To appreciate Wittgenstein's concept of a "language game" and the role
it plays in both his own later philosophy and recent analytic philosophy,
you need to appreciate how Wittgenstein's thinking about language and
philosophical problems changed since the Tractatus.
Differences & Similarities between Early and Late Wittgenstein
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Tractatus
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Language can achieve isomorphism with reality.
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Philosophy works by getting clarity about simple logical relationships
and builds up complex understanding from simples.
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Presupposition that an account of language must show us how language
makes truth possible.
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Investigations & Later Work
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Language (and the self) not "outside" the world.
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Language functions within a sociolinguistic world.
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Philosophy works by grasping, wholistically, the way language functions
in use.
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"Truth" cannot be defined prior to an examination of its function in
a language game.
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Similarities
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Philosophers are still trying to "dissolve" problems.
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Understanding language still involves seeing its structure, its "philosophical
grammar"
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Some cases of "nonsense" in Tractatus are treated as "language taking
a holiday" in later work.
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Problems with the Picture Theory
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Overgeneralized a certain picture of linguistic function
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see p. 394, example of model of language learning that picture theory supposed
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"Representing" by one to one correspondence is only one function of languag.
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Language operates in a social context and cannot be understood apart from
it.
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see p. 397, example of "Slab!" language -- doesn't depend upon rep. or
mental pictures.
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"the test of meaningfulness is not whether a particular language conforms
to some set of criteria that have been prescribed by logic but, quite simply,
whether it is successful in accomplishing whatever it set out to accomplish.
. ." (398)
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Meaning is use, or, There is no single standard for what determines meaning
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analogy between words and tools
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analogy among: different functions of language, different kinds of games,
different "looks" of family members.
Family Resemblances vs. Traditional Understandings of Meaning
So far, Wittgenstein should look like someone who is trying to be more
faithful to the diversity of phenomena and less concerned about "reducing"
appearances to a small set of core relationships or identities. This
strategy runs against the grain of traditional approaches to philosophy.
Think, for a moment, of what Socrates would say to Wittgenstein:
"You say there is something called "meaning" in every
use of language, but you decline to identify that meaning with an "essence,"
saying instead that all the various kinds of meanings are related to one
another like relatives in a family."
This kind of Socratic strategy must be resisted if Wittgenstein is going
to make sesne of his new approach to definition and "giving a philosophical
account"
Consider an example argument of the "sensibility"
of universals / picture theory of language from St. Anselm (402)
Major passage introducing the notion of a language game: read
page 403!
Does this "dissolve" the problem of universals?
Examples of Wittgenstein's Method:
406: his definition of "game" contrasted with alternative approaches.
407: comparison of "knowing" and "saying"
407-8: Understanding definitions as nonexact rules for use. Also,
philosophical error as the search for exactness.
410-412: limits of analysis
412-415: ideal languages
415-419: mind-body problem