1030, ms 1016, pi Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889\-1951 Ludwig Wittgenstein's importance for modern philosophy and criticism lies not just in a set of concepts and doctrines but in a distinctive view of the purpose of philosophy. Under the influence of Russell, Whitehead, and Frege, Wittgenstein developed the view that philosophy was not and could not be a "science" as physics or mathematics are sciences but had, instead, the distinctive task of elucidating the logical form of propositions. While his account of logical form altered significantly from his first published work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), to the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations (1953), his view of the essentially critical function of philosophy remained remarkably constant. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed what has been characterized as a "picture theory" of meaning, based on the principle that what a logical proposition offers is a picture of the logical structure of a fact. "The world is all that is the case," Wittgenstein asserts, in the famous first proposition in that early work, but he continues, in the second (and notably less famous second proposition), "The world is the totality of facts not things." In this account, Wittgenstein maintained that propositions could represent "the whole of reality" but could only show or display the logical form propositions must share with reality in order to represent it (cf. $NN4.12). In this respect, the "pictures" in question in the theory are the result of a method of projection or depiction in which logical structures are the relevant "objects." In the preface to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein expressed the desire to republish his earlier work so as to ensure that his later view be seen "in the right light." The Investigations, for example, appear to abandon the picture theory of meaning, since further work on language had made it clear that as language is acquired and used, the method of projection or depiction cannot be adequately elucidated as if it were concerned only with the truth value of propositions. One might say that the difference is a broadening of scope for the philosopher's activity: language is deployed for many more purposes than making true or false statements. As his attention shifted to the multifarious deployments of language, Wittgenstein elaborated his notion of the "language game" to show the intimate and pervasive links between language and "forms of life." The Investigations begin with a quotation from Augustine's Confessions that expresses the traditional view of language that Wittgenstein had tacitly adopted in the Tractatus: that words name objects and that sentences are combinations of such names. Wittgenstein then proceeds to show the gross oversimplification of this premise, in showing that expressions in a language do not have a common essence by virtue of which they are all included in "language" but rather pre- sent a complex network of relations in which similarities (like "family resemblances") permit us to traverse the network and see connections without the requirement that words and objects always correspond. Wittgenstein's influence has been exceptionally wide, as he has been claimed as an ancestor or progenitor for sometimes mutually incompatible views of philosophy. The Tractatus, for example, was especially important for the early work of philosophers in the so-called Vienna Circle, including Moritz Schlick, Rudolph Carnap, and Herbert Feigl, who elaborated the radical program of logical positivism to eliminate metaphysical statements as meaningless and to unify empirical science by a critique of the logical structure of its language. Work that led to the Investigations, on the other hand, was equally influential in the development of linguistic and "ordinary language" philosophy and the theory of "speech acts" in the work of Friedrich Waismann, Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, and others. For literary critics (such as Charles Altieri, for example), Wittgenstein provides both exemplary arguments and methodological paradigms for explicating language as action and criticism as itself a "form of life." Only the Tractatus was published during Wittgenstein's lifetime, but his notebooks and other works have appeared steadily since his death, including Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan Company, 1953); On Certainty, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969); and Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). See also Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973). Excerpts from philosophical investigations are reprinted by permission of Basil Blackwell and Mott, $cg1958, and the literary executors of the estate of Ludwig Wittgenstein. **1"When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires." [Tr.] **2I have translated the German translation which Wittgenstein used rather than the original. [Tr.] **3[Au.] 1031, ms 1019, pi from PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS 1."Cum ipsi (majores homines) appellabant rem aliquam, et cum secundum eam vocem corpus ad aliquid movebant, videbam, et tenebam hoc ab eis vocari rem illam, quod sonabant, cum eam vellent ostendere. Hoc autem eos velle ex motu corporis aperiebatur: tamquam verbis naturalibus omnium gentium, quae fiunt vultu et nutu oculorum, ceterorumque membrorum actu, et sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis, habendis, rejiciendis, fugiendisve rebus. Ita verba in variis sententiis locis suis posita, et crebro audita, quarum rerum signa essent, paulatim colligebam, measque jam voluntates, edomito in eis signis ore, per haec enuntiabam." (Augustine, Confessions, I. 8.)**1 These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects_sentences are combinations of such names.__In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of words. If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair", "bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself. Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers_I assume that he knows them by heart_up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer.__It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words.__"But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?"__Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere._But what is the meaning of the word "five"?_No such thing was in question here, only how the word "five" is used. 2.That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours. Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with buildingstones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words "block", "pillar", "slab", "beam". A calls them out;_B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call.__Conceive this as a complete primitive language. 3.Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in many cases where the question arises "Is this an appropriate description or not?" The answer is: "Yes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were claiming to describe." It is as if someone were to say: "A game consists in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules ..."_and we replied: You seem to be thinking of board games, but there are others. You can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those games. 4.Imagine a script in which the letters were used to stand for sounds, and also as signs of emphasis and punctuation. (A script can be conceived asa language for describing sound-patterns.) Now imagine someone interpreting that script as if there were simply a correspondence of letters to sounds and as if the letters had not also completely different functions. Augustine's conception of language is like such an over-simple conception of the script. 5.If we look at the example in \p1, we may perhaps get an inkling how much this general notion of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of the words. A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training. 6.We could imagine that the language of \p2 was the whole language of A and B; even the whole language of a tribe. The children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others. An important part of the training will consist in the teacher's pointing to the objects, directing the child's attention to them, and at the same time uttering a word; for instance, the word "slab" as he points to that shape. (I do not want to call this "ostensive definition", because the child cannot as yet ask what the name is. I will call it "ostensive teaching of words"._I say that it will form an important part of the training, because it is so with human beings; not because it could not be imagined otherwise.) This ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an association between the word and the thing. But what does this mean? Well, it may mean various things; but one very likely thinks first of all that a picture of the object comes before the child's mind when it hears the word. But now, if this does happen_is it the purpose of the word?_Yes, it may be the purpose. _I can imagine such a use of words (of series of sounds). (Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.) But in the language of \p2 it is not the purpose of the words to evoke images. (It may, of course, be discovered that that helps to attain the actual purpose.) But if the ostensive teaching has this effect,_am I to say that it effects an understanding of theword? Don't you understand the call "Slab!" if youact upon it in such-and-such a way?_Doubtlessthe ostensive teaching helped to bring this about;but only together with a particular training. Withdifferent training the same ostensive teaching ofthese words would have effected a quite different understanding. "I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever."_Yes, given the whole of the rest of the mechanism. Only in conjunction with that is it a brake-lever, and separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing. 7.In the practice of the use of language (2) one party calls out the words, the other acts on them. In instruction in the language the following process will occur: the learner names the objects; that is, he utters the word when the teacher points to the stone._ And there will be this still simpler exercise: the pupil repeats the words after the teacher_both of these being processes resembling language. We can also think of the whole process of using words in (2) as one of those games by means of 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. And the processes of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be called language-games. Think of much of the use of words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses. I shall also call the whole, consisting of lan-guage and the actions into which it is woven, the "language-game". 