It’s #308. — Antony Nickles

Ah, that works.

The first step,

1) There must be an X in the world — RussellA

looking so innocent. But see §48. What is the simple here? Here is a slab; there, a block, for the purposes of the game; what could it mean for there to be a slab and a block in some absolute sense? And that's where poor @RussellA gets caught, again and again, looking for the slab-in-itself or the concept-of-slab, when these are not only unnecessary but a hinderance to seeing what is happening here.

42. But have even names that have never been used for a tool got a meaning in that game? —– Let’s assume that “X” is such a sign, and that A gives this sign to B a well, even such signs could be admitted into the language-game, and B might have to answer them with a shake of the head. (One could imagine this as a kind of amusement for them.)

A common sledge is to send the apprentice to the bloke at the far end of the shed to fetch the long weight. "I'll get it for you when I finish this..." comes the reply.

And see how long it is until he realises it was a long wait.

Some of the error is to think of "mwanasesere" as having any meaning at all apart from the place it has in the games we play. As if our words all have meanings apart from what we do with them. Davidson address this again in A nice derangement of epitaphs; our jokes undermine the idea of language as following rules.

Except the bit where it doesn't matter in the slightest what the builder and the assistant have "in their heads" so long as the assistant brings the slab to the builder.

That you made the same mistake in another thread is not a good thing. — Banno

No I get Witt's claim (use), but does this really satisfy you that someone "understands the meaning of a word" based on the scenario if all were zombies or had no internal "understanding/sense/point of view" of the word's meaning?

If ChatGPT got someone a slab, ChatGPT is dealing in "meaning", for example?

How strange a claim.

The experience within my mind caused by a wavelength in the world of 700nm is a private experience, inexpressible to others, in the same sense as Wittgenstein's use of the word. — RussellA

Well, take out “experience” (its just what you see, as in, are focusing your sight and attention on) and “within my mind” (this is the picture you’re tripping over compared to something “personal”) and “caused” (this makes it sound like the medical process of vision creates something other than just: red, like, in addition to it). You just see red.

So, try and say something (ordinary) about red in a context (situation without someone) where it would be important to point out the color. And then you have expressed something about the color; identification, differentiation, etc. along the lines of what we do with color (how it works). Your contextless abstract picture is getting you confused.

And the use of “private” is not Wittgenstein’s; it’s the skeptic’s, the interlocutor’s; it’s the “metaphysical use”; Wittgenstein contrasts that with its “ordinary use”, which has particular criteria and contexts in which it is used, which is, as I said, similar to personal, secret.

Within the communal language game we can talk about the colour red. — RussellA

We talk about color in particular ways; but our “talk” is not separate from something else (say, the world). Outside of the ways we talk about color is not “your” color, it’s just jibberish, madness. “That’s my color!” can only be met with “You mixed it? You have a copyright?”

To express what you see, you could paint a painting, take a picture, or have another there when you see the red sunset, and in that way, point out the amazing red you are focusing your attention on. Or you can keep it all to yourself, and then it is yours, but that is something personal; or secret, as in: you didn’t tell the cops it was a red car.

There is not some “color” in you that someone else cannot see. You’re not an alien, or a lion, you are a human being, just like me. You (and the skeptic) want to be different so that you can be singular, have something unique (but it may be the case that you are not, as I said). But the definition of a self does not work the way you picture it. We all know you: you are stubborn as hell, a creative thinker (to the point of slippery), etc.

It might help to look at my original post again after reading this; with fresh eyes, attempting to see it from a different angle. Everything you want from your position is still here.

You (and the skeptic) want to be different so that you can be singular, have something unique (but it may be the case that you are not, as I said). But the definition of a self does not work the way you picture it. We all know you: you are stubborn as hell, a creative thinker (to the point of slippery), etc. — Antony Nickles

See, I'm not interpreting RusselA that way. At least, how I see how he is formulating it, he poses a problem for "use" if it is just "use" without any internal mental states accompanying it. Hence I mentioned zombies and those who really don't understand internally a meaning, yet still "use" the word correctly (aping as Witt might say). I don't see "meaning" and "use" tied exclusively. It has to be use, but intersubjectively understood use. And the intersubjectivity part, requires the mental aspect, exactly which supposedly doesn't matter in the beetle-box. But it does, sir.

