What would be an alternate way of looking at language rather than seeing it as a "language game"? I sincerely don't know the answer to that. Seeing it as a "language game" just seems like common sense to me.

Freedom is slavery.

So is the recommendation that we change our language games in order to become more moral? Isn't that what politically correct speech attempts to do?

Language, as an excitement of the human, personal spirit, is very revealing in many dimensions. It not only reveals new revelations that we wish to share with others, it also can be used as a self-revealing aspect of ourselves, much as handwriting might.

Marcuse has long been on my ban list, but there is something odd in the title. It is almost as if there is something else that we are doing with language than play games, and only Wittgenstein and his pals are playing.

what are the practical affects or effects of seeing language as a language game? — Moliere

What is the alternative? What is the duck to the game-rabbit? Not seeing language at all, but only seeing through it? Or perhaps locating it as the immutable structure of thought or the world? Which is more or less the same thing.

'Game' is a way of looking at language, linguistically, as you say, like a special pair of spectacles for looking at your spectacles. I'm not sure if this is quite as liberating as I'd like it to be. It doesn't actually liberate one from language - only silence can do that.

Blog: The Spectacled Avenger (by Jamie Pratt): Wittgenstein' s Remarks on Frazer's "Golden Bough"

It doesn't actually liberate one from language - only silence can do that. — unenlightened

Practice Zen Buddhism, but even Zen Buddhists communicate with words, so ...

Why do we want to be liberated from language? We're human beings, and language is part of being human.

Why do we want to be liberated from language? — Marchesk

We might want to be liberated from the tyranny of language, its 'superego' aspect, perhaps?

"Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws... The unity of language is fundamentally political. There is no mother tongue, only a power takeover by a dominant language that advances along a broad front, and at times swoops down on diverse centers simultaneously... The scientific enterprise [linguistics] of extracting constants and constant relations is always coupled with the political enterprise of imposing them on speakers and transmitting order words. [e.g. Chomsky's 'tree variables']" (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, "Postulates of Linguistics")

"[Major languages] would be defined by the power of constants. [Minor languages] would be defined by the power of variation." (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, "Postulates of Linguistics")

"Subtract and place in variation. Remove and place in variation; a single operation. Minor languages ... are characterized by a sobriety and variation that are like a minor treatment of the standard language. The problem is not the distinction between a major and minor language, it is one of a becoming. It is a question not of reterritorializing on a dialect but of deterritorializing the major language. Black Americans do not oppose Black to English, they transform the American English that is their own language into Black English. Minor languages only exist in relation to a major language and are also investments of that language for the purpose of making it minor. One must find the minor language, the dialect, on the basis on which one can make one's own major language minor. That is the strength of authors termed "minor", who are in fact the greatest, the only greats: Having to conquer one's own language, in other words, to attain that sobriety in the use of a major language, in order to place it in a state of continuous variation. It is in one's own language that one is bilingual or multilingual. Use the minor language to send the major language racing. Minor authors are foreigner's in their own tongue." (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, "Postulates of Linguistics")

I think the idea here is to use the order-word - the dominant, major usages of words - the words that are used in mass media ('royal' science, politicians, mother-father etc) that communicate death sentences - to flee, to create a positive line of flight that is revolutionary and creative. One should use the regime of signs to create new ideas - to be revolutionary. How does one make the vocabulary of blockage in everyday language into a mode of passage?

