K O D I K A S / C O D E 44 (2021) · No. 1 - 3 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy. Karl Bühlers Zeichenbegriff und seine Beziehung zu Wittgenstein (1984) Abstract: This essay is an attempt to draw from the historical-comparative discussion of Bühler ’ s sign concept clues of the reconstruction of his integral theory of signs. Eschbach first traces the development of Bühler ’ s concept of the sign in published works until 1938 and then details their development in unpublished works during and after WWII. It focuses on the manuscript “ What is a sign? ” and a treatise on the concept of sign; this leads to a comparison of Karl Bühler ’ s and Ludwig Wittgenstein ’ s reflections on the concept of sign, which illuminates the similarities in their two approaches. 1 Introduction To try to reconstruct Karl Bühler ’ s theory of signs from the sparse fragments of a theory which, detached from the name of their author and anonymous like folklore, have become basic elements of modern semiotic thought (cf. Fónagy 1984), could be compared to the attempt to extrapolate the complexity of Peirce ’ s semiotics from his letters to Lady Welby. The fragmentation of Karl Bühler ’ s comprehensive theory of signs into a few splinters of thought, such as the Organon model together with the resulting types of signs symbol, symptom, and signal, the principle of abstract relevance and, if applicable, the remarks on deixis, reveals serious reception deficiencies on various levels: The scope and unity of Bühler ’ s theory of signs are just as little taken into account as the critical function of Bühler ’ s sematology as basic science; the sources of Bühler ’ s theory of signs are passed over as well as the great synthesis he arrived at; in the assessment of Bühler ’ s theory of signs, important works from the time before the publication of his much-cited theory of language (Bühler 1934) are neglected in the same way as his publications after 1934 - not to mention Karl Bühler ’ s estate. It would be presumptuous to try to make up for all the omissions in the context of an essay; instead, we shall attempt to draw from the historical-comparative discussion of Bühler ’ s sign concept, to derive clues for the reconstruction of his integral theory of signs. I will first trace the development of Bühler ’ s concept of the sign until 1938; this will be followed by an investigation of Bühler ’ s unpublished works on sign theory, which will focus on the manuscript “ What is a sign? ” and a treatise on the concept of sign; the conclusion will be a comparison of Karl Bühler ’ s and Ludwig Wittgenstein ’ s reflections on the concept of sign, which I will carry out with the intention of a mutual illumination of the two approaches. 2 The development of Bühler ’ s concept of the sign until 1938 In the so-called “ principles chapter ” of his Theory of language, 1 Bühler develops his ideas of the three Bühler ’ s considerations based on the following: the meaning functions of language phenomena, the sign nature of language, and the four-field schema which unites speech act and speech work, speech act and speech formation. As a starting point for his reflections, Bühler chooses Plato ’ s Kratylos, where it is said that language is an organum to communicate something about things to one another (cf. Bühler 1934: 24). In this enumeration, which reveals the social character of language, which Bühler elsewhere says is logically prior to or at least logically equivalent to a subject-related act theory in Husserl ’ s sense (cf. ibid.: 69), no less than three relational foundations can be distinguished. If we now assume that there is usually an acoustically or optically perceptible phenomenon that maintains relations to all three distinguished foundations, we can graphically illustrate this first finding as follows (cf. ibid: 25): However, Bühler by no means intends to explain human language traffic in the style of Ferdinand de Saussure ’ s “ cycle of speech ” , widely known in 1934, in which a psychophysical system A, stimulated by a stimulus source, shows a reaction that in turn becomes the stimulus source of a psychophysical system B. In his view, the shortcomings of this approach can be remedied only by means of a consistently sign-theoretic or, as he puts it, sematological approach. One of the first facts that a sematological approach has to take into account is that human linguistic intercourse can be represented neither as a stimulus-response chain nor as a mere act of representation in the sense of the scholastic formula “ aliquid stat pro aliquo ” since the sender is formative and the receiver segregative. Bühler formulates this state of affairs in his Axiomatik der Sprachwissenschaften as follows: “ With the signs, which carry meaning, it is thus the case that the sense thing, this perceivable something hic et nunc does not have to enter into the semantic function with the whole fullness of 1 Incidentally, reference should be made to two larger collections of essays: The first volume is a discussion following Karl Bühler ’ s Axiomatik der Sprachwissenschaften (Graumann and Herrmann (eds.) 1984), while the second collection of essays attempts to do justice to the complexity of Bühler ’ s approach from very different perspectives (Eschbach (eds.) 1984). A considerable facilitation and intensification of Bühler research should come when the edition of the Gesamtausgabe of Karl Bühler ’ s works, which is being worked on in Essen under my direction, is completed. The complete edition, which will be published by Suhrkamp-Verlag in Frankfurt a. M., will include, in addition to Karl Bühler ’ s previously published works, his extensive unpublished estate, his scholarly correspondence, and a bibliography. The recent increased interest in the work of Karl Bühler is also manifested in the two Bühler symposia which will be held in 1984 alone: In August 1984, a “ Karl Bühler Seminar ” will be held in Kirchberg as part of the Ludwig Wittgenstein Congress, and in November 1984, a Karl Bühler Symposium will be held at the University of Essen to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the printing of Karl Bühler ’ s main work, the Theory of Language. Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 115 its concrete properties Rather it can be that only this or that abstract moment is relevant for its profession to function as a sign. This is put in simple words, the principle of abstract relevance. ” (Bühler 1933: 31 f.) In view of this fact, Bühler sees himself compelled to recast the formulation of the Platonic Organon model of language referred to at the beginning and to conceive it as a scheme of sign constitution capable of elevating the concrete sound phenomenon to the rank of a sign in three different ways. Bühler laid down this insight in his famous Organon model of language (Bühler 1934: 28), which achieved a high degree of recognition, at least in Germanspeaking countries: Explaining this model, he wrote: The sides of the drawn triangle symbolize these three moments. In one respect, the triangle encloses less than the circle (principle of abstract relevance). In another direction, it reaches beyond the circle to suggest that the sensually Given always an apperceptive complement symbolizes the semantic functions of the (complex) speech sign. It is a symbol by virtue of its association with objects and facts, a symptom (sign, individual) by virtue of its dependence on the sender whose inwardness it expresses, and a signal by virtue of its appeal to the hearer whose external or internal behavior it controls like other traffic signs (ibid.). On the basis of this formulation of Bühler ’ s concept of sign, the following discussion will be conducted against the background of the thesis that Bühler needed the concept of sign in the process of the progressive deepening of the theoretical foundations of linguistics not for its own sake, but because of its medial constituting function of actions (cf. Eschbach 1984). As in many other cases, Bühler was guided in his exploration of the constituting conditions of actions by considerations of his Freiburg teacher Johannes von Kries 2 who had introduced the term “ margin ” 2 in his treatise on the principles of probability theory (von Kries 1886). This term, which recurs in the Theory of language in the inconspicuous - but therefore no less important - a form of the principle of the “ displacement ” of the self in space and time, had already received a coinage in one of Karl Bühler ’ s most successful works, his study Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes (Bühler 1918), in the concept of “ role exercise ” borrowed from Karl Groos, which not only superficially recalls the conception of George H. Mead, with whom Bühler was to meet on the occasion of “ his Chicago guest professorship eleven years later. 3 Accordingly, it will be necessary to examine in more detail which reflexive and/ or regulative functions signs perform in social actions in which and which individuals maintain various kinds of relationships. 