Aphorism 1-10 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver   Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

1. "When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out.  Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples; the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of the voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something.  Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires." 

This is a quotation that Wittgensteinn has taken from Augustine (Confessions, I.8.).  Visualize Augustine's picture of how language is learned and notice how natural and complete it sounds as a total explanation for how language is learned. 

 

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language.  It is this: the individual words in language name objects--sentences are combinations of such names.--In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every

Now, Wittgenstein is beginning his commentary.  The emphasis is mine.  It is the deconstruction of Augustine's picture of language that is the focus of this entire book.  (Although, I should say, that many others beside Augustine have shared this picture of language.  As we will

word has a meaning.  The meaning is correlated with the word.  It is the object for which the word stands.

see, it is a cultural illusion)  Once deconstucted, new and strikingly different ideas about language begin to emerge.

Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word.  If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like 'table', 'chair', 'bread', and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself.

Here the deconstruction begins. Looking at the Augustinian picture of language we see that Augustine has explained only one type of word.   

 

Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping.  I give him a slip marked 'five red apples'.  He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked 'apples', then he looks up the word 'red' in a table and finds a color sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers--I assume that he knows them by heart--up to the word 'five' and for each number he takes an apple of the same color as the sample out of the drawer.--It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words--"But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?" ---Well, I assume that he 'acts' as I have described.  Explanations come to an end somewhere.--But what is

This scenario is a thought experiment.  To what extent do you think the language in this scenario is explained by Augustine's picture of language?  Think of the shopkeeper counting out the apples, one through five.  Did he learn to do this by someone pointing to five apples?  Hardly.  The teaching of language by pointing cannot explain learning to count.  What about using written language to communicate what is wanted?  Someone had to teach him how to read before he could make sense of the note and translate it into an order.  And to follow the order, he had to know much more than was specifically contained in the note - which just said 'five red apples.'  The shopkeeper had to be able to find the apples, even to know to look for them, and also to know to

the meaning of the word 'five'? --No such thing was in question here, only how the word 'five' is used.

put them in a sack and accept money in exchange for them.  He had to be able to recognize various coins our bills and add them together.  It would be hard to explain all of this within the Augustinian picture of language. 

 

2.  That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions.  But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours.          

By "that philosophical concept of meaning" Wittgenstein means the Augustinian picture that he gave us above.  Look at Augustine's picture  again:   

The individual words in language name objects--sentences are combinations of such names.  Every word has a meaning.  The meaning is correlated with the word.  It is the object for which the word stands.

This concept of meaning, Wittgenstein says, has its place in helping us understand primitive language, language more primitive than English, German, French, etc.  It is also the case, Wittgenstein explains, that there are regions of our developed language in which language works just as Augustine portrays it

Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B.  A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams.  B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them.  For this purpose

This is an important thought experiment.  Although he does not call it a language-game in this passage, it will become clear shortly that this passage describes the prototypic primitive language-

they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'.  A calls them out; --B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceive this as a complete primitive language.         

 

game.  He will refer to it often, sometimes in its present form, or in one of a multitude of variations he will give us shortly. 

We will often refer to this as language game (2), using the number of the aphorism to index the number of the language game.    I picture a work supervisor at the front of a site with a worker responding to the supervisor's commands.  There are piles of pillars, slabs, blocks and beams.  The supervisor calls out "Slab!" and the worker brings a slab and sets it at the supervisor's feet.  Pretty simple. 

Wittgenstein puts forth language-game (2) in order to try to envision a language in which Augustine's picture of language works. 

Does Augustine's picture of language work here?  How did the worker learn this language by teachers pointing and naming the slabs and beams as Augustine suggested?  An exercise like Augustine suggests might explain how the worker knew which object to fetch, but how did the worker learn to fetch?  As opposed, say, to taking objects behind the fence?  Crushing them? Or tapping them with a stone?

 

3.  Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system.  And one has to say this in many cases where the question arises 'Is this an appropriate description or not?'  The answer is:  'Yes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were claiming to describe." 

It is as if someone were to say: "A game consists in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules..." --and we replied: You seem to be thinking of board games, but there are others.  You can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those games. 

Somehow Augustine's picture of language, although appropriate for a subsection of language, is not as all inclusive an explanation of language as we are, at first glance, inclined to believe.   

As Wittgenstein says in (1), we tend to sweep under the rug all the uses of language that do not fit the Augustinian picture that seems to capture our imagination. 

Although language-game (2) restricts the vocabulary to words that seem to refer to objects, the Augustinian picture cannot explain everything that happens.

  4.    Imagine a script in which the letters were used to stand for sounds, and also as signs of emphasis and punctuation. (A script can be conceived as a language for describing sound-patterns.) Now imagine someone interpreting that script as if there were simple a correspondence of letters to sounds and as if  the letters had not also completely different functions. Augustine' conception of language is like such an over-simple conception of the script.       

How might this be?  Suppose we taught a parrot to say "Polly wants a cracker," and whenever it says it, we gave the parrot a cracker.  On the surface this looks like language.  The parrot is asking for and receiving a cracker.  However, on closer examination it is not.  We could have taught the parrot to say "Get lost!" and give it a cracker each time it does.  Then, it would not have looked as though the parrot were speaking English. 

 

To think that simply saying the words "Polly wants a cracker" constitutes "language" is to have this sort of over-simple conception of the language.  Something profound is missing from this conception although it is not yet clear exactly what this is.  Still, it is a beginning to say that when the parrot says, "Polly wants an cracker" he doesn't quite know what this sentence means in English.  It amuses us because, nevertheless, it seems as though he does. 

The same would be true if we taught a two year old to answer the question "What is 450 divided by 366?" by saying "One point two three."  It would be a correct answer in English but the child would not know what she was saying because she would not know how to count, know what this number means, or know what division means.  There is more to language than stringing together correct words.

5.    If we look at the example in (1), we may perhaps get inkling how much this general notion of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of the words. 

But although the parroted sentences are not language in the richest sense of the term, they help us to understand how language begins, the roots of language.     

 

   A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of  language is not explanation, but training. 

 

6.    We could imagine that the language of (2) was the whole language of A and B; even the whole language of a tribe. The children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others.     An important part of the training will consist in the teacher's pointing to the objects, directing the child's attention to them, and at the same time uttering a word; for instance, the word "slab" as he points to that shape.   

 

Although the word "slab!" is not tied to any particular activity in English, in the language we are imagining in (2) it is always a command to fetch a slab.  What tends to confuse us is that we can imagine something like this taking place in English.  It is just that the word "slab!" would not be confined to only this use. 

However, in the community we are imagining, this is the only use for the term "slab!"  And how might children be taught the use of the term?  We can well imagine that the Augustinian picture of language training might be involved.  The child's attention will be directed to the different shapes and the child will learn to expect each shape to be associated with a particular sound. 

 

 ( I do not want to call this "ostensive definition", because the child cannot as yet ask what the name is. I will call it "ostensive teaching of words".-----I say that it will form an important part of the training, because it is so with human beings; not because it could not be imagine

What is the difference between ostensive teaching of words and ostensive definitions?  In ostensive definitions someone points and gives a name of something and this serves to make clear how the term

otherwise.)       

 

is to be used.  When someone points to a cracker and says "cracker" those who know what a cracker is (but not the name for it) can receive this as an ostensive definition.  But if a child has not yet learned language, it is like the parrot.  It does not know what is being pointed to on what the word cracker means.  (Maybe the word "cracker" means "square" or "salty".  Or maybe it means "food".)  However the child understands the term, the child can be taught to say it, in association with the object. As Augustine imagined things in (1) .  As Augustine imagined things the child without any language was able to "grasp"

This ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an association between the word and the thing. But what does this mean? Well, it can mean various things: but one very likely thinks first of all that a picture of the object comes before the child's mind when it hears the word. But now, if this does happen---is it the purpose of the word?

The emphasis here is mine.  I want to show what I will call Wittgenstein's aporetic voice.  He is reminding us of the cultural ways we think so that he can deconstruct them.  Here Wittgenstein is talking about the cultural illusion that is related to Augustine's picture of language and what we are likely to say that supports this illusion. 

---Yes, it can be the purpose.---I can imagine such a use of words (of series of sounds). (Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.) But in the language of (2) it is not the purpose of the words to evoke images. (It

But although language may create images for us, remember, the language in (2) was not required to create images for the workers.  The worker in (2) would understand what was being said to him if he simply fetched what was called for,

may, of course, be discovered that that helps to attain the actual purpose.)

whether or not he had images of what called for when it was called, or not. 

    But if the ostensive teaching has this effect, ---am I to say that it effects an understanding of the word? Don't you understand the call "Slab!" if you act upon it in such-and-such a way? -- Doubtless the ostensive teaching helped to bring this about; but only together with a particular training. With different training the same ostensive teaching of these words would have affected a quite different understanding. 

In (2) one understands the call "Slab!" if one brings it when it is called.  Pointing to slab like objects and saying "slab" might have facilitated this teaching but one could also imagine learning to take the slab behind the fence when it is called.  A different training would have resulted in the worker doing different things with the slab, hitting it, hiding it, burying it, and so forth.

    "I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever."---Yes, given the whole of the rest of the  mechanism. Only in conjunction with that is it a brake-lever, and separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing. 

Unless one knows how to weave the word into some form of human activity, the saying of the word is not yet language.  It is like a break that is not yet connected with the entire mechanism.  The parts seem to be there, but it does not yet have the connections to function as it should.

  7.  In the practice of the use of language (2) one party calls out the words, the other acts on them. In instruction in the language the following process will occur: the learner names the objects; that is, he utters the word when the teacher points to the stone.---And there will be this still simpler exercise: the pupil repeats the words after the teacher-----both of these being

All of this sounds like Augustine's picture of learning language.  

 

processes resembling language. 

   We can also think of the whole process of using words in (2) as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language. I will call these games "language-games" and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game. 

 

Here Wittgenstein introduces the concept of a language game, but he will amplify this concept later so that it does not merely apply to language learning exercises.  To anticipate this amplification of the meaning of this term, we might sometimes distinguish this meaning of the term by calling these language games "primitive language games."

    And the processes of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be  called language-games. Think of much of the use words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses. 

In ring-a-ring-a-roses, the child learns the phrases without knowing what they mean, as a parrot might learn to say "Polly wants a cracker."

    I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the "language-game".

So, "the language game" is not merely speech.  In (2), his whole activity of fetching the objects was part of the "language game" of (2).

8.  Let us now look at an expansion of language (2). Besides the four words "block", "pillar", etc., let it contain a series of words used as the shopkeeper in (1) used the numerals (it can be the series of letters of the alphabet); further, let there be two words, which may as well be "there" and "this" (because this roughly indicates their purpose), that are used in connection with a pointing gesture; and finally a number of color samples. A gives an order like: "d---slab---there". At the same time

In (8) LW creates a new language game that is a variation of (2). Now we will be able to speak of bringing X number of slabs and we will be able to indicate where we want the slab to be put.  We understand these concepts LW explains because they exist in English.  Notice, however, that LW does not say that the slabs will be counted with numbers, but with the letters of the alphabet.  This helps us get into the feel of what it would be like if we had a more primitive system of counting, one in which there was no arithmetic

he shows the assistant a color sample, and when he says "there" he points to a place on the building site.  From the stock of slabs B takes one for each letter of the alphabet up to "d", of the same color as the sample, and brings them to the place indicated by A.---On other occasions A gives the order "this---there". At "this" he points to a building stone. And so on. 

possibilities, for example.   

 

9.  When a child learns this language, it has to learn the series of 'numerals' a, b, c, ... by heart. And it has to learn their use.---Will this training include ostensive teaching of the words?---Well, people will, for example, point to slabs and count: "a, b, c slabs".---Something more like the ostensive teaching of the words "block", "pillar", etc. would be the ostensive teaching of numerals that serve not to count but to refer to groups of objects that can be taken in at a glance. Children do learn the use of the first or six cardinal numerals in this way. 

 

How can we imagine the people of (8) learning language?  Can they learn it ostensively as Augustine imagined?  Take the learning of numbers.  We could imagine them learning to distinguish numbers ostensively as we might learn to distinguish two from three by distinguishing these configurations of two and three:                                             o                   o     o           o    o

But this would be of limited use.  We cannot learn to distinguish, apparently much larger numbers in this fashion.  Thus we count.

   Are "there" and "this also taught ostensively?---Imagine how one might perhaps teach their use.  One will point to

How will "there" and "this" be taught?  This is tricky, and LW does not answer the question for us.  Do you point to "this" and say "this"?  Does that clarify the use

places and things---but in this case the pointing occurs in the use of the words too and not merely in learning the use.--- 

of the word "this"?  Hardly.

10.    Now what do the words of this language signify?---What is supposed to shew what they signify, if not the kind of use they have? And we have already described that. So we are asking for the expression "This word signifies this" to be made a part of the description. In other words the  description ought to take the form: "The word . . . .signifies . . . ."   

. 

What does "two signify"?  Does it signify any two objects?  Say, two blocks?  Well, we know what the word "block signifies."  It signifies each of the two blocks.  Does "two" signifiy something other than what "block signifies"?  There are conceptual puzzles here. 

And what does "this" signify.  It signifies what I point to.  But that can be anything.  How can a child learn to associate the naming of anything by one term? 

But, do we need to say what these words "signify"?  Isn't everything clear already?  Since we know their use?  Why would we require that all words "signify"?

   Of course, one can reduce the description of the use of the word "slab" to the statement that this word signifies this object. This will be done when, for example, it is merely a matter of removing the mistaken idea that the word "slab" refers to the shape of building-stone that we in fact call a "block"---but the kind of 'refering' this is, that is to say the use of these words for the rest, is already known. 

In language-game (2) pointing and saying "slab" may be helpful to show which slab is to be fetched, but pointing and naming would not show that the slab is to be fetched.     

 

    Equally one can say that the signs "a", "b", etc. signify numbers; when for example this removes 

In other words, we might want to explain that "c" is not just another object like "slab" or "block" and so

the mistaken idea that "a", "b", "c", play the part actually played in language by "block", "slab",  "pillar". And one can also say that "c" means this number and not that one; when for example this  serves to explain that the letters are to be used in the order a, b, c, d, etc. and not in the order a, b, d, c. 

we might need explain "a", "b", and "c" signify numbers.  But where does this leave us?  Does it teach the child in (8) to learn to use numbers (by counting things) and until the child learns to count does the child really know what "numbers" means? 

    But assimilating the descriptions of the uses of the words in this way cannot make the uses  themselves any more like one another. For, as we see, they are absolutely unlike. 

 

So, although we can find a way to say that "a," "b," "c," signify something, assimilating these different kinds of words to the same expression (they are instances if "signifying" hides the enormity of the difference and creates a over simplified picture language and how language is learned.

Aphorism 11-20 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver     Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

11.  Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a ruler, a  glue-pot, glue, nails and screw.---The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these  objects. (And in both cases there

Augustine was struck by the similarities of different words and failed to note their differences.  Such an understanding would be as superficial as learning that all the objects in the toolbox were "tools" but not knowing any of their different

are similarities.)  functions.

    Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy! 

Look at the words on this page.  Don't they look alike?  They look so much more like each other than they look like your keyboard or your hand.  This is what confuses us.   

 

12.    It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all looking more or less alike.  (Naturally, since they are all supposed to be handled.) But one is the handle of a crank which can be moved continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the handle of a switch, which has only a brake-lever, the harder one pulls on it, the harder it brakes; a fourth, the handle of a pump: it has an effect only so long as it is moved to and fro. 

We are mesmerized by the similarity in the appearance of words.  This keeps us from noticing the vast differences in their uses.         

 

  13.    When we say: "Every word in language signifies something" we have so far said nothing  whatever; unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make. (It might be, of course, that we wanted to distinguish the words of language (8) from words 'without meaning' such as occur in Lewis Carroll's poems, or words like "Lilliburlero" in songs.) 

  14.   Imagine someone's saying: "All tools serve to modify something. Thus the hammer modifies the position of the nail, the saw the shape of the board, and so on."---

It seems we look for ways to disguise the differences in different kinds of terms.  We try to assimilate them all to a particular way of describing them.  But the

And what is modified by the rule, the glue-pot, the nails?---"Our knowledge of thing's length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity  of the box."-----Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?--- 

fact that we can find an expression that treats them all the same (e.g., all words are made of characters) does not mean that they are as similar as we think.  We fail to notice their differences, and this undermines our philosophy about language.

  15.    The word "to signify" is perhaps used in the most straight-forward way when the objects  signified is marked with the sign. Suppose that the tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shews his assistant such a mark, he brings the tool that has that mark on it. 

   It is in this and more or less similar ways that a name means and is given to a thing.---It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing. 

Well, does the word "signify" mean anything at all?  There is a exemplary case of our using this term.  It is used best when we mark objects with a sign.  Sometimes it is useful to use such a model in understanding language.         

 

  16.    What about the colour samples that A shews to B: are they part of language? Well, it is as you please. They do not belong among the words; yet when I say to someone: "Pronounce the word 'the' ", you will count the second "the" as part of the language-game (8); that is, it is a sample of what

There is a certain analogy between saying "This is the color pillar I want you to bring," and "This is the way I want you to pronounce the word 'the.'"  We sometimes give samples of how to say things, or what to call things, with words, and sometimes we use supplementary techniques, such as color samples.  Wittgenstein

the other is meant to say. 

   It is most natural, and causes least confusion, to reckon the samples among the instruments of  the language. 

    ((Remark on the reflexive pronoun "this sentence". - (502))) 

is urging us to count all of these techniques, regardless of whether they consist of words, "language."     

 

  17.    It will be possible to say: In language (8) we have different kinds of word. For the functions of the word "slab" and the word "block" are more alike than those of "slab" and "d". But how we group words into kinds will depend on the aim of the classification,---and on our own inclination. 

    Think of the different points of view from which one can classify tools or chess-men. 

Treat this as an exercise.  What kind of words are there in (8).  The way to classify words in 8 will vary, but one way that suggests itself is we can count some words as names, some as numbers, and some as pronouns.  But couldn't we also classify these words according to whether they are one syllable or two?  Aren't there other ways to classify them? 

 

  18.    Do not be troubled by the fact that languages (2) and (8) consist only of orders. If you want to say that this shews them to be incomplete, ask yourself whether our language is complete;---whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many

At what point does a language become complete?  Was our language complete before we introduced the specialized language of psychoanalysis?  Before we introduced the zero into our counting system?  And, for that matter, is our language complete now? 

We have no way to evaluate the completeness of language.  Each language is more or less rich but the

houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a  maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. 

ways that it is rich are different from that in other languages.       

 

  19.    It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle.---Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes and no. And innumerable others.-----And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life. 

Wittgenstein has already told us that language games are not not just to be "words" and our ways of responding with words.  The language game in (2) for example was woven into a culture that fetched slabs and blocks.  Their words were woven into their activity, their forms of life.

   But what about this: is the call "Slab!" in example (2) a sentence or a word?--- If a word, surely it has not the same meaning as the like-sounding word of our ordinary language, for in (2) it is a call.  But if a sentence, it is surely not the elliptical sentence: "Slab!" of our language. 

How can it be an elliptical sentence?  There are no words possible in language-game (2) except "slab" "block" "pillar" and "beam."   

 

-----As far as the first question goes you can call "Slab!" a word and also a sentence; perhaps it could be appropriately called a 'degenerate sentence' (as one speaks of a degenerate hyperbola); in fact it is

Even in English it is biased to say that "Slab!" is an elliptical form of "Bring me a slab."  If we began by learning the command "slab!" (and maybe we did), then wouldn't "Bring be slab!" be a lengthened

our 'elliptical'  sentence.---But that is surely only a shortened form of sentence "Bring me a slab", and there is no such sentence in example (2).---But why should I not on contrary have called the sentence "Bring me a slab" a lengthening of the sentence "Slab!"?---

form of "Slab!"?       

 

Because if you shout "Slab!" you really mean: "Bring me a slab".---

Here is LW's aporetic (or Augustinian voice).  Let's unpack what we mean by "really mean."

But how do you do this: how do you mean that while you say "Slab!"? Do you say the unshortened sentence to yourself? And why should I translate the call "Slab!" into a different expression in order to say what someone means by it? And if they mean the same thing---why should I not say: "When he says 'Slab!'"? Again, if you can mean "Bring me the slab", why should you not be able to mean "Slab!"? -----But when I call "Slab!", then what I want is that he should bring me a slab!----- Certainly, but does 'wanting this' consist in thinking in some from or other a different sentence from the one you utter?---

And here are some observations that are meant to shed clarifying light: 

How do you have this other meaning "Bring me a slab!" going on?  In what way is this what we really mean?  We don't say "Bring me a slab!" to ourselves while we say "Slab!"  Why not say that "Bring me a slab!" really means "Slab!" 

This notion "really mean" is confusing here.  We do not "really mean" a particular sentence in this case.  Or, we might just as well say that we really mean "slab!" as to say that we really mean "Bring me a slab!"

  20.    But now it looks as if when someone says "Bring me a slab" he could mean this expression as one long word corresponding to the

And, when a person says "Bring me a slab!" it is not the same as if a peson said "bring-me-a-slab!" as if it were just one word.  What is wrong

single word "Slab!" ----Then can one mean it sometimes as one word and sometimes as four? And can one mean it sometimes as one word and sometimes as four?  And how does one usually mean it?-----

with our analysis here? 

When is "Bring me a slab!" four words and when is it one?

I think we shall be inclined to say: we mean the sentence as four words when we use it in contrast with other sentences such as "Hand me a slab", "Bring him a slab". "Bring two slabs", etc.; that is, in contrast with sentences containing the separate words of our  command in other combinations.-----

When we have a variety of sentences that use most of the same words but are variations on a theme, then we will say that the sentence has four words. 

 

But what does using one sentence in contrast with others consist in? Do the others, perhaps, hover before one's mind? All of them? And while one is saying the one sentence, or before, or afterwards?---

No. Even if such an explanation rather tempts us, we need only think for a moment of what actually happens in order to see that we are going astray here. We say that we use the command in contrast with other sentences because our language contains the possibility of those other sentences. Someone who did not understand our language, a foreigner, who had fairly often heard someone giving the order: "Bring me a slab!", might believe that this whole series of sounds was one word corresponding

The clarifying voice:  Our temptation to use an explanation that requires us to think of the other sentences "hovering" is instructive.  It teaches us to stop and look and not base our conclusions on "what must be."  When we stop to look, we see that the other sentences are no in anyway hovering in our minds.  What make one way of saying "Bring me a slab!" a sentence and the other way, "Bring-me-a-slab!" a word has something more to do with the fact that we can make sentences that are variations

perhaps to the word for "building-stone" in his language. If he himself had then given this order perhaps he would have pronounced it differently, and we should say:  he pronounces it so oddly because he takes it for a single word.-----

on the theme "Bring me a slab!"   

 

But then, is there not also  something different going on in him when he pronounces it,---something corresponding to the fact that he conceives the sentence as a single word?----- 

But what is going on with him?  Must he be picturing the "slab" when he hears it?  Or must he say this sentence to himself "Bring me a slab!"

