Method and presentation[edit]
Philosophical Investigations is unique in its approach to philosophy. A typical philosophical text presents a philosophical problem, summarizes and critiques various alternative approaches to solving it, presents its own approach, and then argues in favour of that approach. In contrast, Wittgenstein's book treats philosophy as an activity, rather along the lines of Socrates's famous method of maieutics; he has the reader work through various problems, participating actively in the investigation.
...think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked 'five red apples'. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked 'apples', then he looks up the word 'red' in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers—I assume that he knows them by heart—up to the word 'five' and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.—It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words—"But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?" Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.—But what is the meaning of the word 'five'? No such thing was in question here, only how the word 'five' is used.[4]
This example is typical of the book's style. We can see each of the steps in Wittgenstein's method:
- The reader is presented with a thought experiment: someone is sent shopping with an order on a slip.
- Wittgenstein supplies the response of an imagined interlocutor. He usually puts these statements in quotes to distinguish them from his own: "But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?" Or Wittgenstein may indicate such a response by beginning with a long dash, as he does before the question above: —But what is the meaning of the word 'five'?
- Wittgenstein shows why the reader's reaction was misguided: No such thing was in question here, only how the word 'five' is used.
Similarly, Wittgenstein often uses the device of framing many of the remarks as a dialogue between himself and a disputant. For example, Remark 258 proposes a thought experiment in which a certain sensation is associated with the sign S written in a calendar. He then sets up a dialogue in which the disputant offers a series of ways of defining S, and he meets each with a suitable objection, so drawing the conclusion that in such a case there is no right definition of S.
Through such thought experiments, Wittgenstein attempts to get the reader to come to certain difficult philosophical conclusions independently; he does not simply argue in favor of his own theories.
Language, meaning, and use
The Investigations deals largely with the difficulties of language and meaning. Wittgenstein viewed the tools of language as being fundamentally simple,and he believed that philosophers had obscured this simplicity by misusing language and by asking meaningless questions. He attempted in the Investigations to make things clear: "
Der Fliege den Ausweg aus dem Fliegenglas zeigen"—to show the fly the way out of the
fly bottle.
[6]
Meaning is use
A common summary of his argument is that meaning is use—
words are not defined by reference to the objects they designate, nor by the mental representations one might associate with them,
but by how they are used. For example, this means there is no need to postulate that there is something called
good that exists independently of any good deed. This anthropological perspective contrasts with
Platonic realism and with
Gottlob Frege's notions of
sense and reference.
[8] This argument has been labeled by some authors as
"anthropological holism."[9]
Meaning and definition
Any definition of game which focuses on amusement leaves us unsatisfied since the feelings experienced by a world class
chess player are very different from those of a circle of children playing
Duck Duck Goose. Any definition which focuses on competition will fail to explain the game of catch, or the game of
solitaire. And a definition of the word "game" which focuses on rules will fall on similar difficulties.
The essential point of this exercise is often missed. Wittgenstein's point is not that
it is impossible to define "game", but that we don't have a definition, and we don't need one, because even without the definition, we use the word successfully.
[11]
Wittgenstein argues that definitions emerge from what he termed "forms of life", roughly the culture and society in which they are used. "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." Wittgenstein shows that language is not in all cases a social phenomenon (although, they are for most case); instead the criterion for a language is grounded in a set of interrelated
normative activities: teaching, explanations, techniques and criteria of correctness. In short, it is essential that a language is shareable, but this does not imply that for a language to function that it is in fact already shared.
Wittgenstein rejects the idea that
ostensive definitions can provide us with the meaning of a word. For Wittgenstein, the thing that the word stands for does
not give the meaning of the word.
Family resemblances
Why is it that we are sure a particular activity — e.g.
Olympic target shooting — is a game while a similar activity — e.g. military sharp shooting — is not? How do we recognize that two people we know are related to one another? We may see similar height, weight, eye color, hair, nose, mouth, patterns of speech, social or political views, mannerisms, body structure, last names, etc. If we see enough matches we say we've noticed a family resemblance.