2 Thus it is interesting to note that Wittgenstein ’ s concept of Sprachspiel also seems to go back to von Kries (cf. von Wright 1982: 147) 3 However, very important suggestions for Bühler ’ s theory of action also came from his friends and colleagues of the so-called Würzburg School around Oswald Külpe, which will be discussed elsewhere 116 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) A key passage that succinctly summarizes this entire complex issue is found in Die Krise der Psychologie (The Crisis of Psychology): We follow a proposition often pronounced out of intimate knowledge of things, but never methodically fructified completely, if we look for the origin of semantics not in the individual, but in the community. Also, the logical realization that Kundgabe and Kundnahme are correlative terms, that to the sign giver belongs a sign receiver, if otherwise semantics is to have a meaning, points us to the same source point of language. We thus make the hypothesis, as simple as it is far-reaching, that semantic facilities are from the outset in the service of an ordered community life, and we add that we do not want to think of them as a luxury facility arising secondarily from an already existing community life, but much more deeply and necessarily connected with it: semantics is not a byproduct but a constitutive factor of any animal or human community life. (Bühler 1927: 38 f.; cf. ibid.: 48). In his Theory of language, Bühler - as already mentioned - describes the social moment of language as logically prior to or at least equal to a subject-related act theory (cf. Bühler 1934: 69), from which he draws the consequence and places the fact of intersubjective sign traffic at the top of the investigation (cf. ibid.: 231). If the sociality of human beings is to be regarded as the source point of semantics, we will have to ask how the concept of community is to be characterized in Bühler ’ s opinion. Bühler ’ s answer, which Ungeheuer dealt with in his essay of 1967, which is enormously important for Bühler ’ s research, is content to emphasize as the only characteristic “ that the meaningful behavior of the community members is subject to mutual control ” (Bühler 1927: 39). Explaining this idea, Bühler emphasizes that a factual concordance of the behavior of the community members is not sufficient to establish a community, but that a hic et nunc demonstrable regulation must be present, to which the assertion is linked that such a regulation would not be possible “ without semantics, i. e. means of understanding ” (ibid.), 4 or expressed differently: In the intercourse of people, linguistic signs function as means of controlling practical behavior; they are signals in the service of community life. (Bühler 1931: 104). This idea, which should be evaluated as the pragmatic basis of all further elaborations of Bühler ’ s sematology, finds a preliminary final formulation in the Theory of language: That the human language [ … ] belongs to the devices or platonically spoken, that it is an organon, means nothing else than to consider it in relation to those who deal with it and are its agents. Thus, in the axiom of the sign nature of language, linguistic research encounters the thought model of homo faber, a maker and user of gears [ … ]. In the meantime, however, the sign-like, which is used in intersubjective intercourse, can be characterized as an orientation device of community life. (Bühler 1934: 48) Against the previous explanations, the objection could possibly be raised that, in addition to the area of sign-mediated actions, there would be a second area, the area of the common perceptual situation, in which the attitude of the community members takes place without words and gestures. Of course, there is nothing against the assumption of an area of the common perceptual situation. 4 Furthermore, it is clear from this quotation that the Organon view of language can be reduced to a causal relation only with a very superficial interpretation. Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 117 Bühler occasionally even refers to this situation as the basic case from which we must start (cf. e. g. Bühler 1927: 39). However, Bühler (as well as other sign theorists) repeatedly and vigorously rejected the idea that there could be perceptions that impose themselves on the perceiver directly, unmediated and freed from the need of interpretation (cf. e. g. Bühler 1927: 73 ff.). Literally, in The Krise der Psychologie, he states: Furthermore, in the theory of perception, one must never forget that even the simplest qualities, such as “ red ” and “ warm ” do not function for themselves, but as signs of something else. As signs for qualities of perceived things and events. (ibid.: 97) Similar formulations recur scattered throughout Bühler ’ s work, although one of these passages deserves our special attention because it directs interest to the origin of sign production: It turns out that the biological source point of the sign production is to be found everywhere and only there in the higher community life of the animals, where a social situation demands the extension of the horizon of the joint perceptions. If one of the individuals involved in the cooperation has more of situationally important perceptual or memory data, from this fund the communication is contested. (Bühler 1934: 38) In my opinion, it is precisely this passage, i. e., the discussion of the source point of sign production, where Bühler has taken semiotic research a decisive step forward by introducing the “ dislocation ” notion and incorporating the concept of role-taking, and has eliminated a number of dichotomous monstrosities. With reference to Hildegard Hetzer ’ s Viennese dissertation, which is still groundbreaking in many respects today (Hetzer 1926), Bühler summarizes the discussion so far: If we see, for example, how strikingly early the child is able to understand the symbolic actions of others with whom he is in mental contact and to act as if he were another, to take on roles in a community play, and to act correctly in these roles, if we see, on the other hand, that it is language in which symbolism emerges earliest, then both facts point to one and the same thing. It is community life in the service of which symbolism emerges. (Bühler 1927: 211) If we are willing to accept the view that it is community life in the service of which symbolism emerges, we can by no means conclude the investigation, since it is still unclear how we are to imagine the emergence of symbolism. Older dichotomous models of explanation were content at this delicate point with the terse hint that differentiation of I and non-I would be carried out ‘ in order to secure the identity of the self by this way of negation, but they forgot with nice regularity to indicate what could and would make this surprising step possible; instead of tangible explanations, one preferred to descend into metaphysical, biologistic and/ or dialectical highs in this semioticepistemological question of decision. As in numerous other cases, it was Bühler ’ s way of thinking, captivating in its appropriate simplicity, that cut the Gordian knot of primary mediatization. If in Geistige Entwicklung des Kindes he still noted cautiously that the acquisition and formation of sign consciousness must be of great importance for the child (cf. Bühler 1918: 230), in Krise der Psychologie the bold step into new territory has already been taken, throwing off the ballast of dispensable assumptions; there it is said: 118 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) Our approach contains almost no assumptions about any processes of consciousness, it does not start from the one-system of experiential psychology, but from the indispensable two-ness of signgiver and sign-receiver. Are we now obliged, for the sake of its purity, to derive this two-ness first somehow? From the I a non-I and the Thou, in order to conclude with the assertion that everywhere where this semantic two-ness exists, the differentiation of consciousness must already have progressed to the I and Thou? (Bühler 1927: 42 f.) That the question posed is only a position taken for rhetorical reasons is evident from the question raised elsewhere as to how one should ever arrive at a Thou by derivation if one wanted to be content with the I and a strictly solipsistic coordinate system at the beginning (cf. ibid.: 100). Against this background it becomes understandable why Bühler emphasizes not the disjunction but the correlation of I and Thou and is guided by the assumption that the I and the Thou are categories that can be found in reality thinking like other categories, so that they are to be regarded as constitutive moments and not as products of thinking (cf. ibid.: 99): 5 I am inclined to think that in the very primitive ‘ Zumute-sein ’ , which one might ascribe to the newborn, all that we later see emerging from it, the divorce of I and Thou and the divorce of I and object, the intentional moment in contrast to the self centeredness of the experiences, might somehow already be laid out. (ibid.: 101) Even then, if the view Bühler advocates seem spontaneously more sympathetic or plausible than the dichotomous explanatory strategies, we will not be able to avoid going deeper into the “ somehow ” , whereby Bühler himself again gives us the decisive clues with his interpretation of Max Scheler ’ s thesis of the perceptibility of the foreign experience in mental contact: If one is in contact with a situation partner, one understands his behavior as if he were not another at all, but oneself: One puts oneself