So W used a philosophical doctrine to conclude that philosophy is a waste if time. Self-undermining?

I was just passing Mrs un's computer and the film was paused with the subtitle:

"Will driving passengers please go to their vehicles."

Any philosopher can tell you that a passenger is not a driver, and folks who have left their vehicle are neither. But after a moment's *huh?*, I intuited the context in which it is a perfectly ordinarily meaningful sentence.

Are they all on a bigger thing, like a boat or something?

That was my thought, a car ferry - vehicles within vehicles. It just seemed a good example of meaning requiring context, the context 'philosophy' being the strange holiday context where one is not actually trying to say anything, or get anywhere, just making sure that the engine is running smoothly.

"Meaning requires context" is a philosophical insight. Is it socially conditioned instinctive word application?

Only, I dunno, I'd call "entailed meaning" or something like that, meaning that actually does require the surrounding context to make sense of. Things that require inference, thought, putting things together.

Not everything is like that though. A baby monitor works, because regardless of context, "I'm being harmed or terrified" noises are the same regardless of the surrounding context.

Since racial slurs are fine in the right context, and with the right intent, they ought to be fine to say, and one shouldn't feel anything at all about saying them with abandon in the right contexts. This of course isn't true, it would always feel inappropriate to say.

You could say that we're all just deluded, and emotionally invested in somethings, so that we read more into them than what's given, or that the meaning of things bleed out beyond their contexts.

I should get around to reading Soames: his two volumes are already on my shelves. :)

Hmmm...Scientology...jargon....no actual thought...I would say...yep!

Not that I have any idea or anything. I don't like to determine or constrain things. I'm an agent of chaos, of liberation, emancipation.

What keeps the engine running smoothly is faith, work, relaxation, and love. Believe that you're already the standard by which "smoothly" is to be judged. Work with the precision of Odin, relax like everything is perfect and beautiful in the world, and love at least one thing more than yourself.

True dat.

Only, I dunno, I'd call "entailed meaning" or something like that, meaning that actually does require the surrounding context to make sense of. Things that require inference, thought, putting things together. — Wosret

It's interesting you raise the point in parallel, I had just answered this in a comment currently at the end of https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1349/wittgensteins-mysticism-or-not-/p1 here, in response to the example in the post at the beginning of the thread.

Not everything is like that though. A baby monitor works, because regardless of context, "I'm being harmed or terrified" noises are the same regardless of the surrounding context. — Wosret

This is not a good example of noise without context, because you have already stipulated the context as a baby monitor. Remove that context and who knows what the noises are. I heard a cat in a field, at night, making noises and it sounded just like a distressed baby. It took me some time to convince myself that it could not be a baby out there. A few days later my neighbour told me he had heard that noise, thinking the same thing, and he had come very close to going out into the field to find the baby.

So there is an issue here of convincing oneself that the noises ( words or utterances included) cannot mean what they appear to mean, because the context is wrong. And I cannot think of any noises which could be exempt from this problem. Interpretation is always dependent on context, that's just the way that the mind works, through associations.

I think that that's like suggesting that water isn't always wet, because mirages aren't wet. Misidentifying something doesn't make it necessarily related to that thing, just because you thought it was.

That's the point though, nothing can be said to be related to anything else, except through how we identify them. So if I think that one thing is related to another, then it is related, by virtue of that very thought which relates them. Even if it is a case of "misidentifying", there is necessarily a relationship, because that act of misidentifying creates that relationship. To justify the claim that this is "misidentifying" rather than identifying, requires a demonstration that this relationship is incorrect. We do this by turning to other relationships (context). Vise versa, to justify an identification as correct rather than a misidentification, requires reference to other relationships (context). So context is a necessary part of identification because it distinguishes identification from misidentification.

In what context does a cat in the woods become a baby? You first say that things can't be said without words, and then say that for this reason, words constitute the empirical relationships between things...

These jumping off points begin in midair.

Eh?

That's the point though, nothing can be said to be related to anything else, except through how we identify them. So if I think that one thing is related to another, then it is related, by virtue of that very thought which relates them. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's an extreme form of nominalism where humans create similarity among particulars in a totally ad-hoc fashion.

But that's not how it works. We perceive similarity among particulars, and our language reflects those relationships. It's not arbitrary that cats have some things in common with other cats that dogs don't have, and that's why we group living things into categories. We don't create those similarities. They are already there. We just decide how to make sense of it.

Relationships and similarities are not at all the same. Meaning is built on associations, relationships, not similarities. To say that similarity is what is important here is a mistake.

Maybe it's how a certain group of people identify each other without asking. It's almost as a form of unofficial dialect. For only those who understand the words fluently can understand the how important it is to the transmitter of which the words are used and placed.

So the OP is asking if "language game" is a pawn in a language game. Is it?

Yes.

So on the one hand, I think of W's thesis in propositional terms (which pays close attention to the context of an utterance). By that means I arrive at what I think W meant.

