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Criticism of Meaning as Use

Query: criticism of Wittgenstein's use theory of meaning.

But it isn't a theory if by 'theory' we mean a speculative hypothesis about what something truly is, e.g. about what the meaning of language truly is. When the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus asks what the logic of our language is, it asks a metaphysical question, namely "Where does the limit of language meaning really lie, outside which language is nonsense?"

Wittgenstein's question

What is the answer to Wittgenstein's question, "Words are only spoken sounds, marks on paper, and so what gives those sounds or marks meaning?" That is (logically, not historically) the first question of philosophy.

Two possible answers - The first

The historical Socrates, Saint Augustine, and the TLP: "words are names, and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for". We use words to talk about those things, it is the nature of those things that is the meaning of language, and the interest of logic-philosophy. In other words, if you want to know what the meaning of a word = name is, look at the thing the word names: that thing is the word's true meaning (Socrates' logic of language).

That appears one possible answer to Wittgenstein's question, although it also appears to be a naive picture of language meaning, for how do we learn the nature of things? and how do we know whether of not we have learned it? We learn, so it is said, by a mysterious process of abstracting their essences, and this regardless of whether those things are tangible or abstract (which are named by common names?), and regardless of whether we can state in words what those essences are.

Two objections - The first

"... and how do we know whether or not we have learned the nature of some thing?" In philosophy there is the Socratic standard for knowing, namely being able to explain what we know to others (To 'explain' means to put what we think we know into words that can be put to the tests of public experience and reason, cross-questioned both by ourselves and by our companions); and contrariwise if we are unable to explain what we think we know, then we don't know it.

The nature of some thing = what some thing's name names = the meaning of a word. But if we cannot put into words what we know, then how is our companion to know whether we mean the same thing by that word or not? A meaning so nebulous is only a shadow, an illusion of a meaning. It is not objective -- i.e. publicly verifiable -- and therefore it is not what we call 'knowledge'. It is not what I have called a "logic of language".

Two objections - The second

Is it phenomena that give their meaning to words, as Plato thought. Or is it words that give meaning to phenomena, as Kant thought? (Not bare words, of course, not spoken sounds or marks on paper -- but 'rules for using words' = 'concepts'.)

In other words, do phenomena determine concepts or do concepts define = set limits to the extent of -- phenomena. Phenomena in themselves are nebulous -- they are percepts without concepts, in Kant's jargon -- and percepts without concepts are blind: percepts cannot set limits to concepts, because percepts = phenomena do not as it were exist before they are defined into existence by concepts. Concepts set the limits to phenomena; concepts say what the phenomena are -- not vice versa.

"There are many ways to slice a pie" -- concepts say how the pie is/is to be sliced.

In Plato's dialogs about what the true nature of love, or knowledge, or virtue, or justice is, the one thing that is clear -- is that we are talking without knowing what we are talking about. Plato's questions are irresolvable so long as we presume that things give meaning to concepts rather than that concepts give meaning to things.

Where does a name, which is a label, that lassos an abstraction -- affix itself to the abstraction like a collar to a cat? Well, of course it does not: the lasso is not made of rope but of rules that define the borders that wall in abstraction.

Two possible answers - The second

Philosophical Investigations: "the meaning of a word is its use in the language".

Or rather, one particular meaning of a word is "its use in the language" (PI § 43), because there are many other meanings of the word 'meaning' in our language. But the one particular meaning Wittgenstein chose was chosen so that language meaning in philosophy would be public and therefore objective.

A word's use in the language is explained by the rules governing its use (or "grammar", both syntactic and semantic). In other words, 'language meaning' is defined as 'the rules for using a word'.

Wittgenstein's later work does not speculate about what the true meaning of language is ... nor could it, because the metaphysical notion 'real meaning' has no meaning -- unless the first answer to Wittgenstein's question is the true one. (Do you imagine that there must be a true meaning of the word 'meaning', and that all other meanings of that word are false?)

It's not possible to understand Wittgenstein's later work without understanding the difference between metaphysical and comparative principles. (Comparative principles belong to a "logic of language" rather than to a "a theory of meaning".) Without this understanding you will try to understand Wittgenstein's work as if it were philosophy done in the old way, which it isn't You will be trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.

Rules of a game comparison and consequent first criticism

Wittgenstein's later work begins with a selected definition of the word 'meaning', one that is best explained by comparing language use to playing a game: if the game is played according to the rules, a move in the game has meaning in the game; similarly, if word is used according to the rules of language ("grammar" in Wittgenstein's jargon), then the word has meaning in the language.

First criticism

From which comparison comes the first criticism of Wittgenstein's metaphor, namely that although many, indeed most games are played according to strict rules (Most concepts do not have well-marked boundaries, because their boundaries are not well-marked), for the most part we do not follow strict rules when using the words of our language. And so wherein lies the usefulness of the comparison? The basic answer is that comparisons draw our attention not only to similarities but also to dissimilarities, and that seeing dissimilarities, e.g. that the borders of concepts, unlike the rules of games, are seldom well-defined (and that in language use syntactic analogies -- unlike mathematical analogies, if maths is compared to a game -- are more often false than true), is very important for the understanding of philosophical problems. [A second criticism, not easily answered]

Logic of meaning versus Theory of meaning

A selected definition of a word is not a theory of meaning; it is a logic of meaning ("Logic is the study of everything subject to rules"). Definitions are rules for the use of words. "Nominal definition" (based on the notion that "words are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the word names, which may be an object, an essence, or vague idea") is part of logic, and has been at least since Aristotle.

Logic does not make hypotheses about what the meaning of language really is, but only describes the various things we call -- i.e. ways we use the word -- 'meaning'. There are many meanings of the word 'meaning' in our language -- besides the one chosen by Wittgenstein for his later work in philosophy. And Wittgenstein's meaning of 'meaning' was not arbitrarily chosen, of course, but was chosen because it makes an objective distinction between sense and nonsense by means of rules of grammar (BB p. 65").

Tilt at windmills, not pinwheels. Philosophers and Sophists

Note that Wittgenstein wrote that "the meaning of a word is its use in the language". An academic look at "the meaning is use doctrine" which ask a question like whether "reading the old man to sleep is a use of language" is thoughtless and silly. When studying philosophy it is important to go directly to the original source, namely in this case to Wittgenstein's writing and not get entangled in the scribblings of the sophists (the university professors, the professional philosophers).

Do I say the same things the "academic authorities" say? I don't know: I haven't read them in forty years, and those I read at that time left a very bad impression: philosophy done in the old way: vague (with few definitions of words or examples to make their meaning clear), mixing verbal and real definitions up all over the place, being oblivious to that distinction, classifying Wittgenstein's work as belonging to this or that ill-defined category, (Russell's "a linguistic philosophy", as if the conceptions of philosophy of A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, and J.L. Austin weren't very different from Wittgenstein's), etc., the traditional "fog and filthy air" of the professional philosophers.

'Logic' DEF.= 'the study of rules'

Rules are not statements of fact, although the same proposition may be used to state a rule and to also state a fact about what we actually do with the words of our language, as e.g. 'The word 'cat' is the common name of a class of animals' -- that proposition both states a rule and is a true description of the English language. But rules in themselves are not statements of fact.

The difficulty here is not to explain something complex but to explain something simple, a simple change in point of view -- but a change so fundamental as to be difficult to understand. (It may be compared, maybe helpfully, to a radical Gestalt shift.)

Wittgenstein chose a particular meaning of 'meaning' (a particular definition of the word 'meaning') -- why? Because the meaning of 'meaning' Wittgenstein chose makes an objective distinction (public and therefore testable) between language with meaning and language without meaning. (That distinction is what I am calling a "logic of language" as in Wittgenstein's Logic of Language.)

There are many meanings of the word 'meaning'. In choosing one, Wittgenstein did not invent a theory about the essence of language meaning -- as if he were trying to say what the true meaning of language is. Criticism of Wittgenstein's "meaning is use" which presumes that he did this, completely misunderstands his work in philosophy.

Wittgenstein's comparisons

In explaining what he meant by the word 'use' here, Wittgenstein made comparisons (A is like B in such and such way, not A is really B. Does it make anything clearer to call a comparison a theory?) For example, language is like a tool-chest, and words are like individual tools; the meaning of a word is the work it is used to do in the language. Another comparison: using a word is like playing a game ("language game"), following rules that are more or less strict; a word is used the way a game piece is used (PI § 108).

"Questions that are not" - Second criticism

How then shall "meaning is use" be criticized? One way would be to ask whether the meaning of 'meaning' Wittgenstein chose does indeed do the work he wants it to do in philosophy, namely make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense in philosophy -- or whether it merely sets an arbitrary limit to philosophical discussion, a limit which has the consequence that most traditional problems of philosophy, including the eternal questions, are not problems at all, but mere nonsense ("sound without sense").

The philosopher says: Look at things this way! (CV p. 61)

Every way of thinking is all right as long as it isn't stupid. (Wittgenstein to Sraffa in 1935)

But, on the other hand, the limit Wittgenstein set wasn't arbitrarily set. For if there is no distinction in philosophy between language with meaning and language without meaning, then what becomes of philosophy? That is the very question that troubled Plato (Parmenides 135a-c). But is Wittgenstein's solution the only one possible?

Topics on this page ...

Notes: many of the remarks on this page are first-blush and philosophically stupid. My more considered views are found in the Introduction to the site and Description of the Elements of Wittgenstein's logic of language.

