I have been interested in the philosophy of language for years, and in the question of what our words can and cannot mean. Years ago, I read all kinds of things by and about the incomprehensible Jacques Derrida, and also quite a bit by and about Saussure, Jakobson, Paul de Man, Barthes, Foucault, Eco (besides being a novelist, also a professor of semiotics), Heidegger, and Rorty. And of Stefan Themerson, not to forget. But I had never dared to approach Wittgenstein, no matter how extremely interesting I found various pieces about him (including by Patricia de Martelaere, Roger Scruton, Richard Rorty). His "Philosophical Investigations" were on my bookshelf, but they didn't come out. But now, a small reading club has started on Hebban about "Wittgenstein's Mistress" (a novel by David Markson), which finally made me give in to my long-neglected urge to take those "Philosophical Investigations" off the shelf. Well, I should have done that much earlier, because I enjoyed this book like a child.

I read this book as naively as possible: not being overly impressed by the name and fame of Wittgenstein, and not getting stuck on the fact that I didn't understand some things. And also more focused on pleasure and aesthetic enjoyment than on learning philosophical lessons. That may not necessarily be the right way, but it was my way. I'm simply not a trained philosopher, but a hedonistic reader. Just like Bert Keizer, by the way, who wrote "Ludwig Wittgenstein. Language, the Wandering Guide": an infectious little book by an enthusiast that really helped me to better understand Wittgenstein, and especially to enjoy Wittgenstein's adventurous thinking.

"Philosophical Investigations" consists of a lot of fairly short pieces that are connected but in a very open and flexible structure. In those pieces, usually in short fictional dialogues, questions are considered about what words and sentences can all mean and how we can or cannot recognize that meaning. However, Wittgenstein is not looking for "the essence of things" or "the essence of knowledge": he investigates how word meaning works and functions in daily use. So how we use language as an instrument, and what (often unspoken) rules and criteria we apply or come up with on the spot. And he also doesn't investigate what our words "essentially" mean: on the contrary, he shows that the meaning of words and sentences is extremely diverse and rather indeterminate, because each word can be used in dozens of contexts and means something different in each context. Wittgenstein's basic idea seems to me always to be: we know ourselves and the world only thanks to language, thanks to the perspective that our words and sentences offer on ourselves and the world, but those words and sentences do not give us a copy that exactly matches the world inside and outside of me. Moreover, the meaning of those words and sentences is different in each context. That immediately means that our language does not offer an unassailable order or grip on the world: the thing I am talking about does not determine the meaning of my words, and moreover, language is a pluriform and heterogeneous construction that is constantly being developed further and thus is constantly changing. As Wittgenstein says: "Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of streets and squares, old and new houses, and houses with additions built in different times; and all of this surrounded by a large number of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses." A city, then, that you cannot take in at a glance, and that moreover is constantly changing. And moreover, a city in which you don't always easily find your way: "Language is a labyrinth of paths. You come from one side and you know the way; you come from the other side to the same place, and you no longer know the way."

What I like about "Philosophical Investigations" is that Wittgenstein does not try to convince us through long argumentative discussions that language is a diverse labyrinth, and that he defines and explains little, but that he simply shows in short pieces how our use of words yields much less clarity than we think. We, and all kinds of philosophers with us, still assume that we know what a chair or a tree is and what components it is made up of. But Wittgenstein brilliantly challenges this self-evidence. For example: "But what simple components is reality composed of? - What are the simple components of a chair? - The pieces of wood of which it is made? Or the molecules, or the atoms? - 'Simple' means: not composite. And then the question is: in what sense 'composite'? It makes no sense at all to speak of the'simple components of a chair'. Or: Does my visual image of this tree, this chair, consist of parts? And what are then its simple components? Multi-color is a form of composition; another is, for example, the construction of a broken contour from straight pieces. And a piece of a curve can be called composed of an ascending and a descending branch [….] If it were established that the visual image of a tree is called 'composite' if one sees not only a trunk but also branches, then the question 'Is the visual image of this tree simple or composite' and the question 'What are simple components' would have a clear sense - a clear use." Nice passage, I think, because Wittgenstein first makes us aware of the vagueness and indeterminacy of quite common terms like'simple components of' and 'composed of components', and then finally ends with a question. He does not answer the question whether a chair and a tree are composed or one simple whole, but only clarifies the use of that question and its components. With which that question remains a question. Or as a group of questions: I no longer have the illusion that I know exactly what we exactly mean by "simple" or "composite. So that I look outside, see my little tree standing there, and only now really wonder what I see: one self-evident tree that forms one self-evident whole, as I always thought, or rather a heterogeneity of branches and leaves, where each leaf in turn is composed of many parts.....

