Wi#genstein s Philosophical Investigations into Language

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1 Wi#genstein s Philosophical Investigations into Language STUART LOW TRUST PHILOSOPHY FORUM SESSION 84 ALEX BISHOP Ludwig Wi)genstein was born in Vienna in At this time, Vienna was the capital of the Austro- Hungarian Ludwig Wi#genstein empire, one of the most powerful states in Europe. His Born in 1889 in Vienna (then family was one of the richest in Austria- Hungary (his the capital of the Austro- father was an industrialist). This wealth did not bring Hungarian empire) happiness, however: three of Wi)genstein s brothers Major works: Tractatus Logico- commi)ed suicide and Wi)genstein considered taking his Philosophicus (1921), own life. Philosophical Investigations (1953, posthumous) Wi)genstein had just four works published in his life: a Long association with the book, a paper, a book review, and somewhat University of Cambridge and incongruously a children s dictionary. The book review the Cambridge University (evaluating The Science of Logic by P Coffey, a volume today Moral Sciences Club only remembered for being the subject of a withering Died in Cambridge in 1951 critique by Wi)genstein, who devoted almost half of his assessment to an enumerated list of the grave mistakes in Coffey s tome) came first in 1912, appearing in the Cambridge Review, an undergraduate magazine. Next was the Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus (Latin for Logical- Philosophical Treatise), the only book Wi)genstein published during his lifetime; it went on sale in At this point Wi)genstein thought he had solved all major philosophical problems and that there was no point expending any further effort on the subject. He spent the next few years as a school teacher in rural Austria, which is where he put together the children s dictionary. Following this, he worked as a gardener and an architect (he designed a house for his sister). His final publication, a paper entitled Some Remarks on Logical Form, was wri)en in 1929 and to some extent marked Wi)genstein s return to philosophy. In this essay, Wi)genstein a)empted to patch up some of the concepts in the Tractatus in order to fix flaws pointed out by others. However, he soon realised that a more radical approach was needed and spent the rest of his life working on a revised philosophical outlook. Despite many a)empts, he did not manage to finish any other books or articles to his satisfaction during his final 22 years, though a lot of his writing (including the unfinished Philosophical Investigations) was published after his death. Wi)genstein first arrived at the University of Cambridge in 1911 as an undergraduate philosophy student (though he was older than the typical undergraduate, having previously studied engineering in Berlin and Manchester). He made no real a)empt to get a degree but was taken under the wing of Betrand Russell, the philosopher and mathematician, who had high hopes that Wi)genstein would apply some scientific rigour to philosophy. Wi)genstein, however, would increasingly disappoint Russell, who despaired in his 1959 book My Philosophical Development, The later Wi)genstein [ ] seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary. Page 1 of 8

