Specific absence and negative expressions

4.1.3 4.1.3

4.1.3 SSSSpecific absence pecific absence pecific absence andpecific absence andandand negative expressionsnegative expressionsnegative expressions negative expressions

Wittgenstein’s view on the workings of pain expressions in the first person points to a further issue with the Tractarian notion of logical space. The Tractarian conception of the relation between the affirmative and the negative proposition as a relation in general logical space does not reach as far as accounting for the difference of subject matter between various negative propositions. Again,

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according to early Wittgenstein, the negating or the negative proposition determines a logical place outside the logical place determined by the affirmative or the negated proposition. This amounts to a somewhat deflationary approach to negation. According to this approach, the negative proposition does not add anything substantial to the discourse and it does not correspond to anything in reality either. Take the example of describing the content of a pocket. In the pocket there was, say, a pen and a rubber band, but not money. According to a Tractarian approach, the description of the content would amount to saying “In the pocket there is a pen and a rubber band and nothing else.” The description would consist in a conjunction of affirmative propositions followed by an ending phrase. The ending phrase “and nothing else” would merely put an end to the enumeration of what is actually in the pocket. The problem is that a negative proposition like “In the pocket there is no money” is not substitutable with the phrase “and nothing else”. This negative proposition does add something substantial to the description of the content of the pocket. Namely, that what is missing from the pocket is money as opposed to, say, feathers.

In the case of pain expressions, Wittgenstein is concerned with the fact that negative expressions of pain cannot be taken to be about just any absence. They are rather about a specific absence, namely that of pain. In 1929 he writes:

‘I have no stomach ache’ is comparable to the proposition ‘These apples cost nothing’. They cost namely no money, but not no snow or no trouble. The null point is the null point on one scale. And no point on the yardstick can be given to me without the yardstick, so neither its null point. ‘I have no pains’ does not designate a state which is not about pains. Rather it is about pains. [...] I describe my present state [of painlessness] by way of the allusion to something that is not the case. If this attendance is required for the description (and is not merely an ornament) then in my present state something has to lie that requires that mention.192

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Thus, the negative expression “I have no stomach ache” accounts for a specific absence. Namely, it accounts for the absence of stomach ache. By comparison, the proposition “These apples cost nothing” accounts for the specific matter that one need not pay any money in order to get the apples. The proposition invokes the absence of the need to pay or the absence of money required in order for one to get in the possession of the apples.

Each of these propositions is conceived of as a point on a scale or on a yardstick. Wittgenstein’s introduction of the model of the yardstick is indicative of the turn of his investigations from 1929 onwards to particular domains of discourse. Instead of attempting to account for the syntax of language in general, he now rather thinks that the activity of clarification is to attend to propositions considered as belonging to different domains of discourse according to their subject matter.

In our case, along with the first proposition about the absence of pain, other propositions on its scale would account for the eventual presence of more or less intense stomach aches. Along with the second proposition about the absence of money, other propositions on its scale would account for an eventual cost, which can be smaller or higher. The propositions considered correspond to the null point of a scale, namely, the absence of pain and the absence of an actual cost respectively. But the intelligibility of each of these propositions is not independent from the intelligibility of the other propositions on the same scale. This is what Wittgenstein means by saying that the null point cannot be given without the whole yardstick.

Conversely, this also involves that the yardstick cannot be given without its null-point. That is, that the intelligibility of pain expressions presupposes the intelligibility of the negative pain expression. And the latter in its turn is here accounted for in terms of the negative expression corresponding to a reality or experience, namely, a mental state of painlessness.

So the gist of the above view on the workings of pain expressions is that each such expression, either positive or negative, is verifiable by comparison to a distinct experience, or a mental state. The affirmative expression of pain is correlated to a mental state of painfulness. The negative expression of pain is

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correlated to a mental state of painlessness. A series of further remarks to be discussed take the view on the workings of pain expressions in the first person as a general model for the intelligibility of all discourse about pain. This generalization will turn out to be, however, ultimately exposed to some objections.

4.2 4.24.2

4.2 Critique of the uniform account of pain expressionsCritique of the uniform account of pain expressionsCritique of the uniform account of pain expressions Critique of the uniform account of pain expressions

The present section discuses the uniform account of the intelligibility of pain expressions which is modelled on the above view on the workings of pain expressions in the first person. Some questionable implications of the uniform account will be first exposed and discussed by further reference to the methodological conception of phenomenological language (subsection 4.2.1.) Then I will argue that the uniform account is ultimately undermined by Wittgenstein’s consideration of the asymmetry between the workings of pain expressions in the first person as opposed to the second/third person (subsection 4.2.2). I will finish by drawing some connections between the critique of the uniform account of pain expressions and the critique of phenomenological language (subsection 4.2.3).

4.2.1 4.2.1 4.2.1

4.2.1 TTThe uniform account The uniform account he uniform account and its implicationshe uniform account and its implicationsand its implications and its implications

The core elements of the conception of phenomenological language that converge with the uniform account of pain expressions are the following. According to this conception, ordinary discourse consists in propositions that do not readily exhibit their logical syntax. At the same time, ordinary propositions do not provide an accurate account of the actual content of experience. This calls for a different means of philosophical expression, a different medium of clarificatory analysis. This medium is the phenomenological language. The removal of the hypothetical addition in ordinary statements involves their analysis into phenomenological statements. Such statements are directly verifiable by way of comparison to immediate experience.

Against this background, all discourse about pain appears as analyzable into pain expressions correlated to mental states of pain. In order to account for