fictitiously in the position of the other in order to understand him. The image had to be even more intimate for many cases. [ … 1 Conversely [ … ] the activity and leadership of the other determines our own experience, our primarily I-like experiences, in such a way that we are able to read from them how the partner is feeling. (ibid.: 84) Summarizing the discussion so far, we can state that Bühler ’ s two-entity thesis boils down to the fact that we understand to interpret the perception of the other as a sign because and only because we are able to take over the role of the other, so that the “ foreign ” perception becomes an “ own ” perception, i. e. by transforming what is foreign to us into what is familiar to us on the basis of assumed uniformity. If we already attest to the newborn ’ s ability to interpret itself as well as its environment on the basis of the meaningfulness of the ‘ perceptions by applying the principle of role-taking, we must not forget about this that despite far-reaching similarities between the sign function of sense data and the symbol function of linguistic signs there are also considerable differences, which Bühler tries to do justice to with the help of his principle of dislocation. “ Dislocations ” is described by Bühler in his Theory of language as an immensely subtle game, hardly noticed by us adults, whenever we demonstrate linguistically at the phantasm (cf. Bühler 1934: 138). 5 The accuracy of Bühler ’ s assumptions is demonstrated by recent studies in developmental psychology, which, after a long period of inactivity, pick up where the fruitful work of the 1920s and early 1930s left off. Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 119 The wording, which might seem like an occasional game, takes on a general character a short time later when it says: Man is only able to present what is absent to another in a phantasm by linguistic means because there are displacements (ibid.: 139), which Bühler parable-like distinguishes into two cases “ that Muhammad goes to the mountain or the mountain comes to Muhammad ” (ibid.: 134), conceivably taking into account as a third case the transitional situation in which both protagonists maintain their position. Displacements, which Bühler also calls unbinding means of linguistic utterances (cf. ibid.: 374), not only allow for temporal leaps but equally allow for local, personal, or modal changes of the scope. This principle of dislocation by means of linguistic signs allows the speaker, on the one hand, to forget from where he has been dislocated (cf. ibid.: 375), as, on the other hand, he uses the positional indicator words here, there 1, there 2, and the directional indications front, back, right, left just as much at the phantasm as in the primary perceptual situation (ibid.: 137). However, it would be a mistake to assume that dislocations can only be found in the range of the examples given here: The primary function of the examples is to prove that even phantasmic pointing does not lack natural pointing aids; 6 secondarily, however, it should become clear that the linguistic unbinding device of dislocation establishes and follows rules of its own kind: When the need arises to free the representational content of a linguistic utterance from its entanglements in the current pointing field, this need can only be satisfied by a transposition, i. e. a field change from the pointing field to the symbol field. However, what the speaker gains in freedom from the constraints of the current field of pointing in the transfer, he simultaneously loses again through the new order to which the symbols are subject that receive their field values in the symbol field, insofar as they come under the codetermining influence of the systematic environment (cf. ibid.: 372). Against this background, it becomes understandable why Bühler occasionally refers to the symbols as role indications (cf. ibid.: 381), which are capable of ensuring a dislocation from the events of the conversational situation, but which, on the other hand, cannot do without deictic markings in order to represent the role play linguistically. 7 If it already became apparent in the discussion of symbolically mediated dislocations that even on the level of linguistic signs by no means inconsiderable remnants of developmentally earlier types of signs have an effect, this dynamic aspect of Bühler ’ s theorizing becomes even more essential in the context of his investigations of the role of play for the 6 Thus, towards the end of the language theory, it is consequently stated: “ Strictly speaking, therefore, no Indo- European sentence with a finite verb is completely free of pointing, but always has a pointing sign in the form of the personal suffix to the verb ” . (Bühler 1934: 381) 7 Without pursuing the idea any further at this point, it should merely be pointed out that this concerns what Bühler calls the “ basic fact ” of the principal vagueness of linguistic signs, which he also characterizes as the “ fact of the principle openness ” and need for supplementation of every linguistic representation (cf. Bühler 1934: 255). Literally: “ We have here again the basic fact before us that natural language everywhere only indicates what and how it is to be done, and leaves open margins for contextual indications and material aids ” (ibid.: 320). Analogous statements can also be found in many places in Wittgenstein ’ s work. 120 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) child ’ s mental development more clearly. 8 With repeated reference to the important works of Karl Groos Die Spiele der Menschen (Groos 1899) and Die Spiele der Thiere (Groos 1896), Bühler emphasizes, how, for example, in the human child, starting with the simplest bodily movements (kicking, grasping, babbling), step by step all bodily and mental functions up to the imagination, thinking and willing come into the sphere of action of the practicing play and how the child thus acquires, without having any idea of the deeper biological meaning of the matter, the basic capital of bodily and mental skills necessary for life. (Bühler 1918: 458) These still quite general characterizations of the playful grasp of the environment, which largely coincide with Piaget ’ s views (cf. Piaget 1969: 21 - 52), will certainly be agreed with; nevertheless, two restrictions or clarifications are still necessary in order to be able to isolate Bühler ’ s concept of play in the required sharpness. Games could generally be defined from the perspective of their pleasure-occupied character. However, while an activity that is guided by the desire for satisfaction finds its conclusion in the achievement of the object of desire - has a braking effect, as Bühler says - and, at least for the time being, does not entail any further consequences, and while activities out of the desire for activity would be a pure waste for pure instinct animals (cf. ibid.: 459), games that are characterized by the desire for function act as an incentive to ever new activity (cf. ibid.). Secondarily, it seems necessary to, imitation games in direct connection with sensory impressions are to be distinguished from role-playing games (cf. Piaget 1969: 119 ff.), in which it can already be observed with smaller children that they themselves play a role and/ or attribute a role to the animate and inanimate objects of their environment, into which they themselves can also slip (cf. Bühler 1918: 330 ff.). On the basis of these differentiations, Bühler arrives at his formulation of the concept of play, which reads: We want to call an activity that is endowed with functional desire and is maintained by this functional desire directly or for its sake play, no matter what else it may accomplish and in what context it may be built in. (ibid.: 461) If we include this formulation in the previously obtained characterization of symbolic signs as role signs, only a few steps are needed to do justice to Bühler ’ s theory of speech acts as well as to Wittgenstein ’ s conception of language play. Already in the axiom of sociality, which essentially determined the human use of signs as a communal action, Bühler had drawn attention to the area in the interest of which signs first obtain their function. In the Krise der Psychologie, Bühler sharpens this determination when he emphasizes that no one is able to define the concept of the sense of language par excellence: The ‘ sense in itself ’ , apart from a linguistic community for which it is valid, would be no less an incomprehensible concept than, for instance, ‘ money in itself, apart from an economic sphere in which it has a course. (Bühler 1927: 126) If, however, the sense of language cannot be defined in isolation, but always already refers to community life and marks the realm of rational activities in the context of the other 8 With the restriction to Bühler ’ s investigations of the function of play in the child ’ s mental development is, of course, not intended to give the impression that this problem area has been neglected by others; the opposite is true, which is why a comparative discussion of different views of the function of play will be reserved for another study. Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 121 meaningful ways of human action (cf. Bühler 1931: 96), it should be clear that a theory of signs must be developed as a theory of actions, since, on the one hand, every animal and human action is controlled by signs, and, on the other hand, signs were functionless when detached from their action-constituting and action-mediating role. Bühler specifically points out that the concept of action, which he regards as the key concept in modern theorizing (cf. Bühler 1933: 149), in the full scope of the Aristotelian concept of praxis (cf. Bühler 1934: 52). One of the most important passages for the methodological approach, which at the same time also builds a bridge between Bühler ’ s earliest works and his last monograph Das Gestaltprinzip im Leben des Menschen und der Tiere (Bühler 1960), is found in his theory of expression: Whoever not only says ‘ action ’ but also thinks it, means certain units of events. The α and the ώ of an action theory of expression are questions and answers about the wholeness character of the action. The observer must become clear about and account for how and why he is able to grasp this and that as wholeness out of the flow of visible events; that is the (methodological) a. And last but not least, answers are demanded to the question about the real reason of the unity of an event, which we call to action; that is the (factual) w. And in between, there are all sorts of other things to consider. (Bühler 1933: 197) Actions, which Bühler had already determined in his axiomatics of linguistics from a historical perspective, fundamentally take place in a field of action whose sources of determination are need and opportunity (cf. Bühler 1934: 56). Beyond the breakdown of the field of action into its present determinants, sufficient historical knowledge of the agent himself is required to understand the duplicity of the field of action and the fact of the basis of reaction or action that can only be grasped historically (cf. ibid.). Accordingly, the analysis of action would have to amount to an investigation of the “ infield ” and the “ environment ” of the action in order to arrive at an understanding of the concrete history of the act against this background. The Gestalt principle, which Bühler describes “ as a mediator between sensory perception and conceptual cognition ” (Bühler 1960: 88), on the one hand, ensures the holistic character of actions, just as, on the other hand, in its mediating function, it represents the source point of judgments that constitute the sign nature of actions and enable the agent to establish relations and interpret perceptions as signs. Bühler presents the genesis of judgments in such a way that the earliest demonstrable memories are to be regarded as additions to given perceptual situations, so that the sense of a new situation is understood according to the analogy of the insightfully grasped sense of other situations (Bühler 1918: 406). Bühler regards this principle of analogy, which is based on the fact that certain procedures are applied to what recurs in individual cases when the material changes, as the root of the earliest derivations of judgment. It is interesting in this context that Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles S. Peirce, in their investigations of the constitution of sign and meaning, also came to the conclusion that the sign-constituting judgment of perception, of which we are speaking here, is based on the inference from similar to similar, which is based on the assumption of the uniformity of life (cf. Eschbach 1980: 54 f.). Without doubt, beyond the establishment of a relation of similarity, it must also be clarified what distinguishes the new perception from the hitherto known, in order to be able to draw an extension conclusion on the basis of the relation “ Simile ” - “ Simile ” , which includes hitherto foreign things into the treasure of experience; this extension judgment on 122 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) the basis of the relation “ Simile ” - “ Dissimile ” is, however, only conceivable if the perceptions have already been interpreted as signs. Now it could seem as if there is a stage in the mental development of the child in which sense data are received and stored unprocessed, so to speak, in order to be processed into signs only at a later time. This impression is fundamentally wrong since in Bühler ’ s opinion there can be no talk of perception until the sense data are grasped in their function as signs for this and that which is to be said about things. If we recall that Bühler had essentially determined the concept of play by the functional desire that is responsible for maintaining the activity, we find an analogous situation in the realm of primary judgments, because the sign function of sense data, “ the content of the perceptual judgment and the state of affairs that we think we grasp in perception, always transcends the realm of sensory data ” (Bühler 1927: 78). If the relations “ Simile ” - “ Simile ” and, “ Simile ” - “ Dissimile ” are regarded as the basis of every perceptual judgment, we may also regard this process as the perception of relations or as relational cognition, as Bühler explicitly points out with reference to Klages (cf. Bühler 1933: 166). Of course, Bühler does not conceive of the perception of relations as if the relations simply migrated with the sensations into the experience. Already in 1918, he had instead emphasized the first main theorem in the doctrine of comparison, according to which there can be no relation perception without the function of display (cf. Bühler 1918: 188). But if there is no other way of relation perception than the one that leads via signs, and if there is no more direct perception of relations than the one that leads via perceptual judgments, then the universal principle inherent in all human purpose acts as a moving force. Accordingly, it would be appropriate to regard Bühler ’ s theory of signs as a theory of relational cognition, or, with emphasis on the interpretation of sense data functioning as signs, as an interpretive theory of signs, as he himself proposes: What I call ‘ interpretation ’ , the drawing out of and basing of a relation judgment on signs, contains the ‘ application of a concept ’ and the ‘ referring gaze ’ of which older relation theorists speak. In comparing simple sense data, the “ dimension ” of the difference will emerge more or less clearly (ibid.: 196). If we compare the results of our discussion so far with the old familiar formulation of the Organon model of language (Bühler 1934: 28), it will be clear without further comment that this memorable formulation, while not contradicting our results at any point, does not specifically address many of the aspects recognized as important, so that the impression might arise that they are not of primary importance. This impression is wrong, however, insofar as in Bühler ’ s opinion the concept of sign can neither stand at the beginning of the argumentation nor be introduced by definition, but represents the final abstraction which emerges as a dynamic principle at the end of the investigation. 3 The Concept of the Sign in the Unpublished Works of Karl Bühler As announced at the beginning of this essay, in this section we will be concerned with the two texts “ The Concept of Sign ” and “ What is a sign? ” . The first source we have consulted is an undated manuscript of 57 pages, which was obviously intended as a chapter of a book Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 123 publication, possibly of the planned abridged version of the theory of language; this partly typewritten and partly handwritten text bears the heading: “ Der Zeichenbegriff ” . An approximate dating of this text to the year 1929 results from some references in this treatise. This dating gains plausibility from the fact that Bühler had already presented his theory of language during his visiting professorship at Harvard in 1927/ 28, and at this Harvard lecture he did not use the entire 418-page text, but an abridged version, as can be seen from the “ class notes ” available to me. The second text, which I have in slightly different handwritten and typewritten versions, is entitled “ What is a sign? ” and comprises 47 pages in English. A note in the typewritten version indicates that this text was to be published in the Pocket Book on Practical Semantics that Bühler was working on in 1942. The texts under discussion, which do not overlap at any point, are previously unpublished and are published for the first time in Karl Bühler ’ s Gesamtausgabe. Instead of referencing the two texts in their argumentation as a whole, I will content myself in the present context with treating those aspects which have not yet been addressed in this form in the published version of Bühler ’ s Sematology, so that they can be regarded as preliminary studies or further developments, respectively. At the same time, in the absence of a currently generally accessible text, I will quote the treated passages very extensively. Somewhere at the beginning of its enterprise, sematology will have to strive for the purely logical matter of an analysis of the concept of sign, because otherwise, it runs the risk of getting into a thicket of misunderstandings and pseudo-problems (cf. Bühler 1929: 1). Although there is no disagreement on the necessity of this first step, opinions differ on the “ how ” of the beginning, as