Ludwig Wittgenstein: Life, philosophy, and linguistic contributions

Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Logic and Computers

Language is at once one of the most complex and one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity. It is, according to many, what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Yet for all of its essential place in the formation of societies and individuals, it is also one of the most fiercely debated and (perhaps) misunderstood human phenomenon. To complicate matters further, the modern era has brought language out of the realm of a human-only feature. Not only have various other primates and other mammals -- including dolphins and possibly whales -- been observed to use communication methods that closely resemble (if not replicate) true language, but computers are instruments that also use language in order to operate.

It could be argued that this latter example does not truly bring language out of the human realm, as computers are human inventions. This becomes something of a semantic battle, however, and is unimportant in the face of the fact that language is at least as essential to the functioning of a computer as it is to a fully functioning human being. Because of this, many contributions to the understanding of language have been made by computer science and the pure logic involved therein. Viewing the situation in this way is certainly valid, but it also places the cart before the horse to some degree. Many important contributions were made to the logic of language in the decades leading up to the true advent of computers and computer science.

One of the leading philosophers in this area -- and indeed of the twentieth century in general -- was Ludwig Wittgenstein. The title of "philosopher" should not be taken in the wrong way. Like many philosophers, Wittgenstein's contributions to thought applied to mathematics and logic at least as much as they did to more metaphysical aspects of philosophy.

For many thinkers, including philosophers and especially those leaning towards a belief in metaphysics, language was not a system butyl entirely on logic, but subject to the vagaries of individual interpretation. One of Wittgenstein's major contributions to the philosophy of language was his assertion and explanation of language as a system of pure logical construction (Stanford, sec. 2.1). Most important was his belief that grammar was really a philosophical term describing a set of rules by which language behaved (Bagni, 215). In fact, he believed that all previous philosophy (or at least most of it, including the major problems it had dealt with for millennia) came as the result of misunderstanding the logic of our language, which led to a misunderstanding of individual terms and propositions (Richter, sec. 2).

Though Wittgenstein set out speaking directly about human language and grammar -- that is, the words we use and the ways in which we use them to construct complex thoughts -- have direct implications in mathematics, too: "as a matter of fact, a theorem, like every other analytical (true) statement, expresses a grammatical rule" (Gargani, cited in Bargani, 215). This means that, according to Wittgenstein, math performs like language, or perhaps more simply language performs like math. There are certain established rules, both of grammar and of meaning, that allow language to be useful as long as statements are true, and anything that is not true or that cannot be spoken of using language (i.e. It does not fit into a logical system) must be discarded (Stanford, sec. 2.4). Mathematics and language are the same thing, then, simply with a different set of representational symbols.

The implications that these statements have on computer science should be fairly obvious. Though humans are capable of creating language, or at least of agreeing on new representational symbols, computers are (as yet) unable to take a creative hand in language development themselves. Far from calling into question the veracity of Wittgenstein's claims in relation to mathematics, the practice of computer science shows them to be vitally important -- computers must be taught language, including the grammar of algorithms and the representational symbols for numbers and countless functions in order to operate with any sort of usefulness. The most simplistic way of understanding this is Wittgenstein's proposal that language must obey rules in order to operate efficiently and effectively (Bagni, 216). This is exactly what computers are taught to do -- they obey rules as set by human programmers, using language that is mathematical at its heart and grows more "human" as the layers move out to user interfaces.