OK. That helps. I get confused because this seems to me just a matter of common sense.
Wittgenstein liked to give examples. Here is another one. The builder’s language has its place and meaning within the activity of building. “Slab” means bring me a slab. Nothing would get built if the language rather than the activity of building was not at the foundation. (no pun intended but I’ll take it)
Well put, indeed.
This, in response to Fooloso4. The world is not a thing apart from our language games. And cooking is a language game.
I agree with the first part but not the second.If it were true then whoever you are cooking for would go hungry,
The block example is the epitome of a language game. It involves building with blocks, pillars, and slabs. It shows how a language game does things with words. The expectation is that the assistant bring the right piece.
In thinking of cooking as a language game, we will no more go hungry than fail to finish the building in the slab game.
Cooking is as much a cultural, and thus linguistic, practice as is building.
To @Tom_Storm, here is the contrast mentioned previously, at work — whether the world is a separate thing about which we talk, as @Fooloso4 supposes, or a thing we construct or enact in talking about it. I accept the latter, and I think it is also the better understanding of what Wittgenstein says.
Cool. I wasn’t especially committed to the idea of “mapping” as such. I’m not sure why that word occurred to me. What I was interested in is the broader question of what language actually does for us in the course of ordinary life. Does it provide an illusion of stability? Are we in some sense confined by language? Does it reify abstractions and make them appear more solid than they are? Does it construct a workable but ultimately imprecise world that we then mistake for clarity or precision? Those are the kinds of issues I had in mind.
I can teach someone to cook by demonstration without saying anything. I can’t teach someone to cook without food and utensils.
That is either a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what I said.
PI 7. shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities
into which it is woven, a “language-game”.
You say:
Science is more than something we do with words. In the same way, building is not something we do with words. They are not armchair activities or magic spells.
What is at issue here is whether knowledge is a language-game. It is not. It is the condition for the possibility of language-games. If the builder’s assistant does not know what a slab is and what to do with it no work gets done.
Glad to hear it.
Language games are never just words; the very idea is to bring out the place of those words in the things we do.
And that knowledge is demonstrated in bringing a slab when asked; or is “to know” to have a private mental phenomena of some sort? Wittgenstein would I think reject such a beetle. Knowing just is getting the work done.
If the assistant does not know what a slab or what to do with it then he cannot bring it. Saying that he brought it demonstrates he did know. This supports my point that bringing it is conditioned upon knowing what it is and what to do with it.
Suppose it is the first day for a new assistant. He is not going to know what to do if the builder calls “slab”. He has to be trained to know what a slab is and what to do with it. This has nothing to do with having a private mental phenomena.
Then learning what a slab is, is just learning to bring the item that satisfies the builder.
What is not needed is a private bit of mind-furniture called “knowing what a slab is”. On that we agree?
We agree that what is not needed is a private bit of mind- furniture, but inventing things that it is not is not productive.
Are you now in agreement that knowledge is the condition for the possibility of language-games?
Somehow I find this confusing to me. Was he really talking about the propositions to doubt or not to doubt, or about us doubting nonsensically.
I was going to expand on my OC views further, but decided they might be better suited for their own discussion, which I’ve started here: Why “On Certainty” should be called “On Doubt”
1 Like
It’s not that clear what this might mean, if knowledge is not a bit of mind-furniture.
The assistant learns the difference between a slab and a block is by seeing the reaction of the builder when he brings a block instead of a slab. They only know the difference within the game, and so knowing is not in some way prior to the application of the words “slab” and “block”.
The mind-furniture account might have the assistant “knowing” the difference as bit of private mind-furniture, somehow prior to or outside of the game. That’s very un-Wittgenstein.
So knowing what a slab is, is not a condition of the possibility of the game, but an outcome of playing the game.
The bit about wanting to discuss certainties in this thread. Can you relate this back to the OP?
Not sure what you are asking. As in, I don’t understand “Was he really talking about the propositions to doubt or not to doubt, or about us doubting nonsensically”.
The concept of a language-game is part of a grammatical investigation. It situates the meaning of words within the context of an activity. Although the activity involves language, a language-game is an investigation of the activity only to the extent that it sheds light on the language used.
The language-game is not a description of the activity of building. Once the assistant brings the items called for the game is complete. Nothing will get built simply by bringing slabs and blocks to the builder. The builder must know what to do with them. What is done with them is not part of the builder’s language-game.
Of course it is a condition. The game cannot be played if the assistant has not learned what a block and slab are and what to do with them. Once again you bring up the red herring private mind-furniture and knowing before learning.
Yes. The sticking point is how are we to understand this:
- That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in
deed not doubted.
In order to understand this we need to get a clearer sense of what he means by scientific investigations. To this end I pointed to the following from the Tractatus:
- The world is all that is the case.
4.11 The totality of true propositions is the totality of the whole of natural science.
Wittgenstein’s use of the term ‘science’ is very broad. It means our knowledge of the world. This knowledge forms an enormous system. Hinges have there place is this system.
I think we have to take seriously Wittgenstein’s singling out of scientific investigations. After all, it is not the only place where things are not doubted. He might have said “some things are not doubted”, but that is not quite the same as certain things. Occurring between two of the three statements about hinges leads us to consider what these certain things are.
In other words, what are these hinges? I propose that among them, if not first among them, is causality. This extends far beyond the concepts and practices of science. Wittgenstein argues against scientism and the belief that everything has an explanation and that explanation is a scientific one.
It could also include our knowledge of art, people’s names, who’s dating who, the Kardashians, etc.
What is at issue is the system:
- It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone
doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now
he is doubting our whole system of evidence. It does not strike me as if this system were more
certain than a certainty within it.- “I might suppose that Napoleon never existed and is a fable, but not that the earth did not exist
150 years ago.”
We need to look at role and place that these things have in the system.
Language games are not discreet. They form a system, or a form of life, or what have you.
One of the differences between the Tractatus and the Investigations is a broadening of the list of true statements - so as to include, as @Luke points out, who is dating who and the Kardashians, whoever they are.
Defining science as the set of true statements serves only to reduce science to a useless term. Better, science is a social activity, with its own language games, and watching Kardashians is only doing science if it is done in accord with those language games - perhaps tracking behaviour in order to report on statistical patterns, or some such. If instead you are struck by the morality of their antics, you are not doing science, but ethics.
It belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are not doubted. But that also belongs to the logic of ethics, fishing and bowel movements.
@Fooloso4’s suggestion is apparently that hinge propositions apply only to scientific propositions, yet that the set of scientific propositions is the same as the set of true propositions.
My proposal is that hinges apply to all propositions, and that amongst those propositions we will find scientific propositions.
The effective difference is minimal. @Fooloso4 just used the word “science” far more broadly than I am comfortable with.
I think this line of reasoning has now gone well past its utility.
And, the idle talk of “hinges” continues. How could a taxonomy of something of which there is no agreement about what it is, ever come about?