Wittgenstein - 1953 - Aphorism 1-10 From Philosophical Investigations

8/5/13 lw1-10- Commentary on Wittgenstein's first 10 aphorism

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Aphorism 1-10 from

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations with commentary on the right by

Lois Shawver

Wittgenstein:

(Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver toenhance commentary.)

Shawver commentary:

1. "When they (my elders) named some object,

and accordingly moved towards something, I

saw this and I grasped that that the thing was

called by the sound they uttered when they meantto point it out. Their intention was shown by their

bodily movements, as it were the natural language

of all peoples; the expression of the face, the play

of the eyes, the movement of other parts of thebody, and the tone of the voice which expresses

our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or

avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words

repeatedly used in their proper places in various

sentences, I gradually learnt to understand whatobjects they signified; and after I had trained my

mouth to form these signs, I used them to express

my own desires."

This is a quotation that Wittgensteinn has taken from

Augustine (Confessions, I.8.). Visualize Augustine'spicture of how language is learned and notice how natural

and complete it sounds as a total explanation for how

language is learned.

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular

picture of the essence of human language. It is

this: the individual words in language name

objects--sentences are combinations of such

names.--In this picture of language we find theroots of the following idea: Every word has a

meaning. The meaning is correlated with the

word. It is the object for which the word

stands.

Now, Wittgenstein is beginning his commentary. The

emphasis is mine. It is the deconstruction of Augustine'spicture of language that is the focus of this entire book.

(Although, I should say, that many others beside

Augustine have shared this picture of language. As we

will see, it is a cultural illusion) Once deconstucted, new

and strikingly different ideas about language begin to

emerge.

Augustine does not speak of there being any

difference between kinds of word. If youdescribe the learning of language in this way you

are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like

'table', 'chair', 'bread', and of people's names,

and only secondarily of the names of certain

Here the deconstruction begins. Looking at the

Augustinian picture of language we see that Augustine has

explained only one type of word.



actions and properties; and of the remaining

kinds of word as something that will take care of

itself.

Now think of the following use of language: I

send someone shopping. I give him a slip

marked 'five red apples'. He takes the slip to theshopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked

'apples', then he looks up the word 'red' in a

table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then

he says the series of cardinal numbers--I assume

that he knows them by heart--up to the word

'five' and for each number he takes an apple of

the same colour as the sample out of the

drawer.--It is in this and simlar ways that one

operates with words--"But how does he know

where and how he is to look up the word 'red'

and what he is to do with the word 'five'?" ---Well, I assume that he 'acts' as I have described.

Explanations come to an end somewhere.--Butwhat is the meaning of the word 'five'? --No such

thing was in question here, only how the word'five' is used.

This scenario is a thought experiment. To what extent do

you think the language in this scenario is explained by

Augustine's picture of language? Think of the

shopkeeper counting out the apples, one through five.

Did he learn to do this by someone pointing to five

apples? Hardly. The teaching of language by pointing

cannot explain learning to count. What about using

written languge to communicate what is wanted? Someone had to teach him how to read before he could

make sense of the note and translate it into a order. And

to follow the order, he had to know much more than was

specifically contained in the note - which just said 'five

red apples.' The shopkeeper had to be able to find the

apples, even to know to look for them, and also to knowto put them in a sack and accept money in exchange forthem. He had to be able to recognize various coins our

bills and add them together. It would be hard to explainall of this within the Augustinian picture of language.

2. That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in aprimitive idea of the way language functions. But one can

also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive thanours.

By "that philosophical concept of meaning"Wittgenstein means the Augustinian picture that

he gave us above. Look at Augustine's picture again:

The individual words in languagename objects--sentences are

combinations of such names. Everyword has a meaning. The meaning is

correlated with the word. It is theobject for which the word stands.

This concept of meaning, Wittgensein says, hasits place in helping us understand primitivelanguage, language more primitive than English,

German, French, etc. It is also the case,Wittgenstein explains, that there are regions of

our developed language in which languageworks just as Augustine portrays it



Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to servefor communication between a builder A and an assistant

B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks,pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that

in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose theyuse a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar','slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; --B brings the stone which

he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceivethis as a complete primitive language.

This is an important thought experiment.

Although he does not call it a language-game inthis passage, it will become clear shortly thatthis passage describes the prototypic primitive

language-game. He will refer to it often,sometimes in its present form, or in one of a

multitude of variations he will give us shortly.