William Falukner's The Sound and the Fury presents a relationship between this major and minor - authoritarian and minoritarian struggle and achieves "continuous variation." In the second chapter when Quentin (a southerner) is in the North at Harvard's campus, the prose breaks down into seemingly dadaist, 'run-on' sentences at times. The punctuation - the cadence of his writing - vaporizes like the odor of crumbled leaves or gasoline, leaving only residual piles under trees or stains on leather jackets. The prose itself, muddled piles of printed language that somehow make sense, left during moments of Quentin's anxiety under the ticking clocks and refrains of that northern town. The distinctions between his broken pocket watch, with its minute and hour hands exposed to the elements (because of a missing glass covering), and the birds perched on his open window vaporize. The town with its wet roads, glimmering windows and greasy scents planted in the country side begin to look more and more like the nickel in the dirty palm of a little girl she was helping. This book, in my opinion, (by no means the only example) achieves this "continuous variation" of a minor language. The book, in it's sobriety and simplicity - its verbal asceticism with a "touch of herb and pure water" (Deleuze, Guattari) manages to create a potentially infinite array of relationships depending on how one treats the variables and which constants one decides make variables and vice versa.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, a word of caution from our friends:

"It is certainly not by using a minor language as a dialect that one becomes revolutionary; rather, by using a number of minority elements, by connecting, conjugating them, one invents a specific, unforeseen autonomous becoming." (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, "Postulates of Linguistics")

This all seems to amount to little more than "minoritizing" the tyranny.

Edit:

Is your response itself liberating or tyrannical? Is it a type of policing - an enforcement of laws about conduct on forums, or philosophy, or language etc.? Did you feel compelled to write your response to liberate the readers from majority conceptions of "language", "liberation" and "tyranny"? It all seems very oppressive - a mere act of communication - a blockage of creative flows - in particular, writing.

What is the difference, then, after thinking language thusly? Is there one? To what extent do our beliefs about language influence other areas of belief or action? — Moliere

I have noticed elsewhere that Wittgenstein is sometimes compared to Zen (specifically as depicted in the lectures of D T Suzuki, a contemporary.) Such sayings as his propositions being a ladder which are to be discarded once they're understood are often referenced in this regard. I think there's truth in that, but that this cross-cultural analysis can be taken further. In Buddhist philosophy, philosophical discourse is refined and very precise. But there is also an explicit understanding of the limitations of language and indeed discursive reason, generally, which I think is very difficult to articulate in the context of current analytical philosophy. Why? Because of the absence of the soteriological intent. Put it like this: what kind of liberation is Wittgenstein clearing the decks for? Why be aware of the sense in which the mind is bound by language, or caught up in language games? What liberation awaits the seeing through of that?

@NotOne - welcome to the Forum. They're interesting readings - there are some contributors here who are very well-versed in those kinds of writings, but I myself am not. However I will observe that the underlying rationale or at least sensibility for such analyses seems to be political, or broadly speaking marxist or neo-marxist - as was Marcuse, of course, being one the principles of the 'new left'.

@Wayfarer

Deleuze and Guattari were influenced by Marx and his contemporaries, yeah. I don't believe calling them Marxist is accurate though. They were always interested in becoming, movement, being nomadic, a mongolian, a war machine, a foreigner in one's own country - melieu thinkers, decentered, a vector always in the middle of two points, a particle on the line, never a topographical map, Go players rather than chess players. Anti-Oedipal, poly vocal. The primary forces that drive their work are not political, but cosmic. They are interested in the potential bound up within matter, or what they might call the deterittorializing force of all matter. They are Spinozist's interested in sorcery. They want to make atomic bombs in their backyard by writing books. It's happened before. It happens all the time.

There are forces of oppression, which can be called political. The state can simply be understood as an apparatus of capture. The creative act, if done well, is (especially these days) a criminal activity. "One must look in forbidden places for wisdom." "One who breaks old tablets and writes new ones will be persecuted." - Nietzsche. They usually write about politics from this point of view. Nietzsche calls for a new man to succeed the Last Man - The man that desires his own death. Deleuze and Guattari are no different here. They call for a de-humanization of human-kind. Make the human extra-terrestrial. Destroy the familiar face. Make human-kind create. Deterritorialize the earth and de-populate the people.

