Complexes, rule-following, and language games: Wittgenstein’s philosophical method and its relevance to semiotics

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Torres-Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Reductionist Approach ◽  
Philosophical Grammar

Abstract This paper forges links between early analytic philosophy and the posits of semiotics. I show that there are some striking and potentially quite important, but perhaps unrecognized, connections between three key concepts in Wittgenstein’s middle and later philosophy, namely, complex (Philosophical Grammar), rule-following (Philosophical Investigations), and language games (Philosophical Investigations). This reveals the existence of a conceptual continuity between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” philosophy that can be applied to the analysis of the iterability of representation in computer-generated images. Methodologically, this paper clarifies to at least some degree, the nature, progress and promise of an approach to doing philosophy and semiotics from a modally modest perspective that sees in the intellectual products of humanities, and not in unreflective empiricism, the future of scientific development. This hybrid, non-reductionist approach shows, among other things, that semiotic processes are encoded by specific types of complexes in computer-generated images that display iterability in time and space.

Meaning and Saying in Religion: Beyond Language Games

1974 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Raschke
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Perspective

So much commentary and discussion concerning the significance of religious language has been marketed for consumption during the two decades since Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations first altered the grounds of inquiry in contemporary philosophy of religion that any new contribution to the subject is apt to kindle as much excitement as the average Sunday sermon. The progressive exhaustion of the topic, it may be argued, has resulted largely from this shift, inasmuch as philosophers of religion have thereby so narrowed the horizons of their researches in pursuing the “logical” dimensions of religious utterances that, once this side of the issue has been thoroughly charted, nothing substantial is left to explore. It does not require any prophetic cry in the wilderness to contend, therefore, in the manner that I propose here that (1) the “logical” or neo-Wittgensteinian approach to the problem of religious language must be transcended and that (2) any new perspective need not renounce with counter-revolutionary animus the achievements of analytic philosophy in this field, but merely attempt to arrive at a more subtle understanding of how religious language is employed.

On Rule-Following

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie McGinn
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Normative Constraint

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein raises difficulties for the idea that what comes before my mind when I hear, or suddenly understand, a word can impose any normative constraint on what I go on to do. The conclusion his reflections seem to force on us gives rise to a paradox: there is no such thing as going on to apply an expression in a way that accords with what is meant by it. The paradox can be seen as one horn of a dilemma, the other horn of which is Platonism about meaning. It is generally agreed that resolving the paradox means finding a middle course between the two horns of the dilemma. This chapter looks at three attempts to find the middle course: communitarianism, naturalized Platonism, and quietism. It then considers whether Charles Travis offers a way out of the dilemma which avoids the problems of the other views discussed.

scholarly journals Wittgenstein’s language and Beckett: The limits of language and the absurd

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-376
Author(s):  
Marialena Avgerinou
Keyword(s):  
Language Games ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Problematic Use ◽  
Waiting For Godot

This paper provides a parallel linguistic and conceptual reading of Wittgenstein?s and Beckett?s works. More specifically, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations are looked at in relation to the absurd plays Not I and Waiting for Godot, respectively. The limits of language as described in the Tractatus are part of the verbally and conceptually asphyxiating world brought on stage by Beckett in the monologue Not I, while the transition to ?language games? of the Philosophical Investigations can be identified in parts of Waiting for Godot. The suggested conclusion is that Wittgenstein?s expression of the ineffable, the problematic use of language and (its) meaning can be and have been expressed in a form of art, while the meanings of Wittgenstein?s writings are in harmony with their stylistic form, his concept of ?showing? further illustrating this idea.

scholarly journals “Die Maschine als Symbol ihrer Wirkungsweise”: Wittgenstein, Reuleaux and Kinematics

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Gandon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
General Science ◽  
Machine Model ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
The Future ◽  
Machine Configuration

In Philosophical Investigations 193–94, Wittgenstein draws a notorious analogy between the working of a machine and the application of a rule. According to the view of rule-following that Wittgenstein is criticizing, the future applications of a rule are completely determined by the rule itself, as the movements of the machine components are completely determined by the machine configuration. On what conception of the machine is such an analogy based? In this paper, I intend to show that Wittgenstein relied on quite a specific scientific tradition very active at the beginning of the twentieth century: the kinematic or the general science of machines. To explain the fundamental tenets of this line of research and its links with Wittgenstein, I focus on Franz Reuleaux (1829–1905), whose works were known to Wittgenstein.       The first payoff of this investigation is to help distance the functionalist framework from which this passage is often read: Wittgenstein’s machines are not (or not primarily) computers. The second payoff is to explain why Wittgenstein talks about machines at this place in his discussion on rule-following: it is not the machine model in itself that is criticized in PI 193–94, but the “philosophical” temptation to generalize from it.

How Private Must an Objectionably Private Language Be?

1998 ◽  
pp. 62-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Lillegard
Keyword(s):  
Community Correction ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Private Practices ◽  
Simon Blackburn ◽  
Mental Events

Some philosophers, taking their cue from Philosophical Investigations (PI) 243-315, suppose that a private language is objectionable only when its terms refer to Cartesian mental events. Others (notably Kripke) have focused on PI 201 and the surrounding remarks about rule following, and have explicated the notion of an objectionable private language as (roughly) that of a language used by just one isolated individual unsupported at any time by any source of external or community correction and approval. I attempt to defend Kripke's account against some objections proffered by Simon Blackburn. Blackburn supposes that individuals are no worse off than communities with respect to the difficulties raised by Kripke, and argues that the "paradox" of PI 201 can be avoided by a proper understanding of extended dispositions, and by grasping the possibility of private practices. But Blackburn misconstrues what it is to go on in the "same" way in following a rule, and ignores the place of constitutive rules in practices.

Later Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophical Therapy

Philosophy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Jacquette
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Philosophical Grammar

AbstractThe object of this essay is to discuss Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks inPhilosophical Investigationsand elsewhere in the posthumously published writings concerning the role of therapy in relation to philosophy. Wittgenstein's reflections seem to suggest that there is a kind of philosophy or mode of investigation targeting the philosophical grammar of language uses that gratuitously give rise to philosophical problems, and produce in many thinkers philosophical anxieties for which the proper therapy is intended to offer relief. Two possible objectives of later Wittgensteinian therapy are proposed, for subjectivepsychologicalversus objectivesemanticsymptoms of ailments that a therapy might address for the sake of relieving philosophical anxieties. The psychological in its most plausible form is rejected, leaving only the semantic. Semantic therapy in the sense defined and developed is more general and long-lasting, and more in the spirit of Wittgenstein's project on a variety of levels. A semantic approach treats language rather than the thinking, language-using subject as the patient needing therapy, and directs its attention to the treatment of problems in language and the conceptual framework a language game use expresses in its philosophical grammar, rather than to soothing unhappy or socially ill-adjusted individual psychologies.

Kripkenstein on Belief

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 249-258
Author(s):  
Antonio Capuano ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Skeptical Paradox

I offer a skeptical reading of Saul Kripke’s “A Puzzle about Belief.” I maintain that Kripke formulates a skeptical paradox about belief that is analogous to the skeptical paradox about meaning and rule-following that, according to Kripke, Wittgenstein formulates in his Philosophical Investigations.

Artifacts as Rules

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-399
Author(s):  
Mark Thomas Young ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Geiger Counter ◽  
Physical Design ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
The Common ◽  
Technical Artifacts ◽  
Sociology Of Technology

My goal in this article is to explore the extent to which the conception of rule-following which emerges from Wittgenstein’s later works can also yield important insights concerning the nature of technological practices. In particular, this article aims to examine how two interrelated themes of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations can be applied in the philosophical analysis of technology. Our first theme concerns linguistic practice; broadly construed, it is the claim that the use of language cannot be understood as determined by a system of context independent rules. The second, interrelated theme emerges as a consequence of the first; that the meaning of language is rendered indeterminate when analyzed in isolation from contexts of practice. Following the common tendency in the sociology of technology to draw analogies between language and technology, I aim to show how the arguments that Wittgenstein makes for these two claims concerning language can also help us to understand the relation between technical artifacts and technological practices. For, similar to Wittgenstein’s account of rules, it will be shown how artifacts cannot be adequately understood in isolation from a wider background of skillful practice and interpretation. To illustrate this idea, we will examine the case of the Geiger counter, with a view towards illustrating how important aspects of the function of the device are rendered indeterminate when assessed on the basis of physical design alone.

Was ist das Spielerische am Sprachspiel?

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Julius Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Human Language Faculty

AbstractDid Wittgenstein in coining the term ‘Sprachspiel’ mean to convey the connotation of an open playfulness, as the German terms ‘Spiel’ and ‘spielerisch’ suggest? The paper tries to show that although this was not his original motive for choosing the term, the characterization of natural language offered in the Philosophical Investigations includes and indeed highlights its open, not rule-governed (and in this sense playful) sides. In this respect language is unlike a calculus and unlike a game like chess.Wittgenstein compares language to both, but, so the paper argues, he does so in order to make visible what is special in language and is different from a calculus as well as a strictly regulated game like chess.When he applies the word ‘calculus’ in an affirmative sense for describing a feature of what he describes as language games, the context is the principle of compositionality, interpreted, however, in such a way that the difference between the workings of a calculus and the workings of language is preserved.The paper comes to the conclusion that, in using a natural language, speakers have some freedom to decide whether they cling to or depart from conventional usage. This freedom is a central ingredient of the human language faculty.

INSTITUTIONS, RULE-FOLLOWING AND GAME THEORY

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyril Hédoin
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
Epistemic Games ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Common Understanding

Abstract:Most game-theoretic accounts of institutions reduce institutions to behavioural patterns the players are incentivized to implement. An alternative account linking institutions to rule-following behaviour in a game-theoretic framework is developed on the basis of David Lewis’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein's respective accounts of conventions and language games. Institutions are formalized as epistemic games where the players share some forms of practical reasoning. An institution is a rule-governed game satisfying three conditions: common understanding, minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality. Common understanding has a strong similarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of lebensform while minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality capture the idea that rule-following is community-based.

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