In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein contrues psychological facts as patterns exhibited by `weaves' which include a person's behaviour as well as her temporal and social surroundings. Avowals, in being linguistic elements of such patterns, come to be taken as expressing psychological facts in a way that given the general liberty in pattern description, is normal with all conspicuous elements of behavioural patterns. Speakers come to be taken to express psychological facts because avowals are semantically self-predicating (which is understandable in the (...) light of the normal ways they are learnt). That avowals come to be reliable expressions of their psychological facts is anything but surprising, given normal human capacities of learning to behave in patterns; furthermore, avowals can supplement incomplete patterns and thus define them because articulated sentences add high amounts of complexity. Though not intro-evidentially descriptive, avowals can be descriptions in the way that stating one's impressions of x can be a description of x. (shrink)

An empirical case study is used here to analyze linguistic meaning as it is embedded in complex social behavior. The whole of a natural signalling system - its nonlinguistic conventions, pragmatics and semantics - is considered. Three sections analyze: the relevant conventional facts; conventional utterance meaning in terms of conventional facts; and, finally, sentence meaning in terms of conventional utterance meaning. Linguistic meaning is seen to be derived from meaningful social behavior rather than from goal-directed behavior of individuals. A number (...) of new results on pragmatic and semantic meaning are reached. (shrink)

Grundgedanke des paradigm case argument ist, Skepsis gegenüber Ansprüchen auf Tatsachenwissen durch Appell an den Sprachgebrauch zu widerlegen. Die naivsten Formen der Argumentation sind nicht schlüssig; in ihrer weiteren Verwendung und Diskussion ist sie daher in drei unterschiedHchen Richtungen modifiziert worden: durch sprachtheoretische Ergänzungen , zu ad hominem-Strategien sowie zu quasi-transzendentalphilosophischen Varianten.

This paper is on theoretical commitments involved in connecting use and meaning. Wittgenstein maintained, in his Philosophical Investigations, that meaning more or less 'is' use; and he more or less proclaimed that in philosophy, we must 'not advance any kind of theory' (PI § 109). He presented a connection between use and meaning by describing a sequence of language-games where richness of vocabularies and complexity of embedding behaviour grow simultaneously. This presentation is very impressive in the sequence of PI §§ (...) 2, 8, 15, and 21, even if it needs sympathetic touching up. If supplemented, the presentation makes a convincing case for claiming that there is a connection between use and meaning in the following sense: Within everyday, innocent talk about meanings of expressions, all questions and controversies about meanings are ultimately to be answered and to be decided by appeal to correct descriptions of the expressions' use. This may be a very modest statement of the meaning-is-use connection. However, establishing even this modest statement requires that one implicitly relies on controversial, explanatory theories from philosophy of language, as sober analysis of the sequence presented by Wittgenstein will reveal.This is not to say that the modest statement is in any way fishy. Rather, I want to remind readers of how desirable it is to restrict the interpretation of Wittgenstein's famous hostile remarks on theories to that kind of metaphysical misunderstandings of our everyday language which the context of PI § 109 is about.In (1) I characterize, by way of listing examples from the Philosophical Investigations, the area of what I think Wittgenstein regarded as innocent, everyday meaning talk, talk that is not yet infected by bad philosophy. In (2), I argue that what Wittgenstein wanted to show was that such talk is in some sense replaceable by use descriptions, i.e. by descriptions of language-games. In (3), I argue that not all kinds of language-games are relevant; in particular, those of teaching and explaining words have to be excluded. As I restrict myself to the four remaining 'primitive' language-games in PI §§ 2, 8, 15, and 21, I have to defend my approach, in (4), against Joachim Schulte's case for reading Wittgenstein's comparison of these language-games with real languages as ironical. How the invitation to regard such a language-game as a complete, primitive language should in fact be construed is a question I discuss in (5), defending my interpretation against Richard Raatzsch in particular. How increases of expressive power are brought about by increases of the use repertoires is shown by an analysis of modified versions of the language-games in question, and of alternatives thereof, in (6), (7), (8), and (9) respectively, pointing out the places where theoretical commitments enter. Section (10) sums up commitments that have emerged from a sympathetic defence of a modest reading of the meaning-and-use connection. (shrink)

There are at least two vital restrictions on setting out to construct a common language independently of any natural language: 1. Laying down rules for a common language makes use of rules for stipulating uses of words and/or for pointing at things, rules that should, in their turn, count as rules of language. 2. The classification schemes to be proposed must be learnable for men. "Ostensive definition" of predicates is no kind of definition at all, but a way of teaching, (...) and useful as such precisely because most classification systems are not learnable. So if language has a normative foundation, this is not so because its rules have been or might ideally have been reasonably laid down, but because it is governed by rules that could not possibly be all laid down in complete liberty. (shrink)

Grundgedanke des paradigm case argument ist, Skepsis gegenüber Ansprüchen auf Tatsachenwissen durch Appell an den Sprachgebrauch zu widerlegen. Die naivsten Formen der Argumentation sind nicht schlüssig; in ihrer weiteren Verwendung und Diskussion ist sie daher in drei unterschiedHchen Richtungen modifiziert worden: durch sprachtheoretische Ergänzungen (zur Rolle von Standards, Lehrbeispielen, Hinweisdefinitionen, Verwendungskriterien, semantischen Beziehungen, Unterscheidungsfunktionen), zu ad hominem-Strategien sowie zu quasi-transzendentalphilosophischen Varianten (Bedeutung impliziert Wahrheit; Sprachbenutzung impliziert Überzeugung; Sprachspielbeherrschung enthält Wissen).

