Language Games and Family Resemblances (Wittgenstein)
What is knowledge? What is beauty? What makes me the same person from moment to moment? As a species, we have spent eons ruminating on these questions and others like them, yet we are no closer to an answer now than we were in the fledgling days of philosophy. There are few if any other fields whose experts have struggled so impotently with the same problems for so long. According to Wittgenstein, this is because the questions we are asking don’t make any sense, they are pseudo-questions.
To say that these questions are nonsensical feels intuitively wrong, after all ‘what is knowledge?’ is a grammatically correct sentence. But just like we can draw pictures of things that cannot really exist, we can put words together in ways that obey the laws of grammar but do not represent a coherent state of affairs in the world. Consider for a moment the sentence: ‘A sound you heard sees the sun’, it is obviously nonsensical while still being a proper sentence. The question ‘what is knowledge?’ is similarly proper, and makes just as little sense to ask as it does to talk about a sound seeing the sun. At least in the way a philosopher asks the question.
The crux of the issue comes down to something called essentialism: the idea that the words we use have an underlying meaning or ‘essence’ that connects their myriad uses together and is somehow the truest meaning of the word (Pitcher 1964). Wittgenstein’s’ main criticism of traditional philosophy is that it is a victim of our species’ “craving for unity” (Pitcher 1964): our biological desire for all things referred to by a general term to have something in common to justify their shared classification. When this craving is applied to the words we use the result is Essentialism. A philosopher asking questions like ‘what is knowledge?’ is trying to find the essence of knowledge as a word or concept. It is obvious that if such essences do not exist then any efforts to find them are futile, and the vast swathes of philosophical discourse concerned with uncovering them are rendered meaningless drivel, such is the magnitude of the assertions Wittgenstein makes in Philosophical Investigations.
Wittgenstein’s’ alternative to Essentialism is something he calls ‘family resemblances’ but before I explain what this is it is necessary to first introduce another Wittgensteinian term: Language games. Language games can be defined as “any kind of human activity in which human language is embedded” (Mcginn 1997) and can be used to explain situations where the same word is used to mean two different things in two different instances: it is because in each circumstance a different language game is being played. When philosophers come up with a theory to explain something, such as “what is knowledge?” and then later find that this theory does not account for all the ways we use the word ‘knowledge’ what they have stumbled across are contradictory language games. Unfortunately for them, they take this contradiction to mean that their theory for knowledge is flawed and so work on a new one to try and reconcile the contradiction that has arisen. The result of this is a confusing collection of ideas on what knowledge means that does little to aid humanity’s understanding of reality. What these philosophers fail to understand, and what is clear to the layman, is that we do not mean exactly the same thing every time we use the word ‘knowledge’. What we mean is dependent entirely on the language game we are playing at the time. When somebody corrects us after we use the wrong name to refer to them and you think to yourself “I *knew* her name” You aren’t implying that they are wrong about their own denomination, you are merely describing how certain you were you had the right one; and when you say, “I *know* my father” you don’t mean you know him in the same way that you know world war two ended in 1945. It is clear that these uses are all related, but it is also clear that no one definition can adequately describe all the different meanings of ‘know’ in these different language games. ‘Family resemblances’ is the explanation Wittgenstein gives for how each of these different meanings are related. Rather than every word having an essence that gives all its different uses unity, Wittgenstein says that the uses are connected through a criss-crossing network of similarities and there is no one detail or aspect of a word that unites all its uses under a single etymological umbrella (Wittgenstein 1967).
To further elucidate the terms ‘Language game’ and ‘Family resemblances’ I would like you to conduct a series of thought experiments concerning the word ‘table’. First imagine a traditional dining room table; now imagine you are going on a camping trip with a group of friends and you decide to stop for the night and make dinner. Near you is a rock with a flat top and you say to your companions “I’ve found our table”, in reference to it. What you mean by this isn’t that the rock is identical to the dining room table I asked you to hold in your mind, but that, like your dining room table, this rock can be used as a surface to eat food off. Now imagine on this same trip you and your friends go cloud watching and you say to them “I see a table” in reference to a cloud that makes a rather convincing silhouette of the dining room table I asked you to imagine earlier. In this case your use of the word ‘table’ makes sense because the cloud looks like a traditional table, and in the prior scenario it made sense because the rock had the same function as that table. In all three situations, it makes sense to use the word ‘table’ to describe the object in question. Now, to highlight the arduous path philosophers who subscribe to essentialism have ahead of them try to find a strict definition of the word ‘table’ that works in all three contexts, I’ll wait. The cloud-table is related to the traditional-table through superficial similarity, the rock-table is related to the traditional-table through potential use, but the rock-table and cloud-table are only related to each other by first pointing out the similarities between them and the traditional-table. In these thought experiments each different use of ‘table’ is a different language game, and their nebulous relatedness is an example of family resemblances. I hope it is obvious that no amount of intellectual prowess can overcome the Sisyphean treading of philosophical water that comes about from trying to find the essence of words in a world where only familial resemblances exist.
