Yes, I probably should have said "communally established usages" because the "agreed" still smacks of the 'contractual' which I wanted to de-emphasize.

Both "agreement" and "pact" although not "contract" are synonyms of convention. The second definition in the list definitions that I look up of "convention" uses the word "agreement"...

Buddha makes this clear and unambiguous distinction between convention, and actually knowing stuff, which takes actual practice, living and personal experience.

You can go ahead thinking they're totes the same, but you'll just be wrong...

I did also qualify with "like", I'll add, as in, not exactly, the words don't really matter to me... that's kind of the whole point...

Nope, I mean that conventions as such - if by this we mean already-established uses of language - are quite literally irrelevant to Wittgenstein's account of meaning. Or, as I said, what is at stake is 'conventionalizability' and not conventions — StreetlightX

I believe I understand what you're saying. Witt wanted us to observe how language is used among living humans in order to grasp how words come to have meaning.

An example would be when the Normans invaded England. The whole community began to speak in a kind of baby-talk (English as it is today is a result of that.) Thinking of that community struggling to communicate, the thing that really drives the establishment of rules comes into view. It's part of what it means to be human.

Witt wanted us to observe how language is used among living humans in order to grasp how words come to have meaning. — Mongrel

Yeah, but the really important point is not only that we must observe how language is used among living human beings, but equally that meaning in language is nonetheless not tethered to these actually-existing-practises. There is the capacity to inaugurate new uses, new meanings that may very well break with 'convention' - all the while being amenable - in principle - to becoming conventional. Or to simply go back to my original point: a language-game is not a 'convention' if by 'convention' we understand an actually-existing-use of language by a community of real life speakers.

Yeah, but the really important point is not only that we must observe how language is used among living human beings, but equally that meaning in language is nonetheless not tethered to these actually-existing-practises. — StreetlightX

But I don't think even logical positivists thought that. On the other hand, I think it's only by an artificial analysis that we can separate the source of normativity from the rules themselves. In practice, it's an evolving, organic whole.

The difficulty is that when you describe people's linguistic behavior (as in all the examples that you've listed) it may appear like a behaviorist analysis of meaning (meaning X = saying such and such words under such and such conditions), and this is something we should avoid. And I believe that it wasn't Wittgenstein's analysis either. By 'language use' he didn't simply mean "making a certain type of utterance" (pace Austin) but he was interested in the logical role that words play in our activities, where the purely verbal aspect is not always the most important part.

If you mean he wasn't talking about any particular set of conventions, I think that's clear. Since he encouraged the philosopher to observe word usage, he appears to have been pointing directly at convention as the reason for wording choices (as opposed to ability of language to represent.) — Mongrel

Try this Mongrel. Observe any particular instance of usage of anything, such as a person using a hammer, or a person using a word. You can describe that particular instance of usage. Now look at a number of different instances of usage. You can perhaps make an inductive conclusion, from similarities in each instance, to say that the hammer, or that specific word, is used in a specific way. Recognize that this is a "rule", or "law", which you have created, by means of your inductive conclusion, that the thing is used in this particular way. You cannot proceed from here, to say that the people using this thing are following that rule, because the rule was produced by you, from your observations.

The point is, to provide a separation between particular instances of "use", and the inductive conclusion, of "use", and recognize, that "use" in general is a rule by inductive conclusion, it is not a rule which the users are following.

Yes. I appreciate that point. I spontaneously noticed this some years back: start talking with no conscious end in mind. At some point you may notice the effect of the desire to say something meaningful. That desire produces limitation that didn't appear to be there when you first started talking. The closer you get to the end of the sentence, the fewer options you have

if you want
to continue
being
meaningful
in
your
speech.

So here we aren't talking about rules. We aren't talking about the genesis of rules. We're talking about rule-following (limitation.)

To complement StreetlightX's quote from Cavell, here's another quote from Cora Diamond that gives a particularly good illustration in my opinion to the idea of "forms of life" or Cavell's "whirl of organism": (from "Rules: Looking in the Right Place")

[H]ow do we tell that some people distant from ourselves are telling the time? It is not a matter of their glancing at the sun and saying something; rather, on the supposition that they glance at the sun and say things, it is telling time if they coordinate their activities by such means, or refer to such matters in their narratives in certain ways. Or they say such things as 'He left at dawn, it is half a day's trip; he should be back by now', and then they begin to prepare a meal for him, or start worrying about why he is so late. That they are telling the time is not a matter of any 'technique', taken in isolation from the place of the technique in their lives. Even if they had clocks just like ours, and said 'six o'clock' just when the hands stood, as we say, at six (and so on), it might be anything at all that they were doing. There is nothing in such a technique, described in that sort of way, which suggests that they are telling time. If they think that it is appropriate to pray when they see the hands standing at six, we cannot merely on that account say that they think it appropriate to pray at a particular time, six o'clock: 'six o'clock' does not have in their lives the grammar of being a term for a particular time.

