Nobody talks much about the "incorrect" use of words. We like to think language is democratic.

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

Well, arguably, what happened to all that essence and substance talk, was that it was transformed into the basis for modern science. I was reading about Carl Linneaus recently, who is the father of modern biological taxonomy. How could he have done what he did, without Aristotle's species, genera, and so on? The ideas of form and substance and the other elements of classical metaphysics, is what enabled science proper to take shape. That's why the scientific revolution happened in Europe, and not the East. But the way that it developed precluded the qualitative and the ethical, it became completely focussed on what could be made subject to mathematical analysis. The qualitative aspects were assigned to the observing mind as 'secondary attributes'. Again, very rough sketch.

Nobody talks much about the "incorrect" use of words. — bongo fury

Well, we should learn them to.

telling comment. (Of course, 'the real world' is what exists unperceived by the mind, right?) — Wayfarer

Yes, although I tend not to like to use the term "world", which itself suggests subjective experience, to describe it. Usually, I will refer to it as "the universe", or as " objective reality".

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

Haha...this is he "of the perpetually raised brows", rendering the "hairy eyeball".

Obviously no one was talking about syntax.

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

I would definitely disagree with this assessment of the PI, viz., that "incorrect use makes no sense in the context of the PI." First, my point in pointing out to @TheMadFool, that use doesn't equate to meaning, is that it's imprecise. It's "correct usage" of words/concepts that drive meaning, i.e., a concept has various uses (incorrect and correct) driven by rules (implicit and explicit rules) within a given cultural language-game.

If we look at the first example of a language-game in the PI, we can clearly see there are correct and incorrect uses of words. We observe that if the assistant doesn't respond appropriately to the call "slab," then the assistant has not learned the language-game, and by extension has not learned the proper responses to the calls. Would you say that if the assistant brought a "pillar," that the assistant is "correctly" understanding the use of the word or the call "slab?" Obviously not. So, the obvious implication in this and other language-games is that there are "correct" and "incorrect" uses of words.

When teaching a child the correct use of the word cup, would we say there is no incorrect use? It's true, of course, that W. says that words go on a holiday, i.e., that they lack a use, but this is no argument against what I'm saying. If a philosopher is using the word illusion out of it's normal setting in which the word gets it's meaning, then not only does the word "lack use" in that context, but it's incorrectly used. ""Lacking use" surely also implies incorrect use, as opposed to correct use.

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.

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.

Well, arguably, what happened to all that essence and substance talk, was that it was transformed into the basis for modern science. — Wayfarer

That's why, it seems, I instinctively used $H_2O$, the chemical formula for water, in my post. It seems so natural to do so, as if that, the chemical composition of water, is its (water's) essence but...is it? I suppose it is - everything about water can be explained with how the molecule $H_2O$ would/does behave. I wonder if Wittgenstein had anything to say about science and what seems to be its focus on the thing-in-itself (the referent e.g. water) rather than the sign (the word "water"). Could we then say that to deal with the Wittgensteinian problem of language games we could switch our perspective to a scientific one? I'm shooting in the dark here so do bear with me.

Nobody talks much about the "incorrect" use of words. We like to think language is democratic. — bongo fury

I would love a democratic approach to language - remembering rules is a millstone around our necks but, luckily or not, once a word, here "definition/meaning" is defined, correct and incorrect naturally/automatically enter the picture.

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

So, I'm arguing semantics, I suppose that's meant to mean that it's trivial, or that I'm avoiding the point you're making. Incorrect use,would be, "...not having learnt the use at all." If anyone is arguing semantics, it's you. Surely, W. implies that there are correct and incorrect uses of words, whether he uses that phrasing or not. Let's use Moore's use of the word know in On Certainty as an example. What would be more precise? To say, Moore hasn't learned the use of the word know, or that Moore is using the word incorrectly in that context? I would say the latter is closer to what W. is trying to point out. Obviously W. is pointing out other more subtle things in the context of the PI, but this doesn't take away from what I'm saying.

