A Beginner's Guide to the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Augustine’s Picture of Language and the Referential Conception of Linguistic Meaning
- 3 Names and Their Meaning, Sentences and Descriptions
- 4 Meaning and Use, Understanding and Interpreting
- 5 Ostensive Definition and Family Resemblance: Undermining the Foundations and Destroying the Essences
- 6 Metaphysics, Necessity and Grammar
- 7 Thought and Language
- 8 The Private Language Arguments
- 9 Private Ownership of Experience
- 10 Epistemic Privacy of Experience
- 11 Private Ostensive Definition
- 12 My Mind and Other Minds
- 13 The Inner and the Outer – Behaviour and Behaviourism
- 14 ‘Only of a Human Being and What Behaves like a Human Being …’: The Mereological Fallacy and Cognitive Neuroscience
- 15 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy - I
- 16 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy - II
- 17 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy - III
- Abbreviations
- Further Reading
- Index
4 - Meaning and Use, Understanding and Interpreting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Augustine’s Picture of Language and the Referential Conception of Linguistic Meaning
- 3 Names and Their Meaning, Sentences and Descriptions
- 4 Meaning and Use, Understanding and Interpreting
- 5 Ostensive Definition and Family Resemblance: Undermining the Foundations and Destroying the Essences
- 6 Metaphysics, Necessity and Grammar
- 7 Thought and Language
- 8 The Private Language Arguments
- 9 Private Ownership of Experience
- 10 Epistemic Privacy of Experience
- 11 Private Ostensive Definition
- 12 My Mind and Other Minds
- 13 The Inner and the Outer – Behaviour and Behaviourism
- 14 ‘Only of a Human Being and What Behaves like a Human Being …’: The Mereological Fallacy and Cognitive Neuroscience
- 15 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy - I
- 16 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy - II
- 17 Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy - III
- Abbreviations
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Meaning and Use
We saw, in the last lecture, how Wittgenstein criticized the Augustinian picture and the complex referential conceptions of linguistic meaning that elaborate it. He demonstrated the vacuity of labelling all words as names and refuted the claim that sentences are combinations of names, the essential function of which is to describe how things are.
Int. But all that was purely destructive! Didn't he have anything constructive to say about what it is for words or sentences to have a meaning?
PMSH. Oh, come now! It wasn't purely destructive. After all, you learnt a great deal about naming and reference, about explanations of meaning and about what counts as description.
Int. All right – that's fair enough. But nevertheless, Wittgenstein surely owes us an explanation of what it is for a word to have a meaning, and what meaning is?
PMSH. Yes, he does. And as we shall see in a moment, he discharges his obligation with much subtlety. But before I explain this to you, I want to draw your attention to something. You talk comfortably about a word having a meaning and about words having meanings. Be careful. The very form of words inclines one to think that meanings are things words have – that words and meanings stand in some mutual relationship: here the word, there the meaning. Wittgenstein compared this thought with the thought: here's the money, and there's the cow that one can buy with it. But that is altogether misconceived. The right comparison is with this: Here is the money, and this is its purchasing power.
All right. The first thing we must do is to examine the conception of word meaning that Wittgenstein advanced in place of the variations on the Augustinian, referential conception.
In Investigations §43, Wittgenstein wrote:
For a large class of cases of the employment of the word ‘meaning’ – though not for all – this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
This remark has sometimes been said to express Wittgenstein's theory of meaning as use. That is a misdescription. For his brief observation is neither a theory nor any part of a theory. Wittgenstein did not think that there could be any such thing as a philosophical theory of meaning – only a clarification of the meaning of the word ‘meaning’.
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- A Beginner's Guide to the Later Philosophy of WittgensteinSeventeen Lectures and Dialogues on the Philosophical Investigations, pp. 53 - 74Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2024