Again, despite the popular misconception, neither convention nor 'communally agreed useages' play much of a role - if any - in Witty's understanding of meaning and language (the same can't be said of something like 'communally cultivated habits, dispositions, affects, and activities' and all the stuff Cavell puts under the heading of the 'whirl of organism'). — StreetlightX

If a "convention" is simply "a way in which something is usually done" - which presumably includes the ways in which we are usually taught to do things - then I don't quite understand how it is much different to your (or Cavell's) contrasting class of "communally cultivated habits" and the like.

More quotes about 'forms of life' and 'communal agreement', this time from Wittgenstein himself (taken from "Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics"):

147. Suppose I had said: those people pay for wood on the ground of calculation; they accept a calculation as proof that they have to pay so much.--Well, that is simply a description of their procedure (of their behavior).

148. Those people--we should say--sell timber by cubic measure--but are they right in doing so? Wouldn't it be more correct to sell it by weight--or by the time that it took to fell the timber--or by the labour of felling measured by the age and strength of the woodsman? And why should they not hand it over for a price which is independent of all this: each buyer pays the same however much he takes (they have found it possible to live like that). And is there anything to be said against simply giving the wood away?

149. Very well; but what if they piled the timber in heaps of arbitrary, varying height and then sold it at a price proportionate to the area covered by the piles? And what if they even justified this with the words: "Of course, if you buy more timber, you must pay more"?

150. How could I show them that--as I should say--you don't really buy more wood if you buy a pile covering a bigger area?--I should, for instance, take a pile which was small by their ideas and, by laying the logs around, change it into a 'big' one. This might convince them--but perhaps they would say: "Yes, now it's a lot of wood and costs more"--and that would be the end of the matter.--We should presumably say in this case: they simply do not mean the same by "a lot of wood" and "a little wood" as we do; and they have a quite different system of payment from us.

153. What does people's agreement about accepting a structure as a proof consist in? In the fact that they use words as language? As what we call "language".
Imagine people who used money in transactions; that is to say coins, looking like our coins, which are made of gold and silver and stamped and are also handed over for goods--but each person gives just what he pleases for the goods, and the merchant does not give the customer more or less according to what he pays. In short this money, or what looks like money, has among them a quite different role from among us. We should feel much less akin to these people than to people who are not yet acquainted with money at all and practice a primitive kind of barter.--"But these people's coins will surely also have some purpose!"--Then has everything that one does a purpose? Say religious actions--.
It is perfectly possible that we should be inclined to call people who behaved like this insane. And yet we don't call everyone insane who acts similarly within the forms of our culture, who uses words 'without purpose'. (Think of the coronation of a King.)

Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and of significance and fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation - all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls "forms of life." — StreetlightX

Cavell should suspend his terror over this considering that his knowledge of the mechanics of human language is as limited as anyone else's. It's a fruitful topic among scientists studying human origin. At this point, that science is a collection of speculations. Why on earth would Cavell imagine that he's gone further?

If a "convention" is simply "a way in which something is usually done" - which presumably includes the ways in which we are usually taught to do things - then I don't quite understand how it is much different to your (or Cavell's) contrasting class of "communally cultivated habits" and the like. — Luke

The object of agreement is different. For Wittgenstein as for Cavell, there is 'agreement in the form of life' at stake. It is not an agreement with respect to the conventional (by which I mean 'already-established') use(s) of language. That's the key difference. There are two analytic axes at work here: a language game and the form of life in which that language game operates. 'Agreement' operates at the latter level, as it were.

But what does that have to do with the meaning of the word? You might intend for me to turn left, and this might cause you to say "turn right" – but as you've admitted, this would be the wrong thing to say, given that "turn right" doesn't mean "turn left". So the meaning of the word "right" has nothing to do with your intent or its causal relationship to the actual utterance – your intent can cause you to say the wrong word (and it's still the wrong word even if the person you're speaking too recognises that you've misspoken and correctly infers your intent). — Michael

Then you are no longer arguing for meaning is use. You are now arguing that meaning is what a symbol refers to.

