076 - Language Games: Wittgenstein, Hegel, and the Split in Philosophy

Wittgenstein is often mention as the most influential philosopher of the 20th century.  His focus on the meaning of words became an integral part of the so-called "Analytic" branch of the discipline.   

The later Wittgenstein contended that words are but tools, defined by their use within the context of the “language game” of the arena they are used, which is societally based and can evolve.  One of these sandboxes is philosophy, as well as science and religion.  And the language of one space does not necessarily hold water in another.  That there is not one underlying true meaning of the word beneath all of the different areas;  only how a word or phrase is used in context of the realm of "game" in which it is being used.

But cannot words be used to point outside of the realm in which they are used to Spirit, a higher power and purpose, and to the truly infinite?  And isn't this the purpose of art, religion and philosophy?  This episode explores.   

Transcript

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Hello. I'm Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist podcast, episode 76. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to seek a greater understanding of the world we live in. And our purpose in it. Through the examination of key trends and philosophy, psychology self-help and modern science. And in the philosophical area as regular listeners know, I place special emphasis on the great 19th century philosopher, George William Friedrich hail. And this episode. I'm going to be covering the work of Ludwig. Vichtenstein who many considered to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Vichtenstein focused heavily on language, and that will be our exploration in this episode. And I'll also show how this emphasis of language and 20th century philosophy was the main driving force behind the Ascension of analytical philosophy or what is known as continental philosophy, German idealism, and of which Hegel's work is included. Just to summarize here. Analytic philosophy tends to be more empirically based. And scientific with a strong focus on the meaning of words and phrases. As opposed to the older continental philosophy of Descartes' content Hagle now. That's an over simplification of course. And I'll get into some of the key differences fully in this episode. Now Each time, as I said, is most noted for his stress on the role of words and language and philosophy. And, and this approach of his has been taken up by most of philosophy today. And I must say in, in doing the research for this episode, My own conclusion is that. Philosophy is more than just words. It's more than redefining the meaning of concepts. And, Part of the problem that exists in philosophy today is that many philosophers see that his philosophy is nothing more than that. Just sort of redefining terms and cetera. And as I said, this tends to be a position that's adopted by the analytics school of philosophy, more or less, which I also said dominates today. Now I do agree with Vic and shine. That words are a tool, but I believe that they can only take one so far. And they particularly fail in big concepts, such. As, how does it feel to be alive and things like quality, which is, you know, how do you describe the color red or how do you describe the actual smell of a rose in. In aesthetics, such as music and art. And the sense of the mystical or divine. Words can be used to point to something. But they're not the thing being pointed to. And often that thing is beyond words. As it says in, of course in miracles, words are twice. Removed from reality words are a symbol of a thing. And that thing is not all of reality. But Vichtenstein presented the case. That words are our reality. The root of the so-called analytical, continental split and philosophy can be boiled down to whether or not there was something beyond the words and concepts that we use. And this is what I want to discuss in this episode. Now I've referred here often to the left brain, right. Brain split, where the left brain is involved with breaking things down into smaller chunks. And either we're thinking. And this testifies much of. Um, analytical philosophy, the right brain, however, is more holistic. It puts itself in the picture if you will, and sees purpose and meaning. In life, and this is more typical of the continental philosophy and Gaylene ism in particular. So let's get into it. Now. Vic and shine is, is not recognized by so many as the greatest 20th century philosopher for no good reason. He offers some powerfully unique insights. So let's begin though, with a brief review of his life. And there's some striking things about his background first. he was born in Vienna in 1889 into one of the richest families, not only in Europe, but in the entire world, his father, Carl And Stein was the Andrew Carnegie of Europe, essentially controlling the entire steel industry. There. And by the late 19th century, Carl was one of the richest people in the world. Although we had Jewish roots, in his background, his father had converted to Protestantism and Carl was in fact married to a Roman Catholic woman. His son Ludwig was baptized in the Roman Catholic church. Carl had eight children in all lit with being the youngest and very, unfortunately, three