The purpose of 'admin' and Linguistic Gymnastics

Posted by okydoky on July 28, 2008, at 11:28:33

I apologize for the length of this post in advance. I wanted to be thorough as I could with a limited understanding of language and its use.

After having been involved in one thread on admin I read several threads on this site in an attempt to understand what the purpose of the administration board was and to address why I found it so frustrating. I have quite a bit of cognitive impairment specifically but not limited to word retrieval. When reading several threads I found a lot of distraction from any original intent of the person who started the thread. There seems to be an interest in having an explanation of each and every word, many times asking a poster to provide precise dictionary definitions of multiple words. I was so distracted at times I am not sure (I am not speaking of my one post here as it was addressed) if the original purpose of some posts were ever addressed. I am not a student of language and as stated have problems, which are hurtful to me, so I cannot, even if I wanted to, carry on in any intelligent, cohesive way with a conversation on the topic of language and its use. I have a limited understanding of even that which I am posting below. On the other hand I thought I might find a discussion about my observations helpful to me so I searched to find something with some content that seemed to address how language is being used here and perhaps why I find it such a distraction from what "admin" is supposed to be about. In that vein it occurred to me that perhaps it might be a helpful discussion to others on psychobabble. I do not know if anyone else makes the same observation as I or interprets a distraction of linguistic gymnastics (my words) as I did.

On Psychobabble
Frequently asked questions under Policies,
What exactly do you mean by "civil"?

I know I'm not perfect, and this isn't always easy:
Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of easily accessible wrong turnings. And so we watch one man after another walking down the same paths and we know in advance where he will branch off, where walk straight on without noticing the side turning, etc. What I have to do then is erect signposts at all the junctions where there are wrong turnings so as to help people past the danger points. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 1931, translated by Peter Winch, 1980.

Such signposts are all that philosophy can offer and there is no certainty that they will be noticed or followed correctly. --Duncan J. Richter

The following is form the link Duncan J. Richter above:

Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and regarded by some as the most important since Immanuel Kant. His early work was influenced by that of Arthur Schopenhauer and, especially, by his teacher Bertrand Russell and by Gottlob Frege, who became something of a friend. This work culminated in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the only philosophy book that Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. It claimed to solve all the major problems of philosophy and was held in especially high esteem by the anti-metaphysical logical positivists. The Tractatus is based on the idea that philosophical problems arise from misunderstandings of the logic of language, and it tries to show what this logic is. Wittgenstein's later work, principally his Philosophical Investigations, shares this concern with logic and language, but takes a different, less technical, approach to philosophical problems. This book helped to inspire so-called ordinary language philosophy. This style of doing philosophy has fallen somewhat out of favor, but Wittgenstein's work on rule-following and private language is still considered important, and his later philosophy is influential in a growing number of fields outside philosophy.
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Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Life
2. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
3. Ethics and Religion
4. Conception of Philosophy
5. Meaning
6. Rules and Private Language
7. Realism and Anti-Realism
8. Certainty
9. Continuity
10. Wittgenstein in History
11. Annotated Bibliography
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1. Life
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, born on April 26th 1889 in Vienna, Austria, was a charismatic enigma. He has been something of a cult figure but shunned publicity and even built an isolated hut in Norway to live in complete seclusion. His sexuality was ambiguous but he was probably gay; how actively so is still a matter of controversy. His life seems to have been dominated by an obsession with moral and philosophical perfection, summed up in the subtitle of Ray Monk's excellent biography Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius.
His concern with moral perfection led Wittgenstein at one point to insist on confessing to several people various sins, including that of allowing others to underestimate the extent of his 'Jewishness'. His father Karl Wittgenstein's parents were born Jewish but converted to Protestantism and his mother Leopoldine (nee Kalmus) was Catholic, but her father was of Jewish descent. Wittgenstein himself was baptized in a Catholic church and was given a Catholic burial, although between baptism and burial he was neither a practicing nor a believing Catholic.
The Wittgenstein family was large and wealthy. Karl Wittgenstein was one of the most successful businessmen in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, leading the iron and steel industry there. The Wittgensteins' home attracted people of culture, especially musicians, including the composer Johannes Brahms, who was a friend of the family. Music remained important to Wittgenstein throughout his life. So did darker matters. Ludwig was the youngest of eight children, and of his four brothers, three committed suicide.
As for his career, Wittgenstein studied mechanical engineering in Berlin and in 1908 went to Manchester, England to do research in aeronautics, experimenting with kites. His interest in engineering led to an interest in mathematics which in turn got him thinking about philosophical questions about the foundations of mathematics. He visited the mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), who recommended that he study with Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in Cambridge. At Cambridge Wittgenstein greatly impressed Russell and G.E. Moore (1873- 1958), and began work on logic.
When his father died in 1913 Wittgenstein inherited a fortune, which he quickly gave away. When war broke out the next year, he volunteered for the Austrian army. He continued his philosophical work and won several medals for bravery during the war. The result of his thinking on logic was the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which was eventually published in English in 1922 with Russell's help. This was the only book Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. Having thus, in his opinion, solved all the problems of philosophy, Wittgenstein became an elementary school teacher in rural Austria, where his approach was strict and unpopular, but apparently effective. He spent 1926-28 meticulously designing and building an austere house in Vienna for his sister Gretl.
In 1929 he returned to Cambridge to teach at Trinity College, recognizing that in fact he had more work to do in philosophy. He became professor of philosophy at Cambridge in 1939. During World War II he worked as a hospital porter in London and as a research technician in Newcastle. After the war he returned to university teaching but resigned his professorship in 1947 to concentrate on writing. Much of this he did in Ireland, preferring isolated rural places for his work. By 1949 he had written all the material that was published after his death as Philosophical Investigations, arguably his most important work. He spent the last two years of his life in Vienna, Oxford and Cambridge and kept working until he died of prostate cancer in Cambridge in April 1951. His work from these last years has been published as On Certainty. His last words were, "Tell them I've had a wonderful life."
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2. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Wittgenstein told Ludwig von Ficker that the point of the Tractatus was ethical. In the preface to the book he says that its value consists in two things: "that thoughts are expressed in it" and "that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved." The problems he refers to are the problems of philosophy defined, we may suppose, by the work of Frege and Russell, and perhaps also Schopenhauer. At the end of the book Wittgenstein says "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical" [emphasis added]. What to make of the Tractatus, its author, and the propositions it contains, then, is no easy matter.
The book certainly does not seem to be about ethics. It consists of numbered propositions in seven sets. Proposition 1.2 belongs to the first set and is a comment on proposition 1. Proposition 1.21 is about proposition 1.2, and so on. The seventh set contains only one proposition, the famous "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