You're taking the term "conventional" too literally. I only brought it up to address your claim that if meaning is use then you can simply utter any sounds you like and, given that you've used them, they must have a meaning. That's not what Wittgenstein means by "meaning is use". "Use" isn't synonymous here with "utterance". It's closer to "function". The meaning of a word is its function or role in the language-game – which may be a language-game involving only a small number of people. — Michael

LOL. Now I'm taking a conventional use of the word "conventional" to literally. Then you meant (intended) something else with your use of "conventional".

Also, virtually every dictionary defines "meaning" as "what is intended". So to say that dictionaries don't exhaust every use of a word is preposterous. It is what we use we we want to know what a word means, or what it refers to so that we can use those words to express our intent, or our ideas.

The information you intend to convey dictates the words you use? Yes, or no?

The object of agreement is different. For Wittgenstein as for Cavell, there is 'agreement in the form of life' at stake. It is not an agreement with respect to the conventional (by which I mean 'already-established') use(s) of language. That's the key difference. There are two analytic axes at work here: a language game and the form of life in which that language game operates. 'Agreement' operates at the latter level, as it were. — StreetlightX

But agreement in form of life and agreement in convention are both of the same type: neither are agreements of opinion. Agreement in linguistic convention is just a particular species of agreement in form of life.

Really, I am taking issue with your claim that conventional use is not at all what Wittgenstein refers to with regard to meaning-as-use. We learn the meanings and uses of words just as (or perhaps while) we learn language games. We say that someone "knows how to go on" when they demonstrate that they use words as others usually do (i.e. conventionally). And is there any word or phrase that is not "conventionalizable"? There is only the conventional and the unconventional, as well as right and wrong ways to use words.

So do you want to say something like "meaning of a sentence=intent"? If so, then I think it is very implausible that intending something by a sentence is sufficient to make it mean what you intend.

For example, can you intend to mean that it is sunny outside by the sentence "it is raining"? Suppose someone asks you what is the whether outside, and you answer "it is raining" while intending to convey to him that it is sunny; would you say that you've told a lie or the truth? (and suppose that it is indeed sunny outside). It seems to me that in this example, what you really intend has little to do with the meaning of the sentence that you are using, on a pretty intuitive notion of "meaning".

I think the moral from this story is that for a sentence to mean something that you intend, it must be (in some sense) appropriate to use that sentence to say this particular thing. And what makes it appropriate to use a sentence such as "it is raining" on certain circumstances and not some others, is not decided solely by what one intends. Therefore intention by itself doesn't look like a plausible explanation of linguistic meaning. — Fafner

If it is sunny outside and I intend to convey information that it is sunny outside, then I would say, "it is sunny outside". I used words that match my intentions. If I never intended to convey that information, I would have never used words at all.

If I intended to convey information that it is sunny outside, and I said, "it is raining outside", then my words wouldn't match my intention, which means I misspoke, or I didn't use words correctly.

If I intended to convey information that it is sunny outside while it is actually raining, then that means that I intend to lie - to use words in a way that matches my intentions.

In lying, I could have said, "it is snowing", or anything else, other than "it is raining". In so doing, I used words that match my intentions, not how it is appropriate to use those words to say a particular thing.

In both lying and misspeaking, I am not using words that is appropriate to use those words to say a particular thing. The difference comes from intent. I can intend to lie, but I don't intend to misspeak. Intending to misspeak is lying.

But what makes it the case the certain words match your intention, and others don't? Obviously what they mean. But what explains their meaning? It cannot be your intention, since the meaning of your words can diverge from your intention, so it is false that meaning=intention. Get it?

(and also as a sidenote, it's not an objection to an argument simply to change the example - you should've answered the question that I posed from within the example as I described it - if it bothers you that I included you in my example, then substitute yourself with some hypothetical person.)

Mm, the 'use' in 'meaning-as-use' has never referred to 'conventional use' but 'use in a language game' - and to be in a language game is to be not 'conventional', but to be 'conventializable' - to be, in principle, the kind of thing that can be used conventionally, even if it never, in fact, becomes conventially used. A word employed in a particular language game may be used once in a particular way, and for whatever, totally contingent reason never be used that way ever again by anyone else living or dead, and it would still fall under the rubric of 'meaning-as-use'. — StreetlightX

This sounds awfully close to defining "use" as simply making sounds and writing scribbles. If any scribble or sound can mean anything at anytime, then use would simply making scribbles or sounds to refer to anything. Any scribble or sound is "conventionizable".

