Gordon Baker and Wittgenstein's Method

Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker's Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Volume 1 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (1980), which covers the first 184 sections of the Investigations, has played a primary role in the interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. In the five years after its publication, Baker and Hacker published four other books together, including the second volume of their commentary on the Investigations, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar, and Necessity (1985). After 1985 Baker's view of Wittgenstein's later philosophy began to change, and that lead to the end of his collaboration with Hacker. Peter Sullivan finds the genesis of this change in the work that Baker did for Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle:

Baker's Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle (1988) was conceived as a further volume in this series, though in its gestation it became Baker's alone. Its Preface gives, in the first place, a straightforward explanation for this: the pair's various commitments meant that the work of drafting the new material for this book fell to Baker, and in certain limited and clearly identifiable respectes the arguments Baker then developed 'failed to carry full conviction' with his collaborator (p. xi). The Preface went on, though, to speak more broadly about the point of view informing the new book, elaborating on methodological themes about the nature and aims of philosophical understanding in ways that suggested a deeper and more general departure from the approach that Baker and Hacker had adopted in their jointly published work. (Review of Baker's Wittgenstein's Method, Neglected Aspects in Mind (January, 2006), p. 125).

According to Sullivan, the new interpretation that Baker outlines in the Preface does not figure in the book itself. Instead, Baker developes it in a series of papers beginning with "Philosophical Investigations section 122: neglected aspects" (1991).

Baker's later work is opposed to the interpretation of Wittgenstein he developed with Hacker. Though Hacker continues to defend that interpretation (in several books and articles, including two more volumes of the commentary on the Investigations), many believe that it has been refuted by Baker. For example, in a review of Hacker's Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies, Phil Hutchinson and Rupert Read write,

We find it odd that [Hacker] has never sought to seriously engage with Baker's post '90 'apostasy'. Particularly so since Baker explicitly identifies continuities between his own (post Baker & Hacker) reading of PI and the readings advanced by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond and Burton Dreben [which Hacker does criticize]. What is significant about Baker’s change of mind is not that he did so: a change of mind does not necessitate progress. What is significant is the extent to which Baker’s later work stands as a powerful critique of the reading propounded by he and Hacker in the 1980s, and by Hacker since. (Philosophy, 80, 2005, p. 435)

(Hutchinson and Read's review, as well as their relevant article "'Perspicuous presentation': a perspicuous presentation," can be found here in the "Papers 2005 +" section.)

What I propose to do in the remainder of this post is to (1) examine Baker's later interpretation as it is developed in his article on PI §122, (2) give Hacker's interpretation of §122, and (3) argue that Hacker's interpretation is correct.

(1) In §122 of the Investigations, Wittgenstein writes,

A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view [übersehen] of the use of our words.—Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity [Übersichtlichkeit]. A perspicuous representation [übersichtliche Darstellung] produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connexions'. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases.

The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a 'Weltanschauung'?)

How does Baker understand these remarks? A good place to start this examination will be the general summaries of Baker's interpretation of §122 given by the reviewers of Wittgenstein's Method: Neglected Aspects. Peter Sullivan writes,

["Investigations section 122: neglected aspects"] juxtaposes Wittgenstein’s statement that 'The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental importance for us' (PI §122) with the fact that, on a commonly accepted understanding of 'perspicuous representation' as a compendious and surveyable synopsis of the grammar of a region of discourse (what Baker terms 'the bird's eye view model'), Wittgenstein actually offers us very few such representations. It recommends an alternative understanding of this key methodological notion, on which a 'perspicuous representation' is not a representation that is perspicuous, but a representation that renders perspicuous what it represents (I confess that this seems to me grammatically strained); and it argues that, so understood, all of the reminders of 'landmarks', the suggestions of 'patterns, analogies, pictures, etc. which enable us to find our way about in the motley of "our language"' (p. 41), will qualify as 'perspicuous representations'. The reinterpretation of the notion distances it from the Rylean project of conceptual geography—of mapping, with a view to rigorously policing against the excursions of the metaphysically inclined, bounds of sense set by the facts of ordinary usage—and allies it instead with the open-ended, flexible, essentially person-relative and therapeutic response to particular philosophical problems. There is on this account no presumption that perspicuous representations will be, as Baker nicely says, 'additive' (pp. 28, 43)—that the recasting of a phenomenon against an alternative background picture, the novel comparison, the highlighting of an unobvious analogy, the interpolation of imagined intermediate cases, or whatever manoeuvre it might be that proves effective in unravelling any particular knot in the understanding or in dissolving any particular unease, will be integratable with other such manoeuvres to yield a single correct overiew of the grammar of our language. The notion of correctness, Baker contends, has no place in Wittgenstein’s thinking, or in the philosophical method he aims, by such examples, to teach us. (p. 127)