Some important and representative propositions from the book are these:
1 The world is all that is the case.
4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality.
4.0312 ...My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' are not representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts.
4.121 ...Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.
4.1212 What can be shown, cannot be said.
4.5 ...The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.
5.43 ...all the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit nothing.
5.4711 To give the essence of a proposition means to give the essence of all description, and thus the essence of the world.
5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Here and elsewhere in the Tractatus Wittgenstein seems to be saying that the essence of the world and of life is: This is how things are. One is tempted to add "--deal with it." That seems to fit what Cora Diamond has called his "accept and endure" ethics, but he says that the propositions of the Tractatus are meaningless, not profound insights, ethical or otherwise. What are we to make of this?
Many commentators ignore or dismiss what Wittgenstein said about his work and its aims, and instead look for regular philosophical theories in his work. The most famous of these in the Tractatus is the "picture theory" of meaning. According to this theory propositions are meaningful insofar as they picture states of affairs or matters of empirical fact. Anything normative, supernatural or (one might say) metaphysical must, it therefore seems, be nonsense. This has been an influential reading of parts of the Tractatus. Unfortunately, this reading leads to serious problems since by its own lights the Tractatus' use of words like "object," "reality" and "world" is illegitimate. These concepts are purely formal or a priori. A statement such as "There are objects in the world" does not picture a state of affairs. Rather it is, as it were, presupposed by the notion of a state of affairs. The "picture theory" therefore denies sense to just the kind of statements of which the Tractatus is composed, to the framework supporting the picture theory itself. In this way the Tractatus pulls the rug out from under its own feet.
If the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsensical then they surely cannot put forward the picture theory of meaning, or any other theory. Nonsense is nonsense. However, this is not to say that the Tractatus itself is without value. Wittgenstein's aim seems to have been to show up as nonsense the things that philosophers (himself included) are tempted to say. Philosophical theories, he suggests, are attempts to answer questions that are not really questions at all (they are nonsense), or to solve problems that are not really problems. He says in proposition 4.003 that:
Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.) And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at all.
Philosophers, then, have the task of presenting the logic of our language clearly. This will not solve important problems but it will show that some things that we take to be important problems are really not problems at all. The gain is not wisdom but an absence of confusion. This is not a rejection of philosophy or logic. Wittgenstein took philosophical puzzlement very seriously indeed, but he thought that it needed dissolving by analysis rather than solving by the production of theories. The Tractatus presents itself as a key for untying a series of knots both profound and highly technical.
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3. Ethics and Religion
Wittgenstein had a lifelong interest in religion and claimed to see every problem from a religious point of view, but never committed himself to any formal religion. His various remarks on ethics also suggest a particular point of view, and Wittgenstein often spoke of ethics and religion together. This point of view or attitude can be seen in the four main themes that run through Wittgenstein's writings on ethics and religion: goodness, value or meaning are not to be found in the world; living the right way involves acceptance of or agreement with the world, or life, or God's will, or fate; one who lives this way will see the world as a miracle; there is no answer to the problem of life--the solution is the disappearance of the problem.
Certainly Wittgenstein worried about being morally good or even perfect, and he had great respect for sincere religious conviction, but he also said, in his 1929 lecture on ethics, that "the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language," i.e. to talk or write nonsense. This gives support to the view that Wittgenstein believed in mystical truths that somehow cannot be expressed meaningfully but that are of the utmost importance. It is hard to conceive, though, what these 'truths' might be.
An alternative view is that Wittgenstein believed that there is really nothing to say about ethics. This would explain why he wrote less and less about ethics as his life wore on. His "accept and endure" attitude and belief in going "the bloody hard way" are evident in all his work, especially after the Tractatus. Wittgenstein wants his reader not to think (too much) but to look at the "language games" (any practices that involve language) that give rise to philosophical (personal, existential, spiritual) problems. His approach to such problems is painstaking, thorough, open-eyed and receptive. His ethical attitude is an integral part of his method and shows itself as such.
But there is little to say about such an attitude short of recommending it. In Culture and Value p.29e Wittgenstein writes:
Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to describe what we are to do, not justify it. Because they could provide a justification only if they held good in other respects as well. I can say: "Thank these bees for their honey as though they were kind people who have prepared it for you"; that is intelligible and describes how I should like you to conduct yourself. But I cannot say: "Thank them because, look, how kind they are!"--since the next moment they may sting you.