So how is it really possible that I always saw that tree as something self-evident and as one whole? And what to do with the thought that that tree is actually composed of all kinds of more or less "simple" components and is thus not simple at all? Or that you could at least see it that way? A thought or question that is not demonstrably correct, but also not demonstrably incorrect: it is (according to Wittgenstein) a question that can have meaning in one situation and not in another, and now that meaning has for me and feeds my wonder. Because well, only now do I realize that my impression of that tree changes every day because the leaf growth is different every day, which means that some parts of that tree are just as decisive for my "total impression" as that tree as a whole. And that I now suddenly like it much better to see that tree as "composite" and not as "simple", while I didn't stop to think about it before I knew those terms better. Isn't that amazing? And that wonder grows even further because Wittgenstein says a little later: "The word 'composite' (and also the word'simple') is used by us in an enormous number of different ways. (Is the color of a chessboard simple, or does it consist of pure white and pure yellow? And is white simple, or does it consist of the colors of the rainbow? - Is this length of 2 cm simple, or does it consist of two parts of 1 cm each? But why not a piece 3 cm long and a negative piece of 1 cm?)"

By the way, I think the above is mainly about a broader philosophical issue: is it possible to name reality in a number of elementary names and a number of elementary statements, which would then be the indivisible atoms and indivisible meaning cores of "the truth"? And perhaps also about an assumption that we often make almost without thinking: that there are such atomic meaning cores in the reality around us (and in our own inner world). That Wittgenstein challenges such assumptions I find fascinating. But even more fascinating to me is how he does it with such everyday examples, and based on statements about ordinary trees and chairs. As a result, passages like the above are for me, besides philosophical, also poetic, because they make me look differently at the supposedly familiar world around me.

Thus, Wittgenstein feeds my wonder in every paragraph. Some paragraphs amaze with their conciseness: "But when you say: 'How should I know what he means, I only see his signs', I say: 'How should HE know what he means, he too only has his signs.' " That's quite a dizzying thought: not only do I only understand what the other person feels when he expresses it, but he also only fully understands what is going on inside him when he has found the words for it. And that also applies to me. Or, in other words: without language, everything that is going on inside me is amorphous and unarticulated, only through language does what is happening inside me get a form that is understandable for myself and others. But what to say about that form? Because words and sentences do not have one meaning that is fixed uniformly for all situations. "I love you" means something different to you than to me; it has a different meaning in a play than in an actual profession of love; and for me, the meaning of that sentence changes completely if I later discover - or even just start to suspect - that I was mistaken or was fooling myself. In short: only in language expressions can I properly articulate my thoughts and perceptions for myself and for others, but in those language expressions there is often much more indeterminacy, ambiguity, and vagueness than we think.

