NIKOLAY MILKOV SUSAN STEBBING'S CRITICISM OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS 1. INTRODUCTION: TWO KINDS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY In the first decade after the First World War early Cambridge analytic philosophy was spoken about as the philosophy of the English realists. While the old metaphysics, for example, that of McTaggart, was concerned with the ultimate nature of the world – and because of this was of necessity systematic – the new realistic metaphysics studied the phenomena of the world. It was pluralistic (atomistic), developed step by step, and recognized one authority only: the reality which we are directly acquainted with. By contrast, in Susan Stebbing's paper "Logical Positivism and Analysis",1 which was read to the British Academy as a Henriette Hertz lecture on 22 March 1933 and published shortly afterwards as a separate book, a new enemy of Moore-Russellian realism was proclaimed. She was anxious to distinguish not merely between Cambridge Realists and British Idealists, but between the former and the Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle. Stebbing was adamant in her insistence that the analysis practiced by the English realists was not to be confused with the "logical analysis" of the "Viennese Circle". But that was not all. This keen woman philosopher was the first author to see considerable differences between the philosophy of Moore-Russell – but above all Moore – on the one hand, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus on the other. The latter was seen by her as the product of a non-British tradition in philosophy that had its roots on the Continent. This explains why the ideas of the Tractatus were not only faithfully embraced by the Vienna Circle but also developed further in their true spirit – so much so that Stebbing tried to reconstruct Wittgenstein's post-1929 philosophy from the newly-published works of the philosophers of the Vienna Circle.2 The decision to explicate Wittgenstein's philosophical views of 1929-1932 by analyzing the papers of the Vienna Circle was a judicious one indeed. The published views of the Logical Positivist philosophers of the time were so close to those of Wittgenstein that in the summer of 1932 he was afraid that when he published his long-awaited "new book", he would be found guilty of plagiarism. This is well-documented in a letter to Carnap of 20 August 1932,3 in which Wittgenstein accuses Carnap of using many of the former's own ideas without 351 F. Stadler (ed.), The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism: Re-evaluation and Future Perspectives, 351–363. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 352 NlKOLAY MlLKOV acknowledgement in a paper of his.4 As a matter of fact, this article of Carnap's was the one discussed at greatest length (on 9 of 35 pages) in Stebbing's "Logical Positivism and Analysis".5 2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MOORE AND WITTGENSTEIN-VIENNA CIRCLE Susan Stebbing underlines that Moore and Wittgenstein start from one and the same idea: they are both convinced that the clarification of thoughts has priority in philosophy. From this point on, however, they went in different directions. First and foremost, Wittgenstein maintains that we can clarify thinking when we rightly understand the logic of language. This means that he, like the Logical Positivists, is interested above all in language, not in facts. In contrast, Moore is interested above all in facts, which he indeed investigated by analyzing philosophers' propositions. One implication of Wittgenstein's emphasis on clarifying language through the resources of the "new logic" (see on this term § 3) was his adopted policy of making everything clear at once. In contrast, Stebbing is adamant in her assertion that the process of clarification is to proceed step by step. This point is supported by Moore's insistence that there are degrees of understanding: "[I]t is a grave mistake to suppose that the alternatives are understanding, on the one hand, and simply not understanding, on the other. We understand more or less clearly" and then reflect on what we had so understood in a process of analysis.6 This conception of piecemeal, step-by-step analysis plays a central role in Stebbing's attack on Wittgenstein – it, more precisely, takes the form of criticism of the requirement for complete (lückenlose), exhaustive analysis from the perspective of Moore's philosophy of common sense. Stebbing insisted, namely, that "we can understand a sentence (i.e., know how to use it correctly) without knowing what its correct analysis is".7 In what follows, we shall see that these ideas were connected with the project of directional analysis. Before we proceed to discuss directional analysis, however, we shall try to answer the question why Moore, on the one hand, and Wittgenstein and his friends in Vienna, on the other hand, were so different from one to another? 