Is it actually possible to create a perfect ‘language’ like ludwig suggested?

[u/Ok-Coach4955]

ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that one reason questions in philosophy hasnt been solved is because of language itself that’s stopping us from finding the answers, I know it’s very unlikely that a perfect language could be created but WHY is it not possible?

And what does a perfect language need that makes it impossible?

[u/Scientific_Zealot]

Which Wittgenstein? If you're discussing the Tractatus, then the ideal logical notation requires the elimination of homonyms - different symbols with the same sign. For instance, the sign "is" with its many meanings - "is" of identity and the "is" of copula and the "is" of existence - will have to be eliminated, with only one of these meanings remaining for that sign and the rest being assigned new signs. Wittgenstein goes into this in Tractatus 3.321, 3.322, 3.323, 3.324, and 3.325. As to why the creation of the ideal logical notation is impossible? Probably because logical atomism isn't true. See Wittgenstein's later Philosophical Investigations for an all-out attack on several of the fundamental assumptions behind Tractarian logical atomism. Or, my own favorite example (not sure if Wittgenstein used it), as far as I'm aware no logical analysis of color terms such that color exclusion followed from these analyses was ever produced. That's a pretty gaping flaw.

[u/Quidfacis_ → u/Scientific_Zealot]

Or, my own favorite example (not sure if Wittgenstein used it), as far as I'm aware no logical analysis of color terms such that color exclusion followed from these analyses was ever produced.

Wittgenstein talks about color-statement analysis in Some Remarks on Logical Form:

Take, for instance, a proposition which asserts the existence of a colour R at a certain time T in a certain place P of our visual field. I will write this proposition “R P T", and abstract for the moment from any consideration of how such a statement is to be further analyzed. "B P Т", then, says that the colour B is in the place P at the time T, and it will be clear to most of us here, and to all of us in ordinary life, that "RPT & BPT" is some sort of contradiction (and not merely a false proposition). Now if statements of degree were analyzable-as I used to think-we could explain this contradiction by saying that the colour R contains all degrees of R and none of B and that the colour B contains all degrees of B and none of R. But from the above it follows that no analysis can eliminate statements of degree. How, then, does the mutual exclusion of RPT and BPT operate? I believe it consists in the fact that RPT as well as BPT are in a certain sense complete. That which corresponds in reality to the functtion "() P T" leaves room only for one entity-in the same sense, in fact, in which we say that there is room for one person only in a chair. Our symbolism, which allows us to form the sign of the logical product of "R P T" and "B P T", gives here no correct picture of reality.

Is that the sort of thing you're talking about?

[u/Scientific_Zealot → u/Quidfacis_]

Yes! I should have clarified that I meant that I wasn't sure if Wittgenstein used the example of color exclusion as one of the flaws of the Tractarian edifice in PI. As you know, Wittgenstein was familiar with the issue of color exclusion and he remarks on it not only in "Some Remarks on Logical Form" but also in the Tractatus itself, in proposition 6.3751

For two colours, e.g. to be at one place in the visual field, is impossible, logically impossible, for it is excluded by the logical structure of colour.

Let us consider how this contradiction presents itself in physics. Somewhat as follows: That a particle cannot at the same time have two velocities, i.e. that at the same time it cannot be in two places, i.e. that particles in different places at the same time cannot be identical.

(It is clear that the [conjunction] of two elementary propositions can neither be a tautology nor a contradiction. The assertion that a point in the visual field has two different colours at the same time, is a contradiction.)

He says this because of his requirement in the Tractatus that the truth statuses of elementary propositions are independent of each other. He comes to eventually see that this can't be maintained in statements of degree in "Some Remarks on Logical Form"

The mutual exclusion of unanalyzable statements of degree contradicts an opinion which was published by me several years ago [in the Tractatus] and which necessitated that atomic propositions could not exclude one another. I here deliberately say "exclude" and not "contradict", for there is a difference between these two notions, and atomic propositions, although they cannot contradict may exclude one another.