Either the same thing may go on in him, or something different. For what goes on in you when you give such an order? Are you conscious of its consisting of four words while you are uttering it? Of course you have a mastery of this language---which contains those other sentences as well---but is this having a mastery something that happens while you  are uttering the sentence?---And I have admitted that the foreigner will probably pronounce a sentence differently if he conceives it differently; but what we call his wrong conception need not lie in anything that accompanies the utterance of the command.

We we issue a command "slab!" what goes on in us?  Introspectively, need there be anything private?  There might be something present when we utter the command, but there need not be.             

 

    The sentence is 'elliptical', not because it leaves out something that we think when we utter it, but because it is shortened---in comparison with a particular

In our culture we create the paradigm of the full sentence as the "real."  Therefore we say "Slab!" is a shortened form and not "Bring me a slab!" is a lengthend form.    But

paradigm of our grammar.--- this paradigm that calls the longer form the real form is arbitrary.

Of course one might object here: "You grant that the shortened and the  unshortened sentence have the same sense.---What is this sense, then? Isn't there a verbal expression for this sense?"-----

And if they have the same sense, then isn't one form of the sentence the "right" or "real" form? 

 

But doesn't the fact that sentences have the same sense consist in their having the same use?---(In Russian one says "stone red" instead of " the stone is red"; do they feel the copula to be missing in the sense, or attach it in thought?)

Maybe not.  Maybe we say that the sentences have the same "sense" only because they have the same use in the language-game.  They cause one person to fetch the object, and both the same regardless of which form we use. 

Aphorism 21-30 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver     Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold in Wittgenstein's text has been inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

21.    Imagine a language-game in which A asks and B reports the number of slabs or blocks in a pile, or the colours and shapes of the building-stones that are stacked in such-and-such a place.---  Such a report might run: "Five slabs". Now what is the difference between the report or statement "Five slabs" and the order

That is, what is the difference between "Five slabs" (in language-game 21) and ("Five slabs!" in language game 8?  )       

 

"Five slabs!"?--- 

Well, it is the part which uttering these words plays in the language-game.

Emphasis mine.  But isn't the important thing that "Five slabs!" in (8) causes the worker to bring 5 slabs?  While "five slabs" in (21) only causes the supervisor to have information?

No doubt the tone of voice and the look with which they are uttered, and much else besides, will also be different. But we could also imagine the tone's being the same---for an order and a report can be spoken in a variety of tones of voice and with various expressions of face---the difference being only in the application. (Of course, we might use the words "statement" and "command" to stand for grammatical forms of sentence and intonations; we do in fact call "Isn't the weather glorious to-day?" a question, although it is used as a statement.) We could imagine a language in which all statements had the form and tone of rhetorical questions; or every command the form of the question "Would you like to. . .?". Perhaps it will then be said: "What he says has the form of a question but is really a command",---that is, has the function of a command in the technique of using the language. (Similarly one says "You will do this" not as a prophecy but as a command. What makes it the one or the other?) 

On the surface the difference might be a matter of how it is voiced.  But we could imagine them being voiced with the same intonation.  The intonation is, after all, only a clue as to what the differences are, not the difference itself.           

Besides, we could imagine a language in which everything stated or commanded was put in the form of a question.             

 

 

22.  Frege's idea that every assertion contains an assumption, which is the thing that is asserted, really rests on the possibility found in our language of writing every statement in the form: "It is assert that such-and-such is the case."---  But "that such-and-such is the case" is not a sentence in our language---so far it is not a move in the language-game. And if I write, not "It is asserted that . . . .", but "It is asserted: such-and-such is the case", the words "It is asserted" simply become superfluous. 

Still, there is the dream (such as Frege had) of including some sort of notation in the body of the sentence saying how it was used.  For example, one might include a statement such as "It is asserted that" and complete the sentence any such way.  Or, alternatively, one might do the same thing by saying "It is asserted:" and complete the sentence any way. 

But isn't it clear, at least in the last case, that the notation "It is asserted:" is superfluous?   

We might very well also write every statement in the form of a question followed by a "Yes"; for  instance: "Is it raining? Yes!" Would this shew that every statement contained a question?     

 

Besides, there is nothing to guarantee that a notation "It is asserted:" will in fact be attached to an assertion.  After all, don't we use questioning grammatical forms to make statements?  Don't we say "It is a wonderful day, isn't it?" Even when we use formulations that seem to tell us how a sentence is being used, they need not accurately do so.

Of course we have the right to use an assertion sign in contrast with a question-mark, for  example, or if we want to distinguish an assertion from a fiction or a supposition. It is only a mistake if one thinks that the assertion consists of two actions, entertaining and asserting (assigning the truth-value, or something of the kind), and that in performing these actions we follow

But we can try to construct language so carry such a notation accurately.  The mistake is in thinking that it is the notation that makes it so.  What is in question is whether the sentence is a question, and the notation does not make it so.  The notation is only a label and a label can be correct or misleading. 

This means, when we determine that a statement is an assertion or a

the prepositional sign roughly as we sing from the musical score. Reading the written sentence loud or soft is indeed comparable with singing from a musical score, but 'meaning' (thinking) the sentence that is read is not.   

Frege's assertion sign marks the beginning of the sentence. Thus its function is like that of  full-stop. It distinguishes the whole period from a clause within the period. If I hear someone say "it's raining" but do not know whether I have heard the beginning and the end of the period, so far this sentence does not serve to tell me anything. 

question, it is not enough to look to see what the notation (or punctuation) tells us.  This information is not contained in the words, but in the way these words are being used in the language-game. 

Frege's notation that a sentence is an asssertion is like the full stop of a period at the end of string of words.  Just as a period does not assure you that the sentence functions as a statement, however, so Frege's notation does guarantee that the sentence functions as the notation says.   

See inserted comment of LW's.

  23.   But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question, and command?--- There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call "symbols", "words", "sentences". And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language- games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. (We can get a rough picture of this from the changes in mathematics.) 

The rules of language games are not unchangeable laws.  There is a continuous evolution not only in how many language games there are, but evolution, too, as to the kind of language games thee are. 

Here the term "language-game" is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of  language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.   

 

We have seen this concept of langauge being woven in a form of life before.  In (19), he said that to "imagine a language meant to imagine a form of life."  And in (2) he pointed out that the slab language of that language-game involved not only words but activities, specifically, the activity of fetching objects on command. 

Review the multiplicity of language-game in the following examples, and in others:         

 

Now that LW has taught us something about "language-games" he is going to give us samples to count.  This serves as a kind of ostensive definition of language games, although, note, these examples differ from the primitive language games he talked about in 7 (which was illustrated by the slab language of 2

* Giving orders, and obeying them---  * Describing the appearance of an object, or     giving its measurements---  * Constructing an object from a description (a     drawing)---  * Reporting an event---  * Speculating about an event---  * Forming and testing a hypothesis---  * Presenting the results of an experiment in     tables and diagrams---  * Making up a story; and reading it---  * Play-acting--- 

It is a useful exercise to imagine a sentence of any sort functioning in several of the different language games.  When it does this, it takes on a different meaning.  For example, "There was a storm today."  Imagine how a sentence like this might function in "reporting an event" "speculating about an event" "presenting results from an experiment" "play acting" "singing catches" and so forth.  Some sentences, of course, do not make sense in all language games, but whenever they do, they mean something different in different language games.   

* Singing catches---  * Guessing riddles---  * Making a joke; telling it---  * Solving a problem in practical arithmetic---  * Translating from one language into another---  * Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. 

    ---It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language.( Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)   

         

Of course, Wittgenstein is himself the author of the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus.  And, in that book, as well as in works by other authors of that era (e.g., Russell) language was seen as much more stable and finite.   

 

  24.    If you do not keep the multiplicity of language-games in view you will perhaps be inclined to ask questions like: "What is a question?"---Is it the statement that I do not know such-and-such, or the statement that I wish the other person would tell me. . . .? Or is it the description of my mental state of  uncertainty?---And is the cry "Help!" such a description?             

Questions such as these, LW tells us, come about from the Augustinian (Platonic and confused) understanding of language that is our heritage.  Why is this confused?   

In my reading LW, it is because a "question" is just a grammatical form.  It does not get at the activity of "asking".  We can ask with cries such as   

Oh, I wish I had someone to go to the movies with! (wink). 

And a sentence in the form of of a

                   

 

question might not be an asking.     

Would you mind going to get me a slab?

We want to get beneath such grammatical form (which LW calls "surface grammar") and move  down to the depth, that is something more important than language than the form we use to express it. Asking "What is a question?" betrays a concern with the way things look on the page, or sound in the voic, and not a concern with the deep structure, that is, the way the language is working and having an impact on what is happening. 

Think how many different kinds of thing are called "description": description of a body's  position by means of its co-ordinates; description of a facial expression; description of a sensation of touch; of a mood. 

If asking what a question is reveals a hidden confusion, what about asking what a description is?

Of course it is possible to substitute the form of statement or description for the usual form of  question: " I want to know whether . . . ." or "I am in doubt whether . . . ."---but this does not bring the different language-games any closer together. 

Here, too, with descriptions, we find there is a surface form that does not tell us much about how the sentence is being used.  Just as practically anything can be put in a questioning formt, so practically anything can be put in a descriptive format.

The significance of such possibilities of transformation, for example of turning all statements into sentences

LW gives an account of pain language later that I think this refers to, but it is too early to get

beginning "I think" or "I believe" (and thus, as it were, into descriptions of my inner life) will become clearer in another place. ( Solipsism.) 

into this now.  The important thing now to feel at home in his distinction between the surface of language (such as "What is a question") and the questions about the depth of language (how is the sentence functioning in the language game?) 

 

25.    It is sometimes said that animals do not talk because they lack the mental capacity. And this  means: "they do not think, and that is why they do not talk." But---they simply do not talk. Or to put it better: they do not use language---if we except the most primitive forms of language.---  Commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing.                 

 

Here, LW is looking back at this cultural imagery that he has been deconstructing.  According to this imagery, to be able to "talk" one must be able to think -- because "talking" is the expression of our internal ideas. 

Don't try to deconstruct this imagery at this moment.  Just notice that it is a natural thing to think here.  Dogs do not talk, because they do not think internal thoughts. 

But note the parenthetical that I have emphasized.  A dog can be taught to fetch on command, just as the worker in (2) could fetch slabs on command.  Why are we leaving this kind of language outside the scope of "language"?  Because this is an aporetic voice, the voice of the fly-bottle. 

Still, we are indlined to say that "dogs do not talk" and by this we mean that they also "do not think."

  26.  One thinks that learning language What is naming a preparation for? 

consists in giving names to objects. Viz, to human beings, to shapes, to colours. to pains. to moods, to numbers, etc.  To repeat-naming is something like attaching a label to a thing. One can say that this is preparatory to the  use of a word. But what is it a preparation for? 

Imagine a culture that could only name.  It had no other use for language.  People simply sat around and named things, or else they did things without language.  All that this culture would lack in its language is what naming is a preparation for.

 

27.  "We name things and then we can talk about them: can refer to them in talk." 'As if what we did next were given with the mere act of naming. As if there were only one thing called "talking about a thing". Whereas in fact we do the most various things with our sentences.             

 

Isn't this exactly what the Augtinian picture of language in (2) implies?  We name things and then we can talk about them.  It is as though this is all that is required. 

But naming things, we have come to see, does not show us what to do with them.  The workers might be able to name the beams, pillars, blocks and "slabs" and still not know to fetch them.  Language is not just the uttering of words.  It is the use of words in the activity of language. 

Also, the illusion that all we need to do to be able to talk is name things neglects how few of the words we use are actually names.

Think of exclamations alone, with their completely different functions. 

* Water!  * Away!  * Ow!  * Help!  * Fine!  * No! 

 Are you inclined still to call these

Look at exclamations.  Are these just names of objects?  Do you want to say that there is something internal that these words name?  Of course, someone uttering an exclamation like this might have a image, but are they required?       

words "names of objects"? 

In languages (2) and (8) there was no such thing as asking something's name. This, with its correlate, ostensive definition, is, we might say, a language-game on its own. That is really to say: we are brought up, trained, to ask: "What is that called?"-upon which the  name is given. And there is also a language-game of inventing a name for something, and hence of saying, "This is ...." and then using the new name. (Thus, for example, children give names to their dolls and then talk about them and to them. Think in this connexion how singular is the use of a person's name to call him!) 

     

In (2) and (8) the worker simply brought the objects required.  There was no language for asking what something was called.  Pointing and naming is a language game of its own.  One must learn how to do this. 

And, in addition to learning to give the existing name of an object, one can learn how to invent names.     

 

28.  Now one can ostensively define a proper name, the name of a colour, the name of a material, a numeral, the name of a point of the compass and so on. The definition of the number two, "That is called 'two' "--pointing to two nuts-is perfectly exact. --But how can two be defined like that? The person one gives the definition to doesn't know what one wants to call "two"; he will suppose that "two" is the name given to this group of nuts! He may suppose this; but perhaps he does not. He might make the opposite mistake; when I want to assign a name to this group of nuts, he might understand it as a numeral. And he might equally well take the name of a person, of which I give an ostensive definition, as that of a colour, of a race,

Where, for example, is this hand pointing?  Is it pointing to both of the diamonds?  Or one?  Or is it pointing to the color red?  Or is it pointing to the side of one of the diamonds?  

Wittgenstein says that in every case the object being pointed to is ambiguous.  Can you think of an exception?  If not, does this not undermine Augustine's picture of how we learn language?

or even of a point of the compass. That is to say: an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in every case. 

    29.   Perhaps you say: two can only be ostensively defined in this way: "This number is called 'two' ". For the word "number" here shews what place in language, in grammar, we assign to the word. But this means that the word "number" must be explained before the ostensive definition can be understood. 

     

 

   1   2   3   4   5             This number is called "two". 

Does that solve the problem of how we might ostensively define 2?  There are several problems with it. First the child must learn what "number" means in order to understand what is being pointed to. 

--The word "number" in the definition does indeed shew this place; does shew the post at which we station the word. And we can prevent misunderstandings by saying: "This colour is called so-and-so", "This length is called so-and-so", and so on. That is to say: misunderstandings are sometimes averted in this way. But is there only one way of taking the word "colour" or "length"?-Well, they just need defining.-Defining, then, by means of other words! And what about the last definition in this chain? (Do not say: "There isn't a 'last' definition". That is just as if you  chose to say: "There isn't a last house in this road; one can always build an

Still, you might say, the 2 is in the right place.  One can see where 2 sits in the series of numbers.  And misunderstandings can sometimes be averted by pointing like this.  But how can we define number? 

Can we do it by example?  Should we use a figure like this:   

      This number is called "two".  Or will the student be confused

additional one''.)                         

 

by this ambiguity, too?  And if we tried to get around this problem of ambiguity by defining the words, how shall we define them without their being ambiguous, too? 

    Whether the word "number" is necessary in the ostensive definition depends on whether  without it the other person takes the definition otherwise than I wish. And that will depend on the circumstances under which it is given, and on the person I give it to.               

 

But perhaps someone learns what two means in a particular context, even without a completely adequate explanation for all contexts.  I ask for a ball and the child learns to fetch a ball:   

Then I ask for two balls and the child learns to fetch two balls.   This always pleases me.   

 

   And how he 'takes' the definition is seen in the use that he makes of the word defined. 

But, if he "takes" it in the right way it will become a powerful and reinforcing tool.

30.    So one might say: the ostensive definition explains

 In 30, Wittgenstein continues to investigate the Augustinian model and its

the use--the meaning--of the word when the overall role of the word in language is clear. Thus if I know that someone means to explain a  colour-word to me the ostensive definition "That is called 'sepia' " will help me to understand the word. 

problems as the total explanation for our developing language.  This model, you'll recall, is based on the picture of words being defined ostensively, that is by naming and pointing. 

--And you can say this, so long as you do not forget that all sorts of problems attach to the words "to know" or "to be clear".                 

 

Someone from another country wants to teach you a word in her native language.  She points to a pillow and make a strange sound "upapal" and your question is, "What is she pointing to?  Is it the pillow or the shape of the pillow, or what?"  But if you knew somehow that she was pointing to the color of the pillow, then that would make all the difference in the world.  But that is because you know what "color" means.  Imagine, then, how difficult it must be to learn a color word from an ostensive definition if you don't even have a concept of color.  And, of course, all of us were in that place initially.  isn't it remarkable that we learned anything at all from the experience? 

 One has already to know (or be able to do) something in order to be capable of asking a  thing's name. But what does one have to know?     

 

If I already am quite clear about what a color word is, then I can begin to ask what the color of something is.  If I know the term for color and my teacher knows the term for "color", too, then I am indeed a smart student.  Just pointing and saying "that is the color sepia" should surely do it.  But without those tools, things are going to be a lot tricker. 

    footnote:  Could one define the word "red" by pointing to something that was not red? That would be  as if one were supposed to explain the word "modest" to someone whose English was weak, and one pointed to an arrogant man and said "That man is not modest". That it is ambiguous is no argument against such a method of definition. Any definition can be misunderstood. 

    But it might well be asked: are we still to call this "definition"?-- For, of course, even if it has  the same practical consequences, the same effect on the learner, it plays a different part in the calculus from what we ordinarily call "ostensive definition" of the word "red".

Aphorism 31-38 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver     Wittgenstein: (Emphasis is bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

31.    When one shews someone the king in chess and says: "This is the king", this does not tell him the use of this piece-unless he already knows the rules of the game up to this last point: the shape of the king. You could imagine his having learnt the rules of the game without ever having been strewn an actual piece. The shape of the chessman

Suppose someone showed you an Xray and said to you, "see that tumor?"  It might be evident to all who have learned to read Xrays, but just pointing to it is not enough to enable this kind of seeing.  So it is with handing a child a chess piece and saying "This is a king."  The background for making sense of this pointing and naming has not be laid

corresponds here to the sound or shape of a word.  down.

   One can also imagine someone's having learnt the game without ever learning or formulating rules. He might have learnt quite simple board-games first, by watching, and have progressed to more and more complicated ones. He too might be given the explanation "This is the king",-- if, for instance, he were being strewn chessmen of a shape he was not used to. This explanation again only tells him the use of the piece because, as we might say, the place for it was already prepared.  Or even: we shall only say that it tells him the use, if the place is already prepared. And in this case it is so, not because the person to whom we give the explanation already knows rules, but because  in another sense he is already master of a game. 

 

The emphasis in this passage is mine.  It represents a key concept, the concept of an ostensive definition being made possible by the place for the definition being prepared. 

But the primary point, I believe, is that if we knew the rules of the chess game, knew that losing your king meant that you lost the game, for example, or how the king can move within the rules of the game, then having someone say, "This is the king in a chess set" would mean a lot more, would clarify more, than if you had never heard of chess or board games.  Sometimes, one does not know enough about a subject to even ask useful questions.   

Consider this further case: I am explaining chess to someone; and I begin by pointing to a chessman and saying: "This is the king; it can move like this, .... and so on." -- In this case we shall say: the words "This is the king" (or "This is called the 'king' ") are a definition only if the learner already 'knows what a piece in a game is'. That is, if he has already played other games, or has watched other people praying 'and

There are a family of ways one might go about preparing a person to understand "This is a king" when showing them a chess piece.  It would help, perhaps, if a person knew how to play checkers and knew, in addition, that in chess, losing the king meant losing the game.  Still, this would not prepare the listener to understand his statement as much as if he learned to play chess with pieces that had a

understood'-and similar things. Further, only under these conditions will he be able to ask relevantly in the course of learning the game: "What do you call this?"--that is, this piece in a game. 

We may say: only someone who already knows how to do something with it can significantly  ask a name.   

different kind of king.                 

 

And we can imagine the person who is asked replying: "Settle the name yourself"-and now the one who asked would have to manage everything for himself.                               

 

If you did not have the concept of what is being named, that is, if the place for this name is not prepared, then perhaps it would be as well for you to name it for yourself.  Learning the "name" of something (instead of naming it) is important precisely in those cases that learning the name will connect with what we already know and allow us to learn what we are seeing more completely. 

Say you go to the doctor with a skin rash and ask, "What is this called?"  And suppose the doctor gives you an unintelligible technical name.  Not helpful.  But suppose the doctor says, "This is a measles rash."  Then, because you have an idea as to what measles is, you have learned quite a bit.  But if you didn't have the concept of measles, things would be different.  You could call it whatever you wanted.  It would be just as meaningful to you.  However, it might prepare you less

well for talking with others.   

  32.  Someone coming into a strange country  will sometimes learn the language of the  inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to 'guess' the meaning of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

I remember Harry describing learning a foreign language like this.  He was in a foreign country and people would teach him the names of things by pointing and naming. This seems like a very easy way to learn the names of things in a foreign tongue.

And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And "think" would here mean something like "talk to itself".     

 

Isn't it so?   Augustine describe this kind of pointing and naming as the way that the child learns language?  But we have been working on why this explains so little in the learning of language, and noticing the limits to this kind of learning, for example, that pointing and naming "blue" doesn't mean that the hearer recognizes what we are naming -- even if the hearer then can point at the blue object and say "blue." 

Also, such an ostensive definition can hardly expain how we learn the word "the" or "for" or, in fact, most words.  Look back at this paragraph and see how many words could be taught to the child by ostensive definition.

The problem is that the young child, in the beginning  (picture baby

Augustine), does not have a place prepared for learning by pointing. 

What kind of background is necessary to prepare such a place?  How would you train a child so that it understood that you are naming a chess piece, for example?  Or the color "blue"? 

  33.    Suppose, however, someone were to object: "It is not true that you must already be master of a language in order to understand an ostensive definition: all you need --of course!-- is to know or guess what the person giving the explanation is pointing to. That is, whether for example to the shape of the object, or to its colour, or to its number, and so on." -- And what does 'pointing to the shape', 'pointing to the colour' consist in? Point to a piece of paper. --And now point to its shape -- now to its  colour -- now to its number (that sounds queer). --How did you do it? --You will say that you 'meant' a different thing each time you pointed. And if I ask how that is done, you will say you concentrated your attention on the colour, the shape, etc. But I ask again: how is that done? 

Here LW is luring us back into the muddle and it is good to let ourselves go there for a moment, knowing it is a muddle but letting ourselves feel the pull.  In this muddle he continues to ask, how can an ostensive definition teach the meaning of a term?  How does the student know what we are pointing to.  There is ambiguity in the pointing in every case we can imagine.

Suppose someone points to a vase and says "Look at that marvellous

What we do when we "attend to the color' of something seems, when you

blue-the shape isn't the  point."  --Or: "Look at the marvellous shape-the colour doesn't matter." Without doubt you will do something different when you act upon these two invitations. But do you always do the same thing when you direct your attention to the colour? Imagine various different cases. To indicate a few: 

think about it,  rather nebulous.       

 

*  "Is this blue the same as the blue over there?      Do you see any difference?"  *  You are mixing paint and you say "It's hard      to get the blue of this sky."  *  "It's turning fine, you can already see blue      sky again."  *  "Look what different effects these two blues      have."  *  "Do you see the blue book over there? Bring      it here. "  *  "This blue signal-light means ...."  *  "What's this blue called.'-Is it 'indigo'?" 

