LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

• Studied at the University of Manchester in

1908 and pursued a degree in engineering
• Working with Gottlob Frege, he was convinced
to study at Cambridge with Bertrand Russell
which he did in 1911.
• “Obstinate and perverse, but I think not
stupid… I love him and feel he will solve the
problems I am too old to solve.” (Wittgenstein, Stanford)
 BIOGRAPHY
• Two years later, his father died and Ludwig
inherited his family’s wealth but he gave them
all away.
• Spent his life in solitarily in Norway.
• He fought for the Austrian army in World War I.
• 1918 - finished his lone work named the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
 BIOGRAPHY
• Having claimed to have solved all the
problems in philosophy, he tried many
different jobs .
• Influential in the formation of the famous
Vienna Circle in 1929.
• Known as the Father of Logical Positivism
• Died of prostate cancer on the 29th of April
1951 in Cambridge
 Influences
“I think there is some truth in my idea that I am
really only reproductive in my thinking. I think I have
never invented a line of thinking but that it was
always provided for me by someone else & I have
done no more than passionately take it up for my
work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz,
Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos
Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me.”
 WORKS
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus  (1922)
• Philosophical Investigations (1953)
• Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956)
• Blue and Brown Books (1958)
• Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, (1967)
• Zettel (1967)
• On Certainty, (1969)
• Culture and Value (1970)
• Remarks on Colour (1991)
 Ludwig Wittgenstein

EARLY: LATER:
PICTURE THEORY LANGUAGE GAMES
Early: Picture Theory (Logical Positivist
view)
• Language corresponds to a state of affairs in
the world
• Language can only be meaningful if it used in
relation to what we see in the world
• Language is a way of representing facts
(correspondence theory of truth)

“The cat is on the mat”

Early: Picture Theory (Logical Positivist
view)
• PROBLEM: Poor and inaccurate pictures
caused by miscommunication.

• SOLUTION: ‘Whereof one cannot speak

thereof one must be silent.’ (Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 9)
 Later: Language Games
 Criticised Vienna Circle – our language is
far richer & more diverse than LP allow
 Multiplicity of language:
Give orders, tell jokes, describe, report, ask,
thank, curse, greet, pray etc

If we want to know the meaning of the

language, we need to know how it is
being used – “meaning is use”
 The context of language
• Language activity is governed by certain rules –
according to the context in which it is used.
• One use of a particular word is not better than
another
• Language is meaningful if it is understood in the
correct context
• It is a mistake is to treat all language as if it was
all part of the same game.

TRY DRIBBLE DRAW

 Religious Language
• Believers are all players of the same “game”
• They use the same language in the same
context
• They understand the context in which the
language is used
• To understand it, we must also play the game
– be in that particular “form of life”.
 Meaning of Language
TEST CASE: “God Exists”
•To a religious believer this statement means more than
“there is a god”.
•It is a positive affirmation that they are entering into a life
of faith.
•When a religious believer makes this statement, they are
confirming their belief in God as a reality in their life – a
declaration of faith
•Unless you are a believer, you cannot understand what this
means.
 Imagery of the beetle
Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a
"beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone
says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.—
Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something
different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing
constantly changing.—But suppose the word "beetle" had a use
in these people's language?—If so it would not be used as the
name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the
language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might
even be empty.—No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the
box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe
the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of
'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as
irrelevant.
 Anti Realism
• Wittgenstein’s approach to language is
Anti-Realist.
• What is meaningful is what is “true for me”
• Whether God does or does not have
external reality does not matter
• Religious faith is an affirmative decision to
“enter the game” & therefore find meaning
in the language that is used accordingly
• Truth is relative
“A language has been learned only when…one
has learned to use the words for such purposes
as asking questions, describing things and
events, giving orders, making requests and
promises, evaluating, condemning or naming.”
Justus Hartnack, Wittgenstein and Modern
Philosophy, 65.
 CRITICISM
I have not found in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations anything
that seemed to be interesting and I do not understand why a whole
school finds important wisdom in its pages. Psychologically this is
surprising. The earlier Wittgenstein, whom I knew intimately, was a
man addicted to passionately intense thinking, profoundly aware of
difficult problems of which I, like him, felt the importance, and
possessed (or at least so I thought) of true philosophical genius. The
later Wittgenstein, on the contrary, seems to have grown tired of
serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make
such an activity unnecessary. I DO NOT FOR ONE MOMENT BELIEVE
THAT THE DOCTRINE WHICH HAS THESE LAZY CONSEQUENCES IS
TRUE. I realize, however, that I have an overpoweringly strong bias
against it, for, if it is true, philosophy is, at best, a slight help to
lexicographers, and at worst, an idle tea-table amusement. (Bertrand
Russell. My Philosophical Development, 216–217)
 CRITICISM
• The popularity of Wittgenstein’s through is due to his
triviality, stemming from the fact that it tackles unimportant
problems, ignoring science (specifically scientific linguistics),
and results in purely speculative conclusions. The result is a
shallow philosophy. Mario Bunge, Social Science Under
Debate: A Philosophical Perspective, 57.

• Philosophical Investigations is a so-called rule-following

paradox which is “the most radical and original sceptical
problem that philosophy has seen to date.”
Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private
Language, 60. 
 Evaluating Language Games
STRENGTHS: WEAKNESSES:
• It highlights the non- • Believers’ claims cannot
cognitive nature of be empirically tested
religious language • It alienates people not
• It distinguishes it from initiated into the rules
other forms of language of the game
• It provides boundaries • Religious statements do
for the uses of language aim to correspond with
• Statements are judged reality – God,
within their context – Judgement & Afterlife
they are not inherently are real to a believer,
true or false they are not simply
ideas.
 CONCLUSION
Picture Theory:
•There is but a single form of language which comprises
elementary propositions or truth-functions of elementary
propositions.
•Each of them represents a picture of a state of affairs and
so have the same logical form as the state of affairs.
•State of affairs are essentially unique
•Therefore, only one proposition is true.
•Two propositions that speak of the same state of affairs
should have the same logical form and are, logically
speaking, the same.
 CONCLUSION
Picture Theory:
•When one discovers the logical forms of the various
propositions, he has essentially discovered the true logical
form of the various state of affairs.
•All of this is possible through philosophy, which analyses
sentences to disclose the logical form of elementary
propositions revealing the logical form of the state of
affairs in the process.
 CONCLUSION
Language Games:
•Language has no common essence but minimal similar ones
(vs uniform logical form of facts)
•The structure of language determines reality.
•If it were out of the language game, it would make no sense
to talk about and so must be put into silence.
•“Language is no longer a picture of reality, is now seen as a
tool, and a tool with a rich variety of uses. Different words
are like different tools in the toolbox.”
•Previously language had only one function, to state facts.
Now, it had a plurality of functions making it miserable to
understand.