Schop's books are all about understanding the "inner" part of existence… — schopenhauer1

Well I should read some Schopenhauer then as I’m getting the feeling that I’d agree with his sensibility. I enjoy others who focus on our inner lives. Emerson looks at our relationship to “community” (@RussellA) in Self-Reliance and the later Heidegger considers how to think ethically in What is called thinking? But which book? Any toe-dip essays?

One can describe abstract ideas and felt sensations, intelligibly. …I don't think that [the possibility of error] disproves that communication about abstract ideas (non observational), are thus irretrievably hopeless — schopenhauer1

This is Wittgenstein’s starting point of the PI (he realizes from the beginning that we can discuss everything that was excluded in the Tractatus). His whole investigation is into why we thought we couldn’t (didn’t want to accept that we can) in the first place.

You (Witt perhaps) seems to be fitting all philosophers in this idea of trying to find a single standard, which creates a strawman that the Great Wittgenstein can then "show" is in error. — schopenhauer1

Not all philosophers attempt to solve (or accept or ignore) skepticism. There are ideas that are abstract, like justice (as I believe you mean by “non-observational”) and then there’s the desire to remove those ideas (abstract them) from the regular contexts in which they live, as some philosophy seems as if it were done in space, without history or a world around it at all.

So what Wittgenstein uncovers is not an “error” (and he is showing us what he claims is evidence, not conclusions). His insight is that the fear of the uncertainty of being wrong, being immoral (“evil” Nietszche calls it), of the future, of others, is actually a primal fear created by the human condition of our separation (thus our basic responsibility to bridge it), and that the desire to overcome that fear (and attempt to remove our responsibility) is the motivation for intellectualizing our situation as a “problem” that can be “solved”.

[The possibility of error] doesn't mean that we turn off our ability to think about the bigger questions of life. — schopenhauer1

I agree and I applaud the effort (and I don’t think Wittgenstein would object, other than thinking that effort is a straight highway” #426). Emerson says, “We live amid surfaces [the fear that the world is “appearance”, “impressions”], and the true art of life is to skate them well.” I don’t see this as foolish, nor that Wittgenstein is avoiding big picture stuff either (morality, the creation of the self, ethics, epistemology, etc.).

…we don’t: “know” their pain, we react to it, to the person; their pain is a plea, a claim on us—we help them (or not); that’s how pain works. P. 225.
— Antony Nickles
— schopenhauer1

That is just describing forms of empathy… — schopenhauer1

No, it’s describing how pain is handled by us (or ignored), it is setting out our ordinary criteria for judgments regarding it, compared to treating it as an object of knowledge (wanting to skip over (through) the person who has it). Empathy is just part of what pain involves (even with the absence of empathy). (Also it might help to see that I had to clarify my “don’t: ‘know’ their pain” comment to @Luke above.)

Who said they are looking for exact certainty of someone’s pain? — schopenhauer1

Pain is used by philosophy as the “best case” of our knowledge of the other (because it’s hard for me to ignore, it’s constant, etc.). By “knowledge” here we are talking about a certain kind of “philosophical” knowledge, like an equating. Now, because there is error in the world, some philosophy (Hume for example) creates a thing between us and the world (appearances, your experience, your impressions, your sensations, etc.) which the philosopher then requires to have matched up exactly with the world, or for you and I to have an identical one or I can’t be said to “know” you (You might be an automaton! Or a zombie—which I also discussed with @RussellA here).

It’s an assumption we are not zombies and that pain is roughly negative in similar ways. — schopenhauer1

When has philosophy ever relied on common sense?—“assumed” anything? Plus, if we don’t investigate “knowledge” or “justice”, etc. we would never uncover all the things we have learned about the world (the assumptions, implications, criteria for judgment) but never drew out of ourselves (Wittgenstein and Socrates both say we all hold the knowledge of how our everyday world works in each one of us—Wittgenstein, because of our growing up together, by osmosis into our unconscious as it were. Hey, it’s a better metaphor than Socrates’.)