Consider all these contexts in which you "attend to the color" of blue.  Isn't there something different about each?            

 

   You sometimes attend to the colour by putting your hand up to keep the outline from view; or by not looking at the outline of the thing; sometimes by staring at the object and trying to remember  where you saw that colour before. 

    You attend to the shape,

Although there are surely typical things you actually do when you attend to the color, it is not the things you actually do that are in fact what we mean by the "attending to the color."  There are a variety of things people might actually do in the process of "attending to the color."

 

sometimes by tracing it, sometimes by screwing up your eyes so as not to see the colour clearly, and in many other ways. I want to say: This is the sort of thing that happens while one 'directs one's attention to this or that'. But it isn't these things by themselves that make us say someone is attending to the shape, the colour, and so on. Just as a move in chess doesn't consist simply in moving a piece in such-and-such a way on the board-nor yet in one's thoughts and feelings as one makes the move: but in the circumstances that we call "playing a game of chess", "solving a chess problem", and so on. 

  34.  But suppose someone said: "I always do the same thing when I attend to the shape: my eye follows the outline and I feel....". And suppose this person [were] to give someone else the ostensive definition "That is called a 'circle' ", pointing to a circular object and having all these experiences[,[ cannot his hearer still interpret the definition differently, even though he sees the other's eyes following the outline, and even though-he feels what the other feels? 

In 34, the question is: "How does the student know what the teacher is pointing to?  What if the teacher points to the shape and says, 'This is the shape?'  How will we know that the teacher is not pointing to the color?  Would it help to notice that the teacher makes some moves of her hand to suggest she is pointing to the shape?   

 

That is to say: this 'interpretation' Even when you point at the blue

may also consist in how he now makes use of the word; in what he points to, for example, when told: "Point to a circle".- 

 

circular image to me and say, "circle" very carefully, and follow the edge of the circle with your eyes, maybe even run your finger around the edge of the circle, and even when you are possessed of a 'circle-feeling', I can still misinterpret what you are pointing to.  Is that not true? 

For neither the expression "to intend the definition in such-and-such a way" nor the expression "to interpret the definition in such-and-such a way" stands for a process which accompanies the giving and hearing of the definition.                 

 

If you intend your pointing to the shape to be a definition of the circle, that is all well and good, but there is no mental accompaniment of this act that we call "intention" that is required for it to be an ostensive definition.  Ostensive definition is just the pointing and naming of something.  It is pointing to the blue circle and saying "circle", regardless of inner intention.  (Think of someone who does this so routinely that it can be done 'without thinking about it' in the moment.)  And the same is true for the student's interpretation of the ostensive definition.  Imagine the student paying meager attention to the teacher and, neverthless,  picking up on the definition correctly, or, as another example, incorrectly.  If the student failed to understand correctly, would that make the definition any less of a definition? 

  35.    There are, of course, what can be called "characteristic experiences" of pointing to (e.g.) the shape. For example, following

 

the outline with one's finger or with one's eyes as one points.  --But this does not happen in all cases in which I 'mean the shape', and no more does any other one characteristic process occur in all these cases. --Besides, even if something of the sort did recur in all cases, it would still depend on the circumstances --that is, on what happened before and after the pointing --whether we should say "He pointed to the shape and not to the colour". 

 For the words "to point to the shape", "to mean the shape", and so on, are not used in the same way as these: "to point to this book (not to that one), "to point to the chair, not to the table", and so on.  --Only think how differently we learn the use of the words "to point to this thing", "to point to that thing", and on the other hand "to point to the colour, not the shape", "to mean the colour", and so on.

Wittgenstein is distinguishing two related language-games of pointing.  One in which you point to the thing and give its name, and another related one in which you point to the shape or the color and give its name.  Both cases require only that you point in the same physical way.  There may be differences in the way people point in these two language games, but these differences only help us distinguish between them.  These different ways of pointing are not inevitable and they are not required. 

To repeat: in certain cases, especially when one points 'to the shape' or 'to the number' there are characteristic experiences and ways of pointing-'characteristic' because they recur often (not always) when shape or number are 'meant'. But do you also know of an experience characteristic of pointing to a piece

association

in a game as a piece in a game? 

All the same one can say: "I mean that this piece is called the 'king', not this particular bit of wood I am pointing to".  (Recognizing, wishing, remembering, etc. )             

 

Here LW is saying that the sentence ": "I mean that this piece is called the 'king', not this particular bit of wood I am pointing to" is itself ambiguous.  "Mean" can mean "reccognizing, wishing, remembering, etc."  For example, the above sentence might be paraphrased, "I recognize that this piece is called the 'king'..." or "I wish this piece were called the 'king'..., and so forth.  All these different paraphrases have different meanings. 

Thus, this concept of introspective pointing to the shape or color to teach shape and color remains a puzzle. 

  36.  And we do here what we do in a host of similar cases: because we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing to the shape (as opposed, for example, to the colour), we say that a spiritual (mental, intellectual) activity corresponds to these words. 

Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit.

36. When we point to the ball there is a physical object we are pointing to.  When we point to the color, what we are pointing to is much more nebulous.  In these cases, LW says, we tend to do something quite peculiar.  We imagine that there must be something that we are pointing to, even though it is hard to see or even imagine, and this "something" we imagine ourselves pointing to is "spirit."

I don't think this concept of "spirit" necessarily implies anything

religious, although it sometimes might.  What he means by "spirit" is more subtle and available only by introspection.  One points to the blue circle and mean "blue".  How does one do this.  LW is saying that it feels like we are doing it "spiritually".  Remember, LW is not saying that we are doing it spiritually.  He is saying that we all have a tendency to think of it this way.  It is as though there is something "spiritual" involved in  forming a "meaning" in our minds and that this "meaning" that we form in our spirit somehow corresponds to the words that we are thinking. 

When do we do this?  He says we tend to do it when our language says there is a body we should be referring to, and where, in fact, there is none.  The language suggests that "blue" is a body, but, in fact it is not, so it seems we are pointing spiritually. 

Let's imagine another example.  I say 

             "It is raining." 

Our language suggests there should be a body to correspond with the 'it' in this sentence.    Notice, however,  that it is hard to find a body although our language suggests that there is one.  Here is a case, then, that we might be tempted to say that the "it" that is raining is spirit. 

Here are some more examples: 

* I have a hard time keeping all these numbers     in my mind."  * What about the word "numbers"?  * It's time to go. 

Is there a body to correspond to these nouns?  What about the word "mind"?  Is there a body to correspond with that?  What about "numbers"? Or the word "It's"?  Do you want to say that "it" is "time" in this sentence?  Then ask yourself what you oint to when you point to time. 

In cases like this, LW is saying, we are inclined to think that what is being referenced is spirit, or something spiritual or mental. 

 

.

In #36  Wittgenstein noted that we cannot identify a distinctive action that we call pointing to the shape (or pointing to the color) and because of that we tend to see this kind of pointing as "spiritual." 

37.  What is the relation between name and  thing named?  Well, what is it?  Look at  language-game (2) or at another one: there  you can see the sort of thing this

`When we consider the matter more imaginatively, as Augustine did in #1 when he imagined that he had been taught language by being taught to name things, we might well think of the name bringing up a mental image of that originary lesson.  Supposedly, according to this imaginative picture, we know what the other person is talking about (e.g., a slab) because, having learned the name of slab ostensively, we now have mental images of a "slab" every time we hear the word.  This is particularly compelling because we have all experienced mental images when things are named.   

relation  consists in.  This relation may also consist,  among many other things, in the fact that  hearing the name calls before our mind the  picture of what is named; and it also  consists, among other things, in the name's  being written on the thing named or being  pronounced when that thing is pointed at. 

Still, a little introspection shows that we do not have a mental image for every word we hear. 

Alternative to the theory of mental images assisting understanding we sometimes imagine objects having labels attached.  Still, we do not often write the word "chair"on our chairs.  So, in the end, these two theories of language do not work very well when we think about them. 

But, that does not mean we give them up.  What we do, sometimes, is imagine that the images (or the labels) are there but in a fuzzy and spiritual way.  In this fuzzy and spiritual way we point to things and name things in our mind. 

But then LW asks us to look at #2.  You remember in #2 , we had the simple game of the worker and his supervisor.  The supervisor called out "beam!" and the worker brought it.  What is the relationship between the name and the thing in that particular instance?  It simply causes the worker to fetch what the supervisor wants. Need there be mental images here?  Remember our talking about the way I might teach a gorilla to hand me a banana when I said "banana"?  And that this would be a kind of trick.  It wouldn't need to be the case that the gorilla actually understood what the banana was apart from this particular context of handing one to me.  Here, we might say, that the 'name' of the object does not function merely as a name.  It functions more as a command, although the word we think of as a name has a role in making the command clearer. 

So, can you see that in spite of our models of language (pointing spiritually, or attaching a label spiritually) these models do nt seem entirely satisfactory.  Aside from the problematic metaphysics of a spiritual pointing and naming, we have the fact that in the language game the term "slab" is not just a name of an object.  It is a command to fetch a slab.  That activity around which

the word gets pronounced is not accounted for by naming and pointing. 

Are the mental images required for this activity of fetching?  No. Not logically.  The worker is just trained to do something at the sound of the name. The supervisor does not require him to create a mental image of the object first.  Of course he might do so anyway, but this is not required. 

This shows how problematic our notion of naming is, and how much we try to patch it up with notions of fuzzy spirits doing the work. 

 

37. We have been talking about the relationship between a name and the thing named and we have studied two cultural models.  In one, the name is metaphorically "attached" to the thing (like a label might be inscribed on the thing it names) and in the other model the word we use "points" spiritually to the thing it names.  These are the vague models we use for how words "attach" to things.  But Wittgenstein is leading us through a critical reflection on these models because these models lead us to think we have the problem solved when in fact they are in many ways unsatisfactory models that lead us astray. 

Wittgenstein continues to deconstruct these old models of language.  Here in 38, he is going to remind us, again, that the models are

only satisfactory when we think of certain kinds of words.  Then, he points to terms for which it is hard to use one of the two models above. 

38. But what, for example, is the word "this" the name of in language-game (8) or the word "that" in the ostensive definition "that is called ...."?         

 

"This" and "that" are very difficult words to understand if we stay within the  models above., of teaching something by attaching labels or pointing.  How could you attach the word "this" to everything you call "this"?  And if you point spiritually to a particular "this" with your hidden soul, then what on earth does this "pointing" have to do with the word "this" in a more general sense.  One might illustrate an apple or a dog by pointing to one, but can one illustrate a "this" just by pointing?

--If you do not want to produce confusion you will do best not to call these words names at all.--  Yet, strange to say, the word "this" has been called the only genuine name; so that anything else we call a name was one only in an inexact, approximate way. 

This queer conception springs from a tendency to sublime the logic of our language-as one  might put it. 

If we call "this" a name, then it is a name that can be applied everywhere.  It offers no specificity at all.  Yet, at a certain point in doing philosophy it seems like the only legitimate name.  To call something a "chair" classifies it with other often dissimilar objects.  But what can be purer than just calling it a "this." 

This is a way of trying to make our logic more lofty, our statements more pure.  And when we do this, it leads to queer conceptions.   

The proper answer to it is: we call Here LW is introducing us to an

very different things "names"; the word "name" is used to characterize many different kinds of use of a word, related to one another in many different ways;-but the kind of use that "this" has is not among them.     

 

important puzzle that he will clarify later.  He wants us to notice that diverse kinds of things are called "names' and that we have no golden thread to tie them all into a neat conceptual bundle. 

And, at the same time, he is showing that it will be problematic for us if we try to include "this" and "that" within this diverse bundle of words that we call names.

    It is quite true that, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we often point to the object  named and say the name. And similarly, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we say the  word "this" while pointing to a thing. And also the word "this" and a name often occupy the same  position in a sentence. But it is precisely characteristic of a name that it is defined by means of the demonstrative expression "That is N" (or "That is called 'N' "). But do we also give the definitions:  "That is called 'this' ", or "This is called 'this'"? 

This seems to devastate the notion that you can ostensively define "this" and "that".  How can one point to anyplace and say "that" is "that".  Or, if one does, how does this explain to the hearer what "that is."         

 

    This is connected with the conception of naming as, so to speak, an occult process. 

 

 When LW talks of the notion of naming as a kind of occult process he is criticizing the picture of naming that he feels our culture teaches us.  It is the picture of naming being a kind of spiritual pointing. 

Naming appears as a queer  This sentence "For philosophical

connexion of a word with an object. --And you really get such a queer connexion when the philosopher tries to bring out the relation between name and thing by staring at an object in front of him and repeating a name or even the word "this" innumerable times. For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. And here we may indeed fancy naming to be some  remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object. And we can also say the word "this" to the object, as it were address the object as "this"-a queer use of this word, which doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy. 

problems arise when language 'goes on holiday'," is a famous sentence in Wittgenstein.  It means that language is taken out of context and philosophized about it becomes "confusing".  It reminds me of a time when I was a child that I said "butterfly" over and over.  Isn't it strange, I thought, that we say "Butter-fly" as though butter were to fly away, or "but -er -fly" and by the time that I had said this 15 times or so, the word no longer seemed to mean "butterfly" in the simple way it had.  Often when one philosophizes about a concept the concept has "gone on holiday".  We have lost our grounding in concrete examples.  We know very well how to use the word "virtue" in a sentence, for example, but when we scratch our heads and wonder what "virtue" really means, then the word "virtue" is on holiday.  We are just thinking about the word, not using it in the natural way that our language allows us to use it. 

Do you have any experience with language going on holiday?  Ever said a word a few times, a familiar word, and then sort of lose the meaning of it as you reflect on what this word means? 

And what do you think about "that" and "this"?  Do they seem like names to you?   

  footnote 

What is it to mean the words "That is blue" at one time as a statement about the object one  is pointing to  --at another as an explanation of the word "blue"? Well, in the second case one really means "That is called 'blue' ". --Then can one at one time mean the word "is" as "is called" and the word "blue" as " 'blue' ", and another time mean "is" really as "is"? 

Paraphrase like this can help us be clearer about what language game is being played.

It is also possible for someone to get an explanation of the words out of what was intended as a piece of information. [Marginal note: Here lurks a crucial superstition.] 

Of course.  I might say, "How do you like my new sepia couch."  This might give you an unintended explanation of the word 'sepia."

Can I say "bububu" and mean "If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk"? --It is only in a language that I can mean something by something. This shews clearly that the grammar of "to mean" is not like that of the expression "to imagine" and the like.

This is a critical point that should be puzzled about at this moment rather than clarified.  Can one say "hello" to mean goodbye?  Without somehow creating a special code for others to interpret?  Or does the meaning that we spin with our words have to cooperate, somehow, with their more standard cultural use?

Aphorism 31-38 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver    

Wittgenstein: (Emphasis is bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

31.    When one shews someone the king in chess and says: "This is the king", this does not tell him the use of this piece-unless he already knows the rules of the game up to this last point: the shape of the king. You could imagine his having learnt the rules of the game without ever having been strewn an actual piece. The shape of the chessman corresponds here to the sound or shape of a word. 

Suppose someone showed you an Xray and said to you, "see that tumor?"  It might be evident to all who have learned to read Xrays, but just pointing to it is not enough to enable this kind of seeing.  So it is with handing a child a chess piece and saying "This is a king."  The background for making sense of this pointing and naming has not be laid down.

   One can also imagine someone's having learnt the game without ever learning or formulating rules. He might have learnt quite simple board-games first, by watching, and have progressed to more and more complicated ones. He too might be given the explanation "This is the king",-- if, for instance, he were being strewn chessmen of a shape he was not used to. This explanation again only tells him the use of the piece because, as we might say, the place for it was already prepared.  Or even: we shall only say that it tells him the use, if the place is already prepared. And in this case it is so, not because the person to whom we give the explanation already knows rules, but because  in another sense he is already master of a game. 

The emphasis in this passage is mine.  It represents a key concept, the concept of an ostensive definition being made possible by the place for the definition being prepared. 

But the primary point, I believe, is that if we knew the rules of the chess game, knew that losing your king meant that you lost the game, for example, or how the king can move within the rules of the game, then having someone say, "This is the king in a chess set" would mean a lot more, would clarify more, than if you had never heard of chess or board games.  Sometimes, one does not know enough about a subject to even ask useful questions.   

 

Consider this further case: I am explaining chess to someone; and I begin by pointing to a chessman and saying: "This is the king; it can move like this, .... and so on." -- In this case we shall say: the words "This is the king" (or "This is called the 'king' ") are a definition only if the learner already 'knows what a piece in a game is'. That is, if he has already played other games, or has watched other people praying 'and understood'-and similar things. Further, only under these conditions will he be able to ask relevantly in the course of learning the game: "What do you call this?"--that is, this piece in a game. 

We may say: only someone who already knows how to do something with it can significantly  ask a name.   

There are a family of ways one might go about preparing a person to understand "This is a king" when showing them a chess piece.  It would help, perhaps, if a person knew how to play checkers and knew, in addition, that in chess, losing the king meant losing the game.  Still, this would not prepare the listener to understand his statement as much as if he learned to play chess with pieces that had a different kind of king.                 

 

And we can imagine the person who is asked replying: "Settle the name yourself"-and now the one who asked would have to manage everything for himself.               

If you did not have the concept of what is being named, that is, if the place for this name is not prepared, then perhaps it would be as well for you to name it for yourself.  Learning the "name" of something (instead of naming it) is important precisely in those cases that learning the name will connect with what we already know and allow us to learn what we are seeing more completely. 

               

 

Say you go to the doctor with a skin rash and ask, "What is this called?"  And suppose the doctor gives you an unintelligible technical name.  Not helpful.  But suppose the doctor says, "This is a measles rash."  Then, because you have an idea as to what measles is, you have learned quite a bit.  But if you didn't have the concept of measles, things would be different.  You could call it whatever you wanted.  It would be just as meaningful to you.  However, it might prepare you less well for talking with others.   

  32.  Someone coming into a strange country  will sometimes learn the language of the  inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to 'guess' the meaning of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

I remember Harry describing learning a foreign language like this.  He was in a foreign country and people would teach him the names of things by pointing and naming. This seems like a very easy way to learn the names of things in a foreign tongue.

And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And

Isn't it so?   Augustine describe this kind of pointing and naming as the way that the child learns language?  But we have been working on why this explains so little in the learning of language, and noticing the limits to this kind of learning, for example, that pointing and naming "blue" doesn't mean that the hearer

"think" would here mean something like "talk to itself".     

 

recognizes what we are naming -- even if the hearer then can point at the blue object and say "blue." 

Also, such an ostensive definition can hardly expain how we learn the word "the" or "for" or, in fact, most words.  Look back at this paragraph and see how many words could be taught to the child by ostensive definition.

The problem is that the young child, in the beginning  (picture baby Augustine), does not have a place prepared for learning by pointing. 

What kind of background is necessary to prepare such a place?  How would you train a child so that it understood that you are naming a chess piece, for example?  Or the color "blue"? 

  33.    Suppose, however, someone were to object: "It is not true that you must already be master of a language in order to understand an ostensive definition: all you need --of course!-- is to know or guess what the person giving the explanation is pointing to. That is, whether for example to the shape of the object, or to its colour, or to its number, and so on." -- And what does 'pointing to the shape', 'pointing to the colour' consist in? Point to a piece of paper. --And

Here LW is luring us back into the muddle and it is good to let ourselves go there for a moment, knowing it is a muddle but letting ourselves feel the pull.  In this muddle he continues to ask, how can an ostensive definition teach the meaning of a term?  How does the student know what we are pointing to.  There is ambiguity in the pointing in every case we can imagine.

now point to its shape -- now to its  colour -- now to its number (that sounds queer). --How did you do it? --You will say that you 'meant' a different thing each time you pointed. And if I ask how that is done, you will say you concentrated your attention on the colour, the shape, etc. But I ask again: how is that done? 

Suppose someone points to a vase and says "Look at that marvellous blue-the shape isn't the  point."  --Or: "Look at the marvellous shape-the colour doesn't matter." Without doubt you will do something different when you act upon these two invitations. But do you always do the same thing when you direct your attention to the colour? Imagine various different cases. To indicate a few: 

What we do when we "attend to the color' of something seems, when you think about it,  rather nebulous.       

 

*  "Is this blue the same as the blue over there?      Do you see any difference?"  *  You are mixing paint and you say "It's hard      to get the blue of this sky."  *  "It's turning fine, you can already see blue      sky again."  *  "Look what different effects these two blues      have."  *  "Do you see the blue book over there? Bring      it here. " 

Consider all these contexts in which you "attend to the color" of blue.  Isn't there something different about each?            

 

*  "This blue signal-light means ...."  *  "What's this blue called.'-Is it 'indigo'?" 

   You sometimes attend to the colour by putting your hand up to keep the outline from view; or by not looking at the outline of the thing; sometimes by staring at the object and trying to remember  where you saw that colour before. 

    You attend to the shape, sometimes by tracing it, sometimes by screwing up your eyes so as not to see the colour clearly, and in many other ways. I want to say: This is the sort of thing that happens while one 'directs one's attention to this or that'. But it isn't these things by themselves that make us say someone is attending to the shape, the colour, and so on. Just as a move in chess doesn't consist simply in moving a piece in such-and-such a way on the board-nor yet in one's thoughts and feelings as one makes the move: but in the circumstances that we call "playing a game of chess", "solving a chess problem", and so on. 

Although there are surely typical things you actually do when you attend to the color, it is not the things you actually do that are in fact what we mean by the "attending to the color."  There are a variety of things people might actually do in the process of "attending to the color."

 

  34.  But suppose someone said: "I always do the same thing when I attend to the shape: my eye follows

In 34, the question is: "How does the student know what the teacher is pointing to?  What if the teacher

the outline and I feel....". And suppose this person [were] to give someone else the ostensive definition "That is called a 'circle' ", pointing to a circular object and having all these experiences[,[ cannot his hearer still interpret the definition differently, even though he sees the other's eyes following the outline, and even though-he feels what the other feels? 

points to the shape and says, 'This is the shape?'  How will we know that the teacher is not pointing to the color?  Would it help to notice that the teacher makes some moves of her hand to suggest she is pointing to the shape?   

 

That is to say: this 'interpretation' may also consist in how he now makes use of the word; in what he points to, for example, when told: "Point to a circle".- 

 

Even when you point at the blue circular image to me and say, "circle" very carefully, and follow the edge of the circle with your eyes, maybe even run your finger around the edge of the circle, and even when you are possessed of a 'circle-feeling', I can still misinterpret what you are pointing to.  Is that not true? 

For neither the expression "to intend the definition in such-and-such a way" nor the expression "to interpret the definition in such-and-such a way" stands for a process which accompanies the giving and hearing of the definition.                 

 

If you intend your pointing to the shape to be a definition of the circle, that is all well and good, but there is no mental accompaniment of this act that we call "intention" that is required for it to be an ostensive definition.  Ostensive definition is just the pointing and naming of something.  It is pointing to the blue circle and saying "circle", regardless of inner intention.  (Think of someone who does this so routinely that it can be done 'without thinking about it' in the moment.)  And the same is true for the student's interpretation of the ostensive definition.  Imagine the student paying meager attention to the

teacher and, neverthless,  picking up on the definition correctly, or, as another example, incorrectly.  If the student failed to understand correctly, would that make the definition any less of a definition? 

