Because, I think, modern philosophy on the whole doesn't want anything to do with essence, substantia, or any of those medieval scholasticisms....
— Wayfarer
Why I wonder? 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
Nobody talks much about the "incorrect" use of words. — bongo fury
telling comment. (Of course, 'the real world' is what exists unperceived by the mind, right?) — Wayfarer
Care with the attribution - the quote in my last was from Antony Nickles, not I. It was a thread on much the same topic, but apparently before it's time. — Banno
Incorrect use" makes no sense in the context of the PI. There is simply either use, or not use at all. Witty never talks about the "incorrect" use of words. Only words which lack use entirely. — StreetlightX
Well, arguably, what happened to all that essence and substance talk, was that it was transformed into the basis for modern science. — Wayfarer
Nobody talks much about the "incorrect" use of words. We like to think language is democratic. — bongo fury
The simple fact is that Witty doesn't talk about correct or incorrect use. Ever. Okay, a lie, he uses the term 'correct use' once at §146, and literally no where else in the entirety of the PI. 'Incorrect' use actually makes no appearance at all, ever. As for the postulated assistant who brings the pillar, sure, one can argue semantics over whether to call it an 'incorrect use' or simply not having learnt the use at all, but the latter is simply more in accord with what Wittgenstein actually said. — StreetlightX
And there is, moreover, excellent reason for that. The full phrase is: "meaning is use in a language -game". In other words, 'use' is always relational. To even talk about misuse simply makes no sense. Which is why the word 'misuse' also appears exactly zero times in the PI. To see this, simply try to invert the statement: "Meaninglessness is incorrect use in a language-game". But no language-game specifies 'incorrect use', because 'use' is a function of, let's call it, felicity ("The signpost is in order a if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose"). Either a use fulfills its purpose, or it does not. If it does not, it is not a use at all. Not only does introducing (and lets be clear, it is an extra-textual introduction that does not exist in the PI) 'correct and incorrect use' have practically no textual warrant at all, it also confuses things. It makes it seem as though 'use' could, even in principle, be something not in accord with a language-game. But Witty makes the point over and over and over gain that this is exactly what one cannot do. — StreetlightX
Surely, W. implies that there are correct and incorrect uses of words, whether he uses that phrasing or not. — Sam26
you seem to imply that there aren't language-games that don't accord with the proper function of words — Sam26
That doesn't mean that any language-game conveys the correct use of a word. — Sam26
The standard of the 'correct use of a word' just is the language-game. You seem to be implying that there are 'correct uses' that stand outside of language-games. But this is exactly what the entirety of the PI is geared against. — StreetlightX
I'm saying that not all language-games are on equal footing, some convey incorrect uses. If this wasn't so, then anything goes in terms of meaning. — Sam26
This second sentence doesn't follow. If I am trying to assert something, I should not use language in the manner of a command. And vice versa. What constrains the 'proper use of language' is what one is trying to do. But to ask if commands or assertions are 'on equal footing' or 'not on equal footing' is not a question that is sensical. — StreetlightX
All I'm saying is that you can't just create any language-game, and then suppose that you have somehow meant something by your words. — Sam26
The way they use the word is just incorrect, language-game or not. — Sam26
It's true that Wittgenstein doesn't talk of these kinds of language-games, — Sam26
However, that words lack an essence doesn't entail that the referents of words lack an essence. Come to think of it, Wittgenstein seems to be rather confused about what philosophy is - philosophy is, all things considered, about essences (the referents of words) and not, I repeat not, about words that were meant to stand for those essences (referents). — TheMadFool
Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further 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.
But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)
The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")
The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.
As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign. — Wittgenstein (Blue Book)
Sorry if it was inappropriate. — TheMadFool
if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use. — Wittgenstein (Blue Book)
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)
Frege held that both the thought contents that constitute the proof-structure of mathematics and the subject matter of these thought contents (extensions, functions) exist. He also thought that these entities are non-spatial, non-temporal, causally inert, and independent for their existence and natures from any person's thinking them or thinking about them.
Frege proposed a picturesque metaphor of thought contents as existing in a "third realm". This "realm" counted as "third" because it was comparable to but different from the realm of physical objects and the realm of mental entities. I think that Frege held, in the main body of his career, that not only thought contents, but numbers and functions were members of this third realm. — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge
It is just this 'third realm' which, I think, Wittgenstein wants to reject, on account of it being 'immaterial' or 'occult'. — Wayfarer
Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)
:smirk:"Animals don't have language. They have calls."
— Wayfarer
You realize that we are animals, right? — hanaH
:up:I'm saying that looking at animals giving conventional signals for practical purposes
is a path to something like the essence of Wittgenstein. Start from separate bodies in a world trying to work together. Build on that.
:up:Philosophy nowadays wants to ground itself in the concrete, in the day-to-day realm of what we actually do, not with what it sees as reified concepts such as 'essences'. — Wayfarer
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