Eric's comments are useful, as always, but although he's dead right about the assumptions underlying Walter's questions, his assimilation of language games to games is misleading. The segué from language games to games is too easily made. The initial talk about games, and their similarity to language in some broad sense, has its roots in Wittgenstein's quarrel with Frege, who had said that a concept without clear and definite boundaries is no concept at all. Wittgenstein skirmishes with this notion throughout the early sections of the Investigations (he wonders, for example, why 'Stand roughly here,' isn't a perfectly clear request).
Against Frege, he introduces the notion of games, lists their obvious differences (and similarities), and asks by what standard might they all be called games. (Talk of 'family resemblance follows this.) This invocation of games is specific to the question of the need for clear and precise boundaries—of concepts, and of the use of words.
Then there's a shift, not always noticeable, perhaps.In §84, he notes that he'd said earlier that 'the application of a word is not everywhere bounded by rules,' and goes on to ask, 'But what does a game look like that is everywhere bounded by rules? whose rules never let a doubt creep in, but stop up all the cracks where it might?'
In §83 he'd said, 'Doesn't the analogy between language and games shed light here? We can easily imagine people amusing themselves in a field with a ball so as to start various existing games , but playing many without finishing them and in between, throwing the ball aimlessly into the air, chasing someone with the ball and bombarding one another for a joke and so on. And now someone says: The whole time they are playing a ball-game and following definite rules at every throw.
'And is there not also the case where we play—and make up the rules as we go along? And there is even one where we alter them—as we go along.
One of his targets here is the view of language (as founded on rules which are themselves founded upon unalterable logic) in the Tractatus; and this is a different target from the stricture that concepts in order to be usable must be demarcated with absolute precision.
Language games. Wittgenstein introduces language games briefly in the Blue Book, and in more detail in the Brown Book. In the Brown Book they're presented as primitive elements of language out of which our complex natural languages might be constructed. (How, he does not say.)
But in the Investigations, things are different. There, language games are presented as examples (usually fanciful) stripped of the messy trappings that surround our everyday talk. They are part of the 'reminders assembled for particular purposes,' that make up his technique. Language itself (whatever that could mean) is not one vast language game. However, he does sometimes refer to 'the language game played with...,' and also remark, with respect a particular word or expression, 'This language game is played.' They are meant to be clear and to help us see things that are unclear.
He wants the simple language games he imagines to be perspicuous: not themselves complicated or mysterious; and especially not in need of further interpretation or of any worry about their (ordinary) game-like variability.
So we have four confused commentators: Walter, Eric, John McCreery, and me. I come last, so I'm the most confused of all.
Robert Paul Eric wrote:
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
