Tool 1 is the simplest and, I think, the most important: “Look and see.”

When a philosophical question starts to feel deep, Wittgenstein’s first move is often to stop, and look at how the words are actually used in ordinary situations. Instead of guessing that there must be some hidden thing the word refers to, he'll point out what we already know how to do with it.

What it’s for, it’s for breaking the spell of abstract pictures. A lot of philosophy starts when we take a word that works perfectly well in our everyday life, remove it from its normal setting, and then demand an explanation of what it really is.

Think about the word game. Most people assume that a concept must have a strict definition. So, they ask, what is the essence of a game? But if you actually look, you find board games, card games, Olympic games, children’s games, solitaire, chess, tag, etc. There isn’t one feature shared by every case, and that discovery isn’t a defect. It’s a reminder that our concepts don’t always work by strict definitions, they often work by overlapping similarities (family resemblances).

Take the philosophical example, “What is meaning?” It can sound like we’re asking for a hidden object, a mental item, or a thing attached to a word. Wittgenstein’s move is to say, don’t posit anything yet. Instead look at what we call meaning in real life. We explain a word, we correct someone’s misuse, we translate, we follow an instruction, we misunderstand and then get it right, we use a word in a new context and people either accept it or reject it. The meaning isn’t a ghostly extra. It shows itself in the role the expression plays in our shared practices (forms of life).

If you want a quick test for whether “look and see” is needed, try the following: when you ask your question, do you immediately feel pulled toward a hidden mechanism or a deep entity that must be behind the scenes? If you do, you’re probably in Wittgenstein’s territory. The next tool, the grammar check, is what he uses to say exactly where the question goes off the rails.

Tool 2 - the grammar check, and grammar here in Wittgenstein’s sense, not in the schoolbook sense. He doesn’t mean punctuation or sentence diagrams. He means what are the rules of use for an expression, what role does it play, what counts as a sensible move, and what counts as a category mistake.

You take a philosophical statement, and ask, what kind of sentence is this supposed to be? Is it reporting a fact, giving a rule, expressing a commitment, giving a standard, drawing an inference, or doing something else? Sometimes philosophical trouble comes from treating one kind of sentence as if it were another.

It’s for spotting when a statement only looks like it’s saying something, when it’s really the result of our words getting detached from the contexts or settings that give them their point. You can also think of it as a way of asking, what would count as understanding this claim? What would we do with it?

For example, suppose someone says, “I’ve got a pain in my foot.” That’s not something you normally verify by looking for evidence in the same way you’d verify “there’s a nail in my shoe.” You might ask where it hurts, or whether it’s sharp or dull, or you might offer help. Imagine someone says, “I know I’m in pain because I observed it.” Such a sentence has the wrong grammar. It treats pain like an object discovered by inner observation, and it makes the person’s relation to their pain look like the relation to something external. You can feel the temptation, but the sentence is already sliding into a picture that isn’t expressing how we actually talk and respond.

Consider a philosophical example, “I know the external world exists.” It looks like an ordinary knowledge claim, like “I know there’s a tree in the yard.” But if you run a grammar check, you’ll ask, what would count as checking it, what would count as correcting it, what would count as evidence for or against it, and what would it mean to doubt it in the ordinary ways we doubt things? This is exactly where On Certainty starts to bite. Wittgenstein’s point isn’t that the proposition is false. It’s that in many contexts it doesn’t behave like a normal empirical claim at all. It’s closer to something that stands fast in the background of inquiry, the kind of thing you don’t typically confirm because it’s part of what makes confirmation possible.

A grammar check asks whether we’re trying to do philosophy with a statement/proposition that’s outside it's normal use. It looks like a straightforward statement of fact, but it’s functioning more like a rule, or a framework commitment, or a hinge. And once you see that, much of the philosophical pressure is dissipates.

An admirable approach.

Thanks

Tool 3 is language games, this is where Wittgenstein gets concrete. If the Wittgenstein's grammar asks, “What role does this sentence play?” the language game asks, “In what human activity does it actually play that role? (very important)”

A language game is the use of words inside a practice, viz., asking, answering, commanding, measuring, accusing, thanking, joking, praying, bargaining, teaching a child, doing math, doing science. The point isn’t that language is a literal game. It's that meaning lives in use, and use lives in activities with rules, training, and standards of correction.

It’s for resisting the idea that words get their meaning by pointing to hidden objects, inner items, or metaphysical entities. It helps with a very common philosophical error, i.e., taking a word out of one setting or context where it works perfectly well, then forcing it into another setting or context, and getting a mystery as the result.