of his brothers committed suicide in their adult life. And this. Undoubtedly must have affected them deeply. Regarding his upbringing. He studied mechanical engineering in school. And he realized at the time that he needed to better understand mathematics, to further his understanding of, of mechanical engineering. He read a copy of Bertrand Russell's principles of mathematics. And it was so impressive. He wanted to learn more. In fact, he, he went to Trinity college in Cambridge to actually study mathematics under Russell. Russell was immediately impressed with, if it can. I called him a genius. And convinced him to pursue philosophy instead of engineering. Now against Russel's wishes. He left Cambridge in 1913. He went to Norway. And started to work on his own book of philosophy, which resulted in, in the only book of his published in his lifetime, that Tractatus logical, philosophical. Was she considered once he finished it to be the final word on all the philosophy. Now when world war one broke out, he returned to Vienna to join the Austro-Hungarian army. This army was part of the central powers, which included Germany in the Ottoman empire. And Vichtenstein fought for four years and he continued to work in the Tractatus during his service. He ended up being a prisoner of the Italian army. Italy was on the side of the side of the allies then, which included England, Russia, France, and later the U S. While a prisoner of war, he asked if he could send a copy of the Tractatus to back to Bertrand Russell. And he was allowed to do so. He was then he was eventually freed and returned and he completed and had published the Tractatus. As an aside, I just must point out as remarkable that Vichtenstein one of the richest people on the planet at the time did not want to become just a Playboy. And get a yacht somewhere in sail around the Mediterranean. But he dove head first into, into philosophy and it shows. How these inner urges is higher calling is can really, affect people. Shortly after he returned from the rave and gave away his fortune to his siblings. And when about, you know, teaching and being a regular person in terms of working. Now. He had only two works of his published, the Tractatus in 1921. As I mentioned. And the later collection of his writings, which has published. Posthumously in 1953, titled philosophical investigations. Vichtenstein passed in 1951. And it is the second work, which brought them the most recognition worldwide, a claim. And it should be pointed out that in the second work, he did announced many of the concepts he had presented in the Tractatus. So in a sense, there is an early Vichtenstein and a later Vichtenstein, if it can shine one in Vichtenstein to. But let's start with a Tractatus first. And then I'll be brief here. In this first book. Vichtenstein presents a picture theory of language. That language is meant to be a representation of actual things, much like a picture as a representation of reality. Now he thought this gave a unique key to understanding reality itself. That language represents reality on a one-to-one relation and by studying language, how sentences and meaning are put together. We can understand reality the world out there. How things, objects, forces, et cetera, interact. So the logical structure of language cause corresponds to the logical structure of the world. And he felt that. If we couldn't understand the underlying principles of language. The primary elements, if you will, we would understand the primary elements of reality. And it's not just words in the sentence, but it's how these words were put together in the sentence that drove the meeting. And this is true for reality as well. It's not just objects, but how these objects interact with each other that define reality. Now. Here's the important thing about the Tractatus I believe. Vic. And should I believe that the facts of reality were all we could really think about. But unlike the logical positivists that we've spoken about before here, so often. He believed that the really important things like ethics. Aesthetics aspects of religion, et cetera, they existed, but they were beyond words. We really couldn't speak about them. The final, main premise of that drag status reason, I quote. Where have one cannot speak thereof, one must be silent and quote. So, how did Vichtenstein move away from this position? to his later writings. Well, the answer is straightforward. He went from a picture theory of language to eight use theory of language. He went from thinking about words and sentences, not as representing facts, but it's tools. If you will, that enable conversation. The meaning of the word is in its use. What you can do with it. And there's no inherent essence to a word or sentence. And that it's meaning only comes from its use. And this means that a word can be used in different ways and have different understandings based on this use. There is, of course, a family resemblance, as he says, for the definition of a word. There might be similarities for how a word is used in philosophy and in science, et cetera. but this will be based on its use. Th the definition, the meaning of the word is based on its use in philosophy or in science. And there's no primary meaning, you know, beyond that. And, but again, there will be similar. Similarities just like brothers and