This kind of considerations also make me look very differently at often-used phrases like "It's on the tip of my tongue" or "Actually, I meant it like this....". Especially because Wittgenstein also raises all kinds of questions about exactly that kind of phrases. Which, very simply put, come down to: how do I actually KNOW that "something" is on the tip of my tongue, and what is that "something"? Is that the same "something" as in "Aha! Now I know it!". And how do I know that it's about the same thing? The same goes for "actually meaning something". I say something, someone else says something more or less similar that seems much more precise to me, and I say "yes, that's what I actually meant too". But how do I know that? How do I know at all what I had in my head before I put it into words? Unless I would assume that there was a fully worked-out intention in my head that was then literally and completely depicted by my words. But that's not how it works according to Wittgenstein: what we call intention only takes shape in our words and sentences, which are not a depiction of an archetype in my head. And when others talk about their intention, they use the same word, which is also not a depiction of an archetype in their head. Guys, what did I actually mean all those times when I said "that's what I actually meant"??

Moreover, what happens in our perceptions is also quite complex. Wittgenstein gives all kinds of enchanting examples of our use of "seeing something" and "seeing something as" (or in other words: interpreting something). For example, using a little drawing that from one perspective looks like the head of a hare and from the other like the head of a duck. It took a while before I realized that you can indeed see that little drawing in two ways.... And what makes one viewer see such a picture as a hare and the other as a duck? Moreover, what happens when someone first sees the picture as a duck and then as a hare? What is that "seeing as" exactly? What does the verb "see" mean that we are looking at in all those cases? To what extent are "seeing" and "seeing as" (interpreting) intertwined? The same goes, by the way, when I simply "see" a green leaf. Because that "seeing" is an inaccurate sensory impression (animals see more sharply than humans, for example), which is then translated by my brain, and without knowledge of the terms "green" and "leaf" I don't know that I'm looking at a "green leaf". Which is quite amazing if you stop and think about it for a moment. But even more amazing is to think that I don't know if others see exactly the same color "green" and have the same visual (?) image when looking at that leaf. Because I don't know how their senses work, and I don't know what associations they have with a "leaf": wouldn't a forest ranger look at a leaf differently than I do, wouldn't my spouse do that differently than I do, might I do that differently tomorrow than today?

Language is not a depiction of reality that gives us objective knowledge of how the world "in itself" is. At the same time, language is an indispensable guide in this complex world. But a wandering guide, as Bert Keizer says: a guide that leads me down all kinds of wrong paths and that is much more diverse and ambiguous than I usually assume. And it is exactly that diversity and ambiguity that Wittgenstein shows with great precision in "Philosophical Investigations". In the past week, I drove my colleagues crazy by asking about every sentence whether he meant it like this, like that, or perhaps something else: Wittgenstein had made me more alert to that kind of questions than ever before. I still look at my tree with different eyes. And I wonder even more about that diverse and changing labyrinth of our language than I already did before. What a pleasure it was to read this book!

I actually 'finished' this book a while ago. By 'finished', I mean I read it from cover to cover. However, I highly doubt that I have fully comprehended all of the philosophical investigations within it.

What more can be said that hasn't already been said? Well, the truth is, I have nothing to say. This is a very important book to me.

May 16th, 2017

A year is approaching since I logged this into Goodreads. Once again, it was a great read, and there is still so much more to be understood with further readings. It's like a deep well of knowledge that I can keep dipping into, uncovering new insights and perspectives each time. I look forward to future readings and the continued exploration of the profound ideas presented in this remarkable book.

Wittgenstein's reading seems to follow a logical path, something like this:

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (a logical-philosophical treatise)

The Blue and Brown Books

Philosophical Investigations

With this idea, I have intended to study the Tractatus several times. Given the logical and dry style of the book and the unreadable translation by Mr. Adib Soltani (selecting Persian equivalents without explanation, a German panacea! To the extent that in my opinion, it is easier to read the original text), I decided to start with the only available book in the city library, which is Philosophical Investigations. The book has two parts. The first part consists of 693 paragraphs, and the second part is composed of 14 short sections (except for section 12, which is both interesting and long). The text of the book is not heavy, but it requires patient reading because Wittgenstein is very loyal to daily experiences and writes about thinking, intending, speaking in the mind (or heart), hoping, swearing, and so on. Of course, at the beginning of the book, he emphasizes a lot that the philosophical method is different from the scientific method and justifies his choice of style in this way (although the second part of the book is more like the lectures of a class and has a monotonous rhythm).