  35.    There are, of course, what can be called "characteristic experiences" of pointing to (e.g.) the shape. For example, following the outline with one's finger or with one's eyes as one points.  --But this does not happen in all cases in which I 'mean the shape', and no more does any other one characteristic process occur in all these cases. --Besides, even if something of the sort did recur in all cases, it would still depend on the circumstances --that is, on what happened before and after the pointing --whether we should say "He pointed to the shape and not to the colour". 

 

 For the words "to point to the shape", "to mean the shape", and so on, are not used in the same way as these: "to point to this book (not to that one), "to point to the chair, not to the table", and so on.  --Only think how differently we learn the use of the words "to point to this thing", "to point to that thing", and on the other hand "to point to the colour, not the shape", "to mean the colour", and so on.

Wittgenstein is distinguishing two related language-games of pointing.  One in which you point to the thing and give its name, and another related one in which you point to the shape or the color and give its name.  Both cases require only that you point in the same physical way.  There may be differences in the way people point in these two language games, but these differences only help us

distinguish between them.  These different ways of pointing are not inevitable and they are not required. 

To repeat: in certain cases, especially when one points 'to the shape' or 'to the number' there are characteristic experiences and ways of pointing-'characteristic' because they recur often (not always) when shape or number are 'meant'. But do you also know of an experience characteristic of pointing to a piece in a game as a piece in a game? 

association

All the same one can say: "I mean that this piece is called the 'king', not this particular bit of wood I am pointing to".  (Recognizing, wishing, remembering, etc. )             

 

Here LW is saying that the sentence ": "I mean that this piece is called the 'king', not this particular bit of wood I am pointing to" is itself ambiguous.  "Mean" can mean "reccognizing, wishing, remembering, etc."  For example, the above sentence might be paraphrased, "I recognize that this piece is called the 'king'..." or "I wish this piece were called the 'king'..., and so forth.  All these different paraphrases have different meanings. 

Thus, this concept of introspective pointing to the shape or color to teach shape and color remains a puzzle. 

  36.  And we do here what we do in a host of similar cases: because we cannot specify any one bodily

36. When we point to the ball there is a physical object we are pointing to.  When we point to the color, what we

action which we call pointing to the shape (as opposed, for example, to the colour), we say that a spiritual (mental, intellectual) activity corresponds to these words. 

Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit.

are pointing to is much more nebulous.  In these cases, LW says, we tend to do something quite peculiar.  We imagine that there must be something that we are pointing to, even though it is hard to see or even imagine, and this "something" we imagine ourselves pointing to is "spirit."

I don't think this concept of "spirit" necessarily implies anything religious, although it sometimes might.  What he means by "spirit" is more subtle and available only by introspection.  One points to the blue circle and mean "blue".  How does one do this.  LW is saying that it feels like we are doing it "spiritually".  Remember, LW is not saying that we are doing it spiritually.  He is saying that we all have a tendency to think of it this way.  It is as though there is something "spiritual" involved in  forming a "meaning" in our minds and that this "meaning" that we form in our spirit somehow corresponds to the words that we are thinking. 

When do we do this?  He says we tend to do it when our language says there is a body we should be referring to, and where, in fact, there is none.  The language suggests that "blue" is a body, but, in fact it is not, so it seems we are pointing spiritually. 

Let's imagine another example.  I say 

             "It is raining." 

Our language suggests there should be a body to correspond with the 'it' in this sentence.    Notice, however,  that it is hard to find a body although our language suggests that there is one.  Here is a case, then, that we might be tempted to say that the "it" that is raining is spirit. 

Here are some more examples: 

* I have a hard time keeping all these numbers     in my mind."  * What about the word "numbers"?  * It's time to go. 

Is there a body to correspond to these nouns?  What about the word "mind"?  Is there a body to correspond with that?  What about "numbers"? Or the word "It's"?  Do you want to say that "it" is "time" in this sentence?  Then ask yourself what you oint to when you point to time. 

In cases like this, LW is saying, we are inclined to think that what is being referenced is spirit, or something spiritual or mental. 

  . In #36  Wittgenstein noted that we cannot identify a

distinctive action that we call pointing to the shape (or pointing to the color) and because of that we tend to see

this kind of pointing as "spiritual." 

37.  What is the relation between name and  thing named?  Well, what is it?  Look at  language-game (2) or at another one: there  you can see the sort of thing this relation  consists in.  This relation may also consist,  among many other things, in the fact that  hearing the name calls before our mind the  picture of what is named; and it also  consists, among other things, in the name's  being written on the thing named or being  pronounced when that thing is pointed at. 

`When we consider the matter more imaginatively, as Augustine did in #1 when he imagined that he had been taught language by being taught to name things, we might well think of the name bringing up a mental image of that originary lesson.  Supposedly, according to this imaginative picture, we know what the other person is talking about (e.g., a slab) because, having learned the name of slab ostensively, we now have mental images of a "slab" every time we hear the word.  This is particularly compelling because we have all experienced mental images when things are named.    Still, a little introspection shows that we do not have a mental image for every word we hear. 

Alternative to the theory of mental images assisting understanding we sometimes imagine objects having labels attached.  Still, we do not often write the word "chair"on our chairs.  So, in the end, these two theories of language do not work very well when we think about them. 

But, that does not mean we give them up.  What we do, sometimes, is imagine that the images (or the labels) are there but in a fuzzy and spiritual way.  In this fuzzy and spiritual way we point to things and name things in our mind. 

But then LW asks us to look at #2.  You remember in #2 , we had the simple game of the worker and his supervisor.  The supervisor called out "beam!" and the worker brought it.  What is the relationship between the name and the thing in that particular instance?  It simply causes the worker to fetch what the supervisor wants. Need there be mental images here?  Remember our talking about the way I might teach a gorilla to hand me a banana when I said "banana"?  And that this would be a kind of trick.  It wouldn't need to be the case that the gorilla actually understood what the banana was apart

from this particular context of handing one to me.  Here, we might say, that the 'name' of the object does not function merely as a name.  It functions more as a command, although the word we think of as a name has a role in making the command clearer. 

So, can you see that in spite of our models of language (pointing spiritually, or attaching a label spiritually) these models do nt seem entirely satisfactory.  Aside from the problematic metaphysics of a spiritual pointing and naming, we have the fact that in the language game the term "slab" is not just a name of an object.  It is a command to fetch a slab.  That activity around which the word gets pronounced is not accounted for by naming and pointing. 

Are the mental images required for this activity of fetching?  No. Not logically.  The worker is just trained to do something at the sound of the name. The supervisor does not require him to create a mental image of the object first.  Of course he might do so anyway, but this is not required. 

This shows how problematic our notion of naming is, and how much we try to patch it up with notions of fuzzy spirits doing the work. 

 

37. We have been talking about the relationship between a name and the thing named and we have studied two cultural models.  In one, the name is metaphorically "attached" to the thing (like a label might be inscribed on the thing it names) and in the other model the word we use "points" spiritually to the thing it names.  These are the vague models

we use for how words "attach" to things.  But Wittgenstein is leading us through a critical reflection on these models because these models lead us to think we have the problem solved when in fact they are in many ways unsatisfactory models that lead us astray. 

Wittgenstein continues to deconstruct these old models of language.  Here in 38, he is going to remind us, again, that the models are only satisfactory when we think of certain kinds of words.  Then, he points to terms for which it is hard to use one of the two models above. 

38. But what, for example, is the word "this" the name of in language-game (8) or the word "that" in the ostensive definition "that is called ...."?         

 

"This" and "that" are very difficult words to understand if we stay within the  models above., of teaching something by attaching labels or pointing.  How could you attach the word "this" to everything you call "this"?  And if you point spiritually to a particular "this" with your hidden soul, then what on earth does this "pointing" have to do with the word "this" in a more general sense.  One might illustrate an apple or a dog by pointing to one, but can one illustrate a "this" just by pointing?

--If you do not want to produce confusion you will do best not to call these words names at all.--  Yet, strange to say, the word "this" has been called the only genuine name; so that anything else we call

If we call "this" a name, then it is a name that can be applied everywhere.  It offers no specificity at all.  Yet, at a certain point in doing philosophy it seems like the only legitimate name.  To call

a name was one only in an inexact, approximate way. 

This queer conception springs from a tendency to sublime the logic of our language-as one  might put it. 

something a "chair" classifies it with other often dissimilar objects.  But what can be purer than just calling it a "this." 

This is a way of trying to make our logic more lofty, our statements more pure.  And when we do this, it leads to queer conceptions.   

The proper answer to it is: we call very different things "names"; the word "name" is used to characterize many different kinds of use of a word, related to one another in many different ways;-but the kind of use that "this" has is not among them.     

 

Here LW is introducing us to an important puzzle that he will clarify later.  He wants us to notice that diverse kinds of things are called "names' and that we have no golden thread to tie them all into a neat conceptual bundle. 

And, at the same time, he is showing that it will be problematic for us if we try to include "this" and "that" within this diverse bundle of words that we call names.

    It is quite true that, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we often point to the object  named and say the name. And similarly, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we say the  word "this" while pointing to a thing. And also the word "this" and a name often occupy the same  position in a sentence. But it is precisely characteristic of a name that it is defined by means of the demonstrative expression "That is N" (or "That is called 'N' "). But do we also give the definitions: 

This seems to devastate the notion that you can ostensively define "this" and "that".  How can one point to anyplace and say "that" is "that".  Or, if one does, how does this explain to the hearer what "that is."         

 

"That is called 'this' ", or "This is called 'this'"? 

    This is connected with the conception of naming as, so to speak, an occult process. 

 

 When LW talks of the notion of naming as a kind of occult process he is criticizing the picture of naming that he feels our culture teaches us.  It is the picture of naming being a kind of spiritual pointing. 

Naming appears as a queer connexion of a word with an object. --And you really get such a queer connexion when the philosopher tries to bring out the relation between name and thing by staring at an object in front of him and repeating a name or even the word "this" innumerable times. For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. And here we may indeed fancy naming to be some  remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object. And we can also say the word "this" to the object, as it were address the object as "this"-a queer use of this word, which doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy. 

 This sentence "For philosophical problems arise when language 'goes on holiday'," is a famous sentence in Wittgenstein.  It means that language is taken out of context and philosophized about it becomes "confusing".  It reminds me of a time when I was a child that I said "butterfly" over and over.  Isn't it strange, I thought, that we say "Butter-fly" as though butter were to fly away, or "but -er -fly" and by the time that I had said this 15 times or so, the word no longer seemed to mean "butterfly" in the simple way it had.  Often when one philosophizes about a concept the concept has "gone on holiday".  We have lost our grounding in concrete examples.  We know very well how to use the word "virtue" in a sentence, for example, but when we scratch our heads and wonder what "virtue" really means, then the word "virtue" is on holiday.  We are just thinking about the word, not using it in the natural way that our language allows us to use it. 

Do you have any experience with language going on holiday?  Ever said a word a few times, a familiar word, and then sort of lose the meaning of it as you reflect on what this word means? 

And what do you think about "that" and "this"?  Do they seem like names to you?   

  footnote 

What is it to mean the words "That is blue" at one time as a statement about the object one  is pointing to  --at another as an explanation of the word "blue"? Well, in the second case one really means "That is called 'blue' ". --Then can one at one time mean the word "is" as "is called" and the word "blue" as " 'blue' ", and another time mean "is" really as "is"? 

Paraphrase like this can help us be clearer about what language game is being played.

It is also possible for someone to get an explanation of the words out of what was intended as a piece of information. [Marginal note: Here lurks a crucial superstition.] 

Of course.  I might say, "How do you like my new sepia couch."  This might give you an unintended explanation of the word 'sepia."

Can I say "bububu" and mean "If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk"? --It is only in a language that I can mean something by something. This shews clearly that the grammar of "to mean" is not

This is a critical point that should be puzzled about at this moment rather than clarified.  Can one say "hello" to mean goodbye?  Without somehow creating a special code for others to interpret?  Or does the

like that of the expression "to imagine" and the like.

meaning that we spin with our words have to cooperate, somehow, with their more standard cultural use?

Aphorism 39-50 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver         Wittgenstein: (Emphasis is bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

39.    But why does it occur to one to want to make precisely this word into a name, when it evidently is not a name?-That is just the reason. For one is tempted to make an objection against what is ordinarily called a name. It can be put like this: a name ought really to signify a simple. And for this one might perhaps give the following reasons: The word "Excalibur", say, is a proper name in the ordinary sense. The sword Excalibur consists of parts combined in a particular way. If they are combined differently Excalibur does not exist. But it is clear that the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp blade" makes sense whether Excalibur is still whole or is broken up. But if "Excalibur" is

In (39), LW introduces the question of whether complex objects have simple components.  We discuss whether Excalibur (the sword of King Arthur) disappeared when it is broken into a blade and a handle.  And, if it does, then how can we speak of Excalibur having a sharp blade?  If the blade is required to be attached to the handle in order for Excalibur to exist, then the blade is part of Excalibur and that means, that Excalibur is the handle+blade combination so to say that Excalibur has a sharp blade is to say that this handle+blade combination has a sharp blade -- which makes no sense.  (Hence our aporia.)   

 

the name of an object, this object no longer exists when Excalibur is broken in pieces; and as no object would then correspond to the name it would have no meaning. But then the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp blade" would contain a word that had no meaning, and hence the sentence would be nonsense. But it does make sense; so there must always be something corresponding to the words of which it consists. So the word "Excalibur" must disappear when the sense is analysed and its place be taken by words which name simples. It will be reasonable to call these words the real names. 

40.  Let us first discuss this point of the argument: that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it.-It is important to note that the word "meaning" is being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that 'corresponds' to the word. That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. When Mr. N. N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that, for if the name ceased to have meaning it would make no sense to say "Mr. N. N. is dead." 

Here is a digression as to whether a word has a meaning if nothing corresponds to it.     

 

41.   In #15 we introduced proper names into language (8). Now suppose that the tool with the name "N" is broken. Not knowing this, A

This continues with the digression of whether names make sense once the objects disappear.  In 15 we are talking about one of the building site language games.  The worker is fetching pillars and

gives B the sign "N". Has this sign meaning now or not.?-What is B to do when he is given it?-We have not settled anything about this. One might ask: what mill he do? Well, perhaps he will stand there at a loss, or shew A the pieces. Here one might say: "N" has become meaningless; and this expression would mean that the sign "N" no longer had a use in our language-game (unless we gave it a new one). "N" might also become meaningless because, for whatever reason, the tool was given another name and the sign "N" no longer used in the language-game.  -- But we could also imagine a convention whereby B has to shake his head in reply if A gives him the sign belonging to a tool that is broken.-In this way the command "N" might be said to be given a place in the language-game even when the  tool no longer exists, and the sign "N" to have meaning even when its bearer ceases to exist. 

blocks.  If the pillars and blocks have proper names does it make sense to refer to them if they have no object to reference?     

 

42.  But has for instance a name which has never been used for a tool also got a meaning in that game? Let us assume that "X" is such a sign and that A gives this sign to B -- well, even such signs could be given a place in the  language-game, and B might have, say, to answer them too with a shake of the head. (One could imagine this as a sort of joke between them.) 

Say that the X is "tree".  The supervisor asks the worker to bring a Block1, Pillar3, and then "tree" and all the workers  laugh.  Or, instead of "tree" the supervisor might say "angel" and this, too, might provoke a laugh even though no angel corresponded to it.  Or, the work supervisor might say "pillar 6" even though both supervisor and worker know that "pillar 6" was crushed recently and so cannot be brought

because it "no longer exists."

43.    For a large class of cases-though not for all-in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. 

    And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer. 

The examples in #42 that I gave illustrate ways in which words can have a use in the language-game even when they do not have a referent that we can point to and name.  This settles the question introduced in 39.  Yes, a word can have a meaning even if it does not have a "bearer" (something to point to).  Its meaning is explained by its use in the language-game.  (Click here for an explanded commentary on this aphorism.)

44.   We said that the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp blade" made sense even when Excalibur was broken in pieces. Now this is so because in this language-game a name is also used in the absence of its bearer. But we can imagine a language-game with names (that is, with signs which we should certainly include among names) in which they are used only in the presence of the bearer; and so could always be replaced by a demonstrative pronoun and the gesture of pointing. 

In 44,  LW uses the point established in #43 that a name can make sense even in the absence of its bearer.  But now he wants to reflect on the possibility of having a language in which words only made sense when they have a bearer, that is, when the names could be replaced with the pronoun "this" as in "bring this!"  (Imagine the work supervisor walking over and pointing to the pillar that he wanted taken over to the pile.  We can hardly imagine this working if the pillar wasn't there)

45.  The demonstrative "this" can never be without a bearer. It might be said: "so long as there is a this, the word 'this' has a meaning too, whether this is simple or complex." But that does not make the word into a name. On the contrary: for a name is not used with, but only explained by means of, the gesture

Imagine someone pointing to person and saying, "This is Joseph."  The "This" is not a name.  It is a way of explaining who Joseph is.     

 

of pointing. 

46.   What lies behind the idea that names really signify simples? --Socrates says in the Theaetetus: "If I make no mistake, I have heard some people say this: there is no definition of the primary elements  --  so to speak -- out of which we and everything else are composed; for everything that exists in its own right can only be named, no other determination is possible, neither that it is nor that it is not..... But what exists in its own right has to be ....... named without any other determination. In consequence it is impossible to give an account of any primary element; for it, nothing is possible but the bare name; its name is all it has. But just as what consists of these primary elements is itself complex, so the names of the elements become descriptive language by being compounded together. For the essence of speech is the composition of names." 

  Both Russell's 'individuals' and my 'objects' (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) were such primary elements. 

Here LW shows us how deep the roots of the ideas of simples is.  The idea is that everything is either a simple thing or a complex thing where a complex thing is a composite of simples things.     

 

47.  But what are the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed?  -- What are the simple constituent parts of a chair?  -- The bits of wood of which it is made? Or the molecules, or the atoms? -- "Simple" means: not composite.

(The emphasis is mine.)  When he says it makes no sense to speak "absolutely" of the simple parts of something he means that it makes no sense to speak of "parts" without some kind of context that defines what a "part" is.     

And here the point is: in what sense 'composite'? It makes no sense at all to speak absolutely of the 'simple parts of a chair'. 

 

    Again: Does my visual image of this tree, of this chair, consist of parts? And what are its simple component parts? Multi-colouredness is one kind of complexity; another is, for example, that of a broken outline composed of straight bits. And a curve can be said to be composed of an ascending and a descending segment. 

This is the gestalt notion that the perception consists of more than the sum of its parts.  If you look at a particular person you do not see just a collection of parts.  And if you look at a curved line 

~ you do not just see the elements of that curve.  You see it as a whole.

    If I tell someone without any further explanation: "What I see before me now is composite," he will have the right to ask: "What do you mean by 'composite'? For there are all sorts of things that that can mean!  -- 

The question requires a context.  Otherwise, we don't know what to count as "parts."

The question "Is what you see composite?" makes good sense if it is already established what kind of complexity -- that is, which particular use of the word -- is in question. If it had been laid down that the visual image of a tree was to be called "composite" if one saw not just a single trunk, but also branches, then the question "Is the visual image of this tree simple or composite?" and the question "What are its simple component parts?", would have a clear sense-a clear use. And of course the answer to the second question is not "The

That is, we can create a language game in which we count "branches" as parts and say that a tree is a composite (imagine a sketched tree) if it has branches.  But without such a context, the question "Is this tree composite?" doesn't make much sense.  If there is no such context, then the answer to the question "What are its parts" is an answer as to what to count as parts in this context, not an answer about what the parts are aside from the context.  In other words, to say that "the branches" are the parts is an answer to the grammatical question as to

branches" (that would be an answer to the grammatical question: "What are here called 'simple component parts'?") but rather a description of the individual branches. 

what to count as parts not an answer about the component parts in this tree aside from context.  If we wanted to talk about this particular tree (and not just negotiate what are to count as parts) we will want to do something closer to describing what we see as its parts (which is arbitrary outside of a negotiated language game).

    But isn't a chessboard, for instance, obviously, and absolutely, composite? 

Notice the word "absolutely" here.  It has the special meaning of "absolutely and irrespective of context."

-- You are probably thinking of the composition out of thirty-two white and thirty-two black squares. But could we not also say, for instance, that it was composed of the colours black and white and the schema of squares? And if there are quite different ways of looking at it, do you still want to say that the chessboard is absolutely 'composite'? -- 

This is the question, again, as to whether there are ever absolute parts of anything.  The chessboard is the example he chooses that seems most compelling.  Doesn't it seem, in some natural sense, that there are absolute parts of a chessboard?  And these parts are the squares on the chessboard?  What context could change the answer to that?

Asking "Is this object composite?" outside a particular language-game is like what a boy once did, who had to say whether the verbs in certain sentences were in the active or passive voice, and who racked his brains over the question whether the verb "to sleep" meant something active or passive. 

This is Wittgenstein's emerging philosophy.  It says that everything we say makes sense only within a language-game that establishes the rules and sets the meaning of the terms.  The distinction between "active" and "passive" is different when we think of sleeping than when we think of grammar.  In grammar, if that's our language game at the moment, the passive voice has nothing to do with being sleepy, or passive in that sense of the term. 

And, Wittgenstein is suggesting, it is the same with "parts."  What counts as "parts" depends on the context.

    We use the word "composite" (and therefore the word "simple") in an enormous number of different and differently related ways. (Is the colour of a square on a chessboard simple, or does it consist of pure white and pure yellow? And is white simple, or does it consist of the colours of the rainbow? -- Is this length of 2 cm. simple, or does it consist of two parts, each ~ cm. long? But why not of one bit 3 cm long, and one bit I cm. long measured in the opposite direction?) 

 

To show that things do not have "absolute" parts, but only parts relative to the language game we are playing, he is now showing us some of the different ways we define the parts in different language games. 

I consider the last example, the one of lengths, most compelling.  What are the parts of a length that is two inches?  Are there two parts, each one inch long?  Wouldn't this be different if we measured the object in centimeters?

    To the philosophical question: "Is the visual image of this tree composite, and what are its component parts?" the correct answer is: "That depends on what you understand by 'composite'." (And that is of course not an answer but a rejection of the question.)

Again, this is not Wittgenstein's aporetic voice, but his clarifying voice.  This is his own philosophy which says that we can only answer the question "What are its parts?" once we have negotiated the meaning of "part" in a particular language game.

48.    Let us apply the method of (2) to the account in the Theaetetus. Let us consider a language-game for which this account is really valid. The language serves to describe combinations of coloured squares on a surface. The squares form a complex like a chessboard.  There are red, green, white and black

Notice the statement, "Let us consider a language-game for which this account is really valid."  This is most explicit.  This is what he is trying to do, trying to find an illustration in which the theory is really valid.  What theory is that?  The theory of simples, the theory that Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus and

squares. The words of the language are (correspondingly) "R", "G", "W", "B", and a sentence is a series of these words. They describe an arrangement of squares in the order: 

is also Russell.   