In the Philosophical Investigations and later writings, Wittenstein views "I know" utterances which embed egocentric psychological clauses as affirming contextually defined authority positions rather than as knowledge claims. This view is consistent with Brian McGuinness's analysis of conscious wants in terms of their subjects. A's knowledge of mental facts about B is a capacity (Gilbert Ryle, John Watling) which is responsible for A's being prepared for B's behaviour (as accounted for by those mental facts); for one and the same person (...) this capacity would be idle except for cases where she plays a double role. (shrink)

There are at least two vital restrictions on setting out to construct a common language independently of any natural language: 1. Laying down rules for a common language makes use of rules for stipulating uses of words and/or for pointing at things, rules that should, in their turn, count as rules of language. 2. The classification schemes to be proposed must be learnable for men. "Ostensive definition" of predicates is no kind of definition at all, but a way of teaching, (...) and useful as such precisely because most classification systems are not learnable. So if language has a normative foundation, this is not so because its rules have been or might ideally have been reasonably laid down, but because it is governed by rules that could not possibly be all laid down in complete liberty. (shrink)

Grundgedanke des paradigm case argument ist, Skepsis gegenüber Ansprüchen auf Tatsachenwissen durch Appell an den Sprachgebrauch zu widerlegen. Die naivsten Formen der Argumentation sind nicht schlüssig; in ihrer weiteren Verwendung und Diskussion ist sie daher in drei unterschiedHchen Richtungen modifiziert worden: durch sprachtheoretische Ergänzungen (zur Rolle von Standards, Lehrbeispielen, Hinweisdefinitionen, Verwendungskriterien, semantischen Beziehungen, Unterscheidungsfunktionen), zu ad hominem-Strategien sowie zu quasi-transzendentalphilosophischen Varianten (Bedeutung impliziert Wahrheit; Sprachbenutzung impliziert Überzeugung; Sprachspielbeherrschung enthält Wissen).

In the Philosophical Investigations and later writings, Wittenstein views "I know" utterances which embed egocentric psychological clauses as affirming contextually defined authority positions rather than as knowledge claims. This view is consistent with Brian McGuinness's analysis of conscious wants in terms of their subjects. A's knowledge of mental facts about B is a capacity (Gilbert Ryle, John Watling) which is responsible for A's being prepared for B's behaviour (as accounted for by those mental facts); for one and the same person (...) this capacity would be idle except for cases where she plays a double role. (shrink)

Wittgensteins Philosophische Untersuchungen sind mit ihrem philosophiekritischen Feuer, ihrer aphoristischen Brillanz, ihren griffigen Bildern, ihrer argumentativen Verbissenheit zum mehrdeutig verwendbaren Kultbuch geworden, das unterschiedliche Bekenntnisse zu Aufgabe und rechtem Stil der Philosophie eint. Daruber wird leicht vergessen, dass die klare Sprache, die manifeste Ernsthaftigkeit und die gedankliche Strenge dem Leser die Aufgabe stellen, sich um ein begrundetes Textverstandnis zu bemuhen. Die Beitrage dieses Bandes zeigen, wie sehr es sich lohnt, die grossen sprachphilosophischen und anthropologischen Themen des Werkes methodisch diszipliniert zu (...) erschliessen.". (shrink)

Das einflussreichste Werk Ludwig Wittgensteins findet in diesem Kommentar eine Interpretation, die es zu einem lesbaren Buch macht. Der methodische Ansatz ist einfach: Was zahlt, ist nur der Text. Die Gesamtinterpretation beweist, dass das Werk dem selbstverstandlichen Anspruch genugt, dem Leser ohne weitere Hilfestellung seines Autors zuganglich zu sein. Von der uberwaltigenden Masse der Wittgenstein-Literatur unterscheidet sich dieser Kommentar vor allem dadurch, dass er den Wortlaut der einzelnen Stelle und ihre Einbettung in den Zusammenhang gleichermassen erschopfend zu wurdigen sucht. Es (...) gibt keine Arbeit, die mit vergleichbarer Konsequenz die Philosophischen Untersuchungen als argumentierendes Werk zu lesen versucht. Philosophische Rundschau. (shrink)