Some Remarks on the Philosophical Investigations (Part 1)

Supposedly, our analysis of language will give us a more precise way of finding the essence of what we are looking for. It is as if we were taking apart a watch and looking at each part, thinking that one of the parts will contain the essence of the watch - like the objects in Wittgenstein's picture theory of language.

"But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. It is as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved.

"It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal the of our investigations (PI, para. 91)."

Wittgenstein compares analytic philosophers to someone who is trying to find the real artichoke by stripping away the leaves (B.B. p.125, and P.I. para. 164).

The assumption in the Tractatus was that the meaning of a word resided in what it named, i.e., the object for which it stands. As I said earlier, this picture of language dates from Augustine, and has been the picture that many philosophers have subscribed too since that time. One of the reasons the PI was written, was to dispel the notion that associates words with objects. However, do keep in mind that some words are associated with objects, but Wittgenstein's primary mission in the PI is that there is much more to language than his picture theory. Wittgenstein's conception of language in the PI is much wider in scope - it goes directly to how we use words in our everyday speech, and how our actions relate to that language.

At the beginning of the PI Wittgenstein gives the example of someone going shopping with a note marked "five red apples" - he passes the note to the shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper goes to a box of apples, then he looks at a color chart with the appropriate color; and finally, he counts up to five and removes the appropriate number of apples from the box. If the shopkeeper brings back the correct number and color of apples, then we know that the shopkeeper understood what was written on the slip of paper. That is to say, the shopkeepers actions showed that he understood.

Now if we understand language in terms of the Tractatus, then the appropriate question is the following: What does the term apple refer too, and what does the term color refer too? It is easy to imagine objects associated with each of these words, but what does the word five refer too? Wittgenstein says that this question only makes sense if the word five functions the same as the other two words, or if the word five belongs to the same category. The tendency is to think that since we can point to real objects (apples and color samples) as the references of apple and red, then there must be something we can point too when using the word five. However, the point is, that with the word five there is no object that we can point too - only how five is used (PI, para. 1).

"That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of language more primitive than ours (PI, para, 2)."

The problem is that the function of language is much more sophisticated than we imagine. It is as if we were to define the term game in terms of objects moving on a surface (PI, para. 3), however, this is only true of some games. Not all definitions are meant to be absolute - they are guides in the use of words. One might say that both the definition, and the use of words play an important part in the logic of language. However, too me, use plays a more important role, and I believe it did for Wittgenstein.

"Look at the sentence as an instrument, and it sense as its employment (PI, para. 421)."

According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein said that to understand a proposition is to be prepared for one of its uses; and if we cannot think of a use for it, then we do not understand it.

Sam26 wrote:
Consider once again the idea of games, is there one definition that fits every idea of what we mean by a game? There is no precision here with regard to a definition or referent, yet we use the word, and understand how the word is used in various contexts. There is a kind of logic of use here, which is displayed in the way we learn to use a word or proposition.



It is said above that even in the absence of a universally applicable definition of a word "yet we use the word, and understand how the word is used in various contexts".
But isn't it the case that in PI Witt doesn't adequately explain the process by which we understand how to use a word. I mean if I point to a man building a garden shed and say he is engaged in a game I think most would say that isn't a proper use of the word "game". But why? It's an activity that follows a set of laid out procedures or rules for building the structure. The man may be engaged in the activity to pass away a boring Sunday afternoon. It seems to me to have enough features that give the activity a family resemblance to many of the activities I would unproblematically label a game.So why isn't building a shed a game? Simply telling us that humans don't use the word that way is hardly illuminating as I already knew that. What I am looking for from great philosophers is why isn't it the right way to use the word. If a precise and clear explanation of why and how people use language can't be given then why should any use not be acceptable. I could point to the monitor I am looking at and label it a game. On what grounds could you object to that particular usage.

Sam26 wrote:
........Language is not always that clear and precise, and neither should it be. Sometimes the vague is exactly what we need......

