The language game

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Chasw
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The language game

Post by Chasw »

Ludwig Wittgenstein often used the phrase “language game” to describe an important aspect of the way humans communicate with each other. The “game” part of it has to do, among other things, with the way we assume everyone listening to our utterances shares the meanings and referents we have in mind. We assume everyone in a conversation is on the same page, when clearly we are not, strictly speaking.

Most people would agree that inside our minds, each of us entertains slightly different meanings to commonly used words and intonations in each context. Add to that, uncommon words like pernicious and esoteric, and you can appreciate the pervasive dissonance in everyday conversation. Plus the built in obscurity when it come to the exact object or class of objects a particular word refers to; plus the fact that listeners minds routinely wander during long conversations, drifting in and out of attention when a stranger walks by. However, close is good enough to get the point across, in spite of the inherent misunderstandings.

What should we make of this hidden side of communication, is it important? Another philosopher (Quine or Sellars, I think) referred to this type of behavior as “studied ambiguity”, meaning that speakers are fully aware others are not all listening to exactly what they are trying to say. Yet, speakers and listeners alike pretend that we are - very much a type of game and something which I believe is instinctive. Our skills at this game are sharpened through use as one’s verbal and writing skills grow more refined. A valuable part is the ability to read the facial expressions and posture of listeners to understand their instantaneous feelings.

I suggest our philosophical understanding of “the language game” is important because our scientific endeavors depend on a firm ground of belief in what declarative statements precisely mean under standard conditions and exactly what they refer to. Scientists, and those who pay attention to scientific advances, depend on certainty and clarity of thought. Thus, they need to recognize the pitfalls hidden in every-day language. Another example of why science needs philosophy in order to stay on track.

As an aside, I believe the earliest humans (Homo erectus) probably inherited an expanded vocabulary of proto-words from Australopithecines and have been adding to their language skills with larger brains ever since. The language game has been with us from the beginning.
What do you think? - CW
The central question of human existence is not why we are here, but rather why we behave the way we do - http://onhumanaffairs.blogspot.com/
Fooloso4
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Re: The language game

Post by Fooloso4 »

Chasw:
Ludwig Wittgenstein often used the phrase “language game” to describe an important aspect of the way humans communicate with each other.
Wittgenstein uses the plural language-games and ties them not simply to communication but to thinking and “forms of life”, that is, our activities and ways of life.
Scientists, and those who pay attention to scientific advances, depend on certainty and clarity of thought. Thus, they need to recognize the pitfalls hidden in every-day language.

Hence the language-games of science are played by different rules than those of everyday language.
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Sam26
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Re: The language game

Post by Sam26 »

Fooloso4 wrote:Chasw:
Ludwig Wittgenstein often used the phrase “language game” to describe an important aspect of the way humans communicate with each other.
Wittgenstein uses the plural language-games and ties them not simply to communication but to thinking and “forms of life”, that is, our activities and ways of life.
My view is a bit different. Language-games refers to how we communicate with one another, i.e., language-games reflect a form of life and our thoughts as presented in language. Language-games by definition reflect that which happens in language. Ask yourself, how is a form of life reflected in a language-game, or how are our thoughts reflected in language-games? Is it not through language. This is not to say that a form of life or our thoughts can only be reflected in language, but that Wittgenstein's language-games specifically deals with what is said via language.
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Re: The language game

Post by Fooloso4 »

Sam26:
My view is a bit different. Language-games refers to how we communicate with one another, i.e., language-games reflect a form of life and our thoughts as presented in language.
While it is clear that we communicate through language, in the absence of language would we still be able to think as we do? It is not that we first think and then present what we think in language in order to convey what was already thought pre-linguistically.
Language-games by definition reflect that which happens in language.
Language-game do not simply reflect a form of life they are determined by it and in turn are determinate for it. We would not live as we do if it were not for language and this goes far beyond the problem of communication. On the other hand, we would not have the language-games we do if the circumstances and practices of our form of life were different.
… Wittgenstein's language-games specifically deals with what is said via language.
They also deal with what we do with language and with what language does with us. This is what he addresses when he talks about the bewitchment of language. Consider too the problem of “seeing-as” in the Investigations.
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Re: The language game

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Human actions are mainly reactive. Our lives are spent on reacting to things that happen to us in life. How we react depends on how we perceive the stimulation. Some stimulation all receive the same way (heat, being poked, hunger, thirst) while other stimulations are received with a variation of perception in the receiving individuals (effects of poetry, instructions, schooling, scolding, etc.)

