What does any word actually mean?
Its clear from the reading and class that the answer to that question is highly contingent on the context it was used in and intention of the speaker. Wittgenstein took this simple insight and turned it into an explanation for why Philosophers were not able to get anywhere in their quest for the answer to questions like "What is truth". Wittgenstein proposed in his "Ordinary Language Philosophy" that philosophers were distorting the actual functional roles and definitions of words by attempting to frame them in epistemic terms. Essentially, he believed that the word "truth" has a very functional role in conversation -- it is often used in reference to whether or not something corresponds to a mutually acknowledged version of reality. So when philosophers ask themselves what "truth" is and attempt to phrase it as an epistemic question about the metaphysics of reality, they have difficulty agreeing on the terms of reality. This, according to Wittgenstein, is simply because they've transformed the meaning of truth into something it is not and are having trouble agreeing on what its new meaning is going to be.
Interestingly enough the textbook has a lot of ideas in it that substantiate this point of view. One of the clearest lessons taught in the book is that usage and language are deeply linked, so that a dictionary is right only in so far as it is able to mirror the most prevalent intended use of a word. If we extrapolate upon this principle, then we come to similar conclusions about to the use of words like "truth", "reality" and "consciousness". People don’t use these words in philosophical terms, they use them in functional terms. The notion that words don’t have an "essence" or a fundamental meaning outside of their usage is called anti-essentialism.
Anti-essentialism implies that language is the interplay and communication of concepts that help humans navigate, map and understand the world around us as opposed to the use of terms that are pegged to objective metaphysical realities -- which of course is a terrifying thought. If we are using words because they are convenient and they map to our human perspectives on how the universe works then we can have very little hope at getting to understand universal realities (if those terms even mean anything serious).
So my question is what do you think of Wittgenstein’s perspective and Ordinary Language Theory in general? Do you think that words apply to reality or words apply to concepts that help humans survive and understand reality? The stakes of this question can not be exaggerated in terms of their implications for philosophy.
I really love philosophy discussions like this. I did a quick search on Ordinary Language Theory on Wikipedia to better understand it. It does seem quite reasonable to point out that words only make sense in context. To have an isolated word and attribute a definition or a list of properties to it can be very arbitrary.
ReplyDeleteBut on some level, if we cannot peg a word to one point, can we peg it to an area? Increasingly, it seems that anything is a probability game. For example, disease control, Internet security, manufacturing. Philosophy has been going in that direction for quite some time. To lay open the analogy, Internet is perfectly secure if no one uses it. The more freedom and discretion users have and the more users there are, the more likely security breach can occur. So, for philosophy, if an absolute truth or definition is almost impossible to achieve, or more likely yet, useless when achieved (a perfectly secure network with 0 participant). Why can't philosophical categories or ideas be conceived as spectra, a balance between definition and applicability.
To some extent though, words really become perverted when their meanings are stretched too far too fast. So I think it's reasonable to peg individual meanings within a limited vicinity and still manage to derive useful philosophical knowledge.
Very cool subject to bring up! I enjoy the anti-essentialist argument, and definitely think there is some validity behind it. I think it's easy to imagine words as mere variables for certain mental concepts, and often the concept behind them is not always mutually understood. In fact, it seems like plenty of philosophical problems arise from this. It doesn't really help that to explain the concept that we are referring to when we use a word, we have to use more words! As you said, it definitely is an obstacle in attempting to understand the realities of our world, but I do not think it merits being thought of as terrifying. Yes, we developed language out of convenience, and words merely adopt meaning through use, and this meaning will vary, etc... basically, it's not perfect by any means. However, I think the concepts behind the words are still capable of being realized, even if there is a difficulty of communicated it to another. This may sound incoherent, since presumably we think in a language, but is nevertheless an intuition I have.
ReplyDeleteI believe it a very worthy idea to consider if any word can be "real" because as has been said, there is no real way to determine if a word is "real" based on its definition or idea. I think that is the crux of this entire argument: that the only way to explain if a word is "real" within its language is to describe and understand that word and concept with other words and concepts. There is this strict implication of circular logic will not lead to a solution given that there is no way to figure out whether or not a word is "real" without more words.
ReplyDeleteYet, if there were any words that have a chance of being the most "real" I would argue that they would be onomatopoeia because the meaning of these words is strictly limited. There is no context needed to describe what the meaning of these words is. They are purely a phonetic way to describe sounds that are happening. Therefore they have the least problems in their "real" nature, yet they obviously do not really help us with finding the "real" nature of words with more substantive meaning, but they seem to be the closest to "real" words that we will find.
I find the anti-essentialist argument to be an extremely intriguing and compelling one and I think you do a great job of highlighting its central tenets! One additional feature of your post that I found particularly interesting was how you say “a dictionary is right only in so far as it is able to mirror the most prevalent intended use of a word.” There seems to me to be this interesting balance in terms of how we view a dictionary or a book of grammar rules of a language. On the one hand, as you rightly identify, we judge the success of either based on how it is able to capture the most current usages in a language. On the other hand, though, we use them as standards by which to judge the “correctness” of one’s language use, to teach features of the language, etc. Is there a tension in these two aims and how might they be reconciled?
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