I would have to disagree. Vagueness is never a desirable thing as it leads to paradoxes. We didn't need Witt to point out that some concepts appear to be vague. This has been understood as far back as the ancient Greeks. Indeed the Sorties paradox or heap paradox results from this understanding. A heap of sand grains is,supposedly, a vague concept as we say there is no precise number of sand grains placed on top of one another that make it a heap. But suppose I place a sand grain down one at a time in a confined surface. At first all the grains will be spread-out evenly but when I reach the limits of that confinement each grain of sand will start to lie on top of another. After adding a grain of sand time and time again common sense tells us that this will result in something we call a heap of sand but that must happen only after the addition of a single grain of sand. Therefore a heap in this context would be X number of sand grains placed within this confined area and that X-1 number of sand grains wasn't a heap, thereby making the concept of a heap far from vague if it can be defined that precisely. So we have supposedly one sound line of reasoning telling us a heap of sand is vague and can't be precisely defined. Yet we have another apparently sound line of reasoning telling us that a heap will be a precise number of grains of sand. And a paradox is not something any rational being wants to exist.
You see a kind of sorties occurring with a well known example that W gave himself. He asks what is Excalibur. If Excalibur was the complete blade and handle of the sword combined, then if we break a small part of the blade then we no longer have Excalibur. But that isn't so. If the break is small we say that the object is still Excalibur with part of it's blade broken. We break some more of the blade, yet we still have Excalibur but now with a bigger break. But it's bound to be the case that after breaking enough of the blade we will get down to something that is no longer Excalibur but just part of Excalibur. So at what point does the transition from being Excalibur to being part of Excalibur occur. This is suppose to be vague, but common sense suggests it shouldn't be. Suppose I broke an inch of blade at a time. Common sense suggests that at some moment we reach the transition I talked about. I now say that to be part of Excalibur is something with X amount of inches of it's blade and to be Excalibur itself is to between X and X+1 inches of blade. Making the concept of what is Excalibur far from vague. But isn't that a similar paradox to the sorties. What we want from philosophers are not paradoxes but how to resolve them. Vagueness only invites paradoxes.

Sol wrote:

It is said above that even in the absence of a universally applicable definition of a word "yet we use the word, and understand how the word is used in various contexts".
But isn't it the case that in PI Witt doesn't adequately explain the process by which we understand how to use a word. I mean if I point to a man building a garden shed and say he is engaged in a game I think most would say that isn't a proper use of the word "game". But why? It's an activity that follows a set of laid out procedures or rules for building the structure. The man may be engaged in the activity to pass away a boring Sunday afternoon. It seems to me to have enough features that give the activity a family resemblance to many of the activities I would unproblematically label a game.So why isn't building a shed a game? Simply telling us that humans don't use the word that way is hardly illuminating as I already knew that. What I am looking for from great philosophers is why isn't it the right way to use the word. If a precise and clear explanation of why and how people use language can't be given then why should any use not be acceptable. I could point to the monitor I am looking at and label it a game. On what grounds could you object to that particular usage.

I believe we have to again look at why Wittgenstein wrote the PI. We know that Wittgenstein was responding to a particular way of looking at language,i.e., language as defined in some ostensive way, via an object or via a definition. He says that language is much more broad in its use, not that an ostensive view is necessarily wrong, but that language is much more complex than the kind of analysis he did in the Tractatus.

Wittgenstein uses the idea of a language-game to show how use plays an important role in the learning of words, and the learning of propositions. You say that Wittgenstein didn't properly explain how words are used, but he spends the entire book explaining this idea, among others. He gives many examples showing us how use plays a central role in the learning of words. It isn't that he is simply saying that when you use the word game to refer to a shed that you are using it incorrectly, but that there is something fundamental to the way we learn words that we need to account for in language; and that philosophers tend to overlook the way words are used and learned in a culture, and amongst people.

You also make the comment that Wittgenstein isn't telling you much by simply saying that "...humans don't use the word that way is hardly illuminating as I already knew that," and if that was all he was saying I would agree. Anyone can see that to call a car a dog, is simply wrong. However, what he is trying to explain is much more complex, which is why it is so difficult for people to come to grips with his method. Think of the many philosophical terms that philosophers spend so much time trying to define, i.e., trying to come up with the common characteristic that is the essence of knowledge. Whereby, once we understand this essence or property, we now understand the meaning of knowledge. However, according to Wittgenstein's analysis of language, there is no one essence of knowledge - there are just many overlapping family resemblances that we use, and we learn many of these uses in a variety of contexts via language-games. We learn to use the word know in a variety of ways - using proofs, using experiences, using testimony, using linguistics, and using tautologies to name a few, but there is no common characteristic - no precision - except in context. To analyze words in this way takes a lot of work, and if you haven't read On Certainty, I would suggest you do, because it is here that we see Wittgenstein's method as he analyzes Moore's use of the word know, and it is here that we will see how difficult it is to actually use Wittgenstein's method as we do philosophy.

