Andreas asked:

I would like to ask your opinion about how language relates to the external world according to
Wittgenstein's later philosophy.

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You have asked me to write a book!

The first thing to emphasize is the underlying continuity in Wittgenstein's conception of the problem
facing any philosophical account of the 'relation between language and the world'.

We can describe the relations between things in the world. Some of the things in the world are
pictures or signs, while other things are things pictured or signified. For example, the sign saying, '400
meters to the beach' is actually 577 meters to the nearest bit of sand. The picture of the hotel in the
holiday brochure was taken on one of the few days that the builders were not working on the ground
floor extension and the swimming pool.

The statements I have just made use language, English, to relate objects to one another. The
philosophical problem arises when we raise the question how language as such 'relates' to the world
of objects. Wittgenstein was not the first to see that this kind of question is threatened by a potentially
vicious regress. It is impossible to give a complete description of how our words 'relate' to the objects
in the world, because an account must also be given of the words used in that description, and then
the words used in the account of the words used in the description, and so on.

In his early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,Wittgenstein conceived the task of the
philosopher of language as giving an account of the structure that language must have in order for
there to be statements that are either true or false. Note how this Kantian idea of 'explaining how
such-and-such is possible' neatly avoids the question of saying what the relation actually is!
Wittgenstein's conclusion was that there is a vast, intricate structure underlying my use of words that I
know nothing about. On the assumption that every statement I make has a determinate truth value,
his reasoning is logical and persuasive. Yet the conclusion seems incredible.

In his later work the Philosophical InvestigationsWittgenstein abandoned the assumption of the
determinacy of truth and meaning. What made this move possible was his recognition of the
essentially social character of meaning. The hidden logical machinery needed to account for the
utterances of the lonely 'I' confronting a 'world' was thrown away. In its place, Wittgenstein talked of
'forms of life', the essential commonality of language speakers - biological, psychological, social - that
accounts for their ability to join in and play 'language games' with one another.

That is not, it should be noted, an account of 'how language relates to the external world'. It is better
described as an account - for those who are persuaded by it, a much more believable account than
the one Wittgenstein gives in the Tractatus- that explains why that question is the wrong question to
ask.

Geoffrey Klempner