• [] Is the builder case the simplest possible language, on Witt.'s account? What counts as enough to be able to show what the use of a word is?
  • [] Whatever the simplest language is would be the simplest life-form imaginable. I am thinking that perhaps a language that is all "fetching" of objects (i.e. just discrimination and "labelling") might be a good candidate. But that leads to further q's...(see next)

• [] Ostensive definition is supposed to depend somehow on asking a question about a word, whereas ostensive learning of a word involves an entirely new word which cannot be asked about. Ostensive definition involves knowing how to ask what a word means, which is itself a "tool" of language (see ); so ostensive definition comes after ostensive learning of a word. Does ostensive learning of a word occur to establish the rest of language, which is needed for words to have meanings? At what point is the language sufficient for word meaning?

• [] Isn't the analogy between language and an ancient city with modern suburbs cool ?

• [] "We do not usually carry out the order 'Bring me a red flower' by looking up the colour red in a table of colours and then bringing a flower of the colour that we find in the table, but when it is a question of choosing or mixing a particular shard of red, we do sometimes make use of a sample or table." Here is the first of several mentions of vagueness, which, if I understand right, Witt. takes to be:
  • vital to the proper functioning of language, and therefore not in need of logical analysis revealing something beneath its surface. See [].
  • open to various sorts of specification/stipulation, depending on what level of specificity will "prevent misunderstandings." See []
    • calling a broom an attached brush and stick is an example of overspecification, since calling it a broom works fine. This denies his account of objects in the Tractatus... and Russells particulars. See [].
      • This seems to integrate with Witt.'s comments that existence and the subject-predicate form are features of our use of language, and not something peculiar or special about things themselves. See [].
        • What is essential to an object is often vague -- but is it an empirical matter []when? See []
        • Any other view of a picture (e.g., as being what must be true of reality) leads to superstition that thought is special, and language peculiar and in need of clarification. See []

• [] From vagueness in language Witt. moves to the first part of his arguments for the proper conception of "understanding" as applied to language. If unified by logic, how can language have ineliminable vagueness?
  • The idea that meaning in language may always be logically described comes from the picture theory of meaning in the Tractatus..., e.g., 2.221: "what a picture [note: Witt.'s technical usage] represents is its sense", 2.182: "Every picture is at the same time a logical one. (On the other hand, not every picutre is, for example, a spatial one.)"
  • The unifying nature of logic for meaning is a species of the big problem with philosophical methodology for Witt., which is turning problems into a single problem - see []. The proper methodology "gives philosophy peace"
    • [] The broader program of abjuring theory altogether is set out.
    • Can the a priori nature of philosophy produce explanations, contra Witt., or only descriptions?
      • Logic is an explanation of language, (e.g. Frege in the Begriffschrift calls it the "formula language of pure thought") whereas Family Resemblence is a description.
  • [] To "predicate of a thing what lies in the method of representing it" is sometimes termed the fallacy of verbalism.
• [] How does a teacher get a learner to independently apply a rule, e.g., to continue a number sequence?
  • Some things seem to be assumed about the communicative efficacy of certain behaviors. If the teacher starts by having the learner copy the numbers exactly as he writes them, then the learner must be able to copy written characters independently. This requires first that he copies the forms of the characters right, and second that he replicates their order as given.
    • If the learner doesn't react right, there is no possibility of learning.
      • [] "Understanding" is procedural.

• [] understanding is explained as the particular circumstances in which one is "able to go on"
  • Focusing on these two components, "how to go on" and "particular circumstances," seems to be a repeating theme for Witt.
    • How is this hashed in terms of analyticity vs. syntheticity? Its like we get to the meaning of words by going out in the world and seeing how we ought to obey a rule (see below), which once obeyed becomes a matter of meaning. Or am I going wrong here?
    • [] Consider cases in which B says he knows how to go on, but when he wants to go on he hesitates and can't do it. Deciding whether he was wrong in his initial statement depends on partic. circumstances.
      • Witt. doesn't provide any. How about: B's not wrong if he is struck in the head by a baseball bat after saying he knows how to go on, and afterward can't. B is wrong if at the moment he says "I know how to go on" he is talking to a teacher, who is about to begin teaching a subject B is entirely unfamiliar with, so that B could not go on working out the series.
        • [] Later Witt. gives weight lifting example: "Can you lift this weight?" I answer "Yes". Now he says "Do it!" -- and I can't. In what circum. would it count as justification to say "when I answered yes I could do it, only now I can't?"
          • What if you had a forklift in mind to lift the weight, and it blew a tire?
  • Explanations that don't include partic. circumstances fall flat. Reading can be defined as derivation of a reproduction from an original until one begins to challenge how derivation can be made generally observable. This is trying to "find the real artichoke ... [by] divest[ing] it of its leaves" [].
    • When you focus on a concept internally, the same problem recurs. While one is doing something like reading, there are no experiences of being influenced by the words, or a unity between written words and sounds ... these all come in as post-hoc explanations. What you are doing is responding correctly, or "knowing how to go on" given the circumstances (i.e. the text). See []
    • [] "...while I am [doing X] everything is quite simple, I notice nothing special, but afterwards, when I ask myself what it was that happened, it seems to have been something indescribable."
      • The will has no distinct phenomenology - it is transparent.
• [] Witt. introduces reading analogy for understanding. Could we settle the question, "when did X first read?" by looking at the brain and nervous system?
  • Similar to "can we answer, 'when did you stop remembering x?' if Monday you remember something, and Tuesday you don't?"
  • [] Appeal to a particular conscious sensation of reading won't work to settle the q -- someone could read without the sensation, or not read with it.
  • [] There is no criterion internal to the reader which determines genuine cases of reading. The criterion, as for "understanding," is in independent application, which is mastery of a technique (see [].
    • It seems any internal criterion is too contingently connected to the concept to be its meaning - you could have someone take a drug and feel as though he's reading when he's not, etc.
    • A reaction to partic. circum. just comes, there is nothing distinctive about how it comes.