Davidson address this again in A nice derangement of epitaphs; our jokes undermine the idea of language as following rules. — Banno

I read some Davidson in school; I’ll have to check it out. And I also enjoyed J.L. Austin’s humor, though it was a little cruel, a little, how would we say… Banno-ish? Sorry, I meant, British.

At least we agree that meaning is an important part of communication. — RussellA

I was just pointing out your claims that
1. successful language use is only possible with knowing the meaning of words used
2. meaning of words can only be learnt by pointing at objects in the world
are absurd.

Thinking over the topic, I feel successful language use is only possible when you use language cogently to the situation.  For example, if you walk into a pub, and say to the barmaid "Bring me a slab.", then of course she knows what you mean by  "slab", "bring" and  "me", all the words you just uttered to her.  But she will think you are talking nonsense, pulling her leg or just plain barmy. You must say "A pint of larger please" or something like that, to be understood in the bar to the maid, since you walked into the bar, and you wanted a drink. No one would imagine you would walk into a pub, and look for a slab.

You should say "Bring me a slab." in the building site to your assistant, when you are working on the path or patio, and that sentence will be accepted as meaningful to your assistant and to anyone hearing you speaking.

The other point is that the meaning of words is not learnt by pointing to the objects in the world exclusively, unless it is the case with a child learning language for the first time in her life, or in certain situations such as when you are ordering or buying an item in shops or market, where the seller has many different type of goods for sale in front of you, and you are telling him, that particular item is the one you would like to buy. You would point to it, and say "I will take that one."

There are many words you cannot point to, but you know the meanings, and keep using them in daily life such as "angst", "when", "many" "know" "etc" ... etc.

For example, if you walk into a pub, and say to the barmaid "Bring me a slab.", then of course she knows what you mean by  "slab", "bring" and  "me", all the words you just uttered to her.  But she will think you are talking nonsense, pulling her leg or just plain barmy. — Corvus

Hmm. Again, "Slab" is an Australian term for a carton of two dozen tins of beer.

Hmm. Again, "Slab" is an Australian term for a carton of two dozen tins of beer. — Banno

Another testimony that meaning is contingent. G'day mate :D

The assistant brings the builder a slab because he has been trained to do so. His training consists of being able to identify a slab and bring it to the builder. Being able to identify a slab does not mean forming an inner concept. All that is required is being able to distinguish this thing from the other things he has been trained to identify and bring. All with this one word "slab". — Fooloso4

As regards the thing the assistant brings to the builder, are you a Platonist, such that the slab is a Platonic object that exists independently of the mind and is able to exist through time and space, or a Nominalist?

I am a Nominalist, such that the thing is a particular set of atoms, etc, that exists in the form it has at one moment in time and space, and exists independently of the mind. IE, the particular set of atoms, etc, is one unique, momentary example in the world of what we have in our minds as the general concept "slab".

I don't see why you would call your personal experience a concept. — Luke

I agree that only part of my personal experience is that of a concept.

If I have a personal experience as a consequence of looking at a wavelength of 700nm in the world, there are two aspects to this personal experience, the phenomenological and the cognitive.

As regards the phenomenological, I have a particular momentary colour experience caused by the wavelength 700nm

As regards the cognitive, at the same time as having the phenomenological experience, I think of this particular colour as "red". Even though all my phenomenological experiences of the wavelengths 625nm to 750nm have been different, there still has been something similar about them, and this similarity is what a concept is. A similarity in different phenomenological experiences.

It is on these concepts existing in the mind that language must be built upon.

And the intersubjectivity part, requires the mental aspect, exactly which supposedly doesn't matter in the beetle-box. But it does, sir. — schopenhauer1

I think that Wittgenstein seems to apply his skepticism to mental states in a way which I find just as convincing. I think it is possible to deflate the mental aspects so that really it is just all "use". Or to be more specific, "use" is entirely about states and transitions between states, or in other words: if i am in some experientisl state, what will the next state be? and these experiential states will include all of our linguistic interactions, social behaviors and even "internal" thought processes. The question of why or what causes state transitions is hidden from us, caused by the underlying neural interactions to which we have no access or are "blind" to.