3. WHERE DID THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MOORE AND WITTGENSTEIN-VIENNA CIRCLE COME FROM? There are good reasons to suppose that this difference was a result of Frege's influence on the Viennese analysts. Indeed, both Wittgenstein and the Logical Positivists assumed that we communicate information (thoughts) to other persons through language, and that we therefore can analyze thought by analyzing language only. As Stebbing put it, for them "to communicate is to use language. SUSAN STEBBING'S CRITICISM OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS 353 Hence, ... for Logical Positivists, the problem of knowledge resolves itself into the problem how language can be used to communicate."8 These, however, were all ideas of Frege's. Of course, one can correctly retort that the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, excepting Carnap, scarcely ever referred to Frege. This point, however, only suggests that Frege's influence on them came through some indirect channel. Our guess is that this was Wittgenstein's Tractatus – so that following the Tractatus, Logical Positivists accepted two leading ideas of Frege's, which they occasionally refer to as the "new logic". First, a main tenet of the book was that the task of philosophy is to make our thinking clear by stating what the true symbolism – the logically impeccable language – is. Second, they accept a thorough deductivism.9 That the leading ideas of the Tractatus were essentially Fregean was for the first time shown explicitly by another woman philosopher, Elisabeth Anscombe, as early as 1959.10 Later, this point was also developed by Michael Dummett in his celebrated piece "Frege and Wittgenstein", in which he maintains that when he follows Frege, "Wittgenstein is at his happiest"; when he criticized Frege, "he was almost at his worst".11 Here one is reminded of the fact that when speaking at all of a German influence on the Vienna Circle, philosophers usually assume either that the representatives of the Vienna Circle were Kantian, or that they were massively influenced by the Neo-Kantians, and perhaps also by Husserl.12 All this is true. The influence of the Neo-Kantians, however, does not exclude Frege's; the former merely supplemented – and augmented – the latter. This is best revealed by the example of the philosophical impact exerted on Rudolf Carnap. On the one hand, he was directly influenced by Frege; indeed, Carnap attended no fewer than three courses of Frege's lectures, and was, as he later remembered, immediately impressed by Frege's logic. On the other hand, he was a student of one of the philosophers of the South-West School of NeoKantians, Bruno Bauch. Characteristically enough, Bauch was, in turn, influenced by Frege. This only serves to further indicate how closely related the NeoKantians and Frege were. 4. WHAT IS DIRECTIONAL ANALYSIS? Stebbing first specifies that the point of her study is "intellectual analysis", as opposed to chemical or physical analysis, or to psychoanalysis: "[It] consists in discerning relations and characteristics which are in no way altered by the process of analyzing." 13 In contrast, the task of "material analysis" is the distillation of the analysandum to its ingredients. There are three types of intellectual analysis: metaphysical, grammatical, and symbolic. Grammatical analysis is done by linguists; it aims at revealing syntactical form. Symbolic analysis is the analysis practised by formal logicians, for 354 NIKOLAY MILKOV example, in the Theory of Descriptions; it starts from postulates,14 and is hypothetical and deductive. While grammatical and symbolic analysis remain at one and the same level, "[t]he aim of metaphysical analysis [why it is "metaphysical" we shall see in a while] is to determine the elements and the mode of combination of those elements to which reference is made when any given true assertion is made".15 The elements of the resultant are most often on some different, more basic level. In this sense, metaphysical analysis is directional analysis: it is directed from facts on a less basic level to facts on a more basic one. An example: "If we analyze a statement about a Committee as a statement about individuals, then the analysis is directional, and the levels are different. If we again analyze the statement about individuals as statements about bodily and mental states, then the analysis is [also] directional." 16 The aim of directional analysis is to more clearly reveal, in the resultant, the multiplicity of the analyzed fact. The analyzed fact and the resultant, including the final resultant, have the same multiplicity as the initial fact. The resultant, however, shows the multiplicity in a more conspicuous way.17 That is also why it is called metaphysical: it elucidates the structure of the facts. Stebbing assumes that we can, in principle, reach the level of basic facts. Basic facts are "the set of simple facts terminating a directional analysis".18 They are absolutely specific. As if following Russell, she further accepts these to be the ultimate constituents of the world. Stebbing even specifies how simple such facts can be: "an absolutely specific shade of color, or taste, or sound".19 Referring to such statements of hers, some of her contemporaries treated her as a follower of Russell.20 She was not, however, for four reasons: (i) It is true that, according to her, the sentence "This is a table" entails the set of basic facts upon which it is based. The opposite, however, is