 

1 2 34 5 67 8 9

 

And so for instance the sentence "RRBGGGRWW" describes an arrangement of this sort: 

               

 

    Here the sentence is a complex of names, to which corresponds a complex of elements. The primary elements are the coloured squares. "But are these simple?"-I do not know what else you would have me call "the simples", what would be more natural in this language-game. But under 

The sentence is "RRBGGGRWW."  It describes the way in which the squares are colored.  Doesn't it seem natural to call these different squares the parts?  This is LW's aporetic voice taking us back into the fly-bottle.

other circumstances I should call a monochrome square  "composite", consisting perhaps of two rectangles, or of the elements colour and shape. But the concept of complexity might also be so extended that a smaller area was said to be 'composed' of a greater area and another one subtracted from it. Compare the 'composition

And here he takes us back out of the fly bottle.  He is pointing to a way to see the components of the above figure differently.  We may see 9 if we insist that each part is a square, but we could see the continugous colors as constituting a part.     

     

of forces', the 'division' of a line by a point outside it; 

          

So, there would be two red parts as the following figure helps to illustrate:   

               

 

these expressions shew that we are sometimes even inclined to conceive the smaller as the result of a composition of greater parts, and the greater as the result of a division of the smaller. 

When I read this I see a mistake that I overlooked before.  The smaller is a division of the greater (the smaller square is half of the larger square) and the larger is a composite of two small squares.  This is what I take him to mean.  In other words, we sometimes divide up a part to make smaller parts, or combine parts to make larger parts.

    But I do not know whether to say that the figure described by our sentence consists of four or of nine elements! Well, does the sentence consist of four letters or of nine?  And which are its elements, the types of letter, or the letters? Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case?

If the parts are determined by the colors, then there are 4 parts.  But if the parts are determined by the shape (square), then there are 9.  Which way you count them depends on how you define "part."  And the same thing is true for the sentence: 

RRBGGGRWWYou will say there are 9 words if you count each appearance of a character as "a word."  But if you count the second appearance of each character merely a copy of the same word, then you will count a different number of words.

49.    But what does it mean to say Here he takes us back to 46. (Use

that we cannot define (that is, describe) these elements, but only name them? This might mean, for instance, that when in a limiting case a complex consists of only one square, its description is simply the name of the coloured square. 

your ordinary way of returning from a link to get back to this comment after you click on the above 46 to peak at 46.)  The point is, that if we are thinking of the squares as the "parts", then when we look at a single square we can no longer name the parts.  We can only describe the square.  Isn't this the dilemma that Plato was noticing in the Theaetetus?

    Here we might say -- though this easily leads to all kinds of philosophical superstition -- that a sign "R" or "B", etc. may be sometimes a word and sometimes a proposition. But whether it 'is a word or a proposition' depends on the situation in which it is uttered or written. For instance, if A has to describe complexes of coloured squares to B and he uses the word "R" alone, we shall be able to say that the word is a description -- a proposition. But if he is memorizing the words and their meanings, or if he is teaching someone else the use of the words and uttering them in the course of ostensive teaching, we shall not say that they are propositions. In this situation the word "R", for instance, is not a description; it names an element but it would be queer to make that a reason for saying that an element can only be named! For naming and describing do not stand on the same level: naming is a preparation for description. Naming is so far not a move in the language-game  -- any

I have emphasized the parenthetical "though this easily leads to all kinds of philosophical superstition" because I want to show you how LW shows us which voice he is using, the voice that leads us into aporia or out of it.  He does not really expand on this aporia but you can note it.  The question is when is something a sentence or a word?  We know, but it is hard to say.  We could say that it is a sentence when it makes complete sense, but a sentence does not always make complete sense and a word sometimes does.  Doesn't it?       

Wittgenstein steps out of this aporia by saying that naming and describing do not stand on the same level, that naming is preparation for describing, it is not a move in the langauge game.  It is like setting up the pieces in a game of chess. 

Still, this is confusing because we don't know how to tell, at times, what

more than putting a piece in its place on the board is a move in chess. We may say: nothing has so far been done, when a thing has been named. It has not even got a name except in the language-game. This was what Frege meant too, when he said that a word had meaning only as part of a sentence. 

constitutes the langauge game.  It is easier when we think of chess.

50.    What does it mean to say that we can attribute neither being nor non-being to elements?  --One might say: if everything that we call "being" and "non-being" consists in the existence and non-existence of connexions between elements, it makes no sense to speak of an element's being (non-being); just as when everything that we call "destruction" lies in the separation of elements, it makes no sense to speak of the destruction of an element. 

This fuzzy word "being" is really necessary here.  It is the concept that we are reaching for when we are in an Augustinian frame of mind and trying to make sense of things.  The idea is that if you destroy something by breaking it into its parts then the existence of that thing is destroyed because its existence consisted in the relationship between its parts.  For Excalibur to be Excalibur, the blade of the sword has to have a certain relationship to the handle.  But what about the little piece of the handle 4 cm above the blade, does it have to have a relationship to the rest of the handle?  There is a way in which we cannot speak of the destruction of the handle.

    One would, however, like to say: existence cannot be attributed to an element, for if it did not exist, one could not even name it and so one could say nothing at all of it.

But if the handle has to be in a relationship to the blade in order for Excalibur to exist, then Excalibur is a handle+blade in a certain relationship.  And what sense would that make?  When the blade broke off we would have to say that the handle+blade (that is Excalibur) no longer has a blade.

 --But let us consider an analogous Here he gives us two examples of an

case. There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris.-But this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre-rule.-Let us imagine samples of colour being preserved in Paris like the standard metre. We define: "sepia" means the colour of the standard sepia which is there kept hermetically sealed. Then it will make no sense to say of this sample either that it is of this colour or that it is not. 

object becoming the paradigm we use to make judgments.  If we say that the standard meter in Paris is one meter long it isn't the same sense of "one meter" as when we say this cloth is "one meter long."  The standard meter sets the standard.  What would it mean to say that it is inaccurately measured?  It is what sets the standard of perfection.  On the other hand, we can say that the cloth was inaccurately measured. 

And the same is true when we define "sepia" by giving a sample that we will keep as being "sepia."

   We can put it like this: This sample is an instrument of the language used in ascriptions of colour. In this language-game it is not something that is represented, but is a means of representation.-- And just this goes for an element in language-game (48) when we name it by uttering the word "R": this gives this object a role in our language-game; it is now a means of representation. And to say "If it did not exist, it could have no name" is to say as much and as little as: if this thing did not exist, we could not use it in our language-game.--

Here he is talking about the way in which we negotiate the meaning of the terms of our language game.  One way we do it is by using an example to define the meaning of the term.  When we utter the word "R" in (48) this is actually a way of negotiating the meaning of the term.  We are giving the object a name and a role in our language game.  It is as though someone were to place a stick in Paris and say, "This is a meter" or "this is a length we shall call 'finger'."  It sets up a meaning for this term.

What looks as if it had to exist, is part of the language. It is a paradigm in our language-game; something with which comparison is made. And this may be an important observation; but it is none the less an

It had looked as though we could not break the object up into smaller components.  But on reflection it is just that we had not named the fragments of the compents.  If the

observation concerning our language-game-our method of representation.     

 

square was the basic unit and we could not think of something smaller being an element, it is because we had not learned to think of a fragment of the square as a component. 

For example, take this square as a component that could be multiplied (with different colors) to make up a complex composite:   

.But imagine that we learned to see the only columns as objects so that we saw three objects when we saw the above square - as we might today if they were different colors   

. . .Perhaps we would do this if we were used to building fences of some sort so that we interpreted all graphic squares:   

.in terms of fence slats.  At a glance, even if there were no separating lines, we might see it as 3 fence slats, or three components to a composite fence. 

For, example, in terms of slats, can't you imagine seeing that, wheresas the above square was composed of 3 slats, the one below has  6?   

. 

Aphorism 51-59 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver   Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

51 In describing language-game (48) I said that the words "R", "B", etc. corresponded to the colours of the squares. But what does this correspondence consist in; in what sense can one say that  certain colours of squares correspond to these signs? For the account in (48) merely set up (sic) a connexion between those signs and certain words of our language (the names of colours). 

 

What is the account in 48?  It is where LW says:   

The squares form a complex like a chessboard.  There are red, green, white and black squares. The words of the language are (correspondingly) "R", "G", "W", "B", and a sentence is a series of these words. They describe an arrangement of squares in the order: [see (48)]

Can you see how this sets up what we are going to call the components of the chessboard?  We are told, specifically, that "there are red, green... squares."  So we have been told what we are to consider the parts of the chessboard. 

                                         -- Well, it was presupposed that the use of the signs in the language-game would be taught in a different way, in particular by pointing to paradigms. 

Our Augustinian mythology about language says that we are taught how to use words (signs) by pointing and naming and here we are being "taught" contextually without our noticing.

Very well; but what does it mean to say that in the technique of using the language certain elements correspond to the signs? --Is it that the person who is  describing the complexes of coloured squares always says "R" where there is a red square; "B" when there is a black one, and so on? 

Notice this phrase "certain elements correspond to the signs."   It's a common way of putting things but what does it mean?  Is there a universal meaning to this phrase?

                     But what if he goes wrong in the description and mistakenly says "R" where he sees a black square  --what is the criterion by which this is a mistake? --Or does "R"s standing for a red square consist in this, that when the people whose language it is use the sign "R" a red square always comes before their minds? 

If someone mistakenly calls a black square "R" in what sense is this a mistake?  If you have been drawn into the language game of 48 by the account and you recognize that someone is mistaken in calling a black square "R," how do you know this?  Is it the case that a red square comes before your mind?

     In order to see more clearly, here as in countless similar cases, we must focus on the details of what goes on; must look at them from close to. 

Here LW is teaching us not to accept the answer above without examining what happens in these situations. 

  52.  If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust, I shall do well to examine those rags very closely to

Here LW is continuing with his last comment from 50.  Even if we see that we have bought into a certain cultural mythology that distorts our vision, this does not mean that we

see how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on. But if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous. 

can find our way out of it.  How do we do it?  if we think that mice spontaneously generate in gray rags, and we're convinced of this, it might be superfluous to examine the rags

But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an examination of details in  philosophy. 

The first thing we have to do is understand what gets in our way seeing what is happening.

 

53.   Our language-game (48) has various possibilities; there is a variety of cases in which we should say that a sign in the game was the name of a square of such-and-such a colour. We should say so if, for instance, we knew that the people who used the language were taught the use of the signs in such-and-such a way. Or if it were set down in writing, say in the form of a table, that this element corresponded to this sign, and if the table were used in teaching the language and were appealed to in certain disputed cases. 

How do we know that "R" means that a particular square should be colored "red"?  We can imagine it coming about that "we know this" in a variety of ways (other than the insidious account we have discovered above).  We might say this on the basis of certain Augustinian language practices that we had observed in the tribe.  That is, we might have noticed that the tribe points and names squares "R" until the children learn to do this.  Or if it were set down in writing that red squares should be called "R." Then this is how we would know that this is what they should be called (imagine a dictionary).

We can also imagine such a table's being a tool in the use of the language. Describing a complex is then done like this: the person who describes the complex has a table with him and looks up each element

The complex is like the grid we say in 48, it is a cluster of elements arranged in a predefined way.  How will one describe the complex to another who must arrange, say, a copy?  One might look at the

of the complex in it and passes from this to the sign (and the one who is given the description may also use a table to translate it into a picture of coloured squares). 

complex and then look up each element in a table.

This table might be said to take over here the role of memory and association in other cases. (We do not usually carry out the order "Bring me a red flower" by looking up the colour red in a table of colours and then bringing a flower of the colour that we find in the table; but when it is a question of choosing or mixing a particular shade of red, we do sometimes make use of a sample or table.) 

Whereas ordinarily we rely on our memories to recognize simple colors like "red," we do sometimes use a tool such as this when we are trying to get the exact shade. 

 

If we call such a table the expression of a rule of the language-game, it can be said that what we call a rule of a language-game may have very different roles in the game.

Wittgenstein is setting up this table as a model of rule in a language-game and he will use this model in subsequent text.

  54.    Let us recall the kinds of case where we say that a game is played according to a definite rule. 

A definite rule is one that is set out explicitly that everyone agrees on.

The rule may be an aid in teaching the game. The learner is told it and given practice in applying it.         

Say I explain before we begin that the rule is that when you type your comments you should enclose them in brackets with your initials.  The rule is an aid I devise in assisting our study, but it is not a part of the language-game, in the sense that we could easily devise other devices

 

that would work just as well.  It would not change the playing of the language game in any important way if we used a color code to keep track of who wrote which comment.

    --Or it is an instrument of the game itself. 

 

But an rule that is an instrument of the game itself cannot be changed without changing the game.  If the rule is that we can ask each other questions and get answers then it would change our language game if we changed the rule. 

--Or a rule is employed neither in the teaching nor in the game itself; nor is it set down in a list of rules. One learns the game by watching how others play. But we say that it is played according to such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules off from the practice of the game-like a natural law governing the play. --But how does the observer distinguish in this case between players' mistakes and correct play?  --There are characteristic signs of it in the players'  behaviour. Think of the behaviour characteristic of correcting a slip of the tongue. It would be possible to recognize that someone was doing so even without knowing his language. 

Imagine a new reader noticing that everyone encloses their comments within brackets that contain their initials and conforming to this implicit rule.  In that case, too, can we not, say that this is "playing according to the rules"? 

But in this case how do we know when people are playing correctly according to the rules?  Perhaps by the way people correct themselves or other such recognizeable signs that people show they feel they have violated the rules, even the implicit rules (apologies?)

  55. "What the names in language signify must be indestructible; for it must be possible to describe the

55.  Here LW is speaking again with his aporetic voice, from within the fly bottle.  But there is, you can

state of affairs in which everything destructible is destroyed. And this description will contain words; and what corresponds to these cannot then be destroyed, for  otherwise/the words would have no meaning." I must not saw off the branch on which I am sitting. 

see (can you not?) a certain distance from this aporia.  He is listening to what he is inclined to say here. 

He is inclined to say that there must be objects in the world that are simple and indestructible (which are either true or false).  Even if I destroy Excalibur it must be the case that I at least have something left that I can say is destroyed, fragments, smoke, something. 

If we do not have these simple indestructible truths that we can point to and name, then how can we continue?  Our entire logic depends on this.  Or so it seems from within the fly bottle.

One might, of course, object at once that this description would have to except itself from the destruction. 

That is, if we destroyed everything and then described the destruction, we could not destroy the description itself. 

--But what corresponds to the separate words of the description and so cannot be destroyed if it is true, is what gives the words their meaning --- is that without which they would have no meaning. In a sense, however, this man is surely what corresponds to his name. But he is destructible, and his name does not lose its meaning when the bearer is destroyed

LW is still within his aporetic voice, expressing wonder at these paradoxes he is entertaining.  In this frame of mind it seems that what corresponds to the separate words cannot be destroyed if the words are true.  "The Chair is in the corner."  If the words are true, then the chair cannot have been crushed until it is no longer a chair.  Still, and here's the perplexity, a name still has meaning once the object is destroyed.  How can this be?

 --An example of something corresponding to the name, and without which it would have no meaning, is a paradigm that is used in connexion with the name in the language-game. 

 

The standard meter in Paris gives us an example of this paradigm.  Or a sample of "sepia" that serves to define our naming of colors.  Samples like this can give meaning to a word.  Ask yourself:  How long as a griset?  If we had a sample in Paris that told us, that word would have meaning.

56.    But what if no such sample is part of the language, and we bear in mind the colour (for instance) that a word stands for?  --"And if we bear it in mind then it comes before our mind's eye when we utter the word. (sic) So, if it is always supposed to be possible for us to remember it, it must be in itself indestructible." 

This is LW's aporetic voice.   Notice that he often puts his aporetic voice in quotes, but he is inconsistent.  I put a (sic) after the "word" because I believe it should have a question mark there.  This is the cultural reasoning that puts the indestructible simple in the mind.  It is what gives Plato his essences or eternal ideas.

--But what do we regard as the criterion for remembering it right?     

 

  

Here, LW is questioning his own aporetic voice.  This is a significant question and he will make much of it in other contexts.  If we have a sample of "red" say in our minds, and no external sample, how do we know that we have remembered the right color?  The color that "red" is?  Can you see that this would be problematic?  You can hold the red sample up to the apple and see that the apple is the same color, but that works because the red sample you are using is dependable.  What if you have gotten confused and the red sample in your mind is now distorted, you are thinking of it as "rust."  How would you know?

--When we work with a sample instead of our memory there are circumstances in which we say that the sample has changed colour and we judge of this by memory. But can we not sometimes speak of a darkening (for example) of our memory-image? Aren't we as much at the mercy of memory as of a sample? (For someone might feel like saying: "If we had no memory we should be at the mercy of a sample".) --Or perhaps of some chemical reaction. Imagine that you were supposed to paint a particular colour "C", which was the colour that appeared when the chemical substances X and Y combined.-Suppose that the colour struck you as brighter on one day than on another; would you not sometimes say: "I must be wrong, the colour is certainly the same as yesterday"? This shews that we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the highest court of appeal. 

Here he is further exploring the question of whether we can rely on memory as if it were a sample.  We do sometimes notices that colors have changed, he tells us, but we do not entirely trust our observations.  So, if we rely on memory as a sample, we often do not feel very secure about it.                       

 

 

57.  "Something red can be destroyed, but red cannot be destroyed, and that is why the meaning of the word 'red' is independent of the existence of a red thing." 

The aporetic voice.  Again, the emphasis is mine.  This is a paradigm (sample) case of the Platonic-Augustinian muddle.  What is it that cannot be destroyed?  The color?  What color?  In what way does the color exist apart from things that are so colored?

-Certainly it makes no sense to say Here's LW's clarifying voice.  He is

that the colour red is torn up or pounded to bits. But don't we say "The red is vanishing"? And don't clutch at the idea of our always being able to bring red before our mind's eye even when there is nothing red any more. That is just as if you chose to say that there would still always be a chemical reaction producing a red flame.-For suppose you cannot remember the colour any more.;-When we forget which colour this is the name of, it loses its meaning for us; that is, we are no longer able to play a particular language-game with it. And the situation then is comparable with that in which we have lost a paradigm which was an instrument of our language. 

not really giving us an answer here to the above question, but he is directing our attention.  If we are inclined to say (confusedly) that the red would exist because it would still exist in our minds (because we could imagine a red square still) then this neglects the fact that we sometimes cannot recall the color.  Suppose you suffered brain damage and it did not destroy your color vision but you could no longer remember which color was which.  Would red then still exist?   

 

 

58.  "I want to restrict the term 'name' to what cannot occur in the combination 'X exists'. --Thus one cannot say 'Red exists', because if there were no red it could not be spoken of at all."

Again, LW is using the quotes to indicate his aporetic voice.  This is the aporetic voice trying to patch things up so that they work as our cultural picture says that they should.  According to this patch up job, we are going to say that the word "red" will lose its meaning when there are no red objects.  Will this work?

--Better: If "X exists" is meant simply to say: "X" has a meaning,

In other words, if the statement "Red exists" is true then this means that "Red" has a meaning.

-then it is not a proposition which treats of X, but a proposition about

But notice, this proposition does not talk about the existence of

our use of language, that is, about the use of the word "X". 

"red".  It is a move in setting up the language game.  It has nothing to do with the existence of red apart from this new language game.

It looks to us as if we were saying something about the nature of red in saying that the words "Red exists" do not yield a sense.  Namely that red does exist 'in its own right'.   

 

Important passage.  In 122 LW notices that our grammar is lacking in a certain kind of perspecuity that would enable us to more easily see what is going on.  Here it is.  The phrase "Red exists" can be either a negotiation of the meaning of the term "Red exists" or it can be a statement about the world -- but if it's a statement about the world it has to be within a particular language game. 

We get confused, however, when we see that the statement "Red exists" makes a kind of sense to it.  The sense it seems to make when we conflate the two possible uses of this phrase is that "Red" exists apart from any object that is red.  Still, this seems perplexing to us.  It is hard to imagine how red exists.  This is our aporia here.

The same idea --that this is a metaphysical statement about red --finds expression again when we say such a thing as that red is timeless, and perhaps still more strongly in the word "indestructible". 

That is, there are many ways to express this metaphysical thought that "red exists" beyond red objects and particular language games.  Sometimes we say that it is "timeless" or "indestructible."

But what we really want is simply to take "Red exists" as the statement: the word "red" has a meaning. Or perhaps better: "Red

In other words, if we are tempted to say "red exists" then we are pointing out that the word red has a meaning.  Or if we say that "grue"

does not exist" as " 'Red' has no meaning". 

does not exist," this is a way of saying that the word "grue" has no meaning. 

Only we do not want to say that that expression says this, but that this is what it would have to be saying if it meant anything. But that it contradicts itself in the attempt to say it  --just because red exists 'in its own right'. Whereas the only contradiction lies in something like this: the proposition looks as if it were about the colour, while it is supposed to be saying something about the use of the word "red".

But it seems as though the statement "Red exists" is asserting a truth about red, not just giving us the rules of the language (that the word 'red' has meaning.  The formulation fools us because it is so similar to the formulation we would use if we were talking about a thing and not about meaning, as if I would say, "The document you have been looking for, I have found out that it exists," it would be clear that I am not talking about word definitions but about the document existing.  Still, the formulations seem so similar.

--In reality, however, we quite readily say that a particular colour exists; and that is as much as to say that something exists that has that colour. And the first expression is no less accurate than the second; particularly where 'what has the colour' is not a physical object.

But our language does not make a distinction between these ways of using the phrase "red exists."  Within the rules of our language, both uses are equally correct.

59.    "A name signifies only what is an element of reality. What cannot be destroyed; what remains the same in all changes."

The Augustine's voice again.  This voice tells us: If "red exists" it signifies something that cannot be destroyed.

-- But what is that?  --Why, it swam before our minds as we said the sentence! This was the very expression of a quite particular image: of a particular picture which

This is the aporetic voice speaking.  It says, :isn't there a way in which this seems compelling?  From within the fly bottle?  Doesn't it sometimes happen that when you

we want to use. For certainly experience does not shew us these elements. We see component parts of something composite (of a chair, for instance). We say that the back is part of the chair, but is in turn itself composed of several bits of wood; while a leg is a simple component part. We also see a whole which changes (is destroyed) while its component parts remain unchanged. These are the materials from which we construct that picture of reality. 

say "chair" you see something like a chair flash before your mind's eye?  Well, then, maybe we should say that this ghostly image is what the word 'chair' refers to.  It is the idea, perhaps, that Plato had in mind when he constructed his theory of ideas.       

 

Aphorism 60-64 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver       Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

60.    When I say: "My broom is in the corner",-is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? 

What else could a statement like this be?  Remember that in 51 LW introduced the notion that we can introduce the account into the remarks so that this account defines the terms to be used, sets up the language game rules.

