Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations Quotes

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.

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.

The face is the soul of the body.

So in the end, when one is doing philosophy, one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.

the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be 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.

Think, for example, of the words which you perhaps utter in this space of time. They are no longer part of this language. And in different surroundings the institution of money doesn’t exist either.

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good", for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.

The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.

What people accept as justification shows how they think and live.

Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.

To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.

The philosopher treats a question; like an illness.

In order to find the real artichoke, we divested it of its leaves.

Let us not forget this: when 'I raise my arm', my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?

303. "I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am."—Yes: one can make the decision to say "I believe he is in pain" instead of "He is in pain". But that is all.——What looks like an explanation here, or like a statement about a mental process, is in truth an exchange of one expression for another which, while we are doing philosophy, seems the more appropriate one. Just try—in a real case—to doubt someone else's fear or pain.

What is internal is hidden from us." The future is hidden from us. But does the astronomer think like this when he calculates an eclipse of the sun? If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me.

And nothing is more wrong-headed than calling meaning a mental activity! Unless, that is, one is setting out to produce confusion. (It would also be possible to speak of an activity of butter when it rises in price, and if no problems are produced by this it is harmless.)

Our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.

—'A thing is identical with itself.'—There is no finer example of a useless proposition [...]. It is as if in imagination we put a thing into its own shape and saw that it fitted.

Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)

I should have liked to produce a good book. It has not turned out that way, but the time is past in which I could improve it.

We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the 'possibilities' of phenomena.

No investigation of concepts can tell us that 3 + 2 = 5.

De filosoof behandelt een vraag zoals men dat met een ziekte doet.

Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others: Giving orders, and obeying them— Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements— Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)— Reporting an event— Speculating about an event— Forming or teasing a hypothesis— Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams— Making up a story; and reading it— Singing catches— Guessing riddles— Making riddles— Making a joke; telling it— Solving a problem in practical arithmetic— Translating from one language into another— Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. —It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)

I have not found in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations anything that seemed to me interesting and I do not understand why a whole school finds important wisdom in its pages.

We predicate of the thing what lies in the method of representing it. Impressed by the possibility of a comparison, we think we are perceiving a state of affairs of the highest generality.

The meaning of a word is what an explanation of its meaning explains.” That is, if you want to understand the use of the word “meaning”, look for what one calls “an explanation of meaning”.

A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. – Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. … The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)

Die Probleme werden gelöst, nicht durch Beibringen neuer Erfahrung, sondern durch Zusammenstellung des längst Bekannten. Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.

It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle.--Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes and no. And innumerable others.--And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.

This is connected with the conception of naming as a process that is, so to speak, occult. Naming seems to be a _strange_ connection of a word with an object. -- And such a strange connection really obtains, particularly when a philosopher tries to fathom _the_ relation between name and what is named by staring at an object in front of him and repeating a name, or even the word "this", innumerable time. For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. And _then_ we may indeed imagine naming to be some remarkable mental act, as it were the baptism of an object. And we can also say the word "this" _to_ the object, as it were _address_ the object as "this" -- a strange use of this word, which perhaps occurs only when philosophizing.

Suppose that the colour struck you as brighter on one day than on another; would you sometimes say: "I must be wrong, that colour is certainly the same as yesterday"? This shews that we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the highest court of appeal.

610. Kahvenin kokusunu betimle!- Neden olmuyor? Sözcüklerimiz mi yetersiz? Ne için yetersiz peki? - Ama böyle bir betimlemenin yine de olanaklı olması gerektiği düşüncesi nereden geliyor? Böyle bir betimin eksikliğini duydun mu hiç? Bu kokuyu betimlemeyi deneyip başaramadığın oldu mu?

What the names signify must be indestructible; for it must be possible to receive a state of affairs in which everything destructible is destroyed. And this description will contain words; and what corresponds to these cannot be destroyed, for otherwise the words would have no meaning." I must not saw off the branch on which I am sitting.

If you were to experience something, but couldn’t understand or express the experience with words, then, of course, you wouldn’t be able to accurately describe the experience to other people. Thus, no one else would ever be able to know what you experienced. If this were true though, would that also mean that neither could you? Ludwig Wittgenstein was a 20th century, Austrian-British philosopher known for his uniquely innovative and often confusing ideas regarding the nature of language, internal experience, and the relationship between them. To help illustrate this relationship, Wittgenstein proposed the following metaphorical thought experiment in his primary later book, Philosophical Investigations, in which, he suggested that we imagine a group of people. Each person has a box. Inside each box, there is a thing that everyone calls a beetle. However, in the context of this thought experiment, no one is allowed to look inside anyone else’s box. Everyone can look inside their own and they are only allowed to talk about what’s in their box. So, the question is, can anyone ever know if anyone else actually has a beetle in their box? And can anyone know what anyone else’s beetle actually looks like, if they do? Sure, everyone can describe what’s in their’s, but they can, of course, only talk using words that everyone shares and understands regarding what’s in their box, which in this case is beetle. According to Wittgenstein, though, the thing inside the box cannot be meaningfully talked about using the word beetle because no one can ever confirm what anyone means by “beetle”. As a result, the word beetle can only mean the thing that’s in the box, but doesn’t and can’t necessarily describe the thing that’s actually in anyone’s box.

