on the essentiality of grammatical investigation: meaning and morality in wittgenstein's...

7/28/2019 On the essentiality of grammatical investigation: Meaning and morality in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

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Kristine Marie T. Reynaldo

Professor Zosimo Lee

Philo 204

12 April 2013

On the essentiality of grammatical investigation:

Meaning and morality in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

I.

Departing from the traditional notion that philosophy ought to

contemplate Big Questions such as Truth, Metaphysics, Mind, and

Morality, and seek knowledge of such ideals and universals,

Wittgenstein advocates philosophical practice that is more grounded in

reality. Instead of abstracting and explaining super-concepts,

philosophers should consider the subjects of everyday thinking and

speak the language of the everyday. Furthermore, they should look

into the workings of language and understand how we use it. For

Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise from our persistent

misunderstanding of concepts in striving to grasp their essenceto

define and understand them once and for all, in complete and simple

terms. Such a goal leads to deep disquietudes because it is illusory.

In the attempt to find general theories for ideas, philosophers often


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come up with reductive explanations instead, which fail to account for

the manifold ways in which we apply ideas and speak of them. Thus,

we are perpetually unsatisfied with any explanation that ultimately

proves to be lacking, and yet we persist. Dazzled by the prospect of

achieving the ideal, we often overlook what is. For Wittgenstein, it is in

the consideration of the actual that the value of philosophy lies.

Meaning is to be found in the study of our usual modes of expression,

and the ways in which we use them. For him, Philosophy is a battle

against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language

(PI 109).

What does this battle consist in? For one, it involves resisting

the impulse to consider words apart from their context, to force on

them essential definitions and generalize such definitions. For

meaning-making is more complex than naming, or determining the

connection between a sign and its referent, visualizing the image

words paint in our minds, or diagramming sentences. There is more to

making sense than arranging words according to proper syntax or

looking them up in a dictionarythough such practices are part of it.

To accomplish meaning is to be aware of not only the denotations and

connotations that attend a word, but of the circumstances surrounding

it: its place in a sentence, the sentences role in a language game, the

kind of language game being played, the intention of its players in

making their moves, the forms of life that inform linguistic practice,


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and the social world in which all of these are embedded. For meaning

is contextual; the sense of a word may vary from one sentence to

another.

It all may sound too complicated, and we wonder how we

accomplish meaning at allindeed, often grasp it in an instant. But we

burst forth into the world as part of societies organized by the practice

of language. We flail and swim in the ceaseless currents of signs from

the moment of beingperhaps even before that first utterance: a cry

and imbibe the conventions for making meaning, learn them in training

and practice. For language governs human relations, and gives us tools

with which to parse our reality. Just as we orient ourselves in physical,

temporal, and sociocultural spaces to go on, we make sense of a word

or an expression by situating it.

If there is an essence to language, and therefore, the meaning of

a word, it is this: its instability. It is not only that there is no one-to-one

correspondence between a signifier and its signified, or that not every

word refers to an object in the external world and may be relied upon

to mean only that thing; language itselfas system and activityis

neither static nor delimited and complete.

We may see language as something alive, in flux, just as wethe

people who use itare alive, in flux, and traffic in it. Wittgenstein

compares it to an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of


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old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods;

and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight

regular streets and uniform houses (PI 18). Like an ancient city, the

boundaries, surface structures, signs, and modalities of language are

ever-shifting. Some of the expressions in our language are, to use a

familiar phrase, as old as time; some have fallen out of use; every

year new words are coined to accommodate new concepts; while other

words lose some of their denotations and acquire different ones

through time. As the world and societies evolve, so does language and

our uses for it, the language-games we play and the rules that govern

them. (Once, a man in a superior position commenting on a womans

youthful good looks in a professional setting would be no matter; now

he will be called out and criticized for it, even if he is the president of

the United States of America.)

