32. Someone coming into a strange country will sometimes learn the language of the inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to 'guess' the meaning of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong. | I remember Harry describing learning a foreign language like this. He was in a foreign country and people would teach him the names of things by pointing and naming. This seems like a very easy way to learn the names of things in a foreign tongue. |
And now, I think, we can say: Augustine
describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange
country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as
if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child
could already think, only not yet speak. And "think" would here mean something
like "talk to itself".
|
Isn't it so? Augustine
describe this kind of pointing and naming as the way that the child learns
language? But we have been working on why this explains so little
in the learning of language, and noticing the limits to this kind of learning,
for example, that pointing and naming "blue" doesn't mean that the hearer
recognizes what we are naming -- even if the hearer then can point at the
blue object and say "blue."
Also, such an ostensive definition can hardly expain how we learn the word "the" or "for" or, in fact, most words. Look back at this paragraph and see how many words could be taught to the child by ostensive definition. |
The problem is that the young child, in the beginning
(picture baby Augustine), does not have a place prepared for learning by
pointing.
What kind of background is necessary to prepare such a place? How would you train a child so that it understood that you are naming a chess piece, for example? Or the color "blue"? |
35. There are, of course, what can be called "characteristic experiences" of pointing to (e.g.) the shape. For example, following the outline with one's finger or with one's eyes as one points. --But this does not happen in all cases in which I 'mean the shape', and no more does any other one characteristic process occur in all these cases. --Besides, even if something of the sort did recur in all cases, it would still depend on the circumstances --that is, on what happened before and after the pointing --whether we should say "He pointed to the shape and not to the colour". | |
For the words "to point to the shape", "to mean the shape", and so on, are not used in the same way as these: "to point to this book (not to that one), "to point to the chair, not to the table", and so on. --Only think how differently we learn the use of the words "to point to this thing", "to point to that thing", and on the other hand "to point to the colour, not the shape", "to mean the colour", and so on. | Wittgenstein is distinguishing two related language-games of pointing. One in which you point to the thing and give its name, and another related one in which you point to the shape or the color and give its name. Both cases require only that you point in the same physical way. There may be differences in the way people point in these two language games, but these differences only help us distinguish between them. These different ways of pointing are not inevitable and they are not required. |
To repeat: in certain cases, especially when one points 'to the shape' or 'to the number' there are characteristic experiences and ways of pointing-'characteristic' because they recur often (not always) when shape or number are 'meant'. But do you also know of an experience characteristic of pointing to a piece in a game as a piece in a game? | association |
All the same one can say: "I mean that this piece is called the 'king',
not this particular bit of wood I am pointing to". (Recognizing,
wishing, remembering, etc. )
|
Here LW is saying that the sentence ": "I mean that
this piece is called the 'king', not this particular bit of wood I am pointing
to" is itself ambiguous. "Mean" can mean "reccognizing, wishing,
remembering, etc." For example, the above sentence might be paraphrased,
"I recognize that this piece is called the 'king'..." or "I wish this piece
were called the 'king'..., and so forth. All these different paraphrases
have different meanings.
Thus, this concept of introspective pointing to the shape or color to teach shape and color remains a puzzle. |
. | In #36 Wittgenstein noted that we cannot identify a distinctive action that we call pointing to the shape (or pointing to the color) and because of that we tend to see this kind of pointing as "spiritual." |
37. What is the relation between name and thing named? Well, what is it? Look at language-game (2) or at another one: there you can see the sort of thing this relation consists in. This relation may also consist, among many other things, in the fact that hearing the name calls before our mind the picture of what is named; and it also consists, among other things, in the name's being written on the thing named or being pronounced when that thing is pointed at. | `When we consider
the matter more imaginatively, as Augustine did in #1 when he imagined
that he had been taught language by being taught to name things, we might
well think of the name bringing up a mental image of that originary lesson.
Supposedly, according to this imaginative picture, we know what the other
person is talking about (e.g., a slab) because, having learned the name
of slab ostensively, we now have mental images of a "slab" every time we
hear the word. This is particularly compelling because we have all
experienced mental images when things are named. Still,
a little introspection shows that we do not have a mental image for every
word we hear.
Alternative to the theory of mental images assisting understanding we sometimes imagine objects having labels attached. Still, we do not often write the word "chair"on our chairs. So, in the end, these two theories of language do not work very well when we think about them. But, that does not mean we give them up. What we do, sometimes, is imagine that the images (or the labels) are there but in a fuzzy and spiritual way. In this fuzzy and spiritual way we point to things and name things in our mind. But then LW asks us to look at #2. You remember in #2 , we had the simple game of the worker and his supervisor. The supervisor called out "beam!" and the worker brought it. What is the relationship between the name and the thing in that particular instance? It simply causes the worker to fetch what the supervisor wants. Need there be mental images here? Remember our talking about the way I might teach a gorilla to hand me a banana when I said "banana"? And that this would be a kind of trick. It wouldn't need to be the case that the gorilla actually understood what the banana was apart from this particular context of handing one to me. Here, we might say, that the 'name' of the object does not function merely as a name. It functions more as a command, although the word we think of as a name has a role in making the command clearer. So, can you see that in spite of our models of language (pointing spiritually, or attaching a label spiritually) these models do nt seem entirely satisfactory. Aside from the problematic metaphysics of a spiritual pointing and naming, we have the fact that in the language game the term "slab" is not just a name of an object. It is a command to fetch a slab. That activity around which the word gets pronounced is not accounted for by naming and pointing. Are the mental images required for this activity of fetching? No. Not logically. The worker is just trained to do something at the sound of the name. The supervisor does not require him to create a mental image of the object first. Of course he might do so anyway, but this is not required. This shows how problematic our notion of naming is, and how much we try to patch it up with notions of fuzzy spirits doing the work. |
37. We have been talking about the relationship between
a name and the thing named and we have studied two cultural models.