some are concerned about want to speculate about the source point and the circumstances of the first sign traffic, while others want to put a technical definition of the sign concept at the beginning of the science of signs. Bühler ’ s view on this question differs fundamentally from the positions mentioned above since he considers such speculations to be nonsensical. Even though he himself did not use the term, it seems to me that his view is best characterized by the maxim of the nonsubstantiability of signs, which, on closer examination, enables the sign theorist to make statements about signs in the first place: We have determined the sphere in which our thinking moves and looks around by free choice and will also resist any temptation to reach beyond it. Once again: The empirical linguist finds himself and what he wants to investigate together in the world; when he opens his eyes and ears, he encounters sensually perceptible things, which claim to be considered according to their sign nature and to be scientifically determined, because they are put into the world as signs by the producers and are received as signs by the ( “ consumers ” one is tempted to write) recipients. What lies decided in this claim is the simple and only question we ask. The emphasized because once again indicates the freely chosen limits and framework of the whole enterprise. Dealing with signs is presupposed as a fact; the practice of sign-making and sign-taking steins us before we begin to reflect as theorists. And when we do, the whole effort is directed to determine logically exactly the plain sense of this dealing with signs. One should correctly assess the scope of such a task from the very beginning. The meaningful completion, the fitting and satisfying answer, which we seek, cannot and must not begin like the Gospel of John with any of the “ In the beginning was …” conceivable in our field. If we only knew what was in the beginning! Maybe the Logos, maybe Fichte is right and with him Cassirer and it was the creative function (energy) of the punctuation and Goethe ’ s Faust should write to German “ In the beginning was the deed ” . But even if we would 124 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) know this or are ready to believe this with whole fervor, so this answer does not get into our context. This context says: Sign-like was found and taken up in the world. Whoever begins to reflect as a logician on what this means, must not answer as an epistemologist. If he had the luck to gain an insight into what and how it was ‘ in the beginning ’ , he must put this insight aside for the time being, simply because his revelation would have to remain misunderstood in the given context. And this is true not only for every positive revelation, but also for every negative revelation, e. g. for the one which wanted to proclaim the “ being a sign ” as a lie and deception from the beginning. This also exists; in the course of the nominalism awakening in the Middle Ages there were such first radical iconoclasts and they have reappeared on the scene today. For the time being, we have nothing in common with all the revelators but the one request, that before the veil is finally pulled away, one should allow the naive eye to determine in peace what it thinks to see before any unveiling. One must not, one should not, deny in any field the undemanding priority of pure, i. e. epistemologically and ontologically neutral or ignorant, phenomenology. (Bühler 1929: 1 ff.) I have quoted this long quotation unabridged because it seems to me to express the starting point of Bühler ’ s sematological reflection like hardly any other and because the considerations laid down in this passage are in my opinion highly suitable to give fresh impulses to the modern semiotic discussion and to immunize it against the hollow assumptions of the biological resp. evolutionary epistemologists. One of the most difficult semiotic questions is without doubt the clarification of the relationship between sign and meaning. As old as this question is, as numerous are the proposed solutions that have been worked out in the course of the history of semiotics. Despite the far-reaching differences between these answers, three recurring patterns can be distinguished, insofar as, first, the question of the relation between sign and meaning is answered in terms of the presentational model so that the sign appears as a representative of (abstract) meanings, as suggested by the scholastic mnemonic “ aliquid stat pro aliquo ” or John Locke ’ s formula “ words are signs of ideas ” ; according to the second explanatory strategy, the distance between sign and meaning is completely abolished, so that the relation between the two instances appears as a relation of identity; the third proposed solution is even more radical, since it rejects the question of meaning as meaningless, but can accomplish this only at the price of the complete emptying of meaning from the sign, which is left with no other task than the material carrier function. Right at the beginning of his treatise “ What is a sign? ” Bühler states unequivocally that he considers all three of the proposed solutions to be false and misleading, since none of these positions is capable of explaining the factual role of signs in processes of understanding and webs of interaction, because they come up with technical reductions, instead of taking the social function of signs as their point of departure, and because they can be accused of a “ lack of substance ” because they do not distinguish with sufficient precision the perceptible in signs from the “ soul of signs ” , as Peirce and Husserl called it. Of course, Bühler does not want to prevent anyone from considering perceptible events as signs, as it happens every day in astronomy or meteorology, for instance. However, if we are concerned with the logic of signs and not with the order of things, it must be clear once and for all that “ sematology is not interested in material data ” (Bühler 1942: 13). If we account for objects of what kind we have before us, if we speak of something else on which abstraction is accomplished, we must answer that we are dealing with abstracts, with “ conceptual somethings ” (Bühler 1929: 4), Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 125 which do not occur for themselves, but only entered the concretis (cf. ibid.). If this is the case, however, we need not worry about their fate of being, if they are thought detached. This energetic assertion, which must embarrass all “ material thinkers ” (Stoffdenkern) who confuse columns, design objects, or weathercocks with signs, was not only put forward by Bühler as a thesis delimiting the territory but at the same time with the interest of being able to venture a fruitful new beginning in the determination of the relationship between sign and meaning, which he projects as follows: Now the so-called problem of meaning in the realm of words is up for discussion and I recommend certain indispensable distinctions to get out of the phase of the stew. Think first of the Organon model of the language! And close beside it to the hammer and the hammering. From the organon model of language it can be deduced that a word (every word) occurring in speech traffic can bring along three valences and in fact also brings along, valences of which soon the first, soon the second, soon the third can be worked out and stand in the foreground. And to what do the expressive and appellative valences adhere on the one hand, and to what does the nominal valence adhere on the other? Every speech situation is complex and unique. The valences of the word used are colored by the situation and sometimes the color is the most important thing. (Bühler 1929: 28) So instead of mixing “ sign ” and “ meaning ” into a contourless mishmash or rejecting the question of meaning as meaningless, Bühler opens his article “ What is a sign? ” with the terse remark: First and foremost, we expect a sign to have meaning. A sign without meaning is like a numb nut. It is like a chaff without wheat. Sign and meaning are correlative terms like parent and child. Just as there are no parents who have not begotten or given birth to children, nothing that has no meaning is a sign. (Bühler 1942: 1) This almost Münchhausian turn of clarifying the relationship between sign and meaning would leave the semiotician at a loss if there were no indications of how this correlation should be analyzed. In three interdependent considerations, Bühler develops the analytical framework of a general theory of signs which, in his view, is still in its infancy (cf. Bühler 1942). 