Ramsey on Saying and Whistling: A Discordant Note

In his late paper ‘General Propositions and Causality’, Ramsey argues that unrestricted universal generalisations such as ‘All men are mortal’ are not genuine propositions.1 About this, as about much else in that paper, Ramsey had recently changed his mind. A few years earlier, both in ‘Facts and Propositions’ and in ‘Mathematical Logic’, he had argued that such generalisations are equivalent to infinite conjunctions.2 But by 1929 his ideas about infinity had changed, and it was concerns about the infinite character of unrestricted generalisations which led him to his new view. In our view, Ramsey’s late position is highly unstable, in a way which is interesting both philosophically and historically. For the issues about infinity are essentially those underlying Wittgenstein’s ‘rule following considerations’. On the face of it, if they show that generalisations are not genuine propositions, they show that none of our claims are genuine propositions. This connection between Ramsey’s view of generalisations and the rule following considerations is certainly causal, as well as logical. In 1929 Wittgenstein had just returned to Cambridge, and it is well known that this year marked a turning point—indeed, a U-turning point—in his philosophical development. It is well known, too, that lengthy philosophical discussions with Ramsey formed a major part of Wittgenstein’s intellectual life at this stage. It is also clear that Wittgenstein’s preoccupations at that time had a lot to do with the recent influence of Brouwer on his thinking, and especially his thinking about infinity. Finally, it is well known that Ramsey, too, enjoyed at least a partial conversion to such ideas—‘General Propositions and Causality’ is very much a product of that conversion. But some things remain unclear about these influences and interactions. For one thing, what was the direction of influence between Ramsey and Wittgenstein? Was it perhaps Ramsey who first saw the significance of what became the rule following considerations, for example? In our view, the fact that Ramsey didn’t appreciate the instability to which we here draw attention suggests that it was not. Had Ramsey been