Mensurable Confusion?

Wittgenstein’s Meter-Stick and Beyond

kelly dean jolley
Auburn University

I certainly find it easier to recognize the deep continuities within

Wittgenstein’s thought, than the real nature of the contrasts: one
only comes to recognize these for what they are after prolonged
engagement with the two works.
—R. M. White, Understanding Wittgenstein 23

Introduction
heather gert has offered a reading of Investigations §§ 46–50. Her
attention devolves primarily on the notorious standard meter paragraph of
§ 50. Important to her reading is her conviction about what it is from the
Tractatus that is being criticized and about how it is being criticized.
I believe Gert’s reading of the passage is mistaken. Gert fails to get fully
into focus what is happening in the distance, in the Tractatus, and she fails
to get into focus what is happening nearby, in Investigations §§ 46–50. Her
failures to get these happenings into focus seem to be the result, in part, of a
misunderstanding of Wittgenstein’s 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 obviously
true of it.
My article runs beyond Gert’s. I say this by way of warning, but not
(much) by way of apology. My interest in Gert’s article is, so to speak, larger
than Gert’s article itself. While Gert’s article is, in a way, the subject of this
article, I am primarily interested in her article as exhibitory of a number of
confusions about Wittgenstein’s philosophizing. So, I often widen my focus,
examining more than Gert’s article itself. This means that I may, on occa-
sion, give Gert’s minutiae less than the central place in what I say, and that I
may, 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 attributions
of 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 those

tasks too. My changes of focus slow the development of the argument, but
they 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 interpretation—
at least, I support a version of it.
I start with Gert’s reading of the focal passage, the second paragraph of
§ 50. I then move, in part at Gert’s prodding, into a discussion of Tractarian
ultimate elements. Next, I look more closely at Gert’s reasons for reading the
meter-stick passage as she does, and I look more carefully at her reading of
the remarks leading up to the focal passage, §§ 46–49, especially § 48. After
more discussion of § 50, I fasten on Gert’s way of understanding language-
games, and I show both that her way of understanding them generally is
mistaken, and that her mistake is crucial to the way that she reads § 50. I
also diagnose her mistake. I then marshal forces both from the Tractatus and
the Investigations, and I use them to attack further Gert’s reading of the focal
passage. I turn at that point to the task of giving my specific version of the
received interpretation. The final section of the article I devote to discussing
Wittgenstein’s method and Gert’s misunderstanding of it.

Gert Begins Her Reading

Gert begins her reading by reminding her readers of some of the difficulties
of reading the Investigations. She points out that, throughout the remarks
that compose the book, Wittgenstein speaks in voices—sometimes his own,
sometimes that of a philosophical alter-ego. But these are not all Wittgen-
stein’s voices. There is another voice, Wittgenstein’s, yet not Wittgenstein’s—a
voice in which Wittgenstein quesserts (to twist Richard Grandy’s handy term).
Passages quesserted are passages in which Wittgenstein rephrases a view he is
about to attack, or in which he describes a problematic view in terms meant
to 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 the
standard meter is in Wittgenstein’s voice. . . . But that is not sufficient to
make it an expression of his view. Wittgenstein introduces the standard
meter as a means of translating the discussion about an hypothesized
type of object (Tractarian ultimate elements) into an analogous discus-
sion carried on in terms of objects of a more familiar and undisputed
type (standards). When Wittgenstein writes: “There is one thing of