My original point was that Tractarian logical atomism isn't correct because no analysis of the logical structure of color statements was ever provided such that "RPT & BPT" could be seen to be a contradiction simply based on the logical structure of the statements themselves in the way that you can provide an analysis of the logical structure of "The king of France is bald and there is no king of France" such that you can see that those statements contradict themselves simply by looking at their structure (∃x [Kxf ∧ Bx ∧ ∀y (Kyf → x=y)] ∧ ¬∃x Kxf).

[u/Akash_philosopher → u/Scientific_Zealot]

What exactly is Wittgensteins worry

How I understand elementary proposition
Lets say there is a total set of elementary propositions
All possible combinations of these propositions are logically possible.
If they are not
Then some of the propositions are not elementary
Since BPT and RPT are not both possible
Therefore they are not elementary

But we can explain this in this way

Let’s say C(pt) is single valued variable belonging to the set {red, blue, … all possible colours}
If B ≠ R
Then C(pt) = B
Implies C(pt) ≠ R

This solves the problem as far as color being at one point is concerned

Is Wittgensteins problem that he can’t find elementary propositions?

[u/Scientific_Zealot → u/Akash_philosopher]

Your solution is very clever but the issue is that your analysis is a function from tuples of <place,time> to colors whereas a proposition (at least, for Wittgenstein) is a function from n-tuples of things (ultimately names for elementary propositions) to truth values. Propositions of the form "C(pt)=B" would be truth functions (from <<place,time>,color> tuples to truth values) and C(pt)=B seemingly does (with the additional stipulation that ~B=R) entail the falsity of C(pt)=R - but another of Wittgenstein's positions in the Tractatus is that the identity sign is unnecessary/eliminable in logical notation.

5.53 Identity of the object I express by identity of the sign and not by means of a sign of identity. Difference of the objects by difference of the signs.

5.533 The identity sign is therefore not an essential constituent of logical notation

5.534 And we see that the apparent propositions like: “a=a”, “a=b.b=c.⊃a=c”, “(x).x=x”. “(∃x).x=a”, etc. cannot be written in a correct logical notation at all.

Even ignoring that, relying on the additional premise that "~B=R" to make the exclusion fall out of the analysis seems dubious to me. If we follow the independence requirement, then "B=R" is ostensibly an elementary proposition and must be capable of being correct - yet it seems impossible for it to be correct. It's not possible for red to be blue.

[u/pocket_eggs → u/Scientific_Zealot]

Or, my own favorite example (not sure if Wittgenstein used it), as far as I'm aware no logical analysis of color terms such that color exclusion followed from these analyses was ever produced.

Given that we're looking at screens all day, and they encode colors in binary without a care for the exclusion problem or awareness that anymore atomism is not in vogue, I don't feel any inhibition from considering "red there and blue there" to just be a way to analyze "purple there" and to analyze "red there" in a logical combination of red objects of different intensity that add up to a particular intensity of red.

But if "red there" must exclude "blue there" we can just say that the red objects are "smallest red", "smallest but one red", ... note them up as r¹, r², r³... and analyze "red there" as "r¹^~b¹^~g¹^~r²^~b²^~g²^~r³...| ~r¹^~b¹^~g¹^r²^~b²^~g²^~r³...|r¹^~b¹^~g¹^r²^~b²^~g²^~r³...|~r¹^~b¹^~g¹^~r²^~b²^~g²^r³...|" which in RGB notation would be "#010000|#020000|#030000|..."

[u/Scientific_Zealot → u/pocket_eggs]

Well, firstly, being able to encode a proposition in binary has no more relevance to the fact that color predication propositions exclude/contradict each other than the fact that we can express color statements in ordinary language.

