Ludwig Wittgenstein: Analysis of Language

The direction of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century

was altered not once but twice by the enigmatic Austrian-
British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. By his own Wittgenstein
philosophical work and through his influence on several Life and Works
generations of other thinkers, Wittgenstein transformed the . . Picture Theory
nature of philosophical activity in the English-speaking world. . . Fact and Value
From two distinct approaches, he sought to show that . . New Methods
traditional philosophical problems can be avoided entirely by . . Language Games
application of an appropriate methodology, one that focuses on . . Private Language
analysis of language. Bibliography
Internet Sources

The "early" Wittgenstein worked closely with Russell and shared his conviction that the
use of mathematical logic held great promise for an understanding of the world. In the
tightly-structured declarationss of the Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung (Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus) (1922), Wittgenstein tried to spell out precisely what a logically
constructed language can (and cannot) be used to say. Its seven basic propositions simply
state that language, thought, and reality share a common structure, fully expressible in
logical terms.

On Wittgenstein's view, the world consists entirely of facts. (Tractatus 1.1) Human beings
are aware of the facts by virtue of our mental representations or thoughts, which are most
fruitfully understood as picturing the way things are. (Tractatus 2.1) These thoughts are,
in turn, expressed in propostitions, whose form indicates the position of these facts within
the nature of reality as a whole and whose content presents the truth-conditions under
which they correspond to that reality. (Tractatus 4) Everything that is true—that is, all the
facts that constitute the world—can in principle be expressed by atomic sentences.
Imagine a comprehensive list of all the true sentences. They would picture all of the facts
there are, and this would be an adequate representation of the world as a whole.

The tautological expressions of logic occupy a special role in this language-scheme.

Because they are true under all conditions whatsoever, tautologies are literally nonsense:
they convey no information about what the facts truly are. But since they are true under
all conditions whatsoever, tautologies reveal the underlying structure of all language,
thought, and reality. (Tractatus 6.1) Thus, on Wittgenstein's view, the most significant
logical features of the world are not themselves additional facts about it.

What Cannot be Said

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This is the major theme of the Tractatus as a whole: since propositions merely express
facts about the world, propositions in themselves are entirely devoid of value. The facts
are just the facts. Everything else, everything about which we care, everything that might
render the world meaningful, must reside elsewhere. (Tractatus 6.4) A properly logical
language, Wittgenstein held, deals only with what is true. Aesthetic judgments about what
is beautiful and ethical judgments about what is good cannot even be expressed within
the logical language, since they transcend what can be pictured in thought. They aren't
facts. The achievement of a wholly satisfactory description of the way things are would
leave unanswered (but also unaskable) all of the most significant questions with which
traditional philosophy was concerned. (Tractatus 6.5)

Thus, even the philosophical achievements of the Tractatus itself are nothing more than
useful nonsense; once appreciated, they are themselves to be discarded. The book
concludes with the lone statement:

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

(Tractatus 7) This is a stark message indeed, for it renders literally unspeakable so much
of human life. As Wittgenstein's friend and colleague Frank Ramsey put it,
"What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either."
It was this carefully-delineated sense of what a logical language can properly express that
influenced members of the Vienna Circle in their formulation of the principles of logical
positivism. Wittgenstein himself supposed that there was nothing left for philosophers to
do. True to this conviction, he abandoned the discipline for nearly a decade.

New Directions

By the time Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1928, however, he had begun to

question the truth of his earlier pronouncements. The problem with logical analysis is that
it demands too much precision, both in the definition of words and in the representation
of logical structure. In ordinary language, applications of a word often bear only a
"family resemblance" to each other, and a variety of grammatical forms may be used to
express the same basic thought. But under these conditions, Wittgenstein now realized,
the hope of developing an ideal formal language that accurately pictures the world is not
only impossibly difficult but also wrong-headed.

During this fertile period, Wittgenstein published nothing, but worked through his new
notions in classroom lectures. Students who witnessed these presentations tried to convey
both the style and the content in their shared notes, which were later published as The
Blue and Brown Books (1958). G.E. Moore also sat in on Wittgenstein's lectures during
the early thirties and later published a summary of his own copious notes. What appears
in these partial records is the emergence of a new conception of philosophy.