"I no longer have any secrets, having lost my face, form and matter. I am now no more than a line. I have become capable of loving, not with an abstract, universal love, but a love I shall choose, and that shall choose me, blindly, my double, just as selfless as I [because I'm lost in the activity of creation, no future and no past, imperceptible on the line of flight in the void]. One has been saved by and for love, by abandoning love and self. Now one is no more than an abstract line, like an arrow crossing the void. Absolute Deterritorialization. One has become like everybody / the whole world, but in a way that can become like everybody / the whole world. One has painted the world on oneself, not oneself on the world. It should not be said that the genius is an extraordinary person, nor that everybody has genius. The genius is someone who knows how to make everybody / the whole world a becoming (Ulysses, perhaps: Joyce's failed ambition, Pound's near-success). One has entered becomings-animal, becomings-molecular, and finally becoming's imperceptible. 'I was off the dispensing end of the relief roll forever. The heady villainous feeling continued ... I will try to be a correct animal though, and if you throw me a bone with enough meat on it I may even lick your hand.' Why such a despairing tone? Does not the line of rupture or true line of flight have its own danger, one worse than the others? Time to die." - Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand Plateaus

How sad do you have to be to think duckrabbit is insightful?

I think Wittgenstein's earlier work is something that can be referenced here.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world.

And the elimination of metaphysics from language.

Well, take the beginning of the PI, for example. He uses Augustine as an example of what seems to be a fairly common way of thinking about language as a point of contrast.

Freedom is slavery.

So is the recommendation that we change our language games in order to become more moral? Isn't that what politically correct speech attempts to do? — Marchesk

That's not what I gathered from the article, at least. Honestly, I think the article was using the idea of obtaining freedom through this analysis of language to have a kind of exposition of some key ideas of Wittgenstein. But I thought that framing concept had merit enough to think about and talk about.

Also, I don't think the recommendation is something to make one more or less moral, but is more suggesting that with these particular philosophical lenses on you come to see how you were entrapped and, thereby, can work your way out of said entrapment.

Marcuse has long been on my ban list, but there is something odd in the title. It is almost as if there is something else that we are doing with language than play games, and only Wittgenstein and his pals are playing. — unenlightened

I feel some uncertainty about the claims between W. and freedom, but merely uncertainty. I agree that this seems to set W. on the outside doing something other than, though that wouldn't be a fair reading of W I don't think.

What is the alternative? What is the duck to the game-rabbit? Not seeing language at all, but only seeing through it? Or perhaps locating it as the immutable structure of thought or the world? Which is more or less the same thing. — unenlightened

Not seeing it at all is kind of an option, but only before perceiving, I'd say. The latter seems different to me than the former, though -- it just seems to concieve of language differently.

But I'm not sure which alternative I'd prefer to offer. I think the before and after is a good enough case to answer the question of the affect or effect of viewing language as the article presents, at least.

'Game' is a way of looking at language, linguistically, as you say, like a special pair of spectacles for looking at your spectacles. I'm not sure if this is quite as liberating as I'd like it to be. It doesn't actually liberate one from language - only silence can do that.

It might not liberate one from language -- I'm not sure that would even be desirable -- but it might point to ways language can confuse us qua language, and so be partially liberating in the sense that we are able to work out confusions of our own.

Take "Death" for example -- only through naming death can we think of it as a thing, when death is just an inevitability. But by treating death like a thing we may try to build defenses against it, as we would any other danger to our life. Coming to realize that death is no thing, though it may take the place of a subject in a sentence, would be a first step in getting out of this particular tangle (I'm sure there are other ways of construing the fear of death. I'm sort of going for a proof of concept here to say why the ideas are interesting -- not necessarily setting out to prove, but only to say there's something worth thinking about here)

Put it like this: what kind of liberation is Wittgenstein clearing the decks for? Why be aware of the sense in which the mind is bound by language, or caught up in language games? What liberation awaits the seeing through of that? — Wayfarer

I think that's the question to answer, right there, for the article to have merit. Seems like something you couldn't say, though, yeah?

Though I don't think being caught up in language-games is necessarily what's doing the snaring. Seeing language as a form of life in which language-games take place is, supposedly, doing the liberating -- so what binds isn't language-games. Knowing that we play language games is the liberation -- or, perhaps, leads to liberation.

