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8/12/2019 Philosophical Investigations - Wittgenstein With Commentary
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Commentary on Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations by Lois Shawver
Shawver Commentary
One of the most difficult or misleading aspects of Wittgenstein's
Philosophical Investigations is the way in which he uses multiple
voices to converse with himself. To have a sense of understanding
Wittgenstein you need to be able to hear these different voices.ThePhilosophical Investigations is written in aphorisms short numbered
passages that are loosely tied together in terms of theme. !e often
begins an aphorism with a "uoted passage. #or e$ample he begins thefirst aphorism with a "uotation from %ugustine.
&ost "uoted passages are not actual "uotes however but rather
Wittgenstein's construction of a ind of interlocutor. This interlocutormight be thought of in terms of %ugustine Plato characters in Plato's
dialogues (ertrand )ussell or even early Wittgenstein or perhaps *ust
a vague composite of these various figures. %t any rate this voice +and
it is not always in "uotes, represents the problem that Wittgenstein triesto thin through. I will call this voice whatever seems most
appropriate to the passage such as the voice of %ugustine early
Wittgenstein but the label I use is somewhat arbitrary in mostinstances. What is important is that you notice that this is the voice that
provides the conte$t for Wittgenstein's response.
In addition to the interlocutor it is useful to thin of there being two
additional voices. One is the voice that discovers perple$ities oraporia. This voice is often but not always introduced with a dash and
it often but again not always begins with the word -(ut-. I will often
call this the voice of aporia.
Then there is a third voice in which Wittgenstein maes an incisive point in the face of the tradition and aporia. ou might thin of this as
the -voice of clarity.-
The basic format then is/
voice of theinterlocutor
0verything has an essence.-
voice of aporia (ut is this true1
voice of clarityIt seems that this notion has been a presumption.
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Of course this greatly simplifies the content of what Wittgenstein is
saying and not every passage has "uite this form. (ut if you loo for
these different voices it should assist you maing sense of what youfind in these pages.
I suggest that you never presume that these voices are all there in any
given passage. !e sometimes introduces for e$ample a thought
e$periment that he calls language games and in those cases it does notmae much sense to spea of these three voices. (ut you might
e$amine a passage to see if thining of it in terms of these voices helps
that passage mae sense to you. If it does then you're probably right in presuming that the passage in "uestion adopts this standard format.
%nd for my part when I see this format being used I will often call
your attention to it referring to it at times as -LW's standard format.-
%phorism 2324 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right by
Lois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis in bold is inserted byShawver to enhance
commentary.,
Shawver commentary:
2. -When they +my elders,named some ob*ect andaccordingly moved towards
something I saw this and I
grasped that that the thing wascalled by the sound they uttered
when they meant to point it out.
Their intention was shown by
their bodily movements as itwere the natural language of all
peoples5 the e$pression of the
face the play of the eyes themovement of other parts of the
body and the tone of the voice
which e$presses our state ofmind in seeing having
re*ecting or avoiding
something. Thus as I heard
words repeatedly used in their
This is a "uotation thatWittgensteinn has taen from%ugustine +Confessions I.6.,.
7isuali8e %ugustine's picture of
how language is learned andnotice how natural and complete
it sounds as a total e$planation
for how language is learned.
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proper places in various
sentences I gradually learnt to
understand what ob*ects theysignified5 and after I had trained
my mouth to form these signs I
used them to e$press my owndesires.-
These words it seems to megive us a particular picture of the
essence of human language. It is
this/ the individual words in
language name objects--
sentences are combinations of
such names33In this picture of
language we find the roots of the
following idea/ !very word hasa meaning "he meaning is
correlated with the word It is
the object for which the word
stands
9ow Wittgenstein is beginninghis commentary. The emphasis
is mine. It is the deconstruction
of %ugustine's picture oflanguage that is the focus of this
entire boo. +%lthough I should
say that many others beside
%ugustine have shared this
picture of language. %s we willsee it is a cultural illusion,
Once deconstucted new andstriingly different ideas about
language begin to emerge.
%ugustine does not spea of
there being any difference between inds of word. If you
describe the learning of language
in this way you are I believe
thining primarily of nouns lie'table' 'chair' 'bread' and of
people's names and only
secondarily of the names ofcertain actions and properties5
and of the remaining inds of
word as something that will taecare of itself.
!ere the deconstruction begins.
Looing at the %ugustinian
picture of language we see that%ugustine has e$plained only
one type of word.
9ow thin of the following use
of language/ I send someone
shopping. I give him a slip
mared 'five red apples'. !etaes the slip to the shopeeper
who opens the drawer mared
'apples' then he loos up theword 'red' in a table and finds a
colour sample opposite it5 then
he says the series of cardinal
This scenario is a thought
e$periment. To what e$tent do
you thin the language in this
scenario is e$plained by%ugustine's picture of language1
Thin of the shopeeper
counting out the apples onethrough five. :id he learn to do
this by someone pointing to five
apples1 !ardly. The teaching of
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how did the worer learn tofetch1 %s opposed say to
taing ob*ects behind the fence1
=rushing them1 Or tapping them
with a stone1
?. %ugustine we might say doesdescribe a system of communication5
only not everything that we call
language is this system. %nd one has to
say this in many cases where the
"uestion arises 'Is this an appropriatedescription or not1' The answer is/
'es it is appropriate but only for thisnarrowly circumscribed region not for
the whole of what you were claiming to
describe.-
It is as if someone were to say/ -%game consists in moving ob*ects about
on a surface according to certain
rules...- 33and we replied/ ou seem to
be thining of board games but thereare others. ou can mae your
definition correct by e$presslyrestricting it to those games.
Somehow %ugustine's
picture of languagealthough appropriate for a
subsection of langauge is
not as all inclusive ane$planation of language as
we are at first glance
inclined to believe.
%s Wittgenstein says in
+2, we tend to sweep
under the rug all the usesof language that do not fit
the %ugustinian picture
that seems to capture ourimagination.
%lthough language3game+;, restricts the
vocabulary to words thatseem to refer to ob*ects
the %ugustinian picture
cannot e$plain everythingthat happens.
@. Imagine a script in which the
letters were used to stand forsounds and also as signs of
emphasis and punctuation. +%
script can be conceived as alanguage for describing sound3
patterns., 9ow imagine someone
interpreting that script as if there
were simple a correspondence of
!ow might this be1 Suppose
we taught a parrot to say -Pollywants a cracer- and whenever
it says it we gave the parrot a
cracer. On the surface thisloos lie language. The parrot
is asing for and receiving a
cracer. !owever on closer
e$amination it is not. We could
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letters to sounds and as ifthe letters had not also
completely different functions.
%ugustine' conception oflanguage is lie such an over3simple conception of the script.
have taught the parrot to say
-<et lost>- and give it a cracer
each time it does. Then itwould not have looed as
though the parrot were speaing
0nglish.
To thin that simply saying thewords -Polly wants a cracer-
constitutes -language- is to have
this sort of over3simple
conception of the language.Something profound is missing
from this conception although it
is not yet clear e$actly what thisis. Still it is a beginning to say
that when the parrot says -Pollywants an cracer- he doesn't"uite now what this sentence
means in 0nglish. It amuses us
because nevertheless it seemsas though he does.
The same would be true if we
taught a two year old to answer
the "uestion -What is @A4divided by ?BB1- by saying
-One point two three.- It would be a correct answer in 0nglish
but the child would not nowwhat she was saying because
she would not now how to
count now wha this numbermeans or now what division
means. There is more to
language than stringing together correct words.
A. If we loo at the e$ample in +2, wemay perhaps get an inling how much
this general notion of the meaning of a
word surrounds the woring of languagewith a ha8e which maes clear vision
impossible. It disperses the fog to study
the phenomena of language in primitiveinds of application in which one can
(ut although the parroted sentences are
not language in the
richest sense of the termthey help us to
understand how
language begins theroots of language.
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command a clear view of the aim and
functioning of the words.
% child uses such primitive forms of
language when it learns to tal. !ere the
teaching oflanguage is not e$planation but training.
B. We could imagine that thelanguage of +;, was the whole
language of % and (5 even the
whole language of a tribe. Thechildren are brought up to perform these actions to use
these words as they do so and to
react in this way to the words ofothers. %n important part of
the training will consist in the
teacher's pointing to the ob*ectsdirecting the child's attention to
them and at the same time
uttering a word5 for instance the
word -slab- as he points to thatshape.
%lthough the word -slab>- is nottied to any particular activity in
0nglish in the language we are
imagining in +;, it is always acommand to fetch a slab. What
tends to confuse us is that we
can imagine something lie thistaing place in 0nglish. It is
*ust that the word -slab>- would
not be confined to only this use.
!owever in the community weare imagining this is the only
use for the term -slab>- %nd
how might children be taughtthe use of the term1 We can
well imagine that the
%ugustinian picture of languagetraining might be involved. Thechild's attention will be directed
to the different shapes and the
child will learn to e$pect eachshape to be associated with a
particular sound.
+ I do not want to call this
-ostensive definition- becausethe child cannot as yet as what
the name is. I will call it
-ostensive teaching ofwords-.33333I say that it will form
an important part of the training
because it is so with human
beings5 not because it could not
What is the difference between
ostensive teaching of words andostensive definitions1 In
ostensive definitions someone
points and gives a name ofsomething and this serves to
mae clear how the term is to be
used. When someone points to
a cracer and says -cracer-
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be imagine otherwise.,
those who now what a cracer
is +but not the name for it, can
receive this as an ostensivedefinition. (ut if a child has not
yet learned language it is lie
the parrot. It does not nowwhat is being pointed to on whatthe word cracer means.
+&aybe the word -cracer-
means -s"uare- or -salty-. Ormaybe it means -food-.,
!owever the child understands
the term the child can be taughtto say it in assocition with the
ob*ect. %s %ugustine imagined
things in +2, . %s %ugustine
imagined things the childwithout any language was able
to -grasp-
This ostensive teaching of words
can be said to establish anassociation between the word and
the thing. (ut what does this
mean1 Well it can mean variousthings/ but one very li#ely
thin#s first of all that a picture
of the object comes before thechild's mind when it hears the
word $ut now% if this does
happen---is it the purpose of
the word&
The emphasis here is mine. I
want to show what I will callWittgenstein's aporetic voice.
!e is reminding us of the
cultural ways we thin so tht hecan deconstruct them. !ere
Wittgenstein is taling about the
cultural illusion that is related to%ugustine's picture of language
and what we are liely to say
that supports this illusion.
---es it can be the purpose.333Ican imagine such a use of words
+of series of sounds,. +Cttering a
word is lie striing a note on theeyboard of the imagination., (ut
in the language of +;, it is not the purpose of the words to evoeimages. +It may of course be
discovered that that helps to
attain the actual purpose.,
(ut although language maycreate images for us remember
the language in +;, was not
re"uired to create images for the
worers. The worer in +;,would understand what was
being said to him if he simply
fetched what was called forwhether or not he had images of
what called for when it was
called or not.
(ut if the ostensive teaching In +;, one understands the call
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has this effect 333am I to say that
it effects an understanding of the
word1 :on't you understand thecall -Slab>- if you act upon it in
such3and3such a way1 33
:oubtless the ostensive teachinghelped to bring this about5 butonly together with a particular
training. With different training
the same ostensive teaching ofthese words would have effected
a "uite different understanding.
-Slab>- if one brings it when it
is called. Pointing to slablie
ob*ects and saying -slab- mighthave faciliated this teaching but
one could also imagine learning
to tae the slab behind the fencewhen it is called. % differenttraining would have resulted in
the worer doing different
things with the slab hitting ithiding it burying it and so
forth.
-I set the brae up by
connecting up rod and lever.-333es given the whole of the rest
of themechanism. Only in con*unctionwith that is it a brae3lever and
separated from its support it is
not even a lever5 it may be
anything or nothing.
Cnless one nows how to weave
the word into some form of
human activity the saying of the
word is not yet language. It islie a brea that is not yet
connected with the entiremechanism. The parts seem to
be there but it does not yet have
the connections to function as itshould.
D. In the practice of the use of
language +;, one party calls outthe words the other acts on
them. In instruction in the
language the following processwill occur/ the learner names the
ob*ects5 that is he utters the
word when the teacher points tothe stone.333%nd there will be
this still simpler e$ercise/ the
pupil repeats the words after the
teacher33333both of these being processes resembling language.
%ll of this sounds lie%ugustine's picture of learning
language.
We can also thin of the whole
process of using words in +;, as
one of those games by means ofwhich children learn their native
language. I will call these games
-language3games- and will
!ere Wittgensein introduces the
concept of a language game but
he will amplify this concept laterso that it does not merely apply to
language learning e$ercises. To
anticipate this amplification of
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sometimes spea of a primitivelanguage as a language3game.
the meaning of this term we
might sometimes distinguish this
meaning of the term by callingthese language games -primitive
language games.-
%nd the processes of naming
the stones and of repeating
words after someone might also be
called language3games. Thin of
much of the use words in gameslie ring3a3ring3a3roses.
In ring3a3ring3a3roses the child
learns the phrases withoutnowing what they mean as a
parrot might learn to say -Polly
wants a cracer.-
I shall also call the whole%
consisting of language and the
actions into which it is woven%the language-game
So -the language game- is notmerely speech. In +;, he whole
activity of fetching the ob*ectswas part of the -language game-of +;,.
6. Let us now loo at an
e$pansion of language +;,.
(esides the four words -bloc--pillar- etc. let it contain a
series of words used as the
shopeeper in +2, used the
numerals +it can be the series ofletters of the alphabet,5 further
let there be two words whichmay as well be -there- and-this- +because this roughly
indicates their purpose,that are
used in conne$ion with a pointing gesture5 and finally a
number of colour samples. %
gives an order lie/ -d333slab333there-. %t the same time he
shews the assistant a colour
sample and when he says
-there- he points to a place onthe building site. #rom the
stoc of slabs ( taes one for
each letter of the alphabet up to-d- of the same colour as the
sample and brings them to the
place indicated by %.333On other
In +6, LW creates a new language
game that is a variation of +;,.
9ow we will be able to spea of
bringing E number of slabs andwe will be abe to indicate where
we want the slab to be put. Weunderstand these concepts LWe$plains because they e$ist in
0nglish. 9otice however that
LW does not say that the slabswill be counted with numbers
but with the letters of the
alphabet. This helps us get intothe feel of what it would be lie
if we had a more primitive
system of counting one in which
there was no arithemetic possisilibities for e$ample.
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occasions % gives the order
-this333there-. %t -this- he points
to a building stone. %nd so on.
F. When a child learns
this language it has tolearn the series of
'numerals' a b c ... by
heart. %nd it has to learntheir use.333Will this
training include ostensive
teaching of the words1333Well people will for
e$ample point to slabs
and count/ -a b c
slabs-.333Something more
lie the ostensiveteaching of the words
-bloc- -pillar- etc.would be the ostensive
teaching of numerals that
serve not to count but torefer to groups of ob*ects
that can be taen in at a
glance. =hildren do learnthe use of the first or si$
cardinal numerals in this
way.
!ow can we imagine the people of +6,
learning language1 =an they learn itostensively as %ugustine imagined1
Tae the learning of numbers. We could
imagine them learning to distinguishnumbers ostensively as we might learn
to distinguish two from three by
distinguishing these configurations oftwo and three/
o
o o o o
(ut this would be of limited use. Wecannot learn to distinguish apparently
much larger numbers in this fashion.
Thus we count.
%re -there- and -this
also taughtostensively1333Imagine
how one might perhaps
teach their use. One will point to places and
things333but in this case
the pointing occurs in theuse of the words too and
not merely in learning the
use.333
!ow will -there- and -this- be taught1
This is tricy and LW does not answerthe "uestion for us. :o you point to
-this- and say -this-1 :oes that clarify
the use of the word -this-1 !ardly.
24. 9ow what do the words ofthis language signify1333What is
supposed to shew what they
signify% if not the #ind of use
What does -two signify-1 :oes itsignify any two ob*ects1 Say two
blocs1 Well we now what the
word -bloc signifies.- It signifies
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they have& %nd we have alreadydescribed that. So we are asing
for the e$pression -This word
signifies this- to be made a part ofthe description. In other words the
description ought to tae the form/
-The word . . . .signifies . . . .-
.
each of the two blocs. :oes
-two- signifiy something other
than what -bloc signifies-1 Thereare conceptual pu88les here.
%nd what does -this- signify. Itsignifies what I point to. (ut that
can be anything. !ow can a childlearn to associate the naming of
anything by one term1
(ut do we need to say what these
words -signify-1 Isn't everythingclear already1 Since we now
their use1 Why would we re"uire
that all words -signify-1
Of course one can reduce thedescription of the use of the word
-slab- to the statement that thisword signifies this ob*ect. This
will be done when for e$ample it
is merely a matter of removing the
mistaen idea that the word -slab-refers to the shape of building3
stone that we in fact call a
-bloc-333but the ind of 'refering'this is that is to say the use of
these words for the rest is alreadynown.
In language3game +;, pointing and
saying -slab- may be helpful to
show which slab is to be fetched but pointing and naming would not
show that the slab is to be fetched.
0"ually one can say that the
signs -a- -b- etc. signify
numbers5 when for e$ample this
removesthe mistaen idea that -a- -b-
-c- play the part actually played
in language by -bloc- -slab--pillar-. %nd one can also say that
-c- means this number and not that
one5 when for e$ample thisserves to e$plain that the letters
are to be used in the order a b c
d etc. and not in the order a b d
c.
In other words we might want to
e$plain that -c- is not *ust anotherob*ect lie -slab- or -bloc- and so
we might need e$plain -a- -b-
and -c- signify numbers. (ut
where does this leave us1 :oes itteach the child in +6, to learn to use
numbers +by counting things, and
until the child learns to count doesthe child really now what
-numbers- means1
(ut assimilating the
descriptions of the uses of the
words in this way cannot mae the
So although we can find a way to
say that -a- -b- -c- signify
something assimilating these
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uses
themselves any more lie one
another. #or as we see they areabsolutely unlie.
different inds of words to the
same e$pression +they are
instances if -signifying- hides theenormity of the difference and
creates a over simplified picture
language and how language islearned.
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%phorism 223;4 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein: +0mphasis in bold is inserted by
Shawver to enhance
commentary.,
Shawver commentary:
22. Thin of the tools in a tool3
bo$/ there is a hammer pliers asaw a screw3driver a ruler a
glue3pot glue nails and
screw.333The functions of wordsare as diverse as the functions
of these
ob*ects. +%nd in both cases
there are similarities.,
%ugustine was struc by the
similarities of different words andfailed to note their differences.
Such an understanding would be
as superficial as learning that allthe ob*ects in the toolbo$ were
-tools- but not nowing any of
their different functions.
Of course what confuses usis the uniform appearance of
words when we hear them
spoen or meet them in scriptand print. #or their application
is not presented to us so clearly.0specially when we are doing philosophy>
Loo at the words on this page.
:on't they loo alie1 They loo
so much more lie each other
than they loo lie your eyboardor your hand. This is what
confuses us.
2;. It is lie looing into the cabin of alocomotive. We see handles all looing
more or less alie. +9aturally since they
are all supposed to be handled., (ut one isthe handle of a cran which can be moved
continuously +it regulates the opening of avalve,5 another is the handle of a switchwhich has only a brae3lever the harder
one pulls on it the harder it braes5 a
fourth the handle of a pump/ it has aneffect only so long as it is moved to and
fro.
We are mesmeri8ed by
the similarity in theappearance of words.
This eeps us from
noticing the vastdifferences in their
uses.
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2?. When we say/ -0very word in language signifies something-we have so far said nothing
whatever5 unless we have e$plained e$actly what distinction we wish
to mae. +It might be of course that we wanted to distinguish thewords of language +6, from words 'without meaning' such as occur in
Lewis =arroll's poems or words lie -Lilliburlero- in songs.,
2@. Imagine someone's saying/
-%ll tools serve to modify
something. Thus the hammermodifies the position of the nail
the saw the shape of the board
and so on.-333%nd what ismodified by the rule the glue3
pot the nails1333-Our nowledge
of thing's length the temperature
of the glue and the solidityof the bo$.-33333Would anything
be gained by this assimilation of
e$pressions1333
It seems we loo for ways to
disguise the differences in
different inds of terms. We tryto assimilate them all to a
particular way of describing
them. (ut the fact that we can
find an e$pression that treatsthem all the same +e.g. all
words are made of characters,
does not mean that they are assimilar as we thin. We fail to
notice their differences and this
undermines our philosophyabout language.
2A. The word -to signify- is perhaps used in the moststraight3forward way when the
ob*ects
signified is mared with thesign. Suppose that the tools %
uses in building bear certain
mars. When % shews hisassistant such a mar he
brings the tool that has that
mar on it.
It is in this and more or lesssimilar ways that a name
means and is given to a
thing.333It will often prove
useful in philosophy to say toourselves/ naming something
is lie attaching a label to a
Well does the word -signify- meananything at all1 There is ae$emplary case of our using this
term. It is used best when we mar
ob*ects with a sign. Sometimes itis useful to use such a model in
understanding language.
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thing.
2B. What about the coloursamples that % shews to (/ arethey part of language1 Well it
is as you please. They do not
belong among the words5 yet
when I say to someone/-Pronounce the word 'the' -
you will count the second -the-
as part of the language3game+6,5 that is it is a sample of
what the other is meant to say.
It is most natural and causes
least confusion to recon thesamples among the instruments
of
the language.
++)emar on the refle$ive pronoun -this sentence-. 3
+A4;,,,
There is a certain analogy
between saying -This is the color
pillar I want you to bring- and-This is the way I want you to
pronounce the word 'the.'- We
sometimes give samples of how tosay things or what to call things
with words and sometimes we
use supplementary techni"ues
such as color samples.
Wittgenstein is urging us to countall of these techni"ues regardless
of whether they consist of words-language.-
2D. It will be possible to say/ In
language +6, we have different
inds of word. #or the functionsof the word -slab- and the word
-bloc- are more alie than those
of -slab- and -d-. (ut how we
group words into inds willdepend on the aim of the
classification333and on our own
inclination.
Thin of the different points of
view from which one can classify
tools or chess3men.
Treat this as an e$ercise. What
ind of words are there in +6,.The way to classify words in 6
will vary but one way that
suggests itself is we can countsome words as names some as
numbers and some as
pronouns. (ut couldn't we also
classify these words according
to whether they are one syllableor two1 %ren't there other ways
to classify them1
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26. :o not be troubled by the
fact that languages +;, and +6,
consist only of orders. If youwant to say that this shews them
to be incomplete as yourself
whether our language iscomplete5333whether it was so before the symbolism of
chemistry and the notation of the
infinitesimal calculus wereincorporated in it5 for these are
so to spea suburbs of our
language. +%nd how manyhouses or streets does it tae
before a town begins to be a
town1, Our language can be seen
as an ancient city/ ama8e of little streets and s"uares
of old and new houses and of
houses with additions fromvarious periods5 and this
surrounded by a multitude of
new boroughs with straightregular streets and uniform
houses.
%t what point does a language
become complete1 Was our
language complete before we
introduced the speciali8edlanguage of psychoanalysis1
(efore we introduced the 8erointo our counting system1 %nd
for that matter is our language
complete now1
We have no way to evaluate thecompleteness of language. 0ach
language is more or less rich but
the ways that it is rich are
different from that in otherlanguages.
2F. It is easy to imagine a
language consisting only of orders
and reports in battle.333Or a
language consisting only of"uestions and e$pressions for
answering yes and no. %nd
innumerable others.33333(nd to
imagine a language means to
imagine a form of life
Wittgenstein has already toldus that language games are not
not *ust to be -words- and our
ways of responding withwords. The language game in
+;, for e$ample was woven
into a culture that fetched slabsand blocs. Their words were
woven into their activity their
forms of life.