The picture theory of meaning and logical atomism are untenable, Wittgenstein now
maintained, and there is no reason to hope that any better versions of these basic positions
will ever come along. Claims to have achieved a correct, final analysis of language are
invariably mistaken. Since philosophical problems arise from the intellectual
bewilderment induced by the misuse of language, the only way to resolve them is to use
examples from ordinary language to deflate the pretensions of traditional thought. The
only legitimate role for philosophy, then, is as a kind of therapy—a remedy for the
bewitchment of human thought by philosophical language. Careful attention to the actual
usage of ordinary language should help avoid the conceptual confusions that give rise to
traditional difficulties.

Language as Game

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On this conception of the philosophical enterprise, the vagueness of ordinary usage is not
a problem to be eliminated but rather the source of linguistic riches. It is misleading even
to attempt to fix the meaning of particular expressions by linking them referentially to
things in the world. The meaning of a word or phrase or proposition is nothing other than
the set of (informal) rules governing the use of the expression in actual life.

Like the rules of a game, Wittgenstein argued, these rules for the use of ordinary language
are neither right nor wrong, neither true nor false: they are merely useful for the particular
applications in which we apply them. The members of any community—cost
accountants, college students, or rap musicians, for example—develop ways of speaking
that serve their needs as a group, and these constitute the language-game (Moore's notes
refer to the "system" of language) they employ. Human beings at large constitute a
greater community within which similar, though more widely-shared, language-games
get played. Although there is little to be said in general about language as a whole,
therefore, it may often be fruitful to consider in detail the ways in which particular
portions of the language are used.

Even the fundamental truths of arithmetic, Wittgenstein now supposed, are nothing more
than relatively stable ways of playing a particular language-game. This account rejects
both logicist and intuitionist views of mathematics in favor of a normative conception of
its use. 2 + 3 = 5 is nothing other than a way we have collectively decided to speak and
write, a handy, shared language-game. The point once more is merely to clarify the way
we use ordinary language about numbers.

Pain and Private Language

One application of the new analytic technique that Wittgenstein himself worked out
appears in several connected sections of the posthumously-published Philosophical
Investigations (1953). In discussions of the concept of "understanding," traditional
philosophers tended to suppose that the operation of the human mind involves the
continuous operation of an inner or mental process of pure thinking. But Wittgenstein
pointed out that if we did indeed have private inner experiences, it would be possible to
represent them in a corresponding language. On detailed examination, however, he
concluded that the very notion of such a private language is utterly nonsensical.

If any of my experiences were entirely private, then the pain that I feel would surely be
among them. Yet other people commonly are said to know when I am in pain. Indeed,
 Wittgenstein pointed out that I would never have learned the meaning of the word
"pain" without the aid of other people, none of whom have access to the supposed
private sensations of pain that I feel. For the word "pain" to have any meaning at
all presupposes some sort of external verification, a set of criteria for its correct
application, and they must be accessible to others as well as to myself. Thus, the
traditional way of speaking about pain needs to be abandoned altogether.

Notice that exactly the same kind of argument will work with respect to every other
attempt to speak about our supposedly inner experiences. There is no systematic way to
coordinate the use of words that express sensations of any kind with the actual sensations
that are supposed to occur within myself and other agents. Wittgenstein proposed that we
imagine that each human being carries a tiny box whose contents is observed only by its
owner: even if we all agree to use the word "beetle" to refer to what is in the box, there is
no way to establish a non-linguistic similarity between the contents of my own box and
that of anyone else's. Just so, the use of language for pains or other sensations can only be
associated successfully with dispositions to behave in certain ways. Pain is whatever
makes someone (including me) writhe and groan.

History of Philosophy
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©1998-2002 Garth Kemerling.

