20116622

The Origins of Wittgenstein's Verificationism
Author(s): Michael Wrigley

Source: Synthese, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Mar., 1989), pp. 265-290
Published by: Springer
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MICHAEL WRIGLEY
THE ORIGINS OF WITTGENSTEINS

VERIFICATIONISM
ABSTRACT. The question is raised of the source of the extreme verificationist views
which Wittgenstein put forward immediately after his return to philosophy in 1929. Since
these views appear to be radically different from the ideas put forward in the Tractatus
some explanation of this dramatic new turn in Wittgenstein's thought certainly seems to
be called for. Wittgenstein's very low level of interest in philosophy between 1918 and
shortly before his return to philosophy is documented. Attention then focuses on the
crucial period immediately before Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge, and it is shown
that in this period he encountered only two new philosophical influences. These were the
ideas of Brouwer and the ideas of the Vienna Circle. Each of these is examined and
neither is found capable of providing an explanation of the source of Wittgenstein's

verificationism. This leads to a reconsideration of the underlying assumption that
Wittgenstein's verificationism does represent the radical departure from the ideas of the
Tractatus which it appears to. It is argued that the only way we can account for
Wittgenstein's evident approval of the reading of the Tractatus which he must have
encountered in his meetings with members of the Vienna Circle is by concluding that,
far from being incompatible with his earlier ideas, some form of verificationism must
always have been implicit in the Tractatus.
Few positions seem further removed from the ideas of the later
Wittgenstein than the verificationist theory of meaning. Indeed if there
is one position which the later Wittgenstein would have regarded as
committing about every possible philosophical mistake this is surely it.
So it comes as something of a surprise to discover that in the period
immediately after his return to philosophy in 1929 Wittgenstein him
self held views about the relation of meaning and verification which
could have come straight out of the writings of the Vienna Circle. Yet
even the most cursory examination of the texts which he wrote in the
early Thirties leaves little room for doubt that this was indeed the
case, and that at that time Wittgenstein was whole-heartedly com
mitted to a verificationism of the most extreme kind.
1. THE IMPORTANCE OF WITTGENSTEIN'S VERIFICATIONISM

Not surprisingly it did not take Wittgenstein long to appreciate the
implausibility of this position and his period of radical verificationism
was as short-lived as it was extreme. Nonetheless the fact that Witt
Synthese 78: 265-290, 1989.
? 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
266
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
genstein accepted such views, even if only very briefly, raises one very
important question. Why did he ever accept them in the first place?
This question needs to be answered not merely because it would be

interesting to know what it was that attracted Wittgenstein to such
manifestly implausible views, but, more importantly, because the views
he had held before adopting these views appear to have been
diametrically opposed to any form of verificationism. Certainly there is

no explicit reference to verificationism in the Tractatus, and one of the
principal conclusions of recent work on the Tractatus has been that

this is no accident, since any form of verificationism is incompatible
with some of the most fundamental ideas of the Tractatus. If this is
right then Wittgenstein's rejection of his earlier view of meaning in
favour of verificationism marks nothing less than one of the crucial
turning points in the development of his thought. And in that case if
we want to understand any of his subsequent ideas we obviously need
to understand what brought about this radical transformation. Unless
we can answer this question we are running the risk of seeing all his
subsequent views in a completely mistaken perspective. So it is this

question that I shall be focusing on in this paper. I hope to show that
answering it will indeed have far-reaching implications for the under
standing of Wittgenstein's ideas beyond his brief period of explicit

verificationism, although in rather a different way from what might be
expected.
Before going any further let me dispel any doubts that Wittgenstein
really did hold such extreme verificationist views by quoting a few

representative passages from texts which he wrote in the early Thir
ties:1
Every proposition is a signpost for a verification.

The verification is not one token of the truth, it is the sense of the proposition.
In order to determine the sense of a proposition, I should have to know a very specific
procedure for when to count the proposition as verified. In this respect ordinary
language oscillates very much, much more so than scientific language ... this means that
the symbols of ordinary language are not unambiguously defined.
Where there are different verifications there are also different meanings.
The sense of a proposition is the method of its verification.
If someone familiar only with Wittgenstein's later writings were

presented with these remarks I think he would almost certainly assume
that they came from the writings of Carnap, Schlick or some other
THE ORIGINS OF WITTGENSTEIN'S VERIFICATIONISM 267

member of the Vienna Circle. Yet in fact they are all from Witt
genstein. Nor are these a few isolated aberrations taken out of context.
On the contrary, they are entirely typical of the statements linking
meaning and verification in the closest possible way which are to be
found throughout the texts which Wittgenstein wrote during the early
Thirties. His degree of commitment to these ideas is illustrated parti
cularly strikingly by the fact that he did not hesitate to accept one of
the most controversial and radical consequences of this view of

meaning, its implications for the status of evaluative language. Yet
Wittgenstein made it quite clear that he did accept them when he
remarked in his 1930/1931 lectures that 'ethical and aesthetic judge
ments are not propositions because they cannot be verified'2 (my
emphasis). So, even though he was later somewhat coy about admit
ting it,3 there can, I think, be little room for serious doubt that in the
early Thirties Wittgenstein was whole-heartedly committed to a form
of verificationism which was every bit as radical as anything put

forward by the Vienna Circle. The question is why?
At the moment all we know is that in 1918 when he completed the
Tractatus Wittgenstein appears to have been anything but a
verificationist. But by 1929 when he returned to Cambridge and
resumed philosophical research he most definitely was. Clearly the key

to discovering what brought about this change in Wittgenstein's views
must lie in something which happened during those intervening years.
So the first thing we must do is to look at what was and was not
happening to Wittgenstein intellectually during this long period away
from the world of academic philosophy.
2. THE FALLOW YEARS, 1918-1929

By 1918 the Tractatus was complete and Wittgenstein's interests
turned to matters far removed from philosophy. It is clear that in the
years immediately following he continued to remain convinced that
the ideas of the Tractatus contained in essence the definitive solutions
to the problems of philosophy, and all that remained to be done was to
work out the details, although this was a task for which Wittgenstein
himself obviously had little enthusiasm. As a result Wittgenstein's

degree of interest in philosophical matters sank to a very low level and
remained there for some time. That this was so is shown very clearly
by the testimony of Frank Ramsey. In 1923 Ramsey visited Witt

genstein in the remote Austrian villages where he was working as a
268
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
schoolteacher and spent a good deal of time discussing the Tractatus

with him. It is quite clear from Ramsey's account of these discussions
that Wittgenstein had in no way changed his mind about the finality of
the views which he had put forward in the Tractatus, much less begun
to reconsider some of its most fundamental aspects.4 Indeed, far from
exploring any radically new philosophical directions, philosophy as a
whole seems by now to have been so remote from Wittgenstein's

centre of interest that, at least so he told Ramsey, he could not even
remember exactly what some of the statements in the Tractatus
meant.5 Even if this remark contained an element of exaggeration it
certainly seems clear enough that Wittgenstein was still a long way
from any dramatic transformation in his views. It is equally clear that
his discussions with Ramsey did nothing to alter this state of affairs by
reviving his interest in philosophy. For, not long after Ramsey's visit,
Keynes wrote to Wittgenstein trying to persuade him to return to