Words that follow 'Query' were Internet searches that were directed to the wrong pages of this Web site. They suggested thoughts to me that I have written down here.

The distinction between sense and nonsense is called "logic of language" on this site.

Words and Things. Are all words the names of real things?

Are all words names of things such as objects and phenomena, regardless whether those things are perceptible or abstract? And if words are names of things, then are those things real, existent things?

"Theaetetus-flies"

Query: Wittgenstein. Socrates, for when we think about something we must think about something real.

Query: are our words meaningless if the thing to which they refer does not exist?

About the statement 'Theaetetus flies', Plato asks, But what if there is no Theaetetus Sophist 263a? If 'the meaning' = 'the thing named or stood for' ("a logos", i.e. proposition, "is a combination of names" (Theaetetus 202b)), then, because there is nothing for the name 'Theaetetus' to stand for (because no one bearing the name 'Theaetetus' exists), 'Theaetetus flies' must be a meaningless (mere sound without sense).

Wittgenstein: be struck by this, that "Thought can be of what is not the case" (PI § 95). Plato, on the contrary, invents "logical form" (in contrast to "apparent form") to show that not it cannot be (Sophist 237a); it can only be of what is different from what exist, not of what does not exist ("is not the case").

No birds were flying overhead -- There were no birds to fly. (Lewis Carroll)

It seems that the query's assertion is absurd, that "The meaning of a word is the thing the word names" cannot be a correct definition of the word 'meaning' as we normally use that word. (Wittgenstein's looks at the proposition 'Mr. N.N. is dead': It is Mr. N.N. not the meaning of 'Mr. N.N.' that has died, i.e. ceased to exist.)

Theaetetus flies.
Time flies.

Alexius Meinong (1853-1921)

Do I understand Meinong's thought? I've no idea. I have read that he is talking, not about ontology (i.e. about what exists independently of thought), but of necessities of thought only. But he says that if gold mountains and square circles did not exist, we could not even deny that the propositions 'There is a gold mountain' and 'There is a round square' were true. Or maybe he says something very different.

Whatever can be imagined -- i.e. described, regardless of whether it exists or has ever existed independently of the description -- is called a "logical possibility" (in contrast to a "real possibility"). Now, 'gold mountain' names a logical possibility whereas 'square circle' does not. Why? Because 'square circle' is nothing more than an undefined combination of words, i.e. nonsense, and even God cannot imagine nonsense (because there is nothing to imagine; on the other hand, maybe in the mind of God the Platonic Forms 'square' and 'circle' can be blended (Sophist 252e), despite that not being possible for the logic-limited human mind; but that is a remark about the concept 'God', not about the proposition 'There is no round square'). In contrast, although no such mountain exists, we can describe what it would be like if a gold mountain did exist. In logic, 'nonsense' ≠ 'fanciful' but 'logically impossible'.

[Why is the proposition 'There is a square circle' logically impossible? Is it because there is a contradiction in form? No, it is because there is a contradiction in rules, and that contradiction makes this proposition, not false, but nonsense. (So a contradiction can have at least three values -- because a contradiction in form need not be as well a contradiction in sense; it may even be true.) And a contradiction in rules need not have the form of a contradiction (although it may be rewritten to give it that form). As in this case, the proposition 'Figure A is a circle, and figure A is a square' is not a contradiction in form. Nonetheless, just as the proposition 'There is a round square' is also a contradiction that does not have the form of a contradiction, the proposition 'Figure A is a circle, and figure A is a square' is a contradiction.]

And so Meinong does not so far as I can see explain how it is possible to think nonsense, e.g. the combination of words 'There is a square circle', in order to say that there is no such thing. But Meinong too is struck by the need to explain how "Thought can be of what is not the case".

"If elves did not exist, you could not deny that they exist." (Does that mean: if you could not describe what it would be like if elves did exist? "To imagine anything it to imagine something real, existent, not unreal, nonexistent.") Could you say that statement is from the psychological point of view, in contrast to the logical point of view? But is it clear what 'psychological point of view' is going to mean here? "Logic describes language (rules for using words), whereas psychology (phenomenology) describes inner experience (i.e. experience possibly independent of external-to-thought reality). "Psychologically ..." (No, I don't understand this.)

Theaetetus 189a

Socrates to Theaetetus: "And if someone thinks mustn't he think something?" -- Th.: "Yes, he must." -- Soc.: "And if he thinks something, mustn't it be something real?" -- Th.: "Apparently." (Theaetetus 189a quoted in PI § 518)

When we say ... that his art is a practice of deception, shall we be saying that, as an effect of his art, our mind thinks what is false ...? ... [and] by false thinking, thinking things that are not? ... Does that mean thinking ... that things that are not in any way, in some way are? (Plato, Sophist 240d-e, tr. Cornford)

Dreams are thoughts of what is not. If Theaetetus dreams that he flies, his "mind thinks what is false", but mustn't thinking what is false be thinking "that things that are not in any way, in some way are"? Then does Theaetetus "in some way" fly?

Must round squares in some sense exist? And if they do not exist, then how can we talk about them, for would we not then be talking about nothing? And yet the combination of words 'round square' is not meaningless in every sense of 'meaning'.

Why is it so difficult to get hold of this question in the way Plato did? Is it because Wittgenstein has shown the way out of this conundrum -- i.e. by his method of asking about how we use language rather than for its "meaning" (if by 'meaning' is meant "the object a word stands for"). Because then it will be clear to us that all words are not names of objects (not of any kind of objects whether "physical" or "abstract"). The combination of words 'round square' e.g. is not the name of anything (either of anything possible nor "impossible" ["what is not in any way"]).

Does that answer Plato's question? Only if we are willing to break with Plato's picture of words as names. [When Plato speaks of "names" and "verbs" as the two parts of speech necessary for the construction of a proposition (Sophist 261d ff.), he takes verbs to be the names of actions. (But if that is so, then 'to be' names an action; thus to exist is an act [Gilson insists that this is so, saying that this is the greatest insight of metaphysics: "the act of being is, within every being, the act of acts"]. Wittgenstein: "so long as there is a verb 'to be' which seems to function like the verbs 'to eat' and 'to drink'" we will suffer from philosophical -- that is "grammatical" -- confusion; we do not fail to understand the logic of our language because we are stupid, but because language suggests false paths for us to follow.)]

Related: "the map is not the territory". No, but neither is the meaning of the map the territory. Otherwise a map to which no territory corresponded (e.g. the map of Claudius Ptolemy [fl. 127-48 A.D.] showing an imagined land link between Africa and China)would be meaningless. -- Of course, we could define the word 'meaningless' as 'a sign to which nothing corresponds'; but that definition might not be too useful, because then, would we not have to speak of meaningless language (such as Ptolemy's map) which nonetheless has meaning? [But nonsense that can convey meaning is not nonsense. Would it be helpful to call the so-called eternal questions without answers "nonsensical questions"?]

Query: nonsensical questions.

Well, this is it: Are the unanswerable questions (unsolvable riddles or quandaries) of our life nonsense? For if they are, then our fundamental view of existence is not even built on sand. Indeed, Wittgenstein called those questions "buildings of air", "houses of cards" (PI § 118).

Assign a meaning to the question before you try to answer it

Query: is religion a language game?

If by 'language game' we mean a part of speech, such as color-words, number-words, and many others, then is there a religion-word part of speech? (Wittgenstein used the expression "superstitious words" to classify 'ghost' and 'spirit'). On the other hand, we might mean: Is it useful to regard religion as a collection of related (cf. "family resemblances" [Wittgenstein: "And I shall say: games form a family", or, more clearly: By the word 'game' we mean a category of things that resemble one another in various ways, neither one, nor all, nor several of which ways is defining of that category (or, class of objects)]) language-games? (That requires some discussion: Religion and language-games.) However, I have to say that the combination of words 'Is religion a language game?' has no clear meaning and that, again and again in philosophy: Define the question before you try to answer it.

Query: Socrates related principle; is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty?

Is the meaning of the expression 'absolute certainty' clear to you? Are you asking whether there are propositions which cannot possibly be false? But what kind of "impossibility" would that be? What sort of propositions are "logically necessary"? Or are you asking whether there are any beliefs about which it is impossible for you to be mistaken? But again, what kind of "impossibility" would that be? See Real versus Logical Possibility, where 'real' means 'empirical' or 'experiential'. "The kind of certainty is the kind of language-game" (Philosophical Investigations ii, xi, p. 224e). For example, the propositions of mathematics have the force of a system of rules behind them [cf. chess], not the force of experience. However, my certainty that I have never been very far above the surface of the earth (Moore) has the force of experience behind it, not the force of logic. Again, it is not obvious what meaning the combination of words 'absolute certainty' might have. Often in philosophy if you define your question you also answer it (and sometimes the answer will be that your question has no clear meaning).

Query: Wittgenstein, is it appropriate to call a pattern of language use a game?

If you define 'appropriate', you may find a way to answer your own question. (The expression 'pattern of language use' is nice; cf. patterns of behavior ("forms of life").) The answer may be that sometimes that is a useful comparison to make, but not always. Sometimes there is an analogy to be made, but not always -- nor in all ways: a comparison must note similarities and dissimilarities.

Query: Tolstoy's theory that science is meaningless.