"Conventionizable" isn't even a word. You simply made up a new string of scribbles and ascribed it a meaning via your intent. Most of us knew that you really meant (intended) "conventionalized", which is a word. When there are other words that already have the meaning you intend, then making up a new string of scribbles to mean the same thing would be redundant and makes language more complex and confusing.

. And is there any word or phrase that is not "conventionalizable"? There is only the conventional and the unconventional, as well as right and wrong ways to use words. — Luke

But of course - everything that Witty designates as 'language on holiday' or 'language as an idling engine', etc: these are uses of language where there is no possible way to grasp a rule regarding 'how to go on', where differences no longer make a difference, and there is no possible language-game to which a particular use of language belongs. This distinction simply does not - and cannot - map onto a distinction between 'conventional' (already-established) and 'nonconventional' (not-yet-established) uses of language. After all, it's clear that instances of unconventional language use still mean things, and one can quite easily learn an unconventional idiom and employ it quite successfully.

This sounds awfully close to defining "use" as simply making sounds and writing scribbles. If any scribble or sound can mean anything at anytime, then use would simply making scribbles or sounds to refer to anything. Any scribble or sound is "conventionizable". "Conventionizable" isn't even a word. You simply made up a new string of scribbles and ascribed it a meaning via your intent. Most of us knew that you really meant (intended) "conventionalized", which is a word. When there are other words that already have the meaning you intend, then making up a new string of scribbles to mean the same thing would be redundant and makes language more complex and confusing. — Harry Hindu

It'd be better if you didn't waste your energies on me - your posts in this thread are beneath consideration, and this one especially.

But what makes it the case the certain words match your intention, and others don't? Obviously what they mean. But what explains their meaning? It cannot be your intention, since the meaning of your words can diverge from your intention, so it is false that meaning=intention. Get it? — Fafner

The meaning of my words only diverge from my intention when I misspeak, which is to say that my words were unintentional.

When lying, or using metaphors, or inside jokes, I am "misusing" words intentionally (I could really say that I used words as it makes no sense to say that I misused something intentionally). What makes it the case that certain words match my intention? That my intent preceded the use of words.

The meaning of my words only diverge from my intention when I misspeak, which is to say that my words were unintentional. — Harry Hindu

But In the example that I gave they were intentional.

Let me change it slightly. Imagine someone who doesn't speak English very well, and he utters the sentence "it is raining", while intending to say that it is sunny, because for some reason he believes that this is how you say that it is sunny in English. You cannot say that he was insincere or lying, or using a metaphor, or telling a joke etc; he had the intention to mean something different from what his words in fact mean. How do you explain this?

Since I'm the one who brought convention into this, I should clarify that I'm talking about Lewis's approach in Convention where the conventions are specifically not agreed to, but "emergent" as the solution to coordination problems.

The object of agreement is different. For Wittgenstein as for Cavell, there is 'agreement in the form of life' at stake. It is not an agreement with respect to the conventional (by which I mean 'already-established') use(s) of language. That's the key difference. There are two analytic axes at work here: a language game and the form of life in which that language game operates. 'Agreement' operates at the latter level, as it were. — StreetlightX

The object of agreement seems to me to be the same sort of thing as the understanding Wittgenstein talked about when he said that there is a way to understand a rule that is not an interpretation. And it is regress blocking in the same manner.

This is a interesting thread and I wish I had the time to get involved in it. Recently, while browsing the items distributed by De Gruyter, I stumbled upon a book by Avner Baz -- When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy, HUP 2012. I thought it might interest some of the participants in this thread. (Charles Travis is being discussed extensively). I've placed it near the top of my reading list. Here is the overview:

"A new form of philosophizing known as ordinary language philosophy took root in England after the Second World War, promising a fresh start and a way out of long-standing dead-end philosophical debates. Pioneered by Wittgenstein, Austin, and others, OLP is now widely rumored, within mainstream analytic philosophy, to have been seriously discredited, and consequently its perspective is ignored.

Avner Baz begs to differ. In When Words Are Called For, he shows how the prevailing arguments against OLP collapse under close scrutiny. All of them, he claims, presuppose one version or another of the very conception of word-meaning that OLP calls into question and takes to be responsible for many traditional philosophical difficulties. Worse, analytic philosophy itself has suffered as a result of its failure to take OLP’s perspective seriously. Baz blames a neglect of OLP’s insights for seemingly irresolvable disputes over the methodological relevance of “intuitions” in philosophy and for misunderstandings between contextualists and anti-contextualists (or “invariantists”) in epistemology. Baz goes on to explore the deep affinities between Kant’s work and OLP and suggests ways that OLP could be applied to other philosophically troublesome concepts.