8.Let us now look at an expansion of language (2). Besides the four words "block", "pillar", etc., let it contain a series of words used as the shopkeeper in (1) used the numerals (it can be the series of letters of the alphabet); further let there be two words, which may as well be "there" and "this" (because this roughly indicates their purpose), that are used in connexion with a pointing gesture; and finally a number of colour samples. A gives an order like: "d_slab_there". At the same time he shews the assistant a colour sample, and when he says "there" he points to a place on the building site. From the stock of slabs B takes one for each letter of the alphabet up to "d", of the same colour as the sample, and brings them to the place indicated by A._On other occasions A gives the order "this_there". At "this" he points to a building stone. And so on. 9.When a child learns this language, it has to learn the series of 'numerals' a, b, c, ... by heart. And it has to learn their use. _Will this traininginclude ostensive teaching of the words?_Well, people will, for example, point to slabs and count: "a, b, c slabs"._Something more like the ostensive teaching of the words "block", "pillar", etc. would be the ostensive teaching of numerals that serve not to count but to refer to groups of objects that can be taken in at a glance. Children do learn the use of the first five or six cardinal numerals in this way. 1032, ms 1021, pi Are "there" and "this" also taught ostensively?_Imagine how one might perhaps teach their use. One will point to places and things _but in this case the pointing occurs in the use of the words too and not merely in learning the use._ 10.Now what do the words of this language signify?_What is supposed to shew what they signify, if not the kind of use they have? And we have already described that. So we are asking for the expression "This word signifies this" to be made a part of the description. In other words the description ought to take the form: "The word . ... signifies ....". Of course, one can reduce the description of the use of the word "slab" to the statement that this word signifies this object. This will be done when, for example, it is merely a matter of removingthe mistaken idea that the word "slab" refers tothe shape of building-stone that we in fact call a "block"_but the kind of 'referring' this is, thatis to say the use of these words for the rest, is al-ready known. Equally one can say that the signs "a", "b", etc. signify numbers; when for example this removes the mistaken idea that "a", "b", "c", play the part actually played in language by "block", "slab", "pillar". And one can also say that "c" means this number and not that one; when for example this serves to explain that the letters are to be used in the order a, b, c, d, etc. and not in the ordera, b, d, c. But assimilating the descriptions of the uses of words in this way cannot make the uses themselves any more like one another. For, as we see, they are absolutely unlike. 11.Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. _The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.) Of course what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy! 12.It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all looking more or less alike. (Naturally, since they are all supposed to be handled.) But one is the handle of a crank which can be moved continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the handle of a switch, which has only two effective positions, it is either off or on; a third is the handle of a brake-lever, the harder one pulls on it, the harder it brakes; a fourth, the handle of a pump: it has an effect only so long as it is moved to and fro. 13.When we say: "Every word in language signifies something" we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make. (It might be, of course, that we wanted to distinguish the words of language (8) from words 'without meaning' such as occur in Lewis Carroll's poems, or words like "Lilliburlero" in songs.) 14.Imagine someone's saying: "All tools serve to modify something. Thus the hammer modifies the position of the nail, the saw the shape of the board, and so on."_And what is modified by the rule, the glue-pot, the nails?_"Our knowledge of a thing's length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of the box."_Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?_ 15.The word "to signify" is perhaps used in the most straight-forward way when the object signified is marked with the sign. Suppose that the tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shews his assistant such a mark, he brings the tool that has that mark on it. It is in this and more or less similar ways that a name means and is given to a thing._It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing. 16.What about the colour samples that A shews to B: are they part of the language? Well, it is as you please. They do not belong among the words; yet when I say to someone: "Pronounce the word 'the'", you will count the second "the" as part of the sentence. Yet it has a role just like that of a colour-sample in language-game (8); that is, it is a sample of what the other is meant to say. It is most natural, and causes least confusion, to reckon the samples among the instruments of the language. ((Remark on the reflexive pronoun "this sentence".)) 17.It will be possible to say: In language (8) we have different kinds of word. For the function of the word "slab" and the word "block" are more alike than those of "slab" and "d". But how we group words into kinds will depend on the aim of the classification,_and on our own inclination. Think of the different points of view from which one can classify tools or chess-men. 18.Do not be troubled by the fact that languages (2) and (8) consist only of orders. If you want to say that this shews them to be incomplete, ask yourself whether our language is complete;_whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incoporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. 19.It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle._Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes and no. And innumerable others._And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life. But what about this: is the call "Slab!" in example (2) a sentence or a word?_If a word, surely it has not the same meaning as the like-sounding word of our ordinary language, for in \p2 it is a call. But if a sentence, it is surely not the elliptical sentence: "Slab!" of our language._As far as the first question goes you can call "Slab!" a word and also a sentence; perhaps it could be appropriately called a 'degenerate sentence' (as one speaks of a degenerate hyperbola); in fact it is our 'elliptical' sentence._But that is surely only a shortened form of the sentence "Bring me a slab", and there is no such sentence in example (2)._But why should I not on the contrary have called the sentence "Bring me a slab" a lengthening of the sentence "Slab!"?_Because if you shout "Slab!" you really mean: "Bring me a slab"._But how do you do this: how do you mean that while you say "Slab!"? Do you say the unshortened sentence to yourself? And why should I translate the call "Slab!" into a different expression in order to say what someone means by it? And if they mean the same thing_why should I not say: "When he says 'Slab!' he means 'Slab!" ? Again, if you can mean "Bring me the slab", why should you not be able to mean "Slab!"?_But when I call "Slab!", then what I want is, that he should bring me a slab!_Certainly, but does 'wanting this' consist in thinking in some form or other a different sentence from the other you utter?_ 20.But now it looks as if when someone says "Bring me a slab" he could mean this expression as one long word corresponding to the single word "Slab!"_Then can one mean it sometimes as one word and sometimes as four? And how does one usually mean it?_I think we shall be inclined to say: we mean the sentence as four words when we use it in contrast with other sentences such as "Hand me a slab", "Bring him a slab", "Bring two slabs", etc.; that is, in contrast with sentences containing the separate words of our command in other combinations._But what does using one sentence in contrast with others consist in? Do the others, perhaps, hover before one's mind? All of them? And while one is saying the one sentence, or before,or afterwards?_No. Even if such an explanation rather tempts us, we need only think for a moment of what actually happens in order to see that weare going astray here. We say that we use the com-mand in contrast with other sentences because ourlanguage contains the possibility of those othersentences. Someone who did not understand ourlanguage, a foreigner, who had fairly often heard someone giving the order: "Bring me a slab!", might believe that this whole series of sounds was one word corresponding perhaps to the word for "building-stone" in his language. If he himself had then given this order perhaps he would have pronounced it differently, and we should say: he pronounces it so oddly because he takes it for a single word._But then, is there not also something different going on in him when he pronounces it,_something corresponding to the fact that he conceives the sentence as a single word?_Either the same thing may go on in him, or something different. For what goes on in you when you give such an order? Are you conscious of its consisting of four words while you are uttering it? Of course you have a mastery of this language_which contains those other sentences as well_but is this having a mastery something that happens while you are uttering the sentence?_And I have admitted that the foreigner will probably pronounce a sentence differently if he conceives it differently; but what we call his wrong concept need not lie in anything that accompanies the utterance of the command. 1033, ms 1023, pi The sentence is 'elliptical', not because it leaves out something that we think when we utter it, but because it is shortened_in comparison with a particular paradigm of our grammar._Of course one might object here: "You grant that the shortened and the unshortened sentence have the same sense._What is this sense, then? Isn't there a verbal expres sion for this sense?"_But doesn't the fact that sentences have the same sense consist in their having the same use?_(In Russian one says "stone red" instead of "the stone is red"; do they feel the copula to be missing in the sense, or attach it in thought?) 21.Imagine a language-game in which A asks and B reports the number of slabs or blocks in a pile, or the colours and shapes of the building- stones that are stacked in such-and-such a place._such a report might run: "Five slabs". Now what is the difference between the report or statement "Five slabs" and the order "Five slabs!"?_Well, it is the part which uttering these words plays in the language-game. No doubt the tone of voice and the look with which they are uttered, and much else besides, will also be different. But we could also imagine the tone's being the same_for an order and a report can be spoken in a variety of tones of voice and with various expressions of face _the difference being only in the application. (Of course, we might use the words "statement" and "command" to stand for grammatical forms of sentence and intonations; we do in fact call "Isn't the weather glorious to-day?" a question, although it is used as a statement.) We could imagine a language in which all statements had the form and tone of rhetorical questions; or every command the form of the question "Would you like to ...?". Perhaps it will then be said: "What he says has the form of a question but is really a command",_that is, has the function of a command in the technique of using the language. (Similarly one says "You will do this" not as a prophecy but as a command. What makes it the one or the other?) 