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

Of course, "meaning is use in a language-game," and of course it's "always relational," but that doesn't mean that any language-game conveys the correct use of a word. Groups of people create their own language-games all the time, especially religious people. I wouldn't go so far as to say they haven't learned to use the word at all, because in some contexts they do use the word correctly. However, in other contexts they're using the word incorrectly, and to say so, is in keeping with the PI, as far as I can see.

Use is always in accord with a language-game, but you seem to imply that there aren't language-games that don't accord with the proper function of words. Hence, language-games that don't convey the correct use of words, and here is where we disagree.

Surely, W. implies that there are correct and incorrect uses of words, whether he uses that phrasing or not. — Sam26

There are words which have meaning and words which do not for Witty. And this distinction maps onto words with uses, and words without uses. And this matters because to speak of 'correct' and 'incorrect' uses - which Witty rightly avoids - changes the kind of thing 'use' is. To speak of 'incorrect use' is to introduce the confused notion that there are, as it were, 'incorrect meanings'. But either one means something, or one does not. An 'incorrect meaning' - or 'incorrect use' - would simply be - not a meaning at all. I.e. not a use at all. Which is why he avoids the confused notion of an 'incorrect use' entirely.

you seem to imply that there aren't language-games that don't accord with the proper function of words — Sam26

Yes. That is exactly the implication. Language-games specify 'the proper function of words'. Language-games are not the kind of thing that can be mistaken, wrong, or incorrect (except, perhaps, by the lights of a different language-game - but this would simply be to say that the differing language-games are trying to do different things with words. Say, assertion vs. command).

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.

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

No, I'm not saying that there are correct uses that stand outside of language-games, that's definitely not correct. 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.

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 with langauge. But to ask if commands or assertions are 'on equal footing' or 'not on equal footing' is not a question that is sensical. The standards are the forms-of-life. Beyond that, nothing.

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. This doesn't make any sense. Concepts can't be used just any old way, even if they're used in a language-game created by a group of people, and even if they're are trying to do something with their words.

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

If your language-game has a purpose (and it would not be a language-game if it didn't), then the words employed within it absolutely mean something. There's no other standard. This doesn't mean that 'concepts can be used just any old way'. Our doing things always pose constraints on our saying things, which are, of course, part of the doing.

Let me give you an example. I was arguing with some religious people recently, and their epistemological language-game was such that they have knowledge based on some inner knowing. Something that only they have access to. My contention is that they have not properly understood the use of the word know, i.e., the concept as they were using it, is vacuous. It doesn't matter that they have created a language-game that they use together to try to convey meaning. The way they use the word is just incorrect, language-game or not.

The way they use the word is just incorrect, language-game or not. — Sam26

By what standard? "Langauge-game or not"? This is certainly has no warrant in anything Wittgenstein ever said.

But look, I understand what you're getting at. But the way to put it must be different: it is not that your religious mates had a language-game which 'used the word incorrectly'. It's that your religious mates do not have a language-game at all. That's the point. It's not 'incorrect use'. It's simply - no use. And correspondingly: no language-game. Not any stringing together of words and actions can count as a language-game. That's what it means to be 'misled by grammar'.

It's their attempt at a language-game. It would be like playing chess, but not understanding all the moves correctly. It appears to be the game of chess, but certain moves are missing. It's true that Wittgenstein doesn't talk of these kinds of language-games, but the implication of incorrect and correct uses of words is something implied, especially in terms of learning, you either learn the word correctly or you don't. Your use of the word demonstrates if you understand how it's applied.

It's true that Wittgenstein doesn't talk of these kinds of language-games, — Sam26

Because they are not language-games. And he talks about that incessantly: idling engines, being mislead by grammar, captured by pictures, etc.

Ya, that's a good point.

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

For many philosophy has been about something like essences. It's been something like a pseudo-science of folk science of such essences. Call them forms or universals or concepts.
It's not that Wittgenstein was too dull to grasp this dominant conception of philosophy. Instead he was too bright to miss what was wrong with it. He challenges that view directly.