Essentialism and Family resemblances entail very different conclusions as to what the purpose of philosophy is, and the value of much of the work that has been done so far. Essentialists have the task of finding the unitary[1] definitions of words, but according to Wittgenstein words have a plethora of different meanings depending on the language game being played, so any attempt to give one definition to unite them all is impossible. A common rebuttal to this is to say that the ambiguous nature of our language is a shortcoming, and the job of a philosopher is to remedy this by fixing the meaning of the words we use. Wittgenstein thought that such a goal is impossible, for all language is mercurial and will change over time irrespective of our efforts to place them in stasis. If we breed a new subtype of dog into existence that has a never before seen green-coloured coat, the word ‘dog’ now has the potential to imply a characteristic that it was not previously able to. In a world where words are unitary this new breed would not be a dog, and a new word would need to be made in order to talk about it even though in all ways except its colour this creature is still a dog. When defining this new word, the most efficient way to communicate its meaning would be to describe it as “like a dog, but with a green coat”. If the best way to describe a new word is to repeat the definition of a word that preceded it, surely increasing our lexicon was pointless. I would go so far as to say that the ambiguity of our language is not a shortcoming, but instead allows us to communicate ideas to each other more effectively. the price we pay for this is that sometimes people can interpret the words we say through the lens of a different language game than we intended, but the ability to satisfactorily express ourselves in most situations is worth it.
Think back to our table thought experiment. Imagine again that you come across the rock-table, but this time you exist in a world where words have only a unitary meaning and you have not come across a word that means ‘a rock suitable for eating off’ before. So, knowing that you cannot call this rock a table, because that word is already taken, you make up a new word and say to your friends “I have found a tablock”. When they ask you what a tablock is the easiest way to explain what you mean is to say, “it’s a rock that’s like a table”. In this way, an essentialist language would be cumbersome and pleonastic, and filled with redundancies that crop up as multiple people invent new words to fill in the same gaps in language too fast for the first word created to become ubiquitous. On the other hand, a language that has only familial resemblances tying words together is flexible, allowing humans to communicate novel experiences to each other through familiar ideas and words as in the original thought experiment we performed. The job of the philosopher, in Wittgenstein’s opinion, is to examine the ways we use language in different games as opposed to trying to solve the contradictions that appear when you ignore the fact that words are not unitary things. With this approach, many of the problems that have plagued philosophy since its inception become non-issues. All that we must do to achieve this is add an extra step to our investigative process; when we ask, “what is knowledge?” or any other question, before we do anything else we must ask another question: what language game are we playing?
I began this essay hoping to convince you that Wittgenstein’s theory of ‘Family Resemblances’ is a superior way of explaining the way we use language than Essentialism. If you agree that a green dog is still a dog, and that both a rock and a cloud can be called a table, then there is no other option than to accept Wittgenstein’s theories. This view also has the effect of making our world a less mysterious place, not by providing answers to philosophical conundrums, but by revealing that these conundrums never existed in the first place. If this philosophical destruction upsets you, please keep in mind that “what we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards” (Wittgenstein 1967).
By James Rowarth
https://www.instagram.com/thesillymanhimself/
**Bibliography:**
Wittgenstein, L. (1967). *Philosophical Investigations* (3rd Ed) Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
Pitcher, G. (1964). *Puzzlement and Philosophy, and the Attack on Essentialism*, in The Philosophy of Wittgenstein. (Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, 1964, pp. 188-227)
McGinn, M. (1997). *Style and Method*, in Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (London: Routledge,), pp. 9-32.
[1] A unitary word has only one meaning, finding the definition of a unitary word is identical to finding its essence
Evolution and Emotion: Ancestral Guidance
It is easy to be fooled into thinking that our emotions (or at least some of them) are hindrances that a good life is lived in spite of rather than achieved in collaboration with. Indeed, some of our thoughts and motivations are so shameful that it is difficult even to admit that we have them. It is my opinion that these dark and ugly things that live in the places where we hide stuff are useful. They should be shown to the light and dissected until what they want and why they want it is obvious.
My goal is to give you confidence in yourself that is derived from something solid and defensible. I want to share with you my understanding of emotions. Where they come from, what their job is, and what I think you should do with them.
The first step to understanding anything biological, as our emotions are, is to understand evolution. So guess what we’re doing next?
Here is, I hope, an explanation of evolution that will give you some insight into your origin, and thereby some inkling of your value and your power. The study of evolution can be thought of as the study of change: What mechanisms are responsible for this change? Why are these mechanisms successful? How will these mechanisms cope with future changes to the environment they find themselves in?