In a world of contingency one cannot prove that a particular attitude is the correct one to take. If this suggests relativism, it should be remembered that it too is just one more attitude or point of view, and one without the rich tradition and accumulated wisdom, philosophical reasoning and personal experience of, say, orthodox Christianity or Judaism. Indeed crude relativism, the universal judgement that one cannot make universal judgements, is self- contradictory. Whether Wittgenstein's views suggest a more sophisticated form of relativism is another matter, but the spirit of relativism seems far from Wittgenstein's conservatism and absolute intolerance of his own moral shortcomings. Compare the tolerance that motivates relativism with Wittgenstein's assertion to Russell that he would prefer "by far" an organization dedicated to war and slavery to one dedicated to peace and freedom. (This assertion, however, should not be taken literally: Wittgenstein was no war-monger and even recommended letting oneself be massacred rather than taking part in hand-to-hand combat. It was apparently the complacency, and perhaps the self-righteousness, of Russell's liberal cause that Wittgenstein objected to.)
With regard to religion, Wittgenstein is often considered a kind of Anti-Realist (see below for more on this). He opposed interpretations of religion that emphasize doctrine or philosophical arguments intended to prove God's existence, but was greatly drawn to religious rituals and symbols, and considered becoming a priest. He likened the ritual of religion to a great gesture, as when one kisses a photograph. This is not based on the false belief that the person in the photograph will feel the kiss or return it, nor is it based on any other belief. Neither is the kiss just a substitute for a particular phrase, like "I love you." Like the kiss, religious activity does express an attitude, but it is not just the expression of an attitude in the sense that several other forms of expression might do just as well. There might be no substitute that would do. The same might be said of the whole language-game (or games) of religion, but this is a controversial point. If religious utterances, such as "God exists," are treated as gestures of a certain kind then this seems not to be treating them as literal statements. Many religious believers, including Wittgensteinian ones, would object strongly to this. There is room, though, for a good deal of sophisticated disagreement about what it means to take a statement literally. For instance, Charles Taylor's view, roughly, is that the real is whatever will not go away. If we cannot reduce talk about God to anything else, or replace it, or prove it false, then perhaps God is as real as anything else.
4. Conception of Philosophy
Wittgenstein's view of what philosophy is, or should be, changed little over his life. In the Tractatus he says at 4.111 that "philosophy is not one of the natural sciences," and at 4.112 "Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts." Philosophy is not descriptive but elucidatory. Its aim is to clear up muddle and confusion. It follows that philosophers should not concern themselves so much with what is actual, keeping up with the latest popularizations of science, say, which Wittgenstein despised. The philosopher's proper concern is with what is possible, or rather with what is conceivable. This depends on our concepts and the ways they fit together as seen in language. What is conceivable and what is not, what makes sense and what does not, depends on the rules of language, of grammar.
In Philosophical Investigations Sect. 90 Wittgenstein says:
Our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.
The similarities between the sentences "I'll keep it in mind" and "I'll keep it in this box," for instance, (along with many others) can lead one to think of the mind as a thing something like a box with contents of its own. The nature of this box and its mental contents can then seem very mysterious. Wittgenstein suggests that one way, at least, to deal with such mysteries is to recall the different things one says about minds, memories, thoughts and so on, in a variety of contexts.
What one says, or what people in general say, can change. Ways of life and uses of language change, so meanings change, but not utterly and instantaneously. Things shift and evolve, but rarely if ever so drastically that we lose all grip on meaning. So there is no timeless essence of at least some and perhaps all concepts, but we still understand one another well enough most of the time.
When nonsense is spoken or written, or when something just seems fishy, we can sniff it out. The road out of confusion can be a long and difficult one, hence the need for constant attention to detail and particular examples rather than generalizations, which tend to be vague and therefore potentially misleading. The slower the route, the surer the safety at the end of it. That is why Wittgenstein said that in philosophy the winner is the one who finishes last. But we cannot escape language or the confusions to which it gives rise, except by dying. In the meantime, Wittgenstein offers four main methods to avoid philosophical confusion, as described by Norman Malcolm: describing circumstances in which a seemingly problematic expression might actually be used in everyday life, comparing our use of words with imaginary language games, imagining fictitious natural history, and explaining psychologically the temptation to use a certain expression inappropriately.
The complex, intertwined relationship between a language and the form of life that goes with it means that problems arising from language cannot just be set aside--they infect our lives, making us live in confusion. We might find our way back to the right path, but there is no guarantee that we will never again stray. In this sense there can be no progress in philosophy.
In 1931 Wittgenstein described his task thus:
Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of easily accessible wrong turnings. And so we watch one man after another walking down the same paths and we know in advance where he will branch off, where walk straight on without noticing the side turning, etc. etc. What I have to do then is erect signposts at all the junctions where there are wrong turnings so as to help people past the danger points.
But such signposts are all that philosophy can offer and there is no certainty that they will be noticed or followed correctly. And we should remember that a signpost belongs in the context of a particular problem area. It might be no help at all elsewhere, and should not be treated as dogma. So philosophy offers no truths, no theories, nothing exciting, but mainly reminders of what we all know. This is not a glamorous role, but it is difficult and important. It requires an almost infinite capacity for taking pains (which is one definition of genius) and could have enormous implications for anyone who is drawn to philosophical contemplation or who is misled by bad philosophical theories. This applies not only to professional philosophers but to any people who stray into philosophical confusion, perhaps not even realizing that their problems are philosophical and not, say, scientific.