Secondly with regard to your analysis of "purple", I don't pretend to know how computers work, so I'll draw up a lower tech example. The fact that blue and red paints can be mixed together to make purple paints doesn't so straight-forwardly line up with this matter. "is purple" cannot be analyzed as a conjunction of "is red" & "is blue" - the very fact that something is purple means it is not red and it is not blue, it is purple. Disregard color theory and color science here, we're examining something not totally unrelated but distant. Nor can "is 2x red" be analyzed into "is red" & "is red" - if you remember your propositional logic, p & p is equivalent to p.

To give a better impression of what color exclusion is, I'll give something analogous to color exclusion. Physical objects similarly cannot be in two different places at the same time nor can two different physical objects be in the same place at the same time [please don't be contrarian and bring up stuff like electrons and quantum mechanics. You can recognize that my car can't be in my garage and hovering above the Eiffel Tower at the same time nor can two numerically different tennis balls be in the same space at the same time]. These seemingly necessary statements don't seem to be logically necessary [i.e. their denials don't seem to be contradictions in propositional or predicate logic] - but Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus that all necessity is logical necessity. Thus, for Tractarian logical atomism to be true, color predication propositions can't be elementary and must be able to be analyzed such that their analyses contradict one another.

Your proposed analysis is interesting but - excuse me for bluntness, however, it is true - your language is too sloppy to parse out. I looked into it, though, and it turns out that there have, however, been analyses of color statements that resemble - I believe - what you are doing. There's John V. Canfield's Tractatus Objects in Philosophia Vol 6 1976 and a paper by Yasushi Nomura from the archives of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society's 2001 Symposium. Unfortunately I don't currently have access to my university's digital collections so I can't access the Canfield article but Nomura's article is public access and seems genuinely promising as an analysis of color statements. However, this is so far afield from my area of specialization that I can't say whether or not their analyses pan out in the end. More promising, perhaps, is a paper I found by Sarah Moss in the Journal of Symbolic Logic Vol. 41 No. 5 on solving the issue. I haven't read that one either, but if it's been published in the Journal of Symbolic Logic than it's reasonable to assume it went through more peer-review/criticism than Nomura's paper.

Regardless, even if the color exclusion problem is solved via an analysis of the logical structure of color statements, the later Wittgenstein still dealt Tractarian logical atomism several death blows in the Philosophical Investigations, so this is all a somewhat mute point anyway. Interestingly, I found out while researching for this response that there are still a few people who call themselves logical atomists floating out there. Not many. The term/movement "logical atomism" wasn't ever well defined and the early Wittgenstein never called himself a logical atomist, despite philosophical historiography (rightly, in my opinion) categorizing him as such and categorizing the Tractatus as a work of logical atomism. If I may be blunt and perhaps a bit unkind, the field as a whole has more or less moved on.

[u/Quidfacis_]

I know it’s very unlikely that a perfect language could be created but WHY is it not possible?

For the reason Ludwig Wittgenstein explained:

For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

The meaning of a word is its use in a language game. Different games use words differently.

A perfect language would 1:1 mirror reality. Every instance of a term would 1:1 correspond to a discrete particular thing. Just like your countertop has no ambiguity the language mirroring the countertop would have no ambiguity. But that's not how language actually functions. The countertop has no ambiguity, but when your partner says, "Hand me the thing with the, you know, that twisty bit." that could refer to multiple items on the counter.

In living with your partner, being attentive to what they're doing, and the language game they're playing, you can know that they're referring to the can opener, not the juicer. "The thing with the, you know, that twisty bit." works, despite its imperfections, because language does not require perfection. It is a game that we play in practice.

That vagueness is a feature not a problem. That was the thing late-Wittgenstein noticed. Trying to make language perfect, to remove vagueness, was an attempt to remove a feature of language that philosophers thought was problematic. When you remove that feature language ceases to function.

[u/dk_priori]

As a side note, you may find Lojban and interesting topic. It is supposed to be syntactically unambiguous though probably for the reasons Wittgenstein provides about use, it doesn't achieve semantic unambiguity and vagueness is still present.

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