Cambridge and take up philosophical research once again. His reac
tion to this invitation makes it very clear that Wittgenstein's interest in
philosophy was, if anything, at an even lower ebb than when Ramsey
had visited him. For he replied to Keynes in the following vivid

terms:6
I... no longer have any strong inner drive towards that sort of activity. Everything I
really had to say, I have said, and so the spring has run dry.
Quite plainly Wittgenstein still felt he had nothing new to say, and so
the radical change in his views still lay in the future.
Up to this point, then, the picture is one of a uniform lack of any
renewed interest in philosophy, and a complete absence of any sign

that some radically new ideas were germinating. And the picture
seems to have remained unchanged for several more years. At least
when his days as a schoolteacher came to an end in 1926 it was to
architecture and not philosophy that Wittgenstein turned his attention,
for it was in this year that he began the design and construction of the
Kundmanngasse house in Vienna. This indicates clearly enough that

his interest in philosophy had still yet to revive. And for the next two
years this architectural project was to occupy him fully, leaving little
time or energy over for philosophy.7
Nonetheless, although during this period Wittgenstein's chief
preoccupation was with his architectural project, he did also come into
contact with some new philosophical influences at this time. Obviously
we need to look at them very closely to see whether they may provide

a clue as to the source of the radical transformation in his views which
was soon to take place.
3. WITTGENSTEIN'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE VIENNA CIRCLE

The first new ideas which Wittgenstein encountered during this period
were none other than those of Moritz Schlick and the group of his
colleagues and students who were to become known as the Vienna
Circle. Wittgenstein first met Schlick towards the end of 1927 and
attended discussions with Schlick and some members of his group for
several years.8 Once we know this much it might seem that we need
look no further for the explanation of the radical transformation which
Wittgenstein's ideas had undergone by the time he resumed intensive
philosophical research in January 1929. Schlick and his circle were, of
course, all committed radical empiricists for whom verificationism was
an absolutely central doctrine. The fact that only a very short time
after being exposed to their ideas for the first time Wittgenstein
himself began to put forward almost identical ideas about the relation
of meaning and verification can, surely, only be explained in one way.
It was through the sustained and persuasive advocacy of the Vienna
Circle that Wittgenstein was made to realise the immense im
plausibility of the total exclusion of epistemological considerations

from his earlier account of meaning, and how much more plausible a
verificationist approach was. In short, Wittgenstein owed his con
version to verificationism to the Vienna Circle.
This explanation is attractively simple, and, it might seem, must

obviously be correct. For surely it is too implausible to suggest that
despite his discussions with the Vienna Circle just prior to his explicit
acceptance of verificationism Wittgenstein in fact arrived at these

views by some other quite different route and that this change in his
views had nothing to do with the Vienna Circle. For one thing, what
other possible explanation is there for the source of Wittgenstein's

verificationism, and for another, if it was not their advocacy of
verificationism which held Wittgenstein's interest in what the Vienna
Circle had to say what was it? It seems obvious that something they
had to say must have interested him or he would not have kept on
going to their discussions. And if it was not their advocacy of
verificationism what was it?
However, if we look a little more closely at Wittgenstein's inter

action with the Vienna Circle, the picture that emerges is one that
270
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
does strongly suggest that this apparently implausible possibility was in

fact exactly what did happen, and that the Vienna Circle had nothing
to do with Wittgenstein's conversion to verificationism. Although little
is known about what was said in these discussions during the crucial
period between 1927 and 1929, enough is known to decisively rule out
this attempted explanation of the origins of Wittgenstein's
verificationism. For if the Vienna Circle really had the kind of effect
on Wittgenstein that it is being suggested, then they did nothing less
than bring about a fundamental transformation in Wittgenstein's
views. And if that were the case we would expect to find that
Wittgenstein participated in these discussions eagerly and enthusias
tically as he began to explore the full implications of the new and very
different philosophical perspective whose merits he now appreciated

for the first time. And in that case the other participants in these
discussions could hardly have been unaware of the fact. Yet in fact it
is abundantly clear from the reports that have been given by other
participants in these discussions that nothing of the kind took place.
Herbert Feigl attended many of these discussions and this is how he
described them:9
Wittgenstein ... emphatically told the few of us ... with whom he occasionally met
[between 1927 and 1929]... that he was no longer interested in philosophy. He felt that
he had said all he could in the Tractatus. Moreover, only on relatively rare occasions
could we get him to clarify one or another of the puzzling or obscure passages in his
work. He seemed himself rather unclear on the ideas he had developed during the First
World War.
This is very clearly not the picture of a man in the throes of a radical
transformation involving some of his most fundamental ideas. But this
is very much the picture given by other participants in these dis

cussions. Far from taking a keen interest in the proceedings it was
more often than not difficult to get Wittgenstein to discuss philoso
phical questions at all. Sometimes all he would do was to read poetry
aloud.10 When he could be prevailed upon to consider philosophical
questions his contributions seem to have been limited to giving
explanations of the Tractatus. There is certainly no sign of his having
radically changed his views nor of his having rejected any fundamen
tal aspect of the ideas he had expounded ten years earlier. So, far from
a radical transformation having taken place as a result of Witt

genstein's encounter with the Vienna Circle, things seem to have
changed very little from the state of affairs a few years earlier when he
wrote to Keynes. If pressed Wittgenstein could sometime be prevailed

upon to explain bits of the Tractatus, as he had to Ramsey, but that
was about all. Certainly the one thing Wittgenstein seems not to have
done was to seize on the ideas of the Vienna Circle as a basis for
making far-reaching modifications in his earlier views. So, surprising
though it may seem, I think this attempt to explain the source of
Wittgenstein's verificationism does have to be rejected.

This conclusion means that we are going to have to find answers to
those two questions mentioned earlier. Firstly, and most obviously, if it
was not by this route that Wittgenstein arrived at his own
verificationism, where did it originate? Secondly, if it was not because

they had won him over to verificationism what was it that interested
Wittgenstein sufficiently for him to keep coming to these discussions?
A reply to this second question is needed, and we will come back to it
later. But for the moment I want to concentrate on the first and most
fundamental question of the source of Wittgenstein's verificationism.
By answering this question we will also be able to answer the second.
It seems that in order to find out what motivated Wittgenstein's
adoption of verificationism we need to locate some powerful influence
which affected Wittgenstein during the crucial period just before his
return to Cambridge, and which was capable of leading him in the

direction of verificationism. In fact there is an obvious candidate
which, in one respect, seems to be just what we are looking for. This is
the impact made on Wittgenstein by the ideas of Brouwer.
4. THE IMPACT OF BROUWER

In March 1928 Wittgenstein attended a lecture given by Brouwer in
Vienna. Brouwer's ideas evidently made a considerable impression on
him. Once again Feigl provides an eyewitness account:11
When the Dutch mathematician Luitzen Jan Egbertus Brouwer was scheduled to lecture
on intuitionist mathematics in Vienna, Waismann and I managed to coax Wittgenstein,
after much resistance, to join us in attending the lecture. When, afterwards, Witt
genstein went to a caf? with us, a great event took place. Suddenly and very volubly
Wittgenstein began talking philosophy - at great length.
Quite clearly something Wittgenstein heard struck a chord which had

not happened during his discussions with the Vienna Circle. What is
more Wittgenstein's excitement was not something that quickly

faded away. He was sufficiently interested to go back and hear
Brouwer's second lecture a few days later,12 and the story circulates (it
seems to have originated with Waismann) that he even travelled to
272
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
Holland to have discussions with Brouwer. Less than a year later