9 If the world is not populated by material entities aka signs, which would merely have to be identified as such, a radical change of perspective is required, because then at the beginning of all sign-theoretical research must be the question of the constitution of signs and meaning. To answer this question, Bühler examines the function of signs in social intercourse, coming to the conclusion that the signs are there for us and not we for the signs (cf. ibid.). This banal-sounding remark, however, entails far-reaching consequences, for if signs do not exist without the sign-constituting, social individual, and if the function of the sign results from its mediating activity, then it follows with necessity “ that a sign is what we make of it ” (ibid.). However, because, in Bühler ’ s view, there are nowhere clearly distinguished classes of or types of signs exist, since one and the same perceptible thing can be used as a symptom or signal or symbol or in all three respects at the same time, Bühler proposes “ a kind of factor analysis ” (ibid.) to find out what a sign is. To illustrate this 9 In the essay on the concept of the sign, Bühler writes: , “ Let me first say a general word freely. When I began to do linguistic theory, the concept of meaning in concrete linguistics was in a desolate state from a purely logical point of view, and even today it has not yet become day everywhere. ” (Bühler 1929: 27) 126 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) proposal, Bühler refers, as he did in his theory of language (Bühler 1934: 68), to a passage from Plato ’ s dialogue Kratylos, where it states: “ One must go to the weaver to explore the principles of weaving, and to the carpenter who made the heddle to explore the ‘ principles ’ of the organon ‘ heddle ’” (ibid.). If the meaning of the weaver ’ s means is to be clarified from their use, why should the organon “ sign ” be any different? To whom, however, should we turn to obtain expert information about the organon “ sign ” ? Bühler ’ s answer is: We will be careful to examine and destroy a certain modern half-truth about symbolic actions. It does not take an actor on stage or screen to produce symbolic actions. We produce countless kinds of symbolic acts even in our ‘ real ’ lives. Of course, there is a difference between the fictional world of theater and our so-called real life. There can be no doubt about the fact that stage and screen and statues and pictures are nothing but a make-believe world, a fictional world, that much is true anyway. Fighting fists on stage do not hurt and gunshots do not kill. However, there is a difference between ‘ being fictitious ’ and ‘ being symbolic ’ , which we want to clarify completely, because otherwise, one would not understand a number of important facts. No, pictures are pictures and symbols are signs, whether in a fictional or in the real world. (Bühler 1942: 34) But if it is true that no expert is needed to answer the question about the factorial nature of the organon “ sign ” , since we all have daily, expert dealings with signs, it is only consistent when Bühler considers as the guiding maxim of the constitution of sign and meaning the use we make of our signs: Let us imagine that in a legal text the word ‘ clock ’ was used, and lawyers came to the conclusion that this term ‘ clock ’ needed a definition. The legislator did not give one anywhere, because it is a common word and everybody knows what it means. Now, in a public competition, everyone should be given an opportunity to say what he understands it to mean. I assume that thousands of definitions will be received. Only a portion of them will be shortlisted for the thousand dollar prize. If I had a say, the prize would be awarded to one of those who immediately puts his finger on the use we make of watches. They ‘ show ’ the time or ‘ keep ’ the time, they help us keep time; such was the use described. [ … ] This should be the fixed point of a definition. (Bühler 1942: 10) Even if the constitution of sign and meaning has in this way been given a pragmatic basis from which sign analysis can proceed in an action-oriented way, the previous maxims are not yet sufficient to arrive at a comprehensive sign analysis, for the analysis cannot be limited to eliciting the respective use in a multitude of singular cases. The next step, which in Bühler ’ s opinion must follow with necessity, consists in abstracting from the perceptible data hic et nunc to the meaning. First, wherever we speak of representation, an order (ordo rerum) can be stated in which the two constituents, the representative and the represented, occupy the same place. They are to be said to be identical in place within the framework of this order. And there is, secondly, to each mode of representation a mode of perceptible happening, a mode of processes in which hic et nunc the concrete act of representation takes place. (Bühler 1929: 6) But in order to be able to conclude from a perception to its meaning, at least two things must be guaranteed: 1) In order to be able to conclude from something to something else, we must have observed the first as a fact that is in some respect surprising, different, unfamiliar, striking, strange, and that captures our attention (cf. Bühler 1942: 13 ff.). 2) Since we cannot do anything with what is strange and unfamiliar to us as long as we have not at least Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 127 partially familiarized ourselves with it, we have to look for a procedure that opens the way to the strange. Bühler explains his ideas of this way vividly by means of the procedure of a legal circumstantial evidence, discussing in great detail the two historical criminal cases “ Bayly ” and “ Landru ” : In the trial, the prosecutor ties together the evidence gathered into a narrative of what occurred. Our question is in what way the meaning of the signs supports the accusation. In conjunction, these ‘ mute and stubborn witnesses ’ will either corroborate or weaken or otherwise alter the overall evidence. (Bühler 1942: 19) From the legal examples used by Bühler, one can learn for sign analysis that it is neither about the individual sign in a specific use nor about the mere sum of the individual sign findings: General sign theory is interested in learning how the set of singular references is organized into a corpus of evidence. (Bühler 1942: 19) We can thus say that Bühler ’ s pragmatic semiotics leads to a system or context theory of signs that ties in with his early gestalt theoretical work. Against the background of these considerations, Karl Bühler can then devote himself to the problem, important in sign theory, of clarifying the principles of representation in general and (symbolic) representation in particular. Large parts of the treatise on the concept of the sign are reserved for the discussion of this complex, whereby Bühler ’ s argumentation repeatedly refers critically to Singer ’ s book Das Geld als Zeichen (Singer 1920). Whenever there is talk about any form of substitution, the meaning analysis of this talk will come across some kind of order or rule within the framework of which the act of substitution takes place. A vivid example of this state of affairs would be, for instance, our decadal arithmetic system, in which the Arabic numerals, lined up next to each other, are given a certain status. Bühler expresses the conjecture that to every such order belongs a specific mode or modes of substitution (cf. Bühler 1929: 9). As evidence for this thesis, he cites legal representation in court, which is fundamentally different from “ show representation ” on stage, and both of which are to be differentiated from a third mode of representation about which Bühler writes: In dishes, sometimes saccharin is used ‘ instead ’ of, as a ‘ surrogate ’ for sugar. [ … ] It is in the taste order of things that saccharin is able to substitute for sugar. Because both taste sweet, saccharin can be used as a substitute for sugar. (ibid.: 13) The list of such forms of representation could be extended considerably; nevertheless, it is not even remotely conceivable to put the functions of a symbolic representation, i. e. a linguistic sign, on the same level with those of a surrogate or those of an actor or lawyer in all important respects. Accordingly, it would have to be justified what the similarities and the differences of the surrogates and the surrogates on the one hand and of the symbolic representation, on the other hand, consist of. To this end, Bühler pursues the question of where and why the money appears. If this question is to be answered in the style of an organon view, then the performance of money must be recognized, for which one must analyze the economic-social situation and the economic-social happening, the exchange (cf. ibid.: 1.2). What is the theory of language the output of the asemantic mutual control of 128 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) partners of a social event is and achieves, 10 that is and achieves in the theory of money the output of the moneyless economy. One can mark out in both areas first of all a range of situations in which there the language and here the money is superfluous and therefore does not occur. Occurs - the word taken in the sense of its timeless present meaning. For it is not, or at least not primarily, about the hypothetical construction of a pre-linguistic and pre-money historical phase in the developmental course of mankind, but about situations that one still finds today and can study in concrete cases. (ibid. 23) If in the Theory of language, the theorem of the transcendence of the mutual perceptual situation by means of dislocation holds, then, by analogy, in the theory of money it must be the transcendence of the immediate mutual property exchange situation, i. e., of direct exchange. Although it might seem that the comparison of language and money amounts to an exact parallel, Bühler takes pains to demonstrate that a proposition of the sign nature of money analogous to the proposition