2 Wi)genstein left Cambridge after two years and went to Norway to think about logic. He fought in the First World War for the Austrian army (which was on the losing side) and wrote much of the Tractatus while he was being held prisoner of war by the Italians. During his gardening and architecture period, Wi)genstein found himself being drawn back to philosophy. He a)ended a philosophy group at the University of Vienna (which would later become the Vienna Circle influential in mid- twentieth century philosophy). He returned to Cambridge in 1929 to study under Frank Ramsey, one of the few people on Earth who appeared to understand (and, crucially, persuasively disagree with parts of) the Tractatus. (In 1923, Wi)genstein discovered that Ramsey was planning to visit Vienna. He arranged for them to devote five hours a day to a line- by- line reading of his opus.) He was awarded a PhD for the Tractatus (telling his examiners, Don t worry, I know you ll never understand it ) and became a lecturer and professor. His collaboration with Ramsey, however, was cut short when the la)er died of jaundice in 1930 at the age of 26. Wi)genstein became a British citizen in 1938 after the Anschluss, when Nazi Germany annexed his native Austria (Wi)genstein had Jewish grandparents). He retired from Cambridge in 1947 (though he had spent lengthy periods away from the University: he travelled and lived abroad at times, worked as a porter at Guy s Hospital during the Second World War, and had a spell employed as a laboratory assistant in Newcastle). He died in 1951 at the age of 62. The Poker Incident Wi)genstein had a long association with the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, a still- extant philosophy forum. He gave his first talk there in 1912, answering the question What is Philosophy? in just four minutes (se)ing a record for brevity that stands to this day). In 1944, he became the chairman (taking over from GE Moore), by which time the group had become something of a Wi)genstein personality cult. In October 1946, the Moral Sciences Club was the se)ing for the most notorious incident involving Wi)genstein: his argument with fellow Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (then based at the London School of Economics). It is believed to be the only time the two met. Popper, the Moral Sciences Club s guest speaker that evening, was presenting on the topic Are There Philosophical Problems? when an argument broke out between him and Wi)genstein on the nature of philosophy. The debate got increasingly heated, culminating in Wi)genstein pointing a poker at Popper, demanding an example of a moral rule. Not to threaten visiting speakers with pokers, Popper is said to have retorted, causing Wi)genstein to storm out. Recollections of the meeting differ, with some even going as far as to claim that both Wi)genstein and Popper were armed with pokers, as if preparing for a fight. Some a)ribute the wi)y riposte to Betrand Russell (who was also present at the meeting). Unfortunately for those seeking an authoritative account, the minutes of the meeting (taken by secretary Wasfi Hijab) simply state: The meeting was charged to an unusual degree with a spirit of controversy. Page 2 of 8

3 Philosophical Investigations Unfinished when Wi)genstein died; published in 1953 Original text is German; translated into English by GEM Anscombe Contradicts much of what Wi)genstein wrote in Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus Formed of two parts: part I was largely wri)en in Norway in ; part II (today known as Philosophy of Psychology A Fragment) was largely wri)en in Ireland in Unusual style: numbered sections; rich in metaphor; challenges the reader with thought experiments (philosophy is an activity) Wi)genstein spent much of his later life working on the book Philosophical Investigations, though he ultimately never completed it to his satisfaction. It was published two years after his death in The book was edited by GEM Anscombe (herself a successful philosopher in her own right) and Rush Rhees, with Anscombe producing an English translation. There have been four major editions of Philosophical Investigations. After the 1953 original, Anscombe published a revision in 1958 (which contains minor changes to the German text and more substantive modifications to the English translation). After her death, there was a 2003 edition by Nicholas Denyer, which adds some further corrections made by Anscombe but never previously published. The 2009 revised fourth edition by PMS Hacker and Joachim Schulte contains both changes to the German text and extensive updates to the English translation, in part produced by re- examining the corrections Wi)genstein made to the parts of the book translated by Rhees while Wi)genstein was still alive (unfortunately, Wi)genstein was not a native English speaker and his alterations were not always improvements, which the editors of the fourth edition had to take into account). Philosophical Investigations contradicts much of what Wi)genstein wrote in the Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus (sometimes explicitly so). For a time, Wi)genstein wanted the two to be published side- by- side, believing the later book could only be fully understood if one was familiar with its predecessor. The book is split into two parts, the first largely wri)en in Norway in 1936 to 1937 and the second in Ireland in 1947 to While the editors of the earlier editions believed that the Wi)genstein wanted to incorporate the second part into the first part, those behind the most recent edition are skeptical, going as far as to give the second part a separate title: Philosophy of Psychology A Fragment. Philosophical Investigations has an unusual style, being made up of short numbered sections, typically a paragraph or two long (Wi)genstein also numbered his statements in the Tractatus). The text is conversational and rich in metaphor. Wi)genstein engages in a discussion with the reader (to the point of quoting imagined objections and responding to them) and invites him or her to think through various philosophical problems. Wi)genstein s approach is to treat philosophy as an activity in which the reader is an active participant. This is in contrast to many other philosophical works, which focus on expressing the author s own arguments. The book is considered to be amongst the most influential philosophical publications of the twentieth century. Page 3 of 8

