J: There is nothing hiding behind the Pleasant Pineapple

 The following is my attempt at a summarisation and reworking of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings on use and meaning, from which I hope to use it as a base in posts to come. It does not cover everything, it does not even hold the true power of the Philosophical Investiagations; the investigation of many cases of use, not in generalisation and definitions. That cannot be summarised or contained here or anywhere except the book itself.

In the language-game of this essay the meaning of the quote from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (PI) “For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.”(PI, I, 43) will be in its use as the Wittgensteinian base from which I will try to define a use theory of meaning, with the help of the PI. To be clear, every mention of Wittgenstein hereafter is of the later Wittgenstein. I am not trying to interpret the PI in a way Wittgenstein would approve of, nor am I attempting my own 'Kripkenstein', by all accounts both of these are far beyond the scope of this essay. I am merely in need of a more generalised concept in order to examine in more detail the common and seemingly damning objection of novel sentences. Once so defined, we can then “look and see”(PI, I, 66) but also think about responses for the Wittgensteinian-based use theorist. Are there any routes of escape? What would 'biting the bullet' entail? Does the objection leaves no viable way to keep the theory?

               The use theory of meaning is an alternative to a group of theories about meaning that could be roughly called realist. These theories attempt to explain how words have meaning by saying they are given it by something, be it description, reference, proposition...etc. One could say (again, roughly) that they are attempting to connect language with the world, and this relation is what gives meaning. It is the posit of this relation that causes a lot of trouble, as well as the more internal problems of individual realist theories. The use theory was a breath of fresh, anti-realist air in the 20^th century. Anti-realist theories of meaning say this relation between word and world doesn't account for meaning, and instead looks at how language interacts with itself to explain it. “Language is something people do” (Lycan, p.78), and the ways in which people use language cannot be so easily categorised and labelled into things like assertion, question and command, as perhaps Frege thought (Stanford, Wittgenstein section 3.3).

               'Language' is best described in the use theory as linguistic expression, rather than utterances, sentences, words...etc. 'Linguistic expression' hits the right intuitive note about language as an activity, rather than something abstract. The use theorist says the realist is confused in trying to locate the meaning within a linguistic expression; it doesn't exist in that sense. Meaning is auxiliary to the expression, granted by people if the expression is used correctly. 'Correct and incorrect' are not being used in any sense that relates to truth and falsity, but merely in the weaker sense that the community accepts or denies the expression meaning.

This explanation needs some clarification to be understood in the right way. If we understand linguistic expression as a sort of social behaviour, something people do, it is obvious people do it in different ways, depending on how you were taught. This does not mean some is right and some is wrong, but that meaning is dependent on use in the right way in the right circumstances. We will use the term 'community' to describe a group that uses language in the same way. I realise this is vague, and will be addressed shortly.

               We will use the term 'rule' to explain similarities in how language is used within a community. Wittgenstein refuses to define 'rule' in terms of its nature, but its use is clear. When a linguistic expression follows a rule, it is said to be used correctly, and therefore to have meaning. Ever consistent, it seems always to be the use of things that interest Wittgenstein, not the things themselves. Russell, Ayer, and so on, including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus looked into the words for meaning, but a simple, elemental form could never accommodate the variety and multitude of uses of the word. His definitions are are thus intentionally vague, while his repeated uses in the examples of the PI are enlightening and clarifying upon investigation. It is this shift that makes the PI so irreducible.
               To learn what is expected from what is unexpected, given the circumstances is to learn the rule. One need not think of the rule in itself to know this. To clarify further, rules are not abstract things that give meaning. The community agrees (consciously or otherwise) on the rules.

We have thus far been using the terms 'linguistic expression', 'community', 'rules' without a clear idea of what counts and what doesn't. The reason is because anti-realist theories of language have to take language as it is and cannot posit things to sum up common elements. So to help grasp the ideas, the analogy of 'language-games' is helpful.

               A particular community can be viewed as the players of a particular language-game. Within the game the players use linguistic expressions as 'moves' that are communally/publicly determined to be correct or incorrect according to the 'rules'. This analogy is particularly powerful in linking linguistic expression with non-linguistic context, such that the former has no meaning outside of the latter. (Kenny, Wittgenstein, p14)

Wittgenstein refuses to define what doesn't count as a game or rule. He thinks to do so would be to draw boundaries on the word which do not exist and weren't needed until we drew them “of course we can draw a sharp boundary if we wish, in the same way a pace can be standardised as 75cm.; but that does not mean the non-standardised concept is unusable (PG 113 ; PI, I, 69)” ( Kenny, Wittgenstein, p168). It is therefore a mistake to think of 'rules' and 'games' as always like the example of chess. To compare language solely to such a game would be something of a straw man. The classic example he uses of a builders language-game is not meant to summarise the essence of how we use language, but to be used as 'objects of comparison to help us see similarities and dissimilarities' (PI, I, 130).

              The builders language game has two players, the builder A, and the assistant B. There are four words A can say: block, pillar, slab, beam. For each word, their use in this game is for B to bring the builder the stone A called out. In this game, it is clear what A means in calling out “slab” is not the referent of 'slab', nor the definition. It is also easy to see here how B can 'use' the call correctly or incorrectly without actually having to linguistically express anything. He can follow the rule to bring the builder a slab without saying the word “slab” at all.

              The question “what is the time?” is simple, but “what is time?” is an incredibly complicated philosophical problem. This is because we think of 'time' as a name for a thing, and then set about analysing and considering it, without realising our mistake. I can think of no better way to put it than Wittgenstein does in the following: 
 “I want to restrict the term 'name' to what can occur in the combination 'X exists'. -Thus one cannot say 'red exists', because if there were no red it could not be spoken of at all. Better: If “X exists” is meant simply to say “X” has a meaning, -then it is not a proposition which treats of X, but a proposition about our use of language,that is, about the use of the word “X”.” (PI, I, 58)

We cannot see the whole world cleary because we cannot get outside the world to take a picture of it. likewise we cannot see clearly into language at the metaphysical relations behind our words. all we can see clearly of language is the way it works. This is the only study or philosophy of language there is, and in this realisation, the questions of relations to the world dissapear, and this itself is the answer. To realise that there is nothing hiding behind the words "this is a very pleasant pineapple", that the clear, external uses of the words is all there is to them, is to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

J