Humans have a lot of stimuli to respond to. Some of the responses are uniform, some are individual-specific, and the difference is based on two things: how we perceive the stimuli, and how we process the stimuli. The first depends on our attention, attention span, and learning style; the second depends on our inner accumulated wisdom. Wisdom I define as the person's accrued internal models of how the external world operates.

Language, or lingual input, is only one of the stimuli that can be thought to act like the above. Language is powerful, but it can be misunderstood or misinterpreted easily by a listener, and the listener has a different understanding of what has been said that the speaker who has said it had.

This is I think Wittgenstein's point. Like I said, W did not discover anything, he did not offer an argument, he did not build a theory, he did not critically analyze or debunk any theory; he simply took knowledge and dressed it up and showed it in surprising light, such that makes people get surprised and step back aghast. But there is no newness and no new ideas in anything Wittgenstein has ever said. He is a parrot, a very skilled, should I say genius parrot, but a parrot nevertheless.

-- Updated 2017 July 13th, 7:50 am to add the following --

Wittgenstein focussed on the intellectual side of the lingual input being different between speaker's intentions of what to communicate, and listeners' understanding of the lingual stimulus.

W has ignored a huge and very important part of language: the communication of emotions, feelings, attitudes, moods.

A lot of our perception gets skewed due to what we hear we emotionally analyze and ignore therefore for intellectual content. For instance, take the sentence, "If the Germans won WWII then Hitler would be one of the most popular historical figures of mankind." Most will IMMEDIATELY oppose this idea. Only because most (and rightfully so) hate Hitler's theories, opinions, and actions. But give the condition as true, the conclusion is true in the example sentence. People don't interpret this sentence correctly, because their emotions alter the meaning.

W never got around to this phenomenon. The introduction of emotional content in speech and understanding of it by others. Furthermore, some speakers are unaware that their speech contains elements that will incite the listener to alter the speaker's meaning due to the listener's emotions. For instance, "We must all share Earth's bounty offered to us, and we must therefore take good care of Mother Earth", emotionally gets accepted by almost all listeners, and thought as a good idea, and only a few listeners will be able to switch off their emotive judgment, and realize that "taking a share of Earth's bounty" is the exact opposite of "taking care of good Mother Earth", and therefore realize that the original statement was a self-contradiction.

What I am saying is that W's postulate (as unoriginal as it is) can be expanded to include how the language game further obscures meaning transmitted between speaker and listener by emotional challenges of the listener's interest. (And this does not always to cause discord or disagreement, oftentimes the emotional weight will make the speaker be understood and agreed with for false reasons. Take, for instance, Derak Chopra's any statement. They are intellectually completely empty, false, and easily shot down; but emotionally they appeal with their beauty and optimism.)

In fact, mankind's struggle through history with cultural differences and the consequences of that, can be easily analyzed by applying a tool which combs out emotional elements from intellectual ones in opinions, speeches and theories. The problem is that emotional elements very often influence thinkers to accept the intellectually wrong ideas. I think this is the basic problem and intellectual curse of Christianity or any other religion: people are so attached to it emotionally, that they are incapable of seeing the gaping intellectual impossibilities that their system forces upon the listener (of religious lessons.) If one is more prone to reject intellectual systems of incompatible impossibilities, then that person is more likely to be an atheist. If a person is more likely to accept emotional values, and is more likely to compromise intellectual considerations for emotional benefits, the more likely he or she is to remain religious.
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Fooloso4
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Re: The language game

Post by Fooloso4 »

-1-:
Like I said, W did not discover anything, he did not offer an argument, he did not build a theory, he did not critically analyze or debunk any theory; he simply took knowledge and dressed it up and showed it in surprising light, such that makes people get surprised and step back aghast. But there is no newness and no new ideas in anything Wittgenstein has ever said. He is a parrot, a very skilled, should I say genius parrot, but a parrot nevertheless.
Although I think this overstates the case there is something to it. He was not interested in speculative theory building. W. is part of a long tradition of “philosophical therapy” that in the West goes back at least to Socrates. He did a great deal to show how we are “bewitched” by language. With the concepts of language-games and family resemblance he opened several avenues concerning such things as meaning, essence, rules, reason, rules of reason, and logic. His criticism of metaphysics, especially the metaphysics of Mind, has been influential.