I feel successful language use is only possible when you use language cogently to the situation. — Corvus

Yes, the successful use of language requires several things, of which one is using words in the correct context. Another is knowing the meaning of the words used, in that if the barmaid didn't know the meaning of "bring", she would never be able to bring you your pint of lager.

The other point is that the meaning of words is not learnt by pointing to the objects in the world exclusively, unless it is the case with a child learning language for the first time in her life, or in certain situations such as when you are ordering or buying an item in shops or market — Corvus

We know the meaning of angst, not because we can point to angst, but because we can point to to the visible effect of angst in the world, such as a person's behaviour.

We can have the word "pain" in language because we can point to pain behaviour, whereby the word "pain" replaces pain behaviour.

If not by "pointing", how do we learn the meaning of words such as angst?

If everyone were zombies, and/or if no one had an internal understanding of a word that roughly corresponds to the concept, but its use (outward behavior way they expressed and acted when they spoke or heard the word) was always correct, would you really say that people understand the "meaning" of a word? — schopenhauer1

Exactly. I can say to a robot "bring me a slab", and it would be able to do so, even though it didn't know the meanings of the words.

But it can only do so because a human, who did know the meanings of those words, had programmed it in the first place.

When the builder calls "slab" the assistant does not bring a mackerel or an onion. Whatever theory you have about what you think must be going on in his mind, the fact is, he brings a slab.

What you ignore is that in this language there is no word for 'bring'. "Slab" does not function simply as the name of an object. "Slab" means bring the builder a slab. "Slab" gets its meaning from its use. Its use is determined by the form or way of life. Nomads do not have the word "Slab". Not because there are no slabs but because they do not build, slabs are not used in this way.

And the use of “private” is not Wittgenstein’s; it’s the skeptic’s, the interlocutor’s; it’s the “metaphysical use”; Wittgenstein contrasts that with its “ordinary use”, which has particular criteria and contexts in which it is used, which is, as I said, similar to personal, secret. — Antony Nickles

There is not some “color” in you that someone else cannot see. — Antony Nickles

Cavell in The Later Wittgenstein makes the point that Wittgenstein never denied that we can know what we think and feel.

Other philosophers, I believe, are under the impression that Wittgenstein denies that we can know what we think and feel, and even that we can know ourselves. This extraordinary idea comes, no doubt, from such remarks of Wittgenstein's as: "I can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking" (II, p. 222); "It cannot be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain" (§5!46). But the "can" and "cannot" in these remarks are grammatical; they mean "it makes no sense to say these things" (in the way we think it does); it would, therefore, equally make no sense to say of me that I do not know what I am thinking, or that I do not know I am in pain. The implication is not that I cannot know myself, but that knowing oneself-though radically different from the way we know others--is not a matter of cognizing (classically, "intuiting") mental acts and particular sensations.

As Wittgenstein also writes, the sensation is not a nothing.

PI 304 "But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behaviour accompanied by pain and pain-behaviour without any pain?"—Admit it? What greater difference could there be?—"And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing"—Not at all. It is not a something., but not a nothing either!

When the builder calls "slab" the assistant does not bring a mackerel or an onion. Whatever theory you have about what you think must be going on in his mind, the fact is, he brings a slab. — Fooloso4

If the assistant had no intrinsic theory in their mind as to the meaning of words, they would be bringing onions as often as they brought slabs.

What you ignore is that in this language there is no word for 'bring'. "Slab" does not function simply as the name of an object. "Slab" means bring the builder a slab. "Slab" gets its meaning from its use. Its use is determined by the form or way of life. Nomads do not have the word "Slab". Not because there are no slabs but because they do not build, slabs are not used in this way. — Fooloso4

This is circular. If "slab" gets its meaning from use, then how do you know how to use it before knowing what it means.

I have worked with Bedouin nomads, and we were using the word slab all the time.

If the assistant had no intrinsic theory in their mind as to the meaning of words, they would be bringing onions as often as they brought slabs. — RussellA

If the assistant brought onions he would either be out of a job or undergo further training. Having an intrinsic theory of slabs cannot determine whether that theory matches what it is supposed to be a theory of.