That should suggest just how many meanings there are of the word 'meaning' (and 'meaningless') -- not just the one Wittgenstein chose for his logic of language. (Again, Wittgenstein's work is not Philosophy of Language.) In the query 'meaningless' means 'of no importance', 'of no value' or 'of no help' e.g., not that it is nonsense ("sound without sense"). Tolstoy might have meant e.g. that the solution to the riddle of life's meaning is not to be found in scientific knowledge or theory (in which case 'meaningless' = 'of no significance').

There are also many meanings of the word 'theory' in common usage. By 'Tolstoy's theory' may be meant 'view' or 'idea' or 'notion' or 'conception', or perhaps 'motto' or 'policy' or, as uneducated people, say 'philosophy'. But by 'theory' may also be meant that Tolstoy may be right or wrong about science; others thinkers have different theories (about the path to happiness or salvation). Do you think that what 'theory' might mean in this particular case must have been clear to the person who wrote this query? When we ask philosophical questions we are often lost, looking for even God doesn't know what. [In metaphysics 'theory' often means that something is really what it does not appear to be.]

The one correct interpretation versus various possible interpretations

Query: meaning of the short story The Country of the Blind by Wells.

That is yet another 'meaning' of the word 'meaning' that has nothing to do with conventions for using words (or "grammar" in Wittgenstein's jargon). In the query 'meaning' means something like 'the correct interpretation'.

Edward Shanks wrote that Wells' story is a myth than can be interpreted in many different ways ("a myth with all its subtly shifting possibilities of interpretation"). In my Postscript to Fable of The Born-Blind-People I understood Wells' myth "The Country of the Blind" differently than Wells intended it to be understood (I mistook his "meaning"; I incorrectly "interpreted" his intention); because as I have since discovered Wells regarded his story as a political myth or parable rather than as a "form of life" myth. (Wells later even added bits of story or political commentary, none of which I have read, to the original story of 1904.)

The meaning (i.e. common usage) of the word 'interpretation' here is 'a way of looking at' or 'a way of understanding' -- one out of many possible ways perhaps. Whereas Wells intended (meant) his story to be read as a parable about political or ideological conformity, I read it as a parable about a basis of linguistic conformity.

Query: why is metaphysics philosophical nonsense?

Before asking why we must ask if (The conclusion comes at the end of an investigation, not at its beginning). The first question to ask: Is metaphysics nonsense or is it other things as well? But that requires definitions of the words 'metaphysics' and 'nonsense' -- i.e. that the question be refined, given a definite sense. [Wittgenstein's eccentric definition of 'nonsense' in the TLP.] Of course, once that is done -- and in this case "definition" will involve giving examples rather than talking in generalities -- the question will be answered. [A vague question can only yield a vague answer. In such cases we use the expression 'in some sense' e.g.]

Query: metaphysical vocabulary, meaningless pseudo-problem.
Query: metaphysics is philosophical nonsense.

Of course some metaphysics is meaningless language -- but that is hardly unique to metaphysics. This would not be a definition in the Platonic-Socratic sense, which according to Aristotle includes what distinguishes this (i.e. metaphysical) type of nonsense from all other types of nonsense. [The word 'pseudo' means: a problem in appearance only. We should be very wary of generalizations [statements claiming universal applicability] in philosophy. Those do tend to be nonsense. Is "the riddle of existence" a pseudo-problem?]

"Philosophical nonsense". Are there different kinds of nonsense? If there are many meanings of 'meaning', then wouldn't there be as well many meanings of 'meaningless'? In logic-of-language philosophy 'nonsense' = 'undefined language' (sound without sense) ... but that is only Wittgenstein's selected sense of 'nonsense' (Wittgenstein's jargon). I would not call metaphysics, in general, nonsense, although many metaphysical propositions are demonstrably the result of a failure to understand the logic of our language [e.g. see Gilson's "the act of being" above, Heraclitus when he says that all things are in flux and none at rest, and Descartes when he presumes that he can privatize our common language without its losing its meaning]. But metaphysics is certainly not necessarily -- i.e. of logical necessity -- nonsense. A word-picture is not nonsense solely because it is not a picture of anything found in experience (i.e. because it is unverifiable).

But on the other hand, by 'nonsense' people sometimes mean 'foolishness' or an 'idle waste of time and breath'. I would never call metaphysics that. Even if metaphysics is a mistake -- and that would have to be demonstrated in each particular case -- it is a mistake from which there is a tremendous lot to learn. (Of course, I would not have said that when I was a young student.)

Grammar without Rules ("any description of the use of language")

Query: are there rules for beauty?

Does the word 'beauty' have a grammar? -- Are there semantic rules for using that word? But are those necessarily the same questions -- i.e. does 'grammar' = 'rules' in the jargon of Wittgenstein? Wittgenstein told G.E. Moore that he meant by the word 'grammar': "any explanation of the use of language". Need such an explanation consist of rules? Wittgenstein wrote in another context:

... it is a language without grammar, you couldn't say what its rules are. (Culture and Value (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 137 88b: 4.11.1948])

If we cannot explain the use of a word -- if we cannot give an account of that to others -- then isn't that what we mean by calling the word 'nonsense'?

Question: if someone does not learn to use the word 'beautiful' when he acquires language as a child, will he ever learn to use it? What kind of possibility would that be? Is the word 'beautiful' what might be called a reaction- or response-word -- i.e. when we learn to use that word, mustn't we at the same time learn -- or be trained (by hearing the aesthetic judgments of others) -- to respond in such-and-such ways? Compare the word 'ouch'; -- even someone who has never experienced pain might nonetheless describe the circumstances in which people use that word: he would a least know that it was an appropriate exclamation if a person banged his knee or elbow. Of course, we would want to say: even if he does describe when that word is used, he nonetheless does not appreciate why anyone says 'ouch' [the point of this language-game]; he understands, but he does not understand. And we might say the same about 'beautiful'. [I earlier asked and tried to answer the question: Is 'beautiful' a word without a grammar?

Rather than say "It's a language without a grammar; you couldn't say what its rules are", it would be better -- i.e. clearer -- to simply say that it is a language without rules. Otherwise it sounds as if you were suggesting that there really were rules, but we just couldn't say what they are, because they are somehow hidden from view [but nothing is hidden in logic]. That sounds too much like the "theory of abstraction": it is like saying that there "really" is an essence even when no one can say what it is; it simply must be there. (The only "must" here is the necessity imposed by a preconception.)

There are many meanings of the word 'grammar', but I think the one Wittgenstein, according to Moore selected, is the most useful one to logic-of-language. Because an explanation of meaning does not have to be given in the form of rules; there are other techniques. [Using 'grammar' in Wittgenstein's sense (jargon), the expressions 'logical grammar' and 'semantic grammar' are pleonasms.]

However, "Are there rules for beauty?" might be taken in other ways [senses]. For example. You might think that if all art had a common nature, then if we could identify that nature we would have a fail-safe [fool-proof] set of rules for creating works of art. In Plato's Euthyphro Socrates asks for a standard of judgment. Do I know whether there is a common nature? No, I don't. I would have to undertake a grammatical investigation to find out. And it would be an empirical investigation.

Socrates "had the skill to draw his argument from facts" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers ii, 29).

However, according to Wittgenstein, in the cases we have to deal with in philosophy, we do not need to discover new facts, but instead to "arrange what we already know" (PI § 109). What we know are a vast number of facts about the language we speak and the circumstances in which we speak it (cf. Play-acted definitions). However, unless we have learned to think about the logic of our language, we are unable to give an account of what gives our language its meaning (Just try to define the word 'hope' e.g.). That is, the facts are in plain view, but we do not see their significance. Wittgenstein, however, believed that he had, and what he saw I have called his "logic of language" and have tried to describe-explain in my Synopsis.

God grant the philosopher insight into what lies in front of everyone's eyes. (CV p. 63 [MS 135 103 c: 27.7.1947])

Apparently the Greek sculptors did make rules for carving beautiful female bodies (Let us take the Greek word 'beautiful' in our sense of 'handsome' rather than in their additional sense of 'fit for its purpose'). But a formula in aesthetics does not work like a formula in mathematics -- that is, it does not always give the correct result, if, that is, that something beautiful is the result we want. That just is the grammar of the word 'beautiful' (Saying that "there are no rules" for the application of that word is the same as saying that its application is not "objective"; "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a grammatical remark). Nonetheless, there are some rules even in this case, e.g. we children do not learn to apply the word 'beautiful' by taking a vote; the possibility of disagreement belongs essentially to it grammar.

A tribe might be described who presumed that, just as there are grammatical rules [cf. legislative law] for applying words, there are also natural laws for applying words. And thus if someone did not agree with the aesthetic judgments of the majority he would be regarded as aesthetically defective and put to death. But if we describe such a tribe, are we undertaking a grammatical investigation? ("To imagine a language-game is to imagine a form of life.")

Query: redefinition, game, Wittgenstein.

It strikes me that it was Plato, following Socrates, who "redefined" the word 'game' (not Wittgenstein [see the grammar of 'game' and family resemblances]) -- by demanding an essence (defining common nature) for the things we call 'games'. It's more as if Wittgenstein returned to "primitive Christianity" -- i.e. without the accretions [if there really is such a thing, and if that's the word I want: like barnacles attaching themselves to a ship's hull] of the Christian Church -- i.e. to look at language without the requirements [prerequisites, preconditions] that certain Greek philosophers had made [and which, consequently, later were taken for granted by everyone].

Query: when did Wittgenstein suggest language games?
Query: Wittgenstein, word games.

