Wittgenstein. The Philosophical Investigations I

welcome to contemporary philosophy my name is Marc Torres booth in this video we're gonna be discussing Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical investigations it's considering is probably sort of magnum opus of work and so he's a very very important philosopher for the 20th century but I think you're gonna enjoy it in fact you'll see here that I've constructed presentation here with the background of the city of Paris we're gonna see one of the more provocative ideas that biginsight offers is the philosophy and it's not philosophy that language should be understand as a city an ancient city that has a lot of different boroughs and streets and we're gonna see that beacon Steiner philosophical investigations really argues for a very different conception regarding language and its meaning in fact this is the first of them of a couple of videos we're gonna be doing on the new tickets kinds investigations and there's more all saying here so I guess it was just sort of jump right into it so let's just draw here here's a picture of the King's time I think of a year or two before his death he was born in 1889 in Vienna and he died in Cambridge Great Britain in 1951 a couple I just put it sort of put down here there's a great great biography about thinking Stein called the duty of treatments by Ray monk if you're interested in Deakins telling you he just didn't learning more about his life take them look at that text it's a really good read and it's also it's very interesting provocative discussions about thinking sort of what may have motivated him in his philosophy without doubt this philosopher is one of the most influential philosophers of the entire 20th century and certainly we're gonna see we look previously at frege's discussion of language we've also taken a look at who Searles discussion of logic and we're gonna see here is sort of building for franca but a very different perspective of language than franca in fact the biggest I was born in beats me a nine the answer was born in the wealthiest family or one of the wealthiest families in Austria so he's born is very very well-to-do family they were his family and his grandfather was one of the dust-filled instead could evolve Europe so he was literally born with the silver excluded as well and he in by in 1904 and his brother committed suicide in fact many a number of other people or this fittest family would commit suicide including his other brother and so there's a sort of sad streak of picking sides like his biography so many of his family sort of had the burning the suffering I did suicide in their family the big consent of self is suicidal rate bunk and his biography really focuses on this and thinks this is a sort of key way in which we can understand this time now in 1906 vehicle sentence begins to any mechanical engineering in Berlin where he got interested in Spain aeronautical engineering and a keen mind this is before life had been invented he said became very much interested and part of the race the international race to develop the first airplane I mean actually make team 10 e filed a patent for a propeller which eventually I believed by the fifties would be implemented in Camilla copters so it's quite interesting Whitney was working on his patent for a propeller he had to do a lot of mathematics and began thinking about some of the problems regarding mathematics he even started working on his own treatise in philosophy in mathematics and he started corresponding with franca and also with virtually law school 1908 he actually moved to England or to Manchester University sorry there's there's a lot of spelling errors in it today because the some reason another when I was cleaning commutation I couldn't get the computer to realize I was writing in English if I wasn't writing a German long time so I didn't catch the spelling error so my apologies but he waits he goes to Manchester University and during his years of Manchester he begins communicating with Bertrand Russell and by 1912 he had two transfers between ecology studies under Bertrand Russell within a year Bertrand Russell conceived a thickened Stein in his protege and even complained that he had nothing left to teach because time regarding mathematics were regarded logic I'm in 1913 Biggins tiny decides to give up he begins actually sort of work whose primary one of his first really primary working philosophy would see that is the Tractatus but he didn't feel like he was getting he was the Cambridge was a good atmosphere for that ironically and so he actually left and moved to Noah builds his own house and lived in the middle of the woods he began writing his book the Tractatus and the goal of the tract it is it was really to solve philosophical problems by laying bare the formal logical structure and language and they can send view is that if we can come to an understanding regarding the structure of language and the tart anus then what we can do is we can then begin to understand what sorts of problems of genuine problems of philosophy and which ones are just merely problems that are created through complications of language and he's and of course this is all has a a very detailed and specific relationship to the work of fray head in particular and also the work of Roscoe now in 1914 bacon Stein joins enlist to join the World War one excuse me party in 1914 he he joins enlist in the war in fact biggest and spent most of World War one writing the rest of the tract Amos and in fact he was eventually whole he was eventually captured he was fighting on the side of Austria including the Italian to put in a prisoner of war camp in nearly everything and then he actually remained in a prisoner of war camp took the end of the war while he was in the prisoner of war camp he finishes the Tractatus sends it to Russell and it actually gets published then Russell writes an introduction it was a sort of requirement through the publisher after the war ends in 1918 after Dickinson's released the Tractatus logico-philosophicus is published he essentially thinks that he's solved all the problems of philosophy with this book so time to move on he becomes a schoolteacher long he's a schoolteacher he's not a very good schoolteacher unfortunately and in fact he was known for boxing or heating his students and this doesn't work outlaw and he's of course to quit being a teacher he also spent some time to the architectural work none of that really works well but in the meantime this book the chart ADIS begins to really take on a lot of a lot of interesting minds get really interested and they start teaching it actually at Cambridge there's a gentleman by the name of Frank Ramsey who's a logician at Cambridge studied logically Cambridge and he becomes very very interested in the Tractatus I mean he begins to communicate with take his time particularly regarding some of the discussions he has about logical adamant something there talk a little bit about that today and eventually Ramsey asked enough questions that they can stein realizes that this fundamental there's a fundamental flaw with Dimitar tina's and it's at that time the decisive exit to return the philosophy in 1929 he actually returns to Trinity College how much time he was due to thank you they used the Tractatus in order for him to confer upon a mr. Fury's and eventually he takes on a position teaching philosophy at Cambridge University in 1940s after he has a sort of long career well long ish career at Cambridge in nineteen nineteen forty seven he resigns from Trinity College because he felt that the academic environment was just not sufficient in order to do philosophy he wasn't able to think and I'm skipping over a lot of it just keeping to take place during these years in 1949 tragically he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and only two years later he died in Cambridge so in his last words were tell him I've had a wonderful life so which is picking right now and should say that the consent is a lot I could talk about truly biography but in order to keep this video succinct I'll be I'll just sort of skip and skip off skip ahead and I won't talk too much about his his biography but it's quite interesting and he was he was a very he's a brilliant intellectual though definitely was not a normal intellectual he was he to see a gated university professor so much in fact in many ways you might say that he's an odd philosopher because he sort of spends his entire field we're trying to get rid of philosophy know one thing I didn't mention here is that is the publication of the philosophical investigations which is the book that we'll be talking about today because I actually spent a long time writing this book and then organizing it but he wasn't never fully satisfied with the way in which he was trying to organize its layout in structural you'll see that when you read it it's that there's two parts of the investigations the first part is a series of sectional remarks and then the second part is this one more regular sort of section there it's not a regular book when there's a primary thesis that's laid out and rather there's a sort of series of short remarks out of which the entire combination see through helix particular way of viewing philosophy as well as a particular that could in philosophy it was published after his death and it's been changing and shaping minds ever since so it's sort of jump in here well if some of the key works here i've already mentioned in the Tractatus logico-philosophicus which is actually a very very short book and that's also composed of a series of propositions but interestingly enough those propositions are all organized according to a structural hierarchy there's also the blue and the brown belt which is a text I recommend for new readers of Bacon's time it's actually these are the text books he literally wrote for his own students one was called the glue book because that absolute power another was called the ground book you've got a brown cover but the blue and the brown books is a nice way to introduce you to some of the key ideas they've developed more thoroughly within the investigations now we'll be focusing on the philosophical investigations which is not an easy text it altima they frequently requires multiple readings so I say read it slowly a great little helpful book that I have got here is a book here that you may play by Mary McKeon is called the rulers guide book to vickysd and philosophical investigations I haven't really pulled too much from his book for this video but it is for the helpful secondary reader to help explain some of the things they talked about it was also an 8 the final work he was writing on when he died with Colin was written was later translated and published by I think Russell Center I think I might be wrong but it is a sort of response to a famous essay delivered by GE more so but uncertainty is a very interesting tax on system all actually how we kept strictly about things sort of the textures gradually died there's also numerous other collections if you can stands work that have been published I believe there's one called philosophical clamour well-known there's a couple others but primarily the key text we think it's an extremely attractive agency the philosophical investigations there's also one of the few philosophers that really we very rarely do we see a philosopher mm sort of midway through their career sort of completely doesn't about-face and changes their perspective on language and we're going to see that with thank you so it's quite rare and quite interesting one of the things we will see it's sort of in the background here is the question of language and we've been talking about this throughout all the videos so far in this series now on the one hand with the philosophical philosophical ideas and aren't in the sorts of philosophical problems that philosophers engagement all are constituted within the medium of language so but what this means though is that what the structure of language is de facto a structural limitation for our philosophical problems as well so part of what's at stake here is if we can get a better grasp on language and understand how language itself is meaningful then maybe we'll be in a better position to assess the meaningfulness of these philosophical ideas that we encounter we've been philosophy are the ones that we philosophical overtime songs now so there's a couple key ideas to come both within today's video as well within some of the videos that are there that come along the investigations one is we're going to see the biggest and was a method of description so ultimately he's his methodology if you will is going to be to look to language and describe how it's used rather than to theorize how language operates and then to try to systematize that fear those theoretical observations and some overarching meta theory or something so bacon Stein's view is it's interesting because phenomenology if you contrast this with neutral neutrals view is we have to sort of look at how consciousness operates in describing but then it would show goes on to sort of create this big theoretical sparkler runner dinkenstein takes a similar approach except if he doesn't look at consciousness but he also isn't in the business of trying to create theoretical systems or systemic structures of philosophy and instead he simply seems to describe how language is used and this seems to in many ways dissolve some of the problems that we think we're at stake with in later so let's just call it the method of description for now the second thing that is a key idea we're going to see in today's video in particular is the notion of language games the consent is gonna argue that instead of thinking of language of some sort of hierarchical structure the way in which maybe a computer program is creating something instead let's think of language as a series of games that we play those games are all different and so the meaning of language depends upon the type of language being replayed and the type of language game depends upon the context within the meaning of why we're speaking so friends it's just give you an example think of the words soul by its soul but Plato says we have souls right so Plato uses the word soul in one way think about a priest might use the word soul in a religious format or think about the way in which a musician might be said to have soul in their music notice that the word soul and Plato's differ from the usage of it is in music and the usage of music is different than the usage of the word soul and church or by accretes so think about the word soul seems to have different senses depending upon the context of what you've spoken and here the idea is that when we can say is that the word soul has different meanings into depending upon the type of language game that's at stake or that's in play so we're going to talk about this this may be a primary key idea that's gonna come out of today's discussion also there's the notion of family resemblances and there we're gonna see that the meaningfulness of our words seems to bear resemblances in different languages in different language games but just because there's family resemblances doesn't mean that there has to be one essential meaning to something in here for instance if you're familiar with playdough and you're familiar with the Socratic dialogue of the science of Socratic mode of Investigation in which for instance Socrates will try to figure out what justice means and he'll do it by it's a wall justice in this context means this justice in this context means this justice and this other context means this and what Socrates is always trying to do sort of lace those together into one sort of pure essential definition and we're gonna see this is the exact opposite of the consensus view about how language works for him language has there's resemblances to the way we use language but that doesn't mean that there is one essential structure in fact Vica Stein suggests that we should resist that temptation the big of language as a systemic restructure and is some sort of pure hierarchy alright so you get in by the way this is what becomes is what Freya is all about trying to do is to create to uncover the systemic structure of language and the same thing with Bertrand Russell so what we see here is that in Vik instead we have a flawed philosophical rejection of philosophy itself or liver rejection of philosophical systemization instead the consent suggests a different view philosophy which were maybe the notion that philosophy could be other students therapy that is the goal of philosophy should be to create some theory of the universe the goal of philosophy should be to help us understand where we misunderstand things and so philosophy is a sort of therapy to get us to see things the way they really are another key idea we'll talk about sort of light at the end of this series is the biggest size discussion of aspect blindness which relates quite directly to his rejection of philosophical systemization and is very therapeutic philosophy so there's a couple things we're going to get to it simply excuse me so to begin we're going to start off the very beginning of the philosophical investigations begins with the quotation in Latin from the great philosopher of st. Augusta in Athletic Club's from his confessions it does confession section one number eight in which he quotes he quotes a gustin's explanation for how he learned in language Agustin said in English quote when my elder has named some object and accordingly moved towards something I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound that they uttered when they meant to play it out their attentions were showed by their bodily movements as it were the natural language of all peoples the expression of the face the play of the eyes the movement of other parts of the body and it's one of the boys which expresses our state of mind exceeding having rejecting or avoiding something thus as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences I gradually learned to understand what objects they signified and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs I used them to express my own desires in quote so they can send the kids here by essentially drawing a picture of a sort of very commonly held view look on how language works and what language is all about and this is a view that says language acquisition is developed by pointing rent and so the idea is that if you're teaching someone language you want to teach them what a tree is you point tree same tree they repeat it and so on so forth and so there's this very well we might cause a naive view of language the custom seems to set forth there and this view of there just might be called the naturalistic view of language thinking of Ning language has just a set of meaning operations and then ultimately that's what language is is a set of words and the words are two signs or symbols for the things for objects in the world and this is the viewer thoughts were saying it okay the language is seen as a set of Austin Civ definitions but it all Stan scible here means to point at something right so here's a quotation from the very first actually after Vicki's timelessness he says the individual words in language name objects sentences or combinations of such names and in this picture of layers we find the roots of the following idea that every word has a meeting and this meeting is correlated with the work it's the object for which the word stairs so this is the sort of naturalistic view of a which a big consent describes this is really one possible view regarding what languages we're gonna see it's a view that he ultimately rejects ok the next sort of thing that they can send their faces now let's think of a shopkeeper thought experiment and he wants to do is think of the thought experiment that's similar to agustín's but different right he says imagine you have five red apples but you've never seen an apple before and imagine that the way in which a person uses languages they're given a slip appearances five red apples they let's say they know what five is they can count the cardinal numbers right and so you hand your little slip of paper to a shopkeeper the shopkeeper looks up the word red and sees it through the red color okay and look over the word Apple and they say okay it's these things here and so they go and they look and they find a red apple and then they count one two three four five right and then they've gotten five red apples so in this view of language which is very close the word red is is correlated to an object read by the color and then the object the word Apple is correlated to the object Apple right so now the question is okay this is that same view of language to the customer hold and let's see if this ultimately makes sense right here's the quotation he says he the shopkeeper takes the slip he or the person takes me to slip to the shopkeeper who opens the door mark apples and he looks up the word right at the table finds a color sample it's opposite to it Danny says the series of Carlo is up towards Bob for each number he takes an Apple the same color as the sample out of the tour it is in this in similar ways than what operates with words right this is at least the agustinia view this naturalistic view of language and notice here that these type doesn't say this but notice when we looked earlier at the sign reference distinction that we saw a frigate notice that for Freya a word is treated as a sign that has a reference to an object but so notice here that the consents giving these will almost look like silly thought experiments but these thought experiments are precisely related to this side reference distinction into this fragant view of secretive wards in particular it's a big concern ask well what about the word five though it seemed like when I say five red apples in this case the shopkeeper just memorize five the word five doesn't really have any meaning except its use right it's just it doesn't refer to this that or the other does it refer to an object it seems to refer to a way of doing something counting up to five right and this will be big consents first introduction to the possibility they that may be language the meaningfulness of language isn't given in terms of the tip there being a side reference correlation but rather in terms of there being a correlation with regard to the way which we use our words we're going to see this becomes a very important thing now this means that raises for us two philosophical conceptually meaning what does it mean to have meaning and and big concern here was to suggest what he says is the primitive view of how language functions we do this IceCube uncus community perspective now let's just imagine that that listens take that and run with it and ask ourselves okay the if language is really just a set of correlational signs two objects then let's imagine a language that really fits that definition in the most primitive sense and this is where we get them follow those famous examples of the text which is the builders language we think instead imagine there's a set of buildings there's two builders builder the first builder is called a and the second pillar is called B and we can imagine that the wind builders work is one builder calls out a word and the other builder brings that object to the first building right so he says imagine these following words he a block Hitler slab beam right he calls out slab B the slide it calls out a pillar he brings the pillar and so on and so forth if the consent suggests we can imagine this obviously not as I early as a language that's the same is what we do when we use language well we might call this a complete primitive language modeled after this idea of the coordination between signs and references so the question though is is this actually appropriate to call it a language well the consensus yes in a narrow context it is a bit of enough it is a language but just to this really narrow context obviously this isn't a language in the fuller sense the way we use language when we tell jokes and communicating right poetry those uses of language are not really captured by the builders example but if we take the custody interview seriously but the builders example is a complete main is a language you know in this sort of minimal context and here he says sort of gives the example think of games and we get the first introduction to the notion of what a language gained my feet now he's gonna come later and define language games in the character to consent by the way I've realized because it misspelled but for all of you who want to comment on the misspellings I apologize but fair with in here I just do my best chair there's so you've gotten language games and so well these all being suggested imagine so in this case there's a sort of language operates like a game where the words are like pieces they get moved in the game so when those are an said slob builder B does something right so there's a sort of correlation here between what the builders say and what they do so games is an interesting way to hypothetically compare and there's a parallel to the way we play game to the what this builder a scenario looks like and one of the things that's in the edges here is that we're gonna see that there's no essence of what a game is so bird since they try to define what a game is under every condition maybe you'll say a game is something when there's a competition between two players sort of two or more players of course I can give you the example Saul there's a game and some people say well every game is for fun well and then I could say well what about for instance love games like when lovers play games with each other are those for fun what does that mean exactly or think about war games those are certainly not for fun and in fact the more examples you can give of what a game is I can always usually come up with an example of something that's not a cait something that we would call a game that doesn't fit your definition this one to be very sort of important point because ultimately that's what big instead thinks here unlike the Tractatus which is the sort of hierarchical structure of what language is biggest toy is moving here to I guess is pluralized decentralized view of language right now if we return to a gustin's view of language what we see there whoops is that language is treated like a script like an algorithm the shopkeeper has a sort of rule that they follow through now think of the way the computers do this and this is sort of maybe back that's the layer which we might have expanded now the way to think about is they want the teaching of a language the teaching of a language happens not by explaining the language not by explanation but by training right so if you want to teach someone how to use a language you don't explain how the language works you have to train them to use the words and this is where we get to the notion of the extensive teaching of words work you point to something you say the word and then a child repeats it bacon Stein suggests quote the children are brought up to perform these actions to use these words as they do so and to react in this way to the words of others so children are taught the meaning of words not by explaining what the suicide and the reference harm but by pointing using the words and then if a child used the words incorrectly to correct and accordingly now the purpose of this primitive language isn't to evoke images to purr but to perform tasks so he stick to this notion here and we stick to this notion of the pillar that's example and we're not talking about trying to make people imagine things we're talking about people knew for me tasking doing kids and this will helps biginsight introduced this concept of language games at section seven of the investigations he says quote we can also think of the whole process of using words in number two in the shopkeeper example as one of those games that mean by means of which children learn their native languages I will call these language games and was sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language game you know a little bit later he says my so called the whole consisting of language and the action to which it is woven of language game so Vicarstown is really sort of sticking here with the notion of language games has been really critical model to help us understand how the meaningfulness of language works the note is putting the game in order for game Dabney has to be played and I mean how it's played depends upon other so we see sort of two things coming either play here right is that language games require activities they require a certain type of life that you live certain types of things you have to do to plan them and also is that a language also requires other pupils we have this notion that others are also involved sort of so those are social context to language now notice then a sort of pure platonic analysis of language that says that these ideal forms and concepts we could just get to know maybe a good shape this seems to disregard then the elements of language that this notion of language games seem to be bringing into for gun biginsight gives the example of bringing about of Rosie you might think of the way which language is played there I'm assuming you played this as a kid you know you know green around the rosy pocket full n Z ashes ashes we all fall down and there's a sort of game you play and the words are part of that game and he wants to use this as a model for thinking about how language works now let's ask this next question he asked his next questions how might the builders language expand so what if we wanted to expand the language beyond simply pillars slavi block right what do we do well let's imagine it we combined the builders and the shopkeeper analogy let's have color slabs and and this sort of thing and let's also introduced the notion of there and this so imagine that the builders can save the slob goes there bright yellow slop red pillar so on and so forth so in this example we have the similarity between the builders example in the shopkeeper example where you have words which are being treated as having these extensive definitions words choose reference objects but and there's also this sort of algorithmic view if the language gets view you can see what thinking sense doing here is is developing ultimately what we might say is a reduction ad absurdum argument they would see what he's saying is the more we think through this builder scenario which me fits the model of language that a custom holds the more we'll find it doesn't actually make sense it reduces down to an absurdity that's alternative structure of his first sanction his big consent really just wants to attack the agustinia view of a was because he thinks been while Russell and Freya have very complex theories of language and other philosophers have complex great affairs he thinks that all of it ultimately boils down to this simplistic not simplistic but it is naive view of language that Agustin also holds that doesn't mean that they got it from a Gustin but Agustin becomes sort of a signpost because entire camp of philosophers who take this view of correspondence and scientists signifier in reference and so forth now let's imagine that in this expanded language of builders language they say red slab there this red slab there right what is this and there me how can you teach that ostensibly right the problem is that the pointing out of words occurs in the use of the words - and not merely in the gurney not merely in learning degrees like ask yourself can you point to something and say that and you look so sick you're sitting here right now watching this other computer work one of your computers screaming and saying that what makes the Poynting do the work of telling you what that means right notice things very difficult into that question what what is it about pointing that means that there's a sort of invisible line that stretches from my figure out to the computer screen and I'm now looking at what I say that thing there why isn't it that my finger we treat my fingers doing something else right when I say that maybe my finger could be that is everything but when I'm through what what I'm putting that right so why is it the pointing I was pointing work in a language exactly notice that there and this you can't teach that by pointing to pointing right because the pointing occurs in the use of the words itself not simply in the physical thing right we can ask one of these words signify here it looks like what they signify is use and use alone and notice that many different there's many many different uses of words in fact the uses of our words far outweigh the number of words we actually have what he says quote what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them and script and print but their application is not presented to us clearly especially when we're doing philosophy and he gives the example of when you look under the hood when you open up your hood and look at the engine underneath he says you'll see all of these little levers and gadgets and things you know plugged into each other but all of it kind of looks the same to the untrained eye you don't realize that one thing has a different use than another thing there's so many different uses it all kind of blends together you know it looks like a victim like mechanism of some sort he thinks this is what happens to us in language is that language the meaningfulness of language is ultimately derived in the use of our language but then because there's so many different uses of words we are tempted to try to simplify the meaningfulness of language into some sort of simplistic structure in other words we try to make an engine out of the parts we try to come up with some sort of universal theory that explains all uses as being similar or the same usage right he says quote when we say every word in the language signifies something we actually have said nothing whatever right that acts is not meaningful so when I say a language signify something does it really tell you anything anything right the big consent says here imagine explain the meaning of the word hammer with reference to how it tools modify each other right because one of you would be saying okay if the word doesn't signify something else refer and that's right one way to approach think instead follow you say a word signifies something else and so you have these other words like this that and whatever and for and if then all these other words that don't really have extensible definitions so maybe we can say there's two types of words there's words that have ostensive definitions like the word pen I can defy it by clinging to this and then there's other words which modify those words and so maybe what you have here is you have a system where words modify other words but all of them really is rooted down to his ostensible definitions worth every word all to the house of reference that are referred to and so a big consensus well that doesn't really make sense though because if you try to explain the word what the word hammer meant by explaining how a hammer can modify a nail and then you explain how a nail can modify a wall explain how wall can modify a house and and you just articulate a structure of language our theory of language that just points to the system of modification at the end you still don't really know what hammer means right you've sort of been pulled around in circles here so he doesn't think they just simply create a more complex system of signification will do it's not a sufficient way to deal with the table another example we can ask are the color samples also part of the language that right so go back to the five Apple example well notice that if the language the meaningfulness of the language is given in terms of the way which we used the words and we had color samples we were using then doesn't that mean that those color samples counties were and the answers yes right and that's why we have words like that so it says for instance imagine if you said does someone pronounce the word duck right the in that sense does have a sort of Austin sat definition it has a meaning but that meaning is given in terms of the cues and here's where a big incentive just really this alternate conception of what language is and we here he suggests we should think of language as a city now here's an impart of this if there's an objection potentially to someone might say okay this view that language is a set of games means that language is not complete and because has responses well what language is complete he says quote was language complete before the symbolism symbolization of chemistry and the notation of content if in content incontestable calculus were incorporated but these aren't sort of speak suburbs of our language our language may be seen as an ancient city a maze of little streets and squares of old and new houses and addictions from various periods when this surrounded by multitude of new girls with straight regular streets so big instead sort of view here is that think of language as a city that's slowly evolving and changing right and the uses of our language correspond to different time periods in which there was sort of different ways we thought about these different ways of doing things think of the word valor for instance how often do people today at least in the United States we use the word valid answer pretty much never at least I never use the word I never hear you would use the word well that word dollar does have the use of the language but that use is derived from an older a more ancient time and still a part of our language but it's to know how to use it is to recall that sort of origin to some extent so language is not complete and what is language based upon in here is a signal a key concept we assumed they would CB consent really talking much more later on is the notion of Lebensborn which is this german term for a life form arts form of life and here's the key tl12 theaters so imaginal language always requires us to imagine a form of life and so a big consents do here is that it's not like there's some structure to language and that the goal philosophies to figure it out what the ideal language is and then you know stop talking and me in our ordinary ways says no language is based upon the types of language is rooted in a to use and its use requires a certain content a certain form of life so the word valor has recalls course a certain form of life in which that would make sense the use of that word would make sense now think of the word soul where I gave that example earlier if someone says you got soul they don't mean that you have this spirit or ghost that somehow infused in your brain or your body but they mean you have a certain sort of personality a certain swagger to you right so notice that the word soul and that context refers to a different form of life then if I use the word soul in a church service and I said your soul is going to hell right that means something very different that refers to a different form of life potentially so our words are rooted into the contention full of life out of which they're used this is really critical and you can see here there what dickens tends to use he's developing a strong critique against breagan here in fact he even talks about friggin throughout the book and I'm not gonna always go into what he says that right now but here's one quotation from section 22 BigInsights has quote frege's idea that every assertion contains an assumption which is the thing that his asserted really rests on the possibility found in our language of writing every statement in the form it is asserted that such and such is the case but that is not a sentence in our language that is this kind of sense it is asserted that such and such is not the type of sentence that would make sense within the builders point of life which means that that sentence it is asserted that such as such as the case cannot be an essential view of for all language because it doesn't fit the most primitive form of language that we can imagine right so Franken what he's doing here is he's beginning to deconstruct frege's own assumption that language rest upon us word corresponding system where words have signed words or signs which refer to other objects and think here about brings discussion of function object and concept as well now there's a sort of box or footnote here at the footnote of the board section 22 is I don't know what page that is in the text actually Tom p89 if you have to say he was textured by a headphone in the boxer footnote he gives the ceiling says imagine see a picture of a boxer right and someone says boxer how are you supposed to know what boxer refers to this box are referred to this person is it a name of the person his words boxer refer to the type of athlete they are which it does because we know what a boxer is in English where does boxer referred to a certain style of training the certain way of holding one's arms does boxer refer to the idea of not shaving your chest I mean what exactly does boxer refer to you can ask yourself what assumptions polled when you look at the photo and say boxer what the assumptions are is that there's a certain form of life that corresponds to it right so we can ask well how many words and sentences are possible to language the different barbie i've must have some well my throat their keys partly to talk how many senses are possible with you have a language that's built and structured upon a theory of use rather than a theory of correspondence his answer countless many many right we can talk about giving orders obeying orders we can talk about describing an object's appearance reporting an event speculating about it then forming and testing a hypothesis play acting singing making a joke or telling one translating the language and guessing it riddles and so on and so forth in fact we can think of many many many types of language games that would change the way in which they understand the words before they'd spoken right so for instance if I tell a joke about a moth so here's a joke Decker easily amok goes into this jump over a famous comedian contender I recognize man but a mock goes into a dentist office and the moth asked the tenants the moths it sounds returned to the mocking mocking is to tell the dentist right that the bomb is very depressed it's lost its mother and father recently died it's lost his job is comprises much written over to do and so on and so forth the dentist eventually replies to the monsters well why are you here it seems like you need to see a psychologist and the boss says well I saw that the light was on right so that's a joke about loss it's a silly joke right but notice that the word moth has a certain context because I'm telling a joke right the form of life in or the context of the language game here is that of making a joke that's very different than maybe talking about moths in terms of scientific hypothesis testing but maybe I want to understand how moths fly and so I do a test I'm talking about moths in the scientific sense I have a different language game which means that my words have a sort of countless possibility there's a whole spectrum of potential uses for language so now in to do is now compare the multiplicity of language when we describe it and this big contingent says the sorts of structural theories of language we find in other works of philosophy in particular thickness that calls out his old work that retinas which sought to create an entire hierarchical structure there would be universal for all language they involved keep repeating all sides race back so you can see her well Vick instead essentially moving away from is an essentialist view of language towards a decentralized doing things I guess now Tennessee Vick instead does talk about animals and he says you know most of the time we and we noticed the animals still use language it's that means we think they don't think but really what it means is that they just don't use language and what that means is that animals don't play the language games we do and that makes sense because the animals don't have the same form of life that we do so it doesn't necessarily the animals don't think it just means that they don't know whatever it is they do if it's some sort of thinking it's a type of thinking that we could never understand thinking sad feelings he says later on the chart a state even if the line could speak we would know what it meant right so imagine if a lion walked up to it said hello right you wouldn't really know what that meant because you wouldn't know what the form of life is for a life maybe that's what a lion says right before they eat you for instance it would be nonsensical because a form of life is always an embedded element that grounds or acts as the foundation for the meaningfulness of language because that's what contextualizes the use of language so this presence here to the question of maybe what does it mean to name something and here biginsight says think of naming is something like attaching the label to something right so instead of a word instead of saying that a name refers to the essence of something think of is something that's much more arbitrary to come back right the process of naming doesn't have to clarify the meaning of the name right imagine if I say water or I say away or I say ow hello fine why is it no but those uses of words do those name objects no they don't name objects they seem to UM to refer to a type of you so type of context in which that would make sense there's right so if I say the word no that doesn't correspond to the object but it does correspond to a potential context in which I can imagine someone making a denial at something so what we see here third is is that naming is itself a type of language game right a naming cannot be just some type of ostensible tough revisionist ostensive definition you know for instance imagine teaching though the word number to someone of whether the word number is necessary in an extensive definition depends on whether without it the other person takes the definition otherwise can I win and that will depend upon the circumstances under which it's given and the person that give it to and how he takes the definition is si use that he makes it the work is defined so imagine if I'm trying to teach the word number to someone the only way I can do it is by seeing if they use the work the same way I usually say work but I don't it's not we can both point to the number two so if I say imagine if I'm trying to I always think that there was a a film that came out many years ago called Dances with Wolves and it was a Kevin Costner film sort of nineteenth-century filled about Native Americans and so on and so forth and if there's a spot word Kevin Costner plays a cowboy or a military Westerner who's trying to learn the language they're trying to teach the English language to native tribe that he's encountered in the West on the frontier appeal and the way he does it right think how would you teach the word number to someone who never heard that word before and spoke a different language if you just pointed to the number two how the person know that you're pointing to to say that maybe they might think that number meant to but that's not what you mean because number three is also number number four is a number but only way in which you can eventually come to recognize that you mean the same things is if you use the words the same way so I see is that the word number depends upon its use right and that use depends upon a certain form of life so it makes sense imagine if you're explaining how to play chess to someone so here's a rook PHS well how do you explain without what the word look means well it's you have to wouldn't necessarily explain it simply by telling someone what the rules of chess are because someone could learn the rules of chess without knowing that this piece was called a rook the back piece was called a hook right it's being it's through the use that it ultimately becomes clarified so what this means ultimately is the biggest EIN is developing a criticism against big concerns naive view of language and let's talk the naturalistic fear of language and that's the ultimate Agustin begs the question for in other words the account of language the Augustan are used work ultimately presupposes the use of language which means that it presupposes the use of language than it doesn't actually serve as an account of language right quote Agustin describes converting the human language as if as if a child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country that is as if it had already had a language only not this one or again as if the child could already speak only not yet speak and think here would need something like talk to itself right because Agustin sort of says I learned language because someone would point to something and I would repeat what they said and it someone points a on either keep that and I'll eventually begin to articulate my own desires this has this view as if this child that Agustin was in his mind he already had language and learning the language was just learning what he already had but you can see that structure cannot serve as an explanation of language because it presupposes it so this reveals a sort of philosophical lesson to us and we can ask the question here what is pointing really mean they can sense as quote because we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing to the shape we say that is spiritual or mental intellectual activity corresponds to these words well when our language suggests a body in there is none there which would like to say is a spirit so we have vacant stein actually beginning to comment on sort of mind body do listen to the idea that there's a mind and there's a body and there's a body and soul in this sort of business and what thinking sense seems to suggest here is one of the things that philosophers will do is if we can't find the offensive definition then we just create a different framework to point to that is we say that well maybe that word actually has a mental object or it's an intellectual octave or a spiritual object like Cusco might say in here a BigInsights doesn't know what you've done is you've taken a model Austin somato where every sign has to have a reference that's how that object and when you can't find an object use create one use invent one whole whole talk but this is moving beyond description into ultimately construction people so what you see here is this is a philosophical problem for Dickens time because he thinks that this is the type of problem this is the form of the problem that philosophers fall prey to and here you can think of when philosophers try to articulate a grand theory that everyone should agree then biginsight thinks that this is probably a good sign that your language has gone wrong and you have a false view of language or he wants to show how philosophers fall prey to this false key advantage now the word this might actually be the only genuine name that yes because when I say this the pointing I it becomes demonstrative in that sense and it certainly there's an interesting way in which this can only like because the word this only has its use in terms of the language gained the use of using it which means that this doesn't refer to an object it refers to use and that says it's more genuine than the word Apple where I tend to think that the word Apple refers to an object now biggest [ __ ] to the point is the thorn apple also just refers to a different type of use with Dimmick different within a specific point of life imagine if I say he's a bad apple as opposed to saying why don't you go find me six apples I'm hungry right the word Apple there it means two totally different things now here's a very famous quote of Business Times from section 38 the consensus the philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday so soon as we stop using language this is what philosophical problems begin to develop because we once we divorced though our words from their uses then that means that there is no that number one is that philosophy no longer is talking about reality as it's given but is now speculating about ideal forms of with diffuse so from philosophical problems going on it this is sort of Dickens the way in which we conceive beacon stands rejection of philosophical systems in favor of a therapeutic use of language but there are few use of philosophy I'm sorry now what happens if a word that has nothing to correspond to it whatsoever right biginsight says well it's important to note that the word meaning is being used and listening if it's used to signify the thing that corresponds to the word so meaning is not correspondence now consider what's known as the correspondence theory of truth the correspondence theory of truth is a major artifact from modern philosophy beginning really though it goes further back maybe to a guy's to invite reason further but think about big heart right big hearts view is that if you say something if I say that I'm holding a pen that statement is only true the state of affairs corresponds to it right so think here about meaning of meaning is correspondence then that's a false view that's a false picture of language if meaning is it correspondence it's use right its correspondence abuse baby you might say so he says imagine there's a proper name and maybe the name is ended right but now let's imagine that if we take this ostensive definition stuff seriously then a name would have to correspond to an object so let's imagine that something breaks down and we don't know how it corresponds so if we do so imagine there's two people who don't know this they don't know that the signs no longer having any correspondence and then they started using the word end to talk about something right maybe one builder says bring me the end slab and the other builder brings instance here is the this is the end slab but the word end let's say has lost its correspondence and then maybe these builders are using it correctly so you can ask yourself well if there's no correspondence does it mean anything well obviously to say has no meaning what that really is is to say that there's no move within the language thing not to say that there's no corresponding thing right because the meaningful this is something like the move that's possible within a leg let's think of scrabble good right so the word meaning can be defined thus the meaning of a word is its use in language this is very very important but use that for those of you studying because that here through crafts is that meaning ultimately to rot it can be reduced down to the use of language the way in which we actually use it which means that the work the meaning of a word isn't given in a dictionary it's given by the form of life out of which the words aren't themselves actually used and take place so the word this is explained by means appointed by any sort of interests me an example of that okay now here what we could do and what Dickens had done is he begins to contrast this new theory of language this theory of language games with some of the things we've seen in Plato as well as in Bertrand Russell or even in his earlier work to track tannaz now if we look to the theaetetus in Plato which is about maybe without language what we see is that for Plato of the primary element the primary unit of element for a language is innate which means that if you want to understand what her name is you have to understand what it's definition is and Plato has a theory called the method of division or as a method for this method of division where you take a name and you divide up all its contents and you find the essential thread that links them all together and then you break down each one of those sub definitions further and slowly you begin to define a whole system to update so you can take a look at Plato Plato's Socratic method effectively works in this way and this is this is the method of division I put logicians in college now this is sort of the classic approach to philosophy and in fact he thinks that Bertrand Russell does the same things that the unit of analysis for Bertrand Russell is when he calls individuals the unit of analysis for big instead in the Tractatus were objects right and for Plato their names but you can see here is that this unit of analysis all seems to presuppose this correspondence period right where the unit of analysis corresponds to something it listen is what bigot says ultimately to reject because what he's drawing our attention to is that there's a temptation in philosophy to construct a homogeneous system for meaning which is always the same beautiful called crossed entire spectrum and this brings up the problem of logical atomism now what is logical out of ism well launch of an atom is the view that language has a logical structure which rests upon irreducibly simple parts in the same way that we say that the pen is made of atoms and the atoms are you know can't be divided when we know they can be but a hidden classic atomism but an atom means know cut or something that was can't be divided so a name for Plato functions as the simple unit of analysis just like the objects function is as simple of a not unit of analysis for big concerns countenance the problem of logical animism though is what counts as being simple because the word simple itself is dependent upon us to Sun off foreign language game which precedes it that is simple means different things in different contexts look here Vic instead ask what are the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed what are the simple constituent parts of a chair the bits of wood of which it's made or they molecules or the atoms simple just means not deposit and here the point is in what sense is composite about meaning so it makes no sense at all to speak absolutely to speak absolutely as simple of the simple parts of the chair so in other words animism presupposes its own conceptual language thing so for instance if I'm talking about the simple parts of the chair if and I'm talking with the carpenter then I'm probably just talking about the bits of wood that make up the check if I'm talking about the parts of the simple parts of the chair and but I'm talking to chemists then I'm probably talking about its molecular structure right so you can see here is that the word simple itself refers to a specific type of language so that means that logical atomism basically is an example where yes were it eats its own tail right because ultimately it seems too big it's okay to question him now the BigInsights of disease is okay let's imagine it a language game for the theater TVs one where there are these sort of simple names and let's imagine here that we have simple words like our refers to read B refers to the color black G to the color green our two color red W to the color white let's imagine if you have this sentence this is a sort of sentence in this weird primitive language and it actually refers to this sort of structure here where you have nine boxes and you have two different color variation C of RR b t GG r w w there's a sentence of primary elements but now ask yourself what does does the figure contain four or nine elements that is is the element B is the element the color gram or is the element red that's in this specific spot right because notice that r1 is different from our two so you can ask yourself here even in something as simple as our our beef and a language that says our B T and W in it even in that case of the elements that it's based upon there's uh there's a lack of clarity right is the element the arrangement or is it the color it's unclear so even in the most simple rudimentary things we might make call language the problem of language games continuing to persist in other words whatever unit of a language you choose it depends upon the offer yard language game it's drawn from so there's an important question askers well what is the criteria from the state and language right when I make a mistake in language that reveals that I made a mistake in terms of understanding from language go now we're gonna see later on in the in this series of videos on Dickens time that Dickens time ultimate is going to talk about the rules that govern a language game as being something like the logical grammar for the term of the word and we can see here that when I make a mistake in language the criteria I use is misuse right I don't for instance if I'm trying to teach a language I don't know that you've misunderstood the language until you use it in a way that's mistaken so what's the criteria here again it seems to be the use now here this brains good bunch of rules we're gonna see big consent has a long discussion about the rules that we're gonna get into whether or not language is ultimate instructurecon a sort of series of rules or not what that would even need but we there are some early suggestions here this text is really part of the text where big instead says well what about rules what sorts of rules govern these language games well here realized that rule could be lots of different things there's no one way in which we can have a rule a penguin because notice that a rule not being an aid and teaching the game it might be an instrument of the game itself it might be something that's employed and that's employed and neither the teaching or the game itself nor its set down in the list of rules right so for instance imagine if you're playing Scrabble and then you get upset and you flip the board upside down and all the pieces fall in the ground someone might say you're not allowed to do that you just ended the game you might reply by saying wool it doesn't say in list of rules you're not allowed to do that right so notice here that just because even Scrabble a board game not all the rules are listed because playing the game in invokes a specific context right a specific type of use and if you're playing it flipping the board would be a type of plan so that's why so not every rule has to be written or even employed or treated eighths or even taught so you can sear the rules there's no one definition to what a rule is either which means that one learns are ruled by recognizing mistakes of others and what recognizes that someone doesn't know the rules by recognizing the mistakes of others which means that rules seem to reveal some type of behavior but be careful here because ties not argued from some sort of behaviorist theory language here but he wants to point out here that what behavior reveals is an embedded type of use and when people use it wrong they act incorrectly and this is ultimately what seems to be the basis game now there's a sort of way in which I think biggest is also attacking them a mate a classic view of language here if you take in the history of philosophy series are you looking my video series here you'll know that the Plato had an I transcendental theory curve for ideas right and he thought that ideas corresponding to these eternal forms that existed somewhere else that ultimately the philosopher would come to have knowledge and so on and so forth I mean here we can see the big consent view of language really attacks this Platonic view of language quote what the names in language signified muskie indestructible form must be possible to describe the state of affairs in which everything destructible is destroyed and this description will contain only words and what corresponds to these cannot then be destroyed for otherwise the words would have no meaning right and here if they can stand response to this type of objection by saying you can't solve off the branch upon which we're sitting right and this is a sort of anti platonic view here right and you're I have a sort of picture that's taken from the internet of a person saw in the branch of Parliament City and this ultimately is what you think that the Platonic philosophy leads us to well tonic philosophy wants to completely disregard the use of language in order to understand its transcendental eternal structure the problem is there is no use for that and so when he thinks that Plato's view of reality Boltzmann is a view which basically has disregarded it's existential soil out of which it's grown out it language can't exist in the Platonic sense so this means that every language always occurs against the backdrop of a specific type of paradigm right so for instance the language games that I play in America would be different from the type of language games than my feet Jews in England for instance you know a famous example of this is the thumbs up symbol you know in the United States it thumbs up means a good thing yeah you did a good job it's something to celebrate it's something that's a positive and affirmative Society but notice things well you may not notice but I believe in Australia this actually is a vulgar at symbol right so if you do a thumbs up people will take it very negatively right and so notice here that the use of this corresponds to a specific backdrop a certain set of conditions that people recognize and understand those conditions correspond to the form of life and they thing here than we look at his platonic forms he's indestructible of transcendental ideas these leap beyond the paradigm they go beyond their views and beyond the form of life and they seem to take us into what we might cause a geography of nonsense right and this is ultimately a big concern was going to use this term nonsense throughout his work and drop the philosophical investigations but uses it to say that nonsense is when the sense it was when our if our the sense of our word is derived from their use but we start using words in a way that doesn't have a use this is what nonsense is and this is what they can Stein thinks that philosophers do philosophers start using words in nonsensical ways I have frequently joke with my students that philosophers love to make up words and it's true philosophers are always making up words but why are they making up words this is bigness times point his philosophers are making up words because they're ultimately engaged in this type of nonsense and so ironically when people accuse philosophers of talking nonsense Lincoln Stein agrees but for very I think clear philosophical reasons now another key idea that's going to get into these fears be those with family resemblance as you'll see Lincoln signs Festus instead of thinking of the essence of a term the way Plato right or the medieval philosophers or even glycerol is an interesting thing about the essence of something big instead says there's no essence to the word justice there's only family answers between the uses of justice so instead of thinking of the essence of something think of our concepts of having family resemblances so when I used the word soul in church or I use the word soul at a concert those words have some sort of resemblance to each other but they don't have the same an essence they don't really mean the same thing and what think ensign thinks is is that when we get trapped by language as we recognizes that there's resemblances between these different uses of language and instead of recognizing that they're just resemblances what we do tend to leap to is some sort of essentialist Universalist project that wants to find the same definition for all Maywood refer all uses of the term justice this is the entire project of Plato's Republic in this for biggest time isn't it thought of methodically mistaken right that their family resemblance show us that there's changes in the way in which language and the way in which our words work and there's features that change over time right consider the word gained for instance is there a common is there a common essential definition to what all games are right no there's not right ever there's a whole variety of the uses of the word game he says don't say that there must be something common or they would not be called games but look and see whether there is anything college of the ball for if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all but you'll find similarities relationships and a whole series of them at that and to repeat don't think but look and this is very important assistance for victims time is that we have to describe our language rather than simply theorize about it so big consent doesn't want to speculate he wants to observe some people have often referred to think instead method here is a sort of anthropological of methodology for language I'm not sure I agree with that but there's something more right about that in saying he does what Plato does for instance what we find is then language is that these words in their uses similarities and they it's really a complicated network of similarities that are overlapping and criss crossing all over each other in that there is no singular unified system of language instead we have language understood as an ancient city of different eyes and this is the type of view of language that we see the biggest time is beginning to articulate in the philosophical investigations well that concludes my video for today and for this first for really the first 30 pages of the philosophical investigations or if you will - it's sort of sections 1 through 75 and philosophical investigations this is sort of the central point that think instead look together in our next video we'll continue with the philosophical investigations I'm right starting section 75 of moving forward and also what I'm hoping to do in these videos is really developed for you a nice systemic discussion of language seen from the offense perspective again it's always about showing looking rather than theorizing or speculate so this is Bank a temporary philosophy thank you very much for watching I'll see you guys I'm like ok

Channel: Mark Thorsby

Views: 9,415

Rating: 4.834197 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy, Wittgenstein, language-games, philosophy of language, contemporary philosophy

Id: 7TjOBstC83U

Length: 74min 11sec (4451 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2018