What was said in the writing of Wittgenstein

Though the writing of Wittgenstein had great impact on the logical positivists and linguistic philosophers, the conclusions drawn by him through rigorous analysis are not universally acceptable. Indeed, they have been severely criticized.

Undoubtedly the views of Wittgenstein brought about a revolutionary change in philosophic thinking and his theories proved very fertile in as much as through their criticism new insights were achieved.

The verification theory of meaning propounded by Wittgenstein has been shown to be built upon the foundation of shifting sand. Among its numerous criticism the most crucial is that the criterion by which the meaning is to be tested is itself untested.

For example, “This is a table” can be verified by visual, tactual and other means but, there is no way to verify that to verify the meaning by these means is a meaningful proposition.

To this criticism, Wittgenstein replies that “My propositions are elucidatory in this way; he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed upon it).

He must surmount these propositions, and then he sees the world rightly.” The principle of verification, if strictly adopted as a criterion of meaning, would render many a scientific propositions meaningless.

For example, “There are atoms” is not verifiable in the ordinary sense. We know the existence of atoms inferentially and direct observation of these is as yet not possible. Therefore, adherence to the strict verification criterion would rule out science as senseless.

The crucial error into which Wittgenstein slipped was that he failed to make distinction between science and philosophy and treated them as similar, whereas, science and philosophy are unlike both in subject matter and methodology.

Wittgenstein greatly undervalued philosophy. He accorded to the physical world the status of ultimately as real but, as a matter of fact, the world of values is as much real as the physical world. The values are not capable of analysis.

Philosophy has made significant contribution towards understanding and development of values. Wittgenstein utterly ignored this aspect of philosophy. He did so on account of his over-reliance on the physical world as being ultimately real.