And Hutchinson and Read write,

A key indication of the difference can be gleaned from the understandings of the place of 'perspicuous (re-)presentation', of which Wittgenstein writes in PI §122, that it 'is of fundamental importance for us'. For Baker 'perspicuous presentation' does not denote a class of representations as it is usually thought to do (in the work of Baker & Hacker for instance, though, to be sure, not only there). It rather denotes what works: what achieves the therapeutic aim. And that this form of representation does so here, now, for this person, etc. does not imply that it will do so again, (or) for someone else. Therapy is achieved by facilitating one's interlocutor's ((or) one's own) arrival at a position where they might freely acknowledge hitherto unnoticed aspects. Acknowledging new aspects helps free one from the grip of a philosophical picture that initially led to the seeming intractability of the philosophical problem. Any presentation which serves this purpose can therefore be said to have been perspicuous—for that person, at that time, thereabouts. Perspicuity, on this understanding, does not denote a property of a class of representations but is rather an achievement term: perspicuity is accorded to the presentation that achieves the bringing to light of new aspects which are freely accepted by one's philosophical interlocutor.

One consequence of the later Baker's rendition of 'perspicuous presentation' is that it allows one to reinterpret what 'our grammar' might be when we consider ourselves to be perspicuously presenting it. For (later) Baker 'grammar' is best read as '"our" grammar'; while for Hacker, 'grammar' is to be read as 'the grammar'. So, for Hacker a perspicuous presentation comprises the clarification of the rules of (the) grammar (of the language), by making clear the similarities and dissimilarities in our employment of words in our language. (p., 436-7; Hutchinson and Read review Hacker's Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies in the same review)

I now turn to the article itself. Baker interprets §122 of the Investigations by interpreting its "immediate progenitor," §100 of TS 220 (TS 220 is an "early version" of the Investigations; according to von Wright, it was written in 1937 or 1938). He contends that a careful exploration of the context of TS 220 §100 leads to serious doubts about the standard interpretation of PI §122 (i.e., that of his and Hacker's commentary). Instead, it supports an alternative interpretation which "calls for a radical redescription of what [Wittgenstein] called 'our method'." (p. 44)

The context that Baker is interested in consists of §§98-99 of TS 220:

98. Die philosophischen Fragen werden zur Ruhe gebracht dadurch, daß der Darstellungsform unserer Sprache ein uns beunruhigender Aspekt genommen wird.

Ein Gleichnis, das in die Formen unserer Sprache aufgenommen ist, bewirkt einen falschen Schein; der beunruhigt uns: "Es ist doch nicht so!" — sagen wir. "Aber es muß doch so sein!"

Denk, wie uns das Substantiv "Zeit" ein Medium vorspiegeln kann; wie es uns in die Irre führen kann, daß wir einem Phantom auf und ab nachjagen. ("Aber hier ist doch nichts! — Aber hier ist doch nicht nichts!") Oder denke an das Problem: Wir können die Dauer eines Ereignisses messen, und doch ist sie nie gegenwärtig. — Oder an das Problem, welches daraus entsteht, daß das Wort "ist" Kopula und Gleichheitszeichen ist. Die Rose ist rot, und ist doch wieder nicht rot. Und der Satz der Identität sagt doch etwas, und er sagt doch wieder nichts.

Man weiß keinen Ausweg, denn die Sprache scheint uns keinen zu lassen.