The following quote gives us some sense of what he aimed for philosophically and leads to another area of his investigations - the relationship between acting, thinking, seeing which is tied to his rejection of the metaphysics of Mind:
"Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) " (Culture and Value 16)
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Re: The language game

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Wittgenstein wrote:"Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) " (Culture and Value 16)
This is very slippery. The above opinion's truth value depends ENTIRELY on perspective, on personal philosophy.

If you think about it, all you ever do in life is a work on yourself, whether the outside world exists or not.

But if you think about it another way, you are interacting with the world: you learn from it, you teach it.

I consider the quote to be empty, void of any usefulness. Again, Wittgenstein states a status quo, and he does not attach any significance to it. Here, even his status quo so nonchalantly said is debatable.

I don't like Wittgenstein. He is a genius who has squandered his mind. He never ever made an effort to do something with his brain. He floated, and I consider that idleness.

I think I know why most people are enamoured by him: He is glib, he is full of surprises. He is the opposite in philosophy to what Albrecht Durer was in visual arts. Durer was robust, immovable, he liked stability and weight to things. Wittgenstein flies with the flock, he goes with the flow, and he entertains profusely in the process.
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Re: The language game

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-1-:
This is very slippery. The above opinion's truth value depends ENTIRELY on perspective, on personal philosophy.
But the point is to work on one’s perspective. This is the starting point not the end. Here again we find a connection with Socratic philosophy, which was about the critical examination of opinions rather than building on or deriving philosophical truths from principles.
If you think about it, all you ever do in life is a work on yourself, whether the outside world exists or not.
For some it is, others, however, lack self-awareness to a greater or lesser degree. They are not interested in critical self-examination.
But if you think about it another way, you are interacting with the world: you learn from it, you teach it.
Right, influence flows in both directions. How we regard other people, whether it be an individual or group or most or all people, determines how we interact with them and in turn those interactions determine how we regard them. The same holds for how we regard things, events, etc.
I consider the quote to be empty, void of any usefulness. Again, Wittgenstein states a status quo, and he does not attach any significance to it. Here, even his status quo so nonchalantly said is debatable.
Others find a great deal of significance in it. It may resonate with those familiar with Socratic philosophy and the injunction to ‘know thyself’ or perhaps with those interested in Eastern traditions, but it sound jarringly at odds with those schooled in academic philosophy and the idea that philosophy as the pursuit of truth independent of us.
I don't like Wittgenstein. He is a genius who has squandered his mind. He never ever made an effort to do something with his brain. He floated, and I consider that idleness.
There are many who would disagree. It is evident that he has been and continues to be enormously influential. One thing I find interesting is the shift in who has been influenced by his work. Early on it was primarily analytic philosophers, later continental philosophers were drawn to it, and now poets and artists who have no interest in analytical philosophy.
I think I know why most people are enamoured by him: He is glib, he is full of surprises.
When I first read Wittgenstein I had no idea what he was up to, talking about toothache and things I thought trivial when compared to the transcendent depth of Plato. When I returned to him years later I was still puzzled but less dismissive. I dove in and tried to make sense of it all. The more I looked the more connections I made, a larger picture began to emerge, a picture very much concerned with the connection between thinking and the pictures we form and through which we see.

Here is one of his sayings that on the surface may appear glib :
No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.
but when one begins to think about it it becomes instructive for what he is doing and how he is to be read. Someone else can wear my hat but it won’t keep my head warm. In the same way someone can read Wittgenstein’s words but it won’t benefit him to, so to speak, don them. One must think along with him. The benefit is not to be found in the discovery of ready made answers but in uncovering assumptions, and questioning the logic of the movement of one’s own thoughts as well as that of others. It is the activity of doing philosophy, of thinking, rather than finding thoughts ready made.
Wittgenstein flies with the flock, he goes with the flow, and he entertains profusely in the process.
This is interesting because if you read commentaries on Wittgenstein you find many claims that mirror the commentator’s own views. This is not by accident. W. said he intends to be a mirror in which the reader can see his own thoughts and thereby correct their errors through critical examination. Indeed, many do see their own thoughts but instead of seeing their errors launch a defense of their views as if this is what Wittgenstein meant to show. Those who hold view X go on and on explaining how W.’s thought leads to X and those who hold view not X or Y or Z do the same. It is only when views X, not X, Y, and Z are no longer common currency that more recent commentators are able to show how W. went against the flow.
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Re: The language game

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I would say that language is A tool that developed alongside our ability to forsee the result of events that have yet to happen as well as fostering the evolution of critical thinking. I do not see language as A requirement for complex thought but an excellent way for the brain to catagorize information, and at the same time it also allows us to communicate these complex thoughts to one another.
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Re: The language game

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Fooloso4,

Thanks for your expose on Wittgenstein. You certainly have a lot of stock in him and that is nice.

