Which would make linguists the authorities in logic, and in philosophy as well. — Pussycat

Logic is just grammar. Linguists describe grammar, they don't proscribe it.

Logicians proscribe.

:rofl: with the sole purpose of causing mental mayhem for people like me — TheMadFool

Now here's an example of speakers - or in this case writer's - intent against meaning. My intent was to crystallise my thinking of Wittgenstein by helping write a coherent article, with a critical audience to comment - much as we have seen @Sam26 do here. Causing mental mayhem might well be a happy consequence, but it was not part of my intent...

Anyway, Sam should work on the Wiki articles.

Nor does it mean that it is the main game.

And further, even if it were the main game we might well chose to make it not the main game...

Work on what Wiki articles?

Why, Wittgenstein's wiki ones!

I feel like someone should make a Wittypedia.

EDIT: Although of course it exists as an encyclopedia of Witticisms and not Wittgensteinsms :(

:grin: You could do that StreetlightX.

"Give" us "an" "example" "of" "a" "word" "being" "used" "without" "a" "referent".
— StreetlightX

To be fair, "example", "word", "used" and "referent" also want scratching, here. — bongo fury

To be even fairer, scratch "give", too. Admittedly, how (if) relation-words like verbs refer is where things get tricky, and potentially mixed up in how (if) sentences refer, or correspond or picture or what have you.

Tricky isn't always interesting or worthwhile, so,

even if [reference] were the main game we might well choose to make it not the main game... — Banno

Sure,

to retreat and regroup, or even to give up in the medium term and ask different questions, — bongo fury

Btw, I can be (happily) "in thrall" to reference while at the same time not so obliged to sentences.

To be even fairer, scratch "give", too. Admittedly, how (if) relation-words like verbs refer is where things get tricky, and mixed up in how (if) sentences refer, or correspond or picture or what have you. — bongo fury

None of those words - the ones you pointed out - have referents either though.

None of those words - the ones you pointed out - have referents either though. — StreetlightX

Oh, ok.

@bongo fury
I would like to thank the trio for their replies.

My use of H2O as the meaning of "water" was to convey the fact that "water" does have a referent that most, if not all, immediately pounce upon - let's call it the primary meaning. This primary meaning then serves as an anchor for all other Wittgensteinian use-based meanings in the sense that all uses of the word "water" must have something in common with the primary meaning. I vaguely recall the rope analogy that seems to contradict what I just said and so Iet's take a closer look at Wittgenstein's rope and family resemblance and use his example of the word "game".

Imagine for the moment that we're the people who invented the first game, let's call it x, and the first to define the word "game". We list the essential features of game x, in the process defining the word "game", as:

1. Two or more sides are required

2. It should be fun and exciting

Later on, a person notices that war has sides and so decides wars are games. A second person feels that biology is fun and exciting and infers therefrom that biology is a game.

As you can see, the family resemblance between us, who defined "game", and the first person is in characteristic 1 but not 2 and the family resemblance between us and the second person is in characteristic 2 and not 1. The rope analogy holds as there is no set of definitional characteristics that is common to all the usages of the word "game" above.

However, we, who defined the word "game", clearly had a referent in mind viz. the game x. The fact that, later on, some people (mis)used the word "game" only in a partial sense - focusing on some essential characteristics of (our) game and ignoring others - doesn't imply that the word "game" didn't have a referent. It clearly did for us, the inventors of the first game.

This state (apparently lacking a referent) of the word "game" then results from not some kind of defect in referential meaning but from a misuse or abuse of the word "game". It's the same story for all other words; after all each word was invented by someone who had a referent in mind when s/he invented the word. Over time, due to sloppy thinking, words have been misapplied (partial instead of full definitions being used) and this has resulted in what Wittgenstein called family resemblance.

The takeaway here is simple. That family resemblance exists in the word universe doesn't imply that words have no referents, that referential meaning is flawed and so forth. What it really does is reveal errors in word usage and the cumulative effect of such errors.

All that said, coming back to the notion of family resemblance and Wittgenstein's rope analogy, it seems logically possible that given a word w and it being applied to, say, 3 things 1, 2, and 3, 1 and 2 has a feature p in common, 2 and 3 has a feature q in common and 1 and 3 has a feature r in common. As is evident, none of the features p, q or r, is common to all 1, 2, and 3 which would mean w lacks a stable, clear-cut intension, and so can't have a referent.

However, I feel that Wittgentstein's word family resemblance doesn't occur all at once by which I mean, using the word w example from above, it isn't possible for all members of the family, 1, 2 and 3 in this case, to become true of the word w at the same time for that would imply p, q, r constitute the intension of the word w and this would imply a referent, even if only imaginary [an imaginary referent? Wittgenstein? :chin: ]. This is exactly what Wittgenstein claimed is not true. Yet, if that's the case then the family resemblance must've begun with a feature, say p (1 & 2) and then expanded on from there which loops back to what I said in the beginning- it boils down to word misuse, employing definitions partially one after another until we're left with a mish-mash of pseudo-referents that obscure the true referent of a word but in no way implies that referential meaning is flawed.

Please forgive my disorganized post; I was simply letting my thoughts flow uninterrupted.

Would like to hear your comments on this.

Logic is just grammar. Linguists describe grammar, they don't proscribe it.

Logicians proscribe. — Banno

I am not talking about any proscriptions. Take for example the "infinitive".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitive

When did it appear, when did it fall out of favour, and why, etc? Does its use have anything to do with the logic of the world?

What do you mean? ;D

I am not talking about any proscriptions. — Pussycat

No, I am.

Are you sure you are not just going to great lengths to defend a theory we could do without?

'cause that's what I would say.