For example, think about the word know. In one language game, “I know” is basically a way of saying, “I’m sure (like a conviction),” or “stop worrying,” or “I’ve got this.” In another game, “I know” is a claim that you can back up with good reasons or evidence, “How do you know?” Mixing these games can cause confusion. A person might say, “I know my spouse loves me,” and if you treat that as if it’s the same kind of claim as “I know there’s a cafe on that corner,” you’ll start demanding the wrong kind of evidence and acting as if intimacy is an empirical hypothesis. The trouble isn’t with love; it’s with forcing the sentence into the wrong game.

A skeptic says, “How do you know you’re not dreaming right now?” That question can be asked in some special contexts, like waking up disoriented, or in a movie, or as a thought experiment. But global skepticism tries to make the question applicable everywhere. Wittgenstein’s reply isn’t “here’s the proof that you’re not dreaming.” His reply is, what language game are you playing when you raise that doubt? What would count as settling it? What would it look like to live with that doubt as a genuine doubt? In On Certainty the punchline is that radical doubt isn’t the purest form of inquiry, it’s often a sign that the words doubt, know, and certain have been pulled from the very practices that give them their sense.

This is also where you see why “it’s all about language” is misleading. Language games aren’t just words. They’re words plus action, viz., training, correction, agreement in judgment, shared reactions, the whole backdrop of human life in which our expressions make sense.

Here's the test, when you feel a philosophical problem coming on, ask yourself, “What would people actually do with this sentence in real life?” If the answer is "nothing," or “I can’t picture it,” that’s a red flag. You may be looking at a propostion that’s been detached from any workable language game.

Tool 4 is criteria, and it’s one of the best ways of keeping philosophy honest. If you’ve asked what language game you’re playing in, the next question is: what counts as getting it right, and what counts as getting it wrong?

A criterion isn’t just evidence. It’s what we count as settling, or at least strongly supporting, a claim in a given context. Criteria are built into how we use words. They are seen in what we count as a justified assertion, what we count as a misunderstanding, and what we count as a correction.

Criteria helps to avoid two extremes that generate philosophical problems. One extreme treats everything as a private inner thing that only the subject can access. The other extreme treats everything as if it must be checked by scientific measurement. Wittgenstein’s point is that our everyday concepts already have standards of application, and those standards aren’t mysterious. They’re seen in how we teach, learn, correct, and respond.

For example, take “He’s angry.” How do you know? You don’t usually run a brain scan. You point to tone, posture, what he says, what he does, the context, how he reacts when challenged. Those are the criteria in the language game. Notice the philosophical temptation, “But how do you know he’s really angry inside?” The criteria tool helps you see the problem. The concept angry isn’t mainly a label for a hidden object in an inner theater. It’s a concept with public criteria that we’ve learned to apply in everyday life. That doesn’t deny our inner life, it keeps the concept anchored to the practices that give it its use.

Another example, other minds. “How do you know anyone else is conscious?” Philosophers sometimes treat consciousness as a private object that can only be directly inspected by the subject. Then everyone else becomes an inference from behavior, and the whole thing starts to feel fragile. Wittgenstein’s criteria move isn’t to deny the inner life. It’s to remind us that the grammar of our mental concepts is tied to criteria in our shared practices. If you strip the criteria, the words stop having a stable use.

Now connect that to On Certainty. Skeptical doubt often asks for a kind of certainty that our everyday knowledge claims aren’t designed to deliver. Sometimes it demands absolute certainty, certainty in the sense of logical or moral necessity. Sometimes it demands an unrealistic epistemic certainty, certainty that would have to be defeater proof in every imaginable context. Wittgenstein’s point is that ordinary inquiry doesn’t run on that standard. More importantly, the background that makes inquiry possible isn’t usually a set of super claims that have been proven to the highest degree. It’s what I’d call hinge certainty, the arational bedrock that stands fast so that doubt and justification can get traction. If you try to doubt everything at once, you don’t achieve a purer form of inquiry, you undermine the very criteria that make doubt, check, and justify intelligible.

A quick question you can use whenever things get a bit abstract is: “What would count as settling this philosophical problem in this context?” If no answer is forthcoming then the question is probably detached from any practice, that’s a sign you’re not facing some deep metaphysical puzzle. You’re facing a concept being asked to do work it can’t do.

Tool 1 is the simplest and, I think, the most important: “Look and see.” — Sam26

Thank you for your new Thread.

A thought that I have had for a while about Wittgenstein.

If a person said “I am in xyz” and did nothing, the word “xyz” would be meaningless to any observer of that person. In practice, the word only has a use within a language game if that word “xyz” refers to what they objectively do, not what they are subjectively thinking.