A general answer to all the questions of evolution goes something like this: Things that work, survive. When more than one thing works, the things that work best do better. Things that don’t work, die.
You are a product of evolution. You are the most recent incarnation of a pattern that has been relentlessly modified to contend with the structure of reality for 3.5 billions years(1), which means that you and the first piece of life on this planet are joined together by an unbroken line that spans literal eons.The next time you are tempted to dismiss your emotions or the emotions of other people, consider this: the thing you share in common with each and every creature that has lived and every creature currently alive, is that you are made of the stuff that has what it took to make it this far. The messages and signals that bubble up from within you and them are not arbitrary flights of fancy. Each one is the result of the successes and failures of all those before you interacting with the specific challenges of your life.
I find it helpful to think of emotions as tools. Like a hammer shouldn’t be used to do a screwdriver’s job, certain situations are best informed by certain feelings. More importantly, I think, they are alike in the sense that a master carpenter can do more with a hammer than a novice can; experience brings expertise.
I also find it helpful to think of emotions as simple personalities(after all, what is a personality but a tool for living); each one with specific beliefs about how the world is and how it should be. The reason so many have been amalgamated into one creature (us) is because the world is a lot of things, should be a lot things, and needs to be interacted with in many different ways to become those things.
The last way I’ll have you think of emotions is as selfish members of an orchestra. They are very good at the instruments *they* play, but they only care about how *they* sound, and because of that, the most beautiful songs are beyond them. What they need is a conductor, someone to hear them as a whole and to provide direction. To rein in errant solos and praise symbiotic melodies. For this role evolution provides you. The thing that sees the world, experiences emotion, and makes decisions.
I think you should train yourself to notice which emotions motivate which decisions in which circumstances, and then how you feel about the outcomes of those decisions. You and your orchestra should perform concerts, judge your performances, and then use what you learn to do better next time.
You should work together, to create ever more beautiful music.
By James Rowarth
The Illusion of Certainty.
What are you certain of? What do you definitely know? Is there anything immune to doubt?
You might be familiar with the saying “I think therefore I am”. These are the words of Rene Descartes, and the focus of today's article.
Descartes came up with this pithy saying as a result of his investigations into dubitability: what is it impossible to doubt? His answer? Your own mind, and literally nothing else.
Even the existence of an external reality isn’t certain for Descartes. “But how can that be?” I hear you shout. “We have sensations of an outside world! We see the sun. We hear the birds, we feel the rain! I know the world exists, my senses tell me so!”
But then again, haven’t we all had dreams we’ve believed were real up until the very moment we woke up? And isn’t that proof that our brain doesn’t require the input of an outside world to conjure up the impression of one?
It also seems that our waking senses do not report an objective reality back to us. You can test this yourself with a quick experiment. Put your left hand in ice water and your right hand in hot water and after thirty seconds, put them both into the same bowl of lukewarm water. Your left hand will tell you the water is warm, your right hand will tell you it is cold; different sensations, same stimulus. This seems to suggest that your senses aren’t simply reporting the world to you as it is(or perhaps that the question "what is the world?" Is more complicated than you might at first think). This, and the previous point about dreams, leaves room for some divine fuckery.
Suppose, as Descartes did, that there is an all-powerful demon whose goal it is to fool you. The demon simply presents the facade of an outside world, and because it is omnipotent, it does a damn good job of it, perfectly crafting the sensory experiences you would expect to have if the world did in fact exist. If this creature decided to fool you in such a way you would be utterly unable to tell(maybe it’s doing it right now!).
Probably the most distressing part about this philosophy is the doubtability of the existence of other people. We only have a direct experience of our own consciousness, we infer the existence of everyone else’s through our sensory experiences of them.
But this profound doubt is not all reaching, we have one bastion left for certainty. For an evil demon to fool you, you have to exist. The mere fact that you are experiencing something means that there is something capable of experiencing.
I think, therefore I am.
This conclusion makes no claims about what you are beyond the fact that you are something that can think and experience.
Maybe you’re a brain in a vat hooked up to electrodes that shock you in all the right places so that you dream up the strange world we seem to inhabit.
Perhaps you are one facet of some more supreme consciousness. Perhaps you are to it as our subconscious is to us, and you fade in and out of its focus.
Or perhaps all is as it appears to be, and you live in a world populated by observing, thinking creatures much like yourself, trying to make sense of a world that was not set up to be easily understood.
People are often quite unsettled by thought experiments like this. I think it’s important to keep in mind that just because something is technically possible doesn’t mean it is at all likely.