22.Frege's idea that every assertion contains an assumption, which is the thing that is asserted, really rests on the possibility found in our language of writing every statement in the form: "It is asserted that such-and-such is the case."_But "that such-and-such is the case" is not a sentence in our language_so far it is not a move in the language-game. And if I write, not "It is asserted that. . ..", but "It is asserted: such-and-such is the case", the words "It is asserted" simply become superfluous. We might very well also write every statement in the form of a question followed by a "Yes"; for instance: "Is it raining? Yes!" Would this shew that every statement contained a question? Of course we have the right to use an assertion sign in contrast with a question-mark, for example, or if we want to distinguish an assertion from a fiction or a supposition. It is only a mistake if one thinks that the assertion consists of two actions, entertaining and asserting (assigning the truth-value, or something of the kind), and that in perform-ing these actions we follow the propositional sign roughly as we sing from the musical score. Reading the written sentence loud or soft is indeed comparable with singing from a musical score, but 'meaning' (thinking) the sentence that is read is not. Frege's assertion sign marks the beginning of the sentence. Thus its function is like that of the full-stop. It distinguishes the whole period from a clause within the period. If I hear someone say "it's raining" but do not know whether I have heard the beginning and end of the period, so far this sentence does not serve to tell me anything. 23.But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question, and command?_There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call "symbols", "words", "sentences". And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. (We can get a rough picture of this from the changes in mathematics.) Here the term "language-game" is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life. Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others: Giving orders, and obeying them_ Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements _ Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)_ Reporting an event_ Speculating about an event_ Imagine a picture representing a boxer in a particular stance. Now, this picture can be used to tell someone how he should stand, should hold himself; or how he should not hold himself; or how a par ticular man did stand in such-and-such a place; and so on. One might (using the language of chemistry) call this picture a propositional-radical. This will be how Frege thought of the "assumption". Forming and testing a hypothesis_ Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams _ Making up a story; and reading it_ Play-acting_ Singing catches_ Guessing riddles_ Making a joke; telling it_ Solving a problem in practical arithmetic_ Translating from one language into another_ Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. _It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure oflanguage. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. ) 24.If you do not keep the multiplicity of language-games in view you will perhaps heinclined to ask questions like: "What is a question? "_Is it the statement that I do not know such-and-such, or the statement that I wish the other person would tell me. ...? Or is it the description of my mental state of uncertainty?_And is the cry "Help!" such a description? Think how many different kinds of thing are called "description": description of a body's position by means of its co-ordinates; description of a facial expression; description of a sensation of touch; of a mood. Of course it is possible to substitute the form of statement or description for the usual form of question: "I want to know whether ...." or "I am in doubt whether ...."_but this does not bring the different language-games any closer together. The significance of such possibilities of transformation, for example of turning all statements into sentences beginning "I think" or "I believe" (and thus, as it were, into descriptions of my inner life) will become clearer in another place. (Solipsism.) 25.It is sometimes said that animals do not talk because they lack the mental capacity. And this means: "they do not think, and that is why they do not talk." But_they simply do not talk. Or to put it better: they do not use language_if we except the most primitive forms of language. _Commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing. 26.One thinks that learning language consists in giving names to objects. Viz, to human beings, to shapes, to colours, to pains, to moods, to numbers, etc. To repeat_naming is something like attaching a label to a thing. One can say that this is preparatory to the use of a word. But what is it a preparation for? 27."We name things and then we can talk about them: can refer to them in talk."_As if what we did next were given with the mere act of naming. As if there were only one thing called "talking about a thing". Whereas in fact we do the most various things with our sentences. Think of exclamations alone, with their completely different functions. Water! Away! Ow! Help! Fine! No! Are you inclined still to call these words "names of objects" ? In languages (2) and (8) there was no such thing as asking something's name. This, with its correlate, ostensive definition, is, we might say, a language-game on its own. That is really to say: we are brought up, trained, to ask: "What is that called?"_upon which the name is given. And there is also a language-game of inventing a name for something, and hence of saying, "This is ...." and then using the new name. (Thus, for example, children give names to their dolls and then talk about them and to them. Think in this connexion how singular is the use of a person's name to call him!) . . . . . . . . 1034, ms 1025, pi 40.Let us first discuss this point of the argument: that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it._It is important to note that the word "meaning" is being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that 'corresponds' to the word. That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. When Mr. N. N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that, for if the name ceased to have meaning it would make no sense to say "Mr. N.N. is dead." 41.In \p15 we introduced proper names into language (8). Now suppose that the tool with the name "N" is broken. Not knowing this, A gives B the sign "N". Has this sign meaning now or not?_What is B to do when he is given it?_We have not settled anything about this. One might ask: what will he do? Well, perhaps he will stand there at a loss, or shew A the pieces. How one might say: "N" hasbecome meaningless; and this expression wouldmean that the sign "N" no longer had a use in our language-game (unless we gave it a new one)."N" might also become meaningless because, for whatever reason, the tool was given another name and the sign "N" no longer used in the language -game._But we could also imagine a convention whereby B has to shake his head in reply if A gives him the sign belonging to a tool that is broken._In this way the command "N" might be said to be given a place in the language-game even when the tool no longer exists, and the sign "N" to have meaning even when its bearer ceases to exist. 42.But has for instance a name which has never been used for a tool also got a meaning in that game?_Let us assume that "X" is such a sign and that A gives this sign to B_well, even such signs could be given a place in the language-game, and B might have, say, to answer them too with a shake of the head. (One could imagine this as a sort of joke between them.) 43.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. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer. 44.We said that the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp blade" made sense even when Excalibur was broken in pieces. Now this is so because in this language-game a name is also used in the absence of its bearer. But we can imagine a language-game with names (that is, with signs which we should certainly include among names) in which they are used only in the presence of the bearer; and so could always be replaced by a demonstrative pronoun and the gesture of pointing. 45.The demonstrative "this" can never be without a bearer. It might be said: "so long as there is a this, the word 'this' has a meaning too, whether this is simple or complex."_But that does not make the word into a name. On the contrary: for a name is not used with, but only explained by means of, the gesture of pointing. 46.What lies behind the idea that names really signify simples? _Socrates says in the Theaetetus: "If I make no mistake, I have heard some people say this: there is no definition of the primary elements _so to speak_out of which we and everything else are composed; for everything exists**2 in its own right can only be named, no other determination is possible, neither that it is nor that it is not ..... But what exists in its own right has to be . .... named without any other determination. In consequence it is impossible to give an account of any primary element; for it, nothing is possible but the bare name; its name is all it has. But just as what consists of these primary elements is itself complex, so the names of the elements become descriptive language by being compounded together. For the essence of speech is the composition of names." Both Russell's 'individuals' and my 'objects' (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) were such primary elements. 47.But what are the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed?_What are the simple constituent parts of a chair?_The bits of wood of which it is made? Or the molecules, or the atoms?_"Simple" means: not composite. And here the point is: in what sense 'composite' ? It makes no senseat all to speak absolutely of the 'simple parts ofa chair'. Again: Does my visual image of this tree, of this chair, consist of parts? And what are its simple component parts? Multi-colouredness is one kind of complexity; another is, for example, that of a broken outline composed of straight bits. And a curve can be said to be composed of an ascending and a descending segment. If I tell someone without any further explanation: "What I see before me now is composite", he will have the right to ask: "What do you mean by 'composite'? For there are all sorts of things that that can mean!"