99. Wir ändern nun den Aspekt, indem wir einem System des Ausdrucks andere an die Seite stellen. — So kann der Bann, in dem uns eine Analogie hält, gebrochen werden, wenn man ihr eine andere an die Seite stellt, die wir als gleichberechtigt anerkennen. — Wir sind geneigt, den Satz der Identität als Grundgesetz des Seins fallen zu lassen, wenn uns ein System des Ausdrucks gezeigt wird, das diesen Satz mit andern, die uns auf ähnliche Weise beunruhigten, systematisch aus unsrer Notation ausschließt. — Und wir greifen zu der Notation, die das Wort "ist" einmal durch "[sign for set membership]", einmal durch "=" ersetzt und das Problem der Identität in der Verschiedenheit verschwindet. "Ach so —" sagen wir, wenn uns die philosophische Erklärung gegeben wird, und atmen auf.

Das Seltsame an der philosophischen Beunruhigung und ihrer Lösung möchte scheinen, daß sie wie die Qual des Asketen ist, der, eine schwere Kugel stemmend, unter Leiden dastand, und den ein Mann erlöste, indem er ihm sagte: "Laß sie fallen". Man fragt sich: Wenn Dich diese Sätze beunruhigen, Du nichts mit ihnen anzufangen wußtest, warum ließest Du sie nicht schon früher fallen, was hat Dich daran gehindert? — Es war das System des Ausdrucks, welches mich in Bann hielt.

98. Philosophical problems are brought to rest by the fact that a disquieting aspect is taken on by the form of representation of our language.

A simile that has been absorbed into the forms of our language produces a false appearance, and this disquiets us. "But this isn’t how it is!" — we say. "Yet this is how it must be!"

Think how the substantive "time" can lead us to believe in a medium; how it can be misleading, so that we chase up and down after a phantom. ("But here there is surely nothing!" — But here there is surely not nothing!) Or think of the problem: we can measure the duration of an event, and yet it is never present. Or of the problem which emerges from the fact that the word "is" is a copula and an equals sign. The rose is red and also it is surely not red.

One doesn't know a way out because language does not appear to allow us one.

99. We then change the aspect by placing side-by-side with one system of expression other systems of expression. — The bondage in which one analogy holds us can be broken by placing another alongside which we acknowledge to be equally well justified. We are inclined to drop the law of identity as a basic law of being, when a system of expression is shown to us that systematically excludes from our notation this sentence along with others that disquiet us in a similar way. [...] and the problem of identity in difference disappears. "Oh, I see —" we say, when the philosophical explanation is given to us, and we breath.

The strange thing about philosophical uneasiness and its resolution might seem to be that it is like the suffering of an ascetic who stands there lifting a heavy ball above his head, amid complaints, and whom someone sets free by telling him: "Drop it". One wonders: If these propositions made you uneasy and you didn't know what to do with them, why didn't you drop them earlier? What stopped you from doing this? It was the system of expression which held me in bondage.

(Where available, I've used Baker's, Anscombe's, and Luckhardt and Aue's translations, e.g., the second paragraph of TS 220 §98 is identical to PI §112, and all of the second paragraph of TS 220 §99 (except for the last sentence) is identical to part of BT §89. I've left out TS 220 §100 because it is virtually identical to that of PI §122, quoted above; the only significant difference is that the former follows the question "Is this a 'Weltanschauung'?" with "Spengler." My German is a work in progress; corrections are welcome.)

Commenting on these sections, Baker writes,

Juxtaposing one notation with another is intended to effect a change of aspect; success would consist in our seeng the use of 'is' differently, that is in our looking at the use of this word as decomposing into two distinct uses. The problem of 'identity in difference' will simply vanish for anybody who adopts this point of view since the apparent contradiction depends on seeing the two occurences of 'is' as having the same use. (pp. 44-5)

Baker argues that, because §100 immediately follows these sections, "there is a prima facie case for linking its content to the idea of exposing new aspects of systems of expression in order to break our bondage to analogies absorbed into the forms of our language." (p. 45) (By itself, this is a thin case. Wittgenstein often changes topics from one remark to the next.) The link that Baker suggests is that between examples and a generalization:

