I’ve been doing a reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, highlighting certain sections and adding notes. This is the first installment. The selections from the book are preceded by the relevant paragraph numbers. My remarks are indicated by square brackets “[ ].’
The edition of the Investigations that I am using is the Revised 4th Edition, edited by Peter Hacker and published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2010.
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[In the following selections, Wittgenstein engages with two common philosophical ideas: (a) That there is such a thing as “the meaning of a word”; (b) That the meaning of a word is its referent (what it signifies). Both ideas unravel quickly under examination.]
❡3
Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system…
It is as if someone were to say, “Playing 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 they are not all the games there are.
❡11
Think of the tools in a toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.
Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them in speech, or see them written in print.
❡12
It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. There are handles there, all looking more or less alike…But one is the handle of a crank, which can be moved continuously..; another is the handle of a switch, which has only two operative positions: it is either off or on; a third is the handle of a brake-lever…
❡13
If we say, “Every word in the language signifies something,” we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we explain exactly what distinction we wish to make.
❡14
Suppose someone said, “All tools serve to modify something. So, a hammer modifies the position of a nail, a saw the shape of a board, and so on.” – And what is modified by a rule, a glue-pot and nails? – “Our knowledge of a thing’s length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of the box.” – Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?
❡18
Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses.
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[In these sections, Wittgenstein explores territory that Quine would investigate under the concepts of “the inscrutability of reference” and “indeterminacy of translation,” though Wittgenstein will go considerably farther in problematizing acts of ostension, names, and the distinction/relationship between “simples” and “composites.]
❡26
One thinks that learning language consists in giving names to objects… [N]aming something is like attaching a name tag to a thing. One can call this a preparation for the use of a word. But what is it a preparation for?
❡28
The definition of the number two, “That is called ‘two’” – pointing to two nuts – is perfectly exact. –But how can the number two be defined like that? The person one gives the definition to doesn’t know what it is that 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 take it to be the name of a number…That is to say, an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in any case.
❡30
So, one could say: an ostensive definition explains the use – the meaning – of a word if the role the word is supposed to play in the language is already clear…
One has already to know (or be able to do) something before one can ask what something is called. But what does one have to know?
[Here, the knowledge in question would seem to be of the sort that Ryle charaterizes as “knowing how,” rather than “knowing-that.”]
❡33
But what if someone objected: “It is not true that one must already be a master of a language-game in order to understand an ostensive definition: rather, one need only…know (or guess) what the person giving the explanation is pointing at. That is, whether, for example, at the shape of the object, or its colour, or the number and so on.” –And what does ‘pointing at the shape’, ‘pointing at the color’, consist in? Point at a piece of paper. –And now point at its shape – now at its colour – not at its number (that sounds odd). –Well, how did you do it? –You’ll say that you ‘meant’ something different each time you pointed…But now I ask again: how is that done..?
[This entry, as well as ❡28 are the most closely related of Wittgenstein’s remarks here to Quine’s later discussion of ostension and reference in Word and Object. But Wittgenstein goes even farther in pressing on the idea of pointing to one thing rather than another, observing that pointing to something does not always involve the same activity, even when the object of ostension is held constant.]
One attends to the shape, sometimes by tracing it, sometimes by screwing up one’s eyes so as not to see the colour clearly, and so forth. I want to say: this and similar things are what one does while one ‘directs one’s attention to this or that’. But it isn’t only these things that make us say that someone is attending to the shape, the colour, etc. Just as making a move in chess doesn’t consist only in pushing a piece from here to there on the board – nor yet in the thoughts and feelings that accompany the move: but in the circumstances that we call “playing a game of chess.”
❡36
[B]ecause we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing at the shape (as opposed to the colour, for example), we say that a mental, spiritual activity corresponds to these words.
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[In these excerpts, Wittgenstein addresses the question of simples and composites, both with regard to “reality” and language, thereby confronting both metaphysical and semantic “atomists,” which were dominant of the analytic philosophy of the era. Not only can neither be defined in any sort of absolute way, but the use of these concepts in the “analysis” of language need not yield any greater clarity.
He observes further that what counts as simple and composite depends on the “language game” one is playing. It is at this point in the Investigations that he begins to really develop the idea that language is fundamentally a rule-governed activity and that what a rule is and how it functions may vary. Later, he will claim an irreducibly social element to rules and to the activities that depend on them. ]
❡47
But what are the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed? –What are the simple constituent parts of a chair? – The pieces of wood from which it is assembled? Or the molecules, or the atoms? – “Simple” means: non-composite. 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’…
If it had been laid down that the visual image of a tree was to be called “composite” if one saw not just a trunk, but also branches, then the question “Is the visual image of this tree simple or composite?” and the question “What are its simple constituent parts?” would have a clear sense…
But isn’t a chessboard…absolutely composite? – You’re probably thinking of its being composed of 32 white and 32 black squares. But couldn’t we also say, for instance, that it was composed of the colours black and white and the schema of squares…? –Asking “Is this object composite?” outside a particular game is like what a boy once did when he 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…
And is the white simple, or does it consist of the colours of the rainbow? – Is this length of 2cm simple, or does it consist of two parts, each 1cm long…?
To the philosophical question “Is the visual image of this tree composite, and what are its constituent parts?” the correct answer is “That depends on what you understand by ‘composite’.” (And that, of course, is not an answer to, but a rejection of, the question.
❡50
[T]here is one thing of which one can state neither that it is 1 meter long, nor that it is not 1 metre long, and that is the standard meter in Paris. – But this, of course, is not to ascribe any remarkable property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the game of measuring with a metre-rule. – Suppose that samples of colour were preserved in Paris like the standard metre. So we explain that “sepia” means the colour of the standard sepia which is kept there hermetically sealed. Then it will make no sense to state of this sample either that it is of this colour or that it is not…
This sample is an instrument of the language, by means of which we make colour statements. In this game, it is not something that is represented but a means of representation.
❡54
Just think of the kinds of case where we say that a game is played according to a particular rule.
The rule may be an aid in teaching the game. The learner is told it and given practice in applying it. – Or it is a tool of the game itself. – 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 it. But we can say that it is played according to such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules off from the way the game is played – 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’ behavior.
[Here, Wittgenstein demonstrates that something may be a rule-governed activity even if the rules are not explicitly represented, an important consideration, given the view of language he develops in the Investigations]
❡60
When I say “My broom is in the corner,” is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? 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 first one. – But why do I call it “further analysed”? – 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 previously this was, as it were, hidden in the first of the sentence and is articulated in the analysed sentence. 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? – If we were to ask anyone if he meant this, he would probably say that he had not specifically thought of either the broomstick or the brush. And that would be the right answer…Suppose that instead of telling someone “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?
❡63
To say…that a sentence in (b) is an ‘analysed’ form of one in (a) readily seduces us into thinking that the former is the more fundamental form, that it alone shows what is meant by the other, and so on. We may think: someone who has only the unanalysed form lacks the analysis; but he who knows the analysed form has got it all. – But can’t I say that an aspect of the matter is lost to the latter no less than to the former?
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[In the portions to follow, Wittgenstein introduces his concept of “family resemblances” in response to an imagined charge that he has not defined what a language is. One of the striking things about “family resemblance concepts,” beyond their not having fixed boundaries, is that they require an act of judgment to apply – specifically, “Does x suitably resemble y?” – and consequently are subject to disagreement. Also explored in these selections is what is it to mean something? and what is it to understand something? in the context of language.]
❡65
[S]omeone might object against me: “You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what is essential to a language-game, and so to language: what is common to all these activities, and make them into language or parts of language…
And this is true. –Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all — but there are many different kinds of affinity between them.
❡66
Consider, for example, the activities that we call “games…” What is common to them all? –Don’t say: “They must have something in 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 won’t see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that…
[We] see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: similarities in the large and the small.
❡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, and so on… — overlap and criss-cross in the same way. — And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.
❡68
“Right; so in your view the concept of number is explained as the logical sum of those individual interrelated concepts: cardinal numbers, rational numbers, real numbers and so forth…” –This need not be so. For I can give the concept of number rigid boundaries in this way..; but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a boundary. And this is how we do use the word “game.” For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game, and what no longer does? Can you say where the boundaries are? No.
“But then the use of the word is unregulated — the ‘game’ we play with it is unregulated.” –It is not everywhere bounded by rules; but no more are there any rules for how high one may throw the ball in tennis, or how hard, yet tennis is a game for all that, and has rules too.
❡70
“But if the concept ‘game’ is without boundaries in this way, you don’t really know what you mean by a ‘game’.” –When I give the description “The ground was quite covered with plants,” do you want to say that I don’t know what I’m talking about until I can give a definition of a plant?
❡71
One can say that the concept of a game is a concept with blurred edges. — “But is a blurred concept a concept at all?” — Is a photograph that is not sharp a picture of a person at all?
Frege compares a concept to a region, and says that a region without clear boundaries can’t be called a region at all. This presumably means that we can’t do anything with it. — But is it senseless to say “Stay roughly here”? Imagine that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it, I do not bother drawing any boundary, but just make a pointing gesture… And this is just how one might explain what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way.
❡75
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 kinds of game, showing how all sorts of other games can be constructed on the analogy of these…
❡81
[In] philosophy we often compare the use of words with games, calculi with fixed rules, but cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game. –But if someone says that our languages only approximate to such calculi, he is standing on the brink of a misunderstanding. For then it may look as if what we are talking about in logic were an ideal language… 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 a logician to show people…what a proper sentence looks like.