_The question "Is what you see composite?" makes good sense if it is already established what kind of complexity_that is, which particular use of the word_is in question. If it had been laid down that the visual image of a tree was to be called "composite" if one saw not just a single trunk, but also branches, then the question "Is the visual image of this tree simple or composite?",and the question "What are its simple component parts?", would have a clear sense_a clear use. And of course the answer to the second question is not "The branches" (that would be an answer to the grammatical question: "What are here called 'simple component parts'?") but rather a description of the individual branches. But isn't a chessboard, for instance, obviously, and absolutely, composite?_You are probably thinking of the composition out of thirty-two white and thirty-two black squares. But could we not also say, for instance, that it was composed of the colours black and white and the schema of squares? And if there are quite different ways of looking at it, do you still want to say that the chessboard is absolutely 'composite' ?_Asking "Is this object composite?" outside a particular language-game is like what a boy once did, who had to say whether the verbs in certain sentences were in the active or passive voice, and who racked his brains over the question whether the verb "to sleep" meant something active or passive. We use the word "composite" (and therefore the word "simple") in an enormous number of different and differently related ways. (Is the colour of a square on a chessboard simple, or does it consist of pure white and pure yellow? And is white simple, or does it consist of the colours of the rainbow?_Is this length of 2 cm. simple, or does it consist of two parts, each 1 cm. long? But why not of one bit 3 cm. long, and one bit 1 cm. long measured in the opposite direction?) To the philosophical question: "Is the visual image of this tree composite, and what are its component parts?" the correct answer is: "That depends on what you understand by 'composite'." (And that is of course not an answer but a rejection of the question.) 48.Let us apply the method of \p2 to the account in the Thaeaetetus. Let us consider a language-game for which this account is really valid. The language serves to describe combinations of coloured squares on a surface. The squares form a complex like a chessboard. There are red, green, white and black squares. The words of the language are (correspondingly) "R", "G", "W", "B", and a sentence is a series of these words. They describe an arrangement of squares in the order: And so for instance the sentence "rrbgggrww" describes an arrangement of this sort: Here the sentence is a complex of names, to which corresponds a complex of elements. The primary elements are the coloured squares. "But are these simple?"_I do not know what else you would have me call "the simples", what would be more natural in this language-game. But under other circumstances I should call a monochrome square "composite", consisting perhaps of two rectangles, or of the elements colour and shape. But the concept of complexity might also be so extended that a smaller area was said to be 'composed' of a greater area and another one subtracted from it. Compare the 'composition of forces', the 'division' of a line by a point outside it; these expressions shew that we are sometimes even inclined to conceive the smaller as theresult of a composition of greater parts, and the greater as the result of a division of the smaller. 1035, ms 1027, pi But I do not know whether to say that the figure described by our sentence consists of four or of nine elements! Well, does the sentence consist of four letters or of nine?_And which are its elements, the types of letter, or the letters? Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case? 49.But what does it mean to say that we cannot define (that is, describe) these elements, but only name them? This might mean, for instance, that when in a limiting case a complex consists of only one square, its description is simply the name of the coloured square. Here we might say_though this easily leads to all kinds of philosophical superstition_that a sign "R" or "B", etc. may be sometimes a word and sometimes a proposition. But whether it 'is a word or a proposition' depends on the situation in which it is uttered or written. For instance, if A has to describe complexes of coloured squares to B and he uses the word "R" alone, we shall be able to say that the word is a description_a proposition. But if he is memorizing the words and their meanings, or if he is teaching someone else the use of the words and uttering them in the course of ostensive teaching, we shall not say that they are propositions. In this situation the word "R", for instance, is not a description; it names an element_but it would be queer to make that a reason for saying that an element can only be named! For naming and describing do not stand on the same level: naming is a preparation for description. Naming is so far not a move in the language-game_any more than putting a piece in its place on the board is a move in chess. We may say: nothing has so far been done, when a thing has been named. It has not even got a name except in the language-game. This was what Frege meant too, when he said that a word had meaning only as part of a sentence. 50.What does it mean to say that we can attribute neither being nor non-being to elements?_One might say: if everything that we call "being" and "non-being" consists in the existence and non-existence of connexions between elements, it makes no sense to speak of an element's being (non-being); just as when everything that we call "destruction" lies in the separation of elements, it makes no sense to speak of the destruction of an element. One would, however, like to say: existence cannot be attributed to an element, for if it did not exist, one could not even name it and so one could say nothing at all of it._But let us consider an analogous case. There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris._But this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre-rule._Let us imagine samples of colour being preserved in Paris like the standard metre. We define: "sepia" means the colour of the standard sepia which is there kept hermetically sealed. Then it will make no sense to say of this sample either that it is of this colour or that it is not. We can put it like this: This sample is an instrument of the language used in ascriptions of colour. In this language-game it is not something that is represented, but is a means of representation._And just this goes for an element in language-game (48) when we name it by uttering the word "R": this gives this object a role in our language-game; it is now a means of representation. And to say "If it did not exist, it could have no name" is to say as much and as little as: if this thing did not exist, we could not use it in out language-game. _What looks as if it had to exist, is part of the language. It is a paradigm in our language-game; something with which comparison is made. And this may be an important observation; but it is none the less an observation concerning our language-game_our method of representation. 51.In describing language-game (48) I said that the words "R", "B", etc. corresponded to the colours of the squares. But what does this correspondence consist in; in what sense can one say that certain colours of squares correspond to these signs? For the account in (48) merely set up a connexion between those signs and certain words of our language (the names of colours)._Well, it was presupposed that the use of the signs in the language-game would be taught in a dif ferent way, in particular by pointing to paradigms. Very well; but what does it mean to say that in the technique of using the language certain elements correspond to the signs?_Is it that the person who is describing the complexes of coloured squares always says "R" where there is a red square; "B" when there is a black one, and so on? But what if he goes wrong in the description and mistakenly says "R" where he sees a black square_what is the criterion by which this is a mistake? _Or does "R"s standing for a red square consist in this, that when the people whose language it is use the sign "R" a red square always comes before their minds? In order to see more clearly, here as in countless similar cases, we must focus on the details of what goes on; must look at them from close to. 52.If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust, I shall do well to examine those rags very closely to see how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on. But if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous. But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an examination of details in philosophy. 53.Our language-game (48) has various possibilities; there is a variety of cases in which we should say that a sign in the game was the name of a square of such-and-such a colour. We should say so if, for instance, we knew that the people who used the language were taught the use of the signs in such-and-such a way. Or if it were set down in writing, say in the form of a table, that this element corresponded to this sign, and if the table were used in teaching the language and were appealed to in certain disputed cases. We can also imagine such a table's being a tool in the use of the language. Describing a complex is then done like this: the person who describes the complex has a table with him and looks up each element of the complex in it and passes from this to the sign (and the one who is given the description may also use a table to translate it into a picture of coloured squares). This table might be said to take over here the role of memory and association in other cases. (We do not usually carry out the order "Bring me a red flower" by looking up the colour red in a table of colours and then bringing a flower of the colour that we find in the table; but when it is a question of choosing or mixing a particular shade of red, we do sometimes make use of a sampleor table.) If we call such a table the expression of a rule of the language-game, it can be said that what we call a rule of a language-game may have very different roles in the game. 54.Let us recall the kinds of case where we say that a game is played according to a definite rule. The rule may be an aid in teaching the game. The learner is told it and given practice in applying it._Or it is an instrument of the game itself._Or a rule is employed neither in the teaching nor in the game itself; nor is it set down in a list of rules. One learns the game by watching how others play. But we say that it is played according to such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules of f from the practice of the game_like a natural law governing the play. _But how does the observer distinguish in this case between players' mistakes and correct play?_There are characteristic signs of it in the players' behaviour. Think of the behaviour characteristic of correcting a slip of the tongue. It would be possible to recognize that someone was doing so even without knowing his language. 