(ut what about this/ is the call
-Slab>- in e$ample +;, a sentenceor a word1333 If a word surely it
has not the same meaning as the
lie3sounding word of ourordinary language for in +;, it is a
call. (ut if a sentence it is surely
!ow can it be an elliptical
sentence1 There are no words possible in language3game +;,
e$cept -slab- -bloc- -pillar-
and -beam.-
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not the elliptical sentence/ -Slab>-
of our language.
33333%s far as the first "uestiongoes you can call -Slab>- a word
and also a sentence5 perhaps itcould be appropriately called a'degenerate sentence' +as one
speas of a degenerate hyperbola,5
in fact it is our 'elliptical'
sentence.333(ut that is surely onlya shortened form of sentence
-(ring me a slab- and there is no
such sentence in e$ample +;,.333
$ut why should I not on
contrary have called the
sentence $ring me a slab alengthening of the sentence
Slab)&333
0ven in 0nglish it is biased to
say that -Slab>- is an elliptical
form of -(ring me a slab.- If
we began by learning thecommand -slab>- +and maybe
we did, then wouldn't -(ring
be slab>- be a lengthened formof -Slab>-1
(ecause if you shout -Slab>- you
really mean/ -(ring me a slab-.333
!ere is LW's aporetic +or
%ugustinian voice,. Let's
unpac what we mean by-really mean.-
(ut how do you do this/ how do
you mean that while you say
-Slab>-1 :o you say the
unshortened sentence to yourself1%nd why should I translate the call
-Slab>- into a different e$pressionin order to say what someone
means by it1 %nd if they mean the
same thing333why should I not say/
-When he says 'Slab>'-1 %gain ifyou can mean -(ring me the slab-
why should you not be able to
mean -Slab>-1 33333(ut when I call-Slab>- then what I want is that he
should bring me a slab>33333=ertainly but does 'wanting this'consist in thining in some from
or other a different sentence from
the one you utter1333
%nd here are some
observations that are meant to
shed clarifying light/
!ow do you have this othermeaning -(ring me a slab>-
going on1 In what way is this
what we really mean1 Wedon't say -(ring me a slab>- to
ourselves while we say
-Slab>- Why not say that-(ring me a slab>- really
means -Slab>-
This notion -really mean- isconfusing here. We do not-really mean- a particular
sentence in this case. Or we
might *ust as well say that wereally mean -slab>- as to say
that we really mean -(ring me
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a slab>-
;4. (ut now it loos as ifwhen someone says -(ring me aslab- he could mean this
e$pression as one long word
corresponding to the single word
-Slab>- 3333Then can one mean itsometimes as one word and
sometimes as four1 %nd can one
mean it sometimes as one wordand sometimes as four1 %nd
how does one usually mean
it133333
%nd when a person says -(ring
me a slab>- it is not the same asif a peson said -bring3me3a3
slab>- as if it were *ust one
word. What is wrong with ouranalysis here1
When is -(ring me a slab>- four
words and when is it one1
I thin we shall be inclined tosay/ we mean the sentence as
four words when we use it in
contrast with other sentences
such as -!and me a slab--(ring him a slab-. -(ring two
slabs- etc.5 that is in contrast
with sentences containing theseparate words of our
command in other
combinations.33333
When we have a variety of
sentences that use most of the
same words but are variations on
a theme then we will say that thesentence has four words.
(ut what does using onesentence in contrast with others
consist in1 :o the others
perhaps hover before one's
mind1 %ll of them1 %nd whileone is saying the one sentence
or before or afterwards1333
9o. 0ven if such an e$planation
rather tempts us we need onlythin for a moment of what
actually happens in order to see
that we are going astray here.
We say that
we use the command in
contrast with other sentences
because our language contains
The clarifying voice/
Our temptation to use ane$planation that re"uires us to
thin of the other sentences
-hovering- is instructive. It
teaches us to stop and loo andnot base our conclusions on
-what must be.- When we stop
to loo we see that the other
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the possibility of those other
sentences. Someone who did
not understand our language aforeigner who had fairly often
heard someone giving the order/
-(ring me a slab>- might believe that this whole series ofsounds was one word
corresponding perhaps to the
word for -building3stone- in hislanguage. If he himself had then
given this order perhaps he
would have pronounced itdifferently and we should say/
he pronounces it so oddly
because he taes it for a single
word.33333
sentences are no in anyway
hovering in our minds. What
mae one way of saying -(ringme a slab>- a sentence and the
other way -(ring3me3a3slab>- aword has something more to do
with the fact that we can mae
sentences that are variations onthe theme -(ring me a slab>-
(ut then is there not alsosomething different going on in
him when he pronounces it333
something corresponding to thefact that he conceives the
sentence as a single word133333
(ut what is going on with him1
&ust he be picturing the -slab-
when he hears it1 Or must he
say this sentence to himself-(ring me a slab>-
0ither the same thing may go on
in him or something different.
#or what goes on in you whenyou give such an order1 %re you
conscious of its consisting of
four words while you areuttering it1 Of course you have a
mastery of this language333
which contains those othersentences as well333but is this
having a mastery something that
happens while you
are uttering the sentence1333%ndI have admitted that the
foreigner will probably
pronounce a sentence differentlyif he conceives it differently5 but
what we call his wrong
conception need not lie inanything that accompanies the
utterance of the command.
We we issue a command -slab>-what goes on in us1
Introspectively need there be
anything private1 There might be something present when we
utter the command but there
need not be.
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The sentence is 'elliptical' not
because it leaves out somethingthat we thin when we utter it
but because it is shortened333in
comparison with a particularparadigm of our grammar.333
In our culture we create the
paradigm of the full sentence as
the -real.- Therefore we say-Slab>- is a shortened form and
not -(ring me a slab>- is a
lengthend form. (ut this paradigm that calls the longerform the real form is arbitrary.
Of course one might ob*ect here/
-ou grant that the shortened
and the unshortened sentencehave the same sense.333What is
this sense then1 Isn't there a
verbal e$pression for this
sense1-33333
%nd if they have the same sense
then isn't one form of the
sentence the -right- or -real-
form1
(ut doesn't the fact thatsentences have the same sense
consist in their having the same
use1333+In )ussian one says-stone red- instead of - the stone
is red-5 do they feel the copula
to be missing in the sense orattach it in thought1,
&aybe not. &aybe we say thatthe sentences have the same
-sense- only because they have
the same use in the language3game. They cause one person to
fetch the ob*ect and both the
same regardless of which formwe use.
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%phorism ;23?4 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right by
Lois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis in bold in Wittgenstein'ste$t has been inserted by Shawver to
enhance commentary.,
Shawver commentary:
;2. Imagine a language3game in
which % ass and ( reports thenumber of slabs or blocs in a pile
or the colours and shapes of the
building3stones that are staced in
such3and3such a place.333 Such areport might run/ -#ive slabs-. 9ow
what is the difference between the
report or statement -#ive slabs- andthe order -#ive slabs>-1333
That is what is the difference
between -#ive slabs- +in
language3game ;2, and+-#ive slabs>- in language
game 61 ,
Well% it is the part which uttering
these words plays in the language-
game
0mphasis mine. (ut isn't the
important thing that -#iveslabs>- in +6, causes the
worer to bring A slabs1
While -five slabs- in +;2,
only causes the supervisor tohave information1
9o doubt the tone of voice and the
loo with which they are uttered
and much else besides will also bedifferent. (ut we could also imagine
the tone's being the same333for an
order and a report can be spoen in
a variety of tones of voice and withvarious e$pressions of face333the
difference being only in the
application. +Of course we mightuse the words -statement- and
-command- to stand for
grammatical forms of sentence andintonations5 we do in fact call
Isn't the weather glorious to-
day& a *uestion% although it is
On the surface the difference
might be a matter of how it is
voiced. (ut we couldimagine them being voiced
with the same intonation.
The intonation is after all
only a clue as to what thedifferences are not the
difference itself.
(esides we could imagine a
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used as a statement., We could
imagine a language in which all
statements had the form and tone ofrhetorical "uestions5 or every
command the form of the "uestion
-Would you lie to. . .1-. Perhaps itwill then be said/ -What he says hasthe form of a "uestion but is really a
command-333that is has the
function of a command in thetechni"ue of using the language.
+Similarly one says -ou will do
this- not as a prophecy but as acommand. What maes it the one or
the other1,
language in which everythingstated or commanded was put
in the form of a "uestion.
;;. #rege's idea that every
assertion contains an
assumption which is the thingthat is asserted really rests on
the possibility found in our
language of writing every
statement in the form/ -It isassert that such3and3such is the
case.-333 (ut -that such3and3
such is the case- is not asentence in our language333so far
it is not a move in the language3
game. %nd if I write not -It isasserted that . . . .- but -It is
asserted/ such3and3such is the
case- the words -It is asserted-simply become superfluous.
Still there is the dream +such as#rege had, of including some
sort of notation in the body of
the sentence saying how it wasused. #or e$ample one might
include a statement such as -It is
asserted that- and complete thesentence any such way. Or
alternatively one might do the
same thing by saying -It isasserted/- and complete thesentence any way.
(ut isn't it clear at least in the
last case that the notation -It is
asserted/- is superfluous1
We might very well also write
every statement in the form of a
"uestion followed by a -es-5for
instance/ -Is it raining1 es>-
Would this shew that everystatement contained a "uestion1
(esides there is nothing to
guarantee that a notation -It is
asserted/- will in fact be attachedto an assertion. %fter all don't
we use "uestioning grammatical
forms to mae statements1:on't we say -It is a wonderful
day isn't it1- 0ven when we use
formulations that seem to tell us
how a sentence is being used
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they need not accurately do so.
Of course we have the right touse an assertion sign in contrast
with a "uestion3mar fore$ample or if we want todistinguish an assertion from a
fiction or a supposition. It is
only a mistae if one thins that
the assertion consists of twoactions entertaining and
asserting +assigning the truth3
value or something of the ind,and that in performing these
actions we follow the
prepositional sign roughly as wesing from the musical score.
)eading the written sentence
loud or soft is indeedcomparable with singing from a
musical score but 'meaning'
+thining, the sentence that is
read is not.
#rege's assertion sign mars the
beginning of the sentence. Thusits function is lie that offull3stop. It distinguishes the
whole period from a clause
within the period. If I hearsomeone say -it's raining- but do
not now whether I have heard
the beginning and the end of the period so far this sentence does
not serve to tell me anything.
(ut we can try to constructlanguage so carry such a notation
accurately. The mistae is in
thining that it is the notation
that maes it so. What is in"uestion is whether the sentence
is a "uestion and the notation
does not mae it so.The notation is only a label and a
label can be correct or
misleading.
This means when we determine
that a statement is an assertion or a "uestion it is not enough to
loo to see what the notation +or punctuation, tells us. This
information is not contained in
the words but in the way thesewords are being used in the
language3game.
#rege's notation that a sentence
is an asssertion is lie the full
stop of a period at the end ofstring of words. Gust as a period
does not assure you that thesentence functions as a
statement however so #rege's
notation does guarantee that the
sentence functions as thenotation says.
See inserted comment of LW's.
;?. (ut how many inds ofsentence are there1 Say
assertion "uestion and
command1333 There are
The rules of language games arenot unchangeable laws. There is
a continuous evolution not only
in how many language games
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countless inds/ countless
different inds of use of what we
call -symbols- -words--sentences-. (nd this
multiplicity is not something
fi+ed% given once for all, butnew types of language% new
language-
games% as we may say% come
into e+istence% and others
become obsolete and get
forgotten +We can get a rough
picture of this from the changesin mathematics.,
there are but evolution too asto the ind of language games
thee are.
!ere the term -language3game-is meant to bring into
prominence the fact that the
speaing oflanguage is part of an activity or
of a form of life.
We have seen this concept of
langauge being woven in a formof life before. In +2F, he said
that to -imagine a languagemeant to imagine a form of
life.- %nd in +;, he pointed out
that the slab language of thatlanguage3game involved not
only words but activities
specifically the activity offetching ob*ects on command.
)eview the multiplicity oflanguage3game in the following
e$amples and in others/
9ow that LW has taught ussomething about -language3
games- he is going to give us
samples to count. This serves asa ind of ostensive definition of
language games although note
these e$amples differ from the primitive language games he
taled about in D +which was
illustrated by the slab language
of ;
H <iving orders and obeyingthem333
H :escribing the appearance of
an ob*ect orgiving its measurements333
H =onstructing an ob*ect from a
description +a
It is a useful e$ercise to imaginea sentence of any sort
functioning in several of the
different language games. Whenit does this it taes on a different
meaning. #or e$ample -There
was a storm today.- Imagine
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drawing,333
H )eporting an event333
H Speculating about an event333H #orming and testing a
hypothesis333
H Presenting the results of ane$periment in
tables and diagrams333
H &aing up a story5 and reading
it333H Play3acting333
H Singing catches333
H <uessing riddles333H &aing a *oe5 telling it333
H Solving a problem in practical
arithmetic333
H Translating from one languageinto another333
H %sing thaning cursing
greeting praying.
333It is interesting to compare
the multiplicity of the tools in
language and of the ways they
are used the multiplicity ofinds of word and sentence with
what logicians have said about
the structure of language.+ Including the author of the
Tractatus Logico3
Philosophicus.,
how a sentence lie this might
function in -reporting an event-
-speculating about an event-
-presenting results from ane$periment- -play acting-
-singing catches- and so forth.Some sentences of course do
not mae sense in all language
games but whenever they dothey mean something different in
different language games.
Of course Wittgenstein is
himself the author of the
Tractatus3Logico3Philosophicus.%nd in that boo as well as in
wors by other authors of that
era +e.g. )ussell, language wasseen as much more stable and
finite.
;@. If you do not eep themultiplicity of language3games
in view you will perhaps be
inclined to as "uestions lie/-What is a "uestion1-333Is it the
statement that I do not now
such3and3such or the statement
that I wish the other personwould tell me. . . .1 Or is it the
description of my mental state
of
uestions such as these LW tells
us come about from the%ugustinian +Platonic and
confused, understanding oflanguage that is our heritage.Why is this confused1
In my reading LW it is because a
-"uestion- is *ust a grammaticalform. It does not get at the
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uncertainty1333%nd is the cry-!elp>- such a description1
activity of -asing-. We can aswith cries such as
Oh I wish I had someoneto go to the movies with>
+win,.
%nd a sentence in the form of of
a "uestion might not be anasing.
Would you mind going to
get me a slab1
We want to get beneath such
grammatical form +which LWcalls -surface grammar-, and
move down to the depth that is
something more important thanlanguage than the form we use to
e$press it. %sing -What is a
"uestion1- betrays a concernwith the way things loo on the
page or sound in the voic and
not a concern with the deep
structure that is the way the
language is woring and havingan impact on what is happening.
Thin how many different inds
of thing are called -description-/description of a body's
position by means of its co3
ordinates5 description of a faciale$pression5 description of a
sensation of touch5 of a mood.
If asing what a "uestion isreveals a hidden confusion what
about asing what a description
is1
Of course it is possible tosubstitute the form of statement
or description for the usual formof
"uestion/ - I want to now
whether . . . .- or -I am in doubtwhether . . . .-333but this does not
bring the different language3
!ere too with descriptions wefind there is a surface form that
does not tell us much about howthe sentence is being used. Gust
as practically anything can be
put in a "uestioning formt so practically anything can be put in
a descriptive format.
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games any closer together.
The significance of such
possibilities of transformation
for e$ample of turning allstatements into sentences
beginning -I thin- or -I
believe- +and thus as it wereinto descriptions of my inner
life, will become clearer in
another place. + Solipsism.,
LW gives an account of pain
language later that I thin this
refers to but it is too early to get
into this now. The importantthing now to feel at home in his
distinction between the surface
of language +such as -What is a"uestion-, and the "uestions
about the depth of language
+how is the sentence functioningin the language game1,
;A. It is sometimes said thatanimals do not tal because they
lac the mental capacity. %nd this
means/ -they do not thin and thatis why they do not tal.- (ut333
they simply do not tal. Or to put it
better/ they do not use language333
if we e+cept the most primitive
forms of language333
=ommanding "uestioning
recounting chatting are as much a part of our natural history as
waling eating drining playing.
!ere LW is looing bac at this
cultural imagery that he has beendeconstructing. %ccording to this
imagery to be able to -tal- one
must be able to thin 33 because-taling- is the e$pression of our
internal ideas.
:on't try to deconstruct thisimagery at this moment. Gust
notice that it is a natural thing to
thin here. :ogs do not tal
because they do not thin internalthoughts.
(ut note the parenthetical that I
have emphasi8ed. % dog can be
taught to fetch on command *ustas the worer in +;, could fetch
slabs on command. Why are we
leaving this ind of languageoutside the scope of -language-1
(ecause this is an aporetic voice
the voice of the fly3bottle.
Still we are indlined to say that-dogs do not tal- and by this we
mean that they also -do not thin.-
;B. One thins that learning What is naming a preparation
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language consists in giving names
to ob*ects. 7i8 to human beings to
shapes to colours. to pains. tomoods to numbers etc. To repeat3
naming is something lie attaching
a label to a thing. One can say thatthis is preparatory to the use of a
word. (ut what is it a preparation
for1
for1 Imagine a culture that could
only name. It had no other usefor language. People simply sat
around and named things or else
they did things without
language. %ll that this culturewould lac in its language is
what naming is a preparation for.
;D. -We name things and then
we can tal about them/ can refer
to them in tal.- '%s if what wedid ne$t were given with the
mere act of naming. %s if therewere only one thing called
-taling about a thing-. Whereas
in fact we do the most various
things with our sentences.
Isn't this e$actly what the
%ugtinian picture of languagein +;, implies1 We name things
and then we can tal about
them. It is as though this is all
that is re"uired.
(ut naming things we have
come to see does not show us
what to do with them. The
worers might be able to namethe beams pillars blocs and
-slabs- and still not now to
fetch them. Language is not *ust the uttering of words. It is
the use of words in the activity
of language.
%lso the illusion that all weneed to do to be able to tal is
name things neglects how few
of the words we use are actuallynames.
Thin of e$clamations alone
with their completely different
functions.
H Water>H %way>
H Ow>
H !elp>H #ine>
H 9o>
%re you inclined still to callthese words -names of ob*ects-1
Loo at e$clamations. %re
these *ust names of ob*ects1 :o
you want to say that there is
something internal that thesewords name1 Of course
someone uttering an
e$clamation lie this mighthave a image but are they
re"uired1
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In languages +;, and +6, there
was no such thing as as#ing
something's name "his% with its
correlate% ostensive definition%is% we might say% a language-
game on its own That is really
to say/ we are brought up
trained to as/ -What is thatcalled1-3upon which the name is
given. %nd there is also a
language3game of inventing aname for something and hence of
saying -This is ....- and then
using the new name. +Thus for
e$ample children give names totheir dolls and then tal about
them and to them. Thin in this
conne$ion how singular is the useof a person's name to call him>,
In +;, and +6, the worer simply brought the ob*ects re"uired.
There was no language forasing what something was
called. Pointing and naming is
a language game of its own.
One must learn how to do this.
%nd in addition to learning to
give the e$isting name of an
ob*ect one can learn how to
invent names.
;6. 9ow one can ostensively
define a proper name the nameof a colour the name of a
material a numeral the name of
a point of the compass and so
on. The definition of thenumber two -That is called
'two' -33pointing to two nuts3is perfectly e$act. 33(ut how can
two be defined lie that1 The
person one gives the definitionto doesn't now what one wants
to call -two-5 he will suppose
that -two- is the name given to
this group of nuts> !e maysuppose this5 but perhaps he
does not. !e might mae theopposite mistae5 when I wantto assign a name to this group
of nuts he might understand it
as a numeral. %nd he mighte"ually well tae the name of a
person of which I give an
ostensive definition as that of a
Where for e$ample is this hand
pointing1 Is it pointing to both of the diamonds1 Or one1 Or is it
pointing to the color red1 Or is it
pointing to the side of one of the
diamonds1
Wittgenstein says that in every
case the ob*ect being pointed to is
ambiguous. =an you thin of ane$ception1 If not does this not
undermine %ugustine's picture of
how we learn language1
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colour of a race or even of a
point of the compass. That is to
say/ an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in
every case.
;F. Perhaps you say/ two can only
be ostensively defined in this way/
-This number is called 'two' -. #orthe word -number- here shews what
place in language in grammar we
assign to the word. (ut this means
that the word -number- must bee$plained before the ostensive
definition can be understood.
2 ; ?
@ A
This number iscalled -two-.
:oes that solve the problem
of how we might ostensivelydefine ;1 There are several
problems with it. #irst the
child must learn what
-number- means in order tounderstand what is being
pointed to.
33The word -number- in thedefinition does indeed shew this place5 does shew the post at which
we station the word. %nd we can
prevent misunderstandings bysaying/ -This colour is called so3
and3so- -This length is called so3
and3so- and so on. That is to say/
misunderstandings are sometimesaverted in this way. (ut is there only
one way of taing the word -colour-
or -length-13Well they *ust needdefining.3:efining then by means
of other words> %nd what about the
last definition in this chain1 +:o notsay/ -There isn't a 'last' definition-.
That is *ust as if you
chose to say/ -There isn't a last
house in this road5 one can always
Still you might say the ; isin the right place. One cansee where ; sits in the series
of numbers. %nd
misunderstandings cansometimes be averted by
pointing lie this. (ut how
can we define number1
=an we do it by e$ample1Should we use a figure lie
this/
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build an additional one''.,
This number is called
-two-.
Or will the student beconfused by this ambiguity
too1 %nd if we tried to get
around this problem ofambiguity by defining the
words how shall we define
them without their beingambiguous too1
Whether the word -number- isnecessary in the ostensive definitiondepends on whether
without it the other person taes the
definition otherwise than I wish.
%nd that will depend on thecircumstances under which it is
given and on the person I give it to.
(ut perhaps someone learnswhat two means in a
particular conte$t even
without a completelyade"uate e$planation for all
conte$ts. I as for a ball and
the child learns to fetch a
ball/
Then I as for two balls andthe child learns to fetch two
balls. This always pleases
me.
%nd how he 'taes' the definition
is seen in the use that he maes ofthe word defined.
(ut if he -taes- it in the
right way it will become a powerful and reinforcing
tool.
?4. So one might say/
the ostensive definition
e$plains the use33themeaning33of the word
when the overall role of
the word in language is
In ?4 Wittgenstein continues to
investigate the %ugustinian model and
its problems as the total e$planation for our developing language. This model
you'll recall is based on the picture of
words being defined ostensively that is
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clear. Thus if I now that
someone means to e$plain
acolour3word to me the
ostensive definition -That
is called 'sepia' - will helpme to understand theword.
by naming and pointing.
33%nd you can say this so
long as you do not forgetthat all sorts of problems
attach to the words -to
now- or -to be clear-.
Someone from another country wants
to teach you a word in her native
language. She points to a pillow andmae a strange sound -upapal- and
your "uestion is -What is she pointing
to1 Is it the pillow or the shape of the
pillow or what1- (ut if you new
somehow that she was pointing to thecolor of the pillow then that would
mae all the difference in the world.(ut that is because you now what
-color- means. Imagine then how
difficult it must be to learn a colorword from an ostensive definition if
you don't even have a concept of color.
%nd of course all of us were in that place initially. isn't it remarable that
we learned anything at all from the
e$perience1
One has already to now
+or be able to do,something in order to be
capable of asing a
thing's name. (ut whatdoes one have to now1
If I already am "uite clear about what acolor word is then I can begin to as
what the color of something is. If I
now the term for color and my teacher nows the term for -color- too then I
am indeed a smart student. Gust
pointing and saying -that is the color
sepia- should surely do it. (ut withoutthose tools things are going to be a lot
tricer.
footnote/
=ould one define the word -red- by pointing to something that wasnot red1 That would be
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as if one were supposed to e$plain the word -modest- to someone
whose 0nglish was wea and one pointed to an arrogant man and
said -That man is not modest-. That it is ambiguous is no argumentagainst such a method of definition. %ny definition can be
misunderstood.