Wittgenstein was back in Cambridge at work on philosophy as in
tensively as ever. So the purely circumstantial evidence, that it was
here in the ideas of Brouwer that Wittgenstein found the crucial new
inspiration for the views he began to expound in 1929, looks quite
persuasive.
However when we try to explain in more detail just how the ideas of
Brouwer could have had this effect on Wittgenstein we encounter an
obvious problem. In fact there are two distinct but related problems.
Firstly, it is not at all obvious how anyone could have been led to
adopt radical verificationism by exposure to the ideas of Brouwer.
Secondly, it is particularly difficult to see how Wittgenstein could have
got verificationism, or indeed anything else, out of Brouwer. These

problems arise because, although Brouwer was primarily a philosopher
of mathematics, his account of mathematics was part of a general

metaphysical view which amounted to a solipsistic form of transcen
dental idealism strongly influenced by Schopenhauer. Such an outlook
is obviously far removed from the radical empiricism which forms the
basis for verificationism. It is for this reason that there is a problem in
seeing how anyone could have been led to adopt verificationism by

exposure to the ideas of Brouwer. Furthermore, Brouwer's ideas also
provide an almost perfect example of the psychologism which had
been attacked by Frege as one of the worst errors any philosophical
account of mathematics could commit, and it is this feature of
Brouwer in particular which makes it so difficult to understand how
Wittgenstein could have responded in such a positive way to
Brouwer's ideas. For on the question of psychologism Wittgenstein

was a loyal follower of Frege,13 and so we would expect him to have
found views like Brouwer's as much of an anathema as Frege himself
would have. Certainly the last thing we would expect to find is
Wittgenstein reacting enthusiastically to such ideas. Yet, despite this

apparent obstacle, it seems quite clear that something in Brouwer's
ideas nevertheless did strike a deep chord in Wittgenstein.
In order to discover what it might have been we must obviously
take a closer look at both Brouwer's ideas and Wittgenstein's response
to them. Despite the many differences there is one obvious point of
contact between Brouwer and Wittgenstein, which has already been
mentioned, and this is the influence of Schopenhauer. The strongly
Schopenhauerian tone of Brouwer's general metaphysical outlook can

hardly have failed to find a sympathetic response in Wittgenstein. But
while this is likely enough, there is an obvious reason why it cannot
have been this aspect of Brouwer which was responsible for bringing
about a change in Wittgenstein's attitude towards verificationism. For,
quite apart from the difficulty in seeing how Schopenhauer could have
been the source of radical verificationism, we need only remember

that this was not Wittgenstein's first encounter with the ideas of
Schopenhauer. On the contrary, Schopenhauer was one of the very
earliest influences on Wittgenstein's philosophical development.14 So
by the time he encountered Brouwer Wittgenstein had long ago

absorbed all those aspects of Schopenhauer's ideas which he thought
were of value. By 1928 there was nothing new which he had to learn
from Schopenhauer, and so it cannot have been this aspect of
Brouwer's thought which struck Wittgenstein and which, apparently,

led him to modify his views in such a radical way.
In order to try and locate what it might have been in Brouwer which
Wittgenstein responded to, we need only notice one very striking fact
about the ideas which he began putting forward immediately after his
return to philosophy in 1929. Although one very conspicuous feature
of his thought during this period is his new-found radical veri

ficationism, there is another equally conspicuous new feature - his
intense interest in the philosophy of mathematics. This area was, of
course, precisely the one which was at the centre of Brouwer's

interests and, for good measure, it was the subject to which he
devoted the bulk of his Vienna lectures. The fact that within only a
few months of encountering Brouwer's ideas for the first time Witt
genstein himself developed an intense interest in this very area can
hardly be a mere coincidence. What this suggests is that something in
what Brouwer said struck Wittgenstein as containing a major new
insight into the nature of mathematics which revealed the fundament
ally mistaken nature of his own earlier views.
When we look at the details of the new ideas about mathematics
which Wittgenstein began to develop in 1929 we find that many of his

ideas bear a striking resemblance to key ideas of Brouwer. A rejection
of the completed infinite, criticism of the Law of the Excluded Middle,
and an insistence that the content of a mathematical sentence is
determined by its proof, all these are central features of an intuitionist
account of mathematics which Wittgenstein appears to echo. Witt

genstein's discussions of mathematics even contain explicit references
274
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
to Brouwer. In view of all this we might seem both to have well nigh
conclusive evidence that it was here in Brouwer's account of mathe
matics that the crucial inspiration for Wittgenstein's return to

philosophy is to be found, and also to have pinpointed the precise
aspect of Brouwer which Wittgenstein was so struck by.
If this is right then the answer to our central question must be that
Wittgenstein was led to adopt a radically verificationist account of

meaning not in the very direct way that the previous attempted
explanation suggested, but by a much more roundabout route which
began with certain new ideas about mathematics. However it is one
thing to conclude that this must provide the explanation of Witt
genstein's conversion to verificationism, quite another to show how he
found himself led to verificationism by adopting an account of

mathematics modelled on Brouwer's intuitionism. In fact not only do
we need to explain the nature of the connection which it appears must
exist between Wittgenstein's new account of mathematics and his
equally new verificationism, but we also need to explain how he even

arrived at this account of mathematics in the first place.
We need to do this because, while there is little room for doubt that
Wittgenstein's new view of mathematics was in some way directly

inspired by Brouwer, there is still an obvious problem of explaining
how Wittgenstein could have responded so positively to Brouwer's

ideas about mathematics. The thoroughly psychologistic nature of
Brouwer's ideas about mathematics has already been pointed out. It
has also been pointed out that Wittgenstein would have been un
sympathetic in the extreme to this aspect of Brouwer. And in case
there is any doubt about this, we do indeed find him emphatically
rejecting such psychologism in his discussions of mathematics after
1929, and, what is more, singling out Brouwer for criticism on this
score.15 But this creates an acute problem for the following reason. All
the striking theses about mathematics which intuitionism is notorious
for, its rejection of the completed infinite, and other characteristically
constructivist claims, are, in Brouwer's view, justified only on the basis
of his underlying metaphysical view. What Wittgenstein vehemently
rejects as psychologism constitutes for Brouwer not some optional
extra but the very essence of his whole account of mathematics. But if
this is right then by taking his uncompromisingly anti-psychologistic
stance Wittgenstein is depriving all the other aspects of intuitionism of
their sole justification. Yet in fact he seems to be quite happy to

accept those other aspects. Such a position seems on the face of it to
be blatantly inconsistent. So if this attempt to explain the origins of
Wittgenstein's verificationism is going to get anywhere it has got to
find some way of showing that this inconsistency is only apparent and
that Wittgenstein's selective attitude to Brouwer is a tenable position.
I now want to consider a way that has been suggested of solving both
these problems at a single stroke.
5. A POSSIBLE ROUTE FROM INTUITIONISM