55."What the names in language signify must be indestructible; for it must be possible to describe the state of affairs in which everything destructible is destroyed. And this description will contain words; and what corresponds to these cannot then be destroyed, for otherwise the words would have no meaning." I must not saw off the branch on which I am sitting. One might, of course, object at once that this description would have to except itself from the destruction._But what corresponds to the separate words of the description and so cannot be destroyed if it is true, is what gives the words their meaning_is that without which they would have no meaning._In a sense, however, this man is surely what corresponds to his name. But he is destructible, and his name does not lose its meaning when the bearer is destroyed._An example of something corresponding to the name, and without which it would have no meaning, is a paradigm that is used in connexion with the name in the language-game. 56.But what if no such sample is part of the language, and we bear in mind the colour (for instance) that a word stands for?_ "And if we bear it in mind then it comes before our mind's eye when we utter the word. So, if it is always supposed to be possible for us to remember it, it must be in itself indestructible."_But what do we regard as the criterion for remembering it right?_When we work with a sample instead of our memory there are circumstances in which we say that the sample has changed colour and we judge of this by memory. But can we not sometimes speak of a darkening (for example) of our memory-image? Aren't we as much at the mercy of memory as of a sample? (For someone might feel like saying: "If we had no memory we should be at the mercy of a sample".)_Or perhaps of some chemical reaction. Imagine that you were supposed to paint a particular colour "C", which was the colour that appeared when the chemical substances X and Y combined. _Suppose that the colour struck you as brighter on one day than on another; would you not sometimes say: "I must be wrong, the colour is certainly the same as yesterday"? This shews that we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the highest court of appeal. 57."Something red can be destroyed, but red cannot be destroyed, and that is why the meaning of the word 'red' is independent of the existence of a red thing."_Certainly it makes no sense to say that the colour red is torn up or pounded to bits. But don't we say "The red is vanishing"? And don't clutch at the idea of our always being able to bring red before our mind's eye even when there is nothing red any more. That is just as if you chose to say that there would still always be a chemical reaction producing a red flame._For suppose you cannot remember the colour anymore?_When we forget which colour this is the name of, it loses meaning for us; that is, we are no longer able to play a particular language-game with it. And the situation then is comparable with that in which we have lost a paradigm which was an instrument of our language. 1036, ms 1029, pi member the colour any more?_When we forget which colour this is the name of, it loses meaning for us; that is, we are no longer able to play a particular language-game with it. And the situation then is comparable with that in which we have lost a paradigm which was an instrument of our language. . . . . . . . . 65.Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations._For someone might object against me: "You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language." And this is true._Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenonema have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,_but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all "language". I will try to explain this. 66.Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?_Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games'"_but look and see whether there is anything common to all._For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look! _Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost._Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. 67.I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way._And I shall say: 'games' form a family. And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a_direct_relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres. But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions_namely the disjunction of all their common properties" _I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread_namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres". 68."All right: the concept of number is defined for you as the logical sum of these individual interrelated concepts: cardinal numbers, rational numbers, real numbers, etc.; and in the same way the concept of a game as the logical sum of a corresponding set of sub-concepts." _It need not be so. For I can give the concept 'number' rigid limits in this way, that is, use the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept, but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a frontier. And this is how we do use the word "game". For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. (But that never troubled you before when you used the word "game".) "But then the use of the word is unregulated, the 'game' we play with it is unregulated."_It is not everywhere circumscribed by rules; but no more are there any rules for how high one throws the ball in tennis, or how hard; yet tennis is a game for all that and has rules too. 69.How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called 'games'". And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is?_But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary_for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all! (Except for that special purpose.) No more than it took the definition: 1 pace $eq 75 cm. to make the measure of length 'one pace' usable. And if you want to say "But still, before that it wasn't an exact measure", then I reply: very well, it was an inexact one._Though you still owe me a definition of exactness. 70."But if the concept 'game' is uncircumscribed like that, you don't really know what you mean bya 'game'."_When I give the description: "The ground was quite covered with plants"_do you want to say I don't know what I am talking about until I can give a definition of a plant? My meaning would be explained by, say, a drawing and the words "The ground looked roughly like this". Perhaps I even say "it looked exactly like this."_Then were just this grass and these leaves there, arranged just like this? No, that is not what it means. And I should not accept any picture as exact in this sense. Someone says to me: "Shew the children a game." I teach them gaming with dice, and the other says "I didn't mean that sort of game." Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when he gave me the order? 1037, ms 1031, pi 71.One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges._"But is a blurred concept a concept at all?"_Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need? Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it._But is it senseless to say: "Stand roughly there"? Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand_as if I were indicating a particular spot. And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way._I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I_for some reason_was unable to express; but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an indirect means of explaining_in default of a better. For any general definition can be misunderstood too. The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language-game with the word "game".) 72.Seeing what is common. Suppose I shew someone various multicoloured pictures, and say: "The colour you see in all these is called 'yellow ochre'"._This is a definition, and the other will get to understand it by looking for and seeing what is common to the pictures. Then he can look at, can point to, the common thing. Compare with this a case in which I shew him figures of different shapes all painted the same colour, and say: "What these have in common is called 'yellow ochre'". And compare this case: I shew him samples of different shades of blue and say: "The colour that is common to all these is what I call 'blue'". 73.When someone defines the names of colours for me by pointing to samples and saying "This colour is called 'blue', this 'green' . ...." this case can be compared in many respects to putting a table in my hands, with the words written under the colour-samples._Though this comparison may mislead in many ways._One is now inclined to extend the comparison: to have understood the definition means to have in one's mind an idea of the thing defined, and that is a sample or picture. So if I am shewn various different leaves and told "This is called a 'leaf'", I get an idea of the shape of a leaf, a picture of it in my mind._But what does the picture of a leaf look like when it does not shew us any particular shape, but 'what is common to all shapes of leaf'? Which shade is the 'sample in my mind' of the colour green _the sample of what is common to all shades of green? "But might there not be such 'general' samples? Say a schematic leaf, or a sample of pure green?"_Certainly there might. But for such a schema to be understood as a schema, and not as the shape of a particular leaf, and for a slip of pure green to be understood as a sample of all that is greenish and not as a sample of pure green _this in turn resides in the way the samples are used. Ask yourself: what shape must the sample of the colour green be? Should it be rectangular? Or would it then be the sample of a green rectangle?_So should it be 'irregular' in shape? And what is to prevent us then from regarding it_that is, from using it_only as a sample of irregularity of shape? 74.Here also belongs the idea that if you see this leaf as a sample of 'leaf shape in general' you see it differently from someone who regards it as, say, a sample of this particular shape. Now this might well be so_though it is not so_for it would only be to say that, as a matter of experience, if you see the leaf in a particular way, you use it in such-and-such a way or according to such-and-such rules. Of course, there is such a thing as seeing in this way or that; and there are also cases where whoever sees a sample like this will in general use it in this way, and whoever sees it otherwise in another way. For example, if you see the schematic drawing of a cube as a plane figure consisting of a square and two rhombi you will, perhaps, carry out the order "Bring me something like this" differently from someone who sees the picture three-dimensionally . 