Wittgenstein's Language Games

Right here's an analogy. You go to the doctor's with some illness. They start talking about things such as CT, HTN etc. You don;t have a clue what they're talking about. It's like they're speaking a different language. In some ways, they are. More on this later.

Wittgenstein was a guy who the Vienna Circle greatly admired. he wrote the book 'Tractatus Logico Philsophicus' and 'Philosophical Investigations'.

He said that language is like a picture system of communication. Certain words have certain images. Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. in this way, the meaning of words are not universally fixed, the most important part of a word is how it is used e.g. We may use wicked to mean a good thing whereas it used to mean something bad. It is a philosopher’s job to analyse language, the meaning of a word is its use, this use of language helps give perspective of our world.

He said that language is rather like a game. Just as there are rules with different games, so there are different rules with using different types of language. We must understand the rules before we can use the language. Language is used to communicate ideas that are specific to their particular for of life. Their game. In the analogy, we could say that the language game used was one of a doctor so that they could communicate their particular form of life. Just as there are different ways to play games, so there are different ways to use language. Wittgenstein said that this was a family resemblance.

Language in Wittgenstein's context is non-cognitive because the meaningfulness comes from the context. It gives meaning to the people who play the game (i.e, the language used by doctors is meaningful to them because they know how to play that language game) Once someone knows the rules of a language game (once someone knows what the doctors are going on about) then it is meaningful to them . The meaning of a word is its use in the language

'Ask not for its meaning. Ask for its use'-Wittgenstein.

• The way we use language is similar to playing games.

• Different people use different language depending on their group

• To be able to play a game, you need to play by the rules (for example, if the doctor was using weird words, you need to know what he was talking about to play his game)

• Once you understand the rules behind the subject specific language then you can understand how it is meaningful.

Basically, if scientists pick apart religion based on the meaningfulness of their language, then they are wrong, says Wittgenstein because they are looking at religion from the language game of science and not the religious language game.