Something that occupied my mind while reading the book was related to the difference between analytic and continental philosophy: Continental philosophy starts with rationalists like Spinoza and Leibniz and separates its path from empiricism with Descartes and completely enters the interior. It reaches its peak in German idealism and enters the 20th century with strange offspring like phenomenology and Marxism.

In contrast, the rationalists (partial), the empiricists (skeptics :))) are there who basically do not believe in the interior. They know every relationship as external and have a deep connection with the concept of contractual obligation in this way; with giants like Hume, who can be seen in the place of Wittgenstein having an influential effect on the nature of man. As if Wittgenstein brings his own problem, God, Hume's evil, into the language and extracts it from within. From this aspect, in analytic philosophy, every concept is posterior, and language is no exception to this rule; the applications and language games (a complete cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of a command language.) that ultimately lead to post-analytic philosophers like Rorty.

Continental philosophy starts from me (I think I am posterior), while analytic philosophy starts from the world.

The sentence "The earth has existed for millions of years" has a clearer meaning than "The earth has existed in the past five minutes." Because I have to ask the person who utters the second sentence: "To what observations does this sentence refer, and what observations count against it?" While I know what thoughts and observations the previous sentence is accompanied by.

While reading the book, I also watched the famous film by Mr. Derek Jarman and remembered the last dialogue between Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein:

Russell: This is a fact that there is no chair here

Wittgenstein: This is a metaphysical problem and cannot be proven

The translation by Faridoun Fatemi is not bad, but in my opinion, the trilingual translation by Malik Hosseini of both of Wittgenstein's important works is the best (and greenest) translation available.

Philosophical Investigations is a significant work.

If you aim to understand Wittgenstein, it is advisable to commence with the Blue and Brown Books. These books served as the foundation for Philosophical Investigations.

You might have the impression that Wittgenstein is constantly repeating himself. In fact, Wittgenstein himself admitted that he had a need to repeat and copy his own writings.

However, this reveals his unique way of thinking. He would circle around a problem, a concept, or any philosophical idea. His intention was to penetrate through language and uncover the deep grammar.

This is where he often discovered how language can sometimes be misleading and a source of pseudo-problems. We lack a panoramic and clear view of ourselves, our thinking, our feelings, and our own minds.

Therefore, we must observe various aspects, look repeatedly from different perspectives.

Wittgenstein's writings are like exercises in looking, looking deeply into the essence of things.

Ludwig Wittgenstein had a profound and unique view on the philosophy of language.

He believed that language was not just a means of communication but had a much deeper significance.

Wittgenstein thought that the structure and use of language determined our understanding of the world.

He explored how words and sentences gained their meaning within specific language games and forms of life.

His work emphasized the importance of context and the role of language in shaping our thoughts and experiences.

By studying language, Wittgenstein aimed to clarify philosophical problems and show how many of them were rooted in misunderstandings of language.

His ideas had a significant impact on the development of analytic philosophy and continue to be studied and debated today.

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http://ida2at.com/how-did-ludwig-witt...

Before reading






After reading



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**Title: Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations**

Augustine's quote about learning language sets the stage. Wittgenstein's example of the builder and assistant shows primitive language-games. Language expands beyond simple naming, with words like "this" and modifiers. The primitive notion of language as representation is insufficient. There are countless kinds of sentences, not just assertion, question, and command. The term "language-game" emphasizes that speaking is part of an activity or form of life. There is a multiplicity of language-games, not just one. Frege's claim about assertion is challenged. Ostensive definition cannot be the foundation of language. Regular language-games bring out the openness of language use. The meaning of a word is often its use in the language. Analytic philosophy's interest in uncovering the structure of language and reality is discussed. Wittgenstein is against the fixity of meaning. The philosophy of logic assumes a direct correlation between sentences, thoughts, and facts. Wittgenstein's methods are like therapies to lead us out of metaphysical puzzlement. The concept of "understanding" is similar to "reading," with no single defining feature. The command to "add two" shows the lack of an absolute standard for correctness. Wittgenstein dismantles questions about rule following. He voices a skeptical paradox and offers a skeptical solution. Privileged access to inner sensations is difficult to talk about coherently. Private language games have no room for being wrong about names. The rules of private language are impressions of rules. There is no clear function for "S" in private language. Wittgenstein is not denying the existence of pain, but the ability to talk about it coherently. The last 300 sections of Part 1 deal with philosophy of mind questions. Wittgenstein's method is to make these questions dissolve. The conclusion is that we need to be more conscious of asking the wrong kinds of questions. Part II continues the preoccupation with sorting out the grammar and meaning of various verbs.

