Tuesday 11/13

Philosophical Investigations, 451-546

Discussion Questions

First Question: Pointing

In what sense (or what way) does a drawn arrow point (454)?

Second Question: The Problem of Induction

At 481ff, Wittgenstein takes up the problem of induction in the course of a broader discussion of belief and expectation. What is the problem, and what does Wittgenstein make of it? Is his discussion of 'grounds' in particular persuasive?

Third Question: Understanding the Unintelligible

We sometimes think we can think the unthinkable, only later to discover we could not:

517 The question arises: Can't we be mistaken in thinking that we understand a question?

For many mathematical proofs do lead us to say that we cannot imagine something which we believed we could imagine. (E.g., the construction of the heptagon.) They lead us to revise what counts as the domain of the imaginable.

One might also add, constructing the trisection of an angle, or Russell's Paradox and the (Unrestricted) Axiom of Abstraction. What is Russell's Paradox, and what does it show? How does Wittgenstein's comment apply in this case?

Fourth Question: The Music of Language, or the Language of Music?

Wittgenstein draws an important analogy between understanding music and understanding language:

527 Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think. What I mean is that understanding a sentence lies nearer than one thinks to what is ordinarily called understanding a musical theme. Why is just this the pattern of variation in loudness and tempo? One would like to say "Because I know what it's all about." But what is it all about? I should not be able to say. In order to 'explain' I could only compare it with something else which has the same rhythm (I mean the same pattern). (One says "Don't you see, this is as if a conclusion were being drawn" or "This is as it were a parenthesis", etc. How does one justify such comparisons?—There are very different kinds of justification here.)

What point is he making with this analogy? Can a similar analogy also be drawn between language and painting, say, or language and sculpture?

Fifth Question: An Ambiguity in Understanding

At 531 Wittgenstein invites us to draw a distinction between kinds of understanding. What is the distinction, and what does he make of it?

Sixth Question: A Counterexample

Wittgenstein considers and rejects a possible counterexample to the notion that we can mean something with vocalizations absent any particular language game (at the time of utterance!) Consider:

540 "Isn't it very odd that I should be unable—even without the institution of language and all its surroundings—to think that it will soon stop raining?"—Do you want to say that it is queer that you should be unable to say these words and mean them without those surroundings?

Suppose someone were to point at the sky and come out with a number of unintelligible words. When we ask him what he means he explains that the words mean "Thank heaven, it'll soon stop raining." He even explains to us the meaning of the individual words.—I will suppose him suddenly to come to himself and say that the sentence was completely senseless, but that when he spoke it it had seemed to him like a sentence in a language he knew. (Positively like a familiar quotation.)—What am I to say now? Didn't he understand the sentence as he was saying it? Wasn't the whole meaning there in the sentence?

541 But what did his understanding, and the meaning, consist in? He uttered the sounds in a cheerful voice perhaps, pointing to the sky, while it was still raining but was already beginning to clear up; later he made a connexion between his words and the English words.

542 "But the point is, the words felt to him like the words of a language he knew well."—Yes: a criterion for that is that he later said just that. And now do not say: "The feel of the words in a language we know is of a quite particular kind." (What is the expression of this feeling?)

What is Wittgenstein's response here? Is he correct?