Wittgenstein Lecture Notes

Spring 1995

Ben Dugan

Analytic Tradition

General outlook:

1. The world is composed of "simples" or things which consist of "simples"
2. Analysis consists of decomposing complex things into their simples, which ground reality.
3. Direct experience is subjective. It should be ignored for now, but can explain eventually through careful analysis.

1. We inhabit a real world made up of objects w/ properties.
2. There are facts about the world that are context free.
3. Perception is process by which facts are registered as thoughts.
4. Thoughts can somehow cause phyisical motion.

Correspondence/picture theory of meaning:

1. Sentences are either true or false and say things about the world
2. What a sentence says (means) is a function of the words and how they are combined.
3. Words denote objects, properties, or relationships.

Wittgenstein Background

In very simple terms, the "early" Wittgenstein of the Tractatus attempts to find a correspondence between everyday language and ideal language. The "late" Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations argues that the quest for ideal languages as mirrors of reality is doomed to failure. Revolutionary contribution was his focus on language. Wittgenstein's philosophy was linguistic analysis (both late and early). The late Wittgenstein used linguistic analysis to understand the way we use language.

Wittgenstein can be seen as reacting against the picture theory of language:

1. Objects are perceived independent of language (language doesn't affect experience).
2. Words name (label) objects.
3. The object named by the word is the meaning of the word (object named or the mental image named).
4. Sentences are combinations of words, and we can determine their meaning by composing the meanings of the individual words, etc.

Ostensive definition: definition by "pointing." Establishes an association between word and thing. Wittgenstein argues that we certainly rely on ostensive definitions when we are building vocabulary in a language and learning proper names. However, ostensive definition does not form the basis for learning language in children. Nor can it account for indexicals ("this", "there").

Side note on learning language: children's first utterances are words like "ball," "plane," "bear," etc. These are highly indexical expressions. Next comes a two word stage: "bad dog," "more cookie," "give ball."

Wittgenstein says the picture theory certainly describes a language - a primitive system of communication - but it cannot claim to explain all of human language.

Try to use picture theory to explain words like: "not", "this", "here".

Language games -- a socially constructed system of "rules." These rules are flexible and subject to change.

We can and do create language games for special purposes. For example, see Wittgenstein's language for builders: Beam, Slab, Block

Wittgenstein's view of language, meaning, and understanding:

1. Language arises from social context.
2. Any system of signs is a language insofar as it facilitates the purpose implicit in the context in which it is used. ("Slab" is a sentence in one language and a word in another).
3. If language is effective at promoting the purpose for which it was introduced, then meaning is conveyed and understanding occurs. (The test of meaningfulness is not whether a language conforms to a set of criteria described by logic, but whether it is successful in its intended purpose.)
4. Meaning doesn't necessarily depend upon images (slab conjures up an image to us, but to construction worker it probably doesn't).
5. To understand understanding, we must watch the way language functions in each particular circumstance (the way it is used). "Look not to the meaning (label), but to the use.

• giving orders/obeying orders
• reporting
• acting
• singing
• hitching horses

Universals

Challenge: What is a language game? What is its essence? Wittgenstein refuses to generalize and will say only that LG have no one thing in common, but that they are all related. We find series of relationships between games the way we see relationships in families. Family resemblance (nose, hair, eyes, ears). Board games, card games, ball games. Language game is a concept with blurred edges.

Blurred vs. Sharp concepts

Definitions and rules

Definitions or rules or concepts or signposts are "exact" if they are good enough for the purpose they were introduced.

Analytic methods and Ideal languages

Logic as a normative activity -- to correct everyday/ordinary language. Logic's requirement of exactness has gotten us into a phil. muddle because it has hidden the way language functions.

Interpretation

Pelle Ehn's Alternative to the Analytic Tradition:

To participate in language games on must share the form of life within that practice is possible. This doesn't make us prisoners of our language, because we construct the games and can change the rules.

"If lions could speak, we could not understand them."

"To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life"

Language games help us understand human practice as the product of, at the same time producting the world and our understanding of it.

Note that this seems to clear up the idealist/dualist controversy idealism -> constructivism -> relativism dualism -> passive

W would see system descriptions/design artifacts as linguistic entities. they are not models/mirrors/pictures/ but rather examples, reminders, and cases.

Ehn on the problems w/ systems orientation:

1. Increase division of labor and take planning out of the hands of those doing the job, rather than increase democratic labor processes.
2. Reduce the job of workers to procedures, rather than enhance skill.
3. Formalization and objectification locks the user out of the process.

Analytic approach hides direct experience, subjectivity, skill, social constructions of reality.

Practice/experience is central: We are concerned practioners first. "Practice is ontological. It is more primary than subject-object relations. Practice is acting and reflecting, but it is also social. it is produced cooperatively. To share practice is to share understanding.

Design should be oriented towards practice. ontological. -- reflective and political, looking backwards at tradition but also forwards to the as-yet-uncreated transformations.

Models aren't bad -- they support reflection and description, but they don't account for experience (prototypes and mockups). We need to know about what devices do not just how they operate.

Design is a concerned social, historical, political activity in which we anticipate computer artifacts and their use.

Use is central. (see Wittgenstein -- a language is meaningful if it is successful). We aren't just designing things, but we are changing practice, creating new forms of life.