(ut it might well be ased/ are we still to call this -definition-133
#or of course even if it hasthe same practical conse"uences the same effect on the learner it
plays a different part in the calculus from what we ordinarily call
-ostensive definition- of the word -red-.
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%phorism ?23?6 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein: +0mphasis is bold is inserted by
Shawver to enhance
commentary.,
Shawver commentary:
?2. When one shews someone
the ing in chess and says/ -Thisis the ing- this does not tell
him the use of this piece3unless
he already nows the rules of thegame up to this last point/ the
shape of the ing. ou could
imagine his having learnt the
rules of the game without everhaving been strewn an actual
piece. The shape of the chessman
corresponds here to the sound orshape of a word.
Suppose someone showed you
an Eray and said to you -seethat tumor1- It might be evident
to all who have learned to read
Erays but *ust pointing to it isnot enough to enable this ind of
seeing. So it is with handing a
child a chess piece and saying-This is a ing.- The
bacground for maing sense of
this pointing and naming has not be laid down.
One can also imagine
someone's having learnt thegame without ever learning orformulating rules. !e might have
learnt "uite simple board3games
first by watching and have
progressed to more and morecomplicated ones. !e too might
be given the e$planation -This is
the ing-33 if for instance hewere being strewn chessmen of a
shape he was not used to. This
e$planation again only tells himthe use of the piece because as
we might say the place for it
was already prepared Or
even/ we shall only say that ittells him the use if the place is
already prepared. %nd in this
case it is so not because the
The emphasis in this passage is
mine. It represents a eyconcept the concept of anostensive definition being made
possible by the place for the
definition being prepared.
(ut the primary point I believeis that if we new the rules of
the chess game new that losing
your ing meant that you lost the
game for e$ample or how the
ing can move within the rulesof the game then having
someone say -This is the ing ina chess set- would mean a lot
more would clarify more than
if you had never heard of chessor board games. Sometimes
one does not now enough about
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person to whom we give the
e$planation already nows rules
but becausein another sense he is already
master of a game.
a sub*ect to even as useful
"uestions.
=onsider this further case/ I am
e$plaining chess to someone5
and I begin by pointing to achessman and saying/ -This is
the ing5 it can move lie
this .... and so on.- 33 In this casewe shall say/ the words -This is
the ing- +or -This is called the
'ing' -, are a definition only ifthe learner already 'nows what a
piece in a game is'. That is if he
has already played other gamesor has watched other people
praying 'and understood'3and
similar things. #urther only
under these conditions will he beable to as relevantly in the
course of learning the game/
-What do you call this1-33that is
this piece in a game.
We may say/ only someone who
already nows how to do
something with it cansignificantly
as a name.
There are a family of ways one
might go about preparing a person to understand -This is a
ing- when showing them a
chess piece. It would help perhaps if a person new how to
play checers and new in
addition that in chess losing theing meant losing the game.
Still this would not prepare the
listener to understand hisstatement as much as if he
learned to play chess with pieces
that had a different ind of ing.
%nd we can imagine the personwho is ased replying/ -Settle
the name yourself-3and now the
one who ased would have to
manage everything for himself.
If you did not have the conceptof what is being named that is
if the place for this name is not
prepared then perhaps it would
be as well for you to name it foryourself. Learning the -name-
of something +instead of naming
it, is important precisely in thosecases that learning the name will
connect with what we already
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now and allow us to learn what
we are seeing more completely.
Say you go to the doctor with a
sin rash and as -What is this
called1- %nd suppose the doctor gives you an unintelligible
technical name. 9ot helpful.(ut suppose the doctor says
-This is a measles rash.- Then
because you have an idea as to
what measles is you havelearned "uite a bit. (ut if you
didn't have the concept of
measles things would bedifferent. ou could call it
whatever you wanted. It would be *ust as meaningful to you.!owever it might prepare you
less well for taling with others.
?;. Someone coming into a
strange country
will sometimes learn thelanguage of the
inhabitants from ostensivedefinitions that they give him5
and he will often have to 'guess'
the meaning of these definitions5
and will guess sometimes rightsometimes wrong.
I remember !arry describing
learning a foreign language liethis. !e was in a foreign country
and people would teach him thenames of things by pointing and
naming. This seems lie a very
easy way to learn the names of
things in a foreign tongue.
%nd now I thin we can say/
%ugustine describes the learning
of human language as if thechild came into a strange
country and did not understand
the language of the country5 thatis as if it already had a
language only not this one. Or
again/ as if the child could
already thin only not yet
Isn't it so1 %ugustine describe
this ind of pointing and naming
as the way that the child learnslanguage1 (ut we have been
woring on why this e$plains so
little in the learning of languageand noticing the limits to this
ind of learning for e$ample
that pointing and naming -blue-
doesn't mean that the hearer
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spea. %nd -thin- would here
mean something lie -tal to
itself-.
recogni8es what we are naming
33 even if the hearer then can
point at the blue ob*ect and say-blue.-
%lso such an ostensivedefinition can hardly e$pain how
we learn the word -the- or -for-or in fact most words. Loo
bac at this paragraph and see
how many words could be taught
to the child by ostensivedefinition.
The problem is that the young
child in the beginning +picture
baby %ugustine, does not have a place prepared for learning by
pointing.
What ind of bacground is
necessary to prepare such a place1 !ow would you train a
child so that it understood that
you are naming a chess piece for e$ample1 Or the color -blue-1
??. Suppose however
someone were to ob*ect/ -Itis not true that you must
already be master of a
language in order tounderstand an ostensive
definition/ all you need 33of
course>33 is to now or guesswhat the person giving the
e$planation is pointing to.
That is whether for e$ample
to the shape of the ob*ect orto its colour or to its number
and so on.- 33 %nd what does
'pointing to the shape''pointing to the colour'
consist in1 Point to a piece of
!ere LW is luring us bac into the
muddle and it is good to letourselves go there for a moment
nowing it is a muddle but letting
ourselves feel the pull. In thismuddle he continues to as how can
an ostensive definition teach the
meaning of a term1 !ow does thestudent now what we are pointing
to. There is ambiguity in the
pointing in every case we can
imagine.
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paper. 33%nd now point to its
shape 33 now to its
colour 33 now to its number+that sounds "ueer,. 33!ow
did you do it1 33ou will say
that you 'meant' a differentthing each time you pointed.%nd if I as how that is done
you will say you
concentrated your attentionon the colour the shape etc.
(ut I as again/ how is that
done1
Suppose someone points to a
vase and says -Loo at that
marvellous blue3the shapeisn't the point.- 33Or/ -Loo
at the marvellous shape3thecolour doesn't matter.-
Without doubt you will do
something different whenyou act upon these two
invitations. (ut do you
always do the same thingwhen you direct your
attention to the colour1
Imagine various differentcases. To indicate a few/
What we do when we -attend to the
color' of something seems whenyou thin about it rather nebulous.
H -Is this blue the same asthe blue over there1
:o you see any
difference1-H ou are mi$ing paint and
you say -It's hard
to get the blue of this
sy.-H -It's turning fine you can
already see blue
sy again.-H -Loo what different
effects these two blues
have.-H -:o you see the blue boo
over there1 (ring
=onsider all these conte$ts in whichyou -attend to the color- of blue.
Isn't there something different about
each1
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it here. -
H -This blue signal3light
means ....-H -What's this blue called.'3
Is it 'indigo'1-
ou sometimes attend to
the colour by putting your
hand up to eep the outlinefrom view5 or by not looing
at the outline of the thing5
sometimes by staring at theob*ect and trying to
remember where you saw
that colour before.
ou attend to the shapesometimes by tracing it
sometimes by screwing up
your eyes so as not to see thecolour clearly and in many
other ways. I want to say/
This is the sort of thing that
happens while one 'directsone's attention to this or that'.
(ut it isn't these things by
themselves that mae us say
someone is attending to theshape the colour and so on.
Gust as a move in chessdoesn't consist simply in
moving a piece in such3and3
such a way on the board3nor
yet in one's thoughts andfeelings as one maes the
move/ but in the
circumstances that we call-playing a game of chess-
-solving a chess problem-and so on.
%lthough there are surely typical
things you actually do when you
attend to the color it is not thethings you actually do that are in
fact what we mean by the -attending
to the color.- There are a variety of
things people might actually do inthe process of -attending to the
color.-
?@. (ut suppose someone said/
-I always do the same thing
when I attend to the shape/ my
In ?@ the "uestion is/ -!ow does
the student now what the
teacher is pointing to1 What if
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definition correctly or as another
e$ample incorrectly. If the
student failed to understandcorrectly would that mae the
definition any less of a
definition1
?A. There are of course what
can be called -characteristic
e$periences- of pointing to +e.g.,the shape. #or e$ample
following the outline with one's
finger or with one's eyes as one
points. 33(ut this does not
happen in all cases in which I'mean the shape' and no more
does any other one characteristic process occur in all these cases.
33(esides even if something of
the sort did recur in all cases itwould still depend on the
circumstances 33that is on what
happened before and after the pointing 33whether we should
say -!e pointed to the shape and
not to the colour-.
#or the words -to point to the
shape- -to mean the shape- and
so on are not used in the sameway as these/ -to point to this
boo +not to that one, -to point
to the chair not to the table- and
so on. 33Only thin howdifferently we learn the use of
the words -to point to this
thing- -to point to that thing-and on the other hand -to point
to the colour not the shape- -to
mean the colour- and so on.
Wittgenstein is distinguishing
two related language-games of
pointing ne in which you
point to the thing and give its
name% and another related one
in which you point to the shape
or the color and give its name
(oth cases re"uire only that you
point in the same physical way.There may be differences in the
way people point in these two
language games but thesedifferences only help us
distinguish between them. These
different ways of pointing arenot inevitable and they are not
re"uired.
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To repeat/ in certain cases
especially when one points 'to
the shape' or 'to the number'there are characteristic
e$periences and ways of
pointing3'characteristic' becausethey recur often +not always,when shape or number are
'meant'. (ut do you also now of
an e$perience characteristic of pointing to a piece in a game as
a piece in a game1
association
%ll the same one can say/ -Imean that this piece is called the
'ing' not this particular bit ofwood I am pointing to-.
+)ecogni8ing wishing
remembering etc. ,
!ere LW is saying that the
sentence -/ -I mean that this
piece is called the 'ing' not this
particular bit of wood I am pointing to- is itself ambiguous.
-&ean- can mean -reccogni8ingwishing remembering etc.- #or
e$ample the above sentence
might be paraphrased -Irecogni8e that this piece is called
the 'ing'...- or -I wish this piece
were called the 'ing'... and soforth. %ll these different
paraphrases have different
meanings.
Thus this concept ofintrospective pointing to the
shape or color to teach shape and
color remains a pu88le.
?B. %nd we do here what we
do in a host of similar cases/
because we cannot specifyany one bodily action which
we call pointing to the shape
+as opposed for e$ample tothe colour, we say that a
spiritual +mental intellectual,
activity corresponds to these
words.
?B. When we point to the ball there
is a physical ob*ect we are pointing
to. When we point to the colorwhat we are pointing to is much
more nebulous. In these cases LW
says we tend to do something "uite peculiar. We imagine that there
must be something that we are
pointing to even though it is hard to
see or even imagine and this
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Where our language suggestsa body and there is none/
there we should lie to say is
a spirit.
-something- we imagine ourselves pointing to is -spirit.-
I don't thin this concept of -spirit-necessarily implies anything
religious although it sometimes
might. What he means by -spirit- is
more subtle and available only byintrospection. One points to the
blue circle and mean -blue-. !ow
does one do this. LW is saying thatit feels lie we are doing it
-spiritually-. )emember LW is not
saying that we are doing itspiritually. !e is saying that we all
have a tendency to thin of it this
way. It is as though there issomething -spiritual- involved in
forming a -meaning- in our minds
and that this -meaning- that we
form in our spirit somehowcorresponds to the words that we
are thining.
When do we do this1 !e says wetend to do it when our languagesays there is a body we should be
referring to and where in fact
there is none. The languagesuggests that -blue- is a body but
in fact it is not so it seems we are
pointing spiritually.
Let's imagine another e$ample. Isay
-It is raining.-
Our language suggests there should
be a body to correspond with the 'it'in this sentence. 9otice however
that it is hard to find a body
although our language suggests that
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there is one. !ere is a case thenthat we might be tempted to say that
the -it- that is raining is spirit.
!ere are some more e$amples/
H I have a hard time eeping allthese numbers
in my mind.-
H What about the word -numbers-1
H It's time to go.
Is there a body to correspond to
these nouns1
What about the word -mind-1 Isthere a body to correspond with
that1 What about -numbers-1 Or
the word -It's-1 :o you want to saythat -it- is -time- in this sentence1
Then as yourself what you oint to
when you point to time.
In cases lie this LW is saying we
are inclined to thin that what is
being referenced is spirit or
something spiritual or mental.
.
In ?B Wittgenstein noted that we cannot identify
a distinctive action that we call pointing to theshape +or pointing to the color, and because of
that we tend to see this ind of pointing as
-spiritual.-
?D. What is the
relation between name
and
thing named1Well what is
it1 Loo at
language3game+;, or at
MWhen we consider the matter more
imaginatively as %ugustine did in 2 when heimagined that he had been taught language by
being taught to name things we might well thin
of the name bringing up a mental image of thatoriginary lesson. Supposedly according to this
imaginative picture we now what the other
person is taling about +e.g. a slab, becausehaving learned the name of slab ostensively we
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another one/
there
you can see thesort of thing
this relation
consists in.This relationmay also
consist
among manyother things in
the fact that
hearing thename calls
before our
mind the
picture of whatis named5 and it
also
consistsamong other
things in the
name's being written
on the thing
named or being
pronouncedwhen that thing
is pointed at.
now have mental images of a -slab- every time
we hear the word. This is particularly compelling
because we have all e$perienced mental imageswhen things are named. Still a little
introspection shows that we do not have a mental
image for every word we hear.
%lternative to the theory of mental imagesassisting understanding we sometimes imagine
ob*ects having labels attached. Still we do not
often write the word -chair-on our chairs. So in
the end these two theories of language do notwor very well when we thin about them.
(ut that does not mean we give them up. What
we do sometimes is imagine that the images +or
the labels, are there but in a fu88y and spiritualway. In this fu88y and spiritual way we point to
things and name things in our mind.
(ut then LW ass us to loo at ;. ou remember in ; we had the simple game of the worer and
his supervisor. The supervisor called out -beam>-
and the worer brought it. What is the
relationship between the name and the thing inthat particular instance1 It simply causes the
worer to fetch what the supervisor wants. 9eed
there be mental images here1 )emember ourtaling about the way I might teach a gorilla to
hand me a banana when I said -banana-1 %nd
that this would be a ind of tric. It wouldn't needto be the case that the gorilla actually understood
what the banana was apart from this particular
conte$t of handing one to me. !ere we mightsay that the 'name' of the ob*ect does not function
merely as a name. It functions more as a
command although the word we thin of as a
name has a role in maing the command clearer.
So can you see that in spite of our models of
language +pointing spiritually or attaching a label
spiritually, these models do nt seem entirely
satisfactory. %side from the problematicmetaphysics of a spiritual pointing and naming
we have the fact that in the language game the
term -slab- is not *ust a name of an ob*ect. It is a
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command to fetch a slab. That activity aroundwhich the word gets pronounced is not accounted
for by naming and pointing.
%re the mental images re"uired for this activity of fetching1 9o. 9ot logically. The worer is *usttrained to do something at the sound of the name.
The supervisor does not re"uire him to create a
mental image of the ob*ect first. Of course hemight do so anyway but this is not re"uired.
This shows how problematic our notion of naming
is and how much we try to patch it up with
notions of fu88y spirits doing the wor.
?D. We have been taling about
the relationship between a nameand the thing named and we have
studied two cultural models. In
one the name is metaphorically
-attached- to the thing +lie alabel might be inscribed on the
thing it names, and in the other
model the word we use -points-
spiritually to the thing it names.These are the vague models we
use for how words -attach- tothings. (ut Wittgenstein is
leading us through a critical
reflection on these models because these models lead us to
thin we have the problem
solved when in fact they are in
many ways unsatisfactorymodels that lead us astray.
Wittgenstein continues to
deconstruct these old models of
language. !ere in ?6 he is goingto remind us again that the
models are only satisfactory
when we thin of certain inds of words. Then he points to terms
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for which it is hard to use one ofthe two models above.
?6. (ut what for e$ample is theword -this- the name of in
language3game +6, or the word
-that- in the ostensive definition-that is called ....-1
-This- and -that- are very
difficult words to understand ifwe stay within the modelsabove. of teaching something by
attaching labels or pointing.
!ow could you attach the word
-this- to everything you call-this-1 %nd if you point
spiritually to a particular -this-
with your hidden soul then whaton earth does this -pointing-
have to do with the word -this- in
a more general sense. One mightillustrate an apple or a dog by
pointing to one but can one
illustrate a -this- *ust by pointing1
33If you do not want to produce
confusion you will do best notto call these words names at
all.33 et strange to say the
word -this- has been called theonly genuine name5 so that
anything else we call a name
was one only in an ine$act
appro$imate way.
This "ueer conception springs
from a tendency to sublime the
logic of our language3as onemight put it.
If we call -this- a name then it isa name that can be applied
everywhere. It offers no
specificity at all. et at a certain point in doing philosophy it
seems lie the only legitimate
name. To call something a-chair- classifies it with other
often dissimilar ob*ects. (ut
what can be purer than *ust
calling it a -this.-
This is a way of trying to mae
our logic more lofty our
statements more pure. %nd whenwe do this it leads to "ueer
conceptions.
The proper answer to it is/ we
call very different things-names-5 the word -name- is
used to characteri8e many
different inds of use of a word
!ere LW is introducing us to an
important pu88le that he willclarify later. !e wants us to
notice that diverse inds of
things are called -names' and that
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related to one another in many
different ways53but the ind ofuse that -this- has is not among
them.
we have no golden thread to tie
them all into a neat conceptual
bundle.
%nd at the same time he is
showing that it will be problematic for us if we try to
include -this- and -that- withinthis diverse bundle of words that
we call names.
It is "uite true that in giving
an ostensive definition for
instance we often point to theob*ect named and say the name.
%nd similarly in giving an
ostensive definition for instancewe say the word -this- while
pointing to a thing. %nd also the
word -this- and a name oftenoccupy the same position in a
sentence. (ut it is precisely
characteristic of a name that it is
defined by means of thedemonstrative e$pression -That
is 9- +or -That is called '9' -,.
(ut do we also give the
definitions/-That is called 'this' - or -This
is called 'this'-1
This seems to devastate thenotion that you can ostensively
define -this- and -that-. !owcan one point to anyplace and say-that- is -that-. Or if one does
how does this e$plain to the
hearer what -that is.-
This is connected with theconception of naming as so to
spea an occult process.
When LW tals of the notion of
naming as a ind of occult process he is critici8ing the
picture of naming that he feels
our culture teaches us. It is the picture of naming being a ind of
spiritual pointing.
9aming appears as a "ueerconne$ion of a word with anob*ect. 33%nd you really get
such a "ueer conne$ion when
the philosopher tries to bring out
the relation between name andthing by staring at an ob*ect in
This sentence -#or philosophical problems arise when language'goes on holiday'- is a famous
sentence in Wittgenstein. It
means that language is taen out
of conte$t and philosophi8edabout it becomes -confusing-. It
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front of him and repeating a
name or even the word -this-innumerable times. .or
philosophical problems arise
when language goes on
holiday. %nd here we may
indeed fancy naming to besomeremarable act of mind as it
were a baptism of an ob*ect.
%nd we can also say the word-this- to the ob*ect as it were
address the ob*ect as -this-3a
"ueer use of this word which
doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy.
reminds me of a time when I was
a child that I said -butterfly- over
and over. Isn't it strange Ithought that we say -(utter3fly-
as though butter were to fly
away or -but 3er 3fly- and by thetime that I had said this 2A timesor so the word no longer seemed
to mean -butterfly- in the simple
way it had. Often when one philosophi8es about a concept the
concept has -gone on holiday-.
We have lost our grounding inconcrete e$amples. We now
very well how to use the word
-virtue- in a sentence for
e$ample but when we scratchour heads and wonder what
-virtue- really means then the
word -virtue- is on holiday. Weare *ust thining about the word
not using it in the natural way
that our language allows us touse it.
:o you have any e$perience with
language going on holiday1 0ver
said a word a few times afamiliar word and then sort of
lose the meaning of it as you
reflect on what this word means1
%nd what do you thin about-that- and -this-1 :o they seem
lie names to you1
footnote
What is it to mean the words
-That is blue- at one time as astatement about the ob*ect one
is pointing to 33at another as an
e$planation of the word -blue-1
Paraphrase lie this can help us
be clearer about what language
game is being played.
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%phorism ?F3A4 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis is bold is inserted by
Shawver to enhancecommentary.,
Shawver commentary:
?F. (ut why does it occur to
one to want to mae precisely
this word into a name when itevidently is not a name13That is
*ust the reason. #or one is
tempted to mae an ob*ectionagainst what is ordinarily called
a name. It can be put lie this/ a
name ought really to signify asimple. %nd for this one might
perhaps give the following
reasons/ The word -0$calibur-
say is a proper name in theordinary sense. The sword
0$calibur consists of parts
combined in a particular way. Ifthey are combined differently
0$calibur does not e$ist. (ut it is
clear that the sentence-0$calibur has a sharp blade-
maes sense whether 0$calibur
is still whole or is broen up. (ut
if -0$calibur- is the name of anob*ect this ob*ect no longer
e$ists when 0$calibur is broen
in pieces5 and as no ob*ect wouldthen correspond to the name it
would have no meaning. (ut
then the sentence -0$calibur hasa sharp blade- would contain a
word that had no meaning and
hence the sentence would be
In +?F, LW introduces the
"uestion of whether comple$
ob*ects have simple components.We discuss whether 0$calibur
+the sword of Ning %rthur,
disappeared when it is broen intoa blade and a handle. %nd if it
does then how can we spea of
0$calibur having a sharp blade1If the blade is re"uired to be
attached to the handle in order for
0$calibur to e$ist then the blade
is part of 0$calibur and thatmeans that 0$calibur is the
handleblade combination so to
say that 0$calibur has a sharp blade is to say that this
handleblade combination has a
sharp blade 33 which maes nosense. +!ence our aporia.,
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nonsense. (ut it does mae
sense5 so there must always be
something corresponding to thewords of which it consists. So
the word -0$calibur- must
disappear when the sense isanalysed and its place be taen by words which name simples. It
will be reasonable to call these
words the real names.
@4. Let us first discuss this pointof the argument/ that a word has
no meaning if nothing
corresponds to it.3It is importantto note that the word -meaning-
is being used illicitly if it is used
to signify the thing that'corresponds' to the word. That is
to confound the meaning of a
name with the bearer of the
name. When &r. 9. 9. dies onesays that the bearer of the name
dies not that the meaning dies.
%nd it would be nonsensical tosay that for if the name ceased
to have meaning it would mae
no sense to say -&r. 9. 9. isdead.-
!ere is a digression as to whethera word has a meaning if nothing
corresponds to it.
@2. In 2A we introduced
proper names into language +6,.