However, there is a danger in Wittgenstein's practical approach which dismisses any attempt at a deeper philosophical understanding. It could be called “Cargo Cult Thinking”, where an observed behaviour is imitated rather than trying to make any attempt to understand the cause of such behaviour, difficult that might be.

https://tapandesai.com/cargo-cult-thinking/
The Cargo Cult Thinking: Beware of Imitating Behaviors
During World War II, remote Pacific islanders watched in awe as foreign troops landed on their shores, bringing crates of food, medicine, and supplies, things the islanders had never seen before. The soldiers built airstrips, set up makeshift control towers, and went about their routines. Then, just as suddenly as they arrived, they vanished when the war ended, taking everything with them
But the islanders had a plan.
Believing that the airstrips had summoned the cargo, they built their own, meticulously crafting bamboo control towers and wooden headphones, hoping the planes would return. They mimicked the rituals of the soldiers, waiting for the magic to happen.
But the planes never came back.

Cargo Cult Thinking, because when a person says “I am in xyz”, for Wittgenstein, the word “xyz” refers to what they objectively do, it does not refer to the cause of why they said “I am in xyz” in the first place.

I'll say thanks here for the grammar section in particular. I've never quite understood what Wittgenstein meant by this - not when reading Wittgenstein (only read excerpts, so that's probably to blame), nor when I read others talking about it. This is probably the clearest explication I've ever come across, and it fits nicely into what else I know about Wittgenstein. So: thanks again.

I do have a question: How does the grammer check relate to the language game. My intuition is to say you need to identify the language game before you ran the grammar check - or differently put: isn't the grammar just the structure of the language game? (I'll admit I find it confusing that he chose the term grammar.)

Tool 2 - the grammar check, and grammar here in Wittgenstein’s sense, not in the schoolbook sense. He doesn’t mean punctuation or sentence diagrams. He means what are the rules of use for an expression, what role does it play, what counts as a sensible move, and what counts as a category mistake. — Sam26

Language can be philosophically misleading as language uses figures of speech which within philosophical investigation should not be taken literally. For example, the expression “I see your pain” is a figure of speech which does not literally mean that I am literally able to see your pain.

Language uses figures of speech, and philosophy must be able to distinguish when an expression is being used as a figure of speech or literally.

As the expression “I’ve got a pain in my foot” suggests that pain is an object external to “I”, it is being used as a figure of speech rather than literally. A more literal expression would be “I am the pain in my foot”

As you say, the philosopher must also determine whether an expression is being used as an empirical observation or as a performative utterance, as described by JL Austin. For example, if I say “the postbox is red”, am I making an empirical observation that the postbox is red rather than blue, or am I making a performative utterance that the postbox, regardless of its true nature, is red. It may be that the true nature of the postbox is purple, but even so, within the language game It shall henceforth be called “red”. This is the question as to how names are initially attached to objects. Is the colour of the postbox red, rouge or rot?

When I make the statement that “the external world exists”, is this an empirical observation or a performative utterance that establishes the framework, the bedrock, on which everything else I say about the external world is founded. Once I have made the performative utterance that the external world exists, then I can talk about the mountains, elephants and oceans that reside within this external world.

Philosophy must distinguish between figures of speech such as “I’ve got a pain in my foot” and the more literal expression “ I am the pain in my foot”.

Philosophy must also distinguish between empirical expressions such as “the postbox is red” and performative utterances such as “the postbox is red”.

In this sense, as regards grammar, what Wittgenstein is pointing out is common sense.

However, there is a danger in Wittgenstein's practical approach which dismisses any attempt at a deeper philosophical understanding. It could be called “Cargo Cult Thinking”, where an observed behaviour is imitated rather than trying to make any attempt to understand the cause of such behaviour, difficult that might be. — RussellA

Errors will always occur in understanding, and the meaning is use model works by continued interaction within a community with error correction and even changes within words over time. That is expected. That is to say, Wittgenstein is not suggesting that every time people speak, the word usage is consistent, but instead that it is an ongoing process.

Even assuming the meaning is use model is completely flawed and that we instead gain meaning from reference to mental states, you still have errors, where the Cargo Cult would still be going about things in the wrong way. That is to say, under no model is it suggested that people always get meaning correct.

The question then becomes how do we go about our correction? Per Wittgenstein, use is the standard of correctness, and this use will define meaning. What you have pointed out is a mismatch in usage of terms, but that is the result of lack of correction within the community. It remains possible that this mismatch will be corrected, although your example seperated the communities of users and left each community with differing meaning of words, which would mean at this point they have differing langauges. The point though is potential of correction through usage.

Per a mental reference model, where meaning is attached to what mental images were within the solidier's mind, there would be no correction through comparisons of mental processes. The soldiers could not correct the islander's meaning of the terms by opening their brains and comparing them to the brains of the islanders to show them that they were wrong. The point is the lack of potential correction by reliance upon this model.

One issue that I think comes up very often in these discussions is the thought that Wittgenstein is trying to deny the mental states. He's not. The question regarding them is whether they underwrite the meaning to the terms and whether they offer explanatory power in terms of what is meant.

