The echo of the Tractarian saying versus showing distinction in the later rule following considerations
2.172 A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it.
4.121 Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them. What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.
The paradigmatic role of the saying-showing distinction in the Tractatus concerns the representational powers of pictures and propositions. The account of representation apparently articulated cannot, somewhat paradoxically, be put into words but can be shown. On ‘resolute’ interpretations, however, the distinction itself is part of what has to be jettisoned when the insight offered in the book is finally understood, an aspect of the ‘ladder’ to be thrown down. On a traditional reading, the distinction is what permits something substantial still to be conveyed even when the ladder is thrown down. On McGinn’s elucidatory reading, the distinction survives as an aspect of the continuity between the earlier and later Wittgenstein though McGinn offers an example of that continuity discussion of epistemic matters from On Certainty which is only of indirect connection to representation itself.
In this chapter, I discuss an analogy between the saying-showing distinction as it seems to apply in the Tractatus – whether or not it survives as genuine insight – and the rule following considerations in the Philosophical Investigations. But even in this latter context, difficulties remain.
On one approach, the rule following considerations highlight the gap between what can be set out in any explanation of a rule and what – philosophically – one took to be conveyed. Examples of deviant responses serve as the equivalent of ringers in arguments for epistemological scepticism. And hence so much the worse for ‘saying’.
One response is a radical form of scepticism – Kripke’s meaning scepticism - in which there is less to rule following than was previously thought. Another (eg Brandom) is to fill the gap between what is said and what is understood by a tacit background. Neither approach, however, fits what Wittgenstein himself says.
A third response is to deny that there is any necessary gap between an explanation and what is understood but that, nevertheless, there is a requirement for the distinction between saying and showing at the heart of representation. The content of a rule, such as one governing application of a word, grounds out in particular judgements. For example, there is no further explanation of the fact that 'blue' applies to light and dark blue but not to green than that this is our natural practice. It depends, in Stanley Cavell's fine phrase, on our whirl of organism. The content of our concepts is thus given by our practice. This is the aspect of the ‘logic’ of representation that has to be shown in the later Wittgenstein.
