Wittgenstein word games

Shaun Williamson developed the Ask a Philosopher cgi script question. He did his postgraduate studies on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. So I am inclined to distinguish between the essential and the inessential in a game too. The game, one would like to say, has not only rules but also a point. Philosophical Investigations Para The point of a concept can only be characterized in general terms.

Most of our concepts are like this. I will leave you with this example:. My father was a Mining Engineer. I remember him telling me that one of the topics in mining engineering is the behaviour of heaps and formulae for describing their shape. For example, the angle that the apex of a heap of a particular material will form, e.

A heap is different from a pile, not in a vague but in a precise way, in terms of the way the constituents hold together. A heap of books is different from a pile of books.

Which still allows for indeterminate cases in between as, e. This all-too-human stupidity is deep-seated. Wittgenstein is calling attention to the ways in which, by our everyday language-games, we entrap ourselves. So he looks closely at what he is doing and saying. And there is an intense self-scrutiny in Philosophical Investigations. It is quite remarkable, questioning the ways we use language to do mundane things such as telling the time, doing sums, or hoping that someone will come.

This is not something to which we are accustomed. We can be resistant, not wanting to see things for what they are. It is a subjection of oneself to self-scrutiny, but surely only painful or humiliating for those who stand to lose from finding that they are not so clever after all.

In short, the lady doth protest too much. This is the claim that Wittgenstein is confining, ensnaring us only further within language. Wittgenstein painstakingly shows how the basis for what we use as language is provided by shifting patterns of communal activity. One arises from recognising that we can choose to see something as this, or as that.

Look at the picture, and you can see it as a duck. Look again, and you can see it as a rabbit. Because language-games are played by humans, we can notice what is going on when we see things as this, or as that.

A contemporary example is the controversy over all-male speaker events. But is it only a manel if you choose to see it that way? These examples invite us to question what we take to be given in everyday uses of language. So language usage admits contestation and change, in virtue of what it is. Marcuse, on the other hand, denies this, and even says that societal processes close the universe of discourse.

This cryptic remark might suggest that we need to play language-games differently if we are to change anything. What of this prospect? They arise through communal uses of language. Language-games, with their beguiling snares, raise a collective action problem. But this raises a further question, given how profoundly we are ensnared. It is one that Wittgenstein anticipates:. The rebels live in a state of dissatisfaction with language.

Wittgenstein said that we restrict words if we try to define them out of their context. He said: "philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday". Essentially, Wittgenstein is saying that taking language out of context renders it often useless and at the very least, hard to understand fully. He recognized that words have many different uses in different contexts. Words have meaning only in the context of a game.

Whilst watching a football soccer match, this philosophical idea occurred to Wittgenstein. If a person with no prior knowledge of football is watching a game, to him it will seem very random and meaningless.

For it to take meaning, he must first understand the rules of the game: there are two opposing sides, each has eleven players, each is trying to score against the other by putting the ball in the opposite net etc. Once he understands the overall context of the game then the men running around chasing a ball no longer seem mad but have meaning in the game. So too, concluded Wittgenstein, is it with language.

If one does not understand the context of the language and the rules that are imposed upon the specific discourse, then essentially, one cannot understand the words in their truest form.

He acknowledged that people who understand the rules of one game i. Rugby but essentially, these games are inherently different and thus to understand fully, one must understand the specific rules of that game and its differences from other games. What Wittgenstein was saying was that language only has meaning in its specific context.