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Why Language is not an Instrument
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2010
Extract
Language, said Locke, “is the great instrument and common tie of society.” “Language,” said Dewey, is “the tool of tools.” According to Wittgenstein, “Language is an instrument.” The instrumental characterization of language has had a long and respectable history, which is a curious fact, considering that as often as not philosophers and others who have affirmed it have evidenced less than full satisfaction with it. It is perhaps such dissatisfaction that urged Locke to add the qualification of “common tie” and that moved Wittgenstein to throw in the suggestion that language is “a form of life” (p. 8).
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , December 1970 , pp. 381 - 388
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1970
References
1 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. iii, ch. i, first numbered paragraph.
2 Experience and Mature, 2nd ed. (New York, 1929), p. 168Google Scholar.
3 Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (New York, 1953). p. 151Google Scholar. All subsequent citations of Wittgenstein are from this work.
4 Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, 1964), p. xiGoogle Scholar.
5 Nature and Judgment (New York, 1955), pp. 43–44Google Scholar.
6 This is the fact, as I understand him, that Buchler does realize.