But when I apply that gleaned meaning to "language games" I find that it's probably fruitless for me to try to uncover a particular meaning.

Agree?

If you are saying that there is no context for the concept of language games, then I disagree. As Pneumenon said earlier, the context is philosophical discussion.

If you are saying something else, then please elaborate.

Sure. So I think "language game" is supposed to be anti-propositional.

Looking at it propositionally, we would read W's writings, maybe talk amongst ourselves, and then agree on a set of propositions that we believe W was expressing in his writing. You'd be able to tell that we're thinking propositionally because we would say: "Witt said that..." And then we'd paraphrase.

We would definitely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, assert that we considered context when we derived those propositions. That's how propositions work. You must consider context of utterance to know what proposition is being expressed.

However, when applying the concept of language games to "language games," one of the first things we're going to do is deny that "language games" expresses any concept. I don't think it would really be appropriate to try to discover some proposition that's being expressed. Rather, "language game" should be thought of as sort of pawn in social interaction. And that pawn is the exact words written and how those words were presented. And then how that pawn functioned in terms of actions.

It becomes a little dubious to even discover meaning in W's writings because I'm not in a social relationship with him. ?

It seems that you are tying yourself in knots trying to find contradictions in Wittgenstein's work.

Firstly, I am confused by your use of the term "propositional". It was the early Wittgenstein who limited all of language only to propositions (i.e. assertions about the natural world), while he was working more within the philosophical tradition. The later Wittgenstein took a more relaxed view and allowed more than propositions into language. The later Wittgenstein also placed more emphasis on the context of utterance and considered meaning as use. The early Wittgenstein, in his attempt to locate the most general form of a proposition, had no regard for any context. The later Wittgenstein's focus on context, and introduction of terms of art such as 'language game', were a reaction to the philosophical tradition that had gone before him. This tradition is the context for Wittgenstein's use of the phrase 'language game'.

Ironically, the point on which you attempt to criticise Wittgenstein, is the same point on which Wittgenstein criticises much of philosophy and the reason for his invention of the concept of language games: traditional philosophy often speaks of language outside of any context. Wittgenstein sees this as language going on holiday, which he considers to be the cause of philosophical problems.

So W used a philosophical doctrine to conclude that philosophy is a waste if time. Self-undermining? — Mongrel

You're implying that this conclusion can never be reached without being self-undermining? That's an air-tight way of fending off any criticism of the subject, I suppose.

Firstly, I am confused by your use of the term "propositional". — Luke

Yes. I know. You're confused by my usage because you don't know what a proposition is.

What do you mean by it, then?

I already toldja. Read my above post starting with "looking at it propositionally"

Compare philosophers' use of the terms "being", "language games", "consciousness", "rules" etc in meta-linguistic sentences, to a logicians' use of the noun-phrase "free variable" in open formulas.

When using meta-linguistic terminology i think it is more often that not the case that all the philosopher intends to communicate is an open-sentence containing one or more of these terms as free-variables, and is begging the listener to supply a relevant substitution, whether it be a named instance of the listeners acquaintance (e.g. "language game" -> "chess") or a perceptuo-motor action on behalf of the listener (e.g. "being" -> physically look around).


Perhaps it would be helpful if philosophers adopted a notation to explicitly tag speech-acts whenever there is a potential misunderstanding that a substantive proposition is implied when it is not, for example replacing "being" with <being>. That way confusions concerning the need for "third order talk" and associated paradoxes are kept to a minimum, and it is clear when the philosopher is intending an act of showing involving the listener that goes beyond the boundaries of language.

(Y)

However, when applying the concept of language games to "language games," one of the first things we're going to do is deny that "language games" expresses any concept. — Mongrel

I don't see why we're going to do that. I believe I understand 'language games' as a concept, and I understand it so partly because of other remarks by Wittgenstein about how some concepts can't be defined precisely, but are understood because their uses - the exemplary case is 'game' - have family resemblances.

But Witt's 'Philosophical Investigations' is also indeed a pawn, or possibly a knight or bishop, in the language game of philosophy. There's a certain social and intellectual milieu where such games are mostly played.

In passing, it's interesting that your imagined example is of written language, whereas the Witt notion applies to all forms of language-exchange, and is rooted in talk about 'utterances'.

When using meta-linguistic terminology... — sime

Here, though, there are only words, ordinary words in ordinary language, even to explain to use how we ought to use meta-language. I don't see how that can mitigate any difficulties. I think philosophers on the whole do indeed try to explain the formal meaning they intend their terms to have, but there is a neo-Derrida in my head sometimes who can always find a connotation lurking in the most precise of definitions. Squiggles of various kinds do often clarify: for instance, I'm reading David Wiggins at the moment and his ideas about 'sameness and substance' are greatly clarified by a recourse to formal symbolism. There remains a difficulty in then relating such a formal symbolic language back to the world of ordinary language and human interaction. As soon as one paraphrases, or refers to a slab of ordinary language by some letter or other symbol as if it were a mathematical variable, something is lost of the original, lost in translation.