I actually don't know. That idea does appear in The Blue Book. But I'm not sure that I should have written on that page: "In dictation to his students [in 1933-1934], Wittgenstein gave his earliest account." All I should have said is that it is the earliest I know of.

Norman Malcolm wrote that, looking at a soccer match it occurred to Wittgenstein that "we play games with words" (Memoir 2e p. 55) and in Malcolm's view this is the origin of the concept 'language-games', which is Wittgenstein's jargon (Anscombe's translation added the hyphen, maybe, to indicate-emphasize that it is jargon: the hyphen is not found in Wittgenstein's Blue Book [The book was dictated in English; the German word is Sprachspiel]). And it seemed significant to Wittgenstein that when a ball is thrown it sometimes isn't caught: soccer players sometimes miss passes: they "get their signals crossed" -- i.e. we do not always understand what is said to us. When comparing using language to playing games, this is important to remember. One might say that a move in chess cannot be misunderstood -- but "we do not normally use language according to fixed rules", certainly not according to rules as fixed as those of chess.

However, when we talk of "word games", however, normally (i.e. when not using jargon) we mean either actual games or instances of deception ("You are playing with words" rather than using them as tools to do their accustomed work). With respect to Moore's list of things he claims to know (e.g. I know that this is a hand, that I have never been very far from the earth's surface) Wittgenstein told Malcolm that rather than denying Moore's claim (as if it were false -- i.e. claiming instead that Moore does not know), it would be better to say that in Moore's examples the word 'know' has "no clear meaning" (ibid. p. 70, 72).

Did Wittgenstein mean, however, that Moore's was not a use of language at all -- i.e. that it was nonsense? If I use a screwdriver to do the work of a chisel, I am misusing the screwdriver because I may very easily damage its head, making it useless to do the work a screwdriver is designed to do; however, if I twirl the screwdriver over my head the way I might a key on a string, I am not misusing the screwdriver -- instead, I am not using it at all (that is, I am not using it to do any work as a tool). I do not know if that analogy is a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein's metaphor or not. However, we might say that the analog of using a screwdriver to do the work of a chisel would be using a word in a way that was not in accord with its established use. Wittgenstein gave the example of 'infra-red light' which we might say is a misuse of the word 'light'. So in Moore's case, I think Wittgenstein meant that: it is not clear whether Moore is using our word 'know' to do any work or not (although he is not using that word the way we normally do use it).

The Limits of the Method of Language Games

Note: this continues the discussion Religion and Language-games: Is Wittgenstein's method -- because that's what it is -- of language-games useful for understanding religious language and religion?

Query: language as language-games. Wittgenstein notes.

But is that how Wittgenstein always looks at philosophy, as a collection of topics (e.g. in aesthetics he does not) that are best understood by means of comparing language as it is used in them to the playing of games (as in language-games)? I thought: that was not his method in the Philosophy of Religion; was I correct? "I shall think of you after my death, if that should be possible" (LC p. 53). -- Is that statement a move in a language-game? What would saying that it is make clearer? -- "My normal technique of [understanding] language leaves me [i.e. breaks down, fails me]" (ibid. p. 55). -- Now what is this "normal technique" if not the method of language-games? "I shall think of you ..." -- Well, is that nonsense? No, it is what Wittgenstein has called a "picture" (This seems one of his most useful insights: "a picture held us captive" [PI § 115], etc. [We make for ourselves pictures that mirror no facts (~TLP 2.1)]) -- i.e. not every statement is an hypothesis. What is the language-game here? Well, there isn't one. Wittgenstein: "I would not say: If a man [who believes in the Last Judgment] said he dreamt it would happen tomorrow, would he take his coat? (LC ii, p. 62) -- Asking that would be the "normal language-game".

Query: what are Wittgenstein's religion games?

Well, we know they are not normal language-games if verification of whether someone believes is not logically possible, as in Wittgenstein's example: we can't test whether someone believes the world will end today by asking if he takes his coat or locks his door or pays his electric bill (cf. 'I believe it will rain tomorrow' -- tomorrow does he take his umbrella?) And so why does that man say he believes the world will end tomorrow, for he does not use the word 'believe' as we normally do? In Wittgenstein's view of religious language, it is not because that man is making a conceptual blunder (i.e. doesn't know the rules of the game) -- no, "for a blunder, that's too big" (LC p. 61-62).

The point of comparing the use of language to a game played according to rules is to make the meaning of language -- i.e. the rules for its use -- clear. There are everyday (normal) language-games with the phrase 'I shall think of you' and others with 'after my death', but not with the two combined into 'I shall think of you after my death'. If we try to imagine (invent) a language-game with that combination of words, what would its rules be -- i.e. how would we know if anyone were playing that game correctly or not? 'After my death, I intend to ...' is, as we normally use the phrase 'I intend to', nonsense; cf. 'Is there life after death?' as we normally use the word 'death'. '... if that be possible' is not hypothetical because a propositional hypothesis can be put to the test (verified or falsified). 'I shall think of you ...' That picture would have to fit into a person's view of life, their religious view (for it seems to be a religious picture) of life. Except in a negative way, the game method of comparison is not useful here. There is no transaction.

Criticism of "Meaning as Use"

Note: this continues the discussion of the nature of Wittgenstein's principles, and it is in that particular context that the expression "meaning as use" may be clearer (Wittgenstein's comparisons in contrast to Archimedes' principle of displacement).

Query: problems with Wittgenstein's meaning is usage theory.

The word 'theory' suggests Wittgenstein's work seen from the perspective of Russell's idea of philosophy as a quasi-science. As if Wittgenstein had suggested a philosophical theory (hypothesis) about the essence of language meaning -- as if the word 'meaning' were the name of an obscure phenomenon of some sort ("the phenomenon of thought").

By 'usage' Wittgenstein meant language as a custom or institution, as in the case of the names of emotions. Maybe, then, the query is about "Wittgenstein's meaning is use theory".

One possible source of confusion about "For a large class of cases, though not for all, the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (PI § 43) is that, although it is a comparison -- namely, "We use words like we use tools" -- 'The meaning of a word is its use in the language' has the form of a statement-of-fact (a proposition that can be true or false).

A rule -- or, in this case, a method in philosophy -- may also be stated in the form of a statement of fact. For example, Wittgenstein's rule "Ask for the use rather than the meaning (i.e. use Wittgenstein's selected meaning of 'meaning')" can be rewritten "The meaning of a word is its use in the particular case, rather than an essence (its meaning) that the word retains in all contexts". And that this possibility misleads us is shown by the confusion in philosophy between factual and conceptual investigations (Z § 458), as between real and verbal definitions of words. For example, is it clear to us whether Wittgenstein is making a statement of fact (thesis) or if Wittgenstein is making a rule: is he "defining a thing" (meaning) or defining a word ('meaning')?

Every proposition looks like a statement of fact -- but Wittgenstein said, No, meaning is not a matter of form but of use in the language: "What do we actually do with this language?" That is what you must ask if you want to know the meaning of the language.

Ask yourself, Is it possible to falsify Wittgenstein's assertion? How? -- wouldn't it have to be by showing that Wittgenstein's comparison is fruitless, that contrary to what Wittgenstein wrote, (1) "our words cannot be compared to tools in a way that (dis)solves philosophical problems", and (2) "our use of language cannot be compared to playing games in a way that makes the meaning of our language clear"? In that sense, and only in that sense, Wittgenstein's comparison (A is like B in such-and-such ways) is a thesis that must be put to the test of Socratic cross-questioning. (But that is the nature of all philosophy.)

What does "For a large class of cases ... the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (PI § 43) contrast with? With for instance the alternative view that all words are names and the meaning of name is the object the name stands for; that object is the essence named by the word, regardless of whether the object is tangible or "abstract".

Notes: "... though not for all". Common names don't normally belong to the class of words whose meaning = use in the language. For examples, we explain the meaning of the word 'cow' by pointing at cows or pictures or drawings of cows: "We call things like this and this cows" -- not by stating what the common nature of things called by the name 'cow' is. [Of course, we could always say that the use of the word 'cow' in the language is to be the common name of cows: That would be to use name-of-object as a part of speech.]

But if not all words are names, then how is the meaning of non-names to be stated? An example of this would be to ask what use we make of the word 'this', which is not a name-of-object word but instead a pointing-out-word ("demonstrative pronoun").

The rule "A noun is the name of a person, place, or (any)thing (and everything else)" belongs to syntax, not to language meaning. Not all nouns are names.

If we ask for the use in the language -- i.e. for the specific meaning of 'meaning' Wittgenstein chose -- that will make clear to us what should be obvious to us, but is not, namely that not all words are names of objects, e.g. the words 'idea' and 'elf' are not (It is superstition that whispers again and again to us that they are).

The Philosophers of Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment

He possessed a strong sense of responsibility toward those who have gone before, bequeathing us our culture and civilization, and toward those who will follow us, to whom we must hand on what we have both received and worked to improve. (Professor Kataoka, who knew Nagai Takashi, said this about him; quoted in Glynn, A Song for Nagasaki (1988), xxix)

If my forehead were higher, my work better, that is what I would like to say about these philosophical pages, that they remember the great men to whom we owe what is most worth having in life -- the philosophers of ancient Greece who invented the ideas we call 'the art of reasoning' (logic, criticism), the standards (1) of investigation by the natural light of reason alone, and (2) of the method of Socratic cross-questioning (because philosophy must be put into words: we must be able to explain and defend what we know to others), and freedom of conscience and 'free speech' (Plato, Gorgias 461d-462a).