You made me think, of course. I still have the charge uncleared about W which charge says that he does nothing but state the obvious in surprising ways.

Please, if you can, can you come up with one or two quotes by him, in which he does NOT paraphrase an obvious insight or something that is easy to figure out, in a perplexing example?

I fear that all he has done in his life was coin phrases that have been said before, or that are dead easy to conceptualize, and then in his paraphrasing them he reveals how dead impossible the opposite or the contradiction of the known thing could be.

What really bothers me is he only attacks situations that are dead easy to conceptualize, to comprehend. He rides on easy stuff, and makes it surprisingly true by showing how its reverse or denial would be absurd.

Does he do ANYthing else beside this? If yes, fine, if not, then I still maintain he is useless, and he has squandered his mind, his brainpower.

What you wrote about him was very exalting, and I appreciate your love for his thinking. But if you re-read your text, you will find you have not denied the charge I brought up against him; you'll see that your keep saying things, but not one of them negate my harsh opinion on him.

I appreciate your enthusiasm and am happy for it, but I am not convinced at all of the opposite of my initial (and still maintained) charge of him.

He is glib, he says the obvious in surprising, unconventional way, and that's that.

If people like you can find that useful, and you can use Wittgenstein's statements for more than what they are normatively, then fine, but that's a sign of the genius of his users and readers, not a sign of him doing any effort or putting any effort or thought into anything.

In other words, he is a lazy bum who has become popular and in vogue. Much like the paintings of Nikifor -- incredibly unskilled painter, his paintings were childlike, and he had been declared the world's foremost primitive artist. He is primitive, all right, but he ain't no artist. Only his paintings sell for over a hundred thousand dollars each, and that makes him--somehow-- a great painter.
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Fooloso4
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Re: The language game

Post by Fooloso4 »

Skydude:
I do not see language as A requirement for complex thought but an excellent way for the brain to catagorize information, and at the same time it also allows us to communicate these complex thoughts to one another.
What complex thoughts are possible that are only after the fact categorized or communicated? I am not necessarily asking you to tell me since then you must rely on language but rather something for you to consider without language.


-1-:
I still have the charge uncleared about W which charge says that he does nothing but state the obvious in surprising ways.
The problem, as I see it, is that it only becomes obvious, at least to those struggling with certain philosophical problems, once he gets them to look at things in another way. He himself emphasizes how ordinary such a way of seeing things really is. Here is one of his surprising ways of putting it, followed by a surprising picture of surprises that delighted my children when they were young and I was working on Wittgenstein:
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

When I came home I expected a surprise and there was no surprise for me, so of course, I was surprised.
-1-:
Please, if you can, can you come up with one or two quotes by him, in which he does NOT paraphrase an obvious insight or something that is easy to figure out, in a perplexing example?
I cannot at the moment, I will have to think about it. There was a thread started awhile back called: “Book Club: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations” that you might want to look at if you have not already. There is another that may still be active on W.’s “On Certainty” but it is still pretty much in the development stage.
But if you re-read your text, you will find you have not denied the charge I brought up against him; you'll see that your keep saying things, but not one of them negate my harsh opinion on him.
As I said, there is some truth to what you say. Like other forms of therapy his philosophical therapy is only useful to those who suffer from particular ailments. We find examples of those who suffer not only on sites like this but in academic departments of philosophy and philosophical journals and books as well. If you do not suffer from any of these things then that may in part be to his influence on your thinking even if that influence is not direct, or maybe you just have never gone down certain duck-rabbit (inside joke) holes. Or maybe you have just not come across the topics where his way of looking at things challenges your own.

Life is short and there are all kinds of things to read that interest us. It may be that in order to discover what Wittgenstein has to offer you you must do some hard work reading and struggling with understanding him. But it may be that he has little or nothing to offer you and all that work would be for nothing. Each of us has philosophers that do not interest us. I may, for example, find Schopenhauer or some analytical philosophers have something of value to offer me if I did the work to discover it, but I probably never will do that work and if I did I might find it was not worth it.
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