on the one hand the philosopher wants the claims made to have results for the ordinary use of the expression, yet on the other wants to be careful to divorce it from its ordinary use — The Great Whatever
So talking about language games is a language game. It's a game in which we propose to have a transcendent viewpoint on language. — Mongrel
A vantage point always requires separatation. Saying something about a particular word doesn't compare to saying something about Language. — Mongrel
121. One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy", there must be a second-order philosophy. But that's not the way it is; it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others without then being second-order. — Wittgenstein
The idea is to draw attention to specific curious characteristics of some of the things we do with words.
When one plays chess, one undertakes to abide by certain rules. So moving the bishop along a diagonal is OK, but moving it along a row is not. If your opponent did so, you would accuses them of nit understanding how to play chess.
Language games are reasonably discreet, making it easier to set out the rules. Of course the rules may be implicit, in which case it might be interesting or useful to make them explicit - think of the rules involved in making a promise.
The rules may even change; as in Chess960. Knowing when and that the rules have changes is important. — Banno
I take it to be part of the very idea of language games to rule out transcendence in language. There only is one language game or another. Each has rules. As TGW says, professional rigour sometimes tries to partition off ordinary language meanings from meanings in professional practice. — mcdoodle
Doesn't that kind of strict philosophical use (somewhat ironically) occur when, as Wittgenstein puts it, language goes on holiday? He says that the genesis of philosophical problems is to be found in such use. To look at it the other way around; what if philosophical problems are already there (in the sense of being independent of language) but cannot be adequately formulated in terms of common usage? — John
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