The period [c. 495-322 B.C.] which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death of Aristotle is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself or with reference to the effect which it has produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the world. (Percy Bysshe Shelley, "On the Manners of the Ancients", quoted by R.W. Livingstone, editor, in The Legacy of Greece (Oxford, 1924) (p. 251), quoted by Durant in Life of Greece (1939), xi, p. 245, 690n1 ... although Thales of Miletus was born c. 636 B.C. and Zeno of Citium did not die until 264 B.C.)

The ancient Greek philosophers, and their European counterparts of the Aufklärung ("The Enlightenment") who invented the ideas we call 'religious tolerance' [freedom of conscience], 'the rights of man' [unalienable human rights, freedom from slavery, freedom from torture], 'natural evidence against superstition' [rejection of the notions like sorcery, auguries, the burning of witches], and 'international law' [a trans-national view of mankind, which was the Roman Stoic idea 'common humanity'], are the foundation Western Civilization has bequeathed us -- a far greater gift even than its music (from Corelli to Bach to R. Strauss) and Classical and Renaissance art and architecture [which is, I think, saying something which Wittgenstein would certainly not have said, in contrast to Albert Schweitzer's view of the Enlightenment (Civilization and Ethics (1929), viii, p. 95-96)]

By both Protagoras and Socrates we are taught that if we want to understand, we must question everything, even what is most dear to us. The natural light of reason is the friend of truth, not its enemy. (Rebellion rather than acceptance is characteristic of Western, philosophical man.)

An inscription that could be placed over the door of the school of philosophy: No one enters here except through the school of humility (Epictetus' exhortation to philosophy). Here the word 'humility' = 'self-knowledge' = 'the Socratic distinction between what I know and what I only think I know (but do not)'. "Confess thine ignorance", although it comes from a religious text [sc. The Imitation of Christ], is the best introduction to philosophy, and of course it is an earnest restatement of Socrates. The "examined life" means: the life of self-criticism. "Confess thine ignorance" = "Know thyself", although of course this is impossible for the vain man (Apology 21c-d), for the closed-minded man, for the pretentious man, in a word, for the man who thinks he knows what he does not know -- i.e. for all mankind.

Without Greece, Rome and Europe there would be no schools, no libraries, no hospitals or foundling homes, no universities, no philosophy or science, no Gregorian Calendar, no architecture in the West, no Christianity (because the Gospel according to Luke is, unlike Matthew, a thoroughgoingly Hellenistic-Jewish document -- The Christianity of the gospels is a profound and fundamental revision of Judaism: it would be impossible to argue that the God Jesus describes as the loving Father of all human beings is the same as the Yahweh who is an exclusivist tribal god who revels in war and demands even genocide of his chosen people; Christianity is neither like the roots nor the trunk of the Old Testament tree, but rather like its new leaves that have been nourished by a new earth, new water, and a new sun --), no Roman Stoic concept 'common humanity' and 'universal human rights', no freedom of individual conscience, no democratic ideal, and for many places (Africa and the Americas), there would be no written language and sometimes no sense of time or history. In other words, in my view, Western Civilization's culture has given the world everything that is most worth having, except those things that are gifts that no man can give.

The limit of Schweitzer's vision (I think)

Albert Schweitzer, in contrast, seems to have had no appreciation either of the Classical or the Middle Ages, both of which he dismisses. As he saw it, everything worthwhile Western Civilization has to offer is the product of the Enlightenment, in which was born, Schweitzer believed, the application of reason to all things. But the thoroughgoing application of natural reason began with the Greeks, especially as symbolized by Socrates, and that, although it is true that some early Medieval thinkers silenced reason in the name of faith, the Italian Renaissance was not only the rebirth of Classical art but also the rebirth of Classical thought. (In any case to follow Schweitzer in deprecating the Middle Ages and the life of faith would be, regardless of whether one believes in divine revelation and providence, to severely impoverish one's understanding of history, and of human nature and what it seeks and needs.)

"What philosophy is?"

Query: Socrates claimed not to know, and that's what philosophy is.

We can say that, I think, if we understand what Socrates was talking about when he said that he did not know. Socrates' philosophical mission, according to Plato's Apology [28e, 37e], was to discover the false wisdom -- i.e. thinking one knows what one does not know -- of both himself and anyone else he discoursed with. What Socrates did know, because he had set a criterion for knowing, was that he himself was without knowledge [wisdom] (ibid. 23b) of what is most important for man to know, namely not only the general principle (for the Greek understanding of life identified this) by which man should live his life, but also what must be done in any particular case (This is why in Plato's portrait of him Socrates seeks common nature definitions of the moral virtues of piety and justice, courage, self-control). What Socrates believed he knew was that his method of question, answer and cross-question (dialectic) was the way to seek wisdom. For Socrates and all philosophers in the Socratic tradition, philosophy is seeking to know [the truth] through the thoroughgoing use of reason (In Wittgenstein's view, although certainly not in Plato's, philosophy consists entirely of ways of reasoning because there are no metaphysical theses).

Query: Socrates said, "I am not wise."
Query: Socrates said "I don't know", and that's what philosophy is.

Plato's Socrates claims to know only his own ignorance in Phaedrus 235c (cf. Diog. L. ii, 32), about which I have made a few remarks elsewhere. (But again, note that Xenophon's account of what Socrates knows, which he based on a source other than Plato, seems quite a bit different.)

Query: the beginning of wisdom is "I do not know".

The question is if that is also its end.

Other possible summaries are:

Socrates asked, How do you know? and that's what philosophy is.
Socrates asked, What do you know? and that's what philosophy is.

Socrates held that, If a man knows something, then that man can explain what he knows to others. Socrates set a criterion for saying either that someone knows or does not know (or, in other words, he selected one sense of the word 'know' for our use in philosophy, as Wittgenstein had selected one sense of the word 'meaning'). Socrates asks for an account of what one knows, and then by cross-questioning either agrees to one's thesis or refutes it by finding self-contradiction in it, and further, if a contradiction is found, he suggests a way to modify the original thesis in order to remove the contradiction.

Query: we do not know what we do not know, by Socrates.

But again, what is Socrates talking about? That we do not know -- i.e. we don't recognize -- what do not know (but nonetheless assume that we do know). It was the aim of Socrates in philosophy (although there was more to Socrates' mission than this according to W.K.C. Guthrie) to confront us with the demand to give an account of what we know, in order to test whether we know it or not. Philosophy makes us aware of things that we do not know, in despite of our stubborn [persistent] assumption that we do know them.

Query: who defined philosophy as asking of questions?

Cf. Socrates said "I don't know", and that's what philosophy is. And this query is similar, although it's not Socrates' own definition, if a definition of philosophy is what it is. But the source of both ideas is the figure of Socrates.

Query: philosophy, the rise of Christianity.

Nietzsche wrote:

Europe has gone through the school of consistent, critical thinking; Asia still does not know how to distinguish between truth and poetry, and is not conscious whether its convictions are derived from ... methodical thinking or from fantasies. (Human, All-Too-Human, 256, tr. Kaufmann)

What is not false in this assertion (Certainly Nietzsche is not talking about Confucius) is that Europe's roots spring from the Greek philosophers, and Asia's roots do not. Even Europe's religion strove to reconcile itself with Greek thought in the creation of the strange hybrid of philosophy and religion called 'Catholic theology' ("You are a Catholic. You believe in reason," a character says in Graham Greene's story). The distinction Nietzsche made is vital. Our Greek heritage is to subject everything to the test of reason: "Dare to know!" Kant wrote, which means "Dare to doubt!" Dare to question every authority both contemporary and ancient in order to see who is wise and who is not. The alternative is an eternal tutelage, or an eternal dwelling in nebulosity.

"Why are we born?"

The Greek view was that everything has its own work to perform (its own function) and therefore its own distinctive excellence (W.K.C. Guthrie. A History of Greek Philosophy iii (Cambridge: 1969) p. 442). But what then is man's function or purpose (ergon) -- what was man designed for? That question is taken up in the Catholic catechism and answered: "to love and serve God". But the Greek, or at least the Socratic answer, would be: the function of man is to be rational. (The specific excellence proper to man is: rational moral virtue.)

[I would not call Wittgenstein a great philosopher. Plato certainly, but not Wittgenstein. A great, although not perfect (or does he solve the riddle of the meaning of common names? No more or less than Ockham), logician (in his sense of the word 'logic'), that I would call Wittgenstein.]

"The Language of Percepts" is Concepts

"Do you find the fact that you might never have been born disturbing?" (Max Frisch, from memory)

Why call this a fact? Do I know that I might never have been born? This is, instead, a way of looking at things: a world without fate, e.g.

Do you think the world would exist if you did not exist? My world is unlike anyone else's: it is unique. "We agree in the language we use" ... beyond that I am not willing to say anything. If I imagine the world without me in it, I am only imagining what the world looks like through my eyes. "Objective reality" -- yes, we have a use for that expression. (cf. Appearance and Reality) Don't I think that the world exists independently of me? What are we calling "the world"? The thing in itself? "What the solipsist means is right" (TLP). That is not a claim that only I exist, but to question what it might mean to speak of "the world" independent of any particular individual's world (The sciences have an extremely limited view of the world). Even "sense datum" -- whatever that is when it's at home -- is after all my sense datum, no one else's. And if we agree in the language we use, then we have already moved beyond percepts to concepts (There is no "bare percept" language -- or what would it look like? Birdsong is not, so far as we know, language [if we are using Wittgenstein's concept 'grammar' to define 'language']).