EDIT: To be clear, this not what the article states, and is just a take on the notions presented.

https://youtu.be/rqLtOjENz-Q?t=2m15s

:D


Though I think the duck-rabbit is elucidating "seeing as", rather than the duck-rabbit being insightful unto itself. It's a simple example to demonstrate a more complicated idea.

I think the idea here is to use the order-word - the dominant, major usages of words - the words that are used in mass media ('royal' science, politicians, mother-father etc) that communicate death sentences - to flee, to create a positive line of flight that is revolutionary and creative. One should use the regime of signs to create new ideas - to be revolutionary. — NotOne

Why should they, do you think?

Not saying they shouldn't, I'm just curious what drew out this line of thinking. Indeed, I'm not seeing how it follows, but I'm more than happy to hear people out and see where you're coming from.

I think the game analogy fails. Games are usually played for entertainment, language goes far beyond entertainment. Most the times we compete in games, there is an object to the game and we try to win. Not so with language. And games have a well published set of rules for consultation while language gets made up as we go. Language is something we must learn, and carrying out, in order to get by in society, just like paying tax. Games we choose to play, for entertainment. If language were a game, then paying tax would be entertainment.

Well, it's not for everyone. The people that do this historically generally find it a necessity. Artists, poets, writers, film-makers, prophets are not concerned with "why" or any sort of eodipalization or dialectic rationalization for being creative. They are concerned with becoming lost in the creative processes - in abstracting material processes (molar and molecular) - suspending the material processes into pure intensities, speeds and thresholds in a smooth space - pure abstractions - and out of temporal (corporeal) necessity giving them a tangible form once again. In other words, they are concerned with assemblages. For instance, the starry night sky and the glittering snow on the ground, flashing blues and cold purples. The orientation of the crystal structure in the ice with relation to the eye (this determines the color of the reflected light) becomes a variable that loosely coincides with the age of of a star - a "red giant" or a "white dwarf" (which determines it's color in the sky). A construction of angles becomes interchangeable with duration. The artist is concerned with spilling these assemblages (the night sky and the ice) onto one another through a rigorous, disciplined, yet ambiguous ('poetic') use of association (what Deleuze and Guattari call a Haecceity). In still other words, it is simply a way of moving the perspective - a little shift in perspective that frames both stars and moonlit ice in the same picture. This creative activity. This poetics tends toward multiplicities - heterogeneity. It frees the earth from the grips of the current regime of signs. Nitzsche writes, "let there be lightness.". N's spirit of gravity is his arch enemy. This is the oppressive regime (in his time, the church) that tends toward homogeneity. This is a type of death. An embalmment of the earth - an earth full of caskets and gravediggers - funerals and legacy's. The artist finds a new way to see the world out of necessity. The creative act is always an act of escape - a line of flight - it is always first. They are always on the line, following material flows, inside Borge's Labyrinths, unintelligible, moving - a blur in the desert. They occupy a smooth space, alogical. "Why" is a rational question. It is a question one might ask after the fact. It is social and historical. It may fight fascist tendencies, politically. It may increase evolution. It may create social chaos (as in Heliogablius). It may testify to a higher power, in the case of the martyrs. It may get the artist or prophet excommunicated or killed. In each time, in each place, the why's and where-fors will be different. The goal is to move - to make yourself a becoming and the whole world a becoming. All social, political, dialectical effects and explanations are residual.

No, just my impression of what you quoted there.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world. — Question

Why would that be? Do you depend on language to perceive? To feel? To dream? Are all of life's intricacies and issues captured in language? What is the limit of a dog's world, since it has no language?

Does your very existence derive itself from language?

This focus on language as the key to philosophy is an analytic obsession.

And the elimination of metaphysics from language. — Question

Good luck with that.

