[2.4.9.1.] A Primitive Language.

 

In PI 2, he introduces a language “more primitive than ours”: I’ll call it “Builderese.”

 

It consists of four words:

• “block”
• “pillar”
• “slab”
• “beam”

Each word corresponds to a different shape of building stone.

 

This language is used by a very small “community”: two builders, A and B. When A calls out a word, B brings the corresponding stone to A.

 

Each of the words in Builderese can be understood as a name, as in the picture theory.

 

But they are not merely names. We do not fully understand the meanings of these words if all we know about them is that they name different building stones.

 

                6.  We could imagine that the language of §2 was the whole language of A and B; even the whole language of a tribe. The children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others.

                An important part of the training will consist in the teacher’s pointing to the objects, directing the child’s attention to them, and at the same time uttering a word; for instance, the word “slab” as he points to that shape. … This ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an association between the word and the thing. But what does this mean? Well, it may mean various things; but one very likely thinks first of all that a picture of the object comes before the child’s mind when it hears the word. But now, if this does happen—is it the purpose of the word?—Yes, it may be the purpose.—I can imagine such a use of words (or series of sounds). (Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.) But in the language of §2 it is not the purpose of the words to evoke images. (It may, of course, be discovered that that helps to attain the actual purpose.)

                But if the ostensive teaching has this effect,—am I to say that it effects an understanding of the word? Don’t you understand the call “Slab!” if you act upon it in such-and-such a way?—Doubtless the ostensive teaching helped to bring this about; but only together with a particular training. With different training the same ostensive teaching of these words would have effected a quite different understanding. (P1 6, emphases added)

 

If we think of the meaning of Builderese as the object that each word names, we will not understand that language. Simply making an association between “slab” and that which it (allegedly) names does not give the term a meaning. “Slab” gets a meaning only when it is connected with a specific training; and different trainings might be connected with that word.

 

Like the “five red apples” example, Builderese illustrates that meaning is not always a matter of a word referring to some object. Even if it is correct to construe “slab,” etc. as referring to slabs, etc., we still don’t understand what those words mean in Builderese until we understand how A and B use those terms in their daily activities, including how they were trained to use them.

 

 

 

[2.4.10.] Language Games.

 

The idea of a language game (Sprachspiel; “Sprach” refers not only to written language, but to spoken language as well[1]) is very important for the later Wittgenstein. It is introduced in §7:

 

                We can … think of the whole process of using words in (2) as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language. I will call these games “language-games” and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game. …

I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the “language-game”. (PI §7)

 

A language-game is not just language, but a larger chunk of activity into which language is interwoven. It consists of language AND action.

 

We understand words by engaging in the language games in which they are used. To understand what a word or group of words does, you do not look for its reference, the thing(s) in the world that it designates. Rather, you look at the language game in which it is used and you try to understand what it does in that game.

 

Language use is woven into a network of activities, and language has meaning because it plays a certain role in those activities. To know the meaning of a word is to understand the role it plays in a given activity.

 

 

[2.4.11.] A Variety of Uses.

 

At PI 8, he imagines an expansion of Builderese, which adds:

·         letters (a, b, c, d...) that serve as numerals

·         the words “there” and “this”

·         color samples

 

One of the points he is making in expanding Builderese in this way is that different sorts of words have different sorts of use. These different sorts of word are used in quite different ways.[2]

 

The words in a language rae like the variety of tools in a toolbox, which can be put to a number of different uses:

 

Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. -- The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.) (PI 11)

 

But the uniform appearance or sound of words fools us into thinking that they all do one fundamentally similar job:

 

Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly.

... It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all looking more or less alike. (Naturally, since they are all supposed to be handled.) But one is the handle of a crank which can be moved continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the handle of a switch, which has only two effective positions, it is either off or on; a third is the handle of a brake-lever, the harder one pulls on it, the harder it brakes; a fourth, the handle of a pump: it has an effect only so long as it is moved to and for. (PI 11-12)

 

Wittgenstein gives a long list of different language games:

 

Giving orders, and obeying them--

Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements--

Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)--

Reporting an event--

Speculating about an event--

Forming and testing a hypothesis--

Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams--

Making up a story; and reading it--

Play-acting--

Singing catches-[3]-

Guessing riddles--

Making a joke; telling it--

Solving a problem in practical arithmetic--

Translating from one language into another--

Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. (PI 23)

 

He is trying to dispel an idea that is associated with the Augustinian picture, an idea that he himself had adopted in the Tractatus. It is the idea that sentences are primarily descriptions of the world. Part of his point is that we do much, much more with language than simply describe the world.

 

So just as there are many different types of word other than names, there are many different types of sentence other than descriptions.

 

Wittgenstein chose the metaphor of a game to help convey this view of language, because

·         there are many different types of game, just as there are numerous different types of language use; and, more interestingly,

·         there are no characteristics that are shared by all games; in other words, there is no accurate definition of “game” that lists properties shared by every single game:

 

Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games”. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?—Don’t say: “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’”—but look and see whether there is anything common to all.—For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!—Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.—Are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

                And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. (PI 66, second emphasis added)

 

On Wittgenstein’s view, there is a family resemblance among all the different sorts of game—not one, or two, or any number of characteristics that they all have in common, but a set of overlapping and “criss-crossing” features that make each similar to many others in varying numbers of characteristics—just like the members of a large family.

 

And the same, he maintains, is true about uses of language. There are no general characteristics that unite all meaningful uses of language, no one or more things that they all have in common, not even picturing facts (as the earlier Wittgenstein had maintained). There is just a family resemblance among the many and varied uses of language.

 

 

[2.4.12.]  Philosophy as Therapy.

 

Something that the later Wittgenstein has in common with the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus is that he is critical of all traditional philosophy.

 

He began to think of philosophy as a sort of therapy—an examination of ordinary language that is therapeutic, in the sense that it cures us of traditional philosophical problems by showing them to be pseudo-problems:

 

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. (PI 109)

 

                Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking, which we have foolishly put there; but to do that it must make movements which are just as complicated as those knots. Although the result of philosophy is simple, its method cannot be if it is to arrive at that result.

                The complexity of philosophy is not in its subject matter, but in our knotted understanding.[4]

 

This attitude towards philosophy is sometimes called quietism.

 

One aspect of this critical stance was his rejection of the traditional idea of philosophy as an attempt to provide general explanations, e.g., the traditional attempt to explain what knowledge is. Plato was looking for something like a definition of knowledge, a list of conditions which were jointly sufficient and severally necessary for knowing (e.g., x is knowledge if and only if it is a belief, true, and accompanied by “an account” of what is known).

 

Wittgenstein came to think that philosophy isn’t capable of such explanations/definitions. We can list different examples of knowing, but they won’t all fulfill the same conditions. They will share something more like a family resemblance. [We will see a different sort of criticism of traditional attempts to define “knowledge” when we read Edmund Gettier, later in the semester.]

 

Wittgenstein’s early attempt to give a general explanation of the possibility of linguistic meaning was like this. His picture theory of meaning was an attempt to formulate a single account which would apply to all meaningful sentences.

 

 

Stopping point for Friday February 13. Next time we will have a review-session; come to class prepared to ask questions about what we have done so far. Your first test is Wednesday.