[[We are a machine for pattern recognition, opereting in unconscious].Some philosophical confusions come about because we aren't able to
see family resemblances. Wittgenstein's larger goal is to try to divert us from our philosophical problems long enough to become aware of our intuitive ability to
see the family resemblances.
Language-games
In one language-game, a word (for example game) might be used to stand for (or refer to) an object, but in another the same word might be used for giving orders, or for asking questions, and so on. The meaning the word has depends on the language-game in which it is used. What the sentence means thus depends on its context of use ( "Moses did not exist").
Rules
Any course of action can be made out to accord with some particular rule, and that therefore a rule cannot be used to explain an action.
Private language
A putative [ most likely incoherent] language which talks about those things which are known only to the user, whose content is inherently private.
It is incoherent to talk of
knowing ( Big difference in Knowing ( Trying to know) and Just Know [Already know without the any mechanism]) that one is in some particular mental state. Whereas others can learn of my pain, for example, I simply
have my own pain; it follows that one does not
know of one's own pain, one simply
has a pain.
First, he argues that a private language is not really a language at all. Meaning is a complicated phenomenon that is woven into the fabric of our lives. As a consequence, it makes no sense to talk about a private language, with words. [If you know something already, you don't need to talk about it. If you don't know something then you don't have it, and you are looking up the knowledge in wrong place]. Wittgenstein also argues that one couldn't possibly use the words of a private language. For a language to be used at all it must have some public criterion of identity. Wittgenstein asserts that, if something is a language, it cannot be (logically) private; and if something is private, it is not (and cannot be) a language.
Wittgenstein's beetle[edit]
Beetle-in-a-box thought experiment beetle as a private object "drops out of consideration as irrelevant".Thus, Wittgenstein argues, if we can talk about something, then it is not private, in the sense considered. And, contrapositively, if we consider something to be indeed private, it follows that we cannot talk about it.
Kripke's account[edit]
The discussion of private languages was revitalized in 1982 with the publication of
Saul Kripke's book
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.
[25] In this work, Kripke uses Wittgenstein's text to develop a particular type of skepticism about rules which stresses the
communal nature of language-use as grounding meaning.
[26]
Mind
Thought is inevitably tied to language, which is inherently social [?]; therefore, there is no 'inner' space in which thoughts can occur [?]. "An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria."
[27] like his private languages.
Those who insist that consciousness (or any other apparently subjective mental state) is conceptually unconnected to the external world are mistaken.
"But if I suppose that someone is in pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have so often had." — That gets us no further. It is as if I were to say: "You surely know what 'It is 5 o'clock here' means; so you also know what 'It's 5 o'clock on the sun' means. It means simply that it is just the same there as it is here when it is 5 o'clock." — The explanation by means of
identity does not work here.
[29]
Mental states are intimately connected to a subject's environment, "language is inherent and transcendental"
Wittgenstein and behaviorism
Some put Wittgenstein is simply a
behaviorist—one who thinks that mental states are nothing over and above certain behavior. However, Wittgenstein resists such a characterization
"Are you not really a behaviourist in disguise?
Clearly, Wittgenstein did not want to be a behaviorist, nor did he want to be a
cognitivist or a
phenomenologist. However, some argue that Wittgenstein is basically a behaviorist.
Seeing that vs. seeing as[edit]
The duck-rabbit, made famous by Wittgenstein
But what occurs when one sees it first as a duck, then as a rabbit? As the gnomic remarks in the
Investigations indicate, Wittgenstein isn't sure. However, he is sure that it could not be the case that the external world stays the same while an 'internal' cognitive change takes place.
Relation to the Tractatus
According to the standard reading, in the
Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein repudiates many of his own earlier views, expressed in the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The
Tractatus, as
Bertrand Russell saw it (though it should be noted that Wittgenstein took strong exception to Russell's reading), had been an attempt to set out a logically perfect language, building on Russell's own work. In the years between the two works Wittgenstein came to reject the idea that underpinned
logical atomism, that there were ultimate "simples" from which a language should, or even could, be constructed.