TO VERIFICATIONISM
The starting-point of this suggested solution is a proposal that has

been made by Michael Dummett concerning the interpretation of
Brouwer's account of mathematics. What Dummett claims is that
despite the prominence given to it by Brouwer himself, the psy

chologistic dimension of intuitionism is actually completely irrelevant
to, and indeed, actually in conflict with, the genuine insight at the
heart of intuitionism. According to Dummett what is really at the core
of the intuitionist approach to mathematics, and what provides the real
motivation for all the familiar intuitionist claims about mathematics, is
not some murky idealist metaphysical picture, but something quite

different, namely a radically innovatory theory of meaning for
mathematical sentences.16
What intuitionism is implicitly claiming, Dummett suggests, is that
instead of regarding the meaning of a mathematical sentence as

determined by its truth-conditions, we should recognise that it is
determined by something quite different, namely its proof-conditions.
The principal argument in favour of this interpretation of Brouwer is
that when the implications of such an account of meaning for mathe
matical sentences are worked out in detail, they match exactly those
that Brouwer was led to advocate on the basis of his more metaphysi
cal formulation of intuitionism. I shall not pursue the question of
whether or not Dummett's interpretation really does justice to
Brouwer's account of mathematics,17 but if so it is clear that Dum

mett's proposal is of immediate relevance to our problem of under
standing how Wittgenstein could have consistently reacted to Brouwer

in the selective way he did.18 For all we need to do is to suppose that,
like Dummett, Wittgenstein also recognised the possibility of separat
ing the semantic core of intuitionism from the purely psychologistic
276
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
setting in which Brouwer had embedded it. In that case we would

expect to find Wittgenstein endorsing all the substantial claims about
mathematical practice which are characteristic of intuitionism, while
at the same time rejecting its psychologism. And this, apparently, is
exactly what we do find. So the mystery of how Wittgenstein could
have responded so enthusiastically to Brouwer's ideas is dispelled.
If this is right then we have disposed of one of the problems raised
by the suggestion that Brouwer provided the crucial inspiration behind
Wittgenstein's revival of interest in philosophy after 1929. They key
inspiration was in the philosophy of mathematics and Wittgenstein's
revival of interest in other areas is to be seen as in some way the result
of this. But the obvious question is how? In particular, what about the
problem of explaining how Wittgenstein's verificationism could also
have originated in his encounter with Brouwer? It is one of the great
attractions of this interpretation of Brouwer that it offers an equally
neat and elegant solution to this problem too. Again the crucial point
has been clarified by Dummett. For, he has argued, if a case can be

made at all for replacing an account of meaning for mathematical
sentences in terms of truth-conditions by one in terms of proof
conditions, then it has potentially global application and is not restric
ted only to the domain of mathematics. When such a generalisation of
the intuitionists' implicit account of meaning is carried out the ap
propriate analogue of proof-conditions turns out, Dummett argues, to

be none other than the concept of ueri/icaiiott-conditions.19 Hence, to
explain how Wittgenstein's conversion to verificationism was the out
come of his encounter with Brouwer, we need only suppose that he
too grasped the implicitly global implications of the new conception of

meaning which provided the underlying motivation for the intuitionist
account of mathematics.
Making use of Dummett's work in this way we are able to demon

strate the existence of a very natural route which leads from Witt
genstein's encounter with the ideas of Brouwer to his apparently
totally unconnected conversion to verificationism. Granted that this is
a possible route from intuitionism to verificationism the question we
must now ask is whether this was a route which Wittgenstein travelled.
In fact, despite its great ingenuity and considerable initial plausibility,
I think that this attempted explanation of the origins of Wittgenstein's
verificationism is open to decisive objections and is in the end no more

successful than the attempt to trace these ideas back to Wittgenstein's
contact with the Vienna Circle.
6. DUMMETT'S INTERPRETATION REJECTED

Although I shall argue that it cannot adequately explain the origin of
Wittgenstein's verificationism this perspective does nonetheless have a
number of things to recommend it and there are some important
things to be learned from it. Quite apart from the intrinsic interest of
this new approach to questions in the theory of meaning, this inter
pretation quite rightly draws attention to the fact that any adequate
account of Wittgenstein's ideas in the early Thirties has got to take

account of the central place which the philosophy of mathematics
occupied in his thought at that time, and why it was that it was this
particular area he became so preoccupied with at this time. It also
highlights the need to give an account of the connections which must
surely exist between Wittgenstein's ideas on mathematics and the rest
of his thought. Finally it also draws attention to the need to give some
explanation of why Wittgenstein responded with such enthusiasm to
Brouwer's ideas. I think this interpretation is absolutely right to raise
all these points, and that all these questions are of great importance.
What is more, I think that the answers which this interpretation

proposes to these questions do contain at least an important grain of
truth. For I think that it is quite right to suggest that there are
important connections between Wittgenstein's new ideas about
mathematics and his other new ideas. I think it is right again to
suggest that Brouwer did play a role in shaping these new ideas, both
in the philosophy of mathematics and elsewhere. However it is when it
comes to the proposed explanation of precisely how Brouwer

influenced Wittgenstein that his interpretation goes astray, and as a
result its attempted explanation of the origins of Wittgenstein's

verificationism is wholly mistaken.
Let us now see why it is mistaken. The core of this interpretation
consists in the claim that Brouwer's intuitionism provided Wittgen

stein with a model for a new account of meaning for mathematical
sentences. It was then suggested that his verificationism is to be
explained as the result of generalising this new account of meaning
278
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
outside mathematics. Clearly if the first claim about the nature of

Brouwer's influence on Wittgenstein's account of mathematics is in
correct then the proposed explanation of Wittgenstein's conversion to
verificationism must also be incorrect. Yet I think that it can be

conclusively established that this first claim is indeed incorrect. The
key to showing this is to look a little more closely at Wittgenstein's
philosophy of mathematics.
The starting-point of this whole interpretation was the discovery

that the new account of mathematics which Wittgenstein began to
expound after 1929 exhibited a number of very striking points of
resemblance to Brouwer's intuitionism. However, while there un
doubtedly do appear to be some very striking resemblances between
what Wittgenstein says and what Brouwer says, by no means every
thing Wittgenstein says about mathematics fits so smoothly with this
interpretation. In fact it is not difficult to find aspects of his account of
mathematics which are not merely very different from any account of
mathematics modelled on intuitionism but are clearly inconsistent with
it. Nor is this a matter of a few minor discrepancies which might
perhaps be brushed under the carpet. On the contrary, Wittgenstein's

points of disagreement with intuitionism concern absolutely central
issues and go to the very heart of his account of mathematics.
The crucial issue is what view Wittgenstein took of the role of

mathematical sentences. Intuitionism in common with most other
philosophical accounts of mathematics assumes that the function of
mathematical sentences is to describe, truly or falsely, a certain
domain of facts. To say that a mathematical sentence has a meaning
really amounts to nothing more than the claim that it has descriptive
content. Now if the explanation we are considering of the origins of
Wittgenstein's verificationism is correct then Wittgenstein too must
have accepted this assumption. Yet it- is clear from many quite
unequivocal remarks that Wittgenstein did not accept it. Not only did
he reject the idea that mathematical sentences have a descriptive

