Wittgenstein

The Ideal Language 

• Championed by Frege, Russell 

• Goal: construct a linguistically perfect language to mirror reality 

• Viewed everyday language as vague and misleading  

The Ordinary Turn 

• Led by Wittgenstein 

• Goal: Clarify meaning through actual use in everyday life 

• Argued that ordinary language is perfectly adequate as it is. Should be an object of study 

Linguistic

• Pragmatics: what we do with language 

• Syntax: grammar, logical form 

• Semantics: logical meaning, truth (evaluability), reference 

Early: the picture theory 

• Language mirrors reality. Propositions are logical pictures of facts 

• Representation of reality

Later: Meaning as use 

• Language is a tool for action. 

• Meaning is revealed through practice - to understand a form of life is to understand language 

Wittgenstein's definition of meaning

the meaning of a word is its use in the language 

Contextual meaning 

• Meaning is found in the specific context and language/language game being played 

Language games

• Wittgenstein rejected the idea he and Frege shared: that there is a single, unified language. Instead, he proposed that language is a collection of diverse practices, which he called Sprachspiele (Language games), that follow certain conventions 

Seemingly Rule-Governed 

• Set of social practices 

• The rules are not abstract logic, but social agreements on how words are used.

Embedded practice

• Language is a tool used in specific activities - giving orders, reporting events or telling jokes

• Meaning exists only within these activities, and there is no meaning outside of a language game 

Contextual Flux 

• A word like “water” meaning something different in a science lab vs. a burning building 

• The game determines the function 

Functional meaning:

 The word functions as a signal for action, not a definition of an object 

Contextual verification

The word's meaning is the action

The Response:

The communication is successful if the task proceeds 

form of life

Language is embedded in social and cultural practices

Rule following: 

• The rule is a particular language game

• How to proceed in a particular language game 

• Rule: social rules 

• Following has 2 parts, either because it's governed or because our action accords with that rule 

• Rules are so that one knows how to proceed. To understand a rule is to understand the social context/practice. A rule that is particular to a language game, and to understand a language, is to understand a form of life. Therefore, it is a social rule/practice 

• Wittgenstein - not saying that rule following can't be used to learn certain things, but he is talking about behaviour in accordance with a rule 

The framing problem

• there's the first-order rule, the second-order rule, the third-order rule and so on, but to explain the first rule, you need the second rule, to explain the second rule, you need the third rule and so on 

No private language

•  a language is a social entity/rule, and what's private cannot be a language. If something is social, it can't be private; if it's private, it cannot be a language 

Family resemblance 

• Prototype - taking all features that we associate with an object and grading them in accordance with probabilistic values, and then asking questions about how many of those can be lost, how many of those need to be kept before an object stops being categorized as A and starts being categorized as B 

• Cluster theory or family resemblance  

• For a definition to catch all the games, the definition would have to be vague 

• All games are considered prototypes; they can have distinct features, which are connected in cluster theory or in family resemblance. There's no one thing in common with all games, but they are connected through family resemblance (a web of similarities) 

The concept 

• Wittgenstein challenges the traditional view that all members of a category must share a single common essence 

A web of similarities 

• Concepts are held together by a network of overlapping similarities rather than a rigid definition 

Mapping family resemblances 

There is no single common trait that runs through all games other than a very loose notion of fun or play. Instead, we find a family resemblance where features overlap