Does my dog have an intrinsic theory in her mind when she brings the ball when I say "ball". Does it even matter, as long as she brings the ball? If she had such a theory it is the ball which determines whether it is the right theory.

This is circular. If "slab" gets its meaning from use, then how do you know how to use it before knowing what it means. — RussellA

Use refers to the activity of building. The meaning is determined by the role of "slab" in this activity. He has been trained to bring a slab when the builder says "slab". If he brings an onion he will have to undergo further training or be out of a job.

I have worked with Bedouin nomads, and we were using the word slab all the time. — RussellA

What does it mean when they use the word slab?

my point, or @RussellA rather, is that Witts premise about “use” cannot be solely what picks out meaning. You mentioned “state changes” implying some functionalism whereby mental can be there but it’s about change of state, maybe anticipation of next use or something. But whatever you want to call it, that is an internal mental phenomenon that has to take place. Not only that, there has to be a sort of internal “understanding” in order to use the word. As the zombie case demonstrates, use alone, without some internal understanding, is not “meaning”. In other words, meaning has to “mean something” to a subject. It’s not just use in abstraction, but someone’s idea of use having a significance to the person.

Edit: this indicates to me that Witts premise is either that meaning is never really known (meaning skeptic) and has to leave it there or meaning is use, in which case use alone would be wrong as meaning has to have some sort of internal component. If he is saying that, then it is unclear but p43 should then read something like “intersubjective ideas of use within a language communuty”.

But it can only do so because a human, who did know the meanings of those words, had programmed it in the first place. — RussellA

This is the problem with computational understanding of consciousness. Process without mental is not conscious though intelligent. A computers monitor and keyboard is an output and an input bit it is not the eyes and ears of a computer or anything. The computation in the circuitry is not actually thinking. It’s all in relation to someone who does- someone with mental states.

The human needs to be there or it is nothing.

Use refers to the activity of building. The meaning is determined by the role of "slab" in this activity. — Fooloso4

A "slab" can refer to a slab of concrete used in a builder's yard or a slab of cake used in a cake shop.

If it is the type of slab used in a builder's yard, it may be described as a large, thick, flat piece of stone or concrete, typically square or rectangular in shape. But such as slab can have many uses: as a roof, as a road barrier, as a floor, as a counterweight, etc.

But we know the meaning of "slab" even before we have decided what we want to use it for. In fact, we cannot use the slab until we understand what the slab is. Therefore, it is not the case that we have to use something in order to discover what its name is.

Another is knowing the meaning of the words used, in that if the barmaid didn't know the meaning of "bring", she would never be able to bring you your pint of lager. — RussellA

I have shown some example sentences which can be meaningfully used without knowing the meaning of the word in the sentence in the previous posts such as "I don't know what the word bring means."

We know the meaning of angst, not because we can point to angst, but because we can point to to the visible effect of angst in the world, such as a person's behaviour.

We can have the word "pain" in language because we can point to pain behaviour, whereby the word "pain" replaces pain behaviour.

If not by "pointing", how do we learn the meaning of words such as angst? — RussellA

What would be observed behaviour of someone's state of angst like?

What if someone was acting as if he / she was in pain? How would you be able to tell if the person was acting or really in pain, or just expressing some mental stress and frustration in gesture, or anger? And what is it that you call "pain behaviour"? Is there such thing as formal pain behaviour?

I would rather have thought one learns the word pain by feeling it oneself , or reading about the description of pain rather than looking at someone else's pain behaviour.

Pain is used by philosophy as the “best case” of our knowledge of the other (because it’s hard for me to ignore, it’s constant, etc.). By “knowledge” here we are talking about a certain kind of “philosophical” knowledge, like an equating. Now, because there is error in the world, some philosophy (Hume for example) creates a thing between us and the world (appearances, your experience, your impressions, your sensations, etc.) which the philosopher then requires to have matched up exactly with the world, or for you and I to have an identical one or I can’t be said to “know” you (You might be an automaton! Or a zombie—which I also discussed with RussellA here).