In the attempt to regulate the essential instability of language

and meaning, we codify conventions. And so new additions to the

Oxford English Dictionary are debated and widely publicized at the end

of the year, the Modern Language Association issues a new edition of

its handbook every so often, and the same modes of discourse

(exposition, description, narration, argumentation) are taught in

composition classes. And so articles on email and texting etiquette

abound, driving exams require knowledge of traffic rules and signs,

and scientific studies are used to back up and formalize interpretations


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of human behavior. Yet such prescriptions are themselves contingent

on changing social realities, prevalent practices, modes of expression,

and what John McDowell calls the congruence of subjectivities (143),

and can only guide us so far. As Wittgenstein points out, though we

lay down rules, a technique, for a game when we follow the rules,

things do not turn out as we had assumed That is just what we say

when, for example, a contradiction appears: I didnt mean it like that

(PI 125). Even when we have an understanding of the language-game

and its rules, even when all the moves are perspicuous, we cannot

map out the progression of moves, nor predict how the language-game

will proceed, or if, indeed, it will stay just that kind of gameand there

are an infinite multiplicity of language games, each with an attendant,

usually nonexclusive set of rules and uncertain criteria for

individuation.

Thus, to accomplish meaning, one must abandon the misguided

pursuit of universals or the inflexible and dogmatic reliance on rules

that are themselves the product of convention and tied to particular

contexts, and dip into the stream of life to examine the complexity

underlying the seeming familiarity of ordinary language and its use in

actual cases.

Given the essential instability of language, how is meaning to be

pinned down? Wittgenstein saysand here we see his rejection of

overgeneralization and essential definitionsFor a large class of


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casesthough not for allin which we employ the word meaning it

can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language

(PI 43). Since there is no fixed relation between a signifier and a

signified, and sincewhat with the multiplicity of language-games

every move may be made to accord with a rule to justify an

interpretation, we can use the same words to mean different things.

For instance, the sentence I am here may mean (be used to say):

Where are you? or You can count on me or Gotcha! In such

cases, the words used are not as important as howthey are used to

mean, and how they are used to mean, again, depends on their

context.

If intention were always apparent, determining the use of an

expression would pose no problem. Alas, it is not, for intention is an

interior phenomenon. Since we cannot grasp anothers interiority, we

must refer to what is public: language, which not only gives us the

tools for expression, but also codes the expression with contextual

clues so that we may apprehend the speakers purpose. This is why

Wittgenstein says that the investigation of meaning is a grammatical

one (PI 90).

The essence or gist or meaning of an expression may be

clarified by paying attention to its grammar. Wittgensteins notion of

grammar is not limited to rules for semantic, syntactic, and

morphological usage (surface grammar), but includes other norms


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about what constitutes sense or nonsense, or how language may be

used in particular activities (depth grammar). Grammar tells what

kind of object anything is (PI 373) by helping identify the language-

game being played, and the significations that may be associated with

an expression in that context.

An expression may signify, may only constitute a move in a

language game, if it is meant to accomplish something. If somebody

suddenly says, Blue, another may ask, What is that supposed to

mean? I can think of the color, but what am I supposed to do with it?

A word cannot mean outside a language game. If, for example, before

the one said Blue, the other asked, With what color would you like

us to paint the walls of your room? then that utterance would make

sense, would be properly situated in the language game being played.

And if the question were, How do you feel today? the answer blue

would take on a different meaning altogether.

The ability to remark on the grammar of expressions, to identify

the nature of the language game being played, and to employ

linguistic techniques with regard to conventions to articulate thoughts,

feelings, desires, etc. are functions of the mastery of language. And

because language is a social activity, familiarity with forms of life

inheres in its mastery. Sociocultural context determines the kinds of

language-games a society engages in and the rules that regulate

them. A community that believes in the sacredness of a mountain, for


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instance, would not tolerate uttering profanities, making noises, or

acting in an irreverent manner while traversing it.

Meaning-making involves not only linguistic facility, but also

social cognition. For communication, even in its most primitive forms,

to be possible, there must be intersubjective knowledgeshared

practices, standards, traditions, culture, modes of expression. In an act

of communication, one investigates the grammar of both sentence and

situation. Meaning is accomplished when the intention is externalized

in expression, contextualized and apprehended according to

conventions, and given the appropriate response.

Consider the following examples:

When I ask, Wheres the exit? and the guard turns her head to

the left, pouting her mouth in that direction, I go left.

When I corner my brother and say, Hello, my favorite little

Brother Bear! How handsome you look today! and he replies with,

What do you want from me? I grin.

When I run into an acquaintance in the hallway and he asks,

How are you? I dont launch into a litany of all the difficulties Ive

been dealing with in the past week and instead reply with, Im good,

how about you?