Query: percept language.

Percept language is concepts. ['concept' = sign + rules of grammar.]

To be talked about is to have already been conceived (Goethe: "Das höchste wäre zu begreifen": The most important thing to remember is that all fact is already theory, i.e. that any fact only exists as a fact within some conceptual scheme or other, etc).

[Actually Frisch wrote "thought" rather than "fact" (tr. Skelton), if there is that distinction to be made here, because why in this particular case should anyone be disturbed by an impossibility?]

Umbrella versus Essence

The trouble with the expression "umbrella word" is that it suggests that this is not the usual case, as if words defined by essence were the usual case. I would not e.g. call the word 'game' an umbrella word, but I you could make a classification scheme of umbrella-word versus essence-word.

Moral Concepts

Note: this continues the discussion "Forms of Life".

A dog cannot steal; a human being can. So we see that our concepts 'theft' and 'possession' (in some cases) are "moral concepts" -- i.e. dependent on moral values for their meaning.

You can exercise a dog, but a dog cannot exercise.

Among my teachers in Philosophy

I received an Internet mail (I don't receive many) about my earliest Philosophy of Religion pages, to which I replied:

I would certainly count Albert Schweitzer among my teachers in philosophy as well as Wittgenstein; I think Schweitzer's ideas added [for me] much needed balance to Wittgenstein's ideas about religion [religious belief, religion as a way of life]. [They are antipodal limits: Schweitzer and Wittgenstein (although music was deeply important to both of them).]

The philosophers from whom I have most learned

Who are the philosophers who have most affected (or perhaps determined) my own thinking? The Socrates of logic-and-ethics (as distinct from Plato the metaphysician-theorist), above all in Plato's Apology and in Xenophon (at first only for the philosophical method and way of life and the demand for an account of what we know as the standard for knowing in philosophy, but then later for ethics as rational). Then two of almost equal weight, taken chronologically: (1) Ludwig Wittgenstein (for "logic", or clearer to say, using Wittgenstein's own expression as my jargon, "logic of language", but certainly not at all for his anti-rationalist world-view); and consequently (2) Albert Schweitzer (for his anti-anti-rationalist world-view). Also, I must note that a few of Immanuel Kant's ideas have affected my thinking (powerfully but only by hearsay -- and because I have given my own meaning to his words, treating them as aphorisms, only I-don't-know-how connected with their original meanings).

Beyond his general thoroughgoing rationalism, Schweitzer's writings forced me to see and to accept the distinction between critical theology (historiography) and religion. For I was much attached to the story of Jesus as being born in a stable, but now I see that the story in Luke is not history but myth. It pained me that this is so, but it was an essential lesson for the understanding. That doesn't make the story any less beautiful, but it does affect my picture of the historical Jesus (in contrast to the Jesus of religion).

On the other hand, if I regard all the miracle stories as mythic, and yet the religious picture of Jesus making the blind see, the lame walk, is nonetheless part of how I see him, then why be troubled over the nativity story? Because the birth in a stable would be a natural rather than a supernatural event. That is one way for religious myth to be distinguished from history in the Synoptic Gospels, our only source for the life of Jesus ... although if all religious myth is removed, then the natural history of Jesus' life and the response to it doesn't make sense. If all he had done was to preach the nearness of the kingdom of God and the ethics of love as the way to belong to the kingdom, would he have been regarded as anything more than a prophet?

But to religion what really happened is unimportant; only what is believed to have happened is -- i.e. religion is belief-in, not belief. And although the miracles cannot be removed from the story if the story is to make sense, given the world-picture of people in that time and place, a world-picture that made no clear distinction between natural and supernatural history (their belief in miracles and signs and dreams and divine inspiration), they could regard the entire Gospel story as being the history of Jesus' life.

The infancy and childhood narratives belong to a frame that someone has put around the Gospels. They are not part of the picture. On the other hand, how is what belongs to the picture, what to the frame, to be decided, by what criterion? And is any such criterion definitive.

Philosophers who have not affected my thinking are the Medieval thinkers (Platonism and Aristoteleanism), Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke and Hume, Hegel; I should add that pantheism is a picture that has always been repugnant to me, because the cruelty in and of the world is monstrously palpable.

"I would count ..." although there are countless others who are a profound presence in my thinking [life], even if only for a single idea expressed in a remembered saying. There are many writers I read in my youth whose ideals still affect my thoughts about life and ethics, and there are others, Dostoyevsky and E.T.A. Hoffmann e.g., whom I now regard as representatives of Romanticisms that are an obstacle to the philosophical way of life, like romantic love and desire, and "belief in", an illness of the understanding, a wound to be healed of (Kant).

The Winter Seed

What good can one do in an age whose ethical sense is underdeveloped, as is our age? Should one "shelter behind a wall" (Plato)? One can in the view of Seneca at the very least not wholly withdraw into oneself but instead serve "the great republic by working to improve the general outlook of mankind, and to hasten the coming of a new age" (Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, v, p. 58), like "the winter seed" (ibid. p. 60).

But if it comes about that the thoughts suggested by reverence for life become common among us, there will be a mode of thought [provided] which will affect us all [which will work in everybody], and spirituality will become general and active [and a spirituality aroused which will show itself in everybody]. (ibid. xxii. This is the revised translation by Mrs. Charles E.B. Russell, 3rd ed. (1946), p. 272 [Bracketed is the unrevised translation, Civilization and Ethics, xxii, 2nd ed., p. 276])

Nothing in my experience would justify Schweitzer's hope. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness knows it not. "Pop" exists because, to paraphrase R. Schumann, the populace wants the popular (It certainly doesn't incline to go "the bloody hard way", and it is easily led -- i.e. misled -- in the other direction [downwards] by politicians and the "entertainment industry" which both ruthlessly exploit it). I think that human beings are shallow because either it is our nature to be ("No one can jump higher than his own forehead"; however, I doubt whether many of us really have such low foreheads: we really don't try to jump as high as we can) or because we want to be (According to Socrates this can only be the case if someone is ignorant of the good, granted that "Virtue is Knowledge").

"The Lord is kind, and his goodness is everlasting"

He asked with something at once hopeful and hopeless in his eyes, "Do you believe that idea of Reverence for Life is gaining ground?" (Frederick Franck African Sketchbook (1961), p. 165)

He must ... feel deeply unhappy that he has underestimated the Africans surrounding him. (p. 164)

In what way, I wonder? Perhaps he should have felt unhappy that even someone who had worked at his hospital did not understand his point of view. Schweitzer rejected what Franck calls "Progress" (p. 162); when he stayed at a modern hotel in Europe he asked, "Why do I need running water in my room -- am I a fish?" Wittgenstein held the same view.

There is a danger that they [the colonial peoples] will assimilate the externals of our culture instead of what it possesses of value. (Schweitzer, "Our Task in Colonial Africa", in Joy, Arnold, The Africa of Albert Schweitzer (1948))

Schweitzer wanted Africans to be free -- but not merely 'free' in the sense of politically independent. He wanted them to be free to develop their own culture, their own African way of life; colonization had disrupted African civilization, and although, because Europe had involved Africa in the world economy, that could not be entirely undone, Schweitzer's hope was for the Africans to become self-sufficient (Remember that Schweitzer came from a farming community, a self-sufficient Alsatian village) in their own villages (which had been, and still largely was in Schweitzer's time, their way of life before the Europeans came).

What Schweitzer certainly did not want was for the Africans to ape the Western way of life, to become victims of capitalism's culture-destroying "progress" [homogeneous, anonymous consumerism, exporting raw materials to Europe while importing manufactured goods from Europe]. From Schweitzer's point of view, the Africans did not as it were need "running water"; what the Africans needed was to become themselves.

Do those who imagine that Schweitzer was a racist -- (At worst he may have extended his view of the primitive black Africans in his district to the whole of black Africa, an extension he had no right to make based, as he himself said, on his own limited experience) -- understand the man? Are they able to make any sense of his work in Africa? Schweitzer's ethic was an ethics of love, not of hate (Racism is false generalization, a pretext for denigration, which is a form of hatred). And the Christianity he preached to the Africans was not a Western Church dogma -- but a view of life that offered the Africans freedom from "nature-spirits, ancestral gods [and] fetishes", that the superstitions that filled their lives with fear should be replaced by peace [Note].

"One should have the skin of a hippo," he said abruptly and without explanation, "and the soul of an angel." (African Sketchbook, op. cit. p. 158; the skin of the hippo is two-inches thick.)

[The three of us] crossed the yard to the dining room .... The twenty people in the dining room ... became quiet and sat down. The last chair stopped scrapping ... Schweitzer's eyes quickly darted up and down the long table, then they closed. "Thank the Lord, for He is kind and His goodness is everlasting. Amen," he said quietly. (ibid. Psalm 136)

If I mean the God of Nature, then this isn't true: God is not kind, nor unkind; God does not love nor fail to love. But Schweitzer made this conceptual distinction, that if I mean God as found in the human heart, then I can say this, and it is true, that God is kind and love is everlasting.