The meaning isn’t a ghostly extra. — Sam26

This is the critical line and hundreds of posts have centered around this confusion. This comment is often read to mean "there is no ghostly extra," asserting a metaphysical claim about what might exist in one's mind. That then results in accusations that the internal state is denied and that we are all p-zombies speaking in the Chinese Room. The point is that meaning does not rely upon the ghostly extra, but that is not to suggest anyone is saying anything about what that ghostly extra might be or not be. The point is that it's ghostly, offers no explanatory value, and cannot be meaningfully discussed. It's beyond what philosophy can treat as explanatory for meaning.

Thank you for your new Thread.

A thought that I have had for a while about Wittgenstein.

If a person said “I am in xyz” and did nothing, the word “xyz” would be meaningless to any observer of that person. In practice, the word only has a use within a language game if that word “xyz” refers to what they objectively do, not what they are subjectively thinking.

However, there is a danger in Wittgenstein's practical approach which dismisses any attempt at a deeper philosophical understanding. It could be called “Cargo Cult Thinking”, where an observed behaviour is imitated rather than trying to make any attempt to understand the cause of such behaviour, difficult that might be.

https://tapandesai.com/cargo-cult-thinking/
The Cargo Cult Thinking: Beware of Imitating Behaviors
During World War II, remote Pacific islanders watched in awe as foreign troops landed on their shores, bringing crates of food, medicine, and supplies, things the islanders had never seen before. The soldiers built airstrips, set up makeshift control towers, and went about their routines. Then, just as suddenly as they arrived, they vanished when the war ended, taking everything with them
But the islanders had a plan.
Believing that the airstrips had summoned the cargo, they built their own, meticulously crafting bamboo control towers and wooden headphones, hoping the planes would return. They mimicked the rituals of the soldiers, waiting for the magic to happen.
But the planes never came back.

Cargo Cult Thinking, because when a person says “I am in xyz”, for Wittgenstein, the word “xyz” refers to what they objectively do, it does not refer to the cause of why they said “I am in xyz” in the first place. — RussellA

You're welcome.

Thanks for your thoughts and the pushback. I think you’re right to be concerned about “just copying the surface,” but I don’t think that’s what Wittgenstein is recommending, and I also don’t think it’s right to say that a word only has use if it “refers to what they objectively do” as opposed to what they’re thinking.

First, if someone says, “I am in xyz” and there’s no shared life around xyz, no training, no examples, no circumstances where we’d say, “this is when you use that word,” then yes, it’s meaningless. But that’s not because nothing inner matters. It’s because there are no criteria for the word’s use. In most real cases the utterance itself is already part of the language game. “I’m in pain,” “I’m anxious,” “I’m confused,” “I’m remembering something,” can be perfectly intelligible even if the person is sitting still and doing very little. We might doubt sincerity in certtain contexts, but we still understand what they’re saying, because we’ve learned how those words function across a wide range of situations.

Now the cargo cult worry. Here’s the key point Wittgenstein is trying to keep us from blurring: criteria versus causes.

Criteria answer: “What would count as correctly applying this word here?”

Causes answer: “What produced this state or this behavior?”

Wittgenstein’s methods are mostly about the first question. He’s saying: don’t treat a conceptual question as if it were already a causal one. That’s not a dismissal of deeper understanding; it’s a refusal to do pseudo-science in the armchair. If you want causes, psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and ordinary explanation are exactly where you should go. Nothing in Wittgenstein forbids that. He simply resists the move where we take a word, imagine it must name a hidden inner object, then demand a deeper explanation, which is just a picture we’ve smuggled in.

And notice, if anything, the cargo cult story is a warning about mixing up criteria and causes. The islanders copied what looked like the criteria for planes arriving, towers, headphones, rituals, but they mistook those things for the cause. Wittgenstein’s point is closer to don’t confuse the signs and rules that make a practice intelligible with the mechanisms that produce certain outcomes.

I would say that Wittgenstein isn’t telling us to imitate behavior instead of understanding it. He’s telling us to get clear on what we mean first, what would count as using the word correctly, and only then go looking for causes where causes are the right question. That’s not shallow. It’s often the difference between a real inquiry and a philosophical mirage.

If a person said “I am in xyz” and did nothing, the word “xyz” would be meaningless to any observer of that person. In practice, the word only has a use within a language game if that word “xyz” refers to what they objectively do, not what they are subjectively thinking.