Underlying the above examples are cultural assumptions and

social standards, which may or may not be consciously thought of in

the moment of communication, but which inform our moves in the


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language-game because we have become habituated to them, learned

them through training, customs, past experiences, and so on. Such

habituation is what allows us to grasp meaning in an instant.

What does it mean to say something meaningful? It is, to some

extent, to have a sense of what is acceptable and to be expected in a

particular situation, and let that sense guide use.

II.

The role of philosophy, as Wittgenstein conceives it, is

therapeutic: to bring words back from their metaphysical to their

everyday use (PI 116) and describe how they function in the actual

practice of language, in concrete cases. Such a practice of philosophy

aims to dispel conceptual confusions and philosophical conundrums

that arise when language goes on holiday (PI 38); to avoid

ineptness or emptiness in our assertions (PI 131); and to clarify

meaning, not by reforming language or presenting an absolute and

complete system of prescriptive rules for its application (such as are

put forth in Wittgensteins earlier Tractatus), but by exhorting us to

attend more carefully to what is. For, according to Wittgenstein,

everything is revealed in the grammar of an expression, and the

criteria for understanding are available in the public institution of


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language. Things are as they appear and need no further explication, if

we look closely enough.

Thus the aim of philosophy is primarily descriptive. Rather than

pursuing essential definitions for ideas and ideals, or producing new

knowledge or seeking answers to deep philosophical questions

enterprises that are, to Wittgenstein, misguided, philosophy ought to

inquire into those aspects of things that are most important for us

[which] are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity (PI 129)

an exercise that is not so much uncovering as it is illumination.

As Wittgenstein says:

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of

language; it can in the end only describe it.

For it cannot give it any foundation either.

It leaves everything as it is. (PI 124)

The notion that the proper aim of philosophical practice is

description has been criticized for being conservative and pessimistic.

Given the exalted view of philosophy as a discipline that provides

insight into the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the

foundations of knowledge and belief, and other such profound

concerns of the human condition, the role Wittgenstein assigns to

philosophy seems a tad too humble. In a recent essay, for example,

Michael Lynch asserts:


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philosophy can and should aspire to be more than just a

description of the ordinary. That is because sometimes the

ordinary is mistaken. the philosopher must also take

conceptual leaps. She must aim at revision as much as

description, and sketch new metaphysical theories,

replacing old explanations with new.

But Wittgensteins philosophy is not merely descriptive, does not

seek to maintain the status quo. Indeed, change lies at the heart of it.

Consider his view of language and forms of life as ever evolving, his

idea that we can make up the rules of our language-games as we go

along. Consider the great conceptual leaps he made between the

Tractatus and the Investigations, his resistance to constitutive

definitions and dogma. He may emphasize the importance of studying

what is, but not at the expense of considering what could or ought to

be. After all, it is only by examining established modes of thought and

expression that we are able critically to interrogate themthe first

step to opening up spaces for change. Consider the once-universal

he of patriarchal discoursethe use of masculine pronouns by

default to refer to humanity in general or a hypothetical third person in

particularwhich was recognized, questioned, and eventually largely

discarded for more gender-sensitive language with the rise of


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feminism. Here we see how a change in forms of life, which includes

cultural attitudes, leads to changes in the way language is used.

Just as philosophical problems arise when language is like an

engine idling (PI 132), real-world problems arise when we get lazy in

the investigation and application of our intentions and concepts.

Fogelin notes, The central point of the Tractatus is to place limits

upon language to protect the ethical from babblingparticularly the

babbling that takes place in sophisticated circles. Paul Engelmann

captured the force of this position when he remarked that ethical

propositions do not exist; ethical actions do exist (99). But as

Wittgenstein says in the Investigations, Words are also deeds (PI

546). The ways in which we think and talk about what we think

influence our actions, allow us to connect with our community, and

shape the conditions we live in. Language bears upon our experience

of the world, of other people, and of ourselves. The failure to scrutinize

our mental habits, to be honest with our intentions, to be mindful of

the words we choose to convey our meaning, and to take responsibility

for our silences and utterances, plays a part in the degradation of our

forms of life. Thus, our practice of language has moral implications.

One of the features of language as conceived in Investigations

that makes it relevant to discussions of morality is its social aspect.

Language is what facilitates intersubjectivity. Ones consciousness is


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an opaque sphere. Only when one expresses his interiority by

appealing to public criteria to constitute a concept of the self, describe

inner states and processes, and convey thoughts, feelings, and other

such private phenomena, does ones subjectivity become accessible

and relatable to others.