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5. Meaning
Sect. 43 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations says that: "For a large class of cases--though not for all--in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language."
It is quite clear that here Wittgenstein is not offering the general theory that "meaning is use," as he is sometimes interpreted as doing. The main rival views that Wittgenstein warns against are that the meaning of a word is some object that it names--in which case the meaning of a word could be destroyed, stolen or locked away, which is nonsense--and that the meaning of a word is some psychological feeling--in which case each user of a word could mean something different by it, having a different feeling, and communication would be difficult if not impossible.
Knowing the meaning of a word can involve knowing many things: to what objects the word refers (if any), whether it is slang or not, what part of speech it is, whether it carries overtones, and if so what kind they are, and so on. To know all this, or to know enough to get by, is to know the use. And generally knowing the use means knowing the meaning. Philosophical questions about consciousness, for example, then, should be responded to by looking at the various uses we make of the word "consciousness." Scientific investigations into the brain are not directly relevant to this inquiry (although they might be indirectly relevant if scientific discoveries led us to change our use of such words). The meaning of any word is a matter of what we do with our language, not something hidden inside anyone's mind or brain. This is not an attack on neuroscience. It is merely distinguishing philosophy (which is properly concerned with linguistic or conceptual analysis) from science (which is concerned with discovering facts).
One exception to the meaning-is-use rule of thumb is given in Philosophical Investigations Sect.561, where Wittgenstein says that "the word "is" is used with two different meanings (as the copula and as the sign of equality)" but that its meaning is not its use. That is to say, "is" has not one complex use (including both "Water is clear" and "Water is H2O") and therefore one complex meaning, but two quite distinct uses and meanings. It is an accident that the same word has these two uses. It is not an accident that we use the word "car" to refer to both Fords and Hondas. But what is accidental and what is essential to a concept depends on us, on how we use it.
This is not completely arbitrary, however. Depending on one's environment, one's physical needs and desires, one's emotions, one's sensory capacities, and so on, different concepts will be more natural or useful to one. This is why "forms of life" are so important to Wittgenstein. What matters to you depends on how you live (and vice versa), and this shapes your experience. So if a lion could speak, Wittgenstein says, we would not be able to understand it. We might realize that "roar" meant zebra, or that "roar, roar" meant lame zebra, but we would not understand lion ethics, politics, aesthetic taste, religion, humor and such like, if lions have these things. We could not honestly say "I know what you mean" to a lion. Understanding another involves empathy, which requires the kind of similarity that we just do not have with lions, and that many people do not have with other human beings.
When a person says something what he or she means depends not only on what is said but also on the context in which it is said. Importance, point, meaning are given by the surroundings. Words, gestures, expressions come alive, as it were, only within a language game, a culture, a form of life. If a picture, say, means something then it means so to somebody. Its meaning is not an objective property of the picture in the way that its size and shape are. The same goes of any mental picture. Hence Wittgenstein's remark that "If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of." Any internal image would need interpretation. If I interpret my thought as one of Hitler and God sees it as Charlie Chaplin, who is right? Which of the two famous contemporaries of Wittgenstein's I mean shows itself in the way I behave, the things I do and say. It is in this that the use, the meaning, of my thought or mental picture lies. "The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it."