75.What does it mean to know what a game is? What does it mean, to know it and not be able to say it? Is this knowledge somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition? So that if it were formulated I should be able to recognize it as the expression of my knowledge? Isn't my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely expressed in the explanations that I could give? That is, in my describing examples of various kinds of game; shewing how all sorts of other games can be constructed on the analogy of these; saying that I should scarcely include this or this among games; and so on. 76.If someone were to draw a sharp boundary I could not acknowledge it as the one that I too always wanted to draw, or had drawn in my mind. For I did not want to draw one at all. His concept can then be said to be not the same as mine, but akinto it. The kinship is that of two pictures, one ofwhich consists of colour patches with vague contours, and the other of patches similarly shaped and distributed, but with clear contours. The kinship is just as undeniable as the dif ference. 77.And if we carry this comparison still further it is clear that the degree to which the sharp picture can resemble the blurred one depends on the latter's degree of vagueness. For imagine having to sketch a sharply defined picture 'corresponding' to a blurred one. In the latter there is a blurred red rectangle: for it you put down a sharply defined one. Of course_several such sharply defined rectangles can be drawn to correspond to the indefinite one._But if the colours in the original merge without a hint of any outline won't it become a hopeless task to draw a sharp picture corresponding to the blurred one? Won't you then have to say: "Here I might justas well draw a circle or heart as a rectangle, for allthe colours merge. Anything_and nothing _is right."_And this is the position you are in if you look for definitions corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics. In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good" forinstance)? From what sort of examples? in what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings. . . . . . . . . 1038, ms 1033, pi 489.Ask yourself: On what occasion, for what purpose, do we say this? What kind of actions accompany these words? (Think of a greeting.) In what scenes will they be used; and what for? 490.How do I know that this line of thought has led me to this action?_Well, it is a particular picture: for example, of a calculation leading to afurther experiment in an experimental investigation. It looks like this_and now I could describe an example. 491.Not: "without language we could not communicate with one another" _but for sure: without language we cannot influence other people in such-and-such ways; cannot build roads and machines, etc. And also: without the use of speech and writing people could not communicate. 492.To invent a language could mean to invent an instrument for a particular purpose on the basis of the laws of nature (or consistently with them); but it also has the other sense, analogous to that in which we speak of the invention of a game. Here I am stating something about the grammar of the word "language" by connecting it with the grammar of the word "invent". 493.We say: "The cock calls the hens by crowing"_but doesn't a comparison with our language lie at the bottom of this?_Isn't the aspect quite altered if we imagine the crowing to set the hens in motion by some kind of physical causation? But if it were shewn how the words "Come to me" act on the person addressed, so that finally, given certain conditions, the muscles of his legs are innervated, and so on_should we feel that that sentence lost the character of a sentence? 494.I want to say: It is primarily the apparatus of our ordinary language, of our word-language, that we call language; and then other things by analogy or comparability with this. 495.Clearly, I can establish by experience that a human being (or animal) reacts to one sign as I want him to, and to another not. That, e.g., a human being goes to the right at the sign "l" and goes to the left at the sign "k"; but that he does not react to the sign "0_$ll", as to "k". I do not even need to fabricate a case, I only have to consider what is in fact the case; namely, that I can direct a man who has learned only German, only by using the German language. (For here I am looking at learning German as adjusting a mechanism to respond to a certain kind of influence; and it may be all one to us whether someone else has learned the language, or was perhaps from birth constituted to react to sentences in German like a normal person who has learned German.) 496.Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such-and-such an effect on human beings. It only describes and in no way explains the use of signs. 497.The rules of grammar may be called "arbitrary", if that is to mean that the aim of the grammar is nothing but that of the language. If someone says "If our language had not this grammar, it could not express these facts"_it should be asked what "could" means here. 498.When I say that the orders "Bring me sugar" and "Bring me milk" make sense, but not the combination "Milk me sugar", that does not mean that the utterance of this combination of words has no effect. And if its effect is that the other person stares at me and gapes, I don't on that account call it the order to stare and gape, even if that was precisely the effect that I wanted to produce. 499.To say "This combination of words makes no sense" excludes it from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. If I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in or out; but it may also be part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary; or it may shew where the property of one man ends and that of another begins; and so on. So if I draw a boundary line that is not yet to say what I am drawing it for. 500.When a sentence is called senseless, it is not as it were its sense that is senseless. But a combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation. . . . . . . . . Two uses of the word "see". The one: "What do you see there?"_"I see this" (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: "I see a likeness between these two faces"_let the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself. The importance of this is the difference of category between the two 'objects' of sight. The one man might make an accurate drawing of the two faces, and the other notice in the drawing the likeness which the former did not see. I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it dif ferently. I call this experience "noticing an aspect". Its causes are of interest to psychologists. We are interested in the concept and its place among the concepts of experience. You could imagine the illustration appearing in several places in a book, a text-book for instance. In the relevant text something dif ferent is in question every time: here a glass cube, therean inverted open box, there a wire frame of thatshape, there three boards forming a solid angle. Each time the text supplies the interpretation of the illustration. But we can also see the illustration now as one thing now as another._So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it. Here perhaps we should like to reply: The description of what is got immediately, i.e. of the visual experience, by means of an interpretation _is an indirect description. "I see the figure as a box" means: I have a particular visual experience which I have found that I always have when I interpret the figure as a box or when I look at a box. But if it meant this I ought to know it. I ought to be able to refer to the experience directly, and not only indirectly. (As I can speak of red without calling it the colour of blood.) 1039, ms 1036, pi I shall call the following figure, derived from Jastrow,**3 the duck-rabbit. It can be seen as a rabbit's head or as a duck's. And I must distinguish between the 'continuous seeing' of an aspect and the 'dawning' of an aspect. The picture might have been shewn me, and I never have seen anything but a rabbit in it. Here it is useful to introduce the idea of a picture-object. For instance would be a 'picture-face'. In some respects I stand towards it as I do towards a human face. I can study its expression, can react to it as to the expression of the human face. A child can talk to picture-men or picture-animals, can treat them as it treats dolls. I may, then, have seen the duck-rabbit simply as a picture-rabbit from the first. That is to say, if asked "What's that?" or "What do you see here?" I should have replied: "A picture-rabbit". If I had further been asked what that was, I should have explained by pointing to all sorts of pictures of rabbits, should perhaps have pointed to real rabbits, talked abut their habits, or given an imitation of them. I should not have answered the question "What do you see here?" by saying: "Now I am seeing it as a picture-rabbit". I should simply have described my perception: just as if I had said "I see a red circle over there."_ Nevertheless someone else could have said of me: "He is seeing the figure as a picture-rabbit." It would have made as little sense for me to say "Now I am seeing it as ..." as to say at the sight of a knife and fork "Now I am seeing this as a knife and fork". This expression would not be understood. _And more than: "Now it's a fork" or "It can be a fork too". One doesn't 'take' what one knows as the cutlery at a meal for cutlery; any more than one ordinarily tries to move one's mouth as one eats, or aims at moving it. If you say "Now it's a face for me", we can ask: "What change are you alluding to?" I see two pictures, with the duck-rabbit surrounded by rabbits in one, by ducks in the other. I do not notice that they are the same. Does it follow from this that I see something different in thetwo cases?_It gives us a reason for using this expression here. "I saw it quite differently, I should never have recognized it!" Now, that is an exclamation. And there is also a justification for it. I should never have thought of superimposingthe heads like that, of making this comparison be-tween them. For they suggest a dif ferent mode of comparison. Nor has the head seen like this the slightest similarity to the head seen like this_although they are congruent. I am shewn a picture-rabbit and asked what it is; I say "It's a rabbit". Not "Now it's a rabbit". I am reporting my perception._I am shewn the duck-rabbit and asked what it is; I may say "It's a duck-rabbit". But I may also react to the question quite differently. _The answer that it is a duck-rabbit is again the report of a perception; the answer "Now it's a rabbit" is not. Had I replied "It's a rabbit", the ambiguity would have escaped me, and I should have been reporting my perception. The change of aspect. "But surely you would say that the picture is altogether different now!" But what is different: my impression? my point of view?_Can I say? I describe the alteration like a perception; quite as if the object had altered before my eyes. "Now I am seeing this", I might say (pointing to another picture, for example). This has the form of a report of a new perception. The expression of a change of aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of the perception's being unchanged. I suddenly see the solution of a puzzle-picture. Before, there were branches there; now there is a human shape. My visual impression has changed and now I recognize that it has not only shape and colour but also a quite particular 'organization'._My visual impression has changed; _what was it like before and what is it like now?