4 Question 1: What is a game? At first glance, this seems to be a straightforward question but difficulties quickly arise if we actually try to provide an exact definition (one that is not too broad encompasses activities that are not games nor too narrow excludes some games). A possible approach is to ask: do all games have a common factor? Unfortunately, determining a common factor is difficult. Let s examine some candidates: Fun how does one define fun? Many activities that would not be characterised as games are entertaining Competition what about single- player games (patience, many computer games)? Can be won nobody ever won Tetris Trivial not professional team sports Wi)genstein s solution was essentially to declare trying to define games as a pointless exercise: we have no exact definition of a game and it doesn t maker. Consider, for example, the activities that we call games. I mean board- games, card- games, ball- games, athletic games, and so on. What is common to them all? Don t say: They must have something in 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 won t see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don t think, but look Look, for example, at board- games, with their various affinities. 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 entertaining? 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 singing and dancing games; here we have the element of entertainment, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared And we can go throw the many, many other groups of games in the same way, can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the upshot of these considerations is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss- crossing: similarities in the large and in the small. Philosophical Investigations, 66 I can think of no be)er expression to characterize these similarities than family resemblances ; for the various resemblances between members of a family build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth overlap and criss- cross in the same way. And I shall say: games form a family. Philosophical Investigations, 67 (excerpt) Page 4 of 8

5 Wi#genstein on Games Games have family resemblances with no one factor common to them all ( 67) There are no firm boundaries for the concept of a game; boundaries could be defined for some special purpose but this does not mean they existed before ( 68 69) The concept of a game can be explained by example ( 69); it is not necessary to be able to provide a definition ( 70) Our concept of a game is like a blurred photograph but this is good enough for us ( 71) You can know what something is even if you cannot say what it is ( 75, 78) For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game, and what no longer does? Can you say where the boundaries are? No. You can draw some, for there aren t any drawn yet. (But this never bothered you before when you used the word game.) But then the use of the word is unregulated the game we play with it is unregulated. It is not everywhere bounded by rules; but no more are there any rules for how high one may throw the ball in tennis, or how hard, yet tennis is a game for all that, and has rules too. Philosophical Investigations, 68 (excerpt) How would we explain to someone what a game is? I think that we d describe games to him, and we might add to the description: This and similar things are called games. And do we know any more ourselves? Is it just that we can t tell others exactly what a game is? But this is not ignorance. We don t know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary for a special purpose. Does it take this to make the concept usable? Not at all Except perhaps for that special purpose. Philosophical Investigations, 69 (excerpt) But if the concept game is without boundaries in this way, you don t really know what you mean by a game. When I give the description The ground was quite covered with plants, do you want to say that I don t know what I m talking about until I can give a definition of a plant? Philosophical Investigations, 70 (excerpt) One can say that the concept of a game is a concept with blurred edges. But is a blurred concept a concept at all? Is a photograph that is not sharp a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace a picture that is not sharp by one that is? Isn t one that isn t sharp often just what we need? Philosophical Investigations, 71 (excerpt) Page 5 of 8