                   Well, it could at any rate be replaced by a statement giving the position of the stick and the position of the brush. And this statement is surely a further analysed form of the

This is the voice of tradition noticing that the word "broom" could be replaced with something like "brush plus stick"?  This phrase "brush plus stick," it says, is an analyzed form of

first one.  "broom."-But why do I call it "further analysed"? 

The voice of aporia asks why this is so.

--Well, if the broom is there, that surely means that the stick and brush must be there, and in a particular relation to one another; and this was as it were hidden in the sense of the first sentence, and is expressed in the analysed sentence. 

The voice of tradition answers and gives its reasons.  This T voice says in effect, "Broom" and "brush plus stick" are the same thing except "brush plus stick" gives a more detailed listing of what we actually have.

Then does someone who says that the broom is in the corner really mean: the broomstick is there, and so is the brush, and the broomstick is fixed in the brush?

Perhaps this will remind you of an earlier discussion of whether "Slab!" in languge game 2 really means "Bring me the slab!" (cf 19)  It is in ways like this that Wittgenstein teaches us, going over these points in one context and then in another, using a different versions of a basic model to familarize us with the problem in a variety of cases.

-If we were to ask anyone if he meant this he would probably say that he had not thought specially of the broomstick or specially of the brush at all. And that would be the right answer, for he meant to speak neither of the stick nor of the brush in particular.  Suppose that, instead of saying "Bring me the broom", you said "Bring me the broomstick and the brush which is fitted on to it."!-Isn't the answer: "Do you want the broom? Why do you put it so oddly?" Is he going to understand the further analysed sentence better?

The point is that the speaker who had asked for the broom was asking for the gestalt whole, not the parts even if they were attached to each other.  You don't see a person's face by noticing the constellation of features.  The whole is more than the sum of its individual parts.

 Is he going to understand the further analysed sentence better?-This sentence, one might  say, achieves  the same as the

Actually, it might be harder to understand.  Imagine it:  "Would you had me the brush attached to the broomstick?"

ordinary one, but in a more roundabout way.-Imagine a language-game in which someone is ordered to bring certain objects which are composed of several parts, to move them about, or something else of the kind. And two ways of playing it:     in one (a) the composite objects (brooms, chairs, tables, etc.) have names, as in (15); in the other (b) only the parts are given names and the wholes are described by means of them.-In what sense is an order in the second game an analysed form of an order in the first? Does the former lie concealed in the latter, and is it now brought out by analysis.'- 

    True, the broom is taken to pieces when one separates broomstick and brush; but does it follow  that the order to bring the broom also consists of corresponding parts?   

Poof!  There goes our great distinction between names and descriptions.  If we call the object a broom, then it is a description to say it is a brush with a broomstick attached because the composite object has a name (i.e., "broom").  But if only the parts have names then the whole must be described by the means of the parts and each of the parts become names. 

So, what looked like a comment about the unanalyzability of the broom (or the brush) is really a comment about whether I can further analyze the language.  If invent ways to name more infintesimal aspects of the object, then the object can be analyzed further.  The squares can be divided into triangles and then each square is a composite of triangles.

61.    "But all the same you will not deny that a particular order in (a) means the same as one in (b); and what would you call the second one, if not an analysed form of the first?" 

The Augustinian voice again.  Can you see where he's coming from?  Practically speaking it seems that asking for the 'brush' and the 'broomstick' means the same thing as asking for the broom.  If the instructions were followed in each case, the same object would be fetched.

-Certainly I too  should say that an order in (a) had the same meaning as one in (b); or, as I expressed it earlier: they achieve the same. And this means that if I

I have corrected the electronic version of our text which has the word "strewn" when it should have had "shewn," when in American is "shown." 

were shewn an order in (a) and asked: "Which  order in (b) means the same as this?" or again "Which order in (b) does this contradict?" I should give such-and-such an answer. But that is not to say that we have come to a general agreement  about the use of the expression "to have the same meaning" or "to achieve the same". For it can be asked in what cases we say: "These are merely two forms of the same game."

But the question is, just because they have the same practical effect of resulting in the broom being fetched doesn't mean that they are the same game.  I can get you to turn around by saying "turn around" perhaps, but I can likely achieve the same effect by saying your name.

62.    Suppose for instance that the person who is given the orders in (a) and (b) has to look up a  table co-ordinating names and pictures before bringing what is required. 

Let this remind you of the table discussion for the color of the grid in 53-56. 

Does he do the same when he carries out an order in (a) and the corresponding one in (b)?-Yes and no. You may say: "The point of the two orders is the same". I should say so too.-But it is not everywhere clear what should be called the 'point' of an order. (Similarly one may say of certain objects that they have this or that purpose. The essential thing is that this is a lamp, that it serves to give light;-that it is an ornament to the room, fills an empty space, etc., is not essential. But there is not always a sharp distinction between essential and inessential.) 

Why are we tempted to say, however, that the point of a lamp is that it gives light?  Don't you think we are?  Yet in a given case, in a particular situation, the point may be entirely different.  We are inclined to think of a paradigm case (as if the situation has been set up for us) and ignore alternative possibilities.  We recognize that they are there, but we let them slip under the rug to keep things simple (or for some reason). 

Why do we do this?

63.    To say, however, that a sentence in (b) is an 'analysed' form of one in (a) readily seduces us 

Ah, here it is again.  The account in the language set us up.  It is the same point he made in 51

into thinking that the former is the more fundamental form; that it alone shews what is meant by the other, and so on. For example, we think: If you have only the unanalysed form you miss the analysis; but if you know the analysed form that gives you everything. 

The Augustinian voice says that the more minute the analysis the more accurate things are.

-But can I not say that an aspect of the matter is lost on you in the latter case as well as the former?

But, the level of description is just different.  Something may be gained, but something is also lost.  We lose the forest for the trees.

 

This relates to the point in 19 in which we compared the language game that said that in (2) "Slab!" was not an abbreviated form of "Bring me a slab!" anymore that "Bring me a slab!" was a lengthened form of "slab!"  Nevertheless we are somehow seduced into thinking that "Slab!" is abbreviated.But in each case we have a different language game, a different "form of life."

64.  Let us imagine language game (48) altered so that names signify not monochrome squares but rectangles each consisting of two such squares. Let such a rectangle, which is half red half green, be called "U"; a half green half white one, "V"; and so on. Could we not imagine people who had names for such combinations of colour, but not for the individual colours? Think of the cases where we say: "This arrangement of colours (say the French tricolor) has a quite special character."       

1234

Imagine it.  a sentence like U, V, V, U would result in the grid being colored in thusly:   

  .  .

. .

 

  .

Couldn't we imagine a culture having such names?  Think of the French flag, or any flag and imagine these rectangles looking like flags, one flag on top of another. 

    In what sense do the symbols of this language-game stand in need of analysis? How far is it even possible to replace this language-game by (48)?-It is just another language-game; even  though it is related to (48).     

 

Ah, but you say it would be so inconvenient!  yes, in English it would be.  But what if nothing really mattered but the flags.  Women wore green/white (or U flags) and men wore green/red, or some other division between classes of people were designated like this.  Aside from these flags, there was no concern with color. 

Yes, it would be a different form of life, and the person who thought that these different statements were translatable to statements that coded these flags not as units (U or V but as squares Green, White, and Red) would be missing the forest for the trees.

Aphorism 65-69 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver  

    Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

65.   Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations.-For someone might object against me: "You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language." 

 

We have now shifted to a new topic that he announces straightforwardly.  The topic is presented in the form of an Augustinian voce, or a "somone."  This someone wants Wittgenstein to defie the essence of the concept of a language game.  Notice, within the Augustinian frame, the 'essence" is equal to "what is common to all these activities."  This idea goes back to Plato who talks of the essence of various things or the transcendental idea behind their various sensual manifestations.

So, the question is: What is the essence of a language game?  and hence to all of language?  What is the essence of language?

Also, notice that in the last part of this passage, the Voice reminds LW that this search for the essence was once something that he tried very hard to do, and it gave him considerable trouble.

And this is true.-Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,-but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it

It is true, LW is saying, that he hasn't yet presented this essence that is common to all language (or all language games).  His answer here in this passage is very famous, and it is a powerful move in developing the Wittgensteinian framework.  Before this move, it seems imperative that we define the essence of what we are talking about.  Now, LW is going to show us another way to see things.

is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all "language". I will try to explain this. 

66. Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? -- Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "-but look and see whether there is anything common to all. -- For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look! --   

This aphorism has a little different structure than some of the others that we are reading.  Here LW is explicitly guiding our reading and he does such a good job of it, I am not going to offer much commentary. 

But a few notes:  Now, notice your inclination to say certain things has become the Wittgensteinian voice.  Now, we can begin to listen to this voice within ourselves.  The voice speaks within us when we want to say "there must be something common among "games."  There must be an essence if we have a concept.

LW says, in a manner of speaking, "don't say to yourself that this must be the case and then give yourself a headache trying to see what is not there.  Let's look at specific kind of cases and ask if the essence is there in those cases.

Look through these aphorisms while putting the point that he is making out of mind.  Don't think so much, or ponder what you're looking for, just look at your memories and understanding of games and detail what you observe.

Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. 

Board games, what are some?  Consider chess, of course, but think also of monopoly.

Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many

Card games.  What about poker?  And what about Old Maid.  Remember that children's card game?  How are these card games alike and different from each other?  And how do

common features drop out, and others appear.     

 

they compare with board games?  What about the element of strategy?  Or how many players can play and whether or not there is a single winner or, as in Monopoly (I believe) there are different degrees of winning.

When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.-- Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. 

Think of the way one wins or loses in tennis.  Winning is hierarchical.  One can win a point, but lose the game.  One can win the game, but lose the set.  And one can win the set, but lose the match.  One can win the match but lose the tournament. Compare this with baseball (also hierarchical) or with checkers.  And howabout board games that revolve around a throw of the dice?

Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! sometimes similarities of detail.   

Then we have children's ritual games.  Do they have a winner?  What about drop the hankerchief?  Or London Bridge is falling down?  How about "spin the bottle."?  Are you winning or losing if the bottle stops pointing to you? 

What about jacks?  Jacks is a girls' game that was popular when I was a child and I was into the game.  You have 10 little objects called "jacks" that you toss onto the ground as the other girls sit in a circle.  Then each girl has a turn.  She starts with a ball in her preferred hand and she tosses the ball up and lets it

bounce and before it bounced again, she picks up one jack and then catches the ball before it bounces again.  She does that with each jack.  Then she does "twosees" which means she picks up two jacks in one sweep.  She continues that until she has done all ten jacks.  Then, if she completes that round without difficulty, she starts again with a more difficult rule.  Perhaps she doesn't let the ball bounce at all, or she not only picks up the jacks but she puts them in a particular place before she catches the ball.  There are a few of these rounds that are already invented, but it is common for the winning player to invent the next game.

How does "jacks" compare with chess?  Or with ring-a-ring-o-roses?  How are they different?  How does it compare with tennis?  Or American football?

And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.   

 

Don't children invent games on the spot?  See who can spit the furtherest?  Or see who can solve a particular puzzle first?  Or who can follow a rule the best (think of Simon Says).

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and cries-crossing: sometimes overall similarities.      

 

And what you'll find, I think, if you go through a careful study of these various types of games, is that there are similarities and differences.  Poker is like chess in certain ways.  They both have clear rules and the winner is likely to have practice and skill.  But they are different in some ways, too, and if you look at how they are different, you'll find other games that are not different in these ways, but different in other ways.

67. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and cries-cross in the same way.-And I shall say: 'games' form a family.                                 

 

Here is the key move, and the new metaphor that LW extends to replace the old Platonic metaphor of essence.  The concept is one of "family resemblance."    

Notice Al and Jack have the same eyebrows, while Elmer and Bob have the same ears and Al and Bob have the same smile.  There is no common feature among them yet they all resemble each other.

Wittgenstein Family Resemblance

 

And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a-direct-relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our

I suppose what LW means here is that we call positive numbers, negative numbers, real numbers, or a sequence of characters (a,b,c...z) numbers (see 8).  How are these "numbers" like and unlike a series of characters that we would not consider numbers?

Also, consider phone numbers, and the numbers on football jerseys, social security numbers,  numbers that are ranks, verus

concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some on e fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.     

numbers that can be added and subtracted. 

Or, let's take an example that requires less mathematical sophistication.  Take the word "food."  Imagine a plate of food composed of only vegetables, or a food concoction made of cheese and tomato sauce, or food for the dogs, or for the goldfish.  Also, imagine spoiled food, or raw food, or petrified food. Is there some single feature in these foods that runs through all of them?  Think of artificial food (like wax apples) and playfood (for children's tea).  And don't say that the single feature is that they are all related to eating because that is a way we frame "wax food" and "play food" but it is not a characteristic of this "food."

And, what a closer examination shows is that even if there isn't a single thread that runs through everything (and there may be in some cases, of course), there is a family resemblance between these different items.  Some are edible.  Some are animal flesh.  Some are vegetable.  But there need not be a single aspect that is common to all the varieties.

Can you think of another example that can be analyzed in this way?  Take the concept of "thought."  Do all the different acceptable uses of this term have a common feature?  Or take the concept of "nothing."  Is the meaning of "nothing" the same in these two sentences:

1. There is nothing in the box. 2. There is nothing for me to do.  

But if someone wished to say: "There is something

This is an important passage, too.  It points to the tricks we play to keep ourselves in the fly-

common to all these constructions-namely the disjunction of all their common properties"  --I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread- namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres". 

bottle.

68.    "All right: the concept of number is defined for you as the logical sum of these individual interrelated concepts: cardinal numbers, rational numbers, real numbers, etc.; and in the same way the concept of a game as the logical sum of a corresponding set of sub-concepts."

Here's the Augustinian voice, again.  It always seems to have a comback.  To return to the concept of "number," remember LW had said that there need not be a single common feature in all "number" systems.

--It need not be so.  For I can give the concept 'number' rigid limits in this way, that is, use the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept, but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a frontier. And this is how we do use the word "game". For how is the concept of a game bounded?

 

Here is another important passage.  Wittgenstein is pointing to the way in which we can locally and provisionally define a concept.  How do we do this?  In numerous ways.  Sometimes we set things up explicitly.  We say, "I am using the word number here to mean 'rational number.'"  And sometimes this slips in without our awareness.  (We studied this 51-59, and see especially 51).

What still counts as a game I think we can count this as the Augustinian

and what no longer does?  voice.

Can you give the boundary? No. 

It is very hard to delineate what the boundaries of a game are, to define it so that it includes both tic-tac-toe and Rugby.

You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. 

But in a local and provisional context you might say, "By game I mean something in which one keeps score and there is a definite winner."

(But that never troubled you before when you used the word "game".)

But ordinarily you use the word "game" without trying explicitly to define it locally and provisionally.  You just say, "Is this some kind of a game?" and you take it that people will understand you. 

"But then the use of the word is unregulated, the 'game' we play with it is unregulated." 

Now, the Augustinian feels uncomfortable with where we're going.  It seems we need to keep things more tied down than this.

It is not everywhere circumscribed by rules; but no more are there any rules for how high one throws the ball in tennis, or how hard; yet tennis is a game for all that and has  rules too.

The rules of the game can't control every last detail of the action.  There is always a considerable amount action that is beyond the rules of the game. 

69.    How should we explain to someone what a game is? 

If we don't have a common thread running through everything we call a "game" it seems very chaotic!  How on earth do we teach people to use this term "game"?

I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called 'games' ". And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is?

Still, don't we teach this term "games" to children?  And don't they learn it?  Can it really be as diffficult as all that if we manage to teach it so easily?

 -But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary-for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all!  (Except for that special purpose.) No more than it took the definition: 1 pace = 75 cm. to make the measure of length 'one pace' usable. And if you want to say "But still, before that it wasn't an exact measure", then I reply: very well, it was an inexact one.-Though you still owe me a definition of exactness. 

The term "game"  is not a difficult term for a child to learn and the fact that it seems that it should be  is a flag for this being a confusion left over from our Augustinian muddle.

The situation is that we imagine that we have one term here and the different senses are just variations on a common theme, but in practice we take these vague concepts that are loosely defined and we tie them down to more particular definitions.  It just takes a moment to do this, and the practice is all around us.  It is just that we fail to notice that we do this.  We have a theory of terms having essential meanings (based on transcendental essences) and this belief in the theory of language is so strong we simply overlook the way in which we negotiate the language that we use, when other people do it, and when we do it ourselves.

#[Someone says to me: "Shew the children a game." I teach them gaming with dice, and the other says "I didn't mean that sort of game." Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when he gave me the order?] 

This is a footnote in which LW reminds us how we teach this ostensibly difficult concept of "game."  Notice how we have practices of continuously clarifying our local and provisional meanings.

Aphorism 70-75 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver       Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

Now, we will dip into the reason that our local negotiation of language games (the setting up of the accounts in (51) through (69), do not always work and why we have disagreements and confusions.  What is it about langauge that makes it difficult for us to accept any definition of things at all?

70.   "But if the concept 'game' is uncircumscribed like that, you don't really know what you mean by a 'game'."     

 

Here is the Augustinian (actually, his positivist descendant)  speaking.  The point is simple. You need to define terms to be able to use them.  But Wittgenstein isn't defining "language game" in any clear way, recall, that captures the essence of language games.  Language games form a family resemblance.  There is no essence to tie them together.

-- When I give the description: "The ground was quite covered with plants" --do you want to say I don't know what I am talking about until I can give a definition of a plant? 

But, notice, mostly we don't have ready definitions for terms.  Even when we set up the language game by giving accounts, we don't typically know that we are doing it.  We all learned to talk quite a bit before we were even able to generate definitions for the terms we used.

My meaning would be explained by, say, a drawing and the words "The

Imagine it.  I say, "The ground looked roughly like this" as I point to a front

ground looked roughly like this". Perhaps I even say "it looked exactly like this."-Then were just this grass and these leaves there, arranged just like this? No, that is not what it means. And I should not accept any picture as exact in this sense. 

yard of someone's.  But what does "this" mean.  Recall our problem in defining "this" before.  Or pointing to anything.in an effort to define it.  What am I pointing to here?  This is the whole problem with teaching ostensive definitions that we faced in 1-10, and that Wittgenstein elucidated in his remarks 28 and 29..  Just as it is hard to tell if I am pointing to the circle or the color of the circle, so it is hard to tell what I am pointing to here.  And, I said that the similarity beteween this front yard and the one one I am describing is rough, but rough in what way?  Can I be exact in how it is rough?  Without making this "rough" explanation an exact one?

71.    One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges.-

Here, LW breaks his usual form and he begins this aphorism in his own voice.  He is suggesting a way to think about things that will be challenged in the next passage.

"But is a blurred concept a concept at all?"-

There's the challenge::  The imaginary interlocutor says in effect, "Don't I have to pin my meaning down in order to be precise?"

Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need? 

The question is whether you want to call an indistinct picture a "picture."  Generally I think we do, unless it is more than just a little indistinct.  But with concepts, don't we often operate with "indistinct meanings" of terms?  And in the case of "language game" isn't that what we need?

Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that

Well, here's a real case of the positivist descedent who makes the complaint that forms the problem for this aphorism to handle.

we cannot do anything with it.

-But is it senseless to say: "Stand roughly there"? 

Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand-as if I were indicating a particular spot.   

Clearly we do this all the time.  "I'll be finished about noon," I might tell someone.  Can I call you after that?  "Well", that person says, "I have to leave somewhere around one o'clock.  I'm not sure exactly, but something around one.  So, try to call before then." 

The communication seems sensible and useful in a context like that.

And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is.  One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way.

Isn't this how we explain things often enough?  There are provisional explanations that prepare a place and then more a more sophisticated understandings.  Imagine trying to explain "chess" to a child.  You say, "It's the game that you have seen Daddy play with Uncle Paul.  You know, the one with those funny figures that ove around a board that looks like the floor in our kitchen?"  Oh, the child says, "the one that has soldiers?"  "Yes, kind of."  And that's the first explanation.  Obviously the child does not yet have a very solid understanding of chess, but this initial rough explanation lays a groundwork, prepares a place.  (31)

 --I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I --for some reason-- was unable to express; but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an indirect means of

This is what he does not mean:  He does not mean that somehow this explanation of chess to the child will give the child the essence of chess or that I even knew the essence of chess at the time but simply could not think of it.  My explanation to the child was not merely a faulty explanation,

explaining -- in default of a better.             

 

either.  The child could not have understood a fuller one.  Giving him the explanation that I did will however prepare a place for a fuller explanation.  Over the next year or so, imagine him watching his dad and Uncle Paul playing chess and learning a little at a time until, gradually, he has working definition but still does not know quite what a check-mate means, and after that, he has a working definition, but does not know what a Queen's Gambit is, and so forth. -- Wittgenstein is showing us how we can understand language being learned in terms other than the unambiguous pointing and naming that Augustine imagined in (1)

 For any general definition can be misunderstood too.

No matter how I point at the blue circle and say "blue" you might misunderstand me (cf. 28).  And no sentences, either, are so accurate and so apt as to prevent all misunderstandings.

 The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language-game with the word "game".)

What language game?  The language game of showing others what we mean.  We introduce the concept by preparing the place.  Listeners cannot understand our language until a place is prepared for it..

72.    Seeing what is common. Suppose I shew someone various multi-coloured pictures, and say: "The colour you see in all these is called 'yellow ochre' ".-This is a definition, and the other will get to understand it by looking for and seeing what is common to the pictures. Then he can look at, can

This voice is persistent, isn't it?  The voice that says we learn by seeing what is common.  Well, we sometimes seem to learn by seeing what is common.  The problem is that we give this way of learning language altogether too much credit.  There are other ways of learning language and LW is showing us a few.

point to, the common thing.   

Compare with this a case in which I shew him figures of different shapes all painted the same colour, and say: "What these have in common is called 'yellow ochre' ".         

 

This is the kind of example the Augustinian in this passage was pondering.  You can imagine it.  There are various shapes and they are all the same color.  Even if the person wasn't quite sure about the concept of 'color' (say didn't know the difference between the concept of 'color' and the concept of 'shade') surely she would understand if she could see the different shapes here, and be told, "What these have in common is called 'yellow ochre'".  Isn't this how we learn to know colors?  by seeing what is common?

And compare this case: I shew him samples of different shades of blue and say: "The colour that is common to all these is what I call 'blue' ".                                   

But here, things are a bit different.  Different shades of blue might not all be seen as "blue," especially if one didn't know that ordinarily we treat different levels of saturation as the "same color" even though they are different "shades."

In other words, some situations of explanation are easier to grasp perhaps than others.  If we imagine the case of different objects having the same color as being useful to teach people the concept of 'yellow ochre' are we imagining that these different objects have precisely the same shade of 'yellow ochre'?  But don't we use the word in a rougher kind of way to individate a variety of shades?  Take the color blue and notice the vast difference between midnight blue, ice blue, robin's egg blue, babyblue, and

 

 

so forth.

In other words, we can convince ourselves that we detect the essence of the concept by seeing examples only by thinking of extreme cases in which the ambiguity of what we are pointing to is minimized.  It is hard to imagine what that extreme case would be in the case of "games."