Are you sure you are not just going to great lengths to defend a theory we could do without?

'cause that's what I would say. — Banno

I'm not deliberately trying to defend anything. Let's just say I'm investigating...

However, that words can carry different meanings depending on how we use it doesn't imply that referents don't exist, does it? — TheMadFool

:ok:

I see that you then got (and seemed all too willing to get) sidetracked, into questions of definition, or fixity or primacy or essence.

I see that you then got (and seemed all too willing to get) sidetracked, into questions of definition, or fixity or primacy or essence. — bongo fury

Wittgenstein is here among us! In this forum and many other like this one, for sure but...not because meaning is use but because so many words are being misused.

That family resemblance exists in the word universe doesn't imply that words have no referents, that referential meaning is flawed and so forth. What it really does is reveal errors in word usage and the cumulative effect of such errors. — TheMadFool

I think Wittgenstein's argument is not that words have no referents but that our understanding is not a function of their references.

The problem is not that words are misused but that words don't have essential meanings..

I think Wittgenstein's argument is not that words have no referents but that our understanding is not a function of their references.

The problem is not that words are misused but that words don't have essential meanings.. — jacksonsprat22

Which is another way of saying meaning (of words) is not in reference but elsewhere and that elsewhere for Wittgenstein is use but, my suspicion is that words are being misused and since Wittgenstein's theory (of language games) is predicated on words being used well, it follows that his theory needs some adjustment to say the least.

Which is another way of saying meaning (of words) is not in reference but elsewhere and that elsewhere for Wittgenstein is use but, my suspicion is that words are being misused and since Wittgenstein's theory (of language games) is predicated on words being used well, it follows that his theory needs some adjustment to say the least. — TheMadFool

If you say something and I understand it then you have used words properly.

If you say something and I understand it then you have used words properly. — jacksonsprat22

We may (mis)understand.

We may (mis)understand. — TheMadFool

Yes. But that is not a problem of language.

I am not talking about any proscriptions.
— Pussycat

No, I am. — Banno

Cool! :cool: So what do you proscribe then?

Logicians have to proscribe because there are no natural logics, in the logician's sense – they are artificial, so at some point have ot be laid down.

But once you lay them down, you can describe. It's just that natural languages already have a layer that has been 'laid down' in a less conscious way, so the move to description is more obvious.

One thing I love about the fusion of ideal-language and ordinary-language philosophy surrounding Wittgenstein's time and others' is this realization that one can speak many languages, and that one can even make new languages to speak. It is very freeing.

I agree, that there is a recognition of the flexibility of language in the PI Wittgenstein. That fed into philosophy more generally; so for instance Davidson addresses a much wider range of linguistic phenomena than does Quine.

The only bit I found difficult was:

...the logic that people used in various historical periods... — Pussycat

My predilections and prejudices pull me overwhelmingly towards coherence as a foundation to language. So I bristle at anything that might even slightly undermine that. Even though Pussycat isn't suggesting the acceptability of incoherence, I'm proceeding with exuberant caution...

Here's some stuff I wrote on family resemblance, for the Wiki article on that topic, many years ago:

Prior to Philosophical Investigations the ideal way to give the meaning of something had been thought to be by specifying both genus and differentia. So a 'triangle' is defined as 'a plane figure (genus) bounded by three straight sides (differentia)'.

Logically, this sort of definition can be seen as a series of conjunctions; A triangle is a plane figure and has three sides.

More generally, "P" might be defined using a simple conjunction of "A" and "B":

P =def A & B
By examining closely the use of terms such as 'game', 'number' and 'family', Wittgenstein showed that for a large number of terms such a definition is not possible. Rather, in some cases a definition needs to be a disjunction of conjuncts,

P =def (A & B) OR (C & D)
but furthermore the way we use such terms means that we can both extend and detract from the series by adding or removing some of the conjunctions.

P =def (A & B) OR (C & D) OR...
Nor should we conclude that because we cannot give a definition of "game" or "number" that we do not know what they are: "But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn".[6]

It's the last step, that a definition is extensible, that @TheMadFool was missing in his now-defunct thread. The same extensibility noted by @Snakes Alive.

Bringing together this thread and '1' does not refer to anything...

Wittgenstein never openly came to terms with Gödel, let alone Turing. But there seems to me to be a thread here that is common, in the form of a preference for coherence even if that leads to incompleteness.

It's all too common for folk to over-state the case presented by Gödel, so I'll just note the curious parallel that family resemblance is incomplete in a way perhaps analogous to the incompleteness theorem.

All that to say, we can never present a final analysis of language.

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/321?fbclid=IwAR1RWJdFhVUXAqaJQf6dj5AjQgtXhL8HQbO1X2M1ZECUCMsLNI1Otui7nr0

It's the last step, that a definition is extensible, that TheMadFool was missing in his now-defunct thread. — Banno

Indeed. If I understand you correctly, language is a "alive" and in "motion", evolving over time and this clearly would have an impact on definitions - in your words, they (definitions) would be "extensible", incorporating new features, skipping over some old ones, and so on. The net effect would be that a single word would have multiple meanings that resemble each other but are not identical to each other - Wittgenstein's family resemblance. The evolution of language, specifically with respect to definitions as described above, probably comes about because ordinary people are more flexible when using words than philosophers and logicians - it's not at all surprising, therefore, that Wittgenstein's family resemblance is a phenomenon.

I mentioned earlier that ordinary people - a main source of philosophically relevant words (?) - tend to misuse words and hence family resemblance but it doesn't seem completely accurate to characterize it as such; after all different uses of a word in re language games evince some overlap in meaning. Perhaps the proper way to describe it is: ordinary people are more flexible in the way they engage language.