9ow suppose that the tool withthe name -9- is broen. 9ot
nowing this % gives ( the sign
-9-. !as this sign meaning now
ornot.13What is ( to do when he is
given it13We have not settled
anything about this. One mightas/ what mill he do1 Well
perhaps he will stand there at a
loss or shew % the pieces. !ereone might say/ -9- has become
meaningless5 and this e$pression
would mean that the sign -9- no
longer had a use in our language3
This continues with the digressionof whether names mae sense
once the ob*ects disappear. In 2A
we are taling about one of the
building site language games.The worer is fetching pillars and
blocs. If the pillars and blocs
have proper names does it mae
sense to refer to them if they haveno ob*ect to reference1
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game +unless we gave it a new
one,. -9- might also become
meaningless because forwhatever reason the tool was
given another name and the sign
-9- no longer used in thelanguage3game. 33 (ut we couldalso imagine a convention
whereby ( has to shae his head
in reply if % gives him the sign belonging to a tool that is
broen.3In this way the
command -9- might be said to be given a place in the language3
game even when the tool no
longer e$ists and the sign -9- to
have meaning even when its bearer ceases to e$ist.
@;. (ut has for instance a namewhich has never been used for a
tool also got a meaning in that
game1 Let us assume that -E- issuch a sign and that % gives this
sign to ( 33 well even such signs
could be given a place in the
language3game and ( mighthave say to answer them too
with a shae of the head. +One
could imagine this as a sort of *oe between them.,
Say that the E is -tree-. The
supervisor ass the worer to
bring a (loc2 Pillar? and then-tree- and all the worers laugh.
Or instead of -tree- the
supervisor might say -angel- andthis too might provoe a laugh
even though no angel
corresponded to it. Or the worsupervisor might say -pillar B-
even though both supervisor and
worer now that -pillar B- wascrushed recently and so cannot be
brought because it -no longer
e$ists.-
@?. #or a large class of cases3
though not for all3in which weemploy the word -meaning- it
can be defined thus/ the meaning
of a word is its use in thelanguage.
%nd the meaning of a name is
sometimes e$plained by pointing
to its bearer.
The e$amples in @; that I gave
illustrate ways in which wordscan have a use in the language3
game even when they do not have
a referent that we can point to andname. This settles the "uestion
introduced in ?F. es a word can
have a meaning even if it does nothave a -bearer- +something to
point to,. Its meaning is
e$plained by its use in the
language3game.
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+=lic here for an e$planded
commentary on this aphorism.,
@@. We said that the sentence
-0$calibur has a sharp blade-
made sense even when 0$calibur was broen in pieces. 9ow this
is so because in this language3game a name is also used in the
absence of its bearer. (ut we can
imagine a language3game with
names +that is with signs whichwe should certainly include
among names, in which they are
used only in the presence of the bearer5 and so could always be
replaced by a demonstrative
pronoun and the gesture of pointing.
In @@ LW uses the point
established in @? that a name can
mae sense even in the absence of its bearer. (ut now he wants to
reflect on the possibility of havinga language in which words only
made sense when they have a
bearer that is when the names
could be replaced with the pronoun -this- as in -bring this>-
+Imagine the wor supervisor
waling over and pointing to the pillar that he wanted taen over to
the pile. We can hardly imagine
this woring if the pillar wasn'tthere,
@A. The demonstrative -this-
can never be without a bearer. It
might be said/ -so long as thereis a this the word 'this' has a
meaning too whether this is
simple or comple$.- (ut that
does not mae the word into aname. On the contrary/ for a
name is not used with but onlye$plained by means of thegesture of pointing.
Imagine someone pointing to
person and saying -This isGoseph.- The -This- is not a
name. It is a way of e$plaining
who Goseph is.
@B. What lies behind the idea
that names really signify
simples1 33Socrates says in theTheaetetus/ -If I mae no
mistae I have heard some
people say this/ there is no
definition of the primaryelements 33 so to spea 33 out of
which we and everything else
are composed5 for everythingthat e$ists in its own right can
only be named no other
determination is possible neither that it is nor that it is not..... (ut
what e$ists in its own right has
!ere LW shows us how deep the
roots of the ideas of simples is.
The idea is that everything iseither a simple thing or a comple$
thing where a comple$ thing is a
composite of simples things.
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to be ....... named without any
other determination. In
conse"uence it is impossible togive an account of any primary
element5 for it nothing is
possible but the bare name5 itsname is all it has. (ut *ust aswhat consists of these primary
elements is itself comple$ so the
names of the elements becomedescriptive language by being
compounded together. #or the
essence of speech is thecomposition of names.-
(oth )ussell's 'individuals' and
my 'ob*ects' +Tractatus Logico3Philosophicus, were such primary elements.
@D. (ut what are the simple
constituent parts of which reality
is composed1 33 What are thesimple constituent parts of a
chair1 33 The bits of wood of
which it is made1 Or themolecules or the atoms1 33
-Simple- means/ not composite.
(nd here the point is: in what
sense 'composite'& It ma#es no
sense at all to spea# absolutely
of the 'simple parts of a chair'
+The emphasis is mine., When he
says it maes no sense to spea-absolutely- of the simple parts of
something he means that it maes
no sense to spea of -parts-without some ind of conte$t that
defines what a -part- is.
%gain/ :oes my visual imageof this tree of this chair consist
of parts1 %nd what are its simple
component parts1 &ulti3
colouredness is one ind ofcomple$ity5 another is for
e$ample that of a broen outline
composed of straight bits. %nd acurve can be said to be
composed of an ascending and a
descending segment.
This is the gestalt notion that the
perception consists of more thanthe sum of its parts. If you loo at
a particular person you do not see
*ust a collection of parts. %nd ifyou loo at a curved line
you do not *ust see the elements
of that curve. ou see it as awhole.
If I tell someone without any The "uestion re"uires a conte$t.
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further e$planation/ -What I see
before me now is composite- he
will have the right to as/ -What
do you mean by 'composite'&
#or there are all sorts of things
that that can mean> 33
Otherwise we don't now what tocount as -parts.-
The "uestion -Is what you see
composite1- maes good sense if it is already established what
ind of comple$ity 33 that is
which particular use of the word
33 is in "uestion. If it had beenlaid down that the visual image
of a tree was to be called-composite- if one saw not *ust asingle trun but also branches
then the "uestion -Is the visual
image of this tree simple orcomposite1- and the "uestion
-What are its simple component
parts1- would have a clearsense3a clear use. %nd of course
the answer to the second
"uestion is not -The branches-
+that would be an answer to thegrammatical "uestion/ -What are
here called 'simple component
parts'1-, but rather a descriptionof the individual branches.
That is we can create a languagegame in which we count
-branches- as parts and say that a
tree is a composite +imagine a
setched tree, if it has branches.(ut without such a conte$t the
"uestion -Is this tree composite1-
doesn't mae much sense. If thereis no such conte$t then the
answer to the "uestion -What are
its parts- is an answer as to whatto count as parts in this conte$t
not an answer about what the
parts are aside from the conte$t.
In other words to say that -the branches- are the parts is an
answer to the grammatical
"uestion as to what to count as parts not an answer about the
component parts in this tree aside
from conte$t. If we wanted total about this particular tree +and
not *ust negotiate what are to
count as parts, we will want to dosomething closer to describing
what we see as its parts +which is
arbitrary outside of a negotiated
language game,.
(ut isn't a chessboard for
instance obviously and
absolutely composite1
9otice the word -absolutely-here. It has the special meaning
of -absolutely and irrespective of
conte$t.-
33 ou are probably thining ofthe composition out of thirty3two
white and thirty3two blac
s"uares. (ut could we not alsosay for instance that it was
composed of the colours blac
This is the "uestion again as towhether there are ever absolute
parts of anything. The chessboard
is the e$ample he chooses thatseems most compelling. :oesn't
it seem in some natural sense
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and white and the schema of
s"uares1 %nd if there are "uite
different ways of looing at itdo you still want to say that the
chessboard is absolutely
'composite'1 33
that there are absolute parts of a
chessboard1 %nd these parts are
the s"uares on the chessboard1What conte$t could change the
answer to that1
%sing -Is this ob*ect
composite1- outside a particular
language3game is lie what a boy once did who had to say
whether the verbs in certain
sentences were in the active or passive voice and who raced
his brains over the "uestion
whether the verb -to sleep-meant something active or
passive.
This is Wittgenstein's emerging philosophy. It says that
everything we say maes sense
only within a language3game that
establishes the rules and sets themeaning of the terms. The
distinction between -active- and
-passive- is different when wethin of sleeping than when we
thin of grammar. In grammar if
that's our language game at themoment the passive voice has
nothing to do with being sleepy
or passive in that sense of the
term.
%nd Wittgenstein is suggesting it
is the same with -parts.- What
counts as -parts- depends on theconte$t.
We use the word -composite-+and therefore the word
-simple-, in an enormous
number of different anddifferently related ways. +Is the
colour of a s"uare on a
chessboard simple or does itconsist of pure white and pure
yellow1 %nd is white simple or
does it consist of the colours ofthe rainbow1 33 Is this length of
; cm. simple or does it consistof two parts each cm. long1
(ut why not of one bit ? cmlong and one bit I cm. long
measured in the opposite
direction1,
To show that things do not have
-absolute- parts but only partsrelative to the language game we
are playing he is now showing us
some of the different ways wedefine the parts in different
language games.
I consider the last e$ample the
one of lengths most compelling.What are the parts of a length that
is two inches1 %re there two
parts each one inch long1
Wouldn't this be different if wemeasured the ob*ect in
centimeters1
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To the philosophical "uestion/
-Is the visual image of this tree
composite and what are itscomponent parts1- the correct
answer is/ -That depends on
what you understand by'composite'.- +%nd that is ofcourse not an answer but a
re*ection of the "uestion.,
%gain this is not Wittgenstein's
aporetic voice but his clarifying
voice. This is his own philosophywhich says that we can only
answer the "uestion -What are its
parts1- once we have negotiatedthe meaning of -part- in a
particular language game.
@6. Let us apply the method of
+;, to the account in theTheaetetus. /et us consider a
language-game for which this
account is really valid. Thelanguage serves to describe
combinations of coloured
s"uares on a surface. Thes"uares form a comple$ lie a
chessboard. There are red
green white and blac s"uares.
The words of the language are+correspondingly, -)- -<-
-W- -(- and a sentence is a
series of these words. Theydescribe an arrangement of
s"uares in the order/
9otice the statement -Let usconsider a language3game for
which this account is really
valid.- This is most e$plicit. Thisis what he is trying to do trying to
find an illustration in which thetheory is really valid. What
theory is that1 The theory ofsimples the theory that
Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus
and is also )ussell.
2 ; ?
@ A B
D 6 F
%nd so for instance the sentence-))(<<<)WW- describes an
arrangement of this sort/
!ere the sentence is a
comple$ of names to which
corresponds a comple$ ofelements. The primary elements
are the coloured s"uares. -(ut
The sentence is
-))(<<<)WW.- It describes
the way in which the s"uares arecolored. :oesn't it seem natural
to call these different s"uares the
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are these simple1-3I do not now
what else you would have me
call -the simples- what would be more natural in this language3
game. (ut under
parts1 This is LW's aporetic voice
taing us bac into the fly3bottle.
other circumstances I should call
a monochrome s"uare
-composite- consisting perhapsof two rectangles or of the
elements colour and shape. (ut
the concept of comple$ity mightalso be so e$tended that a
smaller area was said to be
'composed' of a greater area andanother one subtracted from it.
=ompare the 'composition of
forces' the 'division' of a line by
a point outside it5
%nd here he taes us bac out of
the fly bottle. !e is pointing to away to see the components of the
above figure differently. We may
see F if we insist that each part is
a s"uare but we could see thecontinugous colors as constituting
a part.
So there would be two red parts
as the following figure helps to
illustrate/
these e$pressions shew that we
are sometimes even inclined toconceive the smaller as the result
of a composition of greater parts
and the greater as the result of adivision of the smaller.
When I read this I see a mistaethat I overlooed before. The
smaller is a division of the greater
+the smaller s"uare is half of thelarger s"uare, and the larger is a
composite of two small s"uares.
This is what I tae him to mean.
In other words we sometimes
divide up a part to mae smaller parts or combine parts to mae
larger parts.
(ut I do not now whether tosay that the figure described by
our sentence consists of four or
of nine elements> Well does the
If the parts are determined by thecolors then there are @ parts. (ut
if the parts are determined by the
shape +s"uare, then there are F.
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sentence consist of four letters or
of nine1 %nd which are its
elements the types of letter orthe letters1 :oes it matter whichwe say so long as we avoid
misunderstandings in any
particular case1
Which way you count them
depends on how you define
-part.- %nd the same thing is truefor the sentence/
))(<<<)WW
ou will say there are F words ifyou count each appearance of acharacter as -a word.- (ut if you
count the second appearance of
each character merely a copy ofthe same word then you will
count a different number of
words.
@F. (ut what does it mean to
say that we cannot define +thatis describe, these elements butonly name them1 This might
mean for instance that when in
a limiting case a comple$consists of only one s"uare its
description is simply the name of
the coloured s"uare.
!ere he taes us bac to @B. +Cseyour ordinary way of returning
from a lin to get bac to this
comment after you clic on theabove @B to pea at @B., The
point is that if we are thining of
the s"uares as the -parts- then
when we loo at a single s"uarewe can no longer name the parts.
We can only describe the s"uare.
Isn't this the dilemma that Platowas noticing in the Theaetetus1
!ere we might say 33 though
this easily leads to all #inds ofphilosophical superstition 33that a sign -)- or -(- etc. may
be sometimes a word and
sometimes a proposition. (utwhether it 'is a word or a
proposition' depends on the
situation in which it is uttered or
written. #or instance if % has todescribe comple$es of coloured
s"uares to ( and he uses the
word -)- alone we shall be ableto say that the word is a
description 33 a proposition. (ut
if he is memori8ing the wordsand their meanings or if he is
teaching someone else the use of
the words and uttering them in
the course of ostensive teaching
I have emphasi8ed the
parenthetical -though this easilyleads to all inds of philosophicalsuperstition- because I want to
show you how LW shows us
which voice he is using the voicethat leads us into aporia or out of
it. !e does not really e$pand on
this aporia but you can note it.
The "uestion is when issomething a sentence or a word1
We now but it is hard to say.
We could say that it is a sentencewhen it maes complete sense
but a sentence does not always
mae complete sense and a wordsometimes does. :oesn't it1
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we shall not say that they are
propositions. In this situation the
word -)- for instance is not adescription5 it names an element
but it would be "ueer to mae
that a reason for saying that anelement can only be named> #ornaming and describing do not
stand on the same level/ naming
is a preparation for description. 9aming is so far not a move in
the language3game 33 any more
than putting a piece in its placeon the board is a move in chess.
We may say/ nothing has so far
been done when a thing has
been named. It has not even gota name e$cept in the language3
game. This was what #rege
meant too when he said that aword had meaning only as part
of a sentence.
Wittgenstein steps out of this
aporia by saying that naming anddescribing do not stand on the
same level that naming is
preparation for describing it isnot a move in the langauge game.
It is lie setting up the pieces in a
game of chess.
Still this is confusing because wedon't now how to tell at times
what constitutes the langauge
game. It is easier when we thinof chess.
A4. What does it mean to say
that we can attribute neither
being nor non3being toelements1 33One might say/ if
everything that we call -being-
and -non3being- consists in thee$istence and non3e$istence of
conne$ions between elements it
maes no sense to spea of anelement's being +non3being,5 *ust
as when everything that we call
-destruction- lies in the
separation of elements it maes
no sense to spea of thedestruction of an element.
This fu88y word -being- is really
necessary here. It is the conceptthat we are reaching for when we
are in an %ugustinian frame of
mind and trying to mae sense ofthings. The idea is that if you
destroy something by breaing it
into its parts then the e$istence ofthat thing is destroyed because its
e$istence consisted in the
relationship between its parts.
#or 0$calibur to be 0$calibur the blade of the sword has to have a
certain relationship to the handle.
(ut what about the little piece ofthe handle @ cm above the blade
does it have to have a relationship
to the rest of the handle1 There isa way in which we cannot spea
of the destruction of the handle.
One would however lie to
say/ e$istence cannot be
attributed to an element for if it
(ut if the handle has to be in a
relationship to the blade in order
for 0$calibur to e$ist then
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did not e$ist one could not evenname it and so one could say
nothing at all of it.
0$calibur is a handleblade in a
certain relationship. %nd what
sense would that mae1 Whenthe blade broe off we would
have to say that the handleblade
+that is 0$calibur, no longer has a blade.
33(ut let us consider an
analogous case. There is one
thing of which one can say
neither that it is one metre longnor that it is not one metre long
and that is the standard metre in
Paris.3(ut this is of course notto ascribe any e$traordinary
property to it but only to mar
its peculiar role in the language3game of measuring with a metre3
rule.3Let us imagine samples of
colour being preserved in Paris
lie the standard metre. Wedefine/ -sepia- means the colour
of the standard sepia which is
there ept hermetically sealed.Then it will mae no sense to
say of this sample either that it is
of this colour or that it is not.
!ere he gives us two e$amples of
an ob*ect becoming the paradigm
we use to mae *udgments. If we
say that the standard meter inParis is one meter long it isn't the
same sense of -one meter- as
when we say this cloth is -onemeter long.- The standard meter
sets the standard. What would it
mean to say that it is inaccuratelymeasured1 It is what sets the
standard of perfection. On the
other hand we can say that thecloth was inaccurately measured.
%nd the same is true when we
define -sepia- by giving a sample
that we will eep as being -sepia.-
We can put it li#e this: "his
sample is an instrument of the
language used in ascriptions of
colour In this language3game itis not something that is
represented but is a means of
representation.33 %nd *ust this
goes for an element in language3game +@6, when we name it by
uttering the word -)-/ this gives
this ob*ect a role in ourlanguage3game5 it is now a
means of representation. %nd to
say -If it did not e$ist it couldhave no name- is to say as much
and as little as/ if this thing did
not e$ist we could not use it in
our language3game.33
!ere he is taling about the way
in which we negotiate the
meaning of the terms of ourlanguage game. One way we do
it is by using an e$ample to define
the meaning of the term. When
we utter the word -)- in +@6, thisis actually a way of negotiating
the meaning of the term. We are
giving the ob*ect a name and arole in our language game. It is as
though someone were to place a
stic in Paris and say -This is ameter- or -this is a length we shall
call 'finger'.- It sets up a meaning
for this term.
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What loo#s as if it had to e+ist%is part of the language It is a
paradigm in our language-
game, something with whichcomparison is made. %nd this
may be an important
observation5 but it is none theless an observation concerning
our language3game3our method
of representation.
It had looed as though we could
not brea the ob*ect up into
smaller components. (ut onreflection it is *ust that we had not
named the fragments of the
compents. If the s"uare was the basic unit and we could not thinof something smaller being an
element it is because we had not
learned to thin of a fragment ofthe s"uare as a component.
#or e$ample tae this s"uare as a
component that could be
multiplied +with different colors,to mae up a comple$ composite/
.
(ut imagine that we learned to
see the only columns as ob*ects so
that we saw three ob*ects whenwe saw the above s"uare 3 as we
might today if they were different
colors
. . .Perhaps we would do this if we
were used to building fences ofsome sort so that we interpreted
all graphic s"uares/
.
in terms of fence slats. %t a
glance even if there were noseparating lines we might see it
as ? fence slats or three
components to a compositefence.
#or e$ample in terms of slats
can't you imagine seeing that
wheresas the above s"uare wascomposed of ? slats the one
below has B1
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.
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%phorism A23AF from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis in bold is inserted byShawver to enhance commentary.,
Shawver commentary:
A2 In describing language3game+@6, I said that the words -)- -(-
etc. corresponded to the colours of
the s"uares. (ut what does thiscorrespondence consist in5 in what
sense can one say that certain
colours of s"uares correspond to
these signs1 #or the account in +@6,merely set up +sic, a conne$ion
between those signs and certain
words of our language +the names
of colours,.
What is the account in @61 Itis where LW says/
The s"uares form acomple$ lie a
chessboard. There are
red green white and blac s"uares. Thewords of the language
are +correspondingly,
-)- -<- -W- -(-and a sentence is a
series of these words.
They describe anarrangement of
s"uares in the order/
Jsee +@6,K
=an you see how this sets upwhat we are going to call the
components of thechessboard1 We are told
specifically that -there are
red green... s"uares.- So we
have been told what we areto consider the parts of the
chessboard.
33 Well it
was presupposed that the use of thesigns in the language3game would
be taught in a different way in
particular by pointing to paradigms.
Our %ugustinian mythology
about language says that weare taught how to use words
+signs, by pointing and
naming and here we are
being -taught- conte$tuallywithout our noticing.
7ery well5 but what does it mean to 9otice this phrase -certain
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say that in the techni"ue of using
the language certain elements
correspond to the signs1 33Is it thatthe person who is describing the
comple$es of coloured s"uares
always says -)- where there is ared s"uare5 -(- when there is a
blac one and so on1
elements correspond to the
signs.- It's a common wayof putting things but what
does it mean1 Is there a
universal meaning to this phrase1
(ut what if he goes
wrong in the description and
mistaenly says -)- where he seesa blac s"uare 33what is the
criterion by which this is a mistae1
33Or does -)-s standing for a reds"uare consist in this that when the
people whose language it is use the
sign -)- a red s"uare always comes before their minds1
If someone mistaenly calls
a blac s"uare -)- in what
sense is this a mistae1 Ifyou have been drawn into the
language game of @6 by the
account and you recogni8ethat someone is mistaen in
calling a blac s"uare -)-how do you now this1 Is it
the case that a red s"uarecomes before your mind1
In order to see more clearly here
as in countless similar cases we
must focus on the details of whatgoes on5 must loo at them from
close to.
!ere LW is teaching us not
to accept the answer above
without e$amining whathappens in these situations.
A;. If I am inclined to supposethat a mouse has come into
being by spontaneous
generation out of grey rags anddust I shall do well to e$amine
those rags very closely to see
how a mouse may have hidden
in them how it may have gotthere and so on. (ut if I am
convinced that a mouse cannotcome into being from thesethings then this investigation
will perhaps be superfluous.
!ere LW is continuing with his
last comment from A4. 0ven if
we see that we have bought intoa certain cultural mythology that
distorts our vision this does not
mean that we can find our way
out of it. !ow do we do it1 ifwe thin that mice spontaneously
generate in gray rags and we'reconvinced of this it might besuperfluous to e$amine the rags
(ut first we must learn to
understand what it is that
opposes such an e$amination of
The first thing we have to do is
understand what gets in our way
seeing what is happening.
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details in
philosophy.
A?. Our language3game +@6,has various possibilities5 there is
a variety of cases in which we
should say that a sign in thegame was the name of a s"uare
of such3and3such a colour. We
should say so if for instance wenew that the people who used
the language were taught the use
of the signs in such3and3such away. Or if it were set down in
writing say in the form of atable that this element
corresponded to this sign and ifthe table were used in teaching
the language and were appealed
to in certain disputed cases.
!ow do we now that -)-means that a particular s"uare
should be colored -red-1 We
can imagine it coming aboutthat -we now this- in a variety
of ways +other than the
insidious account we havediscovered above,. We might
say this on the basis of certain
%ugustinian language practicesthat we had observed in the
tribe. That is we might havenoticed that the tribe points and
names s"uares -)- until thechildren learn to do this. Or if it
were set down in writing that
red s"uares should be called-).- Then this is how we would
now that this is what they
should be called +imagine adictionary,.
We can also imagine such atable's being a tool in the use of
the language. :escribing a
comple$ is then done lie this/the person who describes the
comple$ has a table with him
and loos up each element of thecomple$ in it and passes from
this to the sign +and the one who
is given the description may also
use a table to translate it into a
picture of coloured s"uares,.
The comple$ is lie the grid we
say in @6 it is a cluster ofelements arranged in a
predefined way. !ow will one
describe the comple$ to another
who must arrange say a copy1One might loo at the comple$
and then loo up each element
in a table.