The obvious thought is that Wittgenstein moved from illustrating some particular therapies for some particular philosophical problems to giving a more general description of the method that he has just exemplified. (p. 45)

Based on this thought, Baker conjectures that alternative systems of expression, when they are used as objects of comparison to break the hold of a philosophically puzzling expression, are themselves 'perspicuous representations' of the grammar of our language. Thus, any system of expression, notation, or language-game which has the effect of countering false appearances by bringing about a change of aspect is a perspicuous representation of the grammar of our language:

Provided that we are prepared to call 'perspicous representations of our grammatical rules', inter alia, whatever objects of comparison serve to make perspicuous to us (to bring us to command a clear view of) 'the grammar of our language', there seems to be a cast-iron case for calling some language-games 'perspicuous representations of our grammar'. (p. 50)

If this is what 'perspicuous representations' are, what does this tell us about Wittgenstein's method? To answer this question, Baker turns to interpreting the second paragraph of TS 220 §100 (i.e., PI §122): "The concept of a perspicuous representation ... earmarks our form of representation, the way we look at things." Baker holds that talk of 'our form of represntation' or 'our way of looking at things' presupposes other, different ways of looking at things. There are, then, many different ways of looking at things (ours and others), and these are embodied in different forms of representation, different forms of expression, or simply, different ways of speaking. From this, seemingly innocuous, observation Baker draws a radical conclusion:

The influence of these 'second-order' forms of representation (or ways of seeing things) on philosophers' descriptions of 'our grammar' is clearly visible not only in generating many of the celebrated 'isms' which dominate philosophical debates, but also in shaping the description of the most basic 'data' supporting their 'metaphysical uses' of the words of 'our language'. One instance is the debate about the status of ostensive definitions. It is clear enough that we do in fact teach the word 'red' by pointing to a ripe tomato and saying 'That is red'; moreover, it is also clear that this procedure is one paradigm of what we call 'explaining what "red" means' or 'explaining what red is'. Yet one philosopher insists that this practice cannot be called 'defining or explaining what "red" means', since it really consists in correctly applying the word 'red' to a perceptible object. Another philosopher argues, on the contrary, that it is the fundamental case of assigning meaning to a word, since it actually connects a word with what it stands for (unlike the usual 'verbal' or 'dictionary' definitions). A third claims that it is indeed an explanation, but only in virtue of its endowing the recipient with the capacity to recognize the colour red when he sees it. Wittgenstein himself suggested that the ostensive definition might be viewed as a substitution-rule for symbols (which should be seen as including both a sample and the gesture of pointing), and so on. In all these cases, philosophers' descriptions of the data of 'the grammar of our language' are shaped by the adoption of particular and identifiable forms (or norms) of description. There is just as compelling a case for claiming that descriptions of 'our grammar' must conform to particular forms of description … as that scientific descriptions of the world must do so (in virtue of being framed in a symbolism which has a particular 'grammar'). There seems no good reason to think (or even to think that Wittgenstein thought) that the subservience of descriptions to forms of description, and hence the 'relativism' of acknowledging the possibility of different forms of description, comes to an end at the frontiers of empirical discourse! (pp. 55-6)

Baker's point can be summarized as follows: A philosophical position is rooted in a particular way of looking at things (different positions are rooted in different ways of looking at things). A way of looking at things, a form of representation, has no claim to be the form of representation. Every form of representation is on equal footing. This amounts to a kind of representational relativism. Thus, Baker concludes, "In claiming the importance of perspicuous representations for 'our form of representation', Wittgenstein seems to have been explicitly subscribing to a form of relativism...." (p. 59)

Wittgenstein's method, according to Baker, is to use different forms of representation (i.e., of expression) to show us that the one which happens to have a hold on us is merely one among others. The effect of recognizing this is that we are no longer compelled to see things according to the first form. We can adopt new and different forms in much the same way that we can put on different pairs of differently colored glasses. In escaping the bondage of our form of representation, we do not discover the correct form of representation. Rather, in escaping our form of representation, we escape the very idea of a correct form of representation. As Sullivan puts it, for Baker "the notion of correctness has no place in Wittgenstein's thinking."