Sol wrote:

I would have to disagree. Vagueness is never a desirable thing as it leads to paradoxes. We didn't need Witt to point out that some concepts appear to be vague. This has been understood as far back as the ancient Greeks. Indeed the Sorties paradox or heap paradox results from this understanding. A heap of sand grains is,supposedly, a vague concept as we say there is no precise number of sand grains placed on top of one another that make it a heap. But suppose I place a sand grain down one at a time in a confined surface. At first all the grains will be spread-out evenly but when I reach the limits of that confinement each grain of sand will start to lie on top of another. After adding a grain of sand time and time again common sense tells us that this will result in something we call a heap of sand but that must happen only after the addition of a single grain of sand. Therefore a heap in this context would be X number of sand grains placed within this confined area and that X-1 number of sand grains wasn't a heap, thereby making the concept of a heap far from vague if it can be defined that precisely. So we have supposedly one sound line of reasoning telling us a heap of sand is vague and can't be precisely defined. Yet we have another apparently sound line of reasoning telling us that a heap will be a precise number of grains of sand. And a paradox is not something any rational being wants to exist.
You see a kind of sorties occurring with a well known example that W gave himself. He asks what is Excalibur. If Excalibur was the complete blade and handle of the sword combined, then if we break a small part of the blade then we no longer have Excalibur. But that isn't so. If the break is small we say that the object is still Excalibur with part of it's blade broken. We break some more of the blade, yet we still have Excalibur but now with a bigger break. But it's bound to be the case that after breaking enough of the blade we will get down to something that is no longer Excalibur but just part of Excalibur. So at what point does the transition from being Excalibur to being part of Excalibur occur. This is suppose to be vague, but common sense suggests it shouldn't be. Suppose I broke an inch of blade at a time. Common sense suggests that at some moment we reach the transition I talked about. I now say that to be part of Excalibur is something with X amount of inches of it's blade and to be Excalibur itself is to between X and X+1 inches of blade. Making the concept of what is Excalibur far from vague. But isn't that a similar paradox to the sorties. What we want from philosophers are not paradoxes but how to resolve them. Vagueness only invites paradoxes.

Wittgenstein is not saying that there is no precision in language, obviously there is, but precision is a matter of context. What might be precise according to a carpenter is not precise for a physicist. In our everyday use of the word precision - what is precise depends on the language-game. If we are in your study, and there is only one desk in the room with one lamp on the desk, and you ask me to remove the lamp and place it on the floor - would I respond by saying your not being precise enough. Obviously not. The notion of "placing it on the floor" is vague, is it not, and yet we use language like this all the time. Should you have to mark a spot on the floor, so that I can place the lamp in an exact spot. If someone says, "Come stand next to me," should I look for a mark on the floor in order to know exactly what someone means by stand next to me. Language is vague and yet we are able to use it, and language can be very precise. The problem occurs when we try to take what is vague, and treat it like a mathematical problem.

Not all philosophical problems fall into Wittgenstein's method of analysis, but many of the problems do. In fact, many of the questions that you see asked in these forums are just such problems.

Some of the problems that fall into these categories are the following:

Time
free will and determinism
knowing
doubting
soul
God
thought
proposition
truth
solipsism
objectivity and subjectivity
mind
and on and on..............

Sam26 wrote:


I believe we have to again look at why Wittgenstein wrote the PI. We know that Wittgenstein was responding to a particular way of looking at language,i.e., language as defined in some ostensive way, via an object or via a definition. He says that language is much more broad in its use, not that an ostensive view is necessarily wrong, but that language is much more complex than the kind of analysis he did in the Tractatus.