Hoe vaak hoorden we geen uitspraken in de zin van: “Wetenschappelijk onderzoek toonde aan dat …” of “Het is wetenschappelijk bewezen dat …” Daarbij neemt men aan dat wetenschap altijd waar is. Maar hoe betrouwbaar is wetenschap? Heel veel van wat we wetenschap noemen, en we als waar aanvaarden, is noch waar, noch onwaar, en behoort tot de metafysica. Gedurende een korte tijd (volgend op de publicatie van de Tractatus van Wittgenstein) zag het ernaar uit dat we een messcherp onderscheid konden maken tussen betrouwbare wetenschappelijke uitspraken en onbetrouwbare metafysische uitspraken. Maar Wittgenstein zette dat onderscheid zelf op de helling met de postume publicatie van zijn Philosophical Investigations. Nog later pakte de (overwegend Franse) postmoderne filosofie uit met de stelling dat er in de algehele wetenschap minder waarheid is vervat dan in een simpel literair gedicht. De tijd van betrouwbare algemene theorieën leek hopeloos voorbij. Is dat zo? Is cognitief denken onmogelijk geworden? Hierna volgt een reflectie. Het tijdgewricht waarin we leven, althans in de westerse wereld, noemt men de postmoderniteit. Het wordt gekenmerkt door grote onzekerheid en een gevoel van toenemende onveiligheid. Onzekerheid heerst rond onbeantwoorde vragen met betrekking tot de toekomst van de planeet, tot de duurzaamheid van de energievoorziening, tot de werkzekerheid, tot de stabiliteit van het gezin, tot de gedaalde sociale controle, tot de toename van het aantal asielzoekers, tot het bestaan van een god, enzovoort. Onveiligheid houdt verband met oorlog, met terrorisme, met criminaliteit. Het is de bedoeling al die fenomenen wetenschappelijk te bestuderen. Maar hoe zeker ben ik dat wetenschap nog steeds betrouwbaar is?

Even if we restrict ourselves to the comparatively limited conceptual repertoire for talking about such matters that early Wittgenstein makes available, we may already say this: in order to learn a first language, the potential speaker needs not only to learn to see the symbol in the sign, she needs the very idea of language to become actual in her. This formal aspect of what it is to be human—the linguistic capacity as such—is something that dawns with the learning of one’s first language, with one’s becoming the bearer of a linguistic practice. We touched above, in the reply to Sullivan, on how the Tractatus inherits and adapts yet a further feature of the Kantian enterprise of critique: it starts with the assumption not only that we already have the very faculty we seek to elucidate in philosophy, but also that the prosecution of the philosophical inquiry must everywhere involve the exercise of the very capacity it seeks to elucidate. The Tractatus does not seek to confer the power of language on us: we already have this and bring it to our encounter with the book. Hence, it does not seek to explain what language is (as it is sometimes put) from sideways-on—from a position outside language—but rather from the self-conscious perspective of someone who already, in seeking philosophical clarity about what language is, seeks clarity about herself qua linguistic being. Through its exercise, however, the book does seek to confer a heightened mastery of that capacity on us—a reflective self- understanding of its logic and its limits, and of the philosophical confusions that arise from misunderstandings thereof. This heightened mastery (like the general power itself) can be acquired only through forms of further exercise of that same capacity. What I just said about the Tractatus, at this level of methodological abstraction, is no less true of the method of the Philosophical Investigations. The author of the Tractatus, however, unlike later Wittgenstein, never pauses for even a moment to reflect upon what it means to learn to recognize the symbol in the sign through attending to contexts of significant use. Nevertheless, early Witt- genstein would certainly agree with his later self on this point: for the learner of language, light must gradually dawn over the whole—over sign and symbol together.

The early Wittgenstein and the logical positivists that he inspired are often thought to have their roots in the philosophical investigations of René Descartes.9 Descartes’s famous dictum “I think, therefore I am” has often been cited as emblematic of Western rationalism. This view interprets Descartes to mean “I think, that is, I can manipulate logic and symbols, therefore I am worthwhile.” But in my view, Descartes was not intending to extol the virtues of rational thought. He was troubled by what has become known as the mind-body problem, the paradox of how mind can arise from nonmind, how thoughts and feelings can arise from the ordinary matter of the brain. Pushing rational skepticism to its limits, his statement really means “I think, that is, there is an undeniable mental phenomenon, some awareness, occurring, therefore all we know for sure is that something—let’s call it I—exists.” Viewed in this way, there is less of a gap than is commonly thought between Descartes and Buddhist notions of consciousness as the primary reality. Before 2030, we will have machines proclaiming. Descartes’s dictum. And it won’t seem like a programmed response. The machines will be earnest and convincing. Should we believe them when they claim to be conscious entities with their own volition?

Meaning is a physiognomy.

The philosopher treats a question; like an illness.

In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein postulates that “ ‘games’ form a family.” To that I would add that players form a family.