• [] This section is a bit confusing to me. Witt. presents two kinds of use appropriate to two formulae. and which are called "formulae which determine/do not determine a number y for a given value of x. The form of the formula is something different: "the formula ... determines y".
  • Ans. a q about the form of the formula is easy - is it or? -- but a q about whether is called "a formula which determines a number y for a given value of _x_" is not: it depends on the particular circum. what the appropriate use is.
• [] "We can grasp the whole use of the word in a flash" - this statement indicates to Witt. that two pictures are being "crossed". Which ones?
  • Grasping here is seems to be of every possible use separately (the "whole use"), combined ("in a flash") into this one complete thing that is understanding. All the possible uses are actual in the understanding, which I guess on this picture is in the head.
    • [] This statement is a "philosophical superlative" b/c it arises from an consideration of the picture of "understanding", and forgets particular circumstances which determine its appropriate use. This is turning problems into a single problem - see .
      • [] This is the reason Witt. mentions the machine-as-symbol example, the movement of which is "predetermined in a different sense from that in which the movement of any given actual machine is predetermined," b/c certain of the possibilities are discounted (machine parts melting, etc).
    • So are the two pictures the "philosophical" one that is unified and the grammatical one for which the various uses are related by family resemblence?
• [] Some of the particular circumstances determining proper use are being a part of a language community with customs. See also []

Sections 201-250

• [] Obeying or Disobeying a rule is not interpreting it. Its also not not interpreting it.
  • [] We interpret when we compare interpretations - recall ex. of interpreting ourselves as influenced or not-influenced when we experience the difference between reading letters and reading arbitrary marks.
  • [] "How do I know [how to continue a pattern by myself]? If that means 'have I reasons?' the answer is: my reasons will soon give out. And then I shall act, without reasons."
  • [] One is not forced to obey a rule, or guided by it, but rather the choice is not considered, "I obey the rule _blindly_"
    • One is causally, and not logically, determined
• [] Cool example of "thinking you are obeying a rule is not obeying a rule" : Tito Mukhopadhyay. See the paragraph beginning "Wanting to talk..." in this article.
• [] Witt. repeatedly says that in teaching another the meaning of a concept, we exhaust our understanding of that concept, which is given in examples and practice.
  • Witt. asserts w/o argument that a gesture ("among other things") might serve a function comparable to pointing for "and so on" or "ad infinitum" (I guess the latter if we're in ancient rome... ). This strikes me as implausible.
• [] Truth is internal to a language which is agreed upon between human beings.
• [] The trouble with knowing oneself to be in pain is that it is redundant. If you are in pain, saying you know you are in pain adds nothing (this isn't how Witt. puts it, but it seems to be what he's saying).
  • What appears to be empirical, that one's pains etc are private, is in fact a matter of grammar.

Sections 251-300

• [] The use of the word "pains" indicates things which can be the same in the sense that "this chair is not the one you saw here yesterday, but is exactly the same as it" (type identity). This makes "my pains are private" false.
  • Pointing out that "another can't have THIS pain" is supposing that THIS pain (token identity) might have been someone else's, and so it makes sense to call it privately yours. But "pain is private" is like saying "this body has extension" - meaningless, because pains in this sense are always private (its analytic - he says "a priori". And negating analytic statements violates grammar, e.g., whats an extensionless body? whats a public pain? or this (my own) pain, had by you?).
    • Since they're private, pains can't be part of a language game, and so have no use, and so have no meaning. It is part of the grammar of THIS pain that it is experienced by S and is unspeakable.
    • Wittgenstein is great.