This table might be said to tae
over here the role of memory
and association in other cases.+We do not usually carry out the
order -(ring me a red flower- by
looing up the colour red in a
Whereas ordinarily we rely on
our memories to recogni8e
simple colors lie -red- we dosometimes use a tool such as
this when we are trying to get
the e$act shade.
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table of colours and then
bringing a flower of the colour
that we find in the table5 butwhen it is a "uestion of choosing
or mi$ing a particular shade of
red we do sometimes mae useof a sample or table.,
If we call such a table thee$pression of a rule of the
language3game it can be said
that what we call a rule of alanguage3game may have very
different roles in the game.
Wittgenstein is setting up this
table as a model of rule in a
language3game and he will usethis model in subse"uent te$t.
A@. Let us recall the inds ofcase where we say that a game
is played according to a definite
rule.
% definite rule is one that is set
out e$plicitly that everyone
agrees on.
The rule may be an aid in
teaching the game. The learner
is told it and given practice in
applying it.
Say I e$plain before we begin
that the rule is that when youtype your comments you should
enclose them in bracets with
your initials. The rule is an aid I
devise in assisting our study butit is not a part of the language3
game in the sense that we couldeasily devise other devices that
would wor *ust as well. It
would not change the playing ofthe language game in any
important way if we used a color
code to eep trac of who wrote
which comment.
33Or it is an instrument of the
game itself.
(ut an rule that is an instrumentof the game itself cannot be
changed without changing the
game. If the rule is that we canas each other "uestions and get
answers then it would change
our language game if we
changed the rule.
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33Or a rule is employed neither
in the teaching nor in the game
itself5 nor is it set down in a listof rules. One learns the game by
watching how others play. (ut
we say that it is playedaccording to such3and3such
rules because an observer can
read these rules off from the
practice of the game3lie anatural law governing the play.
33(ut how does the observer
distinguish in this case between players' mistaes and correct
play1 33There are characteristic
signs of it in the players'
behaviour. Thin of the behaviour characteristic of
correcting a slip of the tongue. It
would be possible to recogni8ethat someone was doing so even
without nowing his language.
Imagine a new reader noticing
that everyone encloses theircomments within bracets that
contain their initials andconforming to this implicit rule.In that case too can we not say
that this is -playing according to
the rules-1
(ut in this case how do wenow when people are playing
correctly according to the rules1
Perhaps by the way peoplecorrect themselves or other such
recogni8eable signs that peopleshow they feel they have
violated the rules even theimplicit rules +apologies1,
AA. -What the names in language
signify must be indestructible5
for it must be possible todescribe the state of affairs inwhich everything destructible is
destroyed. %nd this description
will contain words5 and whatcorresponds to these cannot then
be destroyed for otherwiseQthe
words would have no meaning.-I must not saw off the branch on
which I am sitting.
AA. !ere LW is speaing again
with his aporetic voice from
within the fly bottle. (ut thereis you can see +can you not1, acertain distance from this
aporia. !e is listening to what
he is inclined to say here.
!e is inclined to say that there
must be ob*ects in the world
that are simple and
indestructible +which are eithertrue or false,. 0ven if I destroy
0$calibur it must be the casethat I at least have somethingleft that I can say is destroyed
fragments smoe something.
If we do not have these simple
indestructible truths that we can point to and name then how can
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we continue1 Our entire logic
depends on this. Or so it seems
from within the fly bottle.
One might of course ob*ect atonce that this description wouldhave to e$cept itself from the
destruction.
That is if we destroyedeverything and then describedthe destruction we could not
destroy the description itself.
33(ut what corresponds to theseparate words of the description
and so cannot be destroyed if it
is true is what gives the words
their meaning 333 is that withoutwhich they would have no
meaning. In a sense however
this man is surely whatcorresponds to his name. (ut he
is destructible and his name
does not lose its meaning whenthe bearer is destroyed
LW is still within his aporetic
voice e$pressing wonder at
these parado$es he isentertaining. In this frame of
mind it seems that what
corresponds to the separate
words cannot be destroyed ifthe words are true -The =hair
is in the corner.- If the wordsare true then the chair cannot
have been crushed until it is no
longer a chair. Still and here's
the perple$ity a name still hasmeaning once the ob*ect is
destroyed. !ow can this be1
33%n e$ample of somethingcorresponding to the name andwithout which it would have no
meaning is a paradigm that is
used in conne$ion with the name
in the language3game.
The standard meter in Paris
gives us an e$ample of this paradigm. Or a sample of
-sepia- that serves to define our
naming of colors. Samples lie
this can give meaning to aword. %s yourself/ !ow long
as a griset1 If we had a sample
in Paris that told us that wordwould have meaning.
AB. (ut what if no such sample
is part of the language and we
bear in mind the colour +for
instance, that a word stands for133-%nd if we bear it in mind then
it comes before our mind's eye
when we utter the word. +sic, Soif it is always supposed to be
possible for us to remember it it
This is LW's aporetic voice.
9otice that he often puts his
aporetic voice in "uotes but he
is inconsistent. I put a +sic,after the -word- because I
believe it should have a
"uestion mar there. This isthe cultural reasoning that puts
the indestructible simple in the
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must be in itself indestructible.-mind. It is what gives Plato his
essences or eternal ideas.
33(ut what do we regard as the
criterion for remembering itright1
!ere LW is "uestioning his
own aporetic voice. This is a
significant "uestion and he willmae much of it in other
conte$ts. If we have a sample
of -red- say in our minds andno e$ternal sample how do we
now that we have remembered
the right color1 The color that-red- is1 =an you see that this
would be problematic1 ou
can hold the red sample up tothe apple and see that the apple
is the same color but thatwors because the red sample
you are using is dependable.What if you have gotten
confused and the red sample in
your mind is now distorted youare thining of it as -rust.-
!ow would you now1
33When we wor with a sample
instead of our memory there are
circumstances in which we saythat the sample has changed
colour and we *udge of this by
memory. (ut can we notsometimes spea of a darening
+for e$ample, of our memory3
image1 %ren't we as much at themercy of memory as of a sample1
+#or someone might feel lie
saying/ -If we had no memory
we should be at the mercy of a
sample-., 33Or perhaps of somechemical reaction. Imagine that
you were supposed to paint a particular colour -=- which was
the colour that appeared when the
chemical substances E and combined.3Suppose that the
colour struc you as brighter on
!ere he is further e$ploring the
"uestion of whether we can rely
on memory as if it were asample. We do sometimes
notices that colors have
changed he tells us but we donot entirely trust our
observations. So if we rely on
memory as a sample we oftendo not feel very secure about
it.
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one day than on another5 would
you not sometimes say/ -I must
be wrong the colour is certainlythe same as yesterday-1 This
shews that we do not always
resort to what memory tells us asthe verdict of the highest court of
appeal.
AD. -Something red can be
destroyed% but red cannot be
destroyed and that is why themeaning of the word 'red' is
independent of the e$istence of
a red thing.-
The aporetic voice. %gain theemphasis is mine. This is a
paradigm +sample, case of the
Platonic3%ugustinian muddle.What is it that cannot be
destroyed1 The color1 Whatcolor1 In what way does the
color e$ist apart from things thatare so colored1
3=ertainly it maes no sense to
say that the colour red is torn up
or pounded to bits. (ut don't wesay -The red is vanishing-1 %nd
don't clutch at the idea of our
always being able to bring red
before our mind's eye evenwhen there is nothing red any
more. That is *ust as if you
chose to say that there wouldstill always be a chemical
reaction producing a red flame.3
#or suppose you cannotremember the colour any
more.53When we forget which
colour this is the name of it
loses its meaning for us5 that is
we are no longer able to play a particular language3game with
it. %nd the situation then iscomparable with that in which
we have lost a paradigm which
was an instrument of ourlanguage.
!ere's LW's clarifying voice.
!e is not really giving us ananswer here to the above
"uestion but he is directing our
attention. If we are inclined tosay +confusedly, that the redwould e$ist because it would
still e$ist in our minds +because
we could imagine a red s"uarestill, then this neglects the fact
that we sometimes cannot recall
the color. Suppose you suffered brain damage and it did not
destroy your color vision but
you could no longer remember
which color was which. Wouldred then still e$ist1
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A6. -I want to restrict the term'name' to what cannot occur in
the combination 'E e$ists'.33Thus one cannot say ')ede$ists' because if there were no
red it could not be spoen of at
all.-
%gain LW is using the "uotes to
indicate his aporetic voice. Thisis the aporetic voice trying to
patch things up so that they
wor as our cultural picture saysthat they should. %ccording to
this patch up *ob we are going
to say that the word -red- will
lose its meaning when there areno red ob*ects. Will this wor1
33(etter/ If -E e$ists- is meant
simply to say/ -E- has a
meaning
In other words if the statement
-)ed e$ists- is true then this
means that -)ed- has ameaning.
3then it is not a proposition
which treats of E but a
proposition about our use oflanguage that is about the use
of the word -E-.
(ut notice this proposition doesnot tal about the e$istence of
-red-. It is a move in setting up
the language game. It hasnothing to do with the e$istence
of red apart from this new
language game.
It loo#s to us as if we were
saying something about the
nature of red in saying that the
words 0ed e+ists do not
yield a sense 9amely that reddoes e$ist 'in its own right'.
Important passage In 2;; LW
notices that our grammar is
lacing in a certain ind of perspecuity that would enable us
to more easily see what is goingon. !ere it is. The phrase -)ed
e$ists- can be either a
negotiation of the meaning ofthe term -)ed e$ists- or it can
be a statement about the world
33 but if it's a statement about
the world it has to be within a particular language game.
We get confused however
when we see that the statement
-)ed e$ists- maes a ind ofsense to it. The sense it seems
to mae when we conflate the
two possible uses of this phraseis that -)ed- e$ists apart from
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any ob*ect that is red. Still this
seems perple$ing to us. It is
hard to imagine how red e$ists.
This is our aporia here.
The same idea 33that this is ametaphysical statement about
red 33finds e$pression again
when we say such a thing as thatred is timeless and perhaps still
more strongly in the word
-indestructible-.
That is there are many ways toe$press this metaphysical
thought that -red e$ists- beyond
red ob*ects and particularlanguage games. Sometimes we
say that it is -timeless- or
-indestructible.-
(ut what we really want is
simply to tae -)ed e$ists- asthe statement/ the word -red-
has a meaning. Or perhaps better/ -)ed does not e$ist- as -
')ed' has no meaning-.
In other words if we are
tempted to say -red e$ists- then
we are pointing out that theword red has a meaning. Or if
we say that -grue- does note$ist- this is a way of saying
that the word -grue- has no
meaning.
Only we do not want to say thatthat e$pression says this but that
this is what it would have to be
saying if it meant anything. (utthat it contradicts itself in the
attempt to say it 33*ust because
red e$ists 'in its own right'.Whereas the only contradiction
lies in something lie this/ the
proposition loo#s as if it were
about the colour% while it is
supposed to be saying
something about the use of the
word red.
(ut it seems as though the
statement -)ed e$ists- isasserting a truth about red not
*ust giving us the rules of the
language +that the word 'red' hasmeaning. The formulation fools
us because it is so similar to the
formulation we would use if we
were taling about a thing andnot about meaning as if I would
say -The document you have
been looing for I have foundout that it e$ists- it would be
clear that I am not taling about
word definitions but about the
document e$isting. Still theformulations seem so similar.
33In reality however we "uite
readily say that a particular
colour e$ists5 and that is as muchas to say that something e$ists
that has that colour. %nd the first
(ut our language does not mae
a distinction between these ways
of using the phrase -red e$ists.-Within the rules of our
language both uses are e"ually
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e$pression is no less accurate
than the second5 particularly
where 'what has the colour' isnot a physical ob*ect.
correct.
AF. -% name signifies onlywhat is an element of reality.
What cannot be destroyed5 what
remains the same in allchanges.-
The %ugustine's voice again.
This voice tells us/ If -red e$ists-
it signifies something that cannot be destroyed.
33 (ut what is that1 33Why it
swam before our minds as we
said the sentence> This was the
very e$pression of a "uite particular image/ of a particular
picture which we want to use.#or certainly e$perience doesnot shew us these elements. We
see component parts of
something composite +of achair for instance,. We say that
the bac is part of the chair but
is in turn itself composed ofseveral bits of wood5 while a
leg is a simple component part.
We also see a whole which
changes +is destroyed, while itscomponent parts remain
unchanged. These are the
materials from which weconstruct that picture of reality.
This is the aporetic voice
speaing. It says /isn't there a
way in which this seemscompelling1 #rom within the fly
bottle1 :oesn't it sometimeshappen that when you say -chair-
you see something lie a chairflash before your mind's eye1
Well then maybe we should say
that this ghostly image is whatthe word 'chair' refers to. It is the
idea perhaps that Plato had in
mind when he constructed histheory of ideas.
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%phorism B43B@ from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis in bold is inserted by
Shawver to enhancecommentary.,
Shawver commentary:
B4. When I say/ -&y broom is inthe corner-3is this really a
statement about the broomsticand the brush1
What else could a statement lie
this be1 )emember that in A2 LW
introduced the notion that we canintroduce the account into the
remars so that this accountdefines the terms to be used setsup the language game rules.
Well it could at any
rate be replaced by a statementgiving the position of the stic and
the position of the brush. %nd this
statement is surely a further
analysed form of the first one.
This is the voice of tradition
noticing that the word -broom-could be replaced with something
lie -brush plus stic-1 This
phrase -brush plus stic- it says
is an analy8ed form of -broom.-
3(ut why do I call it -further
analysed-1
The voice of aporia ass why this
is so.
33Well if the broom is there that
surely means that the stic and brush must be there and in a
particular relation to one another5
and this was as it were hidden inthe sense of the first sentence and
is e$pressed in the analysed
sentence.
The voice of tradition answers andgives its reasons. This T voice
says in effect -(room- and
-brush plus stic- are the same
thing e$cept -brush plus stic-gives a more detailed listing of
what we actually have.
Then does someone who says thatthe broom is in the corner really
mean/ the broomstic is there andso is the brush and the broomstic is fi$ed in the brush1
Perhaps this will remind you of anearlier discussion of whether
-Slab>- in languge game ; reallymeans -(ring me the slab>- +cf2F, It is in ways lie this that
Wittgenstein teaches us going
over these points in one conte$tand then in another using a
different versions of a basic model
to familari8e us with the problem
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in a variety of cases.
3If we were to as anyone if he
meant this he would probably saythat he had not thought specially
of the broomstic or specially of
the brush at all. %nd that would bethe right answer for he meant to
spea neither of the stic nor of
the brush in particular. Suppose
that instead of saying -(ring methe broom- you said -(ring me
the broomstic and the brush
which is fitted on to it.->3Isn't theanswer/ -:o you want the broom1
Why do you put it so oddly1- Is he
going to understand the further
analysed sentence better1
The point is that the speaer whohad ased for the broom wasasing for the gestalt whole not
the parts even if they were
attached to each other. ou don'tsee a person's face by noticing the
constellation of features. The
whole is more than the sum of itsindividual parts.
Is he going to understand the
further analysed sentence better13
This sentence one mightsay achieves the same as the
ordinary one but in a more
roundabout way.
%ctually it might be harder to
understand. Imagine it/ -Wouldyou had me the brush attached to
the broomstic1-
3Imagine a language3game in
which someone is ordered to bring
certain ob*ects which are
composed of several parts tomove them about or something
else of the ind. %nd two ways of
playing it/ in one +a, thecomposite ob*ects +brooms chairs
tables etc., have names as in
+2A,5 in the other +b, only the partsare given names and the wholes
are described by means of them.3
In what sense is an order in the
second game an analysed form ofan order in the first1 :oes the
former lie concealed in the latterand is it now brought out byanalysis.'3
True the broom is taen to
pieces when one separates
broomstic and brush5 but does it
Poof> There goes our great
distinction between names and
descriptions. If we call the ob*ect
a broom then it is a description tosay it is a brush with a broomstic
attached because the composite
ob*ect has a name +i.e. -broom-,.(ut if only the parts have names
then the whole must be described
by the means of the parts and eachof the parts become names.
So what looed lie a comment
about the unanaly8ability of the
broom +or the brush, is really a
comment about whether I canfurther analy8e the language. If
invent ways to name moreinfintesimal aspects of the ob*ect
then the ob*ect can be analy8ed
further. The s"uares can be
divided into triangles and then
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follow
that the order to bring the broom
also consists of corresponding parts1
each s"uare is a composite of
triangles.
B2. -(ut all the same you will
not deny that a particular order
in +a, means the same as one
in +b,5 and what would you callthe second one if not an analysed
form of the first1-
The %ugustinian voice again. =an
you see where he's coming from1Practically speaing it seems that
asing for the 'brush' and the
'broomstic' means the same thingas asing for the broom. If the
instructions were followed in each
case the same ob*ect would befetched.
3=ertainly I too
should say that an order in +a, hadthe same meaning as one in +b,5or as I e$pressed it earlier/ they
achieve the same. %nd this means
that if I were shewn an order in +a,and ased/ -Which
order in +b, means the same as
this1- or again -Which order in +b,
does this contradict1- I shouldgive such3and3such an answer. (ut
that is not to say that we have
come to a general agreementabout the use of the e$pression -to
have the same meaning- or -to
achieve the same-. #or it can beased in what cases we say/
-These are merely two forms of
the same game.-
I have corrected the electronic
version of our te+t which has theword strewn when it should
have had -shewn- when in
%merican is -shown.-
(ut the "uestion is *ust becausethey have the same practical effect
of resulting in the broom being
fetched doesn't mean that they are
the same game. I can get you toturn around by saying -turn
around- perhaps but I can lielyachieve the same effect by saying
your name.
B;. Suppose for instance that the person who is given the orders in
+a, and +b, has to loo up a
table co3ordinating names and
pictures before bringing what isre"uired.
Let this remind you of the table
discussion for the color of the grid
in A?3AB.
:oes he do the same when he
carries out an order in +a, and thecorresponding one in +b,13es and
no. ou may say/ -The point of
the two orders is the same-. I
Why are we tempted to say
however that the point of a lampis that it gives light1 :on't you
thin we are1 et in a given case
in a particular situation the point
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should say so too.3(ut it is not
everywhere clear what should be
called the 'point' of an order.+Similarly one may say of certain
ob*ects that they have this or that
purpose. The essential thing is thatthis is a lamp that it serves to give
light53that it is an ornament to the
room fills an empty space etc. isnot essential. (ut there is not
always a sharp distinction between
essential and inessential.,
may be entirely different. We are
inclined to thin of a paradigm
case +as if the situation has beenset up for us, and ignore
alternative possibilities. We
recogni8e that they are there butwe let them slip under the rug to
eep things simple +or for some
reason,.
Why do we do this1
B?. To say however that asentence in +b, is an 'analysed'
form of one in +a, readily seduces
us
into thining that the former is themore fundamental form5 that it
alone shews what is meant by theother and so on.
%h here it is again. The account
in the language set us up. It is thesame point he made in A2
#or e$ample we thin/ If you
have only the unanalysed form
you miss the analysis5 but if younow the analysed form that gives
you everything.
The %ugustinian voice says that
the more minute the analysis themore accurate things are.
3(ut can I not say that an aspect of
the matter is lost on you in thelatter case as well as the former1
(ut the level of description is *ust
different. Something may begained but something is also lost.
We lose the forest for the trees.
This relates to the point in 2F inwhich we compared the language
game that said that in +;, -Slab>-
was not an abbreviated form of
-(ring me a slab>- anymore that-(ring me a slab>- was a
lengthened form of -slab>-
9evertheless we are somehowseduced into thining that -Slab>-
is abbreviated.
(ut in each case we have a
different language game adifferent -form of life.-
B@. Let us imagine language game
+@6, altered so that names signifynot monochrome s"uares but
2
;
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rectangles each consisting of two
such s"uares. Let such a rectangle
which is half red half green be
called -C-5 a half green half whiteone -7-5 and so on. =ould we not
imagine people who had names
for such combinations of colour but not for the individual colours1
Thin of the cases where we say/
-This arrangement of colours +saythe #rench tricolor, has a "uite
special character.-
?
@
Imagine it. a sentence lie C 7
7 C would result in the grid beingcolored in thusly/
.
.
. .
.
=ouldn't we imagine a culture
having such names1 Thin of the
#rench flag or any flag andimagine these rectangles looing
lie flags one flag on top of
another.
In what sense do the symbols of
this language3game stand in need
of analysis1 !ow far is it even
possible to replace this language3game by +@6,13It is *ust another
language3game5 eventhough it is related to +@6,.
%h but you say it would be soinconvenient> yes in 0nglish it
would be. (ut what if nothing
really mattered but the flags.Women wore greenQwhite +or C
flags, and men wore greenQred or
some other division between
classes of people were designatedlie this. %side from these flags
there was no concern with color.
es it would be a different formof life and the person who
thought that these different
statements were translatable tostatements that coded these flags
not as units +C or 7 but as s"uares
<reen White and )ed, would be
missing the forest for the trees.
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%phorism BA3BF from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis in bold is
inserted by Shawver toenhance commentary.,
Shawver commentary:
BA. !ere we come up
against the great
"uestion that lies behind all these
considerations.3#orsomeone might ob*ectagainst me/ -ou tae
the easy way out> ou
tal about all sorts oflanguage3games but
have nowhere said
what the essence of alanguage3game and
hence of language is/
what is common to all
these activities andwhat maes them into
language or parts of
language. So you letyourself off the very
part of the
investigation that oncegave you yourself most
headache the part
about the general form
of propositions and oflanguage.-
We have now shifted to a new topic that heannounces straightforwardly. The topic is
presented in the form of an %ugustinian voceor a -somone.- This someone wants
Wittgenstein to defie the essence of the
concept of a language game. 9otice withinthe %ugustinian frame the 'essence- is e"ual
to -what is common to all these activities.-
This idea goes bac to Plato who tals of theessence of various things or the
transcendental idea behind their various
sensual manifestations.
So the "uestion is/ What is the essence of alanguage game1 and hence to all of
language1 What is the essence of language1
%lso notice that in the last part of this
passage the 7oice reminds LW that thissearch for the essence was once something
that he tried very hard to do and it gave him
considerable trouble.
%nd this is true.3Instead of producing
something common to
all that we call
It is true LW is saying that he hasn't yet presented this essence that is common to all
language +or all language games,. !is answer
here in this passage is very famous and it is a
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language I am saying
that these phenomena
have no one thing incommon which maes
us use the same word
for all3but that theyare related to one
another in many
different ways. %nd itis because of this
relationship or these
relationships that wecall them all
-language-. I will try
to e$plain this.
powerful move in developing theWittgensteinian framewor. (efore this
move it seems imperative that we define the
essence of what we are taling about. 9ow
LW is going to show us another way to seethings.
BB. =onsider for
e$ample the proceedings that we
call -games-. I mean
board3games card3games ball3games
Olympic games and so
on. What is common tothem all1 33 :on't say/
-There must be
something common or they would not be
called 'games' -3but
loo and see whether
there is anythingcommon to all. 33 #or
if you loo at them you
will not see somethingthat is common to all
but similarities
relationships and awhole series of them at
that. To repeat/ don't
thin but loo> 33
This aphorism has a little different structure
than some of the others that we are reading.!ere LW is e$plicitly guiding our reading and
he does such a good *ob of it I am not goingto offer much commentary.
(ut a few notes/ 9ow notice your inclination
to say certain things has become the
Wittgensteinian voice. 9ow we can begin tolisten to this voice within ourselves. The
voice speas within us when we want to say
-there must be something common among
-games.- There must be an essence if wehave a concept.
LW says in a manner of speaing -don't say
to yourself that this must be the case and thengive yourself a headache trying to see what is
not there. Let's loo at specific ind of cases
and as if the essence is there in those cases.