In remark #23 of
Philosophical Investigations he points out that the practice of human language is more complex than the simplified views of language that have been held by those who seek to explain or simulate human language by means of a
formal system. It would be a disastrous mistake, according to Wittgenstein, to see language as being in any way analogous to formal logic.
Besides stressing the Investigation's opposition to the
Tractatus, there are critical approaches which have argued that there is much more continuity and similarity between the two works than supposed. One of these is the
New Wittgenstein approach.
Norman Malcolm credits
Piero Sraffa with providing Wittgenstein with the conceptual break that founded the
Philosophical Investigations, by means of a rude gesture on Sraffa's part:
"Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity', Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?'"
See also
- The Confessions and De doctrina christiana of St. Augustine - Wittgenstein extensively quotes Augustine for his approach to language, both admiringly, and as a sparring partner to develop his own ideas, including the opening passage of Philosophical Investigations.
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Word>intonation/connotation>Sentences> Complex sentences> Complex sentences in context of previous sentences or the situation/subject matter> Facial expression, gesture, body language>Sub-languages>proto-language (lower newtonian mechanics realm reality> Primordial Language (Quantum and sub-quantum realm reality)...add rules of probabilities and you will find a very high degree of certainty of the language's expressivity of reality. If you can use all of the language, then you can achieve a perfect representation of the reality. = "The world as it is."
Picture theory of sentence /word meaning: There is a correspondence between language and the reality but words by themself does not capture anything.[There is a near perfect (unlikely to a perfect) correspondence of reality and sub-language (language that can not be expressed, because at that level, language as we use or imagine of yet not formed but primordial structure is still there). This sub-language is various forms of feelings and emotions, gut feelings, hunch, intuition, epiphany. you can be only aware of these but can not express in language about where from they are coming. Because you have no way to find it out, hence there is no words for it. Just because it is not evident in our daily language, does not mean that it is not existence or important in the way we know something. I already gave example of those.
There is a perfect correlation between
Words gets their meaning when it is in a sentence constructed describing a context when the words can convey that situation meaning. Supposed you want to express a situation and reality. The reality have an infinity layers and depth and so does the corresponding language but after some layers, language no nonger stays in communicable language forms. It enters the realm of sub-language, but still sub-language itself has its limit, beyond which only information remains that is even not a sub-language.The corresponding level of reality is already well above the Newtonian mechanics and good enough to represent everyday reality [Although many levels of lower Newtonian mechanics range of reality is beyond the reach of even sub-language. Different people have different range of sub-language realm that delve little bit deeper into Newtonian mechanics level. [Bottom line, a significant part of Newtonian realm of reality has a correspondence to sub-language and when sub-language and language combined, it depicts the reality with reasonable accuracy [like Newtonian Mechanics], but it is still lagging behind the lower Newtonian realm of reality.
Words = Ambiguous
Sentence = Very simple situation which is self contained fact stating sentences. Example: all bachelors are unmarried.
Complex Sentences= Common day to day situation, although they can be still ambiguous.
Complex Language ++ Context of previous complex sentences = Quality to express reality gets better.
Complex Language ++ Context of previous complex sentences + Author's background, intention, personality =
Quality to express reality gets better.
Complex Language ++ Context of previous complex sentences + Author's background, intention, personality+ Listeners /Readers component or their understanding the whole situation = Quality to express reality gets better.
Complex Language ++ Context of previous complex sentences + Author's background, intention, personality+ Listeners /Readers component or their understanding the whole situation ++ Facial expression/gesture/intonation/connotation == Quality to express reality gets better.
Complex
Language ++ Context of previous complex sentences + Author's
background, intention, personality+ Listeners /Readers component or
their understanding the whole situation ++ Facial expression/gesture/intonation/connotation ++++Addition of sub-language component== Upper Newtonian mechanic realm reality is expressed well enough to be meaningful.
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Sub-language level: You can still recognize it but can not put it in language where it came from in your thought. Different people have different level of sensitivity to detect the presence of such ideas or feelings. This part is still trainable and need a long time to broaden by practice and reflection. They are not still expressible in language about where they came from, but you can still recognize the presence of such entity or idea. Most of the ethics, religion, aesthetics are in the real of sublanguage and hence untraceable to less evolved mind. It is not possible to communicate the contents of sub-language in a meaningful ways but it still, in many occasions, can express the underlying situation or reality.