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6. Rules and Private Language
Without sharing certain attitudes towards the things around us, sharing a sense of relevance and responding in similar ways, communication would be impossible. It is important, for instance, that nearly all of us agree nearly all the time on what colors things are. Such agreement is part of our concept of color, Wittgenstein suggests. Regularity of the use of such concepts and agreement in their application is part of language, not a logically necessary precondition of it. We cannot separate the life in which there is such agreement from our concept of color. Imagine a different form or way of life and you imagine a different language with different concepts, different rules and a different logic.
This raises the question of the relation between language and forms or ways of life. For instance, could just one person have a language of his or her own? To imagine an individual solitary from birth is scarcely to imagine a form of life at all, but more like just imagining a life- form. Moreover, language involves rules establishing certain linguistic practices. Rules of grammar express the fact that it is our practice to say this (e.g. "half past twelve") and not that (e.g. "half to one"). Agreement is essential to such practices. Could a solitary individual, then, engage in any practice, including linguistic ones? With whom could he or she agree? This is a controversial issue in the interpretation of Wittgenstein. Gordon Baker and P.M.S. Hacker hold that such a solitary man could speak his own language, follow his own rules, and so on, agreeing, over time, with himself in his judgements and behavior. Orthodoxy is against this interpretation, however.
Norman Malcolm has written that "If you conceive of an individual who has been in solitude his whole life long, then you have cut away the background of instruction, correction, acceptance--in short, the circumstances in which a rule is given, enforced, and followed." Mere regularity of behavior does not constitute following rules, whether they be rules of grammar or any other kind. A car that never starts in cold weather does not follow the rule "Don't start when it's cold," nor does a songbird follow a rule in singing the same song every day. Whether a solitary-from-birth individual would ever do anything that we would properly call following a rule is at least highly doubtful. How could he or she give himself or herself a rule to follow without language? And how could he or she get a language? Inventing one would involve inventing meaning, as Rush Rhees has argued, and this sounds incoherent. (The most famous debate about this was between Rhees and A.J. Ayer. Unfortunately for Wittgenstein, Ayer is generally considered to have won.) Alternatively, perhaps the Crusoe-like figure just does behave, sound, etc. just like a native speaker of, say, English. But this is to imagine either a freakish automaton, not a human being, or else a miracle. In the case of a miracle, Wittgenstein says, it is significant that we imagine not just the pseudo- Crusoe but also God. In the case of the automatic speaker, we might adopt what Daniel Dennett calls an "intentional stance" towards him, calling what he does "speaking English," but he is obviously not doing what the rest of us English-speakers--who learned the language, rather than being born speaking it, and who influence and are influenced by others in our use of the language--do.
The debate about solitary individuals is sometimes referred to as the debate about "private language." Wittgenstein uses this expression in another context, however, to name a language that refers to private sensations. Such a private language by definition cannot be understood by anyone other than its user (who alone knows the sensations to which it refers). Wittgenstein invites us to imagine a man who decides to write 'S' in his diary whenever he has a certain sensation. This sensation has no natural expression, and 'S' cannot be defined in words. The only judge of whether 'S' is used correctly is the inventor of 'S'. The only criterion of correctness is whether a sensation feels the same to him or her. There are no criteria for its being the same other than its seeming the same. So he writes 'S' when he feels like it. He might as well be doodling. The so-called 'private language' is no language at all. The point of this is not to show that a private language is impossible but to show that certain things one might want to say about language are ultimately incoherent. If we really try to picture a world of private objects (sensations) and inner acts of meaning and so on, we see that what we picture is either regular public language or incomprehensible behavior (the man might as well quack as say or write 'S').
This does not, as has been alleged, make Wittgenstein a behaviorist. He does not deny the existence of sensations or experiences. Pains, tickles, itches, etc. are all part of human life, of course. At Philosophical Investigations Sect. 293 Wittgenstein says that "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." This suggests not that pains and so on are irrelevant but that we should not construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation'. If we want to understand a concept like pain we should not think of a pain as a private object referred to somehow by the public word "pain." A pain is not "a something," just as love, democracy and strength are not things, but it is no more "a nothing" than they are either (see Philosophical Investigations Sect. 304). Saying this is hardly satisfactory, but there is no simple answer to the question "What is pain?" Wittgenstein offers not an answer but a kind of philosophical 'therapy' intended to clear away what can seem so obscure. To judge the value of this therapy, the reader will just have to read Wittgenstein's work for herself.
The best known work on Wittgenstein's writings on this whole topic is Saul A. Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke is struck by the idea that anything might count as continuing a series or following a rule in the same way. It all depends on how the rule or series is interpreted. And any rule for interpretation will itself be subject to a variety of interpretations, and so on. What counts as following a rule correctly, then, is not determined somehow by the rule itself but by what the relevant linguistic community accepts as following the rule. So whether two plus two equals four depends not on some abstract, extra-human rule of addition, but on what we, and especially the people we appoint as experts, accept. Truth conditions are replaced by assertability conditions. To put it crudely, what counts is not what is true or right (in some sense independent of the community of language users), but what you can get away with or get others to accept.
Kripke's theory is clear and ingenious, and owes a lot to Wittgenstein, but is doubtful as an interpretation of Wittgenstein. Kripke himself presents the argument not as Wittgenstein's, nor as his own, but as "Wittgenstein's argument as it struck Kripke" (Kripke p.5). That the argument is not Wittgenstein's is suggested by the fact that it is a theory, and Wittgenstein rejected philosophical theories, and by the fact that the argument relies heavily on the first sentence of Philosophical Investigations Sect. 201: "This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule." For Kripke's theory as a reading of Wittgenstein, it is not good that the very next paragraph begins, "It can be seen that there is a misunderstanding here..." Still, it is no easy matter to see just where Wittgenstein does diverge from the hybrid person often referred to as 'Kripkenstein'. The key perhaps lies later in the same paragraph, where Wittgenstein writes that "there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation". Many scholars, notably Baker and Hacker, have gone to great lengths to explain why Kripke is mistaken. Since Kripke is so much easier to understand, one of the best ways into Wittgenstein's philosophy is to study Kripke and his Wittgensteinian critics. At the very least, Kripke introduces his readers well to issues that were of great concern to Wittgenstein and shows their importance.