This book truly gave me a headache. Its summary, which could be stated as “What people accept as justification shows how they think and live,” really made me think deeply. I will definitely need to re-read it later once I've delved more into his philosophy or other works.

Wittgenstein is a thinker who invites you to linger. The young Wittgenstein held the belief that language could perfectly mirror reality through impartial logic alone. He thought that for language to have a clear and determinate sense, it had to mirror reality itself via strict definitions and propositions. However, instead of enjoying the accolades within the cozy halls of academia, he chose to leave. He humbly worked as a gardener, learned carpentry, and trained as an elementary teacher. For almost five years, Wittgenstein vanished from professional philosophy, immersing himself in rural life and manual labor.

The criss-crossing fibers of meaning are family resemblances? Etymology reveals that most terms perpetually spread roots and reorganize themselves as usage tames them. For example, the name butterfly first emerged from an old superstition about witches stealing dairy cream. The word daughter has its roots in ancient Sanskrit, with its intonations initially denoting a milkmaid.

There is also the idea of mind-body dualism that was inherited from Enlightenment figures like Descartes. Even more radically, Wittgenstein challenges the philosophical idea that individuals have internal mental states, such as feelings, thoughts, and sensations, that are purely private and accessible only to them. His key insight was that our subjective states rely on and are intertwined with public language and behavior for their meaning.

Wittgenstein’s view of consciousness as integrally braided with bodily action and socio-linguistic contexts is almost prophetic of today’s embodied cognition paradigm, which fuses neuroscience with the humanities.

Some of his quotes are also quite thought-provoking. For instance, “The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.” And “If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.” Another one is “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” He also said, “Remember that we sometimes demand explanations for the sake not of their content, but of their form. Our requirement is an architectural one; the explanation a kind of sham corbel that supports nothing.” And finally, “The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.” (haha)

New experiences are an essential part of our lives. They bring fresh perspectives and opportunities for growth.

It is often said that novas experiências não podem contradizer as anteriores quando muito podem alterar toda a nossa visão das coisas. This means that new experiences do not necessarily have to conflict with our previous ones. Instead, they can enhance and reshape our understanding of the world.

For example, we may have had a certain belief or opinion based on our past experiences. However, when we encounter a new situation or idea, it may challenge our existing views and cause us to reevaluate them. This does not mean that our previous experiences were wrong, but rather that our perspective has expanded.

In conclusion, novas experiências são importantes para nossa evolução pessoal e intelectual. Elas nos permitem ver o mundo de forma diferente e aprimorar nossa compreensão das coisas.

Let's play a game.

Games are not only a source of entertainment but also a great way to bond with others and have some fun. There are countless types of games to choose from, whether it's a board game, a card game, or a video game. Each game offers its own unique challenges and rewards, and can provide hours of enjoyment.

Playing a game can also help improve our cognitive skills, such as problem-solving, strategic thinking, and decision-making. It can also enhance our social skills, as we interact with others and learn to work as a team or compete fairly. So, gather your friends or family, choose a game, and let the fun begin!

