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the pluralist Volume 5, Number 2 Summer 2010 : pp. 105140 1052010 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Mensurable Confusion?

Wittgensteins Meter-Stick and Beyondkelly dean jolleyAuburn University

I certainly find it easier to recognize the deep continuities withinWittgensteins thought, than the real nature of the contrasts: oneonly comes to recognize these for what they are after prolongedengagement with the two works.

R. M. White, Understanding Wittgenstein23

Introduction

heather gert has offered a reading ofInvestigations 4650. Herattention devolves primarily on the notorious standard meterparagraph of 50. Important to her reading is her conviction about what it is from the

Tractatusthat is being criticized and about how it is being criticized.I believe Gerts reading of the passage is mistaken. Gert fails to get fullyinto focus what is happening in the distance, in the Tractatus, and she failsto get into focus what is happening nearby, in Investigations 4650. Herfailures to get these happenings into focus seem to be the result, in part, of amisunderstanding of Wittgensteins philosophical method, of his metaphilo-sophical remarks. Her failures also seem to be the result, in part, of a prephilo-sophical conviction about the standard meter, of what is supposedly obviouslytrue of it.

My article runs beyond Gerts. I say this by way of warning, but not(much) by way of apology. My interest in Gerts article is, so to speak, largerthan Gerts article itself. While Gerts article is, in a way, the subject of thisarticle, I am primarily interested in her article as exhibitory of a number ofconfusions about Wittgensteins philosophizing. So, I often widen my focus,examining more than Gerts article itself. This means that I may, on occa-sion, give Gerts minutiae less than the central place in what I say, and that Imay, again on occasion, attribute a generic view to Gert without sorting out

in full detail the specific view she holds. Of course, I intend my attributionsof a generic view to be correct. Since Gert expends a lot of energy providing

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and talking about readings of Wittgenstein, I expend a lot of energy on thosetasks too. My changes of focus slow the development of the argument, butthey are meant ultimately to deepen it.1

Gert opposes what she calls the received interpretation of the meter-stick passage. I oppose her opposition; I support the received interpretationat least, I support a version of it.

I start with Gerts reading of the focal passage, the second paragraph of 50. I then move, in part at Gerts prodding, into a discussion of Tractarianultimate elements. Next, I look more closely at Gerts reasons for reading themeter-stick passage as she does, and I look more carefully at her reading ofthe remarks leading up to the focal passage, 4649, especially 48. Aftermore discussion of 50, I fasten on Gerts way of understanding language-games, and I show both that her way of understanding them generally ismistaken, and that her mistake is crucial to the way that she reads 50. Ialso diagnose her mistake. I then marshal forces both from the Tractatusandthe Investigations, and I use them to attack further Gerts reading of the focalpassage. I turn at that point to the task of giving my specific version of thereceived interpretation. The final section of the article I devote to discussing

Wittgensteins method and Gerts misunderstanding of it.

Gert Begins Her Reading

Gert begins her reading by reminding her readers of some of the difficultiesof reading the Investigations. She points out that, throughout the remarksthat compose the book, Wittgenstein speaks in voicessometimes his own,sometimes that of a philosophical alter-ego. But these are not all Wittgen-steins voices. There is another voice, Wittgensteins, yet not Wittgensteinsavoice in which Wittgenstein quesserts(to twist Richard Grandys handy term).

Passages quesserted are passages in which Wittgenstein rephrases a view he isabout to attack, or in which he describes a problematic view in terms meantto highlight, or help highlight, its problems.

Having told us about the voices she hears, Gert makes her central claim:

I will agree with the received interpretation that the statement about thestandard meter is in Wittgensteins voice. . . . But that is not sufficient tomake it an expression of his view. Wittgenstein introduces the standardmeter as a means of translating the discussion about an hypothesizedtype of object (Tractarian ultimate elements) into an analogous discus-sion carried on in terms of objects of a more familiar and undisputedtype (standards). When Wittgenstein writes: There is one thing of