According to Cora Diamond, In the Tractatus, one kind of clarification of meaning works by putting a tautology in conjunction with the unclear proposition, and thereby revealing its inferential connections to other propositions, and therefore its use, function, i.e. meaning (see her ‘Saying and Showing: an example from Anscombe’). That's logical clarification, and I take it that this is meant to be part of a larger account of the place in the Tractatus for what Diamond elsewhere calls “apparatus propositions,” which include tautologies, contradictions, equations, and scientific laws. Different kinds of such apparatus propositions are discussed in the Tractatus in the 6's. These are not all meant to work in exactly the same way. But they do all have a role in clarification—in different kinds of clarification. And they clarify only in conjunction with other sentences: the unclear sentences.
What about clarification in ethics? What about the 6.4s? In discussing the Tractarian conception of ethics, Ann-Marrie Christensen suggests that in ethics “whole sentences can be used as a kind of tautologies by showing necessary ethical connections, as for example the sentences ‘You ought to the right thing’, ‘Humans should be respected’ and even a sentence like ‘Murder is wrong’.” (“Wittgenstein and Ethical Norms,” 125). I want to take the idea here that a sentence can function like a tautology in a moral context. The sentences Christensen mentions are not tautologies, although they do sound truistic. But I’m not sure that this is what is essential here. It is, however, an important idea that such sentences can function in clarification of moral meaning—moral significance. That’s what I want to develop.
I’m not sure what Christensen means by “showing necessary ethical connections.” Perhaps the suggestion is that we apply the point about logic to ethics, and say that clarification in ethics is similar to clarification in logic in this way: Putting a moral truism in conjunction with a proposition may clarify, or bring out, its moral significance. An example for a morally unclear sentence, perhaps, would be: “Ruth is a human being.” It would, on this suggestion, clarify its moral significance (to the extent that it is not clear) if we say in conjunction “Humans should be respected.”
If this suggestion is to be really useful, however, we would in addition require a better notion of what exactly we achieve by such clarification. We need a better notion of moral clarity and unclarity. We need a better notion of what is it to be clear and unclear about the moral significance of a proposition, in relation to being logically clear.
In logic, unclarity means not seeing a sentence’s inferential connections to other sentences. In this sense, clarifying the meaning of a sentence is clarifying, bringing out, its inferential, necessary connections to other sentences. But what is the parallel to that in ethics? What does “showing necessary ethical connections” amount to? Does it just mean, again (as in logic) showing inferential connections? – This to me seems to take the parallel with logic too far. And one general worry I keep having in these discussions that emphasize the parallels in the Tractatus between ethics and logic is that the parallels might be taken too far. Namely, that not enough room is left for a distinction between logic and ethics. – We need a better notion of ‘moral clarity,’ as opposed to logical clarity.
Perhaps, then, and with a mind to distinguishing between moral and logical clarity, it would help to take another example. A morally unclear sentence: “Ruth is our office manager.” Clarifying sentence: “Ruth is a human being.” Imagine these two sentences uttered in a real conversation. Imagine someone saying: “Don’t worry about the spilled coffee. Leave it to Ruth. She’s our office manager.” And imagine another replying. “She’s our office manager alright, but she is still a human being.” The point of uttering the second sentence can very well be moral clarification: retrieving something moral that was, in a way, lost or forgotten (perhaps in some platonic sense of forgotten). (Rai Gaita has a relevant discussion somewhere about the moral significance of remembering the fact that prison-inmates have mothers.)
Comment: notice that what was an unclear sentence in one example ("Ruth is a human being") is a clarifying sentence in another example. And I take it that there is no a priori limit on what can be (function as) moral clarification. Perhaps this indicates that the parallel of ethics with logic has its limits. But still, there is a parallel at least to this extent: by putting a sentence in conjunction with another, we can bring out the significance of the first sentence.
Where does the parallel end? My suggestion is that in ethics, as opposed to logic, clarification comes to something that is akin to a disclosure of an aspect. This seems to me a good first stab at a description of what is happening in the example above. Both ethics and logic, then, study modes of meaning, patters of interest, ways in which we own the world in thought and language. That's the parallel. We acquire moral sensitivities by acquiring language. Ethics and logic, however, correspond to two different ways in which meaning is clarified: To logically clarify a proposition or a thought means to bring out its functionality. To clarify a proposition or a thought ethically is to clarify its face.