Metaphysical Language: Does it have any Meaning?

When we speak of something as metaphysical, we speak of something that is usually characterized as supernatural or something that is not perceptible by our senses.  When we talk about the things that our minds’ eyes see and not the things that our physical eyes see, we are talking in the language that is metaphysical.

This is one of the things that the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein looks into in his book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus.  Wittgenstein argues that metaphysical language does not have any meaning.  They are as good as words that do not signify anything.  He even contends that the metaphysical statements should not be said:

The right method in philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. ,the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would not be satisfying to the other --he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly correct method. ... Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (Wittgenstein, 6.53-7)

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This does not mean that metaphysical propositions are all automatically false.  What Wittgenstein means is that it is beyond the realm of logic for us to understand metaphysical language.  This is not because they are profound or beyond our reality or beyond our senses but because, for Wittgenstein, they have no sense.

To illuminate, let us take for example this scenario.  I saw a huge Blue Heron flying in front of me and the next day, my neighbor won the lottery.  Another day, I saw a Blue Heron again and two days after that, an accident happened in front of my house.  Now, I see a Blue Heron the third time and I conclude that the Blue Heron is a sign of something will happen.  Nobody knows what will happen but I am sure that the sign means that something will happen because I see it in my mind’s eyes, my soul.  My metaphysical statement is that the Blue Heron is a sign that things will happen.  It is like saying that when we see a black cat, bad things will happen to us.

For Wittgenstein, it does not have any sense to say that a situation is a result of my perception of a Blue Heron or a bad luck is the result of my seeing a black cat.  He says that sentences like these work like a picture.  Since it is very difficult to explain, let me explain it through an example.  A map of the United States, for example, is a picture that points to the land of the United States.  The map shows that New York is more or less in the Eastern side of the map and Washington is in the Western side of the map.

If we are in the Central part of the United States and we want to go to Seattle, we will fly eastward.  We will not fly westward because the map which pictures for us the location of Seattle tells us that Seattle lies east of the United States.   This is what Wittgenstein means when he says that “there must be something identical in a picture and what it depicts” (Wittgenstein 2.161).  The map mimics the way reality is structured.  It mimics the way the real locations in the US are placed beside each other.

Language works like a picture.  It tells us what the situation is.  Wittgenstein says, “We picture facts to ourselves” (2.1).  For him, the meaning of a statement is whatever it pictures.  The meaning of the statement tells the situation of the world but like the picture, it can not tell us if it is actually true of false.  When we make a statement for example and we feel that it is meaningful, what the sentence is doing is that it is just pointing to a possible situation in the reality but it may be true or false.

When we say, for example that a Blue Heron causes things to happen like it is the cause of our neighbor’s winning in the lottery or accident, the statement’s meaning pictures to us situations that can be true but we cannot be really sure because there is nothing in the sentence that makes it true.  Wittgenstein says, “In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality” (Wittgenstein, 2.223).

If we apply this with the statement, “The Blue Heron causes things to happen, things like winning a lottery or being the cause of people’s car accident”.  A Blue Heron is a big bird that lazes around the shallow part of water.  By definition, it has wings.  It can fly.  It has a beak, it can catch fish.  It can walk for a few steps.  It can swim.  These are the capabilities of a Blue Heron.  In reality, nothing in its definition or physical make-up can tell us that it can make a man win a lottery or be in a car accident.

So the statement that “The Blue Heron causes things to happen, things like winning a lottery or being the cause of people’s car accident” does not have any sense.  As Wittgenstein says, “There is no compulsion making on thing happen because another has happened.  The only necessity that exists is logical necessity” (Wittegenstein 6.37).  We can understand the statement but it is nonsensical if we analyze it following Wittgenstein.

In the same way, Wittgenstein would say that it does not have any sense to talk about a ‘soul’ or ‘a good life’.  We do not know what a soul is.  Nobody has seen a soul.  Nobody has reported that he or she sees a soul getting out of the body of a person who has just died.  We cannot find a correspondence for the world ‘soul’ in reality.  We have a sign for soul but we do not have a referent for the sign.

When somebody dies and we say that he/she has lived a ‘good life’, it is also nonsensical.  What is a good life to one is not automatically the good life to another.  There is no single referent for what the sign ‘good life’.  It is also nonsensical when people at the funeral say about the dead person that lives were changed because of him.  Again, value statements like these are subjective and are not verifiable.  How can this statement be analyzed if there nothing that can be the referent for the sign.  The referent has died.  For Wittgenstein says, “The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. . .  Soo too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end” (Wittgenstein 6.43-6.431).

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