Last modified 27 October 2001.
Questions, comments, and suggestions may be sent to:
the Contact Page.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951)

Raised in a prominent Viennese family, Ludwig

Wittgenstein studied engineering in Germany and Life and Works
England, but became interested in the foundations of . . Picture Theory
mathematics and pursued philosophical studies with . . Fact and Value
Moore at Cambridge before entering the Austrian army . . New Methods
during World War I. The notebooks he kept as a soldier . . Language Games
became the basis for his Tractatus, which later earned . . Private Language
him a doctorate and exerted a lasting influence on the Bibliography
philosophers of the Vienna circle. After giving away Internet Sources
his inherited fortune, working as a village
schoolteacher in Austria, and designing his sister's Vienna home, Wittgenstein
returned to Cambridge, where he developed a new conception of the philosophical
task. His impassioned teaching during this period influenced a new generation of
philosophers, who tried to capture it in The Blue and Brown Books (dictated 1933-
35). From the late 'thirties, Wittgenstein himself began writing the materials
which would be published only after his death.

In the cryptic Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung (Tractatus Logico-

Philosophicus) (1922), extended Russell's notion of logical analysis by describing
a world composed of facts, pictured by thoughts, which are in turn expressed by
the propositions of a logically structured language. On this view, atomic sentences
express the basic data of sense experience, while the analytic propositions of logic
and mathematics are merely formal tautologies. Anything else is literally
nonsense, which Wittgenstein regarded as an attempt to speak about what cannot
be said. Metaphysics and ethics, he supposed, transcend the limits of human
language. Even the propositions of the Tractatus itself are of merely temporary
use, like that of a ladder one can discard after having climbed up it: they serve
only as useful reminders of the boundaries of our linguistic ability. This work
provided the philosophical principles upon which the logical positivists relied in
their development of a narrowly anti-metaphysical standpoint. the earlier
Wittgenstein

But just as his theories began to transform twentieth-century philosophy,

Wittgenstein himself became convinced that they were mistaken in demanding an
excessive precision from human expressions. The work eventually published in
the Philosophical Investigations (1953) pursued an different path. In ordinary
language, he now supposed, the meaning of words is more loosely aligned with
their use in a variety of particular "language games."Direct reference is only one
of many ways in which our linguistic activity may function, and the picturing of
reality is often incidental to its success. Belief that language can perfectly capture
reality is a kind of bewitchment, Wittgenstein now proposed. Thus, philosophy is
properly a therapeutic activity, employed to relieve the puzzlement generated by
(philosophical) misuses of ordinary language. philosophical tradition erred in
supposing that simple reports of subjective individual experience are primary
sources for human knowledge. Efforts to employ a private language as
expressions of interior mental states, for example, Wittgenstein argued to be an
avoidable mistake that had caused great difficulties in the philosophy of mind. His
views on this issue were a significant influence on Ryle and others. In his later
work, Wittgenstein applied this method of analysis to philosophical problems
related to epistemology, mathematics, and ethics.
Recommended Reading:

Primary sources:

 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Schriften, ed. by Friedrich (Prices May Change)

Waismann (Suhrkamp, 1960- ) Privacy Information
 Wittgenstein Reader, ed. by Anthony Kenny
(Blackwell, 1994) {Order from Amazon.com}
 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-1916, ed. by
G. E. M. Anscombe and George H. Von Wright Wittgenstein
(Chicago, 1984) {Order from Amazon.com} on Rules
an...
 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico- Saul Kripke
Philosophicus, ed. by D. F. Pears (Routledge, 1981) New $17.50!
Used $10.00!
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 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books
(Harpercollins, 1986) {Order from Amazon.com}
 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr.
by G. E. M. Anscombe (Prentice Hall, 1999) {Order Routledge
Philosophy
from Amazon.com} Gui...
Marie
 Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty / Über McGinn
Gewissheit, ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe and G .H. Von New $18.95!
Used $7.94!
Wright (Harpercollins, 1986) {Order from Amazon.com}
 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of
Mathematics, ed. by Rush Rhees and G. E. M.
Anscombe (MIT, 1983) {Order from Amazon.com}
Wittgenstein
Reader
Secondary sources: Anthony
Kenny
New $31.95!
 P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein (Routledge, 1999) Used $15.00!
{Order from Amazon.com}
 Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private
Language (Harvard, 1984) {Order from Amazon.com}
 Marie McGinn, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein'
Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations s Poker
David
(Routledge, 1997) {Order from Amazon.com} Edmonds
New $11.16!
 The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. by Used $3.93!
Hans D. Sluga (Cambridge, 1996) {Order from
Amazon.com}
 Joachim Schulte, Wittgenstein: An Introduction, tr. by
John F. Holley and William H. Brenner (SUNY,
The Claim of
1992) {Order from Amazon.com} Reason
 Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius Stanley
Cavell
(Penguin, 1991) {Order from Amazon.com} New $24.95!
 Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy. ed. by Used $14.97!