meaning, but his rejection is fundamental to his whole vision of
mathematics. In complete contrast with intuitionism (in either its
original psychologistic form or the refurbished semantic form pro
posed by Dummett) Wittgenstein emphatically rejects the whole idea
that mathematical sentences are properly construed as having de
scriptive content or being 'about' anything. 'When we talk about the

sense of mathematical sentences, or what they are "about"', Witt
genstein insists, 'we are using a false picture'.20 Just how fundamental
this idea is to Wittgenstein's view of the nature of mathematics is

illustrated very clearly by his warning that 'nothing is more fatal to
philosophical understanding [of mathematics] than the notion of proof
and experience as two different but comparable methods of
verification',21 since this implies nothing less than that almost all errors
in philosophy of mathematics stem from failing to grasp this fun

damental fact about the distinctive role of mathematical sentences.
Such errors can be avoided, in Wittgenstein's view, only if we con

stantly bear in mind that in mathematics, in sharp contrast with the rest
of language, 'nothing [is] meaning... even when it doesn't look like

that because we seem to be using words to talk about mathematics'.22
It emerges, then, that where intuitionism sees an identity of function
between mathematics and the rest of language Wittgenstein wishes to
make the sharpest possible distinction. This point is clearly fatal to the
whole idea that Wittgenstein reacted to Brouwer in the way that has
been suggested, that is by taking intuitionism as the starting-point for
a new theory of meaning for mathematical sentences. Wittgenstein
cannot have reacted in this way because he had no account of
meaning for mathematical sentences since he did not think that

mathematical sentences had a meaning of which some account needed
to be given. But in that case Wittgenstein's verificationism cannot

have been arrived at by a process of generalisation from his new
account of meaning for mathematical sentences because there is no
such account to generalise from. So whatever it was that Wittgenstein
got from his contact with the ideas of Brouwer his radical
verificationism was not it, and while there may be a possible route
from an account of mathematics modelled on intuitionism of the kind
Dummett has described to a general verificationism it was not a route

which Wittgenstein followed.
Before we consider what alternative explanation might be available
of the source of Wittgenstein's verificationism, however, there are a
number of other obvious questions which the conclusion we have just
reached raises and which call for at least brief comment. And in fact
this will turn out not to be a complete digression from our central
question, since in answering these questions some unexpected light
will be thrown on the way to answer our central question.
280
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
7. EXPLAINING AWAY APPARENT RESEMBLANCES

TO INTUITIONISM
Perhaps the most obvious question raised by the argument of the

previous section is that of what alternative account Wittgenstein had
of the role of mathematical sentences if he rejected the usual view that
they have a descriptive function. Does this denial of descriptive

meaning to mathematical sentences leave him with no option but to
say that mathematics consists only of empty marks on paper? If this
were his position then it would no more deserve to be taken seriously
than the naive nineteenth century formalist accounts of mathematics
which Frege criticised so devastatingly. So if Wittgenstein's philoso

phy of mathematics is to be taken at all seriously then it needs to be
shown that his position was clearly quite distinct from anything so
crude and implausible. The only account of mathematics which shares
with Wittgenstein a rejection of the descriptive meaningfulness of

mathematical sentences is the more recent and much more sophisti
cated version of formalism of which Hubert was the most committed
advocate.23
However it is important to realise that Wittgenstein's reasons for

taking this position are quite different from Hubert's. Wittgenstein's
account in fact offers a radically new picture of mathematics which is
quite different from any of the familiar positions. The key idea in
Wittgenstein's approach is that mathematical sentences instead of
having a descriptive role have a prescriptive or normative role. Rather
than describing anything themselves they constitute a framework with
in which any description must take place. The importance and interest
of Wittgenstein's account of mathematics stems from the question of
whether or not he succeeded in giving cogent reasons for thinking that
this is the correct way to regard mathematics and in meeting the

obvious objections to which this position appears to be open. Whether
or not he did succeed should still, I think, be regarded as an open

question. This question is obviously a large and complex one and
further discussion of it would take us too far afield from our central
question. However I have mentioned this facet of Wittgenstein's

account of mathematics not merely because it is so central. I do so
also because it throws light in an unexpected way on the central
question of this paper, namely the origin of Wittgenstein's
verificationism. To see how it does this we need to consider one of the

other questions raised by the rejection of Dummett's interpretation.
Now we can appreciate how different the basis of Wittgenstein's
account of mathematics is from intuitionism we need to say something
about those aspects of it which appeared to provide such convincing

evidence of Wittgenstein's debt to intuitionism. What alternative
explanation are we now to give of these now that it is clear that they
cannot be the manifestations of intuitionist influence which they
appeared to be? There are two outstanding features of Wittgenstein's
views which need fresh explanations. These are his insistence that the
significance of a mathematical sentence is determined by its proof, and
his emphatic rejection of the completed infinite. To explain the first of
these I think we need only grasp one of the lessons of Wittgenstein's
rejection of the idea that mathematical sentences have a descriptive

meaning. Although this idea is one with few parallels in other accounts
of mathematics there is one context from which it ought to be very
familiar, and this is Wittgenstein's own earlier work. It is one of the
most fundamental and innovatory ideas of the Tractatus that the

sentences of mathematics (and logic) had an entirely different status
from sentences of other kinds. Unlike ordinary sentences which had
Sinn, or sense, the sentences of mathematics were sinnlos, or sense
less, although that was not at all to say that they were nonsensical like
empty marks on paper. Rather it was to say that they were normative
in function. So it turns out that one of the central ideas of the account
of mathematics which Wittgenstein was putting forward in the early
Thirties was in fact not anything new at all, but stems directly from the
Tractatus. And I think exactly the same turns out to be true of

Wittgenstein's statements about the connection between a mathema
tical sentence and its proof. This idea too is present, if in an extremely
compressed form, in the Tractatus and has nothing to do with in

tuitionism.24
When we turn to the other apparent point of agreement between

Wittgenstein and intuitionism, his rejection of the completed infinite, I
think that here we do have to admit that the agreement is genuine and
not merely apparent. What is more in this case we must also admit that
this does mark a genuine change in Wittgenstein's views and is not

something that can be traced back to the Tractatus.25 However this
does not mean that we are at a loss to explain how Wittgenstein came
to adopt this view, nor even that we are compelled to deny that it had
anything to do with Brouwer. All that was ruled out by the argument
282
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
of Section 6 was the idea that Wittgenstein came to reject the
completed infinite through his acceptance of a theory of meaning

which was based on intuitionism. But this does not rule out the
possibility that he was influenced by Brouwer's ideas in some quite

different way. Indeed it is a good thing that this is not ruled out,
otherwise we would be in danger of being unable to find any way of
explaining how Brouwer influenced Wittgenstein. But on the strength
of Wittgenstein's reaction to Brouwer's lecture alone, and more im

portantly, in the light of the many explicit references to Brouwer's
ideas in Wittgenstein's writings this is one of the few things we can be
sure of.
Very briefly I think the true picture of what happened was, in

outline, as follows.26 What so struck Wittgenstein was not so much any
particular thesis which Brouwer advanced as the fact that he raised in
a very vivid form the whole problem of the nature of the infinite. This
was something which Wittgenstein had previously regarded as com

pletely unproblematic (there is nothing in the Tractatus to suggest the
opposite). But the form in which the problem of the nature of the
infinite crystallised for Wittgenstein was quite different from the way in
which Brouwer presented it. The crucial question for Brouwer con
cerned the incompletability of infinite mental processes of construc
tion. But for Wittgenstein the question was, rather, one of how can
any rule, which must be finite, determine its infinitely many possible
applications. The concept of a rule had a pervasive role in the
Tractatus, but until he encountered Brouwer its immensely prob

lematic nature had simply never struck Wittgenstein. How Witt
genstein pursued this question need not concern us here. But it is
obvious enough from the subsequent course of Wittgenstein's thought

that this is a problem whose ramifications are perfectly general and are
not confined to the philosophy of mathematics. It is also obvious that
there is nothing inconsistent in Wittgenstein's adopting this new

perspective on the nature of rules while at the same time retaining the
basic framework of his Tractatus account of mathematics.
So it is here, I think, that the explanation is to be found of what it

was that excited Wittgenstein so much in Brouwer. This also explains
how this crucial new inspiration led Wittgenstein to begin exploring
new and very different ideas both in philosophy of mathematics and in
other areas too. This is the grain of truth which I suggested earlier was
to be found in Dummett's interpretation and the attempt to explain
Wittgenstein's verificationism as the outcome of his encounter with

the ideas of Brouwer. Although it was in a quite different way from
that suggested by the interpretation based on Dummett's inter

pretation of Brouwer, it turns out that Brouwer was the crucial
stimulus behind many of the new ideas which Wittgenstein began
expounding in 1929. However, to return to our main concern, his
verificationism is a very conspicuous exception. Whatever may be true
of the other ideas which are prominent in what Wittgenstein was

saying immediately after 1929, his verificationism is certainly not
something that can be traced back to Brouwer.
But if this is right then what are we to say about the origin of
Wittgenstein's verificationism? We seem to have reached an impasse
since none of the available candidates for the source of these new
ideas has turned out to be capable of providing a convincing explana
tion. I think the key to discovering its real source lies in taking to
heart the general lesson of the failure to establish a connection
between Brouwer and Wittgenstein's verificationism and calling into
question a fundamental assumption that has, thus far, gone unques

tioned. As we saw, the crucial mistake in that attempted explanation
lay in the assumption that Wittgenstein's conception of mathematics
underwent a complete transformation in 1929. Although there cer

tainly are important changes in Wittgenstein's view of mathematics, at
the most fundamental level the picture is not one of change, but of
complete continuity. The more general lesson of this discovery is that
we ought to be open to the possibility that even where there appears
to be dramatic change in Wittgenstein's views, beneath the apparent
change there may be deep continuity, and that what seems to be new
may not really be new at all. By now it is probably not too difficult to
guess what I am going to suggest is the correct explanation of the
source of Wittgenstein's verificationism. My claim will be that far from
representing the radical change they appear to, Wittgenstein's
verificationist ideas in fact stem directly from the Tractatus. My
method of trying to establish this will be to focus on the importance of

some key facts about Wittgenstein's interaction with the Vienna Circle
which were overlooked in our earlier discussion.
8. A SECOND LOOK AT THE VIENNA CIRCLE

Our earlier discussion of Wittgenstein's meetings with the Vienna
Circle left one important question unanswered. This was simply if
Wittgenstein did not, as I argued he cannot, learn his verificationism
284
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
from the Vienna Circle, what was it that was of sufficient interest in
these discussions that provided him with the motivation to keep on
attending them? We can approach this question by asking another

obvious question. Why did these discussions ever start in the first
place? The initiative came from the Vienna Circle not from Witt
genstein. So what was it that they were so interested by in his ideas? I
think the answer to this question is that they thought that they had
found in the Tractatus an extraordinarily powerful and penetrating
crystallisation of the central tenets of views which they had arrived at
independently. They were eager to have discussions with Wittgenstein
because they felt certain that he had grasped far more clearly than
they yet had the full implications of these views. But what were these
views? It is hardly necessary to be reminded that Schlick and his circle
were all committed radical empiricists. And it was this philosophical
perspective of radical empiricism which they thought found expression
in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. But, as was pointed out earlier, one very
noticeable feature of the Tractatus is the absence of any explicit

reference to verificationism or any other sign of radical empiricism.
What is more, it has been apparently convincingly argued on the basis
of things that the Tractatus does say that we can rule out the
possibility that verificationism is implicit in the Tractatus at any level.
It was precisely for this reason that it was so important to discover

how Wittgenstein came to adopt verificationism since this appeared to
mark a radical change in his views at the most fundamental level.
But now remember what was argued in Section 2. We concluded
there that all the evidence is that between finishing the Tractatus in
1918 and his first encounter with the Vienna Circle in 1927 Witt
genstein's views did not change in any way. But this means that he
came to those discussions still holding exactly the views he had put
forward in the Tractatus. In other words when Wittgenstein first
encountered the Vienna Circle there must have been a direct con
frontation between the Tractatus as Wittgenstein himself understood it
and the Tractatus as the Vienna Circle understood it. And this clearly
provides us with an absolutely clearcut and decisive test of the

correctness or otherwise of the Vienna Circle's interpretation. It does
so because even where far less significant issues were concerned

Wittgenstein was most definitely not someone to take misrepresen
tations of his views lightly.27 So if the Vienna Circle's interpretation
had been half as far from the real intentions of the Tractatus as is
usually supposed, Wittgenstein's reaction would still have been one of

outrage. And we can be certain that in that case he would not have
had the slightest interest in maintaining contact with these people who
had so badly misunderstood his ideas.
But of course Wittgenstein did nothing of the sort. Even if he was
not always the most forthcoming of participants in these discussions he
did come back and kept doing so. Far from being outraged he was
quite content to sit placidly by while the air was thick with talk of
verification, protocol sentences, sense-data, and so on, as the Vienna
Circle attempted to work out the details of the Tractatus. Evidently all
this was perfectly congenial to Wittgenstein. This can, I think, mean
only one thing. That far from being the travesty of the Tractatus it is
commonly taken to be, the Vienna Circle's interpretation contains a

very important element of truth. This must be so because by his mere
presence at their meetings Wittgenstein was clearly giving his tacit
approval to the general way in which the Vienna Circle wished to

interpret the Tractatus. And if this is right then we have finally found
the answer to our central question, although in the most unexpected of
places. The source of the radical verificationism which Wittgen

stein espoused so enthusiastically in the early Thirties lies in the
Tractatus.
Even if this does answer our central question, however, we still have
to answer the question with which this section began. What was it that
held Wittgenstein's attention in the Vienna Circle discussions? And in
answering this we can also deal with a further question which is raised
by our central conclusion. Even if the source of Wittgenstein's

verificationism is in the Tractatus there is still one very obvious
difference between the verificationism of the Tractatus and the
verificationism of the early Thirties. It is simply that in the Tractatus it

was only implicit, whereas after 1929 it became very explicit. Why was
this? Although this change is a great deal less dramatic than the one
which was initially supposed to have occurred between 1918 and

