Unfinished Business: What Use Is Not and When Meaning Isn't Use

In the last lecture, the logical geography of the concept of the meaning of a word was sketched. Wittgenstein linked the concept of word meaning to the concept of the use of a word and to the concept of a rule for the use of a word. The concept of a rule for the use of a word is in turn linked to the concept of an explanation of the meaning of a word – since an explanation of meaning is, in effect, a rule – a standard of correct use. Moreover, the notions of meaning, use, rule and explanation are all connected with the concept of a practice of regular use of a word – and that is linked with the idea of a recognized uniformity that is viewed as standard setting. This network of interwoven concepts ramifies further. The concept of word meaning was also connected with the concept of meaning something by a word, and with the concepts of understanding what a word means and understanding what someone meant in saying what he said. The concept of understanding is in turn linked with using a word correctly, explaining what it means and responding appropriately to its use by others – which are severally criteria for understanding what a word or expression means. We determine whether someone under-stands an expression by reference to whether he uses it correctly, explains correctly what it means in a given context and responds appropriately to its use by others. One might think of this large array of interwoven concepts as a network or web of ideas, each of which is directly or indirectly connected to all the others and all of which conjunctively determine the concept of meaning.

Int. Yes, I have grasped at least part of this network, and I can see that many difficulties can be resolved by attending to the place of the various concepts within this web. Nevertheless, I still have qualms about Wittgenstein's identifying the meaning of a word with its use. I mean, he did say that for a large class of cases the meaning of a word is its use in the language. What worries me is that there are far too many kinds of cases in which the meaning of a word is not its use. And if I’m right, then we can't accept Wittgenstein's claim.