James C. Klagge (Cambridge, 2001) {Order from

Amazon.com} A
Companion
  A. C. Grayling, Wittgenstein (Oxford, 1988) {Order to
Wittgenst...
from Amazon.com} Max Black
 Ilham Dilman, Wittgenstein's Copernican Revolution: New $28.95!

The Question of Linguistic Idealism (Palgrave, 2002)

{Order from Amazon.com}
 Matthew B. Ostrow, Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A
Dialectical Interpretation (Cambridge, 2002) {Order
from Amazon.com}
 P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Connections and
Controversies (Oxford, 2001) {Order from Amazon.com}
 Pasquale Frascolla, Wittgenstein's Philosophy of
Mathematics (Routledge, 2001) {Order from
Amazon.com};
 Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts, ed. by Richard Allen and
Malcolm Turvey (Routledge, 2001) {Order from Amazon.com}

w ittgenstein philosop

Additional on-line information about Wittgenstein includes:

 The outstanding guide (in German) from * Deutsche Ludwig Wittgenstein

Gesellschaft.
 Articles in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on:
o Wittgenstein by Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar.
o private language by Stewart Candlish.
 Duncan J. Richter's thorough article in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
 The University of Bergen's The Wittgenstein Archives.
  The article in the Columbia Encyclopedia at Bartleby.com.
 The thorough collection of resources at EpistemeLinks.com.
 Jean Laberge's article (in French) at Encéphi.
 Björn Christensson's brief guide to on-line resources.
 A philosophical biography from Uwe Wiedemann.
 Robert Sarkissian's summary treatment of Wittgenstein's philosophy.
 A personal tribute from Screaming Chimp Productions.
 An article by Tadeusz Zawidzki in The Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind.
 Andy Blunden's biography of Wittgenstein.
 A brief biography from Österreich-Lexikon.
 Discussion of Wittgenstein's mathematical significance from Mathematical
MacTutor.
 The entry at Biography.com.

©1997-2002 Garth Kemerling.

Last modified 7 August 2002.
Questions, comments, and suggestions may be sent to: the Contact

Wittgenstein's language games

Explanations > Behaviours > Games > Wittgenstein's language games

The game | Three games | So what?

Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. Like many
others, he discovered that language is surprisingly deep...

The game

Wittgenstein, in his early positivist work, saw sentences as pictures of the world. He later
came to the view that language is, in fact, a series of games that are played out, each with
its own rules.

He saw philosophical problems as coming not from the real world, but from language
itself. Our concepts define our experience which we understand only through words.

Lyotard took it further, noting that it even goes down into detail, and each type of
utterance can be defined in terms of its rules.
The rules do not carry their own legitimisation with them. They are objects of a contract
between the players (which may or may not be explicit).

One way in which Wittgenstein's language games are played in when scientists seek to
gain notoriety and fame through adoption of the theories that they either support or have
derived themselves.

Games thus ebb and flow across scientific communities, where rules state that you should
not only be able to support your own ideas but also show how competing ideas are false.

The effect of this is the rather alarming prospect that science is not so much scientific as
linguistic and social. Science also tries to be the only game in town, declaring false
anything that does not follow its rules.

Three games

Lyotard identified several games that are played, including:

The denotative game

Where the focus is on what is true or false. This is a simple scientific game, where facts
are all that count.

Note that denotative meaning is simple and with a single meaning, whilst connotative
meaning is complex, deep and individualised.

The prescriptive game

Where the focus is on good and bad, just and unjust. This implies the use of values,
which are more social than the denotative facts.

The technical game

Where the focus is on what is efficient or inefficient. This is more factual, although
values may be included.

So what?
Look into everyday language that people are speaking. See the games within the language
itself that the speakers do not even realize that they are playing.

If you are arguing with a scientist, play the denotative game. Talk about facts, truth and
falsehood (and avoid emotional arguments and considerations of good and bad).
See also

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell

Lyotard, J-F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: