In this course we will embark on a slow/close reading of sections 1-242 of Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’. Resisting technologically-driven imperatives to skim, scan and select, the intention here will be to engage the first part of Wittenstein’s major mature work directly and unhurriedly, with no required secondary texts (although suggestions will be offered). The order of reading and explication will follow Wittenstein’s long-deliberated structure. Wittgenstein’s later work is focussed on language-in-application, and has had a major influence on modern conceptions of language outside of philosophy as much as within. Some of the implications of this influence for recent approaches to language studies will be glancingly considered, and, in line with the ‘application’ approach, meaning-idiosyncracies of psychosis will be referenced as illustrative at certain key points. However, a direct and contemplative reading of the early sections of the ‘Investigations’ as primary source will remain the central focus.
Required text:
Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophical Investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe & P. M. S. Hacker, Trans.; Revised fourth). Wiley-Blackwell. (Original work published 1953)
recommended reading:
Baker, G. P., & Hacker, P. M. S. (1980). Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, An Analytical Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’, Essays and Exegesis 1-184. Blackwell.
Baker, G. P., & Hacker, P. M. S. (2014). Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity: Volume 2 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Essays and Exegesis 185-242. John Wiley & Sons.
Monk, R. (1991). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The duty of genius . Vintage
Sass, L. (1994). The paradoxes of delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind. Cornell University Press.
Schroeder, S. (2006). Wittgenstein: The Way Out of the Fly-bottle. Polity.
Waismann, F. (1968). The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy (R. Harré, Ed.). Macmillan.
Week 1:
Introduction
Returning to the source / close reading
A word on secondary sources
– will be kept to a minimum (e.g., introductory texts)
– recommendations only (not required reading)
– organisational sections will chiefly follow Baker & Hacker.
Presenter’s background: philosophy/psychiatry/linguistics
Psychosis as meaning-disruption (phenomena of language)
Wittgenstein and Madness — points of contact
Wittgenstein’s ‘task of philosophy’
– ‘showing/shooing’ a fly
‘Ways of proceeding’ (unmethodical methods)
Comments on style
– interlocutor; setup + undermine (a ‘philosophical joke’)
– ‘Criss-cross’ method/style ‘connected with the very nature of the investigation’
Scope of this course: First half of Part I of PI, §§1-242
What we will miss
– private language (§243-271/315)
– Part II: ‘Notes on Psychology’
Housekeeping
Historical context and biographical comments:
– Russell, Frege
– The Theory of Types
– Logical Atomism
– Tractatus
– ‘turning’ from the Tractatan view (gesture/multi-modal signing)
Metaphors as ‘Conceptual Device’ (a preview)
– holographic (non-linear) method
– tool-box
– standard metre
– indicators/indexicals
– internal relations (chepakatov cone)
PI reading §§1-67 — (key concepts in bold)
- § 1-27, Augustinian View of Language
– ‘Games’: Five Red Apples; block-pillar-slab-beam
– meaning-in-use
– the picture view
– language games
– indexicality
– the number series / necessity /internal relations
– what does it mean to signify?
– heterogeneity of language / ‘toolbox conceptual’ device
– the ‘ancient city’ of language (language as complex system)
(§§26-88, ‘logical atomism’ )
- §26-64, naming / ostensive definition / simples, samples & analysis
– relation between naming and use (§§26-31)
– ostensive definition (§§28-31)
– ways/forms of life—the anthropological perspective (§30)
– ‘this’ and ‘that’ are not names (§38)
– atomic simples and naming (§39)
– correspondence vs meaning-in-use (§43)
– parts/wholes/internal relations (§§47-48)
– names are not descriptions (just as indexicals are not names) (§49)
– the standard meter (conceptual device)
– Grammar = ‘rules’ of the language game (§53)
– considerations on ‘point’
- §65-67 the general form of proposition
– ‘the great question’: ‘general forms’ of proposition or language (§65)
– ‘don’t think, but look’ / indexicality (§66)
– family resemblance (§67)
Week 2:
Review of key terms from week 1
- §68-75 borders, ostensive definitions, schemas
– borders of concepts
– prototypes
– ostensive definition
– conceptual schemas
- §76-88, Rules, context, indicators
– exactness / the sharp and the blurred
– logic & language
– knowing how to go on
– rules in context, as dynamic, as signpost; necessity
– indeterminacy of the sign / infinite deferral of meaning
– signpost: point and purpose
– exactness as an ideal, as a form of praise
- §89-133 ‘Philosophy’
– logic as sublime or essence
– Obect of enquiry: the grammatical form of possibilities.
– Language is not the one thing
– trying to remedy inexactness (indexicality)
– general form of the proposition
– thought & language as picture (unique correlate) of the world;
– The mundanity of ‘deep’ philosophical concepts.
– games permit vagueness in the rules
– neccessity and the different ways that ‘must’ can mean
– grammatical structure = a pair of glasses on our nose...
– One predicates of the thing what lies in the mode of representation
– internal relations between ‘proposition’, ‘language’, ‘fact’?
– What is a word?’ — ‘what is a piece in chess?’
– language/thinking agglomeration
– TLP ‘this is how things are’ as the general form of propositions
– the picture view
– bringing words back from their metaphysical sense to their everyday use
– the money and the cow you can buy with it
– seeing connexions
– now I know how to go on
– language games... as ‘objects of comparison’ which, through similarities and dissimilarities elucidate our use of language (130)
– aim: a lucidity (whereby) philosophical problems completely disappear
Week 3:
- §134-142 the general propositional form
– ‘this is how things are’ = propositional schema;
– ‘picture’ vs use — ‘two ways’ of determining meaning
– picture (as meaning); picture vs use (139)
– picture → use as necessity/rule?
– loss of normativity → loss of point in the language game
- §143-184 Meaning and Understanding
– understanding as ‘essential’, sign as ‘inessential
– meaning as mental phenomena
– understanding as a state, process, activity or experience
– understanding and ability
– understanding as a family resemblance concept
Week 4:
- §185-202 accord with a rule, mastery of techniques & practices
– accord between language and reality
– interpretation, ‘fitting’, grammar
– following a rule
– practices and techniques
– privacy and community view
– innate knowledge of language?
Week 5:
- §203-242 Agreement in definitions, judgements and forms of life
- §238-242 Grammar and necessity
- §1-242 overview/ whole course review