[lit-ideas] Re: Sounds right to me

  • From: Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:08:12 +0000

In reply to Robert Paul's thoughtful comments, it doesn't surprise me that I 
ran rough shod over some aspects of Wittgenstein's discussion of language 
games, since I was writing without my copy of the Philosophical Investigations 
(the text I was considering) in front of me and summarizing in one place 
comments I remembered Wittgenstein making in several.

However, having now looked up the references Robert kindly provides, and 
emboldened by John McCreery's endorsement of my initial sketch, I must say I'm 
not entirely sure what Robert is objecting to in that sketch.  

Perhaps my allusions to rules were misleading.  I think that one of the many 
things Wittgenstein does in PI is call attention to how illusory the impression 
can be that there is a clearly-definable and stable structure we refer to when 
we talk about the rules of a situation.  I was trying to block the notion that 
a language game was such a clearly-definable and stable structure, I certainly 
did not mean to substitute one such structure for another.

To Robert's specific comments: while, for all I know, it may be biographically 
true that Wittgenstein's discussion of language games in the first part of PI 
was intended by him to address Frege's demand for clear and definite 
boundaries, I do not think that what W. wrote in those early sections only 
addresses that concern.

For example, W. introduces the term 'language games' in section 7.  In that 
section it seems to me he clearly tells his reader that language games are 
going to be a central image in what he will have to say elsewhere and that he 
will range broadly in how he applies that image.  

He says, for example, "We can also think of the whole process of using words in 
[the building stone example in section]  (2) as one of those games by which 
children learn their native language.  I will call these games 'language games' 
and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language game."  He also 
say, "I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into 
which it is woven, the 'language-game'."

This, it seems to me, invites the reader to consider quite broadly how games 
can be analogous to language practices and not to limit those considerations to 
the question, contra Frege, of whether a concept, to be legitimate, must have 
clear and definite boundaries.

Two other points I'd like to make.  First, when I said 'every game has its 
rules' I did not mean to be prescribing something about everything we call a 
game, rather to be gesturing towards an aspect of the notion of a 'game'.  That 
notion, in my lexicon, involves rules in an important way.  For example, the 
rules are part of what makes cribbage different from ice hockey.  

Even the notion of what makes for a 'rule' is tricky, though -- for example, is 
it important to the game of cribbage that we sit sociably and peaceably at the 
table at which we are playing the game, rather than slamming each other against 
the wall as we go to move our pieces on the peg-board?  If so, is that a sort 
of rule or something else?  (I mean this, by the way, as just a question of how 
we want to use the term 'rule' and not a deep question about the nature of 
rules or reality in general.)

And then there are the kinds of games in which the players make up the rules as 
they go along.  If one were to take my 'every game has its rules' as a formal 
assertion (say: for all x, if x is a game, then x has rules) then such examples 
would create a contradiction calling for a resolution -- either such things 
aren't games (contra common usage, revealing that the word 'game' is to be 
taken in a technical sense) or the generalization needs a qualifier ('every 
game has its rules unless...').

I did not mean to invoke any of this with my comment; rather to evoke the 
notion that rules are pretty much always *relevant* to a game, even to play a 
game without rules is to do something with respect to the notion of rules.

I think, though, that Wittgenstein invited us to consider just how ill-defined, 
how incompletely-articulated the notions of 'rules' and 'rule-following' are, 
and I meant to be calling that to mind when I referred to rules in my earlier 
post.

Finally, when I referred to the 'meaning' of a game, I put the word 'meaning' 
in scare quotes because I was not comfortable with my choice of words there.  I 
intended, in that case, to be pointing at what people pay attention to in the 
playing of a game.  Experienced players and experienced observers don't spend 
time monitoring the rules per se (except when they think other players have 
broken the rules).  Rather they attend to what they are *doing*, the goal they 
are trying to achieve and how best to deploy the means to that goal available 
to them within the bounds created (more or less) by the rules.

I intended to be referring to yet another way in which the apparent orderliness 
created by a game's rules is only partial.

I'm afraid that last bit here is probably too telegraphic to be useful, but I'm 
out of time so I'll send this as is.

Regards to one and all.

Eric Dean
Washington DC


> Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:21:02 -0800
> From: rpaul@xxxxxxxx
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Sounds right to me
> 
> 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.
> 
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