However, there is a danger in Wittgenstein's practical approach which dismisses any attempt at a deeper philosophical understanding. It could be called “Cargo Cult Thinking”, where an observed behaviour is imitated rather than trying to make any attempt to understand the cause of such behaviour, difficult that might — RussellA

You’re interpreting what Wittgenstein is doing as a behaviorist reduction, which treats outward regularities as suffficient and ignores inner causes. You’re assuming that unless we can point to a hidden causal mechanism behind language use, we’ve settled for a shallow imitation of understanding. But Wittgenstein rejects both the idea of hidden causes and behaviorism.
For Wittgenstein, ‘Xyz” doesn’t refer to a behavior, and it doesn’t refer to a cause. The intelligibility of “xyz” as a mood, a stance, a rule, or a commitment doesnt depend on a single episode of observable behavior, but on its place in a web of possible moves: what counts as evidence for being in xyz, what counts as pretending, what counts as withdrawing the claim, what follows from it, what licenses it. Someone can intelligibly say “I am in pain” or “I am in love” while lying motionless, because the grammar of those expressions doesnt require bodily movement.

Analyzing “I am in xyz” at a psychological or neurological level wont tell you what “xyz” means. It presupposes that you already grasp the concept. A brain scan might explain why someone reports pain, but it doesnt teach you what pain is, or how the word “pain” functions in our lives. To think otherwise is to confuse an explanation within a practice with an explanation of the practice.

I'll say thanks here for the grammar section in particular. I've never quite understood what Wittgenstein meant by this - not when reading Wittgenstein (only read excerpts, so that's probably to blame), nor when I read others talking about it. This is probably the clearest explication I've ever come across, and it fits nicely into what else I know about Wittgenstein. So: thanks again.

I do have a question: How does the grammer check relate to the language game. My intuition is to say you need to identify the language game before you ran the grammar check - or differently put: isn't the grammar just the structure of the language game? (I'll admit I find it confusing that he chose the term grammar.) — Dawnstorm

Thanks.

Excellent question, and I think your intuition is basically right, with a minor adjustment.

In practice, grammar check and language game don't refer to a fixed order. They’re two angles on the same problem, andoften we bounce back and forth between them.

The language game question is, what human activity is this expression part of? What’s going on here, asking, warning, promising, measuring, doubting, joking, praying, reporting, teaching, etc.

As for the grammar check question, given that activity, what role does this statement have, and what counts as a sensible move with it? What would count as evidence, correction, a challenge, a misuse.

So yes, you can say that grammar is the structure of the language game, in the sense that it’s the rules of use that make the game the game. But grammar check is the method of testing whether we’ve assigned the sentence the right role, or whether we’re placing it into the wrong game.

To see the difference, take the sentence, “I know I’m in pain.”

If we treat it as an ordinary knowledge claim, we’ll start asking for evidence or some verification. That’s one language game, and the grammar of know there are checks and defeaters.

But when “I’m in pain” is used as an avowal, or a cry, or a call for help, it’s a different language game. The grammar isn’t “I inspected an inner object and concluded,” it’s closer to “this is how we express pain, and this is how others respond.”

The language game helps you locate the setting. The grammar check helps you see whether the sentence is being shoved into a different kind of sentence than it really is. That’s why Wittgenstein can start from either end: sometimes you identify the game first, sometimes you notice a grammatical problem first and then realize you’ve got the wrong game.

On the term grammar, I agree it’s confusing at first. He uses it because he’s talking about rules of use, not about inner meanings or hidden entities. He could’ve called it “the logic of our concepts” or “the rules of the practice,” but “grammar” keeps reminding you that the norms are public in the sense that they’re learnable, teachable, and correctable within a practice, not private mental objects.

If I had to compress it into one line for the thread, I'd say language games are the activities, grammar is the rulebook, and the grammar check is how you catch yourself when you’re using the incorrect rulebook.

First, if someone says, “I am in xyz” and there’s no shared life around xyz, no training, no examples, no circumstances where we’d say, “this is when you use that word,” then yes, it’s meaningless. But that’s not because nothing inner matters. It’s because there are no criteria for the word’s — Sam26

But is this absence of criteria for a word ever a thing for Wittgenstein except when we look for causes and explanations? Are criteria a precondition that must be in place before meaningful use can occur, as though criteria were a kind of background rulebook we consult? Do criteria hover behind use, or are they articulated and stabilized in and through use itself? Is there a moment when we first check whether criteria exist and then allow the word to mean something?

Is the mistake the Islanders made that they mistook criteria for causes, or does the mistake lies in assuming that what needs explaining is why the practice works at all, as if intelligibility itself required a causal foundation? Do inner states and causes have meaning once we see how they are governed by criteria, or is Wittgenstein trying to show us that pursuing inner causes’ , even when preceded by establishing criteria, leaves meaning behind?