sisters and the family will have some similarities, but there are also differences. And that's the key point here. Now there's, there's also, a very dramatic point here. Which I need to say what he is saying is that. Words and concepts do not express underlying ideas, forms and notions. As we know, this is what Plato and Hagle believe. Vichtenstein is claiming that there's no single underlying essence or unity that binds these terms together. there, there. There's only the meaning of the word or phrase and its specific use at a specific time within a specific area. This would mean that Hegel's logic. Which painstakingly defines concept after concept notion, if your notion and development. Might be seen as an intellectual exercise. A very interesting one, but it does not necessarily correspond to any. Essential underlying truth. And that my friends is a very powerful difference in philosophical point of view. Again, he's saying there's is no absolute idea. As an Hagle, that's this. It's truly out there or an absolute form of beauty and truth as in Plato. But these words are just used to express different thoughts for different purposes for different uses. And as I said, there's no deep underlying reality behind them. Now. Here we get into his famous notion of language games, and he meant this, not just as a throw in line, but in a very technical sense. We all have lots of different areas in our life. there's scientific areas, religious, artistic, psychological, philosophical, and many more. And each of these sandboxes has its own way to use words and the words mean different things, depending on which space in which space it is being used. So words like being nothing and becoming, which we talk about so much with Hagle will mean something different when it comes to our relationships or to the law. Or to psychology or whatever. So at the victim each time. Hey goes, terminology is fundamental only to philosophy and not just all philosophy was just his philosophy. And it can not really be transferred directly to all reality, to all life. He clearly states and believes that there's no underlying foundation. There's nothing lying below the transcends at all. Now, what is important is that for Vic and Stan, the role of the philosopher is to understand these various language games and how they are played in their own domains. The philosopher's job is to not derive an underlying fundamental theory of all reality and existence. The job of the philosopher is to understand the difference in usage of words and their meaning in different settings. And he sees this as crucial in all human behavior of how we interact with each other. And all the different avenues of life that we pursue. Each domain has certain rules and regulations regarding the use of language. And these can be changed or modified over time, much like in sports. Rules of the game can be changed. Such as bringing in the three point shot in basketball. Several decades ago, and this year in baseball. They brought in a pitcher's clock. So the. Speed up the game. And again, just to drive this point, home Vic and science saying there's no place to observe the various language games outside of the game itself. And this is the fundamental difference between his philosophy and Hazel's. Fiqh and Stein is putting language into the center of everything. And this is a pretty radical thought. If we examine it. He means that there's no such thing as thinking outside the words we are using. And in our various language games, there is no thinker outside the thought, the words, the words are all that there is, and their use in interacting with other people, uh, Christian. And Mernie also held a similar view, which is pretty interesting. He's maintaining that there's no conscious experience outside these words. Yes, we can sense. We can touch. We can hear, we can smell. But there's no meaning here, outside the language we use to describe these sensations. So he puts language and its use in the center, dead center of philosophy. And this viewpoint has really dominated philosophy ever since. He's saying that philosophy and logic can not stand back and judge religion, for example. All that it can do is analyze how the language game is being played in religion. With concepts like God and spirit, et cetera. That there's no inherent right or wrong outside the language game of the domain itself and how it's being used. And philosophy itself is one of those domains. Uh, the only problem arises is one, one language game tries to judge another by its own terms. Such as when the scientific language tries to look at religion by the rules of its own game or when the vice versa, when the, religious viewpoint tends to look at. Science from its own. Language game. And the important thing for the philosopher to do is to see what role religion plays in someone's life and what role science plays in someone's life to see its use. This is what's important. And this. This includes philosophy itself now. I've spent several episodes here explaining how philosophy can be used by people to understand the rules by which they live in there. So governance is important to do so. And that is the language game of philosophy being used to explore other areas. Um, but it's, it's, it's not the, the law itself or the politics itself. It's philosophy analyzing how the game is played