It’s an assumption we are not zombies and that pain is roughly negative in similar ways.
— schopenhauer1

When has philosophy ever relied on common sense?—“assumed” anything? Plus, if we don’t investigate “knowledge” or “justice”, etc. we would never uncover all the things we have learned about the world (the assumptions, implications, criteria for judgment) but never drew out of ourselves (Wittgenstein and Socrates both say we all hold the knowledge of how our everyday world works in each one of us—Wittgenstein, because of our growing up together, by osmosis into our unconscious as it were. Hey, it’s a better metaphor than Socrates’.) — Antony Nickles

But my point is that most philosophers never asked for certainty of things like "pain". This is a false assumption, and thus becomes a strawman that Witt gets to heroically knock down. I am calling it out as a wrong assumption rather than a legitimate characterization. And again, always back to this, but the only contender for his interlocutor is his own Tractatus and early anal-ytics who focused on sense and reference. So yeah, his theories work best as an antidote to those philosophers.

If someone like Hume or a Locke had a theory on sensations or whatnot, those are theories and theories are people's best attempt at answering questions, leading to perhaps more questions or useful for constructing various ideas and worldviews. More sharing of in-sights. So much straw.

So what Wittgenstein uncovers is not an “error” (and he is showing us what he claims is evidence, not conclusions). His insight is that the fear of the uncertainty of being wrong, being immoral (“evil” Nietszche calls it), of the future, of others, is actually a primal fear created by the human condition of our separation (thus our basic responsibility to bridge it), and that the desire to overcome that fear (and attempt to remove our responsibility) is the motivation for intellectualizing our situation as a “problem” that can be “solved”. — Antony Nickles

That may be what he is "saying" but he rarely "says it" because he's busy trying to ask question after question. You may think that's cute and clever and a hipster way of "demonstrating his point".. Maybe even saying the error in understanding of his point mimics the error in our greater understanding (and hence our responsibility to really "get" each other), but it just comes off as pedantic, pretentious, and annoying. He admitted that he tried to make it a more expositional piece but failed, so perhaps you are reading into his method a wee-bit too much, as Witt has to be a hero apparently, not just someone who couldn't figure out how to explain it. But assuming all of this was a clever style-choice, question after question after question with little to no punchline, this itself is unsympathetic to the reader, and lacks empathy. If someone sat next to me in a diner and explained their theory to me by way of "demonstration" which meant asking question after question without a punchline, I would feel like punching him in the nose and calling him out for trolling me.

At best it would be a parody of Socrates, in which I would be okay with that. At worst he really was trying to "convey" something, in which case- punch on the nose :wink: .

A "slab" can refer to a slab of concrete used in a builder's yard or a slab of cake used in a cake shop. — RussellA

It can but neither of these is what slab means in the builder's language.

it may be described as ... — RussellA

In the builder's language it cannot be described at all, but what it means can be shown by bringing the builder a slab when he says slab.

But such as slab can have many uses ... — RussellA

All of its uses are uses within the activity of building.

But we know the meaning of "slab" even before we have decided what we want to use it for. — RussellA

In the builder's language it means one thing - bring me a slab. Pointing to a slab does not explain the meaning of "slab".

Therefore, it is not the case that we have to use something in order to discover what its name is. — RussellA

As Wittgenstein says:

And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer.

(PI 43)

In the larger context of our language, pointing to a slab may explain the meaning of the name, the bearer of the name, the thing we are referring to when we say slab, but, as the builder's language shows, a language is not a collection of names.

Pointing to a cog does not explain what a cog is. If you find a cog and ask me what it is, my pointing to it and saying "this is what it is" or "it is a cog" is not an adequate explanation. An adequate explanation must include what it is used for.

You might decide to use it for a paperweight or door stop, but that does not mean that a cog is a paperweight or door stop. In this case, the meaning of cog is not determined by your use but by its use as a functional part of a machine.

Some of the error is to think of "mwanasesere" as having any meaning at all apart from the place it has in the games we play. As if our words all have meanings apart from what we do with them. — Banno

PI 43 For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer.

This has been my problem with PI 43, in that it states that the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

The word "mwanasesere" clearly has a use, as we are basing a discussion around it. Even if it has no intrinsic meaning, it has an extrinsic meaning deriving from the other words within the sentence.