The meaning isn’t a ghostly extra.
— Sam26

This is the critical line and hundreds of posts have centered around this confusion. This comment is often read to mean "there is no ghostly extra," asserting a metaphysical claim about what might exist in one's mind. That then results in accusations that the internal state is denied and that we are all p-zombies speaking in the Chinese Room. The point is that meaning does not rely upon the ghostly extra, but that is not to suggest anyone is saying anything about what that ghostly extra might be or not be. The point is that it's ghostly, offers no explanatory value, and cannot be meaningfully discussed. It's beyond what philosophy can treat as explanatory for meaning. — Hanover

Yes, I’d agree with most of that, but I’d add bit more, so it doesn’t overreach.

I agree with the central point, i.e., people hear “there’s no ghostly extra” as a metaphysical denial of inner experience, and that’s a mistake. A better interpretation is methodological and grammatical, viz., whatever those inner things are (probably consciousness itself), they aren’t what gives the word its meaning and they can’t serve as the meaning fixing item we were tempted to posit. So, Wittgenstein isn’t trying to turn us into p-zombies. He’s trying to stop us from treating meaning as if it were an object in our own private theater.

I also agree with the claim that the “ghostly extra” provides no explanatory value for meaning. If you say, “The word means X because I have a private inner item that guarantees it,” then you haven’t explained anything, because you’ve introduced something that doesn’t have public criteria of correctness. You can’t distinguish “seems right to me” from “is right,” and that’s exactly where the philosophical mirage begins.

The one part I’d adjust is the phrase “cannot be meaningfully discussed.” Wittgenstein does talk about inner life, sensations, intentions, imagining, and so on. He’s not banning discussion of the inner. What he’s saying is more specific, viz., inner accompaniments can’t play the role philosophers sometimes assign them, the role of a private object that fixes meaning all by itself, independent of use, criteria, and practice. In that sense, yes, it’s beyond what philosophy can treat as an explanation of meaning.

I’d endorse the comment with a small refinement, it’s not “don’t talk about inner states,” it’s “don’t treat inner states as the foundation that makes meaning possible.” That keeps the point sharp, and it avoids the zombie/Chinese Room detour.

One issue that I think comes up very often in these discussions is the thought that Wittgenstein is trying to deny the mental states. He's not. The question regarding them is whether they underwrite the meaning to the terms and whether they offer explanatory power in terms of what is meant. — Hanover

The builder says to the assistant “bring me a slab”, which is part of a Language Game and whose meaning is in a particular Form of Life. On a construction site, “slab” refers to a concrete block, whereas in a bakery, “slab” may refer to a chocolate cake.

On this construction site, I look at a slab that has been named within the language game “slab”, and in my mind I have the thought of both a slab and its name “slab”. Even though I cannot look into the builder’s mind, I assume that when he looks at the same slab in his mind is also the thought of the slab and its name “slab”.

As you say, Wittgenstein does not deny mental states of the builder, because if there were no mental states then clearly there would be no language. This means that language must be underwritten by mental states. It is inconceivable that there could be “slabs” in language in the absence of any thought of slabs. I see a slab, think of slabs and think of its name “slab”.

Language by itself has no causal power, in that the mere fact of the builder saying “bring me a slab” does not by itself cause the assistant to bring the builder a slab. In the same way that my saying to my bank manager “give me £1m” cannot cause the bank manager to give me £1m. The same problem with the Cargo Cult Thinking. The airstrip is not the cause of the planes landing, the cause is the General who wants the planes to land and needs to build an airstrip in order to do so

So what causes the assistant to bring the builder a slab if language by itself has no causal power. One can imagine the scenario where the builder says to the assistant “bring me a slab”. The assistant does nothing, upon which the builder gives him a cuff around the ear. As you say “continued interaction within a community with error correction”, and the assistant quickly learns that in order to avoid physical discomfort on hearing “bring me a slab” he must take to the builder a slab. Therefore, what does “bring me the slab” mean to the assistant? It means that in order to avoid physical discomfort he must take a slab to the builder.

As regards “meaning is use”, it is true that language by itself is meaningless and only gains meaning when being used within a Form of Life, but it is also true that the meaning of words is underpinned by the mental states of those using the language.

When I see a slab, I think of a slab and I think of its name “slab”. I know what “slab” means because I can think of a slab.

When the assistant hears “bring me a slab”, he thinks about the expression “bring me a slab” and thinks about the physical consequences if he does not take the builder a slab. The assistant knows what “bring me a slab” means because he can think about the physical consequences of not taking a slab to the builder.

Tool 5 is family resemblance, and it’s Wittgenstein’s way of solving a very common philosophical habit, i.e., the habit of demanding a single hidden essence behind every important word.

Instead of assuming that a concept must be defined by one essence in all cases, Wittgenstein tells you to look at the actual cases and note how they overlap. You’ll often find similarities, crisscrossing connections, partial overlaps, and clear differences. The concept holds together, not because every case shares one core property, but because the cases resemble each other in multiple intersecting ways.