Take pain, for instance. Only I can have/feel my pain. But

another can know that I am in pain if I externalize this private

experience, by reporting it or otherwise expressing it through my

behavior (which, like words, can be described by grammar).

Say, I have dysmenorrhea. I hunch over my desk, my arms

around my lower abdomen, my face in a grimace. I may not say

anything, but another can tell that I am in pain, because these

expressions fit into the public criteria of what being in pain looks like.

Or, my dog dies, and though I am grieving, I act like there is

nothing out of the ordinary and everything is going well. Then I tell a

close friend, Bogarts dead. My delivery may be nonchalant, but the

friend knows how much I loved the dog, and she is reminded of her

own experience of sorrow over the passing of a person who mattered

to her. She cannot have my pain, but she knows what it feels like,

knows what commonly attends the concept of grief implied in the

sentence Bogarts dead. So she hugs me and says, There, there.

Thus the publicly available criteria of language, used to

characterize private experience, makes empathy possible. Ones


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subjective experience may not be fully communicated in its

particularityfor, as Bill Ashcroft writes, Even in the most empathetic

exchange the speaker and hearer are never really present to one

another. The experience of one conversant can never become the

experience of the other (298) because each interprets the others

meaning through ones own subjectivity; ones habits of mind and past

experiences influence ones understanding and limits what is revealed

in language. Meaning-making is also circumscribed by the relationship

between the players of a language-game and their knowledge of each

others subjectivity, because intersubjectivity allows for divergences in

shared or partially shared meaning, as in inside jokes only fully

comprehensible between intimates. Nevertheless, this does not

contradict the public nature of language and of meaning as social

accomplishment. By using language to convey meaning by coding a

message with linguistic and social context, understanding may be

achieved.

One may ask, Given the social nature of language and a

utilitarian conception of meaning, whats the use of expression when

one expects no interpersonal engagement in the course of a language-

game? If, when one speaks (or writes, as the case may be), one does

not seek to interact or participate in dialogue, is there sense in


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verbalization? Does it not amount to writing words on sand when one is

alone in a beach?

Perhaps the underlying question here is, What drives mere self-

expression, and is there value in such an activity?

One might answer that there is no sense in saying something if

one does not intend to put it to some practical use, such as articulating

ones opinions to influence anothers behavior. But Wittgenstein does

not apply the use-theory of meaning to all utterances. Recognizing our

complex use of language and the various modalities of expression, he

says, If the feeling gives the word its meaning, then here meaning

means point (PI 545). Words can be wrung from us,like a cry.

Words can be hard to say (PI 546). If a feeling gives rise to expression

just because it needs expressing, then the truth of the feeling gives

the expression meaning. Self-expression as reflection and release is

also a kind of language-game, and has value even if its only purpose is

to make sense, to oneself, of ones inner experiences.

In this way, Wittgenstein shows the impossibility of private

language, because one still needs to appeal to public criteria, which in

turn implies the existence of a community of language practitioners, to

characterize and identify private states. As David Foster Wallace points

out, this avoids the solipsistic consequences of mathematical logic as

language-paradigm (109), which considers only discrete facts, as

pictured by truth-functional schemata, independent of speakers and


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listeners. He further states that it constitutes the most powerful

philosophical attack on skeptic-/solipsisms basic coherence (109) and

allays the deep disquietudesthe paralyzing anxiety of skepticism

Descartes Cogito engendered.

It is interesting to consider solipsism and language in relation to

the advent of technologies that give rise to new language-games.

Modern modes of communication such as email and texting, which

strip conversational language-games of some of the context clues that

attend face-to-face interaction, present new challenges for

representation and situating meaning. Of a different class is interaction

with robots and other automata, and the question of the legitimacy of

engaging in a language-game with a nonhuman technological entity

programmed with artificial intelligence, such as the popular chatting

robot SimSimi, and the possibility of making meaningof advancing

meaningful linguistic movesin that context. If standards for making

meaning are arrived at (constructed) through repeated, accepted use

and cumulative performance, which eventually give rise to linguistic

conventions, and if SimSimi can learn and employ linguistic

techniques based on previous conversations with its millions of users

the world over, then, with enough data and a sophisticated algorithm,

could we be said to have a meaningful conversation with a personified

computer code with no subjectivity of its own but processes data input


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by other peoples subjectivities and adapts accordingly to practice

language?