I think the evil demon thought experiment is best treated as an exercise in humility and humanity. Are you treating the people around you as though they may have something useful to communicate? Are you prepared to receive it? Or are you too attached to your view of the world to accept any alterations? Are there people whose points of view you dismiss as worthless or unimportant to you before you give them a chance? Why? You don't even know if the world is real and you think you know all the important things about it. The very reason we evolved language was because those people who could collaborate outcompeted those people who couldn't. The superiority of shared perspectives is not just an ego management tool, it's a force of evolution, and one of humanity's most fundamental tools. You handicap yourself for no reason when you assume others have nothing to offer.Is it really fair to assume that the tools you inherited when you came into this world are the only ones worth having?
Here is another thought experiment. Imagine that everyone in the world has only your skillset, and observe how quickly society falls apart. The cool thing about this one is that the outcome is the same no matter who you are. Einstein still needed his food to be grown and his house plumbed.
The fact that we can’t be certain about many things means that faith in some things is necessary to living a decent life even if you are irreligious. What I mean is that we need to behave as though some things are true despite the fact that we can’t know for sure that they are. We need to have faith that the way we treat people matters, despite the fact that it’s possible that they are an illusion. Or put even more broadly, we need to have faith that our actions have an effect on the way the world is, and that the way the world is matters, because if we don't, we end up making it worse by accident.
I will have to come back to the topic of this sort of faith. It's a whole can of worms in and of itself, and I'd hate to do such an interesting idea a disservice by trying to cram it into the backend of this piece.
Thank you for reading my friends.
By James Rowarth
https://www.instagram.com/thesillymanhimself/
Sources: http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/descartes-i-think-therefore-i-am
The Greatest Virtue? A lesson from Socrates
Today we will be looking at what we can learn from the Socratic idea that the wisest among us do not think of themselves as wise. A sort of meditation on humility.
In Plato’s Apology of Socrates’ there is a story about a man called Chaerephon, who went to the Oracle of Delphi and asked her if there were any men wiser than Socrates. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html
She replied that there were none.
Socrates was perplexed by this; he thought himself rather unwise. However, he didn’t think it was his place to contradict the gods and so he set about trying to understand what the oracle meant.
He sought out and questioned men with reputations of vast wisdom: politicians, artists, craftsmen. He found that all were possessed by the same flaw: they failed to acknowledge the limits of their expertise. They let their proficiency in one area act as proof that they were proficient in all areas and therefore claimed knowledge where there was ignorance, and wisdom where there was foolishness.
When they told Socrates about how the world worked or how humans should behave he would point out holes and contradictions in their logic and ask if they had thought of a way to resolve them; how had they come to have such surety in their knowledge? Often, and especially among those enamored with themselves, the response to such interrogations was the birth of a bitter enmity towards Socrates.
Eventually the man made so many enemies in this way that he was brought before the court of Athens and put to death for ‘corrupting the youth’. Apparently all that involved was young people choosing to listen to the conversations he had in public places.
Socrates didn’t have a religion he was trying to convert people to, he didn’t charge money for the privilege of hearing what he had to say (which he often claimed was nothing), and he wasn’t a politician looking for personal power. He talked with people, he asked them questions, and for that he was killed. Such is the danger of hubris; It can turn you into something that commits evil in the name of righteousness, a demon painted in the guise of an angel.
The wisest people do not think of themselves as wise. They understand that the wiser you believe yourself to be the more you close yourself off to new wisdom. Their knowledge makes them humble, not arrogant.
Humility is the acknowledgement that what you don’t know is more important than what you do know. It is an acceptance of the fact that humans are invariably more ignorant than we are knowledgeable; the universe is just too big. Without humility new information is merely a threat to your status. Conversations are dominance disputes.
Arrogance stifles growth. It whispers to you: “I know everything that’s important” and if you know everything that’s important then why learn anything new?
Arrogance strips you of power. If your life isn’t going the way you want and you believe there is no way for you to improve, then you have no option but to pray for the universe to be different, or to busy yourself cursing its nature.
Once you’ve decided that you are definitely correct everything that goes wrong is the consequence of a cosmos that simply isn’t set up for things to go right. The only other variable in this life is you, and if you relinquish control over yourself, then you relinquish control in its entirety. Nothing now but a marionette to be pushed around by the tides of fate, hands tugging at strings that frayed to nothing while you were away bragging about their strength.
The problem with being humble is that it is hard. It is painful to be wrong and it takes work to fix it. To be humble is to be aware of all the ways you fall short of perfection and being imperfect hurts. But we are humans, and we have no say over the dilemmas we inherit, no choice but to make hard choices. Yes, it is difficult to do the right thing, but it is even more difficult to exist with yourself as a creature who does what is wrong because it is easy. So strive to be humble my friends, take good ideas from wherever you can find them and replace them when you find better ones.
There is no shame to be found in simply not knowing, and plenty to be found in pretending you do.
By James Rowarth Bell
https://www.instagram.com/thesillymanhimself/
@TheSillymanHimself