Why would that be? Do you depend on language to perceive? To feel? To dream? Are all of life's intricacies and issues captured in language? What is the limit of a dog's world, since it has no language? — Marchesk

To perceive, I would say, we do rely upon language -- though not in the sense that one must have a language in order to perceive. Rather, that perception and language intermesh. If you speak language then your perception depends on language. So a dog, for instance, wouldn't serve as a counter example.

Feeling, too, changes with linguistic competence. Naming a feeling changes its quality, allows it to be analyzed and differentiated from other feelings, and understood better.

All of life's intricacies and issues are surely not captured in language -- but no intricacy or issue could be stated without it.

Does your very existence derive itself from language?

In a sense, yes, but only in a sense. I do not mean the body deriving itself from language, but we do tell stories about ourselves to ourselves -- and, certainly, my body derives itself from language (though the body exists regardless of language). Language enables us to have beliefs about ourselves, especially with relation to ourselves over time.

Without language, this self wouldn't exist. A dog feels, but does the dog have beliefs about themselves at various points in their life?

This focus on language as the key to philosophy is an analytic obsession.

Eh, it's not just an analytic thing, to be fair.

Well, take the beginning of the PI, for example. He uses Augustine as an example of what seems to be a fairly common way of thinking about language as a point of contrast. — Moliere

I'll have to reread that part this morning, as I can't recall that bit.

This is something I've been thinking about so I'm glad of the thread :) In my 60s/early 70s youth I thought Marcuse was greatly 'liberating' and Wittgenstein was an oddball conservative. Now I find Marcuse pompous and overbearing, and Wittgenstein greatly liberating.

So is the recommendation that we change our language games in order to become more moral? Isn't that what politically correct speech attempts to do? — Marchesk

Part of the point is that there are few recommendations other than to recognise we are in language games, because once we understand the deeper implications of each game we're playing, which will take some in-depth work, then some of our philosophical problems will turn out to be just problems of language and grammar. The others may be extremely hard to put adequately into words, including ethics, aesthetics and spiritual matters.

It surprised people who got to know Wittgenstein that he was very unlike Russell, and sometimes antipathetic to the scientific outlook. In Vienna the Carnap circle were shocked to find he didn't take to (what became) logical positivism. The Hegelian/Marx approach of the Frankfurt school like Marcuse is obviously not his cup of tea (though he flirted with going to work in the Soviet Union in the 1930's). He loved music, read a lot of Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, and was, as I would characterise him, someone with religious attitudes but no religion (I've borrowed the phrase from somewhere). So it wasn't that he was opposed to metaphysical speculation exactly, but thought the language escaped us to speak of such things well.

There still seems to be rich seams to mine in Philosophical Investigations and indeed in J L Austin's speech acts, even though they've been over-systematised by Searle, Grice and so on. The very heart of language is still a mystery to us. At the moment I'm reading about the thesis that language originates in gesture - that all language is in a sense gesture - which chimes harmoniously with my owns sense that each of us is in a drama, moved and moving others, bodily creatures as we are. If that were so then there would be many things about language and what we do that would need to be thought about afresh.

This is something I've been thinking about so I'm glad of the thread :) In my 60s/early 70s youth I thought Marcuse was greatly 'liberating' and Wittgenstein was an oddball conservative. Now I find Marcuse pompous and overbearing, and Wittgenstein greatly liberating. — mcdoodle

I'd be interested in hearing more from you. What's the story in this transition? It doesn't have to be personal -- at the meat I'm most interested in the the reasoning (broadly understood) that went into this transition

I barely know anything about Marcuse. But for W. I think I could see a possibility for what the article is talking about ,even if I might disagree with the general thrust of the article, and even if I might be uncertain what that would entail or end up being, politically speaking.

I think what confuses a lot of people is that they think that Wittgenstein's idea that problems of language use underly all philosophical problems undercuts any need for systematic thinking & metaphysics. I mean sure, it places strong limits on metaphysical thought and expression, but there are all sorts of conceptual assumptions that lie even in our use of "ordinary language" so to speak, and systematic metaphysics helps us navigate the terrain in how such language is used.