73.    When someone defines the names of colours for me by pointing to samples and saying "This colour is called 'blue', this 'green' ..... " this case can be compared in many respects to putting a table in my hands, with the words written under the colour-samples.-Though this comparison may mislead in many ways.-

Well, this is a familiar example.  Think of all of our talk of the table or the file cabinet in the mind.  Yet, it is true that we do teach these words in situations that amount to attaching labels to things, it is just that we have seen that this example, as seductive as it seems to be, is misleading if it leads us to think that such a table must be present in the mind.(cf   54-58)

One is now inclined to extend the comparison: to have understood the definition means to have in one's mind an idea of the thing defined, and that is a sample or picture. So if I am shewn various different leaves and told "This is called a 'leaf' ", I get an idea of the shape of a leaf, a picture of it in my mind.-But what does the picture of a leaf look like when it does not shew us any particular shape, but 'what is common to all shapes of leaf'? Which shade is the 'sample in my mind' of the colour green-the sample of what is common to all shades of green? 

 

He continues to show us the problem with the idea that we deduce the essence of the concept from examples in which the one thing held constant is the essential feature of the concept (as in differently shaped objects all having the color "yellow ochre" in common.

He is countering this Augustinian presumption by referring to some earlier discussions.  In 38, for example he talked about our tendency to solve the puzzle of how we do things by presuming we do things half-unconsciously (or even unconsciously) in the mind that correspond to what we might do physically.  If we can look up a table to see what a color is, we imagine doing this in the mind,

unconsciously.

"But might there not be such 'general' samples? Say a schematic leaf, or a sample of pure green?"   

 

This is the next move after the Augustinian voice realizes that we do teach general concepts that include considerable variation (and families of variation) under their rubric.  "Maybe,"  the Auegustinian says, we have a kind of schematic leaf in the mind, roughly drawn.  Would that work?"  That is kind of like a table in the mind, (cf. lwref pictures before the mind.)

-Certainly there might. But for such a schema to be understood as a schema, and not as the shape of a particular leaf, and for a slip of pure green to be understood as a  sample of all that is greenish and not as a sample of pure green-this in turn resides in the way the samples are used. 

"Yes," LW is saying, there could be such a schema, but how would we know that it was such a schema and not the shape of a particular leaf?"  And, I might add, how would we know how diverse a group of things this schema would apply to? 

Ask yourself: what shape must the sample of the colour green be? Should it be rectangular?  Or would it then be the sample of a green rectangle?-So should it be 'irregular' in shape? And what is to prevent us then from regarding it-that is, from using it-only as a sample of irregularity of shape? 

Or, let's reverse the example here to the earlier one: What color would the schematic leaf be?  And how would we know that the term did not apply to the color of the leaf?

74. Here also belongs the idea that if you see this leaf as a sample of 'leaf shape in general' you see it differently from someone who regards it as, say, a sample of this particular shape. Now this might well be so -- though it is not so -- for it would only be to say that, as a

Here I think LW confuses things a bit.  He is using the phrase "see the thing in a particular way" in one of its possible senses.  I see him as saying you don't "see things differently" unless it is something like a gestalt picture of the duck-rabbit where it appears like a duck sometimes and like a rabbit at

matter of experience, if you see the leaf in a particular way, you use it in such-and-such a way or according to such-and-such rules. 

others.  I think we have a related langauge game in which we say that we "see things differently" without this meaning that we actually experience the visual image differently.  Be that as it may, Wittgenstein is, I believe, talking about "seeing things differently" as seeing a different aspect as in the case of the duck-rabbit.  At least, to me, this is the interpretation that makes the most sense.

Of course, there is such a thing as seeing in this way or that; and there are also cases where whoever sees a sample like this will in general use it in this way, and whoever sees it otherwise in another way. For example, if you see the schematic drawing of a cube as a plane figure consisting of a square and two rhombi you will, perhaps, carry out the order "Bring me something like this" differently from someone who sees the picture three-dimensionally. 

And an important point.  The world around us has many aspects and some of those aspects may be noticeable if we see the world in a certain way, and not if we don't.  Both ways may be equally correct (as in the case of the duck-rabbit).  But how we see the world will have an impact on what we do, and on our form of life.

75.   What does it mean to know what a game is? What does it mean, to know it and not be able to say it? Is this knowledge somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition? So that if it were formulated I should be able to recognize it as the expression of my  knowledge? Isn't my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely expressed in the explanations that I could give? That is, in my describing examples of various

I understand this on the model of people learning to make judgments without knowing the criteria they use to make those judgments and, even, without there being formulateable criteria.  I learn to drive steer a car, turning the steering wheel a little this way or that in response to how the car moves, and I learn to ride a horse by doing something similar, even balance on my feet as I'm standing still by doing little corrections, but this doesn't mean that I would recognize the rule,

kinds of game; shewing how all sorts of other games can be constructed on the analogy of these; saying that I should scarcely include this or this among games; and so on. 

or even that the rule could be stated in a single formula, no matter how complex.  This is especially clear to me if the judgment is obviously complex like whether my boss is in a good mood, good enough to ask for a raise. 

Aphorism 76-80 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver       Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:

76.   If someone were to draw a sharp boundary I could not acknowledge it as the one that I too always wanted to draw, or had drawn in my mind. For I did not want to draw one at all. His concept can then be said to be not the same as mine, but akin to it. The kinship is that of two pictures, one of which consists of colour patches with vague contours, and the other of patches similarly shaped and distributed, but with clear contours. The kinship is just as undeniable as the difference. 

Consider again the concept of a schematic leaf In sketching such a schema, one creates something that was not initially there.  I do not picture such a schematic leaf in my mind each time identify a leaf, and if I were to do so, the one that I pictured might not be exactly like yours.  Still, if we were each to create such a schematic leaf, representing all leaves, our creativity would be constrained by our similar understanding of what counted as a leaf.

77.  And if we carry this comparison still further it is clear that the degree to which the sharp picture can resemble the blurred one depends on the latter's degree of vagueness.  For imagine  having to sketch a sharply defined picture 'corresponding' to a blurred one.

Here is a schematic leaf.  Is that the one you would have drawn?  How similar to a real leaf must this leaf be in order to be a schematic

leaf?  Will the point on the right side be enough to make it serve for a maple leaf?  Or should it be more pointed?  And if it were more pointed, would it it also work for a smooth-sided leaf ? 

How would you sketch a sharply defined picture corresponding to this blurred one?

 In the latter there is a blurred red rectangle: for it you put down a sharply defined one. Of course-several such sharply defined rectangles can be drawn to correspond to the indefinite one.-But if the colours in the original merge without a hint of any outline won't it become a hopeless task to draw a sharp picture corresponding to the blurred one? Won't you then have to say: "Here I might just as well draw a circle or heart as a rectangle, for all the colours merge. Anything-and nothing-is right." And this is the position you are in if you look for definitions corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics. 

And here is a blurred rectangle.  suppose your task is to draw a definite one that corresponds with this indefinite one.  And,

if you imagined it even more blurred?  At some point wouldn't the task become hopeless?

 In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good" for instance)? From what sort of examples? in what language-games?

The situation is similar when we try to envision the essential features of a game, or of any other concept.  To think in terms of essences, we must visualize a blurred concept, and yet,

Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.

when we try to apply such a concept to a case before us, we will have the same kind of difficulties we have with the schematic leaf or rectangle.

78.    Compare knowing and saying:           how many feet high Mont Blancis-           how the word "game" is used-           how a clarinet sounds. 

If you are surprised that one can know something and not be able to say it, you are perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not of one like the third. 

If one knows how high a mountain is, then one would surely know how to say it.  But isn't it possible to know how a clarinet sounds, or how coffee smells, without being able to say what one knows?  And, isn't the case of knowing what a game is rather like the case of knowing how a clarinet sounds?  It is easy to know such things without know how to say what one knows.

79. Consider this example. If one says "Moses did not exist", this may mean various things. It may mean: the Israelites did not have a single leader when they withdrew from Egypt or: their leader was not called Moses or, there cannot have been anyone who accomplished all that the Bible relates of Moses -- or: etc. etc.-- 

The sentence "Moses did not exist" has blurred boundaries much like the blurred boundaries of a schematic leaf or a blurred rectangle.  Just as a number of different leaf shapes could have been taken from the blurred schema, so a number of different meanings might be drafted onto the statement "Moses did not exist."

We may say, following Russell: the name "Moses" can be defined by means of various descriptions. For example, as "the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness", "the man who lived at that time and place and was then called 'Moses' ", "the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter" and so on. And according as we assume one definition or another the proposition "Moses did not exist" acquires a different sense, and so does every other proposition about Moses.-And if we are told "N did not exist",

Even the name "Moses" is not as clearly defined as we are apt to presume.  What if someone not-named Moses was still a person who had done all that Moses is repored to have done.  Would that be the same as Moses?  Or what if he had done some of the ghings, but not all?  How much different from the story of Moses could the historical man have been in order to justify the statement "Moses did not exist?"     

we do ask:  "What do you mean? Do you want to say ...... or ...... etc.?" 

 

But when I make a statement about Moses,-- am I always ready to substitute some one of these descriptions for "Moses"? I shall perhaps say -- By "Moses" I understand the man who did what the 

Bible relates of Moses, or at any rate a good deal of it. But how much? Have I decided how much must be proved false for me to give up my proposition as false? Has the name "Moses" got a fixed  and unequivocal use for me in all possible cases? -- 

But if I were to make a statement about Moses, all of these considerations are not in my mind.  I haven't decided beforehand which features of the story of Moses are essential in order for us to say that Moses lived.  But, perhaps you want to say that most of it must be true in order to say that Moses existed.  But how much?

 Is it not the case that I have, so to speak, a whole series of props in readiness, and am ready to lean on one if another should be taken from under me  and vice versa?

Suppose there were 40 stories of Moses.  If stories 4 through 32 were false, would this be different than if stories 1-28 were false?  Are there any essential stories?  Or can I fall back on any?

 Consider another case. When I say "N is dead", then something like the following may hold for the meaning of the name "N": I believe that a human being has lived, whom I (1) have seen in such-and-such places, who (2) looked like this (pictures), (3) has done such-and-such things, and (4) bore the name "N" in social life. --Asked what I understand by "N", I should enumerate all or some of these points, and different ones  on different occasions. So my definition of "N" would perhaps be "the man of

Although it may seem to us when we speak that our language is unambiguous, even the phrases that at first seem without ambiguiuty are, on reflection, very equivocal, that is, subject to interpretation -- much like the blurred leaf that was to serve as a schematic leaf.  Is "N" dead?  For "N" to be dead, "N" must have lived, but how will we decide that the person I am referring to is a specific person?  If someone lived who had some of the features I imagined for "N" but not all, was that "N?" 

whom all this is true".-But if some point now proves false? --Shall I be prepared to declare the proposition "N is dead" false-even if it is only something which strikes me as incidental  that has turned out false? But where are the bounds of the incidental?-- If I had given a definition of the name in such a case, I should now be ready to alter it. 

         

 

And this can be expressed like this: I use the name "N" without a fixed meaning. (But that detracts as little from its usefulness, as it detracts from that of a table that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes wobbles.) 

So, we are driven to notice that words do not have fixed meanings.  At first glance you may think this would reduce their usefulness to us.  But it is not so. 

Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don't know, and so am talking nonsense? - -Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)                           

 

When we notice that language is never unambiguous, that is much like the blurred leaf, we might ask "can I use a word [dorrectly] whose meaning I do not know?"  There is a sense in which our understanding of the term is limited.  Shall we count this as a case of not-knowing? 

The problem is that we can see what is known and what is not-known.  Our confusion comes not from not-knowing what the facts are, but rather from the fact that the rule that would determine how we should speak is not definitive enough to tell us how to answer. 

It is the same as if I were to ask: "Is it cold outside?" (since you were standing outdoors) and you might know it was 62° Fahrenheit (imagine

having a thermometer), and yet not know whether to count this as "cold" because the word "cold" does not have such well defined boundaries. 

Still, your understanding of the temperature would limit how you answered the question (truthfully).

(The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what to-day counts as a observed concomitant of a phenomenon will to-morrow be used to define it.)       

 

Scientific definitions reduce this ambiguity somewha.  What counts as water in the vernacular is different from what counts as H20.  In he creation of the concept of H20 there has been the systemtic exclusion of seawater, or dishwater, from the concept.  Still, if there are a few molecules that are not "H20" shall we still consider the vial to contain H20?  Even here, there is ambiguity that tends to escape us.

80.    I say "There is a chair". What if I go up to it, meaning to fetch it, and it suddenly disappears from sight.? --"So it wasn't a chair, but some kind of illusion". --But in a few moments we see it  again and are able to touch it and so on. --"So the chair was there after all and its disappearance was some kind of illusion". --But suppose that after a time it disappears again-or seems to disappear. What are we to say now? Have you rules ready for such cases  ---rules saying whether one may use the word "chair" to include this kind of thing? But do we miss them when we use the word "chair"; and are we to say that we do not really attach any

The rules that determine the right way to use language in any given language game are never defined with absolute precision.  We all comfortably call the objects we sit on chairs, but we have no rules to label them if they stop behaving as chairs.  Language is simply not that precise.  There are blurred boundaries that we fail to see and that often do not bother us.           

 

meaning to this word, because we are not equipped with rules for every possible application of it? 

Aphorism 81-88 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver     Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary:  This section is concerned with rules and precision of rules and suggests that precision is not always better than imprecision.

81.    F. P. Ramsey once emphasized in conversation with me that logic was a 'normative science'. I do not know exactly what he had in mind, but it was doubtless closely related to what only dawned on me later: namely, that in philosophy we often compare the use of words with games and calculi which have fixed rules, but cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game. --But if you say that our languages only approximate to such calculi you are standing on the very brink of a  misunderstanding. For

81.  This is an important aphorism.  Early Wittgenstein, the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, thought of language as something like a calculus.  The idea was that if you knew the rules of language, you could apply the calculus to understand it. 

For example, suppose you had the following four sentences:

A.  Mary went to the store B  Jack went to the barber. C  Mary is tired D Jack earns lots of money

And suppose you also had four ways of connecting those sentences:

v - meaning either or both * - meaning "and" > - meaning if -then # - meaning if and only if

then it may look as if what we were talking about were an ideal language. As if our logic were, so to speak, a logic for a vacuum. --Whereas logic does not treat of language -- or of thought -- in the sense in which a natural science treats of a natural phenomenon, and the most that can be said is that we construct ideal languages. But here the word "ideal" is liable to mislead, for it sounds as if these languages were better, more perfect, than our everyday language; and as if it took the logician to shew people at last what a proper sentence looked like.                                   

And suppose you could also modify any sentence by negating it and symbolizing that negation with a tilde like this:

~ 

And let's enrich this calculus.  You can also use parentheses.  Using the character names above to name the four sentences, couldn't you figure out the following statement like one would figure out a calculus?

(A*B) * ~A

It would mean     

While it is true that "Mary went to the store and Jack went to the Barber" is a true statement it is not true that Mary went to the store.

And, as you can see, this would not be possible because it is not true for Mary to have both gone to the store and not to have gone to the store.  So, we can see that the symbolic phrase

(A*B) * ~A

is nonsense. because to be true it would  requires A to be both true and false. 

Now, consider the following:

                                             

 

[~(A*B) v (B>C)] v (D#B)

Could this statement be true? 

You could figure this out using the same process that we used above and it would feel very much like performing a kind of mathematical calculus. 

This was the sort of vision of language that inspired early Wittgenstein (and the logical positivists), but now he is saying that it will not work. 

One might want to say that if it were a misunderstanding that language worked as a calculus, then it was because language is defective in some way.  But Wittgensein is telling us that the failure of langauge to conform to a calculus does not imply that it is defective.  

All this, however, can only appear in the right light when one has attained greater clarity about the concepts of understanding, meaning, and thinking. For it will then also become clear what can lead us (and did lead me) to think that if anyone utters a sentence and means or understands it he is operating a calculus according to definite rules. 

And these concepts of understanding, meaning and thinking are concepts Wittgenstein will explicate.      

 

82.    What do I call 'the rule by which he proceeds'?  --The hypothesis that satisfactorily describes his use of words, which we observe; or the rule which he looks up when he uses signs; or the one which he gives us in reply if we ask him what his rule is? --But what if observation does not enable us to see any clear rule, and the question brings none to light? --For he did indeed give me a definition when I asked him what he understood by "N", but he was prepared to withdraw and alter it.-So how am I to determine the rule according to which he is playing? He does not know it himself. --Or, to ask a better question: What meaning is the expression "the rule by which he proceeds" supposed to have left to it here?                   

 

82. Suppose you are playing chess and you move your knight.  A child who does know how to play chess asks you how you were able to move the piece in such an odd way.  If you know chess, the rule is probably clear in your mind and you can state it unambiguously.  You can say what the rule is that guides and constrains the movement of the bishop, compared to the movement of the knight.  There is no ambiguity here.

But if you were asked the rule you used to decide if a sentence were a well formed sentence, or grammatically flawed, you might find that you do not know the answer immediately.  You feel you have to think about it a bit.  It may be that you can choose which sentence has a flaw, but not know immediately what the rule that this correct useage obeys. 

Similarly, you might know how to use a word in a sentence, and use it regularly and meaningfully, yet still not be know its useage well enough to give a definition spontaneously and easily.

So, ask yourself, are you following a rule in the cases in which you cannot easily and spontaneously state the rule?  In what sense are you following one?  Are you subsequently just trying to discover a stated rule that wold capture the behavior you are engaging in without any sense of trying to conform to a defined rule?

83.     Doesn't the analogy between language and games throw light here? We can easily imagine people amusing themselves in a field by playing with a ball so as to start various existing games, but playing many without finishing them and in between throwing the ball aimlessly into the air, chasing one another with the ball and bombarding one another for a joke and so on. And now someone says: The whole time they are playing a ball-game and following definite rules at every throw. 

83.  See how far this new model of language is from the model of language as a calculus?  Yes, there are rules, but the rules are not binding in the same way that they are in calculus.  The rules of langauge do not confine every movement that is made.    In languge, one can stop, metaphorically speaking, to toss the ball up into the air.   

 

And is there not also the case where we play and-make up the rules as we go along? And there is even one where we alter them-as we go along.  

 

This is a particularly significant observation.  In language we will find ourselves making up meanings for words as we go along.  "What do you mean by that?" someone asks you.  Then you say, "I mean..." and you give the word a definite sense, not a sense that is quite what it is in the dictionary, but a definite sense.  You are making up the rules of this language game as you go along.

84.   I said that the application of a word is not everywhere bounded by rules. But what does a game look like that is everywhere bounded by rules? whose rules never let a doubt creep in, but stop up all the cracks where it might? -- Can't we imagine a rule determining

84. Am I right that games are not completely bounded by rules? Sure, there are gaps in the stated rules.  But can't we imagine some sort of implicit rule that guides us in the spaces between the rules?

 

the application of a rule, and a doubt which it removes-and so on? 

    But that is not to say that we are in doubt because it is possible for us to imagine a doubt. I can easily imagine someone always doubting before he opened his front door whether an abyss did not yawn behind it, and making sure about it before he went through the door (and he might on some occasion prove to be right)-but that does not make me doubt in the same case. 

Sure, we can imagine such a thing, but we need not.  It is not a requirement of games that they be everywhere bounded by rules.    

 

85.    A rule stands there like a sign-post.--Does the sign-post leave no doubt open about the way I have to go? Does it shew which direction I am to take when I have passed it; whether along the road or the footpath or cross-country? But where is it said which way I am to follow it; whether in the direction of its finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one?  --And if there were, not a single sign-post, but a chain of adjacent ones or of chalk mar  

ks on the ground-- is there

85.  And even if we stated rules (like sign-posts) every space, this would not leave us with some flexibility in how we played the game.  Even sign-posts have to be interpreted.  Even if a hand  

points in a certain direction, where is the rule that says I must follow it in the direction of the finger?  

And even if we assume that the hand points towards the flag, is it pointing to the stripes or the stars?  Or the flag as a whole?  Or to the colors?  Is there not room for interpretation here?  Is everything completely bound by rules?  And if we have this flexibility in pointing, is there not room for a similar flexibility in how we interpret the

only one way of interpreting them?-- So I can say, the sign-post does after all leave no room for doubt. Or rather: it sometimes leaves room for doubt and sometimes not. And now this is no longer a philosophical proposition, but an empirical one. 

rules of a game?

 

86.  Imagine a language-game like (2) played with the help of a table. The signs given to B by A are now written ones. B has a table, in the first column are the signs used in the game, in the second pictures of building stones. A shews B such a written sign; B looks it up in the table, looks at the picture opposite, and so on. So the table is a rule which he follows in executing orders.-One learns to look the picture up in the table by receiving a training, and part of this training consists perhaps in ~e pupil's learning to pass with his finger horizontally from left to right; and so, as it were, to draw a series of horizontal lines on the table. 

Imagine the workers in a language-game like (2) having the following table to use to make their selection of stones.  

    Suppose different ways of reading a table were now

If we did include arrows in our own culture, it would likely look like this:

introduced; one time, as above, according to the schema:     

 

For the most part, however, the action that the arrows prompt is so common in our own culture that the arrows are not needed.  We all approach such tables with our eyes already trained to look in the way the arrows are intended to guide us.

    another time like this:   

 or in some other way.  

For this kind of looking, however, we would need arrows:  

 

--Such a schema is supplied with the table as the rule for its use. 

But what Wittgensein had in mind for this tribe is two tables.  For exxample, imagine one being up on a wall, and the other being in one's hand.    

However, if their mythology required a more

complex, the rule might be:

Or, imagine things more complex,, still.  Perhaps this language game is not for the purpose of building but for the purpose of assuaging the temper of the gods, and supppose, too, that the paths the gods want their servants to take to read these tables requires them to work through a maze of arrows such as this:    

in order to read a table like this:  

   Can we not now imagine further rules to explain this one? 

Now, suppose the various rules in the network of arrows was tied to a mythology so that each arrow represented a sacred path that must be followed exactly.  Not only did this sacred path guide how one's eyes were to move, but also how one stood and the expression one put on one's face:  

And, on the other hand, was that first table incomplete without the schema of arrows? And are other tables incomplete without their schemata? 

The initial table seemed easy to us:  

But the ease we felt surely reflected the years of training we had in reading such a table.  We no longer needed guidance to look from left to right.  The straight arrows may have provided 

such guidance to one uninitiated, but only if that person had already had training in how to read arrows, how to follow a line with the eyes.  Years of reading make it natural for English speaking people to follow the line from left to right, but, of course, there are other traditions.  We could complicate things further by a requirement that the reader of the table must jump from line to line, or move the eyes back and forth, or up and down the line.  There is no end of complicating possibilities.  Yet, these possibilities do not confuse us.  We have been trained to see and read such tables so we do with ease, just as

we have been trained to read the words on this page and do that with ease -- even though it was not always so.

All these implicit rules seem to guide our behavor, and rules we can no longer state, that no longer guide us in a concscious way.  Do we want to say that the table needed to include such rules in order to be complete?  If so, would any table ever be complete?  