Philosophical problems, on this reading, are the effect of being under the sway of a particular form of representation. We can make different problems disappear by trying on different sets of glasses, i.e., by seeing different aspects.

(2) Wittgenstein's first remarks about 'perspicuous representation' occur in his criticism of Frazer's Golden Bough (MS 110, 1931; see Hacker's "Developmental Hypotheses and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein on Frazer's Golden Bough" in Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies). In the revised edition of Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Hacker writes,

This passage, more or less as it occurs in Investigations §122, was transcribed into the Big Typescript, where it is deatched from reflections on Frazer and generalized. The section head within which it occurs is 'THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY: THE SURVEYABLE REPRESENTATION OF GRAMMATICAL // LINGUISTIC // FACTS. THE GOAL: TRANSPARENCY OF ARGUMENTS. JUSTICE [Gerechtigkeit] (BT 414).' No indication is given as to what counts as a surveyable representation of grammatical facts, but it is perhaps significant that the next remark is:

A proposition is completely logically analyzed when its grammar is laid out completely clearly [vollkommen klargelegt]. It might be written down or spoken in any number of ways.
Above all, our grammar is lacking in surveyability. (BT 417)

This remark, if it is to be read in association with the previous one, suggests that a surveyable representation lays out the grammar of an expression (a) completely clearly, and (b) such that it can be taken in or surveyed. (p. 327)

Hacker defends this suggestion by quoting a letter Wittgenstein wrote to Schlick (in 1931) in which he explains the difference between the method he advocated in the Tractatus and his new method:

Perhaps the main difference, he writes, between the conception advanced in the Tractatus and his current one is that he now realizes that the analysis of propositions does not turn on discovering hidden things, 'but on tabulating, on the SURVEYABLE REPRESENTATION of, grammar, i.e. the grammatical use of words' ('sondern im Tabulieren, in der ÜBERSICHTLICHEN DARSTELLUNG, der Grammatik, d.h. des grammatischen Gebrauchs, der Wörter'). (p.327)

For Hacker, a 'perspicuous representation' "tabulates the rules for the use of words in a perspicuous manner that can readily be taken in." (p. 330)

Narrowly understood, a surveyable representation of the grammar of an expression appears to be a grammatical proposition or a few grammatical propositions that shed enough light on the matter at hand to dispel illusion and to highlight the grammatical category or role of the expression in question. Broadly understood, a surveyable representation is a synopsis of the grammatical rules for the use of an expression. (p. 332)

Hacker metaphorically describes this method in Rylean terms as mapping the grammar of words, i.e., as conceptual geography or topology (some evidence for this view will be examined below). For Hacker's Wittgenstein, the grammatical terrain is (more or less) the same for speakers of the same language. Consequently, grammatical rules are normative for those speakers.

For present purposes, this is a sufficient account of Hacker's position. For Hacker's full and lengthy discussion of this question (including his responses to Baker), see the revised edition of Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, "Surveyability and Surveyable Representations," pp. 307-334, and "Gordon Baker's Late Interpretation of Wittgenstein," Wittgenstein and His Interpreter's: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, pp. 88-122.

(3) (a) Is a 'perspicuous representation' an object of comparison as Baker holds or a tabulation of rules as Hacker holds? Hacker criticizes Baker's interpretation of PI §122 on page 328 of the revised Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (though he does not mention Baker by name):

It is clear that not anything that helps one to attain an overview is a surveyable representation of the grammar of an expression. It is true that he observes (surely correctly) that a good expression or good simile enables one to get an instantaneous overview ... of things (MS 112 (Vol. VIII), 112r). But comparing words to tools, or comparing the contrast between the appearance of words and their uses to that between handles and levers (PI §§11f.), cannot be said to represent (or present) the grammar of the word 'word'. Comparing the use of a sentence with a move in a game (PI §49) is illuminating, and it may for someone be, as it were, a 'redeeming word' (erlösende Wort) which enables them to get an instantaneous overview of an essential feature of the grammar of 'sentence'. But it cannot be said to represent the grammar of the word 'sentence' in a surveyable representation — and Wittgenstein nowhere suggests that it does. Putting the rules of draughts alongside the rules of chess may shed light on the latter by way of both similarities and differences, but the rules of draughts are not a surveyable representation of the rules of chess (it is not as if one can read the rules of chess off the rules of draughts!). What such comparisons may do, and what they are meant to do, is to jolt us out of a particular misleading way of looking at the grammatical facts by concentrating our view upon a crucial contrast. This is intended to make it possible for us to take it in. But a glimpse of the landscape is not a representation of what is seen.