We will often refer to this as language game (2),using the number of the aphorism to index the

number of the language game. I picture awork supervisor at the front of a site with a

worker responding to the supervisor'scommands. There are piles of pillars, slabs,

blocks and beams. The supervisor calls out"Slab!" and the worker brings a slab and sets itat the supervisor's feet. Pretty simple.

Wittgnstein puts forth language-game (2) in

order to try to envision a language in whichAugustine's picture of language works.

Does Augustine's picture of language work

here? How did the worker learn this languageby teachers pointing and naming the slabs and

beams as Augustine suggested? An exerciselike Augustine suggests might explain how the

worker knew which object to fetch, but howdid the worker learn to fetch? As opposed,

say, to taking objects behind the fence? Crushing them? Or tapping them with a stone?

3. Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication;

only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has tosay this in many cases where the question arises 'Is this an appropriate

description or not?' The answer is: 'Yes, it is appropriate, but only for

this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were

claiming to describe."

It is as if someone were to say: "A game consists in moving objects

Somehow Augustine's picture oflanguage, although appropriate for

a subsection of langauge, is not as

all inclusive an explanation oflanguage as we are, at first glance,

inclined to believe.

As Wittgenstein says in (1), we

tend to sweep under the rug all the

uses of language that do not fit theAugustinian picture that seems to

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about on a surface according to certain rules..." --and we replied: You

seem to be thinking of board games, but there are others. You can

make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those games.

capture our imagination.

Although language-game (2)restricts the vocabulary to words

that seem to refer to objects, the

Augustinian picture cannot explain

everything that happens.

4. Imagine a script in which the letters

were used to stand for sounds, and also assigns of emphasis and punctuation. (A

script can be conceived as a language for

describing sound-patterns.) Now imagine

someone interpreting that script as if therewere simple a correspondence of letters to

sounds and as if

the letters had not also completely different

functions. Augustine' conception oflanguage is like such an over-simple

conception of the script.

How might this be? Suppose we taught a parrot to say "Polly

wants a cracker," and whenever it says it, we gave the parrot a

cracker. On the surface this looks like language. The parrot isasking for and receiving a cracker. However, on closer

examination it is not. We could have taught the parrot to say

"Get lost!" and give it a cracker each time it does. Then, it

would not have looked as though the parrot were speakingEnglish.

To think that simply saying the words "Polly wants a cracker"constitutes "language" is to have this sort of over-simple

conception of the language. Something profound is missing

from this conception although it is not yet clear exactly what this

is. Still, it is a beginning to say that when the parrot says, "Pollywants an cracker" he doesn't quite know what this sentence

means in English. It amuses us because, nevertheless, it seems

as though he does.

The same would be true if we taught a two year old to answer

the question "What is 450 divided by 366?" by saying "One

point two three." It would be a correct answer in English but

the child would not know what she was saying because shewould not know how to count, know wha this number means,

or know what division means. There is more to language than

stringing together correct words.




5. If we look at the example in (1), we may perhaps get an inkling how

much this general notion of the meaning of a word surrounds the working oflanguage with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. It disperses the

fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in

which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of the

words.

A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here

the teaching of

language is not explanation, but training.

But although the parroted

sentences are not language in

the richest sense of the term,they help us to understand

how language begins, the roots

of language.

6. We could imagine that the

language of (2) was the whole

language of A and B; even the wholelanguage of a tribe. The children are

brought up to perform these actions,

to use these words as they do so, and

to react in this way to the words ofothers. An important part of the

training will consist in the teacher's

pointing to the objects, directing the

child's attention to them, and at thesame time uttering a word; for

instance, the word "slab" as he points

to that shape.

Although the word "slab!" is not tied to any particular activity in

English, in the language we are imagining in (2) it is always a

command to fetch a slab. What tends to confuse us is that we canimagine something like this taking place in English. It is just that the

word "slab!" would not be confined to only this use.

However, in the community we are imagining, this is the only use forthe term "slab!" And how might children be taught the use of the

term? We can well imagine that the Augustinian picture of language

training might be involved. The child's attention will be directed to

the different shapes and the child will learn to expect each shape tobe associated with a particular sound.