Loo through these aphorisms while puttingthe point that he is maing out of mind. :on't
thin so much or ponder what you're looingfor *ust loo at your memories and
understanding of games and detail what youobserve.
Loo for e$ample at
board3games withtheir multifarious
relationships.
(oard games what are some1 =onsiderchess of course but thin also of monopoly.
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9ow pass to card3
games5 here you find
many correspondenceswith the first group
but many common
features drop out andothers appear.
=ard games. What about poer1 %nd whatabout Old &aid. )emember that children's
card game1 !ow are these card games alie
and different from each other1 %nd how do
they compare with board games1 What aboutthe element of strategy1 Or how many
players can play and whether or not there is asingle winner or as in &onopoly +I believe,
there are different degrees of winning.
When we pass ne$t to
ball3games much that
is common is retained but much is lost.33 %re
they all 'amusing'1
=ompare chess withnoughts and crosses.Or is there always
winning and losing or
competition between players1 Thin of
patience. In ball games
there is winning andlosing5 but when a
child throws his ball at
the wall and catches it
again this feature hasdisappeared. Loo at
the parts played by
sill and luc5 and atthe difference between
sill in chess and sill
in tennis.
Thin of the way one wins or loses in tennis.
Winning is hierarchical. One can win a point
but lose the game. One can win the game butlose the set. %nd one can win the set but lose
the match. One can win the match but lose
the tournament. =ompare this with baseball+also hierarchical, or with checers. %nd
howabout board games that revolve around a
throw of the dice1
Thin now of games
lie ring3a3ring3a3
roses5 here is theelement of amusement
but how many other
characteristic featureshave disappeared>
sometimes similarities
of detail.
Then we have children's ritual games. :o
they have a winner1 What about drop the
hanerchief1 Or London (ridge is falling
down1 !ow about -spin the bottle.-1 %re
you winning or losing if the bottle stops pointing to you1
What about *acs1 Gacs is a girls' game that
was popular when I was a child and I was intothe game. ou have 24 little ob*ects called
-*acs- that you toss onto the ground as the
other girls sit in a circle. Then each girl has a
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turn. She starts with a ball in her preferred
hand and she tosses the ball up and lets it
bounce and before it bounced again she picsup one *ac and then catches the ball before it
bounces again. She does that with each *ac.Then she does -twosees- which means she pics up two *acs in one sweep. She
continues that until she has done all ten
*acs. Then if she completes that round
without difficulty she starts again with amore difficult rule. Perhaps she doesn't let
the ball bounce at all or she not only pics up
the *acs but she puts them in a particular place before she catches the ball. There are a
few of these rounds that are already invented
but it is common for the winning player toinvent the ne$t game.
!ow does -*acs- compare with chess1 Or
with ring3a3ring3o3roses1 !ow are they
different1 !ow does it compare with tennis1Or %merican football1
%nd we can go through
the many many other
groups of games in thesame way5 can see how
similarities crop upand disappear.
:on't children invent games on the spot1 See
who can spit the furtherest1 Or see who can
solve a particular pu88le first1 Or who canfollow a rule the best +thin of Simon Says,.
%nd the result of this
e$amination is/ we seea complicated networ
of similarities
overlapping and cries3
crossing/ sometimes
overall similarities.
%nd what you'll find I thin if you go
through a careful study of these various types
of games is that there are similarities and
differences. Poer is lie chess in certainways. They both have clear rules and the
winner is liely to have practice and sill.(ut they are different in some ways too andif you loo at how they are different you'll
find other games that are not different in these
ways but different in other ways.
BD. I can thin of no !ere is the ey move and the new metaphor
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better e$pression to
characteri8e these
similarities than-family
resemblances-5 for the
various resemblances between members of a
family/ build features
colour of eyes gaittemperament etc. etc.
overlap and cries3cross
in the same way.3%nd Ishall say/ 'games' form
a family.
that LW e$tends to replace the old Platonic
metaphor of essence. The concept is one of-family resemblance.-
9otice %land Gac
have the
sameeyebrows
while 0lmer
and (ob
have thesame ears
and %l and(ob have thesame smile.
There is no
commonfeature
among them
yet they all
resembleeach other.
Wittgenstein #amily
)esemblance
%nd for instance the
inds of number form
a family in the same
way. Why do we callsomething a
-number-1 Well
perhaps because it hasa3direct3relationship
with several things that
have hitherto beencalled number5 and this
can be said to give it
an indirect relationship
to other things we call
I suppose what LW means here is that we call
positive numbers negative numbers realnumbers or a se"uence of characters
+abc...8, numbers +see 6,. !ow are these
-numbers- lie and unlie a series ofcharacters that we would not consider
numbers1
%lso consider phone numbers and the
numbers on football *erseys social securitynumbers numbers that are rans verus
numbers that can be added and subtracted.
Or let's tae an e$ample that re"uires less
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the same name. %nd
we e$tend our concept
of number as inspinning a thread we
twist fibre on fibre.
%nd the strength of thethread does not reside
in the fact that some on
e fibre runs through its
whole length but inthe overlapping of
many fibres.
mathematical sophistication. Tae the word
-food.- Imagine a plate of food composed of
only vegetables or a food concoction made of cheese and tomato sauce or food for the
dogs or for the goldfish. %lso imaginespoiled food or raw food or petrified food. Isthere some single feature in these foods that
runs through all of them1 Thin of artificial
food +lie wa$ apples, and playfood +for
children's tea,. %nd don't say that the singlefeature is that they are all related to eating
because that is a way we frame -wa$ food-
and -play food- but it is not a characteristic of this -food.-
%nd what a closer e$amination shows is thateven if there isn't a single thread that runs
through everything +and there may be in somecases of course, there is a family
resemblance between these different items.
Some are edible. Some are animal flesh.Some are vegetable. (ut there need not be a
single aspect that is common to all the
varieties.
=an you thin of another e$ample that can be
analy8ed in this way1 Tae the concept of-thought.- :o all the different acceptable
uses of this term have a common feature1 Ortae the concept of -nothing.- Is the meaning
of -nothing- the same in these two sentences/
2. There is nothing in the bo$.
;. There is nothing for me to do.
(ut if someone wished
to say/ -There is
something common toall these constructions3
namely the dis*unction
of all their common properties- 33I should
reply/ 9ow you are
only playing withwords. One might as
This is an important passage too. It points to
the trics we play to eep ourselves in the fly3
bottle.
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well say/ -Something
runs through the whole
thread3 namely thecontinuous
overlapping of those
fibres-.B6. -%ll right/ the
concept of number is
defined for you as the
logical sum of theseindividual interrelated
concepts/ cardinal
numbers rationalnumbers real numbers
etc.5 and in the same
way
the concept of a gameas the logical sum of a
corresponding set ofsub3concepts.-
!ere's the %ugustinian voice again. It
always seems to have a combac. To returnto the concept of -number- remember LW
had said that there need not be a single
common feature in all -number- systems.
--It need not be so
.or I can give the
concept 'number'
rigid limits in this
way% that is% use the
word number for a
rigidly limited
concept% but I canalso use it so that the
e+tension of the
concept is not closed
by a frontier %nd this
is how we do use theword -game-. #or how
is the concept of a
game bounded1
!ere is another important passage.Wittgenstein is pointing to the way in which
we can locally and provisionally define aconcept. !ow do we do this1 In numerousways. Sometimes we set things up e$plicitly.
We say -I am using the word number here to
mean 'rational number.'- %nd sometimes this
slips in without our awareness. +We studiedthis A23AF and see especially A2,.
What still counts as agame and what no
longer does1
I thin we can count this as the %ugustinian
voice.
=an you give the
boundary1 9o.
It is very hard to delineate what the boundaries of a game are to define it so that
it includes both tic3tac3toe and )ugby.
ou can draw one5 for (ut in a local and provisional conte$t you
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none has so far been
drawn.
might say -(y game I mean something in
which one eeps score and there is a definite
winner.-
+(ut that never
troubled you beforewhen you used theword -game-.,
(ut ordinarily you use the word -game-
without trying e$plicitly to define it locally
and provisionally. ou *ust say -Is this someind of a game1- and you tae it that people
will understand you.
-(ut then the use of
the word isunregulated the 'game'
we play with it is
unregulated.-
9ow the %ugustinian feels uncomfortablewith where we're going. It seems we need to
eep things more tied down than this.
It is not everywherecircumscribed by rules5
but no more are there
any rules for how highone throws the ball in
tennis or how hard5
yet tennis is a game for all that and has rules
too.
The rules of the game can't control every lastdetail of the action. There is always a
considerable amount action that is beyond the
rules of the game.
BF. !ow should wee$plain to someone
what a game is1
If we don't have a common thread running
through everything we call a -game- it seemsvery chaotic> !ow on earth do we teach
people to use this term -game-1
I imagine that weshould describe games
to him and we might
add/ -This and similar
things are called'games' -. %nd do we
now any more
about it ourselves1 Is itonly other people
whom we cannot tell
e$actly what a game
is1
Still don't we teach this term -games- tochildren1 %nd don't they learn it1 =an it
really be as diffficult as all that if we manage
to teach it so easily1
3(ut this is not
ignorance. We do not
now the boundaries because none have
been drawn. To repeat
we can draw a boundary3for a special
The term -game- is not a difficult term for a
child to learn and the fact that it seems that it
should be is a flag for this being a confusionleft over from our %ugustinian muddle.
The situation is that we imagine that we have
one term here and the different senses are *ust
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purpose. :oes it tae
that to mae the
concept usable1 9ot atall> +0$cept for that
special purpose., 9o
more than it too thedefinition/ 2 pace R DA
cm. to mae the
measure of length 'one pace' usable. %nd if
you want to say -(ut
still before that itwasn't an e$act
measure- then I reply/
very well it was an
ine$act one.3Though
you still owe me adefinition of
e$actness.
variations on a common theme but in practice we tae these vague concepts that are
loosely defined and we tie them down to
more particular definitions. It *ust taes a
moment to do this and the practice is allaround us. It is *ust that we fail to notice that
we do this. We have a theory of terms having
essential meanings +based on transcendentalessences, and this belief in the theory of
language is so strong we simply overloo the
way in which we negotiate the language thatwe use when other people do it and when we
do it ourselves.
JSomeone says to me/
-Shew the children a
game.- I teach them
gaming with dice andthe other says -I didn't
mean that sort of
game.- &ust thee$clusion of the game
with dice have come before his mind whenhe gave me the
order1K
This is a footnote in which LW reminds us
how we teach this ostensibly difficult concept
of -game.- 9otice how we have practices ofcontinuously clarifying our local and
provisional meanings.
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%phorism D43DA from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis in bold is inserted by
Shawver to enhancecommentary.,
Shawver commentary:
9ow we will dip into the reason
that our local negotiation of
language games +the setting up ofthe accounts in +A2, through +BF,
do not always wor and why wehave disagreements andconfusions. What is it about
langauge that maes it difficult for
us to accept any definition of thingsat all1
D4. -(ut if the concept 'game' is
uncircumscribed lie that youdon't really now what you mean
by a 'game'.-
!ere is the %ugustinian +actually
his positivist descendant,
speaing. The point is simple. ouneed to define terms to be able to
use them. (ut Wittgenstein isn't
defining -language game- in anyclear way recall that captures the
essence of language games.
Language games form a familyresemblance. There is no essence
to tie them together.
33 When I give the description/
-The ground was "uite covered
with plants- 33do you want to say
I don't now what I am talingabout until I can give a definition
of a plant1
(ut notice mostly we don't have
ready definitions for terms. 0venwhen we set up the language game
by giving accounts we don't
typically now that we are doing it.We all learned to tal "uite a bit
before we were even able to
generate definitions for the terms
we used.
&y meaning would be e$plained
by say a drawing and the words
-The ground looed roughly lie
Imagine it. I say -The ground
looed roughly lie this- as I point
to a front yard of someone's. (ut
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this-. Perhaps I even say -it
looed e$actly lie this.-3Then
were *ust this grass and these
leaves there arranged *ust liethis1 9o that is not what it
means. %nd I should not accept
any picture as e$act in thissense.
what does -this- mean. )ecall our
problem in defining -this- before.
Or pointing to anything.in an effortto define it. What am I pointing to
here1 This is the whole problem
with teaching ostensive definitionsthat we faced in 2324 and that
Wittgenstein elucidated in his
remars ;6 and ;F.. Gust as it ishard to tell if I am pointing to the
circle or the color of the circle so it
is hard to tell what I am pointing tohere. %nd I said that the similarity
beteween this front yard and the
one one I am describing is rough
but rough in what way1 =an I be
e$act in how it is rough1 Withoutmaing this -rough- e$planation an
e$act one1
D2. One might say that the
concept 'game' is a concept with
blurred edges.3
!ere LW breas his usual form and
he begins this aphorism in his own
voice. !e is suggesting a way to
thin about things that will bechallenged in the ne$t passage.
-(ut is a blurred concept a
concept at all1-3
There's the challenge// The
imaginary interlocutor says ineffect -:on't I have to pin my
meaning down in order to be precise1-
Is an indistinct photograph a
picture of a person at all1 Is it
even always an advantage toreplace an indistinct picture by a
sharp one1 Isn't the indistinct one
often e$actly what we need1
The "uestion is whether you wantto call an indistinct picture a
-picture.- <enerally I thin we do
unless it is more than *ust a littleindistinct. (ut with concepts don't
we often operate with -indistinct
meanings- of terms1 %nd in the
case of -language game- isn't thatwhat we need1
#rege compares a concept to an
area and says that an area withvague boundaries cannot be
called an area at all. This
presumably means that wecannot do anything with it.
Well here's a real case of the positivist descedent who maes the
complaint that forms the problem
for this aphorism to handle.
3(ut is it senseless to say/ -Stand =learly we do this all the time. -I'll
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roughly there-1
Suppose that I were standing
with someone in a city s"uareand said that. %s I say it I do not
draw any ind of boundary but perhaps point with my hand3as if I were indicating a particular
spot.
be finished about noon- I might
tell someone. =an I call you after
that1 -Well- that person says -Ihave to leave somewhere around
one o'cloc. I'm not sure e$actly
but something around one. So tryto call before then.-
The communication seems sensible
and useful in a conte$t lie that.
%nd this is *ust how one might
e$plain to someone what a game
is. One gives e$amples andintends them to be taen in a
particular way.
Isn't this how we e$plain thingsoften enough1 There are
provisional e$planations that
prepare a place and then more amore sophisticated understandings.
Imagine trying to e$plain -chess- to
a child. ou say -It's the game thatyou have seen :addy play withCncle Paul. ou now the one
with those funny figures that ove
around a board that loos lie thefloor in our itchen1- Oh the child
says -the one that has soldiers1-
-es ind of.- %nd that's the firste$planation. Obviously the child
does not yet have a very solid
understanding of chess but this
initial rough e$planation lays agroundwor prepares a place.
+?2,
33I do not however mean bythis that he is supposed to see in
those e$amples that common
thing which I 33for some reason33was unable to e$press5 but that
he is now to employ those
e$amples in a particular way.
!ere giving e$amples is not an
indirect means of e$plaining 33 indefault of a better.
This is what he does not mean/ !edoes not mean that somehow this
e$planation of chess to the child
will give the child the essence ofchess or that I even new the
essence of chess at the time but
simply could not thin of it. &y
e$planation to the child was not
merely a faulty e$planation either.The child could not have
understood a fuller one. <ivinghim the e$planation that I did will
however prepare a place for a fuller
e$planation. Over the ne$t year orso imagine him watching his dad
and Cncle Paul playing chess and
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learning a little at a time until
gradually he has woring
definition but still does not now"uite what a chec3mate means
and after that he has a woring
definition but does not now whata ueen's <ambit is and so forth.
33 Wittgenstein is showing us how
we can understand language beinglearned in terms other than the
unambiguous pointing and naming
that %ugustine imagined in +2,
#or any general definition can
be misunderstood too.
9o matter how I point at the bluecircle and say -blue- you might
misunderstand me +cf. ;6,. %nd no
sentences either are so accurate
and so apt as to prevent allmisunderstandings.
The point is that this is how we
play the game. +I mean the
language3game with the word
-game-.,
What language game1 The
language game of showing otherswhat we mean. We introduce the
concept by preparing the place.
Listeners cannot understand ourlanguage until a place is prepared
for it..
D;. Seeing what is common.
Suppose I shew someone variousmulti3coloured pictures and say/
-The colour you see in all theseis called 'yellow ochre' -.3This is
a definition and the other will
getto understand it by looing for
and seeing what is common to
the pictures. Then he can loo atcan point to the common thing.
This voice is persistent isn't it1
The voice that says we learn byseeing what is common. Well we
sometimes seem to learn by seeing
what is common. The problem isthat we give this way of learning
language altogether too much
credit. There are other ways oflearning language and LW is
showing us a few.
=ompare with this a case inwhich I shew him figures of
different shapes all painted the
same colour and say/ -What
these have in common is called'yellow ochre' -.
This is the ind of e$ample the%ugustinian in this passage was
pondering. ou can imagine it.
There are various shapes and they
are all the same color. 0ven if the person wasn't "uite sure about the
concept of 'color' +say didn't now
the difference between the concept
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of 'color' and the concept of 'shade',
surely she would understand if she
could see the different shapes hereand be told -What these have in
common is called 'yellow ochre'-.
Isn't this how we learn to nowcolors1 by seeing what is
common1
%nd compare this case/ I shew
him samples of different shades
of blue and say/ -The colour thatis common to all these is what I
call 'blue' -.
(ut here things are a bit different.
:ifferent shades of blue might notall be seen as -blue- especially if
one didn't now that ordinarily we
treat different levels of saturation asthe -same color- even though they
are different -shades.-
In other words some situations ofe$planation are easier to grasp perhaps than others. If we imagine
the case of different ob*ects having
the same color as being useful toteach people the concept of 'yellow
ochre' are we imagining that these
different ob*ects have precisely thesame shade of 'yellow ochre'1 (ut
don't we use the word in a rougher
ind of way to individate a variety
of shades1 Tae the color blue andnotice the vast difference between
midnight blue ice blue robin's egg
blue babyblue and so forth.
In other words we can convince
ourselves that we detect the essence
of the concept by seeing e$amples
only by thining of e$treme casesin which the ambiguity of what we
are pointing to is minimi8ed. It is
hard to imagine what that e$tremecase would be in the case of
-games.-
D?. When someone defines the
names of colours for me by pointing to samples and saying
-This colour is called 'blue' this
'green' ..... - this case can be
Well this is a familiar e$ample.
Thin of all of our tal of the tableor the file cabinet in the mind. et
it is true that we do teach these
words in situations that amount to
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compared in many respects to
putting a table in my hands with
the words written under thecolour3samples.3Though this
comparison may mislead in
many ways.3
attaching labels to things it is *ust
that we have seen that this e$ample
as seductive as it seems to be ismisleading if it leads us to thin
that such a table must be present in
the mind.+cf A@3A6,
One is now inclined to e$tend
the comparison/ to haveunderstood the definition means
to have in one's mind an idea of
the thing defined and that is asample or picture. So if I am
shewn various different leaves
and told -This is called a 'leaf' -
I get an idea of the shape of aleaf a picture of it in my mind.3
(ut what does the picture of a
leaf loo lie when it does notshew us any particular shape but
'what is common to all shapes of
leaf'1 Which shade is the 'samplein my mind' of the colour green3
the sample of what is common to
all shades of green1
!e continues to show us the
problem with the idea that we
deduce the essence of the concept
from e$amples in which the onething held constant is the essential
feature of the concept +as in
differently shaped ob*ects allhaving the color -yellow ochre- in
common.
!e is countering this %ugustinian presumption by referring to someearlier discussions. In ?6 for
e$ample he taled about our
tendency to solve the pu88le of howwe do things by presuming we do
things half3unconsciously +or even
unconsciously, in the mind thatcorrespond to what we might do
physically. If we can loo up a
table to see what a color is we
imagine doing this in the mindunconsciously.
-(ut might there not be such'general' samples1 Say a
schematic leaf or a sample of
pure green1-
This is the ne$t move after the
%ugustinian voice reali8es that wedo teach general concepts that
include considerable variation +and
families of variation, under theirrubric. -&aybe- the %uegustinian
says we have a ind of schematic
leaf in the mind roughly drawn.
Would that wor1- That is ind of
lie a table in the mind +cf. lwref pictures before the mind.,
3=ertainly there might. (ut forsuch a schema to be understood
as a schema and not as the shape
of a particular leaf and for a slip
of pure green to be understood as
-es- LW is saying there could besuch a schema but how would we
now that it was such a schema and
not the shape of a particular leaf1-
%nd I might add how would we
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a sample of all that is greenish
and not as a sample of pure
green3this in turn resides in theway the samples are used.
now how diverse a group of things
this schema would apply to1
%s yourself/ what shape must
the sample of the colour green be1 Should it be rectangular1 Or
would it then be the sample of a
green rectangle13So should it be
'irregular' in shape1 %nd what isto prevent us then from regarding
it3that is from using it3only as a
sample of irregularity of shape1
Or let's reverse the e$ample here to
the earlier one/ What color would
the schematic leaf be1 %nd how
would we now that the term didnot apply to the color of the leaf1
D@. !ere also belongs the idea
that if you see this leaf as a
sample of 'leaf shape in general'you see it differently from
someone who regards it as say a
sample of this particular shape. 9ow this might well be so 33
though it is not so 33 for it would
only be to say that as a matter of e$perience if you see the leaf in
a particular way you use it insuch3and3such a way or
according to such3and3suchrules.
!ere I thin LW confuses things a
bit. !e is using the phrase -see the
thing in a particular way- in one of
its possible senses. I see him assaying you don't -see things
differently- unless it is something
lie a gestalt picture of the duc3rabbit where it appears lie a duc
sometimes and lie a rabbit at
others. I thin we have a relatedlangauge game in which we say
that we -see things differently-
without this meaning that weactually e$perience the visual
image differently. (e that as itmay Wittgenstein is I believe
taling about -seeing thingsdifferently- as seeing a different
aspect as in the case of the duc3
rabbit. %t least to me this is theinterpretation that maes the most
sense.
Of course there is such a thingas seeing in this way or that5 and
there are also cases wherewhoever sees a sample lie thiswill in general use it in this way
and whoever sees it otherwise in
another way. #or e$ample if yousee the schematic drawing of a
cube as a plane figure consisting
%nd an important point. The world
around us has many aspects andsome of those aspects may be
noticeable if we see the world in acertain way and not if we don't.(oth ways may be e"ually correct
+as in the case of the duc3rabbit,.
(ut how we see the world will havean impact on what we do and on
our form of life.
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of a s"uare and two rhombi you
will perhaps carry out the order
-(ring me something lie this-differently from someone who
sees the picture three3
dimensionally.
DA. What does it mean to now
what a game is1 What does it
mean to now it and not be ableto say it1 Is this nowledge
somehow e"uivalent to an
unformulated definition1 So thatif it were
formulated I should be able to
recogni8e it as the e$pression of
my nowledge1 Isn't mynowledge my concept of a
game completely e$pressed in
the e$planations that I couldgive1 That is in my describing
e$amples of various inds of
game5 shewing how all sorts ofother games can be constructed
on the analogy of these5 saying
that I should scarcely include thisor this among games5 and so on.
I understand this on the model of
people learning to mae *udgments
without nowing the criteria they
use to mae those *udgments andeven without there being
formulateable criteria. I learn to
drive steer a car turning thesteering wheel a little this way or
that in response to how the car
moves and I learn to ride a horse
by doing something similar even balance on my feet as I'm standing
still by doing little corrections butthis doesn't mean that I would
recogni8e the rule or even that the
rule could be stated in a single
formula no matter how comple$.This is especially clear to me if the
*udgment is obviously comple$ lie
whether my boss is in a good moodgood enough to as for a raise.