_If I represent it by means of an exact copy_and isn't that a good representation of it? _no change is shewn. And above all do not say "After all my visual impression isn't the drawing; it is this_which I can't shew to anyone." _Of course it is not the drawing, but neither is it anything of the same category, which I carry within myself. The concept of the 'inner picture' is mislead-ing, for this concept uses the 'outer picture' as a model; and yet the uses of the words for these concepts are no more like one another than the uses of 'numeral' and 'number'. (And if one chose to call numbers 'ideal numerals', one might produce a similar confusion.) If you put the 'organization' of a visual impression on a level with colours and shapes, you are proceeding from the idea of the visual impression as an inner object. Of course this makes this object into a chimera; a queerly shifting construction. For the similarity to a picture is now impaired. If I know that the schematic cube has various aspects and I want to find out what someone else sees, I can get him to make a model of what he sees, in addition to a copy, or to point to such a model; even though he has no idea of my purpose in demanding two accounts. But when we have a changing aspect the caseis altered. Now the only possible expression ofour experience is what before perhaps seemed, oreven was, a useless specification when once we had the copy. And this by itself wrecks the comparison of'organization' with colour and shape in visual impressions. If I saw the duck-rabbit as a rabbit, then I saw: these shapes and colours (I give them in detail)_and I saw besides something like this: and here I point to a number of different pictures of rabbits. _This shews the difference between the concepts. 'Seeing as ....' is not part of perception. And for that reason it is like seeing and again not like. I look at an animal and am asked: "What do you see?" I answer: "A rabbit"._I see a landscape; suddenly a rabbit runs past. I exclaim "A rabbit!" Both things, both the report and the exclamation, are expressions of perception and of visual experience. But the exclamation is so in a different sense from the report: it is forced from us._It is related to the experience as a cry is to pain. But since it is the description of a perception, it can also be called the expression of thought._If you are looking at the object, you need not think of it; but if you are having the visual experience expressed by the exclamation, you are also thinking of what you see. Hence the flashing of an aspect on us seems half visual experience, half thought. Someone suddenly sees an appearance which he does not recognize (it may be a familiar object, but in an unusual position or lighting); the lack of recognition perhaps lasts only a few seconds. Is it correct to say he has a different visual experience from someone who knew the object at once? For might not someone be able to describe an unfamiliar shape that appeared before him just as accurately as I, to whom it is familiar? And isn't that the answer?_Of course it will not generally be so. And his description will run quite differently. (I say, for example, "The animal had long ears"_he: "There were two long appendages", and then he draws them.) I meet someone whom I have not seen for years; I see him clearly, but fail to know him. Suddenly I know him, I see the old face in the altered one. I believe that I should do a different portrait of him now if I could paint. Now, when I know my acquaintance in a crowd, perhaps after looking in his direction for quite a while,_is this a special sort of seeing? Is it a case of both seeing and thinking? or an amalgam of the two, as I should almost like to say? The question is: why does one want to say this? 1040, ms 1038, pi The very expression which is also a report of what is seen, is here a cry of recognition. What is the criterion of the visual experience?--The criterion? What do you suppose? The representation of 'what is seen'. The concept of a representation of what is seen, like that of a copy, is very elastic, and so together with it is the concept of what is seen. The two are intimately connected. (Which is not to say that they are alike.) How does one tell that human beings see three-dimensionally? _the land (over there) of which he has a view. "Is itlike this? " (I shew him with my hand)--"Yes."--"How do you know?"--"It's not misty, I see it quite clear."--He does not give reasons for the surmise. The only thing that is natural to us is to represent what we see three-dimensionally; special practice and training are needed for two-dimensional representation whether in drawing or in words. (The queerness of children's drawings.) If someone sees a smile and does not know it for a smile, does not understand it as such, does he see it differently from someone who understands it?--He mimics it differently, for instance. Hold the drawing of a face upside down and you can't recognize the expression of the face. Perhaps you can see that it is smiling, but not exactly what kind of smile it is. You cannot imitate the smile or describe it more exactly. And yet the picture which you have turned round may be a most exact representation of a person's face. The figure (a) is the reverse of the figure (b) As (c) is the reverse of (d) But--I should like to say--there is a different difference between my impressions of (c) and (d) and between those of (a) and (b). (d), for example, looks neater than (c). (Compare a remark of Lewis Carroll's.) (d) is easy, (c) hard to copy. Imagine the duck-rabbit hidden in a tangle of lines. Now I suddenly notice it in the picture, and notice it simply as the head of a rabbit. At some later time I look at the same picture and notice the same figure, but see it as the duck, without necessarily realizing that it was the same figure both times.--If I later see the aspect change--can I say that the duck and rabbit aspects are now seen quite differently from when I recognized them separately in the tangle of lines? No. But the change produces a surprise not produced by the recognition. If you search in a figure (1) for another figure(2), and then find it, you see (1) in a new way. Notonly can you give a new kind of description of it,but noticing the second figure was a new visual experience. But you would not necessarily want to say "Figure (1) looks quite different now; it isn't even in the least like the figure I saw before, though they are congruent!" There are here hugely many interrelated phenomena and possible concepts. Then is the copy of the figure an incomplete description of my visual experience? No.--But the circumstances decide whether, and what, more detailed specifications are necessary.--It may be an incomplete description; if there is still somethingto ask. Of course we can say: There are certain things which fall equally under the concept 'picture-rabbit' and under the concept 'picture-duck'. And a picture, a drawing, is such a thing.--But the impression is not simultaneously of a picture-duck and a picture-rabbit. "What I really see must surely be what is produced in me by the influence of the object"--Then what is produced in me is a sort of copy, something that in its turn can be looked at, can be before one; almost something like a materialization. And this materialization is something spatial and it must be possible to describe it in purely spatial terms. For instance (if it is a face) it can smile; the concept of friendliness, however, has no place in an account of it, but is foreign to such an account (even though it may subserve it). If you ask me what I saw, perhaps I shall be able to make a sketch which shews you; but I shall mostly have no recollection of the way my glance shifted in looking at it. The concept of 'seeing' makes a tangled impression. Well, it is tangled.--I look at the landscape, my gaze ranges over it, I see all sorts of distinct and indistinct movement; this impresses itself sharply on me, that is quite hazy. After all, how completely ragged what we see can appear! And now look at all that can be meant by "description of what is seen".--But this just is what is called description of what is seen. There is not one genuine proper case of such description--the rest being just vague, something which awaits clarification, or which must just be swept aside as rubbish. Here we are in enormous danger of wanting to make fine distinctions. __ the everyday language-game, and to note false accounts of the matter as false. The primitive language-game which children are taught needs no justification; attempts at justification need to be rejected. Take as an example the aspects of a triangle. This triangle can be seen as a triangular hole, as a solid, as a geometrical drawing; as standing on its base, as hanging from its apex; as a mountain, as a wedge, as an arrow or pointer, as an overturned object which is meant to stand on the shorter side of the right angle, as a half parallelogram, and as various other things. "You can think now of this now of this as you look at it, can regard it now as this now as this, and then you will see it now this way, now this."--What way? There is no further qualification. But how is it possible to see an object according to an --The question represents it as a queer fact; as if something were being forced into a form it did not really fit. But no squeezing, no forcing took place here. When it looks as if there were no room for such a form between other ones you have to look for it in another dimension. If there is no room here, there is room in another dimension. . . . . . . . . 1041, ms 1040, pi Do I really see something different each time, or do I only interpret what I see in a different way? I am inclined to say the former. But why?--To interpret is to think, to do something; seeing is a state. Now it is easy to recognize cases in which we are interpreting. When we interpret we form hypotheses, which may prove false.--"I am seeing this figure as a ....." can be verified as little as (or in the same sense as) "I am seeing bright red". So there is a similarity in the use of "seeing" in the two contexts. Only do not think you knew in advance what the "state of seeing" means here! Let the use teach you the meaning. We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough. If you look at a photograph of people, houses and trees, you do not feel the lack of the third dimension in it. We should not find it easy to describe a photograph as a collection of colour-patches on a flat surface; but what we see in a stereoscope looks three-dimensional in a different way again. (It is anything but a matter of course that we see 'three-dimensionally' with two eyes. If the two visual images are amalgamated, we might expect a blurred one as a result.) The concept of an aspect is akin to the conceptof an image. In other words: the concept 'I amnow seeing it as ....' is akin to 'I am now havingthis image'. Doesn't it take imagination to hear something as a variation on a particular theme? And yet one is perceiving something in so hearing it. "Imagine this changed like this, and you have this other thing." One can use imagining in the course of proving something. Seeing an aspect and imagining are subject to the will. There is such an order as "Imagine this", and also: "Now see the figure like this"; but not: "Now see this leaf green". The question now arises: Could there be human beings lacking in the capacity to see something as something--and what would that be like? What sort of consequences would it have?