In one, the name is metaphorically "attached" to the thing (like a label
might be inscribed on the thing it names) and in the other model the word
we use "points" spiritually to the thing it names. These are the
vague models we use for how words "attach" to things. But Wittgenstein
is leading us through a critical reflection on these models because these
models lead us to think we have the problem solved when in fact they are
in many ways unsatisfactory models that lead us astray.
Wittgenstein continues to deconstruct these old models of language. Here in 38, he is going to remind us, again, that the models are only satisfactory when we think of certain kinds of words. Then, he points to terms for which it is hard to use one of the two models above. |
|
38. But what, for example,
is the word "this" the name of in language-game (8)
or the word "that" in the ostensive definition "that is called ...."?
|
"This" and "that" are very difficult words to understand if we stay within the models above., of teaching something by attaching labels or pointing. How could you attach the word "this" to everything you call "this"? And if you point spiritually to a particular "this" with your hidden soul, then what on earth does this "pointing" have to do with the word "this" in a more general sense. One might illustrate an apple or a dog by pointing to one, but can one illustrate a "this" just by pointing? |
--If you do not want to
produce confusion you will do best not to call these words names at all.--
Yet, strange to say, the word "this" has been called the only genuine name;
so that anything else we call a name was one only in an inexact, approximate
way.
This queer conception springs from a tendency to sublime the logic of our language-as one might put it. |
If we call "this" a name, then it is a name that
can be applied everywhere. It offers no specificity at all.
Yet, at a certain point in doing philosophy it seems like the only legitimate
name. To call something a "chair" classifies it with other often
dissimilar objects. But what can be purer than just calling it a
"this."
This is a way of trying to make our logic more lofty, our statements more pure. And when we do this, it leads to queer conceptions. |
The proper answer to it is: we call very different things "names";
the word "name" is used to characterize many different kinds of use of
a word, related to one another in many different ways;-but the kind of
use that "this" has is not among them.
|
Here LW is introducing us to an important puzzle
that he will clarify later. He wants us to notice that diverse kinds
of things are called "names' and that we have no golden thread to tie them
all into a neat conceptual bundle.
And, at the same time, he is showing that it will be problematic for us if we try to include "this" and "that" within this diverse bundle of words that we call names. |
It is quite true that, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we often point to the object named and say the name. And similarly, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we say the word "this" while pointing to a thing. And also the word "this" and a name often occupy the same position in a sentence. But it is precisely characteristic of a name that it is defined by means of the demonstrative expression "That is N" (or "That is called 'N' "). But do we also give the definitions: "That is called 'this' ", or "This is called 'this'"? | This seems to devastate the notion that you can ostensively
define "this" and "that". How can one point to anyplace and say "that"
is "that". Or, if one does, how does this explain to the hearer what
"that is."
|
This is connected with the conception of naming
as, so to speak, an occult process.
|
When LW talks of the notion of naming as a kind of occult process he is criticizing the picture of naming that he feels our culture teaches us. It is the picture of naming being a kind of spiritual pointing. |
Naming appears as a queer connexion of a word with an object. --And you really get such a queer connexion when the philosopher tries to bring out the relation between name and thing by staring at an object in front of him and repeating a name or even the word "this" innumerable times. For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. And here we may indeed fancy naming to be some remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object. And we can also say the word "this" to the object, as it were address the object as "this"-a queer use of this word, which doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy. | This sentence "For philosophical problems arise
when language 'goes on holiday'," is a famous sentence in Wittgenstein.
It means that language is taken out of context and philosophized about
it becomes "confusing". It reminds me of a time when I was a child
that I said "butterfly" over and over. Isn't it strange, I thought,
that we say "Butter-fly" as though butter were to fly away, or "but -er
-fly" and by the time that I had said this 15 times or so, the word no
longer seemed to mean "butterfly" in the simple way it had. Often
when one philosophizes about a concept the concept has "gone on holiday".
We have lost our grounding in concrete examples. We know very well
how to use the word "virtue" in a sentence, for example, but when we scratch
our heads and wonder what "virtue" really means, then the word "virtue"
is on holiday. We are just thinking about the word, not using it
in the natural way that our language allows us to use it.
Do you have any experience with language going on holiday? Ever said a word a few times, a familiar word, and then sort of lose the meaning of it as you reflect on what this word means? And what do you think about "that" and "this"? Do they seem like names to you? |
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