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1 results

  • 3 - Measure for measure? Wittgenstein on language-game criteria and the Paris standard metre bar

  • Edited by Arif Ahmed, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein's <I>Philosophical Investigations</I>
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    13 May 2010, pp 49-65

  • Summary

    Wittgenstein has puzzled many readers by maintaining that the standard metre bar is neither one metre nor not one metre in length. This chapter explores how the standard metre bar can possibly decide questions about whether or not anything is exactly one metre in length if it is not itself exactly one metre in length. It investigates how the logical consistency problem can be overcome without substituting predicate complementation for Wittgenstein's negation. Whether the language-game role played by the bar can be properly understood without exempting it from itself either being or not being precisely one metre long is also surveyed. The chapter answers how Wittgenstein's analogy between the bar's being neither one metre nor not one metre long is supposed to shed light on the inapplicability of existence and non-existence attributions to the 'elements' of a theory. It presents Saul A. Kripke's critique of the metre.