5. Language Games

5. Language Games

Ludwig Wittgenstein (his second phase)

Philosophical Investigations (his second book)

• the second book by Wittgenstein was written in c. 1930-1950, but was published posthumously in 1953

• different form from a Tractatus, it has a fictitious or inner dialogue, in a form of numbered paragraphs

• Tractatus made impression that it has answers to all the questions; Investigations asked questions without finding answers to them = he was not sure about his thoughts

Ordinary language philosophy

• Wittgenstein gave up construction of an ideal language, the ambition is to describe how a natural language works

“Philosophy must not interfere in any way with the actual use of language, so it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot justify it either. It leaves everything as it is.” (§124)

Sentence purpose

• Wittgenstein abandoned picture theory of language, because it was not complete; it dealt with declarative sentences only

• Tractatus left this problem unsolved: What is the meaning of interrogative, exclamatory and imperative sentences? What about wishes, promises, warnings, greetings, jokes, insults, etc.?

• You talkin' to me?

• Call me Ishmael.

• May the Force be with you.

• You son of a motherless goat!

= no fact in the real world

Language-games

• He realised we cannot find a reference for every phrase; we can only describe its use in a linguistic community

• language-game: a practice when a speaker is trying to communicate meaning for various reasons (he invented the term, but the term is very general)

“The word 'language-game' is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.” (§23)

“I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than 'family resemblances'; for the various resemblances between members of a family a build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth overlap and criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say: 'games' form a family.” (§67)

• Examples of language-games: Acting in a play, telling a joke, thinking, praying, translating, giving orders…

Rule-following

• using language is like playing chess

• in the beginning you give meaning to pieces of the game (“This is the king.”)

• then you have to follow the rules to play successfully

• language does not picture the world, it is a set of all language-games

Private language

• rules of any language are public by definition

• there cannot be anything like a private language (later “language of thought”, “mentalese”, etc.)

• if the language was private and used by just a one person, other would not understand the rules and the communication couldn’t be done = useless language

• thought experiment “beetle in a box” (§293) = we can’t see in the head of other people, we can only hope that they have the same ideas in their heads as we do, but it doesn’t have to be like that (video! To bylo dobré na pochopení)

Behaviourism and nativism