I completely agree. I think the power of PI is it acts as a critique of the Tractatus, and Witt should be applauded for being willing to re-visit his earlier work and show up it's shortcomings. That takes intellectual honesty and courage.

Sam26 wrote:

....You say that Wittgenstein didn't properly explain how words are used, but he spends the entire book explaining this idea, among others. He gives many examples showing us how use plays a central role in the learning of words. It isn't that he is simply saying that when you use the word game to refer to a shed that you are using it incorrectly, but that there is something fundamental to the way we learn words that we need to account for in language; and that philosophers tend to overlook the way words are used and learned in a culture, and amongst people.


To be fair and for the purposes of precision I don't think I actually said W didn't explain how words are used. What I said was "But isn't it the case that in PI Witt doesn't adequately explain the process by which we understand how to use a word".
Would you not accept Sam that there is a difference between describing how words are used and explaining why words are used the way they are. PI abounds with descriptions of how words are used.You have written about many. W observes that when we use the word "game" we don't appeal to some universally applicable definition but instead seem to use the word as a label for a set of activities that have at most a family resemblance. That's all well and good, and such an observation acts as a critique of the Tractatus in the sense that it challenges the notion that the world is made up of neatly delineated atomic facts which can be referred to by neat little atomic propositions. But observing that when we call various different activities games these different activities have a family resemblance doesn't explain WHY we used the word "game" to label these particular activities the way we did.It just acts as a description of how the word is being used. That was point I was trying to make in my building a shed example. I believe building a shed has a family resemblance to many of activities we call games for the reasons I outlined, but we don't call building a shed a game. So making the observation that when labelling activities games we find these activities have similarities isn't an explanation as to why we called them games as if it were we would call all things similar to 'game activities' games. What W appears to be doing is only describing what is going on when we use words like game. He is not explaining why we use it the way we do.
It is a long time since I read the Tractatus and PI and I admit I found them heavy going but I think the power of the PI comes from it's critique of the Tractatus, showing that W's early work is too facile and restrictive to be an adequate explanation of how and why we use language, but PI isn't a book, to my recollection, that provides an explanation of WHY we use language the way we do but is rather just full of interesting examples of HOW language is used in various contexts. Interesting as this is I think it is answering the Why question, however, that matters the most. After all if I was a scientist trying to create an android that could mimic human intelligence, a prerequisite for achieving this is to create a machine that could speak and understand language as well as we could.To be able to do this I must first understand WHY it is that humans use words the way they do. Scientists working in AI are already familiar with many of the observations made in PI. Such scientists tell you that they could not put a robot in a hundred different rooms and programme it to move towards the door, rather than say the window, because they really don't know why humans are able to distinguish between doors and windows. It is not, as Witt, would observe that there is some definition of a door that perfectly distinguishes it from the definition of a window ( try finding one and you will see what I mean) a definition they could then use to construct as an algorithm or programme. Yet if you placed a 4 year old in hundred different rooms they could accomplish the task of distinguishing between doors and windows easily. But aren't we biological machines whose brains presumably work to some definable programme. My point is that even if the Tractatus doesn't provide us with a way of grasping why humans use language the way they do, the PI doesn't either.

Sol wrote:

To be fair and for the purposes of precision I don't think I actually said W didn't explain how words are used. What I said was "But isn't it the case that in PI Witt doesn't adequately explain the process by which we understand how to use a word".
Would you not accept Sam that there is a difference between describing how words are used and explaining why words are used the way they are. PI abounds with descriptions of how words are used.You have written about many. W observes that when we use the word "game" we don't appeal to some universally applicable definition but instead seem to use the word as a label for a set of activities that have at most a family resemblance. That's all well and good, and such an observation acts as a critique of the Tractatus in the sense that it challenges the notion that the world is made up of neatly delineated atomic facts which can be referred to by neat little atomic propositions. But observing that when we call various different activities games these different activities have a family resemblance doesn't explain WHY we used the word "game" to label these particular activities the way we did.It just acts as a description of how the word is being used. That was point I was trying to make in my building a shed example. I believe building a shed has a family resemblance to many of activities we call games for the reasons I outlined, but we don't call building a shed a game. So making the observation that when labelling activities games we find these activities have similarities isn't an explanation as to why we called them games as if it were we would call all things similar to 'game activities' games. What W appears to be doing is only describing what is going on when we use words like game. He is not explaining why we use it the way we do.
It is a long time since I read the Tractatus and PI and I admit I found them heavy going but I think the power of the PI comes from it's critique of the Tractatus, showing that W's early work is too facile and restrictive to be an adequate explanation of how and why we use language, but PI isn't a book, to my recollection, that provides an explanation of WHY we use language the way we do but is rather just full of interesting examples of HOW language is used in various contexts. Interesting as this is I think it is answering the Why question, however, that matters the most. After all if I was a scientist trying to create an android that could mimic human intelligence, a prerequisite for achieving this is to create a machine that could speak and understand language as well as we could.To be able to do this I must first understand WHY it is that humans use words the way they do. Scientists working in AI are already familiar with many of the observations made in PI. Such scientists tell you that they could not put a robot in a hundred different rooms and programme it to move towards the door, rather than say the window, because they really don't know why humans are able to distinguish between doors and windows. It is not, as Witt, would observe that there is some definition of a door that perfectly distinguishes it from the definition of a window ( try finding one and you will see what I mean) a definition they could then use to construct as an algorithm or programme. Yet if you placed a 4 year old in hundred different rooms they could accomplish the task of distinguishing between doors and windows easily. But aren't we biological machines whose brains presumably work to some definable programme. My point is that even if the Tractatus doesn't provide us with a way of grasping why humans use language the way they do, the PI doesn't either.

What your asking, I think, is beyond the scope of what Wittgenstein was trying to do, and it is definitely beyond the scope of this thread. However, that is not to say that it isn't important, I am sure it is. It seems to delve into how our minds/brains function, i.e., if I understand your question.

Some Remarks on the Philosophical Investigations (Part 2)

According to Wittgenstein what clears up the fog of language is studying language in primitive settings. For example, think about a child learning a language - it's not a matter of explanation - it's a matter of training - training in the use of words. Explanation comes later.

Remember Wittgenstein's early language-game (PI, para. 2) between the builder and his assistant. The builder is using words like block, pillar, slab, and beam. The builder calls out one of the words "Slab!" and the assistant brings the appropriate stone. This is a primitive language-game (names that refer to particular objects). The training establishes a connection between the name and the object. Does the assistant's understanding of the word happen when he/she gets an image in the mind? - No, it is acting upon the word in a particular way.

It is interesting that we can accomplish the same things with different grouping of words or letters. Instead of the call "Slab!" I can say "Bring me the slab," or "I want a slab;" or I can use "a," "b," or "c" to accomplish the same purpose. If you say "Slab," how is it that you mean "Bring me a slab?" Well, it is a matter of convention - meaning is not private.

Obviously language-games expand, which means that slab can mean various things in different language-games.

What does this tell us about the use of words like know or certainty? It means that when we as philosophers try to connect the word knowledge with a precise definition, as though a definition is going to cover every use of the word - we fail. That is why it is important to look at how we use the word, which also tells us important things about what it means "to know."

If you want to get a good look at how to apply the methods of the PI to certain words, read On Certainty.

Again, meaning is not a private thing, as though we should associate knowing with some internal mechanism, state, or quality. Knowing is part of the language-game of having knowledge, and that takes place in a culture, a form or life, or dialogue. I am not saying that things do not go on in the mind, but in a sense it is irrelevant. When the builder called out to the assistant "Slab!" - I am sure there was something going on in the assistant's mind, but that is irrelevant (It's irrelevant in the sense that we are talking about here.) to the correct use of the word.

The point is, of course, that we are always tempted to want to point to something that refers to the word - whether it is some physical object, a definition, or something in the mind; and there are times when this is appropriate, but we forget just how important use is. Use is where we begin to learn language - children are taught how to use words, and we know that they understand the word or proposition because they use them correctly.

There are many confusions that occur as a result of not looking at the way we use language. Consider the following:

How do we use words in terms of a form of life - how do we use words in certain contexts, i.e., language-games?

"When we say: "Every word in language signifies something" we have so far said nothing whatever: unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make (PI, para. 13)."

Saying that all words signify something, is like saying that all tools serve to modify something - this tells us very little (PI, para. 13, 14).