Benedict Daswa

Primitive man does not ask what causes things, but instead who causes them, and there remain many places on earth where primitive thinking rules men's live. After the village of Mbahe suffered natural (weather) disasters some people wanted to hunt down whoever was behind these disasters, and when Benedict Daswa, a school teacher and Catholic, tried to stop them by teaching against belief in witchcraft, he was ambushed and martyred. This was in January 1990 in Limpopo province, South Africa. About Blessed Benedict Daswa, former bishop Patrick Slattery said: "he helped liberate people from internal oppression, the kind that stifles people and makes victims of jealousy and fear" (March 2015).

Unphilosophical Remarks

There is a difference between working at philosophy and pretending to work at philosophy. Thinking that does not force itself to go beneath the surface is not philosophy.

What did Socrates mean by 'to examine your life'? That you were to have a Socratic dialog with yourself, to engage in dialectic with yourself [self-criticism, self-cross-examination, self-cross-questioning]? That you were to distinguish between what you know and what you only think that you know (but do not). ["The unexamined life is not worth living"]

We human beings like to air our opinions (our point of view) -- but only when that requires no thought: "I think this, that and the other" (whatever suggests itself to me, whatever seems right). The chimpanzee is mocked for chattering, but the human being also chatters, and likes to chatter, and likes to repeat its own chatter. The difference is that the human being knows -- or ought to know -- better. The human being has philosophy.

Most of my rough draft "logic of language studies" are only me pretending to work at philosophy. They are like having a sailboat because one says one loves the sea, but keeping it in drydock: one mistakes the symbol for the reality: one deludes oneself. Remarks made from the surface -- off the top of one's head -- are not philosophy. Don't mistake the symbol for the reality, Socrates might have said.

Why do we pretend to have reasons?

If we do not have reasons, why do we use forms of expression that suggest that, -- although we haven't "explicit reasons" [cannot put our reasons into words] --, we nonetheless do have reasons? We say: "I think it likely ...", "I believe it probable ...", "I suspect it must be ..." Must I have reasons, a justification, for suspecting that something is the case -- i.e. does that belong to the grammar of 'suspect'? Sometimes we do have reasons: "Do you think he will come?" -- "I believe it unlikely, because he told me this morning that he was not feeling well." But sometimes we do not have reasons, "even if we were really to think about it": "Yes, I think so." -- "Why?" -- "I don't know; just a feeling I have." Well, is that not a "language-game" ("form of life"; cf. PI §§ 654-655; Z §§ 541-542); don't we learn to behave that way from childhood up? [But the mere existence of a language-game does not force you to participate in it; games may be foolish, ways of life may be foolish -- and that is what language-games are, ways in which we do or do not live, and games is what our language can often be compared to.] But in philosophy we must distinguish between and between: Here I have reasons; there I leave it to whatever suggests itself; here is reason, there instinct. We must not be reluctant to use the form of expression 'I guess ...' when guessing is all that we are doing.

Belief is measured by willingness to take risks (Ramsey)

If I remember aright, when Frank Ramsey spoke of 'probability', he set a standard or criterion: how much money would someone be willing to risk (wager)? "I think this proposition is probably true." One historian might say, "I will wager my reputation as a scholar." But another might say, "Opinions are likely to change; this is at present my considered [But how did you "consider" it?] opinion"; in a word: another historian might be willing to risk nothing at all, but instead "stammer ... something about tradition, intuition, an unmistakable impression, the stamp of genuineness and the like" (Schweitzer). If you don't know, then say you that don't know. If you want to add that you feel inclined to believe, say what exactly inclines you. And if you really must wildly speculate -- because that is what speculating amounts to -- then use the word 'may', as in 'It may be ...' with its inherent 'just as it may [equally well] not be'.

Ramsey on measuring belief: Is the person willing to risk money on it? And I think also such things as: Is he willing to go to prison or death for it, e.g. does he only give mouth honor to doing what is right, to freedom of inquiry (Socrates)? ["What you'll have, I'll give, and willing too; For do we must what force will have us do."]

Again, if I remember aright, and I often remember wrong, Bertrand Russell, blamed Americans for the criterion, "What is its [a given proposition's] cash value?" However, if I recall aright, it was Britons who invented capitalism of the Industrial Revolution type. (But business as "buying cheap and selling dear" -- i.e. exploitation of the buyer -- is found in Xenophon (Memorabilia iii, 7, 6, tr. Marchant), who was about 30 years old in 399 B.C.)

Query: is philosophy easy?

Newton found Euclid easy, unbearably easy ("proofs of the obvious"). I did not. A subject can be worthwhile without being easy. I would say that whether or not it will be worthwhile for you to take a course in the philosophy department will depend on "what manner of man" and thinker your professor is (or, on whether your texts are worthwhile despite your professor) as well as what manner of man you are, for although philosophy can be studied by anyone it is studied only at one's own level. As to the probability of the proposition of your finding a professor of philosophy whose teaching will be worthwhile for you being true? I would be willing to wager [This is Ramsey's definition, i.e. measure of 'belief' or 'degree of belief' by means of the concept 'probability'] in its favor US $0 at most; I wouldn't go higher.

If anyone tells you that philosophy is easy, it is someone who has never studied philosophy, regardless of what they may have done at school. No philosopher ever found philosophy easy.

Eduard Zeller's Account of Socrates

Note: this supplements the discussion Socrates' Logic of Language, of Socratic definition and ethics, of Socrates' mission in philosophy.

... know this of a truth -- that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. (Apology 41c-d, tr. Jowett)

In my Quotations from Memory I wrote: Why? Because the only evil that can happen is for a man to do evil, and a good man does not do evil. So says ethics.

The following is from: Eduard Zeller. Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy. 13th ed., rev. Nestle, tr. Palmer. (London: 1931) Chapter 27: "The Socratic Philosophy":

Socrates laid no claim to authority; he was far more occupied in teaching men to think for themselves. He made no precise formulations of doctrine (Apology 33a-b). [Note 1] It is on this account difficult to assign him a place in philosophy [He was certainly not a systematic philosopher] .... He was a "philosopher" in the original, modest sense of a man who, while recognising the limits of human knowledge, seeks after the truth (Phaedrus 278d). From a negative point of view it is certain that he rejected natural science. As positive achievements Aristotle ascribed to him the process of induction, definition and the founding of ethics. (Metaphysics 1078b; Nicomachean Ethics 1145b)

Socrates had much in common with the Sophists; first a critical attitude towards everything that seemed to be founded merely on tradition; further the chief object of his thought -- man as a knowing, active, social being; thirdly, that in his philosophic reflections he always started from experience. But he could not remain content with the subjectivity and relativity of the sophists. Behind morals he sought morality, behind prevailing law justice, in the history of existing states fixed principles for the communal life of man and behind the gods divinity. These were for him not theoretical, but practical problems which were comprehended in one question -- how to live rightly. Its answer he considered to be the condition and the guarantee of happiness (eudaemonia) for man whose most important problem is care for his soul. (Laches 185e, Gorgias 513d, 487a, 491e, 492d, 500c, 507d, 527e)

Socrates naturally thought an answer to those questions impossible without some insight into the nature of good and evil (agathon and kakon). We have to bear in mind that these two Greek words had a double sense -- a moral and a material sense -- [as in the expressions] "to do good" and "to fare well", "to do evil and "to fare ill".

The following accords with what I wrote above, although it does not entirely accord with my views. Because I disagree with Zeller's notion of "unshakeable conviction", as if this were not entirely a matter of being guided by reasons. However, if I do what I say I know is wrong, it is a case of "I say I know, but I think I know better" -- i.e. of my not having thought the thing all the way through, of my not having thoroughly cross-questioned myself, of my not "knowing myself".

Socrates was convinced that there is only one real misfortune -- to do evil and only one real happiness -- to do good. (Gorgias 470e)

Knowledge of the Good

Since no one wishes to make himself unhappy or to do harm to himself, no one is voluntarily evil. He who knows what the good is will do good. (Protagoras 351b ff., 357b ff.) By this "knowledge" he did not mean of course a purely theoretical knowledge which needed only to be learnt, but an unshakeable conviction based on the deepest insight into and realisation of what is really valuable in life, a conviction such as he himself possessed. The opposite of this "knowledge" of the good is therefore not error but self-deception.

It follows from these principles that no one should under any circumstances do wrong, not even to his enemies, and that it is better to endure any kind of suffering, even death, than to commit a wrong. Hence the moral is something unconditioned and is the same in all its forms. But it is also a strength; the good man is stronger than the evil man and the latter can therefore do him no real harm; for the only real harm is spiritual and produced only by one's own wrong doing. (Gorgias 527c-e)

It is implicit in his train of thought that no prospect of reward for virtue is held out; for doing good itself is Eudaemonia ["happiness"]. It is the great thing about the Socratic ethics that it is turned towards this world. The question of life after death he leaves open. His [ethics] is unaffected by its denial or affirmation. (Apology 40c ff.) Thus Socrates detached ethics from religion ... [Note 2]

Note 1: Philosophy as activity as opposed to philosophy as doctrine/theories.

I have not found in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations anything that seemed to me interesting .... Its positive doctrines seem to me trivial and its negative doctrines unfounded. (Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development, New York: 1959, p. 216)

The question is: are there doctrines -- either positive or negative -- in the Philosophical Investigations? I am asking for a definition. What would be an example of doctrine? Would "What has to be accepted, the given, is -- so one could say -- forms of life" (PI II, xi, p. 226c)? "The logic of our language is misunderstood"? Is "Concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind" (Kant) an example of doctrine? Or: the Pythagoreans "became convinced that the elements of numbers are the elements of everything" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 986a)? Is Plato's Socrates' "a common name names a common nature (essence)" doctrine?