not the case. The basic facts do not entail the macroscopic object. Consequently, the final resultant does not yield a complete analysis of the initial fact, as Russell believed to be the case. In order to be in a position to do this, says Stebbing vaguely, we must know how the symbols are used.21 (ii) That directional analysis aims at basic facts does not mean that it requires that we must get to the basic facts. "A philosopher might employ directional analysis without being successful in carrying the analysis to completion."22 (iii) In contrast to Russell's theory of the external world, Stebbing's directional analysis did not mean reduction of material bodies to their constituting elements; the reason for this: she didn't believe that we can prove that material bodies are built out of basic elements. (iv) It was also never part of her intention to prove that basic facts exist.23 Following Moore, Stebbing was instead concerned with the analysis of our knowledge of certain complex material things which we know, with certainty, to exist – such as this table, the books on it, the chairs in the seminar room, etc. and also perceptual situations, perspectives, etc. In other words, she accepted the SUSAN STEBBING'S CRITICISM OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS 355 materialist position that "the external world is the world of macroscopic objects, in their spatial and temporal relations".24 So we need not construct the external world – it is given to us. All these assumptions show that Stebbing conceives of the problem of the external world as of an epistemological problem. This is "a problem of analyzing what it is we know when we do know a [table, say]".25 It is true that we do not know the whole table directly. Nevertheless, the table is given to us – though indirectly, – whereas the sense-data are given directly. Her conclusion: We must abandon the belief that all that is given to us is given directly.26 That the macroscopic objects are given to us indirectly presents the following task to the philosopher: she/he should make their structure (multiplicity) clearer by revealing those aspects of them which are given directly to us. Stebbing is convinced that the philosophical problem is not that we are to construct the world from simple elements, sense-data, for example. This is a Cartesian task: to infer the world from something that is given.27 As already noted, she specifically criticizes Russell's obsession with finding the individual data upon which to erect our knowledge of the external world.28 Even worse, the Logical Positivists transformed it into the linguistic principle that every sentence I understand is capable of translation into a sentence, every element of which could be used demonstratively. Both approaches – of Russell and of the Logical Positivists – lead to solipsism which, according to Stebbing, is a philosophical dead-end. She put it in the following, Moorean way: "I have the best grounds for denying solipsism, namely, I know it to be false."29 5. CRITICISM OF LOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONS Stebbing agrees that the objects of the external world can be called "logical constructions" in the sense that macroscopic objects – tables, chairs, etc. – can be seen as being made (composed) of low-level elements through logically definable connections. True to her idea of directional analysis, however, she is reluctant to use this expression – she does not believe that something is really "constructed" here. This explains why '"Tables are logical constructions' is a sensible remark and is also true... But 'Logical constructions exist' is a nonsensical statement."30 Her conclusion: "It would have been better to avoid the use of the word 'construction' [in philosophy] altogether."31 Indeed, the external world is not constructed, nor are macroscopic material objects. We have constructions in physical theories, not in the world. This point explains why, when speaking of constructions, philosophers often make mistakes. So Russell was in a muddle when he stated that "perspectives" are logical constructions.32 Indeed, whereas a perspective is partial, a construction is abstract. "Hence, constructions cannot be fitted together",33 whereas perspectives can. 356 NIKOLAY MILKOV Another point of difference between true analytism and construction-making: Whereas constructed systems cannot be exhaustive, analysis can. The reason for this is that "analysis is not abstract relative to the analysandum of which it is an analysis",34 while constructed systems are. What is more, exhaustive analysis is the aim of directional analysis. "The base is provided (in the case of propositions about the external world) by perceptual situations." 35 When speaking of logical constructions, we must constantly bear in mind that a system is always constructed relative to a certain base. Not only that, but "[w]hatever base be chosen, other bases would be possible. ... [Hence,] no constructed system could be exhaustive with reference to the external world."36 In other words, construction is something like a hypothesis. There are alternative systems of constructions, or hypotheses, based on the same facts. This is exactly what is assumed by the Logical Positivists and their poster boy – Wittgenstein. Above all, for Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, the facts are hypothetical facts, which can verify the propositions. In contrast, "in Russell's view a fact is what makes a proposition true, or false."37 This is also what Stebbing accepts. 6. THE HISTORY OF MOORE'S IDEA OF DIRECTIONAL ANALYSIS From the critical remarks addressed to Russell's kind of analysis cited at the end of §4, it is clear that aside from the differences between Moore, on the one hand, and Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, on the other, there were considerable differences between Moore and Russell as well.38 These became especially conspicuous after 1925. Thus, according to the Moore of this period, "that the belief follows is ... not to be taken to mean that it follows 'according to the rules of inference accepted by Formal Logic' ".39 There are quite different types of following that are not to be confused with one another. In contrast, Russell accepted that following is of one type only – that of formal logic. In connection with this, he sought in epistemology "a basis for certain knowledge", from which he hoped to be in a position to infer any other knowledge by necessity. Why this difference between Moore and Russell, who, as is well-known, were working jointly as the co-founders of analytic philosophy around 1900? My second guess is similar to my first one, articulated in the beginning of § 3: this disagreement was due, above all, to an increased influence of German philosophy – this time on Russell. First, German philosophy – Lotze, Helmholtz, Hermann Cohen – persuaded him to embrace scientific philosophy. Secondly, it was Frege and his philosophical logic which stirred Russell to accept the doctrine that ordinary language, on the one hand, and logic, on the other, have quite different forms; so that the task of both logic and philosophy is to seek the true logical form which lies hidden beneath the grammatical form. In contrast, Moore developed the method of examining philosophers' sentences which was to explicate the propositions they in fact intended to state. SUSAN STEBBING'S CRITICISM OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS 357 Now as Moore had noted in his "Autobiography", it was Russell's Principles of Mathematics as well as the Theory of Descriptions that persuaded him to reformulate his method of examining "what on earth this-and-this philosopher means by p?" – which he had so successfully applied in the early 1900s – into the terms of philosophical logic. This Moore did in his lectures Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1910-11), in which he accepted the linguistic approach to philosophy. For example, he divided the "contents of the Universe" into two classes: propositions and non-propositions.40 Gradually, however, Moore felt more and more uncertain with respect to the philosophical logic of the Russell-Frege type and eventually returned to his old philosophical realism in an attempt to reformulate and refine it. A real breakthrough in this direction was marked by his inaugural lecture as professor of philosophy at Cambridge, "A Defence of Common Sense" (1925), which for many years was considered to be the beginning of analytical philosophy.41 This development gathered momentum in his first course of lectures as a professor at Cambridge in 1925-6, later published in Lectures on Philosophy,,42 where directional analysis was discussed for the first time. It culminated in Moore's open criticism of Russell in "Four Forms of Skepticism" (1940-4), and especially in "Russell's 'Theory of Descriptions' " (1944).43 7. ITS LOGIC The point at which Moore opposed Russell's philosophical logic was the treatment of "incomplete symbols". The term was introduced in Russell-Whitehead's Principia Mathematica to designate a symbol which is never used in isolation, only in a context.44 The prime example of an incomplete symbol is "definite description"; another example is "logical construction". These are all logical fictions. In 1925-26, in the Lectures on Philosophy cited above, Moore insisted, contrary to Russell-Whitehead, that "incomplete symbols", as well as "logical constructions" and "definite descriptions", are not fictitious. So these concepts are not logical fictions. Russell's failure to grasp their true nature is easily seen in that it is not possible to perceive a fictitious entity, while we clearly perceive what is supposed to be an entity named by definite descriptions – this table, for example. The same is true of logical constructions,45 as well as of incomplete symbols. The most important outcome of this difference made by Moore-Stebbing between incomplete symbols and logical fictions is that the two types of concepts give rise to two different types of logical consequence: imply and entail. Imply is a strict logical consequence, whereas entail is metaphysical one, and is not exclusive. Here is one example of this distinction. The proposition "unicorns are fictitious", where "unicorns" are incomplete symbols, (metaphysically) implies that there are no unicorns in the real world. In contrast, "lions are logical 358 NIKOLAY MILKOV fictions" logically entails that "there are no lions", in a sense in which this is a proposition about words.46 The first proposition presupposes directional analysis, the second one logical analysis. 