( I do not want to call this "ostensive

definition", because the child cannot as

yet ask what the name is. I will call it"ostensive teaching of words".-----I

say that it will form an important part

of the training, because it is so with

What is the difference between ostensive teaching of words and

ostensive definitions? In ostensive definitions someone points and

gives a name of something and this serves to make clear how the

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human beings; not because it could not

be imagine otherwise.)

term is to be used. When someone points to a cracker and says

"cracker" those who know what a cracker is (but not the name for

it) can receive this as an ostensive definition. But if a child has notyet learned language, it is like the parrot. It does not know what is

being pointed to on what the word cracker means. (Maybe the

word "cracker" means "square" or "salty". Or maybe it means"food".) However the child understands the term, the child can be

taught to say it, in assocition with the object. As Augustine imagined

things in (1) . As Augustine imagined things the child without any

language was able to "grasp"

This ostensive teaching of words can

be said to establish an association

between the word and the thing. Butwhat does this mean? Well, it can

mean various things: but one very

likely thinks first of all that a

picture of the object comes beforethe child's mind when it hears the

word. But now, if this does happen-

--is it the purpose of the word?

The emphasis here is mine. I want to show what I will callWittgenstein's aporetic voice. He is reminding us of the cultural

ways we think so tht he can deconstruct them. Here Wittgenstein is

talking about the cultural illusion that is related to Augustine's pictureof language and what we are likely to say that supports this illusion.

---Yes, it can be the purpose.---I canimagine such a use of words (of series

of sounds). (Uttering a word is like

striking a note on the keyboard of the

imagination.) But in the language of (2)

it is not the purpose of the words to

evoke images. (It may, of course, be

discovered that that helps to attain the

actual purpose.)

But although language may create images for us, remember, the

language in (2) was not required to create images for the workers.

The worker in (2) would understand what was being said to him if

he simply fetched what was called for, whether or not he had images

of what called for when it was called, or not.

But if the ostensive teaching has this

effect, ---am I to say that it effects an

understanding of the word? Don't you

understand the call "Slab!" if you act

upon it in such-and-such a way? --

Doubtless the ostensive teachinghelped to bring this about; but only

together with a particular training.

With different training the same

ostensive teaching of these words

In (2) one understands the call "Slab!" if one brings it when it is

called. Pointing to slablike objects and saying "slab" might have

faciliated this teaching but one could also imagine learning to take theslab behind the fence when it is called. A different training would

have resulted in the worker doing different things with the slab,

hitting it, hiding it, burying it, and so forth.


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would have effected a quite differentunderstanding.

"I set the brake up by connecting

up rod and lever."---Yes, given the

whole of the rest of the

mechanism. Only in conjunction with

that is it a brake-lever, and separatedfrom its support it is not even a lever;

it may be anything, or nothing.

Unless one knows how to weave the word into some form of human

activity, the saying of the word is not yet language. It is like a break

that is not yet connected with the entire mechanism. The parts seem

to be there, but it does not yet have the connections to function as itshould.

7. In the practice of the use of language (2) one party

calls out the words, the other acts on them. In instruction

in the language the following process will occur: the

learner names the objects; that is, he utters the word whenthe teacher points to the stone.---And there will be this

still simpler exercise: the pupil repeats the words after the

teacher-----both of these being processes resembling

language.

All of this sounds like Augustine's picture of

learning language.

We can also think of the whole process of using words

in (2) as one of those games by means of which children

learn their native language. I will call these games

"language-games" and will sometimes speak of a primitive

language as a language-game.

Here Wittgensein introduces the concept of a

language game, but he will amplify this concept

later so that it does not merely apply to language

learning exercises. To anticipate this

amplification of the meaning of this term, we

might sometimes distinguish this meaning of the

term by calling these language games "primitivelanguage games."

And the processes of naming the stones and of

repeating words after someone might also be

called language-games. Think of much of the use words in

games like ring-a-ring-a-roses.

In ring-a-ring-a-roses, the child learns the

phrases without knowing what they mean, as a

parrot might learn to say "Polly wants a

cracker."

I shall also call the whole, consisting of languageand the actions into which it is woven, the

"language-game".

So, "the language game" is not merely speech. In (2), he whole activity of fetching the objects

was part of the "language game" of (2).