in each of those different areas. Each of these areas has its own societaly based game and it exists in its own domain. And this must be recognized. Now another interesting point he makes is there's no such thing as a private language game, that all the words we use are embedded in some social construct or language game between people is impossible to have a private language game. And this is indeed similar to Hegel's notion that there can be no self consciousness within another sub consciousness. It's that fundamental? There's no, self-consciousness without another second. Self-consciousness. And vice versa. And this has direct correspondence to what we've been talking about with Geist and the cunning of Geist. It is a social phenomenon. The words we use in our life with others have a certain meaning. And these meanings evolve and grow over time. Through this societal constructs, we established the language game of spirit evolved socially through history. That's the point that you've made over and over again here. So. There you have it. What does this all mean? Well, I think that Vichtenstein makes some excellent points. And by pointing out that we often mix up our language games by applying science, talk to religion and religious talk back to science and so forth. That's a very important point to understand. But here's where I differ from. Vichtenstein. I believe that. Within the language games of say art, religion, and philosophy. They're all pointed at something though, outside the language games of their respective disciplines. This is important to realize art. Points to spirit. When you see Michelangelo's David or a great painting, it is pointing to something beyond the human form. You can feel it and sense it. When you listened to Beethoven's ninth symphony, you feel something beyond the mere structure of the chords in the nice harmonies it's pointing to spirit. There's no word. that means exactly what we're talking about. When we say spirit. When religion speaks of God, it is speaking of something outside the religion, it's pointing to something outside of itself. And that's its purpose. And Hegel's philosophy does the same thing. As I said, there, there are no words to describe spirit in all art, religion, and philosophy is an attempt. To do just that. And here we come to the important split between the analytic tradition and the Galean tradition. It's the underlying belief that there's something beyond something beyond words. Beyond the material and the words used to describe it. Yes, I'm oversimplifying here, but I think you get my point. Now I'm no Vichtenstein expert far from it, but I can't help. The sense though, that he would not necessarily disagree with what I'm saying here. He was just pointing out how the game is played in various disciplines, what the rules are, how they change and how they are socially constructed. and that there's not one word game that underlies all the others. But. And I don't think he would necessarily disagree that they're all pointing to something which cannot be described, but. I'll leave that to others to figure out. But I do believe that he senses that there's something about which nothing can be said. And he, as he said this in the Tractatus in the court that I said earlier, And very importantly is focused on the use of language, provides an important bridge that connects mind and body subject in substance. in other words, the meaning behind the words, the language game of the domain that we share with others brings. The internal and the external together in one, in one language. and, and it brings it together within life itself. So, and that's important. And I think that's a good thing to recognize. And, and I think he's, he's really laid out the groundwork here. But again, I come back to the left brain, right. Brain analogy that I mentioned previously. The Analytica approach is more left-brain seeking definitions and isolating variables. Where the Galean right-brain reasoning approach recognizes the importance of holistic thought of being in the game. So to speak, to be in the actual world, not just analyzing it from, without. From above. So. To summarize. Vichtenstein was certainly a brilliant philosopher. He showed that words and meaning are not something we can take for granted, but there are the actual ways of establishing the various disciplines we commonly share in society. And there's not one language or set of concepts that underpins all the others. Arbor to me. This does not destroy the Galium position of spirit Or of the importance of art, religion, philosophy to point to something outside ourselves to a better way. To the truly infinite. Well, That's a wrap for this episode. Thank you. Once again for listening. And please like, and follow the podcast. Facebook page at cutting of Geist. I post there. Um, stuff almost daily. So we get into good conversations with people. And so, so please check that out like it and follow it. I'm also on Twitter, Gregory Novak. The handle is at cutting of Geist. And please feel free to share my posts. My comments. These, these episodes. With your own circle of friends on social media, help spread the word. And recommend this podcast to anyone you think might benefit from it. So to sign off, let me say once again. Um, Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. See you next time.