8. THE FATE OF MOORE'S DIRECTIONAL ANALYSIS Many historians of analytic philosophy consider Quine's criticism voiced in his seminal paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) on Carnap's strict distinction between a priori and empirical knowledge to be a harbinger of the end of analytic philosophy.47 In fact, however, there were many analytic philosophers, above all Moore, Stebbing, and John Wisdom, who refused to accept such a distinction as long ago as the late 1920s and the early 1930s. For them, (directional) analytical knowledge was not a priori, and also not necessary. Apparently, the conception of analytic philosophy of these historians of philosophy was, to say the least, one-sided. Unfortunately, nobody developed this kind of analytic philosophy – the analytic philosophy based on directional analysis – systematically and to its full extent. Indeed, while teaching at St. Andrews in the early 1930s, John Wisdom accepted that the task of philosophy is to seek illumination of facts already known, thus reaching beyond their first-level structure. He developed this insight even before Stebbing, in his early book Interpretation and Analysis,48 and in his five papers on "Logical Constructions" (1931-3).49 However, in 1934 Wisdom came to teach philosophy at Cambridge; in 193437 he came to attend Wittgenstein's lectures. As a result, he underwent a linguistic turn, which can be very well seen in his celebrated paper "Philosophical Perplexity" (1936), which reads: "It's not the stuff, it's the style that stupefies."50 This development irritated his old ally Stebbing, who openly criticized Wisdom's new "mnemonic slogan".51 Of course, Wisdom never turned pure linguistic philosopher in the sense of Frege-Wittgenstein. Rather, under the guise of his linguisticism, he continued to do directional analysis, which is clearly discernible in his mature works.52 In these Wisdom tried to reveal some deeper aspects of the common-level structure of facts which are well-known to all. Among other things, they address such typically metaphysical problems as the meaning of life. Even deeper were the traces of Moore's type of analytic philosophy, so eloquently articulated by Stebbing, by Ryle, and especially by J. L. Austin, who used to say in the 1950s: "Some like Witters [the insinuation here was of Wittgenstein], but Moore is my man".53 Indeed, some twenty years after Stebbing, Austin fought against the pursuit of the flawless justification of human knowledge which brings to life the fetishism of truth and precision; he was also against accepting sense-data and knowledge by acquaintance. Exactly like Moore-Stebbing,54 he was convinced that in epistemology we must start from SUSAN STEBBING'S CRITICISM OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS 359 perceptual situations, not from sense-data. Exactly like Moore-Stebbing, again, he was interested in the meaning of words, not in their grammar. Despite these clear cases of sympathy with the kind of analysis practiced by Moore-Stebbing, the latter remained a "road less travelled". The reason for this was that, after the Second World War, it was completely suppressed by the powerful voice of American analysts, above all Quine. This sad development was hastened by Stebbing's early death in 1943, as well as by Moore's personality, which was less than suitable for the founder of a school of philosophy. As a result, the project of philosophy done in terms of directional analysis was consigned to oblivion. 9. THE EFFECTS OF STEBBING'S PAPER The main idea of Stebbing's Henriette Hertz Lecture – the opposing of two kinds of analytism: that of Moore-Russell but especially of Moore's, and that of the Vienna Circle but especially of Wittgenstein's – didn't go without notice. In the years before the Second World War, it was often discussed in Britain. Thus, on 31 May 1934, John Wisdom read a paper at the Moral Science Club in Cambridge on "Moore and Wittgenstein" in which he summed up the difference between the two as follows: "Moore recommends 'What is the meaning of the word so and so?' . . . In contrast Wittgenstein recommends: 'What is the grammar of the word so-and-so?' "55 Wittgenstein attended this lecture and it may be well the case that it motivated him further in his endeavour to distance himself from Moore's type of analysis. We shall discuss the effects of Stebbing's paper on Wittgenstein in the next section. All that is to be noted here is that, five years later, this difference found its clearest expression in a paper of Max Black's which reads: "It is ... the different direction given to the practice of philosophical analysis in England by Moore's example, to which the current difference between English analysts and Logical Positivists can be traced."56 What Black could not know in 1939 was that this was also to constitute the rift between American analytical philosophy and British analytical philosophy which became sadly obvious in the 1950s. In hindsight, this isn't surprising. Indeed, the beginning of American analytic philosophy was deeply influenced by some European émigrés, such as Carnap, Hempel and Tarski, who were either members of the Vienna Circle, or were close to it. There was only a handful of followers of Moore's kind of analytic philosophy in America, who could not match in strength the alternative, Quinesque kind, formed in critical discussion with the Logical Positivists. 360 NIKOLAY MILKOV 10. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF STEBBING'S CRITICISM FOR THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF WITTGENSTEIN "Logical Positivism and Analysis" was exceptionally critical of Wittgenstein's Tactatus and assumed that after his return to Cambridge in 1929, and until March 1933, he continued its main line of thought. In this connection it is to be noted that at the time, Wittgenstein was facing considerable resistance in Cambridge. Charles Broad didn't accept his philosophy, and neither did Frank Ramsey, who called it "scholastic". Finally, it was also criticized in a paper on Cambridge philosophy of the time by Richard Braithwaite, a close friend and follower of Ramsey, that was published in March 1933.57 Nobody was as specific, nor as forceful, in her or his criticism of Wittgenstein, though, as Susan Stebbing in her paper "Logical Positivism and Analysis", which was nothing but a list of his "muddles". As a matter of fact, Stebbing's paper made considerable use of Braithwaite's piece, which she read when still unpublished. Her paper, however, was much more disapproving than that of Braithwaite. At this point it is to be noted that after Stebbing published her A Modern Introduction to Logic in 1931, she enjoyed considerable authority among British philosophers. In 1931-2 she was a visiting professor at Columbia University. Early in 1933, Stebbing was elected professor at Bedford College, London, and president of the The Aristotelian Society. In the summer of 1933 she co-founded the journal Analysis. Accordingly, it is not difficult to imagine how disquieting her criticism was for Wittgenstein. To be sure, there is no evidence that Wittgenstein read Stebbing's paper; it is most reasonable, however, to assume that part of its contents leaked out to him through his friends and students. His immediate reaction was his notorious letter to the editor of Mind, written on 27th of May 1933, in which he "disclaimed] all responsibility for the views and thoughts which Mr. Braithwaite [and so also Stebbing] attributes to [him]" (Wittgenstein 1933).58 Wittgenstein escaped philosophical defeat thanks, for one thing, to Moore's support. Indeed, in the paper Stebbing opposed Wittgenstein's "bad" to Moore's "good" philosophy. Moore, however, openly declared that he learned much from Wittgenstein and in 1930-33 regularly attended his lectures. In this way, he acknowledged that Wittgenstein's kind of analysis was at least on a par with his. As already mentioned, it was simply not Moore's nature to organize an antiWittgenstein philosophical party. Secondly, after March 1933, i.e. immediately after Braithwaite and Stebbing's criticism, Wittgenstein made a turn in his philosophy almost as drastic as his turn of 1929 – a turn which invalidated this criticism. He more precisely made a new synthesis in his philosophy, which found first expression in his Cambridge lectures, delivered in 1932-33. SUSAN STEBBING'S CRITICISM OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS 361 (i) After the 26th lecture,59 he stopped speaking of "verification", "visual field", and "private language" altogether. (Here one should remember that the main accusation of both Braithwaite and Stebbing against Wittgenstein was "his solipsism" – his "insisting that the verification of a proposition which I assert must be in my own experience".60) Instead, Wittgenstein accepted that the meaning of the word is nothing but its use. (ii) In addition, immediately after March 1933 he made the criticism of the private language argument a central theme in his writings. These theoretical changes in Wittgenstein's philosophy led to changes in his writing projects too. Indeed, in the summer of 1933, he started revisions of TS 213, on which part of Philosophical Grammar and the Blue Book are based. In these he began to prepare to write his "new book" – Philosophical Investigations. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11 . 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. See Susan Stebbing, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", in: Proceedings of the British Academy 19, 1933, pp. 53-87. See ibid., pp. 53 ff. See Michael Nedo/Michele Ranchetti, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1983, p. 381. Wittgenstein means here Rudolf Carnap, "Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft", in: Erkenntnis 2, 1931, pp. 432-65. See Susan Stebbing, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., pp. 69-77. Idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., p. 81. Idem, "Some Puzzles About Analysis", in: Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 39, 1938/9, p. 77. Idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., pp. 67-8. Stebbing herself identifies the "new logic" with these two ideas in ibid., pp. 65f. See Elisabeth Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus. London: Hutchinson 1959. Michael Dummett, Frege and Other Philosophers. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991, pp.237, 239. See e.g. Alan Richardson, Carnap's Construction of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998; Michael Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999. Susan Stebbing, "The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics", Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 33, 1932-3, p. 77. Whereas in December 1932 (in "The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics", passim) Stebbing spoke of "symbolic analysis", in March 1933 she spoke of "postulational analysis"; see her "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., pp.80f. Susan Stebbing, "The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics", loc. cit., p. 79. Idem, "Directional Analysis and Basic Facts", in: Analysis 2,3,1934, pp. 35-6. See Idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., p. 8!. Idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., p. 82. Idem, "The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics", loc. cit., p. 91. See Eugen Bronstein, "Miss Stebbing's Directional Analysis and Basic Facts", in: Analysis 2, 12, 1934, pp. 10-14. 362 NlKOLAY MlLKOV 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. See idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., p. 82. Unfortunately, Stebbing didn't explore this idea further. Idem, "Directional Analysis and Basic Facts", loc. cit., p. 36. See ibid., p. 34. Idem, "Constructions", in: Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 34, 1933-4, p. 10. Idem, "Directional Analysis and Basic Facts", loc. cit., p. 27. See idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., p. 78. See idem, "Some Puzzles About Analysis", loc. cit., p. 72. See idem, "Constructions", loc. cit., p. 20. Idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., p. 77. Idem, "Constructions", loc. cit., p. 19. Ibid., p. 20. See Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World, 2nd ed. London: Allen & Unwin, 1926, pp.94ff. Susan Stebbing, "Constructions", loc. cit., pp. 24-5. Ibid., pp. 25-6. Ibid., p. 26. Italics mine. Ibid.,p.25. Idem, "Logical Positivism and Analysis", loc. cit., p. 85, italics mine. In the same paper, however, Stebbing mentions that Schlick too speaks of truth-making (p. 65). This, of course, is an inconsistency. The truth is that the conception of truth-making was introduced by the early Wittgenstein, and in no way was connected with realism. See on the history of the term Nikolay Milkov, "Verifikation II. Wahrmacher; Verifikator", in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 11, 2001, pp. 702-3. See for them Alfred Ewing, "Two Kinds of Analysis", Analysis 2, 3, 1934, pp. 60-4. Susan Stebbing, "Moore's Influence", in: Paul Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of G. E. Moore. La Salle (III.): Open Court 1942, p. 525. See George Edward Moore, Some Main Problems of Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin, 1953, p.56. See, for example, Austin Duncan-Jones, "Does Philosophy Analyze Common Sense?", in: Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 16, 1937, pp. 139-61. See George Edward Moore, Lectures on Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin 1966. See Idem, Philosophical Papers. London: Allen & Unwin 1959, pp. 196-226; 151-95. See Bertrand Russell/Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1910. See Susan Stebbing, "Constructions", loc. cit., p.19. George Edward Moore, Lectures on Philosophy, loc. cit., p.122. See e.g. Gregory Romanos, Quine and Analytic Philosophy. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press 1983; Dirk Koppelberg, Die Aufhebung der analytische Philosophie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1987. John Wisdom, Interpretation and Analysis. London, Kegan Paul 1931. Idem, Logical Constructions. New York: Random House 1969. Idem, Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis, Oxford: Blackwell 1953, p. 38. See Susan Stebbing, "Some Puzzles About Analysis", loc. cit., pp.80n., 84. See John Wisdom, Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis, loc. cit., and Paradox and Discovery, Oxford: Blackwell 1965. Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1989, p.381. See Susan Stebbing, "The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics", loc. cit., p. 72. See also §5, para. 3. Michael Nedo/Michele Ranchetti, op. cit., p. 266. Max Black, "Relation between Logical Positivism and the Cambridge School of Analysis", in: Erkenntnis 8, 1938/9, p. 26. Richard Braithwaite, "Philosophy", in: Harold Wright (Ed.), University Studies, Cambridge. 1933. London: Nicholson & Watson 1933, pp. 1-32. Ludwig Wittgenstein, "[Letter] To the Editor of Mind", in: Mind 42, 1933, p. 415. SUSAN STEBBING'S CRITICISM OF WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS 363 59. 60. See idem, Wittgenstein's Lectures. Cambridge, 1932-1935, Alice Ambrose (Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell 1979, p.31. Richard Braithwaite, "Philosophy", loc. cit., p. 27. Abteilung Philosophie Universität Bielefeld Postfach 100131 D-33501 Bielefeld Germany nikolay.milkov@uni-bielefeld.de