While I agree with Hacker, as a response to Baker (which I'm assuming it is) this seems to beg the question. Baker denies that there is any such thing as the rules of our grammar (that is, he's a 'representational relativist'). That said, Hacker does give an alternative relation between objects of comparison and perspicuous representations. For Baker these are the same. For Hacker the former prepare the way for the latter. This, it seems to me, significantly weakens Baker's case. On Hacker's account, we can explain the fact that examples of objects of comparison (TS 220 §§98-9) immediately precede the general remark on perspicuous representation (TS 220 §100) without identifying objects of comparison with perspicuous representations. Thus, Baker's "prima facie case" is insufficient.

On the positive side, the letter to Schlick seems to be conclusive. There Wittgenstein explicitly equates perspicuous representation with the tabulation of the grammatical use of words. (Cf. Wittgenstein's claim in the Big Typescript section on perspicuous representations that "The philosophical problem is an awareness of the disorder in our concepts, and can be solved by ordering them." (p. 309)

(b) Is Wittgenstein interested in conceptual geography, and is the conceptual terrain the same for all speakers of a language? Yes, and yes. In no particular order, here are some relevant quotations (many of these are quoted by Hacker or Anthony Kenny in his excellent article, "Wittgenstein on the Nature of Philosophy" in The Legacy of Wittgenstein).

My aim is to teach you the geography of a labyrinth, so that you know your way about it perfectly. (MS 162b, 6v).

The philosopher wants to master the geography of concepts. (MS 137, 63a)

I am trying to conduct you on tours in a certain country. I will try to show you that the philosophical difficulties which arise in mathematics as elsewhere arise because we find ourselves in a strange town and do not know our way. So we must learn the topography by going from one place in the town to another, and from there to another, and so on. And one must do this so often that one knows one's way, either immediately or pretty soon after looking around a bit, wherever one may be set down.
This is an extremely good simile. In order to be a good guide, one should show people the main streets first.... The difficulty in philosophy is to find one's way about. (LFM, 44)

One difficulty with philosophy is that we lack a synoptic view. We encounter the kind of difficulty we should have with the geography of a country for which we had no map, or else a map of isolated bits. The country we are talking about is language and the geography its grammar. We can walk about the country quite well, but when forced to make a map, we go wrong. (AWL, 43)

Teaching philosophy involves the same immense difficulty as instruction in geography would have if a pupil brought with him a mass of false and falsely simplified ideas about the courses and connections of rivers and mountains. (BT, §90)

In order to know your way about an environment, you do not merely need to be acquainted with the right path from one district to another; you need also to know where you'd get to if you took this wrong turning. This shews how similar our considerations are to travelling in a landscape with a view to constructing a map. And it is not impossible that such a map will sometime get constructed for the regions that we are moving in. (RPP, §303)

After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination.—And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction.—The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings.
The same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions, and new sketches made. Very many of these were badly drawn or uncharacteristic, marked by all the defects of a weak draughtsman. And when they were rejected a number of tolerable ones were left, which now had to be arranged and sometimes cut down, so that if you looked at them you could get a picture of the landscape. (PI, Preface)

Wittgenstein also employs other similes to the same effect:

This may be compared to the way a chartered accountant precisely investigates and clarifies the conduct of a business undertaking. The aim is a synoptic comparative account of all the applications, illustrations, conceptions of the calculus. The complete survey of everything that may produce unclarity. And this survey must extend over a wide domain, for the roots of our ideas reach a long way. (Z, §273)

Savages have games (that's what we call them, anyway) for which they have no written rules, no inventory of rules. Now let's imagine the activity of an explorer travelling through-out the countries of these peoples and setting up lists of rules for their games. This is completely analogous to what the philosopher does. (BT, §90)