of the sign nature of language would be false, since money functions as a proxy, but not as a sign in the same way as a language but makes the claim that its proxy is recognized as a special mode of being a proxy and is distinguished from the mode of being a sign in the language (cf. ibid.: 15). Accordingly, the proxy function of money must not be understood in such a way that the appropriately implied sign functions occurring in it are regarded in the same way as in language as that for whose sake money is there: For the purpose of examination, take a banknote in your hand, any piece of that sort or type of money which one is accustomed to call materially worthless or sign money, and ask yourself the question whether there is anything to be found on it or on it which betrays a form of being a sign not to be found elsewhere. [ … ] Everything that can be discovered in or on the banknote in terms of sign moments, a very rich and diverse, ingeniously conceived apparatus of signs, is completely borrowed from other sign areas and only artfully assembled for the special needs on the piece of paper here or already entered into it in the paper mill. The number or the numeral word is repeatedly written on it in the word picture. And some other linguistic signs, by which the type of the note is designated and the act of conferring value on it is documented and (possibly) its representative function is defined. “ The Reichsbank pays … in gold …” , it used to say. All this, I repeat, in a snarling national language. And what else is to be found are either easily recognizable diacritics to distinguish it from other notes and pieces of paper, or else it belongs to the epitome of features which one provides in heaps for the practically so important authenticity test and the individual identification of the piece of paper. (ibid.: 18 f.) If we continue this chain of thought and include cash substitutes such as checks, money orders, bills of exchange, credit cards, and the like in the discussion in their dominant role today, a developmental step becomes clear that must be accepted in all its consequences and thought through to the end two insights Bühler considers to be particularly important for divorce in this developmental step of “ representation ” and “ representation ” : 1) in the field of linguistic signs, i. e. symbolic representation, this step is far behind us; 2) it is the step from magical thinking to the literal conception of the pure sign function of language. The theory of signs has made this step with the establishment of the real concept “ science ” and the reflection of the means of development and formation of logic (cf. ibid.: 37). 10 Bühler does not claim that the meaningful behavior of community members can be explained exclusively by means of mutual control. However, he is of the opinion that mutual attitude and understanding result with necessity from the constitutive function of signs (cf. Bühler 1927: 42). Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 129 In summary, Bühler once again highlights the key points of his argumentation: The philosophically boldest construction, which was ever carried out with the idea of representation, is present in the Leibnizian monad doctrine. It is known that in it several historical movements, and currents converge, and several schemes of thought are put into one by a great synoptist. We highlight two of them and ask the question of whether it is possible to put them into one in the sphere in which we move. Whoever wanted to grasp the problem in the Kantian or Schopenhauerian terminology would find himself with one step in the middle of the post- Leibnizian discussion of the causal principle. I propose a somewhat different version, which seems to me equally justified after the historical antagonisms of Leibniz ’ s synthesis. In a nutshell. Wherever there is a pars pro toto or a pars pro parte, is it to be said generally and uniformly that it can only be a matter of representation, or does the empiricist have the right and the duty to describe the connexio rerum he finds differently in the first instance? (ibid. 44) Based on what we have heard so far, it should be obvious what the answer should be. 4 Bühler and Wittgenstein Concerning direct and/ or indirect relations between Karl Bühler and Ludwig Wittgenstein, there have been repeated speculations in recent years, all of which resemble each other in one point: Since, due to the restrictive and secretive editing policy of the administrators of the Wittgenstein estate, concrete evidence, for instance in the form of explicit quotations, epistolary contacts, etc. - if they exist at all - has not been made available to scholarly discussion so far, these attempts rely on more or less dubious circumstantial evidence, which, taken as a whole, however, seems to suggest that the relationship between Baeder and Wittgenstein did in fact exist. For example, Bartley (1974) argues that the so-called Austrian school reform brought Bühler and Wittgenstein into contact with each other, while Toulmin (1969) sees psycholinguistics as the link between the two authors, and Kaplan (1984), commenting on Toulmin ’ s work, suggests the possibility that Wittgenstein might have been familiar with the research results of the Würzburg School, which was significantly influenced by Bühler, as both researchers had had a neo-Kantian background, which, however, is doubted by other scholars (cf. e. g. Haller 1981). Such speculations could easily be extended and taken to extremes, for example, Wittgenstein ’ s nephew Thomas Stonborough received his doctorate from Bühler in 1928, when Wittgenstein was busy building a house for his sister Margarete Stonborough at Kundmanngasse 19 in Vienna, which also housed the Pedagogical Institute of the City of Vienna, where Bühler had his psychological laboratory and also held lectures and seminars. It has also been pointed out on various occasions that Bühler ’ s gestalt theoretical orientation may have influenced Wittgenstein (cf. Gier 1981: 99 and 111). Others have considered it worth mentioning that Karl and Charlotte Bühler were present at the home of Margarete Stonborough, the mother of Thomas Stonborough when Moritz Schlick and Ludwig Wittgenstein first met in person; on the other hand, it is rumored that Wittgenstein considered Bühler a charlatan (cf. Engelmann 1970: 960; 11 which is in strange contradiction to the view that Bühler was the single thinker who could have caused Wittgenstein to turn 11 As an aside, it should be noted that those who report Wittgenstein ’ s supposed assessment have to admit, when asked, that they do not know who Karl Bühler was and that they have not read his works. 130 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) away from the ideas of the Tractatus (cf. Billing 1980: 27), although Wittgenstein himself explicitly points out the influence of two other persons. Instead of encouraging such or similar speculations, in the interest of clarifying this important question, I will not conduct the following discussion from the perspective of which books Wittgenstein may have read and with whom he may have met on some occasion; Instead, on the basis of authentic texts by Wittgenstein, I will try to prove the thesis that the central motifs of Wittgenstein ’ s late philosophy were laid down long before the publication of the Philosophical Investigations, that Wittgenstein had set down these insights in writing at the latest in 1931 during his summer vacation in Austria, and that, thirdly, these insights can be read down to the letter in Bühler. In other words, the intention of the following discussion can by no means be to cast doubt on the genius of Wittgenstein ’ s approach to late philosophy, but solely to shed light on the congeniality of two thinkers who at the same time in the cultural milieu of the same city arrived at converging linguisticphilosophical-sematological conceptions. Ludwig Wittgenstein ’ s Tractatus logico-philosophus was completed in the manuscript at a time when Karl Bühler was engaged in his famous experiments in thought and working on the first volume of his Gestaltwahrnehmungen. Although Bühler already gave logic lectures during his professorship in Dresden, hardly anything speaks that he got to know Wittgenstein ’ s Tractatus before he followed the call to the University of Vienna. Even if the Tractatus and Bühler ’ s early writings have, at most, certain common source points, the findings change - if one disregards the different addressees and the differences in the types of texts - if one includes Bühler ’ s work Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes (The Intellectual Development of the Child), which was first published in 1918, since this treatise not only anticipates central motifs of the Theory of language published in 1934 but also corresponds to the basic assumptions of Wittgenstein ’ s late philosophy, which, by the way, Kaplan already pointed out some time ago (cf. Kaplan 1984). In order to substantiate this strong claim, in this chapter I will take up some of Wittgenstein ’ s thoughts and compare them with those considerations which have been identified in the two previous chapters as integral parts of Bühler ’ s approach. In 1931 at the latest, Wittgenstein, with explicit and repeated reference to Plato ’ s Cratylus and