The temptation is to think of language games as discreet, and hence in terms of explicit rules. A few things mitigate against this. — Banno
the grammatical rules (implicit or explicit) govern how we use the words, or in chess how we move the pieces (correctly or incorrectly). — Sam26
§201 ...Hence there is an inclination to say: every action according to the rule is an interpretation. But we ought to restrict the term "interpretation" to the substitution of one expression of the rule for another.
§202 And hence also "obey a rule" is a practice.
§217 ...If I have exhausted the justification I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say :'This is simply what I do."
I've always been a bit, a whole lot actually, bothered by what is correct usage of words. This is basically the idea that a word has a fixed referent and while context/the language game matter, given a particular context/language game, a word has a referent that should remain constant.
Consider now Wittgenstein's private language argument. He deems such an impossibility because it would be incoherent. It's not clear what he meant by that but the received wisdom seems to be that correct usage becomes meaningless as the sign/word - referent association breaks down and becomes chaotic, too chaotic to be understood hence, incoherence.
This suggests, to me at least, that Wittgenstein subscribes to the sign-referent theory of meaning or some variation of it. If not, his private language argument is nonsensical (correct usage).
Come now to Wittgenstein's meaning is use concept. Words can be used for anything that we can do with them seems to be the takeaway. There is no essence (to a word) holding us back. Basically, correct usage is meaningless or N/A.
What up with that? — TheMadFool
In what ways other than reference is language meaningful? Even if there's an answer to that question, of what relevance do they have to philosophy? — TheMadFool
How would we go about living lives if, for instance, we don't know the essence of poisons and their antidotes? How do we recognize water if we ignore the essence of what water is? — TheMadFool
Surely, something's not quite right with Wittgenstein and his acolytes if they're, as you seem to be claiming, moving away from essences to merely, quite obviously, playing with words. — TheMadFool
1. Meaning is use [words lack an essence]. — TheMadFool
2. Language games [Form of life determines meaning (use)]. — TheMadFool
3. Family resemblance [Illusion of essence]. — TheMadFool
4. Private language [Incoherent for many reasons]. — TheMadFool
Meaning is not use, strictly speaking, but use indicates meaning. If I were to use a word in an eccentric way to refer to something other than its conventional referent or referents, then my use would indicate the alternative meaning I have assigned to the word. — Janus
:up:In dropping talk of meaning in favour of talk about use, we demote stating rules in favour of enacting them. — Banno
I'm happy to talk more if you decide to be serious again. — hanaH
A language-game is analogous to a chess game, i.e., you're either playing chess or not. To say you're playing chess, when you're making the wrong moves, is not chess. It's not that you're playing chess incorrectly, you're not playing chess at all. My contention is that there are incorrect moves in the game of chess, so if you move the rook diagonally, then you're not playing chess correctly. If you're teaching the game of chess, then it seems obvious that there are correct and incorrect moves based on the rules. — Sam26
You're the one who introduced animal communications into the conversation, as if that were meaningful in respect of the nature of language and conceptual thought. — Wayfarer
Now you're appealing to 'survival' as if that is a criteria of what is true. As if the only criteria you have for deciding 'what is true' is 'what contributes to survival'. — Wayfarer
But this is simply taking evolutionary theory as a philosophy, which it isn't. — Wayfarer
I don't think it's helpful to understand the meaning of "true" as "whatever helps one survive." — hanaH
Perhaps it's human vanity that prevents us from simply looking at social animals and seeing how their signals allow them to coordinate their behavior and therefore get fed or avoid becoming food, which is to say survive. — hanaH
I get what you are saying, but I think it's problematic to call some personally assigned referent an "alternative meaning." This is because it's best to think about "meaning" being something like the system of behavior and worldly entities that includes spoken or written words. The "meaning" of a stop sign is (something like) the fact that people stop at it most of the time.
(I've been suggesting that talk of referents is, in general, more misleading than helpful. Better, in rational discussions, to say with what is public.) — hanaH
If there is a private mental accompaniment to that stopping, so be it, but it's not important.
I can say that when I write or speak 'gronk' I mean or refer to horse. Of course that would be of no importance to public discourse, but it's not in any way confusing as far as I can tell. (Of course this purportedly private meaning would really be a public meaning insofar as it denotes horse; a denotation that would be impossible without the public language already being in place). — Janus
What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'."—Well, let's assume the child is a genius and itself invents a name for the sensation! —But then, of course, he couldn't make himself understood when he used the word.—So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone?—But what does it mean to say that he has 'named his pain'?—How has he done this naming of pain?! And whatever he did, what was its purpose?—When one says "He gave a name to his sensation" one forgets that a great deal of stagesetting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense. And when we speak of someone's having given a name to pain, what is presupposed is the existence of the grammar of the word "pain"; it shews the post where the new word is stationed.
How do you think it is problematic? — Janus
"it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs."
— Wittgenstein (Blue Book)
There seems a suggestion of 'vitalism' - that 'meaning' might be thereby construed as being 'something immaterial', something which might, erroneously, be thought to exist separately from the sign. — Wayfarer
Nobody talks much about the "incorrect" use of words.
— @bongo fury
Well, we should learn them to. — Wayfarer
It's not a practical problem, but philosophically the concept-as-immaterial-referent doesn't seem very useful. By definition, we can't check such referents directly.
It may be an oversimplification, but I think a good path into Wittgenstein involves thinking of human communication as if it were just the communication of another, less complicated animal. Let's see how far we can get without immaterial referents that may be no more rational or useful than phlogiston. — hanaH
And this itself is valid iff it's done with the consensus of the current players.We add and subtract from the rules. — Banno
:up:Meaning is not use, strictly speaking, but use indicates meaning. — Janus
:100:In dropping talk of meaning in favour of talk about use, we demote stating rules in favour of enacting them. — Banno
But that is what you said: — Wayfarer
It's not 'human vanity'. It's a fact that humans make artefacts and create languages, and that animals don't. So trying to explain that as a fuction of evolution casts no light. But I do agree that this is tangential to this thread so will leave off. — Wayfarer
The fact that we all know headaches occur should be enough to establish the coherence of the idea that we can refer to them. — Janus
The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. What am I to say about the word "red"?—that it means something 'confronting us all' and that everyone should really have another word, besides this one, to mean his own sensation of red? Or is it like this: the word "red" means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each person, it means something known only to him?
It's impossible in principle to compare headaches, and it's therefore absurd to think that the "meaning" of headache is some quale-as-referent. It's far more reasonable to examine how the token "headache" is entangled with other public behavior (including the use of other tokens.) This is how we learn the "meaning" of "headache" to begin with. — hanaH
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