It’s for stopping the slide from “this word is important” to “this word must name one special thing.” A lot of philosophical puzzles start when we force a concept into an essence shape it wasn’t meant to fit. If we do that, we either invent a mysterious entity to serve as the essence, or we declare that ordinary use is sloppy and needs to be replaced. Wittgenstein’s wants us not to rush. Survey the different uses. Let the concept show you its structure.

Game is Wittgenstein's classic case. Board games, card games, children’s games, sports, video games, solitary games, competitive games, cooperative games. Some have winners and losers, some don’t. Some require skill, some are luck heavy. Some are played for fun, some for money, some as ritual. There’s no one trait that every game has. But there’s also no confusion in ordinary life. We learn the concept by learning a family of activities and how the word is used in each context or case.

Philosophers often confuse thiings by asking questions like, “What is the essence of knowledge?” and then they expect a definition that covers every case with strict necessity. Wittgenstein’s approach loosens that grip. Look at how know functions across uses: “I know the way home,” “I know French,” “I know he’s trustworthy,” “I know the results are significant,” “I know I left the keys on the table.” These don’t all work the same way. The criteria differ, the checks differ, and the kind of confidence involved differs. Some uses lean heavily on evidence and verification, some on competence and training, some on trust and track record. If you force them all under one essence, you’ll either flatten important differences or invent something abstract that doesn’t match how we use the word in everyday life.

This is also where my four senses of certainty matter. A philosopher may demand absolute certainty as if every “I know” is supposed to carry that weight and then conclude that knowledge is impossible. But many everyday knowledge claims aim at epistemic certainty, defeater resistant enough for the practice at hand, not invulnerable in every imaginable scenario. And in the background, there’s hinge certainty, what stands fast so that any checking and doubting can even get started. Once you see that knowledge and certainty don’t form a single uniform category, a lot of skeptical arguments lose their force, because they depend on treating all cases as if they had to meet the same standard.

A good diagnostic question here is: “Am I assuming this word must have one essence, and is that assumption doing the damage?” If yes, the family resemblance tool is usually the release.

But Wittgenstein rejects both the idea of hidden causes and behaviorism.
..............................The intelligibility of “xyz” as a mood, a stance, a rule, or a commitment doesnt depend on a single episode of observable behavior, but on its place in a web of possible moves: what counts as evidence for being in xyz, what counts as pretending, what counts as withdrawing the claim, what follows from it, what licenses it. — Joshs

I touch a hot stove, flinch and say “I am in pain”

There is the hidden cause, an unobservable mental state, being in pain and there is observable behaviour, flinching,

There is the Language Game “I am in pain”.

If Wittgenstein rejects both hidden causes and behaviourism, what is his foundation for the Language Game?

If Wittgenstein rejects both hidden causes and behaviourism, what is his foundation for the Language Game? — RussellA

He doesn’t offer a “foundation” in the sense of a hidden cause or a behaviorist reduction. The language game “I’m in pain” is grounded in the practice itself, viz., how we’re trained to use it, what responses it calls for, and the public criteria that distinguish real cases from pretense or misuse within a shared form of life. Causal stories and inner experiences can be real, but they aren’t what fix the meaning.

causal stories and inner experiences can be real, but they aren’t what fix the meaning. — Sam26

If people had no inner feelings, then there would be no language games.

It follows that we have language games because we have inner feelings.

Therefore, if I did not have the inner feeling of xyz, there would be no language game of “I feel xyz”

Therefore, “I feel xyz” in the language game must be referring to my inner feeling of xyz.

The meaning of "I feel xyz" in the language game must be referring to my inner feeling of xyz.

Game is Wittgenstein's classic case. Board games, card games, children’s games, sports, video games, solitary games, competitive games, cooperative games. Some have winners and losers, some don’t. Some require skill, some are luck heavy. Some are played for fun, some for money, some as ritual. There’s no one trait that every game has. But there’s also no confusion in ordinary life. We learn the concept by learning a family of activities and how the word is used in each context or case. — Sam26

We have to be careful here, because whether or not language-games are intepreted to be open or closed distinguishes two very different readings of language-games that perpetually divide Wittgenstein readers into two camps.

In open games, the choices of individuals are unconstrained and primary, such that shared rule following is the result of emergent behaviour. Many spontaneous children's games are of this sort in which the rules, if any, are made up and perpetually modified after play has proceeded. By contrast closed games are well-established institutional practices that are considered to direct or constrain individual choices in accordance with a closed rule set under the juristiction of a central authority (Chess, Tennis, Golf, etc).

The "community view" is the closed interpretation of language-games, according to which language, meaning, and rule-following are taken to be a closed set of socially normative practices that require a community of users to make sense of, and hence to sanction what is considered to be a language-game, as opposed to the isolated thoughts and actions of any given individual.