Theaetetus, arrived at the concept of meaning to which he has persistently adhered ever since: To understand the meaning of a word is to know, to understand its use (Wittgenstein 1931: 12), or as it says elsewhere in the same manuscript: But why do I rack my brains over the term ‘ language ’ instead of using language (ibid.: 188)? These two terse formulations, found toward the beginning and end of Wittgenstein ’ s remarks on philosophy, are situated in a context that has great relevance for the question at hand: In the first case, it is about marking the origin or starting point of linguistic pointing, and in the second case, it is about the question of what it has to understand a sentence. Wittgenstein ’ s marking of the origin of linguistic pointing is not done with a genetic intention but corresponds completely to Bühler ’ s deictic considerations concerning the marking of the origo of the pointing field. While Bühler explained: Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 131 Two lines on the paper, intersecting perpendicularly, are supposed to indicate to us a coordinate system, 0 the origo, the coordinate starting point: I claim that three pointing words must be put in the place of 0 if this scheme is to represent the pointing field of human language, namely the pointing words here, now, and I (Bühler 1934: 102), noted Wittgenstein: The words here, now, etc. denote the origin, and starting point of a coordinate system: like the letter “ 0 ” , but they do not describe its position in relation to the objects in space ( … ) they do not stand for the descriptions of the position of the point 0 in relation to spatial objects. They do not stand for the description of a spatial situation. (Wittgenstein 1931: 12). Wittgenstein answers the second question about the conditions of understanding a proposition in the sense of the thesis of the non-interpretability of signs, as he sees on the one hand the test of understanding always going further from the proposition (cf. ibid.: 183), as he emphasizes on the other hand that no sign and also no argument leads us beyond itself (cf. ibid.: 186). Literally, he states: When we say a sentence is any sign by which we mean something, one might ask: What do we mean and when do we mean it? While we give the sign, etc., etc.? And there it becomes clear again that this meaning, if it is to be relevant, must belong to the process of the symbol. (ibid.) As can already be seen from the Plato-oriented organon definition of language and from the definition of meaning as sign interpretation, it seems appropriate to Wittgenstein to speak of understanding only “ where we understand one thing in contrast to something else. And this contrast is expressed by signs ” (ibid.: 149), with which Bühler ’ s principle of abstract relevance returns in a reformulated form. At the same time, however, this formulation also echoes the idea that Victoria Lady Welby, e. g. in What is Meaning? (Welby 1983), but also in “ Sense, Meaning and Interpretation ” and in Significs and Language (Welby 1984), that the process of sign interpretation is to be characterized as a process of translation. 12 In Wittgenstein ’ s manuscript, this thought sounds as follows: The sense, however, is what seats that are translatable into each other have in common. Sentences, however, can be translated into each other only within their language. (Wittgenstein 1931: 174) If meaning constitution and sign interpretation are related to each other in this way, it becomes plausible when Wittgenstein, in order to further clarify the situation, compares the activity of giving signs with other forms of activity and at the same time examines the extent to which “ giving signs, ” “ using a language, ” and “ playing a game ” show similarities (cf. ibid.: 188). Like Bühler, Wittgenstein sees the basis of the comparison in the fact that “ giving signs, ” “ making use of a language, ” and “ playing a game ” is apparent. However, apart from obvious and important similarities, they differ from each other in other essential respects. In order to trace the differences between the three types of action, Wittgenstein, like Bühler, draws on the comparison of language and money. Whereas Bühler, in his discussion of Singer ’ s book Das Geld als Zeichen (Money as a Sign), had rejected a parallelization of the propositions of the sign nature of language and the sign 12 Here it is appropriate to point out that this is with a certain probability not a coincidence, but a commonality mediated by Lady Welby ’ s temporary assistant and translator of Wittgenstein Tractatus C. K. Ogden. For more details cf. the introduction by H. Walter Schmitz to the volume Signifies and Language by Lady Weiby (1984). 132 Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) nature of money, since in his view the respective modes of representation show significant differences, we read in Wittgenstein: If language can be compared to money, to which nothing is attached in and of itself, but which is only indirectly significant, because it can be used to buy objects that have meaning for us; it can be said that here, in the use of the words l, here, now, etc., barter enters into the money trade. (ibid.: 108) The supposed contradiction between Bühler ’ s and Wittgenstein ’ s assumptions concerning the sign nature of language and money can then be resolved if we examine more closely what, for instance, we use the linguistic sign for now. Wittgenstein ’ s answer to this question is that the use of this linguistic sign results from its diacritical function with respect to other linguistic signs such as in an hour, 5 minutes ago, etc. so that we can say that now does not denote a system but belongs to a system. Like Bühler, Wittgenstein also emphasizes that the linguistic sign does not work magically (ibid.), but acquires its meaning as a move in a game regulated by rules, i. e. cannot be of interest in its suggestive, advertising, material role, but only as a member in a system that is independent (that has its meaning in itself) [ … ] that is self-meaning (ibid.: 111). In the interest of clarifying this important thought, with which Wittgenstein once again sides with Bühler, the following passage may also be consulted: The awkwardness with which the sign, like a mute, tries to make itself understood by all sorts of suggestive gestures disappears when we realize that what is essential about the sign is the system to which it belongs, and its remaining content falls away (ibid.: 112 f.). If, however, the essential thing about the sign is the system to which it belongs, one must immediately look for the nature and the characterizing features of this system, which Wittgenstein also underlines with his demand to care only about what lies in the signs and their rules (cf. ibid.: 66). While we had previously heard that the meaning of linguistic signs is to be sought in the use we make of them, disregarding their material appearance, this characterization is given a higher degree of precision by the fact that Wittgenstein assigns to signs, in the sense of the Organon model of language, the function of representing and expressing the contrast or difference that occurs “ where we understand one thing in contrast to something else ” (ibid.: 149). This specification, like considerations, addressed earlier, refers both to the (game) space within which the sign obtains and performs its function and to the (game) rules that clarify the reciprocal relations of the players. If this were not the case, i. e., “ if meaning were not determined by the signs and rules, there would be no understanding and nothing we could call the language ” (ibid.: 3). According to this, it is not only permissible to link the functioning of linguistic signs to the rules of use governing them, but it is absolutely necessary, because otherwise there would be no possibility to designate something as something as distinct from a second. If, however, the determination of the function of linguistic signs boils down to the analysis of the rules of use to which they are subject, the analyzer cannot be satisfied with the mode of use of an isolated sign, since a sign can only be used meaningfully in relation to the system to which it belongs, or, to put it more precisely: something is a linguistic sign only in the system of a language. If, then, we ask about the rules of use of linguistic signs, this question Karl Bühlers Concept of the Sign and its Relationship to Wittgenstein ’ s Late Philosophy (1984) 133 amounts to an analysis of the relations which, on the one hand, are conceivably possible within this system and which, on the other hand, shape the current, system-immanent relation of the signs under discussion. Wittgenstein ’ s determination of the use of the meaning of linguistic signs thus boils down to the analysis of the rule-dependent relations of the signs, which paraphrases the perhaps most important idea of Bühler ’ s Theory of language, which I would like to mention again because of its importance at the end of these considerations: Plato explained in the Kratylos, one must go to the weaver, in order to find the principles of weaving, and to the carpenter, who has made the weaving shuttle, in order to explore the ‘ principles ’ of the organon ‘ weaving drawer ’ . 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