When Words Are Called For defends OLP not as a doctrine but as a form of practice that might provide a viable alternative to work currently carried out within mainstream analytic philosophy. Accordingly, Baz does not merely argue for OLP but, all the more convincingly, practices it in this eye-opening book."

... "Avner Baz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He has written about ethics, aesthetics, perception, judgment, and about the question of philosophical method in the works of Kant, Wittgenstein, Cavell, and John McDowell"

The object of agreement seems to me to be the same sort of thing as the understanding Wittgenstein talked about when he said that there is a way to understand a rule that is not an interpretation. And it is regress blocking in the same manner. — Pierre-Normand

Yes! This, exactly. I reckon if one can grasp the import of this passage, almost the entirety of the PI falls into place.

The book sounds interesting too, although I'm actually pretty unfamiliar with the 'analytic' reception of Witty outside of a few select readers here and here (Cavell and Kripke). Tbh, my favourite readings have come from the space of, funnily enough, political philosophy. Linda Zerilli, Chantal Mouffe, Hannah Pitkin, Cavell, and even Zizek have, more than any other readers, made me appreciate the power and the singularity of Witty's thought. The 'mainstream' of Witty scholarship has been largely outside my ken, unfortunately.

Yes. I appreciate that point. I spontaneously noticed this some years back: start talking with no conscious end in mind. At some point you may notice the effect of the desire to say something meaningful. That desire produces limitation that didn't appear to be there when you first started talking. The closer you get to the end of the sentence, the fewer options you have

if you want
to continue
being
meaningful
in
your
speech.

So here we aren't talking about rules. We aren't talking about the genesis of rules. We're talking about rule-following (limitation.) — Mongrel

But in Wittgensteinian terms, or definitions, following a rule, or "rule-following", has nothing to do with one's intention or desire. Rule-following is acting in a way which is consistent with those inductive conclusions. So if we say that symbols like "2", "3', and other words of language are used in a particular way, then using them in this way is said to be "correct" behaviour, and that is rule-following, acting correctly.

Intention, or "desire to say something meaningful", cannot enter this picture, because all there can be is desire to act correctly. And this is the desire to act in a way which is consistent with the way that others are acting. This is the question which Wittgenstein alludes to at the beginning of PI, and enters again at the so-called private language argument: what gives one the capacity to act in a way which may be determined as correct, i.e. the way which is consistent with the way that other people are acting. Under the defined terms, we cannot say that the person is following an internal principle, an internal rule, because rule-following is defined by correctness, and the internal principle which inclines one to act may not itself be a correct "rule". So Wittgenstein leaves us with no approach to the "desire to say something meaningful".

Yes! This, exactly. I reckon if one can grasp the import of this passage, almost the entirety of the PI falls into place. — StreetlightX

Let's assume we have achieved the Right Understanding of what Wittgenstein Really Meant.

What I want is an account of how language is possible and how it works.

I would expect a certain sort of challenge:
(1) What I want is impossible.
and/or
(2) What I want shows I am prey to a certain misunderstanding or illusion.
and/or
(3) I should really want something else.

Assuming I can run that gauntlet, then my questions would be:

(A) Does Wittgenstein provide the sort of account I'm interested in?
(B) Is it a good one?

Since I'm the one who brought convention into this, I should clarify that I'm talking about Lewis's approach in Convention where the conventions are specifically not agreed to, but "emergent" as the solution to coordination problems. — Srap Tasmaner

It occurs to me that since Lewis is avowedly Humean, he might have chosen the word "custom" instead of "convention". He chose the latter to see if there was an answer to Quine.

Wittgenstein was attempting to kill philosophy wasn't he? Trying to show that you won't find meaning in the texts, in the speech, but in living... so get out there and live, and then maybe stuff will start falling into place of its own accord.

We definitely need education, maps, systems in order to organize and share our experiences, but it's all empty yapping without the living it too. That's a pretty old idea really, and I think can be interpreted as all substantial meaning, all content is phronetic, and all that can really be criticized, understood, or apprehended besides this is form, grammar, consistency, logical validity.

As for some understandings don't require interpretation... well, I think that anything that has fallen off of anything and hurt itself, understands gravity without any need of interpretation.

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." --H. Arendt

What does she mean by "reveals meaning?"