"Later transition> from picture theory of language to tool theory of language. Later he uses tool as a metaphor of words in expressing reality. Words and sentences are a tool and what it means depends on what you can do with it. The meaning of words is sumtotal of its possible uses. Originally, the words are the device tied with a picture to represent the reality but later words are no longer tied with picture but rather as a tool. Just like a tool can be used in many ( infinity) different ways, worlds can be used in many different ways and the ways it is used generates its new meaning ( often deviating its design just to express the underlying reality). Because the words are the agents of action in nonphysical plane, you can not stop it creating new meanings. The Language is indefinitely expandable [god], and there is no limit of its creation]. If you can not recognize the godnatured language, you will miss the reality. The words will not have a corresponding reality in physical newtonian world that we observe day to day, and you will be utterly confused about any meaning of anything at all. Its overshooting, or overusing of a poewerfull tool. Too powerful to mean reality of day to day. And this is the problem of mathematics too, like over calculation."
Language game: Its an add-on activity, not to represent any underlying picture!
There is no point of view outside of language.There is no way we can stand back behind the language and think without language.[False]. We are always operated within some language and its game. We can no longer take language for granted. Language can be immensely problematic. Reality can divide up if we divide it with language, and its valid in language world ( not necessarity, physical world, TRUE). There is no separate human existence apart from language. Its not a previladge for philosophers to analyze the language of religion, all they can do is to describe. Religious utterence is as equally valid and scientific claims. Rather philosopher should describle the effects of religios teaching of people, and that is the meaning of it. "God does not want any of your brain ( over intelectualization or over-understanding of meaning). What god wants is a heart." Philosophical problem arises when we take words of sentences out of their original context and try to understand the meaning of the words or sentences all by itself and try to disprove it in different context. The matter of fact that, words and sentences are only valid for the context. There is not only half truths except one.
Private language: Rules are always subject to interpretation. Obeying the rule is a social learning. In general controversial he himself. We can not speak of private language. The only ultimate criteria of meanings are not personal, are not private at all. Its social, the context it has been used. [False, its the reality itself]. The word use is also a social norm based on social acceptance. Language is a kind of life on itself. We can not just separate language from human activity. [False, we cannot separate the language [will, logos, intention, consciousness] from reality because they are tied together]
He wanted to write things differently, he wanted to be difficult. He always tried to say something that he haven't expressed yet. He never really succeed. He is against any general theory. He thought it's not possible. [False, we don't know, if we don't try]. The complexity of language and mind should not discourage us to pursue to develop a general theory. If you don't know, that does not mean that others can not know! If i can't do it. nobody can! He himself had a deep religious hunger.But most people think he was an atheist.He couldn't reconcile his philosophy and god/religious languages.
He devastatingly attacked the idea that words represents some things or some introspective mental process.
He espoused that words are actions or deeds. Very effective attack on Cartesian and tried to unify mid and body [unlike others anti Cartesian who just claimed there is no mind].
Traditionally, we think, any meaningfull human activity must have common understanding of reality. When one person talk, if the other person understand, they must have some common ground, unconscious language [True]. But he is very anxious to note that, in majority cases, we don't think. We just react primitively, forgetting that we are reacting. We dont put hands to fire, not by refuting Hume, rather we just dont do it becaused in most case we are biologically and socially conditioned/trained to do it, forgetting that fact and notw try to understand that by logic or philosophy.
Once, in a certain lake, there lived a turtle and a pair of swans. The turtle and the swans were friends. They would spend all their free time together telling each other stories, and exchanging news and gossip. The turtle especially loved to talk and chatter, and always had something to say.
The swans agreed and flew off. After flying for several hours they the perfect lake. They returned to the turtle with the good news. But now another problem arose: the new lake was too far for the turtle to walk. How was the turtle to get there? The swans did not want to leave their friend behind.