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7. Realism and Anti-Realism
Wittgenstein's place in the debate about philosophical Realism and Anti-Realism is an interesting one. His emphasis on language and human behavior, practices, etc. makes him a prime candidate for Anti-Realism in many people's eyes. He has even been accused of linguistic idealism, the idea that language is the ultimate reality. The laws of physics, say, would by this theory just be laws of language, the rules of the language game of physics. Anti-Realist scepticism of this kind has proved quite popular in the philosophy of science and in theology, as well as more generally in metaphysics and ethics.
On the other hand, there is a school of Wittgensteinian Realism, which is less well known. Wittgenstein's views on religion, for instance, are often compared with those of Simone Weil, who was a Platonist of sorts. Sabina Lovibond argues for a kind of Wittgensteinian Realism in ethics in her Realism and Imagination in Ethics and the influence of Wittgenstein is clear in Raimond Gaita's Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception. However, one should not go too far with the idea of Wittgensteinian Realism. Lovibond, for instance, equates objectivity with intersubjectivity (universal agreement), so her Realism is of a controversial kind.
Both Realism and Anti-Realism, though, are theories, or schools of theories, and Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the advocacy of theories in philosophy. This does not prove that he practiced what he preached, but it should give us pause. It is also worth noting that supporters of Wittgenstein often claim that he was neither a Realist nor an Anti-Realist, at least with regard to metaphysics. There is something straightforwardly unWittgensteinian about the Realist's belief that language/thought can be compared with reality and found to 'agree' with it. The Anti-Realist says that we could not get outside our thought or language (or form of life or language games) to compare the two. But Wittgenstein was concerned not with what we can or cannot do, but with what makes sense. If metaphysical Realism is incoherent then so is its opposite. The nonsensical utterance "laubgefraub" is not to be contradicted by saying, "No, it is not the case that laubgefraub," or "Laubgefraub is a logical impossibility." If Realism is truly incoherent, as Wittgenstein would say, then so is Anti-Realism.