1929, it is still a genuine change and some explanation is required of
why it happened. I think that the way to explain this change is to

realise that although the Tractatus is tacitly committed to some form
of verificationism, it is not committed to any particular detailed

formulation of verificationism. As so often in the Tractatus Witt
genstein is operating at a very high level of generality. It seems likely
that he may have had a number of different possible candidates in

mind for the specific way his general commitment to verificationism
might be worked out, but he had not come to any decision between
286
MICHAEL WRIGLEY
them since it was not crucial for him to do so because he knew (or
thought he knew) on a priori grounds that some candidate must fit the
bill. Finding out which it was was simply a matter of detail that Witt
genstein was not particularly interested in. This is surely the reason
why we do not find any detailed explicit verificationist pronounce

ments in the Tractatus itself. However once he had been confronted
with the Vienna Circle's determined efforts to work out a fully explicit
answer to the question of what precise form verificationism should

take Wittgenstein did gradually become more concerned with these
questions of detail himself. And in doing so he now did commit
himself to a specific formulation of verificationism. It was his parti
cipation in this gradual process of trying to arrive at a satisfactory
detailed and explicit formulation of verificationism which was what
held Wittgenstein's attention in the Vienna Circle discussions, and it
was for the same reason that by 1929 he formulated his verificationism
absolutely explicitly. Yet because much of this was already relatively
familiar to Wittgenstein and because this was also a relatively gradual
process this claim is not inconsistent with his relatively low level
of interest in the proceedings.
Let me now conclude by making clear what I think has been
established and what not, and indicate some further questions raised
by my conclusions.
9. RECONSIDERING THE TRACTATUS'

First of all let me emphasize what I am not claiming. I am not
proposing simply to revive the Vienna Circle interpretation of the

Tractatus in its entirety. Undoubtedly the Vienna Circle's inter
pretation did badly misrepresent the Tractatus on many issues, the
nature of philosophy, the nature of mathematics and logic, ethics, to
give only a few examples. It has undoubtedly been one of the major
achievements of recent work on the Tractatus to make this very clear
and to show how much there is in the Tractatus that stems from Frege,
Hertz, Schopenhauer and elsewhere, and has nothing to do with the

Vienna Circle or radical empiricism. It was precisely all these aspects
of the Tractatus which the Vienna Circle were completely blind to.
However now that this lesson has been thoroughly learned, and also
now that some of the texts from Wittgenstein's crucial middle period
are available, we can perhaps take a second look at the Vienna

Circle's interpretation and realise that while this interpretation is
certainly not the whole truth about the Tractatus, it is not wholly
mistaken either, and on one point of some importance it does contain
a genuine insight. So although the Vienna Circle's interpretation is not
without its shortcomings it is certainly an exaggeration to claim that
this interpretation fails 'not from any minor defect but because it
comes from entirely the wrong philosophical tradition'.28 The reply
to this must surely be that this interpretation is far from being the
complete failure suggested since there is every sign that Wittgenstein
felt perfectly at home in this supposedly alien philosophical tradition.
In one sense this conclusion about the source of Wittgenstein's
verificationism raises many more questions than it answers. For those

who reject the Vienna Circle's reading do so on the basis of what look
like very persuasive arguments which are based on what Wittgenstein
says in the Tractatus. Whereas my claim that we must trace the source
of Wittgenstein's verificationism back to the Tractatus is not based on
what he actually says in the Tractatus. While I do not think that this
makes my argument any less conclusive, clearly if I am right then it
must be possible to demonstrate the existence of Wittgenstein's tacit
verificationism directly on the basis of what he says in the Tractatus.
In addition it needs to be shown precisely where the arguments which
appear to show that there is no place within the framework of the
Tractatus for verificationism go wrong. It seems like no easy task to

do either of these things, and I shall not attempt to do either here. But
I do not think it will prove any easier to find a convincing alternative
explanation of the source of Wittgenstein's verificationism or to show
where my own argument goes wrong.
I suggested earlier that finding an answer to the question of the

origins of Wittgenstein's verification might well have far-reaching
consequences and involve radical revisions of widely accepted views
about Wittgenstein's ideas beyond the brief period of his explicit
verificationism. This much seems certain, that if my argument is
correct then this suggestion has very definitely been borne out.
NOTES
1 These remarks come, respectively, from Philosophical Remarks, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1975, pp. 174, 200; and from Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, Basil
Blackwell, Oxford, 1979, pp. 47, 53, 79.
288 MICHAEL WRIGLEY

2 Desmond Lee (ed.): 1980, Wittgenstein's Lectures: Cambridge, 1930-1932, Basil
Blackwell, Oxford, p. 66.

3 He once said, 'I used at one time to say that, in order to get clear how a certain
sentence is used, it was a good idea to ask oneself: "How would one try to verify such an
assertion?"_But some people have turned this suggestion about asking for the
verification into a dogma - as if I'd been advancing a theory about meaning', Gasking
and Jackson: 1978, 'Wittgenstein as a Teacher', in K. T. Fann (ed.), Ludwig Witt
genstein: The Man and His Philosophy, Harvester, Brighton, p. 54. Notice that even
here what Wittgenstein was objecting to was not so much the idea that meaning was in
some way connected with verification as the idea that this provided the basis for a theory
of meaning. Of course it is not clear that he was even justified in complaining about this.
Certainly it's hard on reading the texts of the early Thirties to escape the impression
that, in one sense at least of 'theory', that was exactly what Wittgenstein was doing.
4 Cf. Ramsey's description of these meetings in the letter to his mother written while he
was still in Austria, in Wittgenstein, Letters to C. K. Ogden, Basil Blackwell and

Routledge and Kegan Paul, Oxford and London, 1973, p. 78.
5 So G. E. Moore reports, 'Wittgenstein's Lectures, 1930-1933', Philosophical Papers,
Allen and Unwin, London, 1959, pp. 248-49.
6 Letter to Keynes, 4th July 1924, in Wittgenstein's Letters to Russell, Keynes and
Moore, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1974, p. 116.
7 As he remarked later, 'When I was building the house for my sister in Vienna I was so
completely exhausted at the end of each day that all I could do was go to a "flick" every
night', Drury: 1984, 'Conversations with Wittgenstein', in Rhees (ed.), Recollections of
Wittgenstein, Oxford University Press, London, p. 106.
8 Wittgenstein never attended the official meetings of the Vienna Circle, but met some
members of the Circle separately. Cf. McGuinness' introduction to Wittgenstein and the
Vienna Circle.
9 Feigl: 1980, 'The Wiener Kreis in America', in R. S. Cohen (ed.), Inquiries and
Provocations: Selected Writings, 1929-1974, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, p. 63.

10 Cf. McGuinness' introduction to Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, p. 15, and Feigl
op. cit.
11 Feigl op. cit., p. 64.

12 Cf. Hallett: 1977, A Companion to Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations',
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, p. 762.
13 Indeed Wittgenstein seems to go even further and takes Frege himself to task for
lapsing into psychologism, commenting, 'it is remarkable that a thinker as rigorous as
Frege appealed to self-evidence as a criterion of a logical proposition', Tractatus
6.1271.
14 As we know from von Wright's report in 'Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Biographical

Sketch' Wittgenstein, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1982, p. 18. Although von Wright goes
on to say that Wittgenstein abandoned some of his earliest Schopenhauerian views as a
result of the influence of Frege, it has been argued very convincingly that the ideas of
the Tractatus still incorporate substantial Schopenhauerian elements. Cf. Hacker: 1972,
Insight and Illusion, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 58fF.
15 For example, 'when the intuitionists speak of the "basic intuition" - is this a

psychological process? If so, how does it come into mathematics?', Philosophical
Grammar, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1974, p. 322.