By contrast, an open interpretation of language-games sees the role of the community as being secondary and downstream from, the free and unpredicatable thoughts and actions of individuals. In which case, recognizable social practices are regarded as being descriptive of steady-state epiphenomena, rather than being the prescriptive ground for what does and does not count as a language-game.

causal stories and inner experiences can be real, but they aren’t what fix the meaning.
— Sam26

If people had no inner feelings, then there would be no language games.

It follows that we have language games because we have inner feelings.

Therefore, if I did not have the inner feeling of xyz, there would be no language game of “I feel xyz”

Therefore, “I feel xyz” in the language game must be referring to my inner feeling of xyz.

The meaning of "I feel xyz" in the language game must be referring to my inner feeling of xyz. — RussellA

I understand the argument, but it slides from a harmless point to a stronger conclusion that doesn’t follow. Yes, if we had no inner life, we wouldn’t have our sensation and emotion language games. But it doesn’t follow that the meaning of “I feel xyz” is fixed by a private inner object called xyz.

Two points are at work. First, dependence isn’t the same as meaning, and pain talk depends on the fact that humans feel pain, but what fixes the meaning is the expression’s role in a shared practice, when it’s appropriate to say it, what counts as sincerity or pretense, what responses it calls for, how it’s learned and corrected. Second, reference isn’t private pointing, i.e., if meaning depended on an inner ostensive definition, “this sensation is xyz,” there’d be no standard for correct use, only “it seems right to me,” and that can’t mark the difference between right and wrong application, which Witt points out.

And there’s more to the story than “inner vs behavior.” “I’m in pain” in the first person present usually functions as an avowal or expression, not as a report based on evidence, whereas “he’s in pain” is where checking and criteria show up more clearly. Those criteria aren’t just one bit of behavior either, they’re a whole pattern of life, context, history, what follows, what helps, what counts as exaggeration. So inner feelings matter, they’re part of the background, but they don’t supply the rulebook that makes the words meaningful.

And yes if there were no inner life at all, language itself would be impossible. A language game isn’t just noises plus outward motion, it presupposes creatures for whom things matter, who can be trained, who can respond, who can mean and be meant. But that point is about the conditions under which language exists, not about what gives meaning to particular expressions. Inner life makes language possible, while the meaning of our words is stabilized by their public grammar, the shared practices of use, correction, and uptake that give those words their place in our shared language life.

I like the presentation very much. It is a useful summary and demystification of Wittgenstein's approach to philosophy. Some possibly helpful comments.

Tool 1 is the simplest and, I think, the most important: “Look and see.” — Sam26

I'm not at all sure that this tool is the simplest, but I agree that it is probably the most important. It seems simple, because it suggests that all we have to do is to sit back and the truth will reveal itself. But Wittgenstein also talks about the mental cramp that results when you go over the same points over and over again, thinking that you are testing an argument for flaws. But you may just be practicing a kind of self-hypnosis that prevents you from seeing properly. You need to look around you, at the context of your thought; you need to look at it from a variety of perspectives; above all, perhaps you need to avoid simplified (purified, ideal) concepts that seem to give clarity and certainty, but only do so because they are remote from the rough and tumble of actual life.

“I’m in pain” in the first person present usually functions as an avowal or expression, not as a report based on evidence, whereas “he’s in pain” is where checking and criteria show up more clearly. — Sam26

Yes, that's what he says. But this is a case where grammar (standard sense) presents a format that makes it hard to see the grammatical (W's sense) of the two forms. It makes it very hard to take on board the difference between first and third person uses. The two pronouns often herald different use patterns, but the point is seldom noticed.
As to the accusation of behaviourism, he protests somewhere that there could not be a greater difference between pain-behaviour without pain and pain-behaviour with pain. However, sadly, mimicry, deception, exaggeration and repression are also part of the language-game - it is necessary to understand them in order to take part in the game.

And yes if there were no inner life at all, language itself would be impossible. — Sam26

"Inner feelings" are part of the games here. We learn how to play them. Suppression of behaviours is a necessary part of social life - even non-language using animals practice it.

We do have to be careful, because the “open vs closed” split doesn’t map very well onto Wittgenstein and can sneak back in the false choice between individual freedom and community authority as the ground of meaning. Language games can be improvised like kids play or regimented like chess, and both are intelligible because there are learnable norms and ways of correcting. The community view also doesn’t have to mean a top-down authority, norms can stabilize through ordinary training and correction. But if open means anything goes with no criteria, rule following collapses into “whatever seems right,” which is exactly the slide Wittgenstein targets. The real issue isn’t open vs closed, it’s whether a sign is embedded in a practice stable enough to make right and wrong use intelligible, and whether normativity is explained by inner items, communal sanction, or the lived practice itself.