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8. Certainty
Wittgenstein's last writings were on the subject of certainty. He wrote in response to G.E. Moore's attack on scepticism about the external world. Moore had held up one hand, said "Here is one hand," then held up his other hand and said "and here is another." His point was that things outside the mind really do exist, we know they do, and that no grounds for scepticism could be strong enough to undermine this commonsense knowledge.
Wittgenstein did not defend scepticism, but questioned Moore's claim to know that he had two hands. Such 'knowledge' is not something that one is ever taught, or finds out, or proves. It is more like a background against which we come to know other things. Wittgenstein compares this background to the bed of a river. This river bed provides the support, the context, in which claims to know various things have meaning. The bed itself is not something we can know or doubt. In normal circumstances no sane person doubts how many hands he or she has. But unusual circumstances can occur and what was part of the river bed can shift and become part of the river. I might, for instance, wake up dazed after a terrible accident and wonder whether my hands, which I cannot feel, are still there or not. This is quite different, though, from Descartes's pretended doubt as to whether he has a body at all. Such radical doubt is really not doubt at all, from Wittgenstein's point of view. And so it cannot be dispelled by a proof that the body exists, as Moore tried to do.

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9. Continuity
Wittgenstein is generally considered to have changed his thinking considerably over his philosophical career. His early work culminated in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with its picture theory of language and mysticism, according to this view. Then there came a transitional middle period when he first returned to philosophical work after realizing that he had not solved all the problems of philosophy. This period led to his mature, later period which gave us the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty.
There certainly are marked changes in Wittgenstein's work, but the differences between his early and late work can be exaggerated. Two central discontinuities in his work are these: whereas the Tractatus is concerned with the general form of the proposition, the general nature of metaphysics, and so on, in his later work Wittgenstein is very critical of "the craving for generality"; and, in the Tractatus Wittgenstein speaks of the central problems of philosophy, whereas the later work treats no problems as central. Another obvious difference is in Wittgenstein's style. The Tractatus is a carefully constructed set of short propositions. The Investigations, though also consisting of numbered sections, is longer, less clearly organized and more rambling, at least in appearance. This reflects Wittgenstein's rejection of the idea that there are just a few central problems in philosophy, and his insistence on paying attention to particular cases, going over the rough ground.
On the other hand, the Tractatus itself says that its propositions are nonsense and thus, in a sense (not easy to understand), rejects itself. The fact that the later work also criticizes the Tractatus is not, therefore, proof of discontinuity in Wittgenstein's work. The main change may have been one of method and style. Problems are investigated one at a time, although many overlap. There is not a full-frontal assault on the problem or problems of philosophy. Otherwise, the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations attack much the same problems; they just do so in different ways.

Here is something I found trying to search for some meaning before I read what was on the site itself:

Natural Meaning for Natural Language

David Cole 5-10-98

In Book II of the Essay, at the beginning of his discussion of language in Chapter II ("Of the Signification of Words"), John Locke writes that we humans have a variety of thoughts which might profit others, but that unfortunately these thoughts lie invisible and hidden from others. And so we use language to communicate these thoughts. As a result, "words, in their primary or immediate signification,stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them.". Perhaps this is the most natural view of natural language: language is a communication tool, an arbitrary conventional code, for letting others know what you think. Natural language derives its meaning from the thoughts it represents.
This general view of the status of language has enjoyed a lengthy ascendency. Critics, such as Wittgenstein, have not prevailed. The recent focus by Dretske, Fodor, Pinker, and others, on a semantics for mentalese exists along side followers of Grice, who focus on the role speaker intent plays in determining the meaning of natural language. All hold that the principal bearers and determinants of semantic properties are something other than natural language.
Here I hope to develