It was one of the goals of the logical positivists to find the master language. This language would be both logical and positivist: logical implying that there would no ambiguity in the language; and positivist in that all that could be said in the language would be both meaningful and true. This approach was exemplified in Betrand Russell and Alfred Whiteheads' Principica Mathematica where they attempted to reduce mathematics to a set of a logically necessary forms.

In the end, it was the inscrutable Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who seized that project by the throat and rammed it into completion. In the sparkling book Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Wittgenstein explores the logical foundations on which such a project could be built.

If a master language exists then any meaningful proposition in ordinary language must be reducible to an unambiguous proposition in the master language. Furthermore, for the proposition to be truly unambigous, the proposition, as expressed in the master language, would be utterly unique.

In that case, every proposition would correspond to a fact of the world. Conversely, all the facts in the world corresponds to the sum propositions of this language. Of course, the Tractatus was an attempt to articulate this language. What was supremely brilliant about the Tractatus was that Wittgenstein analysed the logical status of the master language in the framework of the master language itself. And he came up with some startling conclusions.

Now, if all the facts in the world corresponds to all the allowed propositions in the language then no statements about the language itself would be allowed. Why?

Because if a proposition in the language referred to itself, you would be talking about the language whilst you were using the language. If the language contained all that was true then from what point of view would you be talking about all that was true? By treating the language itself as an object, you could talk about what was not the language. Such a point of view would be outside all that was true. But the master language was only supposed to only contain facts of the world - you shouldn't be allowed to make statements about what was outside the facts of the world. Hence, Wittgenstein argues, one would have to pass over in silence statements about the master language in the master language.

Wittgenstein then concluded that he had demonstrated the self-refuting nature of all metaphysics.

However, this still leaves behind a niggling little problem. If you can't talk about the master language in the master language, how would you know that it was the master language in the first place?

Wittgenstein's answer to that question was quite instructive: intuition.

© 2001.