The language-game with SimSimi starts out regularly enough. If

I say, Im tired, SimSimi might reply, Aw, you should get some rest!

But after a few more moves in the language-game, it begins to lose

sense, i.e. SimSimi starts giving inappropriate responses in the context

of the conversation.

The use theory of meaning does not place too great an emphasis

on the role of consciousness in accomplishing meaning, which occurs

in the public sphere, using the publicly available tools of language. As

Hallett puts it, Unimportant for the ability to understand, inner

experiences are equally unimportant for the ability to use signs. On the

sending as on the receiving end communication can go without them

(67). But the rapid breakdown of sense in interactions with nonhuman,

intelligent entities reminds us that language is a human activity;

communication, a social enterprise, embedded in forms of life; and

understanding achieved through cognition, previous experience, and

practice situated in concrete instances of language use.

Wittgenstein says, only of a living human being and what

resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has

sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious

(PI 281). Look at a stone and imagine it having sensations.One says

to oneself: How could one so much as get the idea of ascribing a


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sensation to a thing? One might as well ascribe it to a number!And

now look at a wriggling fly and at once these difficulties vanish and

pain seems able to get a foothold here (PI 284). SimSimi, by virtue of

algorithm, may be able to parse sentences or process linguistic

patterns. However, it cannot do the same for forms of life, because it is

not a life form. If we ascribe sensation or speech to it, we do so only in

a secondary sense, like personifying dolls (PI 282). The language-

games we engage in with it are more akin to the language-games we

play when we are, essentially, talking to ourselves rather than talking

to other people. For how do you delineate the concepts of self and

other when the other exists in internalized forma projection, a wish, a

fantasy? If meaning crosses no intersubjective space because it

originates in one subjectivity, if it is accomplished at all?

Such cases exemplify the complexity of language and its use, of

the role of the mind in understanding, and the necessity not just of

logical analysis, but social engagement.

The arbitrariness of signs makes us depend on conventional

associations and the congruence of subjectivities to assign meaning.

Thus, though language is in flux, there must also be a modicum of

regularity in its practice for rules to serve a purpose. If rule became

exception and exception rule; or if both became phenomena of roughly

equal frequencythis would make our normal language-games lose


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their point (PI 142). Take lying, for instance. Though Wittgenstein

states that it is a language-game that needs to be learned like any

other one (PI 249), being, unfortunately, a part of our forms of life, it

cannot be universalized. Understanding depends on shared knowledge

of realities and the correct apprehension of contextual clues and

intention, and someone who lies flouts these standards, by withholding

knowledge of reality, or misrepresenting it or his intentions, thus

deliberately misdirecting grammatical investigation. I believe Kant

thought honesty a categorical imperative because, if reason is what

makes us human, then depriving another of the proper use of his

reason by deceiving him is an affront to his humanity. But Wittgenstein

shows that the commitment to truth is important, because to misuse

language by deception would make our normal language-games lose

their point. This would lead not only to conceptual chaos and the

deterioration of language, but to the deterioration of human relations.

We name things so that we can talk about them. Grammar tells

what kind of object anything is (PI 373)that is, how we use our

words in concrete instances. Thus, grammar allows us to say

something meaningful about the world, and is the basis for

metaphysics. In investigating the ways in which we use words, we also

examine the ways in which we construe the concepts we associate

with them, and think about them. Because we ascribe value to


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concepts and apply them in normative ways, we need to define our

concepts by examining how we express them, in what circumstances,

and to what ends. Take concepts such as good and bad, for

instancewhat sort of deeds and events fall under such criteria? Is

unchecked economic growth good because it represents increased

profit, or bad because it represents widening inequality and the

exploitation of natural resources and cheap labor for the benefit of the

few? Grammatical investigation does not only clarify our concepts, but

behooves us to be more responsible in applying themto say what we

mean and mean what we say, as it were. For it is so easy to be

bewitched by language, to rationalize our subjective interpretations of

a word or a sentence to justify our use of them outside the language

game that is their home, to conceal from others and, more

dangerously, to conceal from ourselves our perversions of their

meaning. George Orwell presents the case so strikingly in Politics and

the English Language:

Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the

inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle

machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary

bullets: this is calledpacification. Millions of peasants are

robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads

with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of

population or rectification of frontiers. People are


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imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the

neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is

called elimination of unreliable elements.