I say "read" very very loosely for this book, because I don't think this book could ever be fully "read" (it would maybe take years, if even possible). I mean, my eyes glanced over and my mind comprehended each individual English word in this book, but as to how much of it I really understood, that I can't say. Wittgenstein's book is very very easy to read, in the sense that a fifth-grader probably has the vocabulary necessary for this work (except for the word 'phenomenology' which I still don't understand).

But it's NOT easy to understand at all. Wittgenstein has these numbered paragraphs, that jump from topic to topic and reference paragraphs hundreds of numbers back very obliquely, and do NOT have section or chapter titles, except some mysterious roman numerals in the Part II, Philosophy of Psychology -- A Fragment. Each paragraph is extremely modernist, in the sense that Wittgenstein breezily describes some use of language / human activity / societal or individual phenomenon he had witnessed and deconstructed, but leaves his conclusion open-ended and oblique.

Thus, to understand anything Wittgenstein is saying on a real level, you need not only to read it many times over, picturing what he is saying in your mind, but you also need to consult secondary sources, Austin and Cavell being the most famous ordinary language philosophers out there. THESE authors in themselves however are impossible to understand (Austin is easier to understand), and we therefore need to consult TERTIARY sources to understand them. Do you get what I mean? Wittgenstein is terribly hard.

As a prime example of what I mean, let me quote this one paragraph reproduced in its entirety: "327. If a lion could talk, we wouldn't be able to understand it." This was the first quote of Wittgenstein I ever learned and it stuck with me for a long time, and I mean literal years. Even if a lion could speak, it would make no sense to us because we don't share its forms of life. We would never be able to understand it. This is just a really simple example. Some other paragraphs by Wittgenstein are genuinely impossible to wrap one's head around. One absurd example, which isn't even out of the ordinary for Wittgenstein because he DRAWS pictures too in this book:

"314. A newborn child has no teeth." "A goose has no teeth." "A rose has no teeth." This last at any rate one would like to say is obviously true! It is even surer than that a goose has none. And yet it is far from clear. For where should a rose's teeth have been?... This would not be absurd, because one has no notion in advance where to look for teeth in a rose. ((Connection with 'pain in someone else's body.'))

Overall, this is a highly masterful work, a magnum opus, one that everyone should read. I don't particularly care about philosophy of language or linguistics (my philosophy research interests are metaphysics and moral philosophy), but I think it is still really groundbreaking and worth a read to just wrap your mind around. Also, it should be noted that Wittgenstein literally hates philosophy and uses the word as a pejorative, so I guess I should have never expected a normal work anyway.

To me, the main contribution of this work lies in the refutation of logical atomism. There is truly no one more qualified to undertake this refutation than one of its founders, just as Wittgenstein did earlier with his “Tractatus”. Moreover, it is quite an achievement for someone to initiate a second system of philosophy.

The systematic approach that was present before is now absent. Instead, the style is aphoristic, and questions without answers abound. The words no longer point unequivocally to objects in the world. Their meanings are spread across multiple levels and cannot be completely specified. It is their common/social use that gives words their meanings, and they are part of local, contextual, and vaguely specified “language games”. Thinking, knowing, logic, believing, feeling, communicating, pointing, meanings, mathematics, subject/object, and so on - all these meet and are practically resolved in language. Trying to philosophically, and especially logically, describe the language and its practical use is extremely complicated - if not perhaps even impossible.

Logic is no longer the main tool and structure of the book as it was in “Tractatus”, but it still lurks in the background. The same holds true for the subject-object ontology and for truth seen as correspondence and correctness.

The book is a whole world: word, meaning, naming, language play. Through completely simple examples, it shows how we perceive our language and everything around it. It is not only a fundamentally important and revolutionary work for the theory of linguistics that I wanted to read.

But because I dedicated myself more to it at school, this reading was for me just such a conclusion and a reminder of the essential.

It helps to deepen our understanding of language and how it functions in our daily lives. The simple examples make it accessible even to those who are not experts in linguistics.

Moreover, it allows us to appreciate the beauty and complexity of language, and how it shapes our thoughts and perceptions. Overall, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in language and linguistics.