A philosophical question is similar to one about the constitution of a particular society.
—And it's as if a group of people came together without clearly written rules, but with a need for them; indeed also with an instinct that caused them to observe certain rules at their meetings; but this is made difficult by the fact that nothing has been clearly articulated about this, and no arrangement has been made which brings the rules out clearly. Thus they in fact view one of their own as president, but he doesn't sit at the head of the table and has no distinguishing marks, and that makes negotiations difficult. That is why we come along and create a clear order: we seat the president at a clearly identifiable spot, seat his secretary next to him at a little table of his own, and seat the other full members in two rows on both sides of the table, etc., etc. (BT, §89)

This last quotation occurs in the section titled "the Clearly Surveyable Representation of Grammatical Facts". That section occurs in the chapter of the Big Typescript titled "Philosophy." That chapter, in my opinion, presents a view of philosophy that is completely at odds with Baker's interpretation. The next quotation (below) is also from that chapter.

Read and Hutchinson, in their article "'Perspicuous presentation: a perspicuous presentation," criticize Hacker for holding that Wittgenstein engages in anything similar to Rylean conceptual geography (R&H side with Baker against Hacker). They remark that no one would bother to map sand dunes or waves in the ocean because these are constantly changing. Language, they claim, is in flux to a similar degree (a position which strikes me as obviously false). That Wittgenstein did not share their view is evident from this passage from the Big Typescript:

Human beings are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e. grammatical, confusions. And freeing them from these presupposes extricating them from the immensely diverse associations they are caught up in. One must, as it were, regroup their entire language. — But of course this language developed as it did because human beings had — and have — the tendency to think in this way. [...]

Language has the same traps ready for everyone; the immense network of easily trodden false paths. And thus we see one person after another walking down the same paths and we already know where he will make a turn, where he will keep going straight ahead without noticing the turn, etc., etc. Therefore wherever false paths branch off I ought to put up signs to help in getting past the dangerous spots.

One keeps hearing the remark that philosophy really doesn't make any progress, that the same philosophical problems that occupied the Greeks keep occupying us. But those who say that don't understand the reason it must be so. That reason is that our language has remained constant and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. So long as there is a verb "be" that seems to function like "eat" and "drink", so long as there are the adjectives "identical", "true", "false", "possible", so long as there is talk about a flow of time and an expanse of space, etc., etc., humans will continue to bump up against the same mysterious difficulties, and stare at something that no explanation seems able to remove.

[...]

The goal of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language comes to an end anyway. (BT, §90)

These remarks are interesting for a couple of reasons. First, they establish that, for Wittgenstein, language is static enough (even between different cultures and times!) to give rise to the same problems. And second, that problems are not person-relative, etc., but are the same for human beings speaking the same language (and, apparently, similar languages).

I will conclude with Hacker's accusation that Baker's interpretation makes Wittgenstein's philosophy irrelevant (this is becoming a common refrain).

Those who see Wittgenstein as one of the great geniuses of philosophy will be sad to see a figure of such originality and importance reduced to these dimensions. If Baker's interpretation were right, one of its consequences — whether intended by Baker or not — would be that Wittgenstein is a figure of very minor importance. For he is, Baker insists, relevant only for those who are suffering intellectual torment, and who need conceptual psychotherapy to ameliorate their condition. Baker's Wittgenstein is an 'intellectual GP' much influenced by Freud, with a book of case histories of individual treatments of his tormented friends and acquaintances. He insists on nothing. Everything is up for negotiation; nothing is forced on one by compelling argument; nothing is refuted and no one is shown to be wrong. Maximal tolerance is manifested in the face of absurdities (for, Baker avers, it would be a 'moral defect' to mock Heidegger's confusions concerning Nothingness and its activities, as Carnap did). Alternative pictures are offered one, but one is free to accept or reject them at will. One can look at things this way, or that way — as one pleases. ("Gordon Baker's Late Interpretation of Wittgenstein," p. 116)

[Update: Daniel has some interesting comments on PI §122 over at SOH-Dan.]