Such a use of words, which divests them of their usual contexts

in order to mislead, is intellectually dishonest. It not only disrupts

meaning-making by using intentionally vague language, but also

evades the analysis of moral philosophy. It exemplifies a kind of

linguistic bewitchment that may be rectified by grammatical

investigation.

Another way in which the bewitchment of language may impede

meaning-making is tied to that which makes meaning-making possible:

convention, and its constituents of habit and imitation, which are

functions of training in the use of language. Some expressions have

survived through time and remain part of our language not because

they are usefulthat is, convey meaning effectivelybut because they

are repeated thoughtlessly. Clichs and buzzwords typify this. They are

the equivalent of white noise in thought and discourse. Such

expressions become more problematic if we allow that language and

thought, and by extension, practice, exist in a dialectical relation with

one anotherthat the way we talk about things influences the way we

think about them, and vice-versa. Thus, the careless use of

expressions betrays sloppy thinking, and as Gary Gutting says in


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What Philosophers Know, effective action requires accurate

thought.

Those who charge Wittgenstein with pessimism say that he

abandoned the Big Questions of traditional philosophical pursuit,

deeming them pointless and illusory, because he had grown tired of

serious thinking and invented a doctrine which would make such an

activity unnecessary (Russell qtd. in Horwich). On the contrary,

grammatical investigation demands constant intellectual vigilance, for

in every move in every language game lies the possibility of

misunderstanding and the opportunity of demystification. And because

the critical interrogation of language and the social conditions it

reflects should not end in theorizing but in linguistic and even political

activity, Wittgensteins later philosophy also entails social

engagement, as well as the mindful practice of language.

Meaning (making it and making sense of it) is performative as

much as it is retrospective. For one can make sense of something only

in the context of what came before itprior moves in the language

game, linguistic conventions, and the practices and traditions from

which they came. It is a function of accumulated performances, of

repeated and repeatedly accepted utterances. Thus meaninglike

language, like cultures, like peopleis ever-evolving, alive, and subject


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to change. Meaning is constructed in discourse, and discourse shaped

by human agency, and it is in this possibility not only of meaningful

expression, but of meaningful action, interaction, and intervention that

the morality of Wittgensteins philosophy of language lies.

Underlying all of this is the necessity of investigating established

modes of thought and speech in the attempt to understand and to be

understood. Anyone who uses language is caught up in this constant

attempt to communicate, to learn in practice, and to bear upon the

world. The more one is exposed to instances of the various ways in

which expressions are used, the more one is exposed to human

relations, activities, cultures, placesthe weave of life in which

language is threadedthe more one refines ones sensitivities and

notions of nuance, and the better one creates and conveys meaning.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein wrote,

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent (7). With such

a stark statement he summarily dismissed the infinite richness of

human life and expression, and invalidated judgments of aesthetics or

morality, which, arguably, represent the highest aspirations of

humanity. Soon afterward, he gave up the practice of philosophy. But

with Philosophical Investigations he turned around and reclaimed the

value of the actual and the everyday, exhorting us to take off our

blinders in the pursuit of the ideal and open our eyes to what, once


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seen, is most striking and most powerful (PI 129) there, henceforth

changing the way we practice and conceive of philosophy.

It is not a matter of complicating things, but of clarifying them.


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Works Cited

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London: Routledge, 1995. 298-302. Print.

Fogelin, Robert J. Wittgenstein. 2nd ed. London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1987. Print.

Gutting, Gary. What Philosophers Know. Interview by Richard

Marshall. 3: AM Magazine, 10 Dec. 2012. Web. 9 Apr. 2013.

Hallett, Garth. Wittgensteins Definition of Meaning as Use. New York:

Fordham University Press, 1967. Print.

Horwich, Paul. Was Wittgenstein Right. Opinionator. The New York

Times, 3 Mar. 2013. Web. 9 Apr 2013.

Lynch, Michael. Of Flies and Philosophers: Wittgenstein and

Philosophy. Opinionator. The New York Times, 5 Mar. 2013.

Web. 9 Apr 2013.

McDowell, John. Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following. Wittgenstein:

To Follow A Rule. Eds. Steven Holtzman and Christopher Leich.

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 141-62. Print.

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on the essentiality of grammatical investigation: meaning and morality in wittgenstein's...

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