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)

This is so vague. What about rule following or the chess game example and the famed meter stick?

She certainly was a Thomist, but I've not noted anything by her on the topic of essence. So I do not know how she dealt with essence. Let me know if you find something.

Sorry if it was inappropriate. — TheMadFool

Not inappropriate; I was just correcting any misconstrule.

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 a rather cheap way of deflating the issue at hand. When he says:

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. Presumably this is something undesireable, associated with 'the occult sphere'. But 'use' is quotidian, what we're all familiar with - it's a pragmatic solution. But what kind of account of meaning does it really give?

As he introduces Frege it's worth considering what Frege had in mind:

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.

which sounds platonist. It goes on

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'.

The temptation is to think of language games as discreet, and hence in terms of explicit rules. A few things mitigate against this.

• The rule is ultimately seen in our following it or going against it, Rather than in saying it. The use, not the rule, is the final arbiter.
• We add and subtract from the rules. Consider castling, or en passant. A key aspect of a family resemblance is recognising a new cousin, perhaps with not qualities in common with yourself, as a member of your family. (@TheMadFool)
• And our language games come together as a form of life. That is, they interact with each other, and with themselves - recursively. @hanaH

So it makes some sense to talk of correctly or incorrectly following a rule, so long as one keeps an eye on what one is doing.

The problem with Kripke's quus isn't it being incorrect addition so much as that quus is only of any use in philosophy classes.

That we can have a A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs depends on our having a nice arrangement of epithets.

All this by way of agreeing with Davidson, that while it is tempting to think of language as dependent on agreed conventions of some sort, it isn't so. For any convention one might take up, there will be an ingenious or ignorant construct to undermine it.

And this is also what @Pop, and others, who deem language no more than transmission and reception of signals, are doomed never to be able to account for.

It is just this 'third realm' which, I think, Wittgenstein wants to reject, on account of it being 'immaterial' or 'occult'. — Wayfarer

In my view, that's a common misunderstanding of critical philosophers in general. It's not religion as such or the immaterial as such that's a problem. The 'third realm' is rejected (or rather circumvented) because it's useless...like phlogiston, like the ether. I mean 'useless' in terms of ('rationally') justifying claims.

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.)

"Animals don't have language. They have calls."
— Wayfarer

You realize that we are animals, right? — hanaH

:smirk:

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

:up:

But the domain of real concepts serves an important purpose, it accounts for something. If you don't understand that, then, sure, it's all simply signs connected to other signs. But what to signs actually signify? What gives them traction? How, by the manipulation of signs, in e.g. mathematics, are completely new domains discovered, as they are in mathematical physics? Why the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences?

I have the usual sense of having an idea "in mind" and, like others, I'll talk about having a "realization." "Mental" language will always be with us. It's useful. So it's not about denying the existence of "what it's like to grasp a concept" or "what it's like to see red." It's about seeing the epistemological uselessness of this mysterious and yet banal stuff.

You mention "signs connected to signs." It's true that the dictionary gives only signs as the meaning of other signs, and so on. But let's remember the vervet monkeys. They are bodies in a world together. Their cries are connected to eagles and other predators (as well as evasive responses.)

edit: I hadn't read p. 3 (re: StreetlightX & Sam26) before posting this reply.

It's been decades since I've read the PI but it seems to me that "incorect usage" corresponds to making an invalid move in a language-game, so to speak, such as using a word native to religious discourse like "God" in a physical science discourse in order to treat it a "hypothesis" (or vice versa e.g. "evolution" in a religious discourse). Witty doesn't explicitly proscribe word usage as "incorrect" but, IIRC, does convey the idea as analogous to e.g. moving a rook diagonally in chess, thereby no longer playing chess whether or not one realizes it. I could be mistaken though. Still, this is the gist of Witty's critique of philosophical discourse in which "language goes on holiday", no?