16 Cf. Dummett: 1977, Elements of Intuitionism, Clarendon Press, Oxford; and, espe
cially, 'The Philosophical Basis of Intuitionist Logic', Truth and Other Enigmas,
Duckworth, London, 1978.
17 Although two points are worth making briefly. One obvious question, whose im
portance was stressed to me by Peter Eggenberger, is whether Dummett's interpretation
can do justice to the evident transcendental dimension of Brouwer's thought. At a

different level questions can be raised whether the kind of picture of mathematics which
follows from the theory of meaning which Dummett claims is implicit in Brouwer
actually tallies with the views which Brouwer put forward. In particular, it can be
questioned whether Dummett's theory of meaning really has the revisionary con
sequences with respect to mathematics which are such a notorious part of Brouwer's
ideas. Cf. Crispin Wright: 1981, 'Dummett and Revisionism' in Philosophical Quarterly,
where it is forcefully argued that Dummett's account of meaning does not have any such
revisionary consequences. If this is right then Dummett's claim to have extracted the
true core of Brouwer's intuitionism is clearly called into question.
18 Although the key idea behind this perspective on Wittgenstein is due to Dummett, he
has not been much concerned with working out any detailed interpretation of Witt
genstein himself. The most detailed presentation of such an interpretation is to be found
in the early work of Baker and Hacker, e.g., Hacker Insight and Illusion, and Baker and
Hacker 'Critical Notice of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Grammar', Mind, April 1976.

(Although I should stress that Baker and Hacker have long since vigorously rejected
such a reading of Wittgenstein. Cf. Scepticism, Rules and Language, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1984, pp. 46-47.) Similar ideas have been put forward in John Richardson:
1976, The Grammar of Justification, Sussex University Press, London, and in Crispin
Wright: 1980, Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics, Duckworth, London.
19 Dummett has discussed this aspect of his ideas most fully in 'What is a Theory of
Meaning? (II)', in Evans and McDowell (eds.), Truth and Meaning, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1976. Cf. also Crispin Wright 'Truth-Conditions and Criteria', Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 1976.
20 Philosophical Grammar, p. 290.
23 In fact it is an oversimplification to say that Hubert completely rejected the idea that
mathematical sentences had a meaning. For a certain very restricted class of sentences
he did allow that they had descriptive content.
24 In 'Mathematics in the Tractatus' (to appear) I have tried to show that it is possible to
piece together enough of the extremely compressed account of mathematics given in
the Tractatus to see that this claim about the relation between a mathematical sentence
and its proof is implicit in that account.
25 Cf. 'Mathematics in the Tractatus' for arguments that, contrary to what is often
claimed, Wittgenstein did not reject the completed infinite in the Tractatus.
26 I have discussed how exactly Brouwer did influence Wittgenstein in more detail in
'Wittgenstein and Brouwer' (to appear).
27 As both Russell and Waismann, among others, found. Cf. Kenneth Blackwell: 1981,
290 MICHAEL WRIGLEY

'The Early Wittgenstein and the Middle Russell', in I. Block (ed.), Perspectives on the
Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, p. 27n, and Gordon Baker: 1979,
'Verehrung und Verkehrung: Wittgenstein and Waismann', in Luckhardt (ed.), Wit
genstein: Sources and Perspectives, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, pp.
267-68.
28 James Griffin: 1964, Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p.
150.
Departamento de Filosof?a (IFCH)

Universidade Estadual de Campinas
CP? 1170
13100 Campinas, S.P.
Brazil

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The Origins of Wittgenstein's Verificationism

Author(s): Michael Wrigley

THE ORIGINS OF WITTGENSTEINS

neither is found capable of providing an explanation of the source of Wittgenstein's

mitted to a verificationism of the most extreme kind.

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF WITTGENSTEIN'S VERIFICATIONISM

This question needs to be answered not merely because it would be

he had held before adopting these views appear to have been

diametrically opposed to any form of verificationism. Certainly there is

principal conclusions of recent work on the Tractatus has been that

subsequent views in a completely mistaken perspective. So it is this

standing of Wittgenstein's ideas beyond his brief period of explicit

really did hold such extreme verificationist views by quoting a few

Every proposition is a signpost for a verification.

The sense of a proposition is the method of its verification.

If someone familiar only with Wittgenstein's later writings were

THE ORIGINS OF WITTGENSTEIN'S VERIFICATIONISM 267

the most controversial and radical consequences of this view of

of verificationism which was every bit as radical as anything put

Tractatus Wittgenstein appears to have been anything but a

verificationist. But by 1929 when he returned to Cambridge and

resumed philosophical research he most definitely was. Clearly the key

2. THE FALLOW YEARS, 1918-1929

himself obviously had little enthusiasm. As a result Wittgenstein's

by the testimony of Frank Ramsey. In 1923 Ramsey visited Witt

schoolteacher and spent a good deal of time discussing the Tractatus

whole seems by now to have been so remote from Wittgenstein's

remember exactly what some of the statements in the Tractatus

meant.5 Even if this remark contained an element of exaggeration it

Keynes wrote to Wittgenstein trying to persuade him to return to

had visited him. For he replied to Keynes in the following vivid

renewed interest in philosophy, and a complete absence of any sign

Kundmanngasse house in Vienna. This indicates clearly enough that

Nonetheless, although during this period Wittgenstein's chief

THE ORIGINS OF WITTGENSTEIN'S VERIFICATIONISM 269

was soon to take place.

3. WITTGENSTEIN'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE VIENNA CIRCLE

Circle that Wittgenstein was made to realise the immense im

plausibility of the total exclusion of epistemological considerations

verificationist approach was. In short, Wittgenstein owed his con

version to verificationism to the Vienna Circle.

This explanation is attractively simple, and, it might seem, must

acceptance of verificationism Wittgenstein in fact arrived at these

other possible explanation is there for the source of Wittgenstein's

going to their discussions. And if it was not their advocacy of

verificationism what was it?

However, if we look a little more closely at Wittgenstein's inter

does strongly suggest that this apparently implausible possibility was in

this attempted explanation of the origins of Wittgenstein's

than bring about a fundamental transformation in Wittgenstein's

different philosophical perspective whose merits he now appreciated

is very much the picture given by other participants in these dis

a radical transformation having taken place as a result of Witt

THE ORIGINS OF WITTGENSTEIN'S VERIFICATIONISM 271

making far-reaching modifications in his earlier views. So, surprising

though it may seem, I think this attempt to explain the source of

Wittgenstein's verificationism does have to be rejected.

was not by this route that Wittgenstein arrived at his own

verificationism, where did it originate? Secondly, if it was not because

return to Cambridge, and which was capable of leading him in the

4. THE IMPACT OF BROUWER

Quite clearly something Wittgenstein heard struck a chord which had

more Wittgenstein's excitement was not something that quickly

seems to have originated with Waismann) that he even travelled to