What is the difference between "doctrine" and "dogma"? The absence of an open mind: the exclusion of the possibility of anomaly [falsification]? an unwillingness to revise? Is the spirit of philosophy the spirit that creates doctrines? or is it the spirit that questions doctrines (destructive criticism)? Shouldn't important distinctions be made here, e.g. between axioms and propositions (statements of fact), between propositions and preferred points of view (ways of looking at things [e.g. from the point of view of grammar and sense and nonsense])? [BACK]

Note 2:

"Is there no reward then?" Seems it to you so small a thing, and worthless, to be a good human being ...? (Epictetus, Discourses iii, 24)

But I do not see that Zeller's "thus" is justified, unless religion (religious morality) is only about rewards and punishments, but is it? Plato held that the Good should be identified with God (if Plato did hold that, which Guthrie affirms, but Gilson denies), and if one takes the view [i.e. uses the definition] that "God is good", then loving God -- i.e. loving the good -- will be an end in itself. [BACK]

The Irrational, and Rationality Gone Mad

Not all human beings use reason to reach decisions: it is not possible with all human beings to convince them by stating the reasons for and the reasons against; they will instead decide on the basis of what, after brooding, seems right to them, regardless of any arguments you may present them with. "It's there -- like our life" -- i.e. there just is a human "form of life" that is this way and that just has to be accepted [as existing, which it undoubtedly does]. That is one meaning of the word 'irrational' -- being unwilling or unable to use reason where reason is available. But another meaning of the word 'irrational' pertains to where reason is unavailable, as in the following case:

The art historian Kenneth Clark thought that the appeal of opera was precisely that it is irrational (Civilisation: a personal view (1969) p. 243), or as philosophers would, say "non-rational". When under the influence of art or love, it may seem that everything that is of value in human life is irrational. Wittgenstein may have thought that: "... all that music has meant in my life."

Rationalism as madness

When we are ill, however, how grateful we are for the rationality of a capable doctor ... although, in my experience, in many doctors this "rationality" goes far too far: I have seen doctors and nurses treating lab results and vital-sign monitors -- i.e. pieces of paper and machines -- rather than treating the human being who is lying in front of them, as if these doctors and nurses were incapable of thinking independently, trapped as it were inside -- or blinded by -- the medical theories they were taught at school. A dogmatic doctor is no more than a body mechanic, but the human machine cannot at this point in history be treated on that model. That is rationality gone mad.

How does a mother know when her child is ill? Not because she has studied medicine, but because she knows her child. Florence Nightingale says that observation is part of nursing (Notes on Nursing (1859), xiii). The mother has eyes that see, ears that hear and hands that feel --

[Wittgenstein said to Drury,] "You don't take enough notice of people's faces; it is a fault you ought to try to correct." (Recollections p. 126) "I think in some sense you don't look at people's faces closely enough." (ibid. p. 96)

-- and, of course, she sees her child every day. Medical rationality must always be balanced by this type of empiricism.

Wittgenstein approved of Drury specializing in psychiatric medicine because: "You at least know that "There are more things in Heaven and earth" etc." (ibid. p. 152). The clues to relieving human suffering -- which is the very thing that doctors [by definition] seek to do -- may not always be found in lab reports and vital-sign monitors, and it often appears to me that doctors forget this (and by Hamlet's word 'philosophy', I do not mean any technique that is in principle beyond the scope of empiricism).

[Cf. Statistics as madness: "But I only have one daughter."]

Ways of Life, and Philosophy as Definition

Query: life form, Wittgenstein, biology.

That is a very interesting query, because -- to what in which ways, if any, did Wittgenstein intend "form of life" to equal "life form"? I made a distinction between ways of life that can be chosen and those that cannot, but was I correct in doing that? What am I asking -- for the history of the German-language expression? Wittgenstein seems only to allude to something -- so for clarification it would be correct to ask: to what was Wittgenstein alluding?

When speaking to Rhees, Wittgenstein used the form of expression 'ways of life' rather than 'forms of life'. The latter is Anscombe's translation of Lebensformen. Wittgenstein's On Certainty has: "something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal" (§§ 358-359).

Metaphysics and thought-experiments

Query: a metaphysical question.

Should this be sent to A metaphysical statement may have three values (but "true" and "false" are not among them, because it cannot come into conflict with experience [otherwise we would not call it 'metaphysical']), which was where it was sent, or to Questions without answers? What do we want to call 'metaphysics'? If we want speculative theories, then we will reserve that word for the pictures that philosophers invent.

The nearest equivalent to metaphysics in philosophy is "thought experiment" in physics. The nearest equivalent physics has to metaphysics is "thought experiments".

Query: metaphysics of language.

That would be the type of theories philosophers invent about meaning: what is language's "true" or "real" meaning? We could say that the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is built on a metaphysics of language: "the essence of a proposition" -- its "general form" -- is a string of "names" mirroring a fact: This is how things stand (A "fact" is a relationship among things). When philosophers talk about the essence of meaning, that could be called "metaphysics of language".

Query: metaphysical language, does it have meaning?

Now you owe us two definitions: 'metaphysical' and 'meaning'.

Query: metaphor, logic, idea, word.

Now that is where I would say the problems of philosophy lie -- i.e. the questions that we can actually do something with, not in "space, time, and deity" (Recollections p. 99) about which philosophy knows basically and finally nothing.

"Language and thought"

Query: how does language limit the expression of our thoughts?

The forms of expression of our language which we inherit when we acquire language lay out well-worn paths, like the grooves in a gramophone disk (Z § 349) or like railroad tracks. -- It's logically possible to leave the path, but we almost never do. Custom and habit, our laziness about thinking things through -- and our lack of originality -- limit our thinking.

It is very hard "to say a new word" -- i.e. give birth to a new idea; sometimes a new form of expression is invented, but more often the "new word" is said using old forms of expression that have been given a new meaning [cf. Kierkegaard's notion that "conceptual revisions" are made by the thinkers of each generation]. But new ideas are rare [breaking out of the grooves, leaving the well-worn path, is rare]: there is no rarer creature than a philosopher; from the point of view of "limits" in mathematics, in a ratio with the total population, philosophers don't exist. [Is there a way to learn philosophy without getting any jargon involved?]

[On this topic there are notes about Narrowing the circle of thought by limiting vocabulary (George Orwell), Enlarging language to limit thought (Orwell's "slogan swallowers"), and Can language be used to limit emotion?]

The query ("language limits the expression of thought") sounds as if there were two things: language and thought, as if language were a necessary medium for thoughts (like water is for fish: where there is no water, there fish cannot go), as if we had many thoughts for which no language existed with which to express them, and that language set the limits to [or, limited] our thoughts in that way.

But that is not the case: what limits our thoughts is concept-formation (the invention of new concepts): we can always invent more "language" -- either by inventing new linguistic signs or by redefining old ones -- with which [i.e. by means of: we use language as we use tools] to express our thoughts.

Again, the way "language" -- in the sense here, not of 'bare linguistic signs' (spoken sounds, ink marks on paper) but of the 'common usage -- i.e. already defined uses -- of linguistic signs' [This is the distinction between a sign and its meaning] -- limits thoughts is found in the formulas of language [thought] that we learn and rather thoughtlessly repeat from childhood on; our thoughts stick to the "grooves", to the well worn paths, pre-laid out for us by our common language. That is the way "language limits our thinking"; not "language limits the expression of our thoughts", which is a misleading form of expression. Or, again, bare linguistic signs do not limit our thinking but instead usage (custom, habit) does.

Query: no one teaches children grammatical rules.

Syntax and natural language. (In the case of mathematics, children are taught grammatical rules.) In the beginning, it appears, children learn-acquire language by imitating (and then by following analogies, syntactic patterns), and even later only occasionally do adults correct them, e.g. to say "We were" rather than "We's" as in "We was" (a way of speaking which the child may have acquired in the playground). -- Of course, from the point of view of Wittgenstein's logic of language, "We's" serves just as well as "We were", because that logic is only concerned with the sense or meaning of language -- i.e. with the work that signs are used to do -- not with whether or not a form of expression is "proper English" (cf. CV p. 15 ("Riddles of technology"), PI § 98).

Socrates' Philosophy of Definitions

Query: Socrates, philosophy of definition.

The two-part definition according to Aristotle of 'Socratic definition' is stated in Socrates' Logic of Language. But to take the query in a different way, we really could say that Socrates' Philosophy was definition -- i.e. that his philosophical method was to seek definitions (cf. logico-philosophicus, which I take in my Preface to mean: "the philosophy of logic" (PI § 108), or, one might say "Logic philosophy" (in contrast to say Cartesian philosophy) -- i.e. looking at philosophical questions from the point of view of the logic of language).

But not as if Socrates wanted definitions for their own sake -- because for Socrates definition would lose its reason for being without his search for knowledge in ethics, "no small matter, but how to live", for those who think they know what they don't know are misled themselves and mislead others: without knowing what the good is for man, man cannot do what is good.

Wittgenstein, on the other hand, wanted "definitions", that is, grammatical clarity for its own sake -- although his investigations of language were only done for the sake of clarifying philosophical problems (PI § 109). (Engelmann's view of Wittgenstein's intent is a bit different.)

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