87.  Suppose I give this explanation:   

I take 'Moses' to mean the I man, if there was such a man, who led the Israelites out of Egypt, whatever he was called then and whatever he may or may not have done besides."  --

 

87.  LW is going to try to show us (or remind us) how difficult it can be to tie down the meaning of even an apparently simple sentence.  This may seem to you like a change in subject, because we are no longer talking about tables and arrows, but the subject is much the same.  We are noticing how many gaps there are in the rules we might use to interpret things, how much of our understanding takes place without our noticing how it all works.

But similar doubts to those about "Moses" are     possible about the words of this explanation (what are you calling "Egypt", whom the "Israelites" etc.?). Nor would these questions come to an end when we got down to words like "red", "dark", "sweet".

As soon as you try to pin down these words, you can see how hard it is to make sure the person in history that we talk about refers to "Moses." Maybe the real person had a different name and maybe his story has been modified through the years.  Has it been so modified that the person we think of as "Moses" is no longer congruent with the historical figure?  It is possible to doubt all of these things.

 "But then how does an explanation help me to understand, if after all it is

This is Wittgenstein's questioning voice, voice of aporia, wondering.  If I can't tie these things down with an explanation, I not

not the final one? In that case the explanation is never completed; so I still don't understand what he means, and never shall!" -- 

As though an explanation as it were hung in the air unless supported by another one. 

only fail to understand who Moses is, but I fail in all similar attempts.  Exaplanations cannot help me understand!  (or so it seems to the aporetic voice).

It seems (when in this apoetic mood) that we must be  able to use explanations to tie down all the ambiguities, or else nothing will ever be known.  

Whereas an explanation may indeed rest on another one that has been given, but none stands in need of another -- -unless we require it to prevent a misunderstanding. 

That is, we may be able to use one explanation to explain another -- but no additional explanation is needed except to prevent misunderstanding.  You do not need an explanation for the statement "The chair I am sitting in is uncomfortable," unless you don't understand it (and you might not, for example, if it looked o you that I was not sitting at all.)

One might say: an explanation serves to remove or to avert a misunderstanding -- one, that is, that would occur but for the explanation not every one that I can imagine. 

The confusion comes about because we imagine that explanations contain a complete rule that require no training to interpret.  Explanations canavert misunderstandings but only for those whose training is sufficient to understand the explanation.  And, we cannot find sufficient explnations to replace that history of training.

It may easily look as if every doubt merely revealed an existing gap in the  foundations; so that secure understanding is only possible if we first doubt everything that can be doubted, and then remove all these doubts.  

This is reminescent of Decartes' "Cartesian doubt", or "methodological doubt."  His idea was, you'll recall, that he could doubt everything except that he was thinking (I think, therefore I am).  Everything that came after that point in the Cartesian text was the result of his reasoning things out, and thus proven, ostensibly, by the reasoning.  It looks as though we must pin things down completely.  We must find a way to prove, for example, that historical person I call

Moses is indeed he "real Moses" or else it is all a sham.  But how many stories about Moses would have to be a little wrong, in order to call it all a sham?  And even if the stories were quite a bit wrong, would it be a sham?  What does it mean, in fact, for any name to refer to an historical figure with accuracy? It seems it does not make sense if we cannot pin things like this down.  On the other hand, the assertions do make some kind of sense to us, given our training in this story of Moses -- even though we cannot pin things like this down without becoming aware of the enormity of doubt about all the details.

The sign-post is in order -- if, under normal circumstances, it fulfills its purpose.  

When does the explanation, the reasoning come to an end?  Remember, we may not need an explanation at all. If we are already trained or practiced in how to interpret some sign, then the explanation is no longer required.  If there is a stop sign, or some strange sign, it needs no explanation if we have been trained in its interpretation. 

Consider the explanation I gave those reading over our shoulder at the top of this note. I explained our tradition that we put our initials in brackets around the text.  But I did not explain that Judy uses small characters for her initials, or that Nick sometimes uses no brackets at all.  Will they understand?  Is it possible that they will simply make sense of it even if I don't explain these details? At what point will the explanation be more than is necessary?  

88.     If I tell someone "Stand roughly here"-- may not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every

88. If I want to take a photograph of someone, I might say, "stand roughly here".  That means,  I am likely to be  satisfied if the person stands somewhere withina range of

other one fail too? 

places.  Of course, the person might stand outside my preferred range, or I might discover that the range of places I thought would work will not work. On the other hand, I cannot guard against this kind of problem entirely by being more specific.   Imagine my saying, "Stand on this blade of grass."  Couldn't I find this positioning not quite satisfactory, too?

 But isn't it an inexact explanation? -

This is really the voice of Ramsey again, or perhaps the voice of early Wittgenstein or one of the positivists who tried to reduce language to a kind of calculus.  This voice has been very influential in the development of modern psychology.   This voice says, "Can't we find a way to represent our thoughts and wishes very precisely so that there can be no misunderstanding? The usefulness of phrases such as "stand roughly here" helps disenchant us with this quest by showing us 

Yes; why shouldn't we call it "inexact"? Only let us understand what "inexact" means. For it does not mean "unusable". 

that non-exact explanation can be very useful, indeed.

And let us consider what we call an "exact" explanation in contrast with this one. Perhaps something like drawing a chalk line round an area? Here it strikes us at once that the line has breadth. So a colour-edge would be more exact. But has this exactness still got a function here: isn't the engine idling? 

In this paragraph, Wittgenstein argues that not only is non-precise language often useful, but that more precise statements (e.g., stand precisely on this blade of grass) adds nothing to the usefulness, at times, of less precise statements.  You could stand on a precise blade of grass if I stand "stand roughly over there" but it wouldn't be more useful than if you stood in a slightly different place.  This is what Wittgenstein has in mind when he suggests that this exactness does not have a function in some contexts.

And remember too that we have not yet defined what is to count as overstepping this exact boundary; how, with what instruments, it is to be established. And so on. 

Even when we try to be more precise (you must step on this precise blade of grass) we do not elminate all imprecision.  Even here, we must define what will count as not doing what the precise rule calls on us to do.

    We understand what it means to set a pocket watch to the exact time or to regulate it to be exact. But what if it were asked: is this exactness ideal Of course, we can speak of measurements of time in which there is a different and as we should say a greater, exactness than in the measurement of time by a pocket-watch; in which the words "to set the clock to the exact time" have a different, though related meaning, and 'to tell the time' is a different process and so on.-- 

Even when we talk about precision, it is not clear how precise precision must be in order to be precise enough.

Now, if I tell someone: "You should come to dinner more punctually; you know it begins at one o'clock exactly"-- 

Here's another example to examine, to help us understand the function and limits of our ideal of precision. How precise would such a statement be?

is there really no question of exactness here? because it is possible to say: "Think of the determination of time in the laboratory or the observatory; there you see what 'exactness' means"?

The first thing to notice is that the kind of "exactness" that would be required for someone coming to dinner punctually is not of the same level as that is required in a laboratory or an observatory.  The context lets us know that different levels of precision are involved in these different situations.

exactness, or how nearly does it approach the ideal?-

    "Inexact" is really a reproach, and "exact" is praise. And that is to say that what is inexact attains its goal less perfectly than what is more exact. Thus the point here is what we call "the goal". Am I inexact when I do not give our distance from the sun to the nearest foot, or tell a joiner the width of a table to the nearest thousandth of an inch? 

Language is often implicitly loaded to convince us that something is good or bad.  People who call someone "youthful" for example are using loaded langauge to communicate a positive quality about behavior or appearance that xome might refer to more negatively as "childish".  Sometimes, it is hard to find the negative loading for a positive term (or the positive loading for a negative term) and our languuge simply doesn't appear to have the resources for thinking about the object without this particular evaluative loading. 

That may be the case for the notion of "exactness" has that kind of positive loading.  (see my comments on "transvaluation")

    No single ideal of exactness has been laid down; we do not know what we should be supposed to imagine under this head  -- unless you yourself lay down what is to be so called. But you will kind it difficult to hit upon such a convention; at least any that satisfies you.

What all of this study of exactness seems to be teling us is that how much "exactness" we need depends upon the context.  Sometimes demands for "exactness" can just be a bother with nothing useful to add.  Because they would be a "bother", this excessive precision is not so universally ideal as our language suggests to us.

Aphorism 89-100 from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by Lois Shawver

    Wittgenstein: (Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) 

Shawver commentary and supplementary notes:

89. These considerations bring us up to the problem: In what sense is logic something sublime?

For there seemed to pertain to logic a peculiar depth -a universal significance.  Logic lay, it seemed, at the bottom of all the sciences.--  For logical investigation explores the nature of all things. It seeks to see to the bottom of things and is not meant to concern itself whether what actually happens is this or that.  

In 89, The question is: How did we come to believe that logic is sublime? Why do we think that it is sublime?

The people of our culture have believed that logic is sublime for a long, long  time. (SUPPLEMENTARY ARTICLE)  Since Aristotle, at least, philosophers have been inspired with the idea that logic is something something lofty and, if followed carefully, can lead us to a more accurate understanding.  In fact, thinking this way, it seems if we could only get logic right, define things precisely enough, then we could make sense of all things.   

--It [logic] takes its rise, not from an interest-- in the facts of nature, nor from a need to grasp cause connexions: but from an urge to understand the basis, or essence, of everything empirical. Not, however, as if to this end we had to hunt out new facts; it is, rather, of the essence of our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand.

This glorification of logic emerges, not from our need to grasp particular connections, (such as what specifically causes what), but a desire to find a key that will open up the secrets of the world for us, make it all make sense. The quest is not to uncover something new detail, but to understand something that is already before us, but confuses us because its mysteries are somehow veiled.  

 

Augustine says in the Confessions this translates as: "What therefore is

"quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio".

 

time?  If you don't ask me, I know - if you ask me, I don't know." In other words, the loftiness of  logic is something we understand until we are asked about it.  Then, suddenly, we see how confusing it is to us.

-This could not be said about a question of natural science ("What is the specific gravity of hydrogen?" for instance). Something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give an account of it, is something that we need to remind ourselves of.  (An it is obviously something of which for some reason it is difficult to remind oneself.)

There are many scientific problems that we either know the answers to or we don't.  But there are other thngs we to undestand so well we take our knowledge for granted, until we are asked.  Then, we are puzzled.  It is as though we know the answer but can't quite remember what it is and need to be reminded.  

90.  We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is directed not towards  phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the 'possibilities' of phenomena.          

 

When we feel that logic is lofty, we feel as though we had to penetrate the mysteries of what is before us with the power of logic, but we do not actually look at what we are studying in order to try to do this.  We simply think about things, or study them, in our "logical" reflection. 

We might ask about our subject, for example, in relationship to certain possibilities.  If time is the subject of our study, we might ponder, for example, if time would continue to exist if the world stopped turning.   

We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of  statement that we make about phenomena.  

Using logic, we try to recall things about our subject.  We might say to ourselves, for example, that,  "time seems to pass more quickly when

   

 

you're busy."  And we would ask ourselves, "What does that mean about time?"  This kind of logical reflection, then,  is more reflective than observational. 

Thus Augustine recalls to mind the different statements that are made about the duration, past present or future, of events. (These are, of course, not philosophical statements about time, the past, the present and the future.)

Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away.  

 

So our investigation is not based on observations of new data.  Instead, it is a study of the things we say or have said about this subject.  Our purpose is to clear away certain misunderstandings that seem to block clarity about whatever interests us.  This means that our study is a grammatical one in the sense that we might ponder the meaning of certain terms, or the connection between different terms, and remind ourselves of the criteria for different application of these terms.  If we wanted to know what time is, we might remind ourselves of the way we name time differently in different time zones, for example.

Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.  

 

Many of our misunderstandings result from the fact that there are superficial similarities  between different regions of language.  If I say "love" when I am scoring tennis, this does not mean the same thing as when I speak endearingly.  These things continuously confuse us.  supplementary note

-Some of them [misunderstandings] can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be called an "analysis" of our forms of expression, for the process is sometimes like one of taking a thing apart.

Some of this confusion can be removed by replacing words with other words that seem less confusing.  "Love" we might say, "means zero" so instead of saying the score 30-love.  We might say that the score is 30-zero, in order to be less confused and

     

 

confusing.  There are many multiple uses of most terms that get confused this way, and we are scarcely aware of them.  When we do study them, unravel the equivocations, this we might call "analysis." 

91. But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved. 

When we analyze the equivocations, straighten things out, it sometimes begins to appear as though we could finally get a picture of the accurate meaning, that we could invent, even, ways of talking that allowed tus o speak in ways that are completely clear, so that the problem at hand is solved. 

 

It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation.

 

When we are mystified like this, we think we can find a way to put things that will eliminate all misunderstandings.  It will just require, so we think, more exactness.  It even seems that exactness, not clarity, is the real goal of our investigation.  Somehow we have become infatuated with the idea that exactness will bring us closer to a final picture of the hidden mysteries around us.

92. This finds expression in questions as to the essence of language, of propositions, of thought.

Our infatuation with exactness shows itself when philosophers ask about the essence of language in that they often strive for more exactness. 

--For if we too in these investigations are trying to understand the essence of language -- its function, its structure, --yet this is not what those

It may seem that this is what we, in this book, are trying to do as well.  But the questions we ask are different.   

questions have in view.  For they see in the essence, not something that already lies open to view and that becomes surveyable by a rearrangement, but something that lies beneath the surface. Something that lies within, which we see when we look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out.

We need to use different metaphors for their questions and for ours.  While they are seeking something deeper that will be unveiled as the mystery structure of language, we are seeking something that might be clear to us by a certain rearrangement of the details.

'The essence is hidden from us': this is the form our problem now assumes. We ask: "What is language?", "What is a proposition?" And the answer to these questions is to be given once for all; and independently of any future experience.            

 

If we are in their frame of reference, and we ask questions about the essence of things, we look for answers that can be given now and for all time, regardless of what happens in the future.  After all, the essence of language cannot change. If langauge has an essence, so they think, it exists everywhere and whenever langauge exists.  Not so for us.  We will look at changeable aspects of language that happen to create patterns during our cultural experience.  For example, whereas they will look for what "truth" really is, apart from any true statement, we will be inspired to notice the ways in which this term is used in our culture and in particular language games and practices.

One person might say "A proposition is the most ordinary thing in the world" and another: "A proposition - that's something very queer!" --And the latter is unable simply to look and see how propositions really work. The forms that we use in expressing ourselves about

When they are looking for essences they do not look at the way the statements actually work and how we use them.  They look for something hidden from us.  We look for something we can watch and see.   

 

propositions and thought stand in his way.

Why do we say a proposition is something remarkable? On the one hand, because of the enormous importance attaching to it.  (And that is correct). On the other hand this, together with a misunderstanding of the logic of language, seduces us into thinking that something extraordinary, something unique, must be achieved by propositions.      

 

When this logic of propositions seems remarkable, it is for two reasons.  One I endorse:  There is much importance attaching to language, and why and how that is so is worthy of our reflection.  The second reason we think logic is remarkable is that we are seduced by certain illusions that tell us that language is alien to other things in the world.  We will find the distinction between language and non-language quite blurry.  Our culture tends to polarize the world, mistakenly I feel, into language and not-language, failing to see that the distinction is not so complete as we at first think. 

--  A misunderstanding makes it look to us as if a propositions did something queer.  

 

Our recognition of the importance of language, plus our having been seduced into seeing it as something completely different from non-language, makes language propositions (statements) seem very odd, indeed. 

94. 'A proposition is a queer thing!' Here we have in germ the subliming of our whole account of logic.

This "subliming" of our logic is a way of seducing ourselves into this mystification that treats logic as something quite mystical.

The tendency to assume a pure intermediary between the propositional signs and the facts. Or even to try to purify, to sublime, the signs themselves.      

When we sublime the logic of our langauge in this way, we turn it into a kind of ghost which is seems to work as an intermediary between the statements we make and the words we say.  We try to get rid of the words (signs) themself and stare at the essence, this linguistic ghost, so to speak, that connects our words with the facts they are meant to

  portray. 

-For our forms of expression prevent us in all sorts of ways from seeing that nothing out of the ordinary is involved, by sending us in pursuit of chimeras.

 

Seduced by the ghost of language into seeing apparitions between words and things (into seeing "selves" "minds" "schizophrenia" as things, for example) we are distracted and do not notice the ordinary that is involved. 

95. "Thought must be something unique". When we say, and mean, that such-and-such is the case, we -- and our meaning-- do not stop anywhere short of the fact; but we mean: this-is-so. But this paradox (which has the form of a truism) can also be expressed in this way: Thought can be of  what is not the case.                                        

95 begins with LW talking indirectly about the fly-bottle/ That is, he is exploring the cultural thoughts that weave together and block our path out of the fly-bottle.  Here, at the source of this impasse, we find ourselves saying things like, "Thought must be something unique".  This is not an innocent statement.  It represents our willingness to imagine "thought" as something mysterious and beyond explanation at the same time that that we look for explanation.  This is a path into thinking of language as tied to metaphysical mysteries such as Platonic forms. supplemental article.

Here is my paraphrase of the last part of this aphorism: When I say, "This is a cup." my words seem to point directly to this cup.  I am pointing right  to it.  My words don't fall short of the cup and point just to a concept.  This is a cup, I say.  It is so. 

But words can only point to what is true?  Isn't this a truism?  If I say "This is a flower" and it is really a  cup before us, then my words are not really pointing to anything.  That is

         

 

fine.  My words are just pretending that there is a flower there.  I can't really point to what is not here.

Or can I?  If I look for my cup and find a bare shelf and say, "My cup is not here", aren't I pointing to its absence?  And how is this different from looking at the bare shelf and saying, "The  flower is not here?"  What would be different about the shelf and what I point to in the two  cases? It must be that there is something else that I am pointing to other than the cup itself.  

96. Other illusions come from various quarters to attach themselves to the special one spoken of here. Thought, language, now appear to us as the unique correlate, picture, of the world. These concepts proposition, language, thought, world, stand in line one behind the other, each equivalent to each. (But what are these words to be used for now? The language-game in which they are to be applied is missing.)                      

I point here to this bare shelf and say, "The cup is not here", but what am I pointing to?  I might say, perhaps I am pointing to the thought of the-cup-that-is-not-here?  Or if not the thought, then to the proposition "This is a cup" or to the web of language that reflects this meaning, or to the "world" (as LW used the term in the Tractatus when he said in the beginning "The World is all that is the case).  These are all more or less synonyms.  As soon as you knock one down, I have a backup concept that stands between the word and the fact.  These words may look a little different to you, but they function in the same way.  They are place holders that I use to talk about these ghostly Platonic images as i think about my difficulties in explaining the way langauge seems to me to work. Is that any better?

     

 

By having a string of abstract concepts we construct in order to have something to point to, we create a mysterious object of meaning that language seems to address.  It suddenly appears, when we are pointing to that thought, whatever that should mean.Then, language begins to appear to be something remarkabe, almost magical.   

97. Thought is surrounded by a halo.  --Its essence, logic, present an order, in fact the a priori order of the world: that is, the order of possibilities, which must be common to both world and thought. But this order, it seems, must be utterly simple. It is prior to a experience, must run through all experience; no empirical cloudiness or uncertainty can be allowed to affect it --It must rather be of the purest crystal.  But this crystal does not appear as an abstraction; but as something concrete, indeed, as the most concrete, as it were the hardest thing there is (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus No. 5.5563).  

In this aporia, it seems, that thought is surrounded by a kind of halo.  This halo of thought is "essence" or "logic", and this logical-essence-halo seems to hold the world in some kind of order, to organize it.  Without that organizing halo the world would appear chaotic.  But this organizing halo must be completely simple, perfect in someway.  It would not work for this metaphysical-halo of essences to have something confused about it, something fuzzy.  And, we must have this organizing principle prior to our being able to make sense of anything.  Without this organizing principle, all if confusion.    

We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound, essential, in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language. That is, the

And, so, in this state of mystification we are under the illusion that there is some essence of langauge, some magical essence, and that we are trying to grasp this essence, which is

order existing between the concepts of proposition, word, proof, truth, experience, and so on. This order is a super-order between --so to speak-- super-concepts. Whereas, of course, if the words "language", "experience", "world", have a use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words "table", "lamp", "door".

just beyond our grasp.  This essence consists in the organizing principles, concrete almost, ghostlike organizing principles.  And these appear to be permanent fixtures in the world.  How can they change, we say in our illusions, they are the principles that control the world of human understanding? See #91  

98. On the one hand it is clear that every sentence in our language is in order as it is'. That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us.-- On the other hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect order. So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence.            

 

But there is aporia while in this mystification, because, for example, we know that it is a bit odd to say that we can point to nothing, and yet it seems we can.  It seems with my concepts, I can point to the fact that John is not in his seat.  I see the seat empty.  How can I do that?  Then, noticing this aporia and we think that the problem is that the language that we use is not quite perfect enough, so we want to make it more perfect, more exact.  This perfect language awaits our construction.  What will it be like?  Well, it seems, it will be much like the one we have, only more exact, more perfect.  Thinking like this, we say to ourself that the organizing principle that controls everything is there even in the fuzzy imperfect principle, but still, things do not quite work correctly.  The organizing principle is perfect, we just have a language that is an imperfect picture of it.  There are a few flaws, and we must figure them out and fix them. 

99. The sense of a sentence --one In this perfect language, that, in our

would like to say-- may, of course, leave this or that open, but the sentence must nevertheless have a definite sense. An indefinite sense-- that would really not be a sense at all. --This is like: An indefinite boundary is not really a boundary at all. Here one thinks perhaps: if I say "I have locked the man up fast in the room --there is only one door left open"-- then I simply haven't locked him in at all; his being locked in is a sham. One would be inclined to say here: "You haven't done anything at all". An enclosure with a hole in it is as good as none. --But is that true?

 

mystification it seems we must construct (if we are to gain any clarity) we may, of course, allow for a sentence to have some flexibility.  We might have a structure like, "The book is on the table" that could be adapted to "The pen is on the table."  But, it seems, there must be something quite definite in the boundaries of it all.  We can't have the basic rules be flexible.  If I leave any of the basic rules flexible, it seems, I might as well not have any rules at all.  (Think how this relates to Lyotard and his notion that we negotiate the basic rules of our language in paralogy.  We can say, now, in our postmodernism, "This is what I mean by X" and, sometimes, people can follow us.) 

100. "But still, it isn't a game, if there is some vagueness in the rules". -- But does this prevent its being a game? -- "Perhaps you'll call it a game, but at any rate it certainly isn't a perfect game." This means: it has impurities, and what I am interested in at present is the pure article.

-But I want to say: we misunderstand the role of the ideal in our language. That is to say: we too should call it a game, only we are dazzled by the ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the word "game" clearly.

And so, let me ask you, must there be exact rules in order for us to have a "game"?  Or is this just an illusion of our logocentrism?  The mystified voice responds, well, you can call this game without precise rules a game if you wish, but it is not a perfect game.  But, now, as I think through this, finding my way out of the fly bottle, Wittgenstein  says, I want to say that we misunderstand the nature of our task here.  We are far too dazzled by the dream that increased precision will show us clarity to see any other prospects clearly.. 

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