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Categories, Formal Concepts and Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

D. W. Hamlyn
D. W. Hamlyn
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
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Extract

In the Tractatus 4.126 Wittgenstein introduces the notion of a formal concept which, he says, needs to be distinguished from the notion of a proper concept, i.e. a concept such as that of “man” which has an ordinary empirical application. The sense in which formal concepts are formal is not that they have anything in particular to do with formal logic or logical form, but that they are concerned with what Wittgenstein called the “form of representation”. That is to say that they are concerned with the ways in which expressions can represent the world. To put it in another way, they are concerned with the use or application to which expressions might be put. (It is sufficiently clear, I think, that a large part of the Tractatus might be rewritten in these terms, in such a way as to leave it consistent with the later Wittgenstein.) Now, it is well known that for the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus it was impossible to say anything about the form of representation of any expression: this could only be shown. Hence Wittgenstein calls these formal concepts “pseudo–concepts”, meaning by this not that there are not such concepts, but that they are incompatible with his theory.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 129 , April 1959 , pp. 111 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1959

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References

1 This conclusion is reinforced by some of the considerations adduced by Strawson in his article on “Proper Names” (P.A.S. Supp. Vol. 1957), but I feel that by discussing the issue in terms not of the use of expressions but of the introduction of terms into propositions he has made a retrograde step which adds considerably to the obscurity of the discussion.

2 Cf. Ayer's discussion of the material and formal modes of speech in his article on “Individuals”.–Philosophical Essays, p. 7.

3 He still, of course, insists upon the priority of the category of substance to the other categories, but this does not seem part of his elucidation of the notion of substance.

page 115 note 1 Cf. Berlin, Mind, 1950, and his talk of the pointing feature of categorical statements, as opposed to hypotheticals. v. too Buck, Mind, 1951.

page 116 note 1 Logic and Language (ed. Flew), Vol. II.

page 120 note 1 P.A.S., 1954–55. cf. again his “Proper Names” (P.A.S. Supp. Vol. 1957).

page 120 note 2 “Singular Terms, Ontology and Identity”, Mind, October, 1956.