However, if the intrinsic meaning of any word is irrelevant to its being able to take part in the language game, but that each word does have an extrinsic meaning deriving from the other words within the sentence, then we end up with a language, whilst being internally coherent, is totally self-referential.

In PI 2, Wittgenstein opposes the Referentialism of Augustine , where the word "slab" names a slab in the world.

In PI 19, Wittgenstein writes "Bring me a slab", and slabs clearly exist in the world. But is this world in the Investigations a world that exists inside language or a world that exists outside of language?

Does Wittgenstein in the Investigations say?

I have shown some example sentences which can be meaningfully used without knowing the meaning of the word in the sentence in the previous posts such as "I don't know what the word bring means." — Corvus

If the barmaid doesn't know the meaning of X in the sentence "X me a lager", then the sentence cannot be meaningfully be used in the context of a pub, though it is true that it could be meaningfully be used in the context of a language class.

I would rather have thought one learns the word pain by feeling it oneself , or reading about the description of pain rather than looking at someone else's pain behaviour. — Corvus

Isn't learning the word pain by feeling it oneself the point of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument?

Is it possible to learn the meaning of every word one uses just from a dictionary?

If the barmaid doesn't know the meaning of X in the sentence "X me a lager", then the sentence cannot be meaningfully be used in the context of a pub, though it is true that it could be meaningfully be used in the context of a language class. — RussellA

You wouldn't walk into a pub, and say to the barmaid "X me a beer". That implies, even you, the speaker doesn't know what he is talking about, and what X means.

If you really didn't know what "Bring" meant, and for some reason, if the barmaid didn't know the meaning either, but you still wanted beer to be served to you, you could go and point to the menu, and the beer will be served to you for sure. It is a blooming pub.

Isn't learning the word pain by feeling it oneself the point of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument?

Is it possible to learn the meaning of every word one uses just from a dictionary? — RussellA

Does that mean that, if you have never seen someone groaning and twisting their bodies with pain, you would never know what pain is? People react to pain differently, and also pain behaviours are all different depending what kind of pain one is having. Some people don't show any reaction to pain at all, if the pain is not severe enough, or if the pain sufferer doesn't want any body to know he is in pain.

@RussellA @Banno @Luke

[RussellA] poses a problem for "use" if it is just "use" without any internal mental states accompanying it. Hence I mentioned zombies and those who really don't understand internally a meaning, yet still "use" the word correctly (aping as Witt might say). I don't see "meaning" and "use" tied exclusively. It has to be use, but intersubjectively understood use. And the intersubjectivity part, requires the mental aspect, exactly which supposedly doesn't matter in the beetle-box. But it does, sir. — schopenhauer1

I’ve addressed this confusion over “use” here when I focused on the sense (another word Wittgenstein swaps for “use”) in showing how the Lion Quote p. 225, in the context, has the use as a fact and not an empirical statement or otherwise to make a point about a picture of language. From that discussion:

“Witt's focus on "use" has been a stumbling block in the responses, so I wanted to point out that it is not the idea that use (some internal force/decision) determines or is the basis for "meaning". There are multiple versions ("senses") of a concept; one determines the use from the context (afterwards). "Every word has a different character in a different context." PI, p. 181. Not to say we do not sometimes chose what we say, but senses (uses) exist outside and prior to us; the same confusion is that every word/action is 'intended' - caused by something internal. The idea of a sentence or a word in isolation is only a thing in some philosophy--stemming from the desire to tether it to something determinate, certain, universal."

I point this out only as you all are imagining "use" as if language were under my control (not what I say, but what it "means"), or that the "meaning" is "caused" by my "intention"--that "use" is in the sense that I operate language or that, every time (or generally), there is some "agreement" or decision (inter-subjective or not) about what the words "mean" (rather than just an ongoing process of clarification after an expression if there is something odd, unexpected "Did you intend to offend her?". Life is meaningful in certain ways, as evidenced by the ordinary criteria that are evidence about what matters to us, what counts as what. That this breaks down at times makes the skeptic feel we need to have some connection between something internal (my intention, meaning) and something external.