6 What does it mean to know what a game is? What does it mean to know it and not be able to say it? Is this knowledge somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition? So that if it were formulated, I d be able to recognize it as the expression of my knowledge? Isn t my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely expressed in the explanations that I could give? That is, in my describing examples of various kinds of game, showing how all sorts of other games can be constructed on the analogy of these, saying that I would hardly call this or that a game, and so on. Philosophical Investigations, 75 Compare knowing and saying: how many metres high Mount Blanc is how the word game is used how a clarinet sounds. Someone who is surprised that one can know something and not be able to say it is perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not of one like the third. Philosophical Investigations, 78 This isn t relevant just for games: Wi)genstein thought these blurred edges could be found in the definitions of most words and concepts. He extended this to ethics (why we find it so difficult to define what good means). He even believed that this applies to language itself and how we use it. Wi)genstein begins Philosophical Investigations by quoting Augustine (an early Christian theologian and philosopher) in Confessions: When grown- ups named some object and at the same time turned towards it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signified by the sound they u)ered, since they meant to point it out. [ ] In this way, li)le by li)le, I learnt to understand what things the words, which I heard u)ered in their respective places in various sentences, signified. These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the words in language name objects sentences are combinations of such names. In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. The meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which this word stands. Philosophical Investigations, 1 (excerpt) Now what do the words of this language signify? How is what they signify supposed to come out other than in the kind of use they have? Philosophical Investigations, 10 (excerpt) Wi)genstein thinks that if one is to investigate language, the trick is to look at how words are used rather than what they mean. Page 6 of 8

7 Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them in speech, or see them wri)en or in print. For their use is not that obvious. Especially when we are doing philosophy Philosophical Investigations, 11 (excerpt) In the Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, Wi)genstein argued that the only meaningful sentences in language are propositions, or statements of fact. Assertions ( The cat is on the mat ) are already propositions, while questions ( Is the cat on the mat? ) and commands ( Put the cat on the mat ) can be rephrased as assertions. Therefore, if we investigate the logical form of propositions, we are investigating the entire structure of language. In Philosophical Investigations, Wi)genstein directly counters this view, claiming that there are actually countless kinds of sentence (with new forms appearing over time) and that focusing solely on propositions is a flawed approach, which has damaged philosophy. But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question and command? There are countless kinds; countless different kinds of use of all the things we call signs, words, sentences. And this diversity is not something fixed, given once and for all; but new types of language, new language- games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete or forgo)en. (We can get a rough picture of this form from the changes in mathematics.) The word language- game is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life. Consider this variety of language- games in the following examples, and in others: Giving orders, and acting on them Describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements Constructing an object from a description (a drawing) Reporting an event Speculating about the event Forming and testing a hypothesis Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams Making up a story; and reading one Acting in a play Singing rounds Guessing riddles Cracking a joke; telling one Solving a problem in applied arithmetic Translating from one language into another Requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. It is interesting to compare the diversity of the tools of language and of the ways they are used, the diversity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (This includes the author of the Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus.) Philosophical Investigations, 23 Page 7 of 8

8 Wi#genstein on the Use and Variety of Language Questions the idea that language is primarily used to name objects ( 1) How language is used is more important than what the words mean ( 10 11) Rejects his own earlier argument (in the Tractatus) that the only meaningful statements are propositions, which have a logical form that can be analysed There are countless kinds of sentences ( 23) Question 2: What do you think of Wi#genstein s idea that how language is used is more significant than what the words mean? Are there are countless kinds of sentence? If so, is it even worth a#empting to analyse the logical structure of language? What do your conclusions tell us about our language? About philosophy? Sources All Philosophical Investigations quotations are taken from: Ludwig Wi)genstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by GEM Anscombe, PMS Hacker and Joachim Schulte, rev. by PMS Hacker and Joachim Schulte, 4th edn (Chichester: Blackwell, 2009) Most other una)ributed information was plagiarised sourced from publications on the further reading list. And Wikipedia. Further Reading Ray Monk, How to Read WiKgenstein (London: Granta, 2005) Ray Monk, Ludwig Wi)genstein, in Encyclopædia Britannica (21 October 2013) <h)p:// Wi)genstein> Anat Bileyki and Anat Matar, Ludwig Wi)genstein, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 November 2002, rev. 3 March 2014) <h)p://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wi)genstein/> Arif Ahmed, The Moral Sciences Club (A Short History) <h)p:// seminars- phil/seminars- msc- history> Notes According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Mount Blanc is 4,807 metres high Page 8 of 8