8. Let us now look at an expansion of language (2). Besides the

In (8) LW creates a new language game

that is a variation of (2). Now we will be

able to speak of bringing X number of

slabs and we will be abe to indicate

where we want the slab to be put. We

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four words "block", "pillar", etc., let it contain a series of wordsused as the shopkeeper in (1) used the numerals (it can be the

series of letters of the alphabet); further, let there be two words,

which may as well be "there" and "this" (because this roughly

indicates their purpose),that are used in connexion with a pointing

gesture; and finally a number of colour samples. A gives an order

like: "d---slab---there". At the same time he shews the assistant a

colour sample, and when he says "there" he points to a place onthe building site. From the stock of slabs B takes one for each

letter of the alphabet up to "d", of the same colour as the sample,

and brings them to the place indicated by A.---On other

occasions A gives the order "this---there". At "this" he points to a

building stone. And so on.

understand these concepts LW explainsbecause they exist in English. Notice,

however, that LW does not say that the

slabs will be counted with numbers, but

with the letters of the alphabet. This

helps us get into the feel of what it would

be like if we had a more primitive system

of counting, one in which there was noarithemetic possisilibities, for example.

9. When a child learns this language, it has to learn the series of

'numerals' a, b, c, ... by heart. And it has to learn their use.---Will

this training include ostensive teaching of the words?---Well, people

will, for example, point to slabs and count: "a, b, c slabs".---Something more like the ostensive teaching of the words "block",

"pillar", etc. would be the ostensive teaching of numerals that serve

not to count but to refer to groups of objects that can be taken in at

a glance. Children do learn the use of the first or six cardinal

numerals in this way.

How can we imagine the people of (8)learning language? Can they learn it

ostensively as Augustine imagined?

Take the learning of numbers. We

could imagine them learning to

distinguish numbers ostensively as we

might learn to distinguish two from

three by distinguishing theseconfigurations of two and three:

o

o o o o

But this would be of limited use. We

cannot learn to distinguish, apparently

much larger numbers in this fashion.

Thus we count.

Are "there" and "this also taught ostensively?---Imagine how one

might perhaps teach their use. One will point to places and things---but in this case the pointing occurs in the use of the words too and

not merely in learning the use.---

How will "there" and "this" be taught?

This is tricky, and LW does not

answer the question for us. Do youpoint to "this" and say "this"? Does

that clarify the use of the word "this"?

Hardly.

10. Now what do the words of this language signify?---

What is supposed to shew what they signify, if not the

kind of use they have? And we have already describedthat. So we are asking for the expression "This word

What does "two signify"? Does it signify any two

objects? Say, two blocks? Well, we know what

the word "block signifies." It signifies each of the




signifies this" to be made a part of the description. In other

words the

description ought to take the form: "The word . . . .signifies

. . . ."

.

two blocks. Does "two" signifiy something other

than what "block signifies"? There are conceptual

puzzles here.

And what does "this" signify. It signifies what I

point to. But that can be anything. How can a child

learn to associate the naming of anything by one

term?

But, do we need to say what these words "signify"?

Isn't everything clear already? Since we know their

use? Why would we require that all words

"signify"?

Of course, one can reduce the description of the use of

the word "slab" to the statement that this word signifies this

object. This will be done when, for example, it is merely a

matter of removing the mistaken idea that the word "slab"

refers to the shape of building-stone that we in fact call a

"block"---but the kind of 'refering' this is, that is to say theuse of these words for the rest, is already known.

In language-game (2) pointing and saying "slab"

may be helpful to show which slab is to be fetched,

but pointing and naming would not show that the

slab is to be fetched.

Equally one can say that the signs "a", "b", etc. signify

numbers; when for example this removes

the mistaken idea that "a", "b", "c", play the part actually

played in language by "block", "slab",

"pillar". And one can also say that "c" means this number

and not that one; when for example this serves to explain that the letters are to be used in the order

a, b, c, d, etc. and not in the order a, b, d, c.

In other words, we might want to explain that "c" is

not just another object like "slab" or "block" and sowe might need explain "a", "b", and "c" signify

numbers. But where does this leave us? Does it

teach the child in (8) to learn to use numbers (by

counting things) and until the child learns to count

does the child really know what "numbers" means?

But assimilating the descriptions of the uses of the words

in this way cannot make the uses themselves any more like one another. For, as we see, they

are absolutely unlike.

So, although we can find a way to say that "a," "b,"

"c," signify something, assimilating these different

kinds of words to the same expression (they are

instances if "signifying" hides the enormity of the

difference and creates a over simplified picturelanguage and how language is learned.

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Wittgenstein - 1953 - Aphorism 1-10 From Philosophical Investigations

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