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%phorism DB364 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
+0mphasis in bold is inserted by
Shawver to enhancecommentary.,
Shawver commentary:
DB. If someone were to draw a
sharp boundary I could not
acnowledge it as the one that Itoo always wanted to draw or had
drawn in my mind. #or I did notwant to draw one at all. !isconcept can then be said to be not
the same as mine but ain to it.
The inship is that of two pictures one of which consists of
colour patches with vague
contours and the other of patchessimilarly shaped and distributed
but with clear contours. The
inship is *ust as undeniable as the
difference.
=onsider again the concept of a
schematic leaf In setching such a schema one
creates something that was notinitially there. I do not picturesuch a schematic leaf in my mind
each time identify a leaf and if I
were to do so the one that I
pictured might not be e$actly lieyours. Still if we were each to
create such a schematic leaf
representing all leaves ourcreativity would be constrained by
our similar understanding of what
counted as a leaf.
DD. %nd if we carry this
comparison still further it is clearthat the degree to which the sharp
picture can resemble the blurred
one depends on the latter's degreeof vagueness. #or imagine
having to setch a sharply defined picture 'corresponding' to a blurred one.
!ere is a schematic
leaf. Is that the one
you would havedrawn1 !ow
similar to a real leaf
must this leaf be in
order to be aschematic leaf1 Will the point on
the right side be enough to mae it
serve for a maple leaf1 Or should
it be more pointed1 %nd if it weremore pointed would it it also
wor for a smooth3sided leaf 1
!ow would you setch a sharplydefined picture corresponding to
this blurred one1
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In the latter there is a blurred red
rectangle/ for it you put down a
sharply defined one. Of course3several such sharply defined
rectangles can be drawn to
correspond to the indefinite one.3(ut if the colours in the original
merge without a hint of any
outline won't it become a hopelesstas to draw a sharp picture
corresponding to the blurred one1
Won't you then have to say/ -!ereI might *ust as well draw a circle
or heart as a rectangle for all the
colours merge. %nything3and
nothing3is right.- %nd this is the
position you are in if you loo fordefinitions corresponding to our
concepts in aesthetics or ethics.
%nd here is a
blurred
rectangle.suppose your
tas is to draw a
definite one thatcorresponds
with this indefinite one. %nd if
you imagined it even more blurred1 %t some point wouldn't
the tas become hopeless1
In such a difficulty always as
yourself/ !ow did we learn themeaning of this word +-good- for
instance,1 #rom what sort of
e$amples1 in what language3games1 Then it will be easier for
you to see that the word must
have a family of meanings.
The situation is similar when we
try to envision the essential
features of a game or of any other
concept. To thin in terms ofessences we must visuali8e a
blurred concept and yet when we
try to apply such a concept to acase before us we will have the
same ind of difficulties we havewith the schematic leaf orrectangle.
D6. =ompare nowing and
saying/
how many feet high &ont(lancis3
how the word -game- is
used3how a clarinet sounds.
If you are surprised that one cannow something and not be able
to say it you are perhaps thiningof a case lie the first. =ertainly
not of one lie the third.
If one nows how high a mountain
is then one would surely nowhow to say it. (ut isn't it possible
to now how a clarinet sounds or
how coffee smells without beingable to say what one nows1 %nd
isn't the case of nowing what a
game is rather lie the case ofnowing how a clarinet sounds1 It
is easy to now such things
without now how to say what onenows.
DF. =onsider this e$ample. If one
says -&oses did not e$ist- this
The sentence -&oses did not
e$ist- has blurred boundaries
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may mean various things. It may
mean/ the Israelites did not have asingle leader when they withdrew
from 0gypt or/ their leader was
not called &oses or there cannothave been anyone who
accomplished all that the (ible
relates of &oses 33 or/ etc. etc.33
much lie the blurred boundaries
of a schematic leaf or a blurred
rectangle. Gust as a number ofdifferent leaf shapes could have
been taen from the blurred
schema so a number of differentmeanings might be drafted onto
the statement -&oses did not
e$ist.-
We may say following )ussell/the name -&oses- can be defined
by means of various descriptions.
#or e$ample as -the man who ledthe Israelites through the
wilderness- -the man who lived
at that time and place and was
then called '&oses' - -the manwho as a child was taen out of
the 9ile by Pharaoh's daughter-and so on. %nd according as we
assume one definition or another
the proposition -&oses did not
e$ist- ac"uires a different senseand so does every other
proposition about &oses.3%nd if
we are told -9 did not e$ist- wedo as/
-What do you mean1 :o you wantto say ...... or ...... etc.1-
0ven the name -&oses- is not as
clearly defined as we are apt to
presume. What if someone not3named &oses was still a person
who had done all that &oses is
repored to have done. Would that be the same as &oses1 Or what if
he had done some of the ghings
but not all1 !ow much different
from the story of &oses could thehistorical man have been in order
to *ustify the statement -&oses did
not e$ist1-
(ut when I mae a statement
about &oses33 am I always ready
to substitute some one of thesedescriptions for -&oses-1 I shall
perhaps say 33 (y -&oses- I
understand the man who did whatthe
(ible relates of &oses or at any
rate a good deal of it. (ut howmuch1 !ave I decided how much
must be proved false for me to
give up my proposition as false1
!as the name -&oses- got afi$ed
and une"uivocal use for me in all
possible cases1 33
(ut if I were to mae a statementabout &oses all of these
considerations are not in my
mind. I haven't decided beforehand which features of the
story of &oses are essential in
order for us to say that &oseslived. (ut perhaps you want to
say that most of it must be true in
order to say that &oses e$isted.
(ut how much1
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Is it not the case that I have so to
spea a whole series of props in
readiness and am ready to lean onone if another should be taen
from under me
and vice versa1
Suppose there were @4 stories of
&oses. If stories @ through ?;
were false would this be differentthan if stories 23;6 were false1
%re there any essential stories1 Or
can I fall bac on any1 =onsider another case. When I
say -9 is dead- then something
lie the following may hold for
the meaning of the name -9-/ I believe that a human being has
lived whom I +2, have seen in
such3and3such places who +;,looed lie this +pictures, +?, has
done such3and3such things and
+@, bore the name -9- in social
life. 33%sed what I understand by-9- I should enumerate all or
some of these points and differentones on different occasions. So
my definition of -9- would
perhaps be -the man of whom all
this is true-.3(ut if some pointnow proves false1 33Shall I be
prepared to declare the
proposition -9 is dead- false3evenif it is only something which
stries me as incidental that hasturned out false1 (ut where arethe bounds of the incidental133 If I
had given a definition of the name
in such a case I should now be
ready to alter it.
%lthough it may seem to us when
we spea that our language isunambiguous even the phrases
that at first seem without
ambiguiuty are on reflection very
e"uivocal that is sub*ect tointerpretation 33 much lie the
blurred leaf that was to serve as a
schematic leaf. Is -9- dead1 #or-9- to be dead -9- must have
lived but how will we decide that
the person I am referring to is aspecific person1 If someone lived
who had some of the features I
imagined for -9- but not all was
that -91-
%nd this can be e$pressed lie
this/ I use the name -9- without a
fi$ed meaning. +(ut that detractsas little from its usefulness as it
detracts from that of a table that it
stands on four legs instead ofthree and so sometimes wobbles.,
So we are driven to notice that
words do not have fi$edmeanings. %t first glance you may
thin this would reduce their
usefulness to us. (ut it is not so.
Should it be said that I am using a
word whose meaning I don't
now and so am talingnonsense1 3 3Say what you
choose so long as it does not
When we notice that language is
never unambiguous that is much
lie the blurred leaf we might as-can I use a word JdorrectlyK
whose meaning I do not now1-
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prevent you from seeing the facts.
+%nd when you see them there is a
good deal that you will not say.,
There is a sense in which our
understanding of the term is
limited. Shall we count this as acase of not3nowing1
The problem is that we can seewhat is nown and what is not3nown. Our confusion comes not
from not3nowing what the facts
are but rather from the fact that
the rule that would determine howwe should spea is not definitive
enough to tell us how to answer.
It is the same as if I were to as/
-Is it cold outside1- +since you
were standing outdoors, and youmight now it was B; #ahrenheit
+imagine having a thermometer,and yet not now whether to count
this as -cold- because the word
-cold- does not have such welldefined boundaries.
Still your understanding of the
temperature would limit how you
answered the "uestion +truthfully,.
+The fluctuation of scientific
definitions/ what to3day counts as
a observed concomitant of a phenomenon will to3morrow be
used to define it.,
Scientific definitions reduce thisambiguity somewha. What counts
as water in the vernacular is
different from what counts as!;4. In he creation of the concept
of !;4 there has been the
systemtic e$clusion of seawater or dishwater from the concept. Still
if there are a few molecules that
are not -!;4- shall we stillconsider the vial to contain !;41
0ven here there is ambiguity thattends to escape us.
64. I say -There is a chair-.What if I go up to it meaning to
fetch it and it suddenly disappears
from sight.1 33-So it wasn't achair but some ind of illusion-.
33(ut in a few moments we see it
The rules that determine the rightway to use language in any given
language game are never defined
with absolute precision. We allcomfortably call the ob*ects we sit
on chairs but we have no rules to
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again and are able to touch it and
so on. 33-So the chair was there
after all and its disappearance wassome ind of illusion-. 33(ut
suppose that after a time it
disappears again3or seems todisappear. What are we to say
now1 !ave you rules ready for
such cases 333rules sayingwhether one may use the word
-chair- to include this ind of
thing1 (ut do we miss them whenwe use the word -chair-5 and are
we to say that we do not really
attach any meaning to this word
because we are not e"uipped with
rules for every possibleapplication of it1
label them if they stop behaving as
chairs. Language is simply not
that precise. There are blurred boundaries that we fail to see andthat often do not bother us.
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%phorism 62366 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein: +0mphasis in bold is
inserted by Shawver
to enhance
commentary.,
Shawver commentary: This section isconcerned with rules and precision of rules
and suggests that precision is not always
better than imprecision.
62. #. P. )amseyonce emphasi8ed in
conversation with me
that logic was a'normative science'. I
do not now e$actly
what he had in mind
but it was doubtlessclosely related to
what only dawned on
me later/ namely thatin philosophy we
often compare the
use of words with
games and calculiwhich have fi$ed
rules but cannot saythat someone who is
using language must
be playing such a
game. 33$ut if you
say that our
languages only
appro+imate to such
calculi you are
standing on the very
brin# of a
misunderstanding.
#or then it may loo
as if what we were
taling about were anideal language. %s if
our logic were so to
62. This is an important aphorism. 0arly
Wittgenstein the Wittgenstein of the
Tractatus thought of language as something
lie a calculus. The idea was that if younew the rules of language you could apply
the calculus to understand it.
#or e$ample suppose you had the following
four sentences/
%. &ary went to the store
( Gac went to the barber.
= &ary is tired: Gac earns lots of money
%nd suppose you also had four ways of
connecting those sentences/
v 3 meaning either or both
H 3 meaning -and- 3 meaning if 3then
3 meaning if and only if
%nd suppose you could also modify any
sentence by negating it and symboli8ing thatnegation with a tilde lie this/
%nd let's enrich this calculus. ou can also
use parentheses. Csing the character namesabove to name the four sentences couldn't
you figure out the following statement lie
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spea a logic for a
vacuum. 33Whereas
logic does not treat of language 33 or of
thought 33 in the
sense in which anatural science treatsof a natural
phenomenon and the
most that can be saidis that we construct
ideal languages. (ut
here the word -ideal-is liable to mislead
for it sounds as if
these languages were
better more perfectthan our everyday
language5 and as if it
too the logician toshew people at last
what a proper
sentence looed lie.
one would figure out a calculus1
+%H(, H %
It would mean
While it is true that
-&ary went to the store
and Gac went to the(arber- is a true
statement it is not true
that &ary went to the
store.
%nd as you can see this would not be possible because it is not true for &ary to
have both gone to the store and not to have
gone to the store. So we can see that thesymbolic phrase
+%H(, H %
is nonsense. because to be true it would
re"uires % to be both true and false.
9ow consider the following/
J+%H(, v +(=,K v +:(,
=ould this statement be true1
ou could figure this out using the same
process that we used above and it would feel
very much lie performing a ind ofmathematical calculus.
This was the sort of vision of language that
inspired early Wittgenstein +and the logical
positivists, but now he is saying that it willnot wor.
One might want to say that if it were a
misunderstanding that language wored as a
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calculus then it was because language isdefective in some way. (ut Wittgensein is
telling us that the failure of langauge to
conform to a calculus does not imply that it isdefective.
%ll this however can
only appear in theright light when one
has attained greater
clarity about theconcepts of
understanding
meaning and
thining. #or it willthen also become
clear what can lead
us +and did lead me,to thin that if
anyone utters a
sentence and meansor understands it he is
operating a calculus
according to definite
rules.
%nd these concepts of understanding
meaning and thining are conceptsWittgenstein will e$plicate.
6;. What do I call'the rule by which he
proceeds'1 33The
hypothesis thatsatisfactorily
describes his use of
6;. Suppose you are playing chess and youmove your night. % child who does now
how to play chess ass you how you were
able to move the piece in such an odd way. If you now chess the rule is probably clear in
your mind and you can state it
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words which we
observe5 or the rule
which he loos upwhen he uses signs5
or the one which he
gives us in reply ifwe as him what hisrule is1 33(ut what if
observation does not
enable us to see anyclear rule and the
"uestion brings none
to light1 33#or he didindeed give me a
definition when I
ased him what he
understood by -9- but he was prepared
to withdraw and alter
it.3So how am I todetermine the rule
according to which
he is playing1 !edoes not now it
himself. 33Or to as a
better "uestion/ Whatmeaning is the
e$pression -the rule by which he
proceeds- supposedto have left to it
here1
unambiguously. ou can say what the rule isthat guides and constrains the movement of
the bishop compared to the movement of the
night. There is no ambiguity here.
(ut if you were ased the rule you used todecide if a sentence were a well formed
sentence or grammatically flawed you
might find that you do not now the answer
immediately. ou feel you have to thinabout it a bit. It may be that you can choose
which sentence has a flaw but not now
immediately what the rule that this correctuseage obeys.
Similarly you might now how to use a word
in a sentence and use it regularly and
meaningfully yet still not be now its useagewell enough to give a definition
spontaneously and easily.
So as yourself are you following a rule inthe cases in which you cannot easily and
spontaneously state the rule1 In what sense
are you following one1 %re you
subse"uently *ust trying to discover a statedrule that wold capture the behavior you are
engaging in without any sense of trying to
conform to a defined rule1
6?. :oesn't the
analogy between
6?. See how far this new model of language
is from the model of language as a calculus1
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language and games
throw light here1 We
can easily imagine people amusing
themselves in a field
by playing with a ballso as to start variouse$isting games but
playing many without
finishing them and in between throwing the
ball aimlessly into
the air chasing oneanother with the ball
and bombarding one
another for a *oe and
so on. %nd nowsomeone says/ The
whole time they are
playing a ball3gameand following
definite rules at every
throw.
es there are rules but the rules are not
binding in the same way that they are in
calculus. The rules of langauge do not
confine every movement that is made. Inlanguge one can stop metaphorically
speaing to toss the ball up into the air.
%nd is there not alsothe case where we
play and3mae up the
rules as we go along1%nd there is even one
where we alter them3
as we go along.
This is a particularly significant observation.
In language we will find ourselves maing up
meanings for words as we go along. -What
do you mean by that1- someone ass you.Then you say -I mean...- and you give the
word a definite sense not a sense that is "uitewhat it is in the dictionary but a definite
sense. ou are maing up the rules of this
language game as you go along.
6@. I said that the
application of a word
is not everywhere bounded by rules.
(ut what does agame loo lie that is
everywhere bounded by rules1 whose rules
never let a doubt
creep in but stop upall the cracs where it
might1 33 =an't we
6@. %m I right that games are not completely
bounded by rules1 Sure there are gaps in the
stated rules. (ut can't we imagine some sortof implicit rule that guides us in the spaces
between the rules1
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imagine a rule
determining the
application of a ruleand a doubt which it
removes3and so on1
(ut that is not to
say that we are indoubt because it is
possible for us to
imagine a doubt. I
can easily imaginesomeone always
doubting before he
opened his front door whether an abyss did
not yawn behind it
and maing sureabout it before he
went through the
door +and he might
on some occasion prove to be right,3but
that does not mae
me doubt in the samecase.
Sure we can imagine such a thing but we
need not. It is not a re"uirement of games
that they be everywhere bounded by rules.
6A. % rule stands
there lie a sign3 post.33:oes the sign3 post leave no doubt
open about the way I
have to go1 :oes itshew which direction
I am to tae when I
have passed it5
whether along theroad or the footpath
or cross3country1 (ut
where is it said whichway I am to follow it5
whether in the
direction of its fingeror +e.g., in the
opposite one1 33%nd
if there were not a
single sign3post but a
6A. %nd even if we stated rules +lie sign3
posts, every space this would not leave uswith some fle$ibility in how we played thegame. 0ven sign3posts have to be
interpreted. 0ven if a hand
points in a certain direction where is the rule
that says I must follow it in the direction of
the finger1
%nd even if we assume that the hand pointstowards the flag is it pointing to the stripes
or the stars1 Or the flag as a whole1 Or to
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chain of ad*acent
ones or of chal mar
s on the ground33 is
there only one way of interpreting them133
So I can say the sign3 post does after all
leave no room for
doubt. Or rather/ itsometimes leaves
room for doubt and
sometimes not. %nd
now this is no longera philosophical
proposition but an empirical one.
the colors1 Is there not room for
interpretation here1 Is everything completely
bound by rules1 %nd if we have thisfle$ibility in pointing is there not room for a
similar fle$ibility in how we interpret the
rules of a game1
6B. Imagine a
language3game lie
+;, played with thehelp of a table. The
signs given to ( by %
are now written ones.( has a table in the
first column are the
signs used in the
game in the second pictures of building
stones. % shews (
such a written sign5 (loos it up in the
table loos at the
picture opposite andso on. So the table is
a rule which he
follows in e$ecuting
orders.3One learns toloo the picture up in
the table by receiving
a training and part of this training consists
perhaps in e pupil's
learning to pass with
Imagine the worers in a language3game lie
+;, having the following table to use to maetheir selection of stones.
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his finger
hori8ontally from left
to right5 and so as itwere to draw a series
of hori8ontal lines on
the table.
Suppose differentways of reading a
table were now
introduced5 one timeas above according
to the schema/
If we did include arrows in our own cultureit would liely loo lie this/
#or the most part however the action thatthe arrows prompt is so common in our own
culture that the arrows are not needed. We all
approach such tables with our eyes alreadytrained to loo in the way the arrows are
intended to guide us.
another time lie
this/
or in some other
way.
#or this ind of looing however we would
need arrows/
33Such a schema is
supplied with the
table as the rule forits use.
(ut what Wittgensein had in mind for this
tribe is two tables. #or e$$ample imagine
one being up on a wall and the other being inone's hand.
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!owever if their mythology re"uired a more
comple$ the rule might be/
Or imagine things more comple$ still.
Perhaps this language game is not for the
purpose of building but for the purpose ofassuaging the temper of the gods and
supppose too that the paths the gods want
their servants to tae to read these tables
re"uires them to wor through a ma8e ofarrows such as this/
in order to read a table lie this/
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=an we not now
imagine further rules
to e$plain this one1
9ow suppose the various rules in the
networ of arrows was tied to a mythology so
that each arrow represented a sacred path thatmust be followed e$actly. 9ot only did this
sacred path guide how one's eyes were to
move but also how one stood and thee$pression one put on one's face/
%nd on the other
hand was that firsttable incomplete
without the schema
of arrows1 %nd are
other tablesincomplete without
their schemata1
The initial table seemed easy to us/
(ut the ease we felt
surely reflected the
years of training we
had in reading such atable. We no longer
needed guidance to
loo from left toright. The straight
arrows may have
provided
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such guidance to one uninitiated but only if
that person had already had training in how
to read arrows how to follow a line with theeyes. ears of reading mae it natural for
0nglish speaing people to follow the line
from left to right but of course there areother traditions. We could complicate thingsfurther by a re"uirement that the reader of the
table must *ump from line to line or move
the eyes bac and forth or up and down theline. There is no end of complicating
possibilities. et these possibilities do not
confuse us. We have been trained to see andread such tables so we do with ease *ust as
we have been trained to read the words on
this page and do that with ease 33 even
though it was not always so.
%ll these implicit rules seem to guide our
behavor and rules we can no longer state
that no longer guide us in a concscious way.:o we want to say that the table needed to
include such rules in order to be complete1
If so would any table ever be complete1
6D. Suppose I give
this e$planation/
I tae '&oses' to
mean the I man
if there was such
a man who ledthe Israelites out
of 0gypt
whatever he wascalled then and
whatever he
may or may nothave done
besides.- 33
6D. LW is going to try to show us +or remind
us, how difficult it can be to tie down the
meaning of even an apparently simplesentence. This may seem to you lie a
change in sub*ect because we are no longer
taling about tables and arrows but thesub*ect is much the same. We are noticing
how many gaps there are in the rules we
might use to interpret things how much ofour understanding taes place without our
noticing how it all wors.
(ut similar doubts to
those about -&oses-
are possible about
%s soon as you try to pin down these words
you can see how hard it is to mae sure the
person in history that we tal about refers to
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the words of this
e$planation +what are
you calling -0gypt-whom the -Israelites-
etc.1,. 9or would
these "uestions cometo an end when wegot down to words
lie -red- -dar-
-sweet-.
-&oses.- &aybe the real person had a
different name and maybe his story has beenmodified through the years. !as it been so
modified that the person we thin of as
-&oses- is no longer congruent with thehistorical figure1 It is possible to doubt all of
these things.
-(ut then how doesan e$planation help
me to understand if
after all it is not thefinal one1 In that case
the e$planation is
never completed5 so Istill don't understand
what he means and
never shall>- 33
%s though ane$planation as it were
hung in the air unless
supported by anotherone.
This is Wittgenstein's "uestioning voice
voice of aporia wondering. If I can't tie
these things down with an e$planation I notonly fail to understand who &oses is but I
fail in all similar attempts. 0$aplanationscannot help me understand> +or so it seemsto the aporetic voice,.
It seems +when in this apoetic mood, that we
must be able to use e$planations to tie down
all the ambiguities or else nothing will ever be nown.
Whereas ane$planation may
indeed rest on
another one that has been given but none
stands in need of
another 33 3unless were"uire it to prevent a
misunderstanding.
That is we may be able to use onee$planation to e$plain another 33 but no
additional e$planation is needed e$cept to
prevent misunderstanding. ou do not needan e$planation for the statement -The chair I
am sitting in is uncomfortable- unless you
don't understand it +and you might not fore$ample if it looed o you that I was not
sitting at all.,
One might say/ an
e$planation serves toremove or to avert a
misunderstanding 33
one that is thatwould occur but for
the e$planation not
every one that I can
imagine.
The confusion comes about because we
imagine that e$planations contain a completerule that re"uire no training to interpret.
0$planations canavert misunderstandings but
only for those whose training is sufficient tounderstand the e$planation. %nd we cannot
find sufficient e$plnations to replace that
history of training.
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It may easily loo asif every doubt merely
revealed an e$isting
gap in thefoundations5 so that
secure understanding
is only possibleif we first doubt
everything that can
be doubted and then
remove all thesedoubts.