--Would this defect be comparable to colour-blindness or to not having absolute pitch? __" Is he supposed to be blind to the similarity between two faces? _") Ought he to be unable to see the schematic cube as a cube?--It would not follow from that that he could not recognize it as a representation (a working drawing for instance) of a cube. But for him it would not jump from one aspect to the other.--Question: Ought he to be able to take it as a cube in certain circumstances, as we do?--If not, this could not very well be called a sort of blindness. The 'aspect-blind' will have an altogether different relationship to pictures from ours. (Anomalies of this kind are easy for us to imagine.) Aspect-blindness will be akin to the lack of a 'musical ear'. The importance of this concept lies in the connexion between the concepts of 'seeing an aspect' and 'experiencing the meaning of a word'. For we want to ask "What would you be missing if you did not experience the meaning of a word?" What would you be missing, for instance, if you did not understand the request to pronounce the word "till" and to mean it as a verb, _In a law-court, for instance, the question might be raised how someone meant a word. And this can be inferred from certain facts.--It is a question of intention. But could how he experienced a word--the word "bank" for instance--have been significant in the same way? Suppose I had agreed on a code with someone; "tower" means bank. I tell him "Now go to the tower"--he understands me and acts accordingly, but he feels the word "tower" to be strange in this use, it has not yet 'taken on' the meaning. "When I read a poem or narrative with feeling, surely something goes on in me which does not go on when I merely skim the lines for information."--What processes am I alluding to?--The sentences have a different ring. I pay careful attention to my intonation. Sometimes a word has the wrong intonation, I emphasize it too much or too little. I notice this and shew it in my face. I might later talk about my reading in detail, for example about the mistakes in my tone of voice. Sometimes a picture, as it were an illustration, comes to me. And this seems to help me to read with the correct expression. And I could mention a good deal more of the same kind.--I can also give a word a tone of voice which brings out the meaning of the rest, almost as if this word were a picture of the whole thing. (And this may, of course, depend on sentence-formation.) When I pronounce this word while reading with expression it is completely filled with its meaning.--"How can this be, if meaning is the use of the word?" Well, what I said was intended figuratively. Not that I chose the figure: it forced itself on me.--But the figurative employment of the word can't get into conflict with the original one. Perhaps it could be explained why precisely this picture suggests itself to me. (Just think of the expression, and the meaning of the expression: "the word that hits it off".) But if a sentence can strike me as like a painting in words, and the very individual word in the sentence as like a picture, then it is no such marvel that a word uttered in isolation and without purpose can seem to carry a particular meaning in itself. Think here of a special kind of illusion which throws light on these matters.--I go for a walk in the environs of a city with a friend. As we talk it comes out that I am imagining the city to lie on our right. Not only have I no conscious reason for this assumption, but some quite simple consideration was enough to make me realize that the city lay rather to the left ahead of us. I can at first give no answer to the question why I imagine the city in this direction. I had no reason to think it. But though I see no reason still I seem to see certain psychological causes for it. In particular, certain associations and memories. For example, we walked along a canal, and once before in similar circumstances I had followed a canal and that time the city lay on our right.--I might try as it were psychoanalytically to discover the causes of my unfounded conviction. "But what is this queer experience?"--Of course it is not queerer than any other; it simply differs in kind from those experiences which we regard as the most fundamental ones, our sense impressions for instance. "I feel as if I knew the city lay over there."--"I feel as if the name 'Schubert' fitted Schubert's works and Schubert's face." You can say the word "March" to yourself and mean it at one time as an imperative at anotheras the name of a month. And now say "March! "--and then "March no further!"--Does the same experience accompany the word both times--areyou sure? If a sensitive ear shews me, when I am playing this game, that I have now this now that experience of the word--doesn't it also shew me that I often do not have any experience of it in the course of talking?--For the fact that I then also mean it, intend it, now like this now like that, and maybe also say so later is, of course, not in question. 1042, ms 1042, pi But the question now remains why, in connexion with this game of experiencing a word, we also speak of 'the meaning' and of 'meaning it'.--This is a different kind of question.--It is the phenomenon which is characteristic of this language-game that in this situation we use this expression: we say we pronounced the word with this meaning and take this expression over from that other language-game. Call it a dream. It does not change anything. Given the two ideas 'fat' and 'lean', would you be rather inclined to say that Wednesday was fat and Tuesday lean, or vice versa? (I incline decisively towards the former.) Now have "fat" and "lean" some different meaning here from their usual one?--They have a different use.--So ought I really to have used different words? Certainly not that.--I want to use these words (with their familiar meanings) here.--Now, I say nothing about the causes of this phenomenon. They might be associations from my childhood. But that is a hypothesis. Whatever the explanation,--the inclination is there. Asked "What do you really mean here by 'fat' and 'lean'?"--I could only explain the meanings in the usual way. I could not point to the examples of Tuesday and Wednesday. Here one might speak of a 'primary' and 'secondary' sense of a word. It is only if the word has the primary sense for you that you use it in the secondary one. Only if you have learnt to calculate--on paper or out loud--can you be made to grasp, by means of this concept, what calculating in the head is. The secondary sense is not a 'metaphorical' sense. If I say "For me the vowel e is yellow" I do not mean: 'yellow' in a metaphorical sense,--for I could not express what I want to say in any other way than by means of the idea 'yellow'. Someone tells me: "Wait for me by the bank". Question: Did you, as you were saying the word, mean this bank?--This question is of the same kind as "Did you intend to say such-and-such to him on your way to meet him?" It refers to a definite time (the time of walking, as the former question refers to the time of speaking)--but not to an experience during that time. Meaning is as little an experience as intending. But what distinguishes them from experience?--They have no experience-content . For the contents (images for instance) which accompany and illustrate them are not the meaning or intending. The intention with which one acts does not 'accompany' the action any more than the thought 'accompanies' speech. Thought and intention are neither 'articulated' nor 'non-articulated'; to be compared neither with a single note which sounds during the acting or speaking, nor with a tune. 'Talking' (whether out loud or silently) and 'thinking' are not concepts of the same kind; even though they are in closest connexion. The interest of the experiences one has while speaking and of the intention is not the same. (The experiences might perhaps inform a psychologist about the 'unconscious' intention.) "At that word we both thought of him." Let us assume that each of us said the same words to himself--and how can it mean MORE than that?--But wouldn't even those words be only a germ? They must surely belong to a language and to a context, in order really to be the expression of the thought of that man. If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speak-ing of. "Why did you look at me at that word, wereyou thinking of ....? "--So there is a reactionat a certain moment and it is explained by say-ing "I thought of ....." or "I suddenly remem-bered ...." In saying this you refer to that moment in the time you were speaking. It makes a difference whether you refer to this or to that moment. Mere explanation of a word does not refer to an occurrence at the moment of speaking. The language-game "I mean (or meant) this" (subsequent explanation of a word) is quite different from this one: "I thought of .... as I said it." The latter is akin to "It reminded me of ...." "I have already remembered three times today that I must write to him." Of what importance is it what went on in me then?--On the other hand what is the importance, what the interest, of the statement itself?--It permits certain conclusions. "At these words he occurred to me."--What is the primitive reaction with which the language-game begins--which can then be translated into these words? How do people get to use these words? The primitive reaction may have been a glance or a gesture, but it may also have been a word. "Why did you look at me and shake your head?"--"I wanted to give you to understand that you ....." This is supposed to express not a symbolic convention but the purpose of my action. Meaning it is not a process which accompanies a word. For no process could have the consequences of meaning. (Similarly, I think, it could be said: a calculation is not an experiment, for no experiment could have the peculiar consequences of a multiplication.) There are important accompanying phenomena of talking which are often missing when one talks without thinking, and this is characteristic of talking without thinking. But they are not the thinking. "Now I know!" What went on here? So did I not know, when I declared that now I knew? You are looking at it wrong. (What is the signal for?) And could the 'knowing' be called an accompaniment of the exclamation? The familiar physiognomy of a word, the feeling that it has taken up its meaning into itself, that it is an actual likeness of its meaning __And how are these feelings manifested among us?--By the way we choose and value words.