The incompleteness of the
understanding consists in the persons missing awareness of the
illegitimacy of these questions. Knowing the abstract sense and
even knowing the normal use of an expression does not necessarily
entail the ability to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate ways of
152 Philosophical Investigations

carrying on a language-game, especially when it turns to philo-

sophical questions.
So the concept of sense emerging from these arguments does not
take us as far as Frege (and Dummett) would want it to take us; the
understanding of the sense of an expression is necessary for
grasping its semantic complexity, but in many (and not only in a
few exceptional) cases it stops short of taking us to its full meaning.
In order to arrive a t the meaning of a sentence, it is necessary (if I
may say so) to make an imaginative jump. Certainly a person can
develop a special skill for this kind of mental fitness, comparable to
the skill in using analogies or inventing good metaphors. And a
skill much like it is needed to distinguish legitimate from
misleading questions. But there is no way of substituting the
exercise of this skill by a process of rule-following, of derivation or
calculation. Some kind of calculating does take place on the level of
sense, and it is indispensable. It is e.g. necessary for a competent
hearer to recognize the type of change in thc meanings of sentences
of the forms Peter loves Mary vs. Mary loves Peter. But what is
then needed is imagination and experience. Neither part of this
polarity of calculation and imagination can be taken care of by the
respective other part.

4.
I am now able to conclude my exposition with only a few remarks
about the project of a theory of meaning. These will easily be seen
as consequences of what I have been arguing so far. If by the words
a theory of meaning we mean to designate a network of sentences
claiming to express truths about language as a system of intricately
interrelated verbal actions, I see no reason to deny the possibility of
such a theory, or even to deny that in Wittgensteins writings we
find important contributions to it as well as many open questions.
The therapy he offers is not only a view, a way of looking at
language, but it is a view that can be expressed in words and
sentences, the meanings of which will not be trivial. When
Dummett says in order to analyse thought . . . it is necessary to
make explicit (the) principles, regulating our use of language,
which we already implicitly grasp, I see no reason to disagree if
the word principle is taken in a wide enough sense to enable us to

10. M. I>ummett, Can Analytical Philosophy . . . (cf. note 7), p. 447-

 Hans jirlius Srlirzeidcv 153

speak e.g. of the principle of making a metaphorical use of an

expression or form.
What I hope to have shown is not possible is to meet Duninietts
expectation that for a workable theory of meaning the notion of
sense be such that, once we know both the category to which a
sentence belongs (i.e. the speech act type; H.J.S.) and the sense
which it carries, then we have an essential grasp of the significance
of an uttcraiice of the sentence. O r , in other words, I think it is
not the case that there is some uniform means of deriving all the
other features of the usc of any sentence from this one feature (i.e.
its sense; H.J.S.) so that knowledge of that one feature of a sentence
is the only specific piece of knowledge about it that we need to
know its meaning. I think that Wittgcnstein has shown that no
such derivation in any strict sense is possible; there will always be
gaps that have to be closed by our imagination. But a t the same
time this does not force us to deny the existence of a lcvel of sense,
at which something like Freges calculating the scnse of the
sentence from thc sense of its constituents and the ways of their
combination does take place. So there is a place for dealing with
semantic complexity, only in many cases it does not lead us all the
way to the meaning of a sentence in a philosophically relevant
sense. And this nieans that a theory of meaning has to be richer
than a theory of abstract sense. It has to include the treatment of
syntactic metaphor.

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11. Lor. tit.. p. 450.

12. M. Dummett, What is a Theory of Meaning? (11) (cf. note 21).
p. 75.