This is reminescent of :ecartes' -=artesian
doubt- or -methodological doubt.- !is idea
was you'll recall that he could doubteverything e$cept that he was thining +I
thin therefore I am,. 0verything that came
after that point in the =artesian te$t was theresult of his reasoning things out and thus proven ostensibly by the reasoning. It loos
as though we must pin things down
completely. We must find a way to prove for e$ample that historical person I call &oses is
indeed he -real &oses- or else it is all a
sham. (ut how many stories about &oseswould have to be a little wrong in order to
call it all a sham1 %nd even if the stories
were "uite a bit wrong would it be a sham1
What does it mean in fact for any name torefer to an historical figure with accuracy1 It
seems it does not mae sense if we cannot
pin things lie this down. On the other handthe assertions do mae some ind of sense to
us given our training in this story of &oses
33 even though we cannot pin things lie thisdown without becoming aware of the
enormity of doubt about all the details.
The sign3post is inorder 33 if under
normal
circumstances itfulfills its purpose.
When does the e$planation the reasoning
come to an end1 )emember we may notneed an e$planation at all. If we are already
trained or practiced in how to interpret some
sign then the e$planation is no longerre"uired. If there is a stop sign or some
strange sign it needs no e$planation if we
have been trained in its interpretation.
=onsider the e$planation I gave those readingover our shoulder at the top of this note. I
e$plained our tradition that we put our
initials in bracets around the te$t. (ut I did
not e$plain that Gudy uses small charactersfor her initials or that 9ic sometimes uses
no bracets at all. Will they understand1 Is
it possible that they will simply mae senseof it even if I don't e$plain these details1 %t
what point will the e$planation be more than
is necessary1
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66. If I tell
someone -Stand
roughly here-33 maynot this e$planationwor perfectly1 %nd
cannot every other
one fail too1
66. If I want to tae a photograph of
someone I might say -stand roughly here-.
That means I am liely to be satisfied if the person stands somewhere withina range of
places. Of course the person might stand
outside my preferred range or I mightdiscover that the range of places I thoughtwould wor will not wor. On the other
hand I cannot guard against this ind of
problem entirely by being more specific.Imagine my saying -Stand on this blade of
grass.- =ouldn't I find this positioning not
"uite satisfactory too1
(ut isn't it an ine$act
e$planation1 3
This is really the voice of )amsey again or perhaps the voice of early Wittgenstein or
one of the positivists who tried to reduce
language to a ind of calculus. This voicehas been very influential in the development
of modern psychology. This voice says
-=an't we find a way to represent our
thoughts and wishes very precisely so thatthere can be no misunderstanding1 The
usefulness of phrases such as -stand roughly
here- helps disenchant us with this "uest byshowing us
es5 why shouldn't
we call it -ine$act-1Only let usunderstand what
-ine$act- means. #or
it does not mean-unusable-.
that non3e$act e$planation can be veryuseful indeed.
%nd let us consider
what we call an
-e$act- e$planation
in contrast with thisone. Perhaps
something lie
drawing a chal lineround an area1 !ere
it stries us at once
that the line has breadth. So a colour3
edge would be more
In this paragraph Wittgenstein argues that
not only is non3precise language often useful
but that more precise statements +e.g. stand
precisely on this blade of grass, adds nothingto the usefulness at times of less precise
statements. ou could stand on a precise
blade of grass if I stand -stand roughly overthere- but it wouldn't be more useful than if
you stood in a slightly different place. This
is what Wittgenstein has in mind when hesuggests that this e$actness does not have a
function in some conte$ts.
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e$act. (ut has this
e$actness still got a
function here/ isn'tthe engine idling1
%nd remember toothat we have not yet
defined what is tocount as overstepping
this e$act boundary5
how with what
instruments it is to be established. %nd
so on.
0ven when we try to be more precise +youmust step on this precise blade of grass, we
do not elminate all imprecision. 0ven here
we must define what will count as not doing
what the precise rule calls on us to do.
We understand
what it means to set a
pocet watch to thee$act time or to
regulate it to bee$act. (ut what if it
were ased/ is this
e$actness ideal Ofcourse we can spea
of measurements of
time in which there is
a different and as weshould say a greater
e$actness than in themeasurement of time by a pocet3watch5 in
which the words -to
set the cloc to thee$act time- have a
different though
related meaning and
'to tell the time' is adifferent process and
so on.33
0ven when we tal about precision it is notclear how precise precision must be in order
to be precise enough.
9ow if I tell
someone/ -oushould come to
dinner more
punctually5 you nowit begins at one
o'cloc e$actly-33
!ere's another e$ample to e$amine to help
us understand the function and limits of our
ideal of precision. !ow precise would such a
statement be1
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is there really no
"uestion of e$actness
here1 because it is possible to say/
-Thin of the
determination of timein the laboratory orthe observatory5 there
you see what
'e$actness' means-1e$actness or how
nearly does it
approach the ideal13
The first thing to notice is that the ind of
-e$actness- that would be re"uired for
someone coming to dinner punctually is notof the same level as that is re"uired in alaboratory or an observatory. The conte$t
lets us now that different levels of precision
are involved in these different situations.
-Ine$act- is reallya reproach and
-e$act- is praise. %nd
that is to say thatwhat is ine$act
attains its goal less
perfectly than what is
more e$act. Thus the point here is what we
call -the goal-. %m I
ine$act when I do notgive our distance
from the sun to the
nearest foot or tell a *oiner the width of a
table to the nearest
thousandth of aninch1
Language is often implicitly loaded toconvince us that something is good or bad.
People who call someone -youthful- fore$ample are using loaded langauge to
communicate a positive "uality about behavior or appearance that $ome might refer
to more negatively as -childish-. Sometimes
it is hard to find the negative loading for a positive term +or the positive loading for a
negative term, and our languuge simply
doesn't appear to have the resources forthining about the ob*ect without this
particular evaluative loading.
That may be the case for the notion of
-e$actness- has that ind of positive loading.+see my comments on -transvaluation-,
9o single ideal of
e$actness has been
laid down5 we do not
now what we should be supposed to
imagine under this
head 33 unless youyourself lay down
what is to be so
called. (ut you willind it difficult to hit
upon such a
convention5 at least
any that satisfies you.
What all of this study of exactness seems to be teling us is that how much -e$actness- we
need depends upon the conte$t. Sometimes
demands for -e$actness- can *ust be a botherwith nothing useful to add. (ecause they
would be a -bother- this e$cessive precision
is not so universally ideal as our languagesuggests to us.
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%phorism 6F3244 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations
with commentary on the right byLois Shawver
Wittgenstein: +0mphasis in bold is inserted by
Shawver to enhance
commentary.,
Shawver commentary
and supplementary notes:
6F. These considerations bring us
up to the problem/ In what sense islogic something sublime1
#or there seemed to pertain to
logic a peculiar depth3a universal significance. Logic
lay it seemed at the
bottom of all the sciences.33 #or
logical investigatione$plores the nature of all things. It
sees to see to the bottom of
things and is not meant to concernitself whether what actually
happens is this or that.
In 6F The "uestion is/ !ow did
we come to believe that logic is
sublime1 Why do we thin that it
is sublime1
The people of our culture have believed that logic is sublime for a
long long time. +SCPPL0&09T%)
%)TI=L0, Since %ristotle at least
philosophers have been inspired
with the idea that logic is
something something lofty and iffollowed carefully can lead us to
a more accurate understanding. In
fact thining this way it seems ifwe could only get logic right
define things precisely enoughthen we could mae sense of allthings.
33It JlogicK taes its rise not from
an interest33 in the facts of naturenor from a need to grasp cause
conne$ions/ but from an urge to
understand the basis or essenceof everything empirical. 9ot
however as if to this end we had
to hunt out new facts5 it is ratherof the essence of
our investigation that we do not
see to learn anything new
by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain
view. #or this is what we seem in
some sense not to understand.
This glorification of logic
emerges not from our need tograsp particular connections
+such as what specifically causes
what, but a desire to find a eythat will open up the secrets of the
world for us mae it all mae
sense. The "uest is not to uncoversomething new detail but to
understand something that is
already before us but confuses us
because its mysteries aresomehow veiled.
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%ugustine says in the =onfessions
-"uid est ergo tempus1 si nemo e$
me "uaerat scio5 si "uaerentie$plicare velim nescio-.
this translates as/ -What therefore
is time1 If youdon't as me I now 3 if you as
me I don't now.- In other wordsthe loftiness of logic is something
we understand until we are asedabout it. Then suddenly we see
how confusing it is to us.
3This could not be said about a"uestion of natural science
+-What is the specific gravity of
hydrogen1- for instance,.
Something that we now when noone ass us but no longer now
when we are supposed to give anaccount of it is something that weneed to remind ourselves of. +%n
it is obviously something
of which for some reason it isdifficult to remind oneself.,
There are many scientific problems that we either now the
answers to or we don't. (ut there
are other thngs we to undestand sowell we tae our nowledge for
granted until we are ased. Thenwe are pu88led. It is as though we
now the answer but can't "uiteremember what it is and need to
be reminded.
F4. We feel as if we had to
penetrate phenomena/ our
investigation however is directednot towards phenomena but asone might say towards the
'possibilities' of phenomena.
When we feel that logic is lofty
we feel as though we had to
penetrate the mysteries of what is before us with the power of logic
but we do not actually loo at
what we are studying in order totry to do this. We simply thin
about things or study them in our
"logical" reflection.
We might as about our sub*ectfor e$ample in relationship to
certain possibilities. If time is the
sub*ect of our study we might ponder for e$ample if time
would continue to e$ist if the
world stopped turning.
We remind ourselves that is to
say of the ind of statement that
we mae about phenomena.
Csing logic we try to recall things
about our sub*ect. We might say
to ourselves for e$ample that-time seems to pass more "uicly
when you're busy.- %nd we
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would as ourselves -What does
that mean about time1- This ind
of logical reflection then is morereflective than observational.
Thus %ugustine recalls to mind the
different statements that are madeabout the duration past present or
future of events. +These are of
course not philosophical
statements about time the pastthe present and the
future.,
Our investigation is therefore a
grammatical one. Such aninvestigation sheds light on our
problem by clearing
misunderstandings away.
So our investigation is not based
on observations of new data.Instead it is a study of the things
we say or have said about this
sub*ect. Our purpose is to clear
away certain misunderstandingsthat seem to bloc clarity about
whatever interests us. This means
that our study is a grammaticalone in the sense that we might
ponder the meaning of certain
terms or the connection between
different terms and remindourselves of the criteria for
different application of theseterms. If we wanted to now
what time is we might remind
ourselves of the way we name
time differently in different time8ones for e$ample.
&isunderstandings concerning the
use of words caused among other
things by certain analogies between the forms of e$pression
in different regions of language.
&any of our misunderstandings
result from the fact that there aresuperficial similarities between
different regions of language. If Isay -love- when I am scoring
tennis this does not mean thesame thing as when I spea
endearingly. These things
continuously confuse us.supplementary note
3Some of themJmisunderstandingsK can be
removed by substituting one form
of e$pression for another5 this may
be called an -analysis- of ourforms of e$pression for the
process is sometimes lie one of
taing a thing apart.
Some of this confusion can beremoved by replacing words with
other words that seem less
confusing. -Love- we might say
-means 8ero- so instead of sayingthe score ?43love. We might say
that the score is ?438ero in order
to be less confused andconfusing. There are many
multiple uses of most terms that
get confused this way and we arescarcely aware of them. When we
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do study them unravel the
e"uivocations this we might call
-analysis.-
F2. (ut now it may come to loo
as if there were something lie a
final analysis of our forms oflanguage and so a single
completely resolved form of every
e$pression. That is as if our usual
forms of e$pression wereessentially unanalysed5 as if there
were something hidden in them
that had to be brought to light.When this is done the e$pression
is completely clarified and our
problem solved.
When we analy8e the
e"uivocations straighten thingsout it sometimes begins to appear
as though we could finally get a picture of the accurate meaning
that we could invent even ways
of taling that allowed tus o spea in ways that are completely clear
so that the problem
at hand is solved.
It can also be put lie this/ we
eliminate misunderstandings by
maing our e$pressions more
e$act5 but now it may loo as ifwe were moving towards a
particular state a
state of complete e$actness5 and asif this were the real goal of our
investigation.
When we are mystified lie thiswe thin we can find a way to put
things that will eliminate all
misunderstandings. It will *ustre"uire so we thin more
e$actness. It even seems that
e$actness not clarity is the realgoal of our investigation.
Somehow we have become
infatuated with the idea thate$actness will bring us closer to a
final picture of the hiddenmysteries around us.
F;. This finds e$pression in
"uestions as to the essence of
language of propositions of
thought.
Our infatuation with e$actnessshows itself when philosophers
as about the essence of language
in that they often strive for moree$actness.
33#or if we too in these
investigations are trying tounderstand the essence of
language 33 its function itsstructure 33yet this is not whatthose "uestions have in view.
It may seem that this is what we
in this boo are trying to do as
well. (ut the "uestions we asare different.
#or they see in the essence notsomething that already
lies open to view and that becomes
surveyable by a rearrangement
We need to use differentmetaphors for their "uestions and
for ours. While they are seeing
something deeper that will be
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but something that lies beneath the
surface. Something that lies
within which we see when weloo into the thing and which an
analysis digs out.
unveiled as the mystery structure
of language we are seeing
something that might be clear tous by a certain rearrangement of
the details.
'The essence is hidden from us'/
this is the form our problem now
assumes. We as/ -What islanguage1-
-What is a proposition1- %nd the
answer to these "uestions is to begiven once for all5 and
independently
of any future e$perience.
If we are in their frame ofreference and we as "uestions
about the essence of things we
loo for answers that can be given
now and for all time regardless of what happens in the future. %fter
all the essence of language
cannot change. If langauge has anessence so they thin it e$ists
everywhere and whenever
langauge e$ists. 9ot so for us.
We will loo at changeableaspects of language that happen to
create patterns during our culturale$perience. #or e$ample
whereas they will loo for what
-truth- really is apart from any
true statement we will be inspiredto notice the ways in which this
term is used in our culture and in
particular language games and practices.
One person might say -% proposition is the mostordinary thing in the world- and
another/ -% proposition 3
that's something very "ueer>-33%nd the latter is unable simply to
loo and see how propositions
really wor. The forms that we usein e$pressing ourselves about
propositions and thought stand in
his way.
When they are looing foressences they do not loo at the
way the statements actually worand how we use them. They loo
for something hidden from us.
We loofor something we can watch and
see.
Why do we say a proposition issomething remarable1 On the one
hand because of the enormousimportance attaching to it. +%nd
that is correct,. On the other hand
this together with a
misunderstanding of the logic of
When this logic of propositionsseems remarable it is for two
reasons. One I endorse/ There ismuch importance attaching to
language and why and how that is
so is worthy of our reflection.
The second reason we thin logic
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language seduces us into thining
that something e$traordinarysomething uni"ue must be
achieved by propositions.
is remarable is that we are
seduced by certain illusions that
tell us that language is alien toother things in the world. We will
find the distinction between
language and non3language "uite blurry. Our culture tends to
polari8e the world mistaenly I
feel into language and not3language failing to see that the
distinction is not so complete as
we at first thin.
33 % misunderstanding maes itloo to us as if a propositions did
something "ueer.
Our recognition of the importanceof language plus our having been
seduced into seeing it as
something completely different
from non3language maeslanguage propositions
+statements, seem very oddindeed.
F@. '% proposition is a "ueer
thing>' !ere we have in germ
the subliming of our wholeaccount of logic.
This -subliming- of our logic is a
way of seducing ourselves into
this mystification that treats logicas something "uite mystical.
The tendency to assume a pure
intermediary between the
propositional signs and the facts.Or even to try to
purify to sublime the signs
themselves.
When we sublime the logic of our
langauge in this way we turn it
into a ind of ghost which isseems to wor as an intermediary
between the statements we mae
and the words we say. We try toget rid of the words +signs,
themself and stare at the essence
this linguistic ghostso to spea that connects our
words with the facts they are
meant to portray.
3#or our forms of e$pression prevent us in all sorts of ways
from seeing that nothing out of the
ordinary isinvolved by sending us in pursuit
of chimeras.
Seduced by the ghost of language
into seeing apparitions betweenwords and things +into seeing-selves- -minds- -schi8ophrenia-
as things for e$ample, we are
distracted and do not notice theordinary that is involved.
FA. -Thought must be something FA begins with LW taling
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uni"ue-. When we say and mean
that such3and3such is the case we
33 and our meaning33 do not stopanywhere short of the fact5
but we mean/ this3is3so. (ut this
parado$ +which has the form of atruism, can also be e$pressed in
this way/ Thought can be of what
is not the case.
indirectly about the fly3bottleQ
That is he is e$ploring the
cultural thoughts that weavetogether and bloc our path out of
the fly3bottle. !ere at the source
of this impasse we find ourselvessaying things lie -Thought must
be something uni"ue-. This is not
an innocent statement. Itrepresents our willingness to
imagine -thought- as something
mysterious and beyonde$planation at the same time that
that we loo for e$planation. This
is a path into thining of language
as tied to metaphysical mysteries
such as Platonic forms.supplemental article.
!ere is my paraphrase of the last
part of this aphorism/When I say, "This is a cup." my
words seem to point directly to
this cup. I am pointing right toit. y words don't fall short of
the cup and point !ust to a
concept. This is a cup, I say. It is
so.
ut words can only point to what
is true# Isn't this a truism# If I
say "This is a flower" and it isreally a cup before us, then my
words are not really pointing to
anything. That is fine. y words
are !ust pretending that there is a flower there. I can't really point
to what is not here.
$r can I# If I loo% for my cupand find a bare shelf and say, "y
cup is not here", aren't I pointing
to its absence# &nd how is this
different from loo%ing at the bare shelf and saying, "The flower is
not here#" What would be
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different about the shelf and what
I point to in the two cases# It
must be that there is somethingelse that I am pointing to other
than the cup itself.
FB. Other illusions come from
various "uarters to attachthemselves to the special one
spoen of here. Thought
language now appear to us as theuni"ue correlate picture of theworld. These concepts proposition
language thought world stand in
line one behind the other eache"uivalent to each. +(ut what are
these words to be used for now1
The language3game in which theyare to be applied is missing.,
I point here to this bare shelf andsay -The cup is not here- but
what am I pointing to1 I might
say perhaps I am pointing to thethought of the3cup3that3is3not3
here1 Or if not the thought then
to the proposition -This is a cup-or to the web of language that
reflects this meaning or to the
-world- +as LW used the term inthe Tractatus when he said in the beginning -The World is all that is
the case,. These are all more or
less synonyms. %s soon as younoc one down I have a bacup
concept that stands between the
word and the fact. These wordsmay loo a little different to you
but they function in the same
way. They are place holders that I
use to tal about these ghostlyPlatonic images as i thin about
my difficulties in e$plaining the
way langauge seems to me towor.
Is that any better1
(y having a string of abstract
concepts we construct in order tohave something to point to we
create a mysterious ob*ect of
meaning that language seems toaddress. It suddenly appears
when we are pointing to that
thought whatever that shouldmean.Then language begins to
appear to be something
remarabe almost magical.
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FD. Thought is surrounded by a
halo. 33Its essence logic present
an order in fact the a priori orderof the world/
that is the order of possibilities
which must be common to bothworld and thought. (ut this order
it seems must
be utterly simple. It is prior to ae$perience must run through all
e$perience5 no empirical
cloudiness oruncertainty can be allowed to
affect it 33It must rather be of the
purest crystal. (ut this crystal
does not appear as an
abstraction5 but as somethingconcrete indeed as the most
concrete as it were the hardestthing there is +Tractatus Logico3
Philosophicus 9o. A.AAB?,.
In this aporia it seems that
thought is surrounded by a ind of
halo. This halo of thought is-essence- or -logic- and this
logical3essence3halo seems to
hold the world in some ind oforder to organi8e it. Without that
organi8ing halo the world would
appear chaotic. (ut thisorgani8ing halo must be
completely simple perfect in
someway. It would not wor forthis metaphysical3halo of essences
to
have something confused about it
something fu88y. %nd we must
have this organi8ing principle prior to our being able to mae
sense of anything. Without thisorgani8ing principle all if
confusion.
We are under the illusion that what
is peculiar profound essential in
our investigation resides in itstrying to grasp the incomparable
essence of language. That is the
order e$isting between the
concepts of proposition word proof truth e$perience and so on.
This order is a
super3order between 33so tospea33 super3concepts. Whereas
of course if the words -language-
-e$perience--world- have a use it must be as
humble a one as that of the words
-table- -lamp- -door-.
%nd so in this state ofmystification we are under the
illusion that there is some essence
of langauge some magicalessence and that we are trying to
grasp this essence which is *ust beyond our grasp. This essenceconsists in the organi8ing
principles concrete almost
ghostlie organi8ing principles.
%nd these appear to be permanentfi$tures in the world. !ow can
they change we say in our
illusions they are the principlesthat control the world of human
understanding1 See F2
F6. On the one hand it is clear that
every sentence in our language is
in order as it is'. That is to say we
are not striving after an ideal as ifour ordinary vague sentences had
not yet got a "uite
une$ceptionable sense and a
(ut there is aporia while in this
mystification because for
e$ample we now that it is a bit
odd to say that we can point tonothing and yet it seems we can.
It seems with my concepts I can
point to the fact that Gohn is not in
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perfect language awaited
construction by us.33 On the otherhand it seems clear that where
there is sense there must be perfect
order. So there must be perfect
order even in the vaguest sentence.
his seat. I see the seat empty.
!ow can I do that1 Then
noticing this aporia and we thinthat the problem is
that the language that we use is
not "uite perfect enough so wewant to mae it more perfect
more e$act. This perfect language
awaits our construction. Whatwill it be lie1 Well it seems it
will be much lie the one we
have only more e$act more perfect. Thining lie this
we say to ourself that the
organi8ing principle that controls
everything is there even in the
fu88y imperfect principle butstill things do not "uite wor
correctly. The organi8ing principle is perfect we *ust have a
language that is an imperfect
picture of it. There are a fewflaws and we must figure them
out and fi$ them.
FF. The sense of a sentence 33one
would lie to say33 may of courseleave this or that open but the
sentence must nevertheless have adefinite sense. %n indefinitesense33 that would really not be a
sense at all. 33This is lie/ %n
indefinite boundary is not really a
boundary at all. !ereone thins perhaps/ if I say -I have
loced the man up fast in the room
33there is only one door leftopen-33 then I simply haven't
loced him in at all5 his being
loced in is a sham. One would beinclined to say here/ -ou haven't
done anything at all-. %n
enclosure with a hole in itis as good as none. 33(ut is that
true1
In this perfect language that in
our mystification it seems wemust construct +if we are to gain
any clarity, we may of courseallow for a sentence to have somefle$ibility. We might have a
structure lie -The boo is on the
table- that could be adapted to
-The pen is on the table.- (ut itseems there must be something
"uite definite in the
boundaries of it all. We can't havethe basic rules be fle$ible. If I
leave any of the basic rules
fle$ible it seems I might as wellnot have any rules at all. +Thin
how this relates to Lyotard and his
notion that we negotiate the basicrules of our language in paralogy.
We can say now in our
postmodernism -This is what I
mean by E- and sometimes
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people can follow us.,
244. -(ut still it isn't a game if
there is some vagueness in therules-. 33 (ut does this prevent its
being a game1 33
-Perhaps you'll call it a game butat any rate it certainly isn't a
perfect game.- This means/ it has
impurities and what I am
interested in at present is the purearticle.
3(ut I want to say/ we
misunderstand the role of the idealin our language. That is to say/ we
too should call it a game only we
are da88led by the ideal andtherefore fail to see the actual useof the word -game- clearly.
%nd so let me as you must there be e$act rules in order for us to
have a -game-1 Or is this *ust an
illusion of our logocentrism1 Themystified voice responds well
you can call this game without
precise rules a game if you wish but it is not a perfect game. (ut
now as I thin through this
finding my way out of the fly bottle Wittgenstein says I want
to say that we misunderstand the
nature of our tas here. We are far
too da88led by the dream thatincreased precision will show us
clarity to see any other prospects
clearly..