[lit-ideas] Re: Sounds right to me
- From: Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:41:16 +0000
Walter's questions about language games start from presumptions I think
Wittgenstein was at pains to preclude.
As I read Wittgenstein, the notion of 'language game' was never intended to be
a rigorously defined technical construct. It was, rather, what he seemed to
see as a suggestive image, one that invites the analyst to consider what people
are doing when they communicate, rather than focusing on what they are saying.
The notion of 'game' served, in that context, several purposes. Every game has
its rules, and every game's rules are arbitrary in an important sense. The
only answer to "Why does the knight move this way" is "because that's how
knights move." In general, adults don't expect there to be further answers.
It is a concrete illustration of his dictum that explanations stop somewhere.
Second, apart from involving human beings and having some notion of rules,
games differ so much from one another that it's hard to see makes them all
games. What exactly do cribbage and ice hockey have in common? Games bear
family resemblances to one another, and the family of games is pretty
capacious. I think Wittgenstein meant for us not to be searching for exactly
what the language game is that is under way.
Finally, the 'meaning' in a game is not to be found by examining the rules nor
even, generally, in examining how the rules constrain the choices before the
players. It is, instead, to be found in how the players interact with one
another through the actions offered by the rules -- the meaning is in what
they're doing, not in syntactic analysis the rules might offer.
Wittgenstein's referring to language games in talking about language was not, I
believe, intended as a "theory of language" or something else that could be
tested with empirical research. It was, instead, intended as a suggestive
metaphor that might lead those who caught its sense to a reconsideration of how
they think about language.
Walter's first question, as I read it, appears to presume that "language games"
are definable things, which I do not think Wittgenstein actually believed.
Walter asks: "What did W himself actually believe regarding the status of
language games for the possibility of meaning and knowledge?" Something that
can have a 'status' in this sense, is something that can be defined
independently of that status, i.e. something which can be identified and then
the status of which can be assessed. This is decidedly not what I think W was
trying to describe.
I'm not entirely sure what Walter is asking in the rest of his question. If he
was asking what connection W drew between language games and the possibility of
meaning and knowledge, I would suspect that the answer is that W in a way had
no question about whether meaning and knowledge were possible, since there are
frequent non-technical, practical circumstances in which we ask "what do you
mean?" and "how do you know?", questions which are widely accepted as
legitimate and questions which often can receive answers that the questioners
accept as legitimate. In that sense, of course meaning and knowledge are
possible, though exactly what we're calling 'possible' with that statement
might be intractably elusive, because the myriad situations in which "what do
you mean?" or "how do you know?" might legitimately be asked bear only a family
resemblance to one another.
But the bottom line is that the question I think Walter's asking has
misunderstood what Wittgenstein is doing when he talks about language games.
He is not expounding a theory of language, he is inviting attention to a facet
of what is happening when we talk about language.
So when Walter goes on to ask "What possibilities for meaning and knowledge are
there independent of the construct of language games?" I think he greatly
misses the point. The short answer to the question is "none" -- but to give
that answer is to acknowledge that the question makes sense when the entire
point of the exercise with language games has been to encourage setting aside
the sort of analysis that leads to those kinds of questions.
W goes on to ask, "Assume that human beings did not/could not engage in
language games, what would the 'meaning' of a word or statement itself mean?"
Again, the simple answer is that assuming human beings could not engage in
language games is assuming human beings have no language. The meaning of the
question seems to have been assumed away with its assumption. But more
importantly, the idea that such a question is useful is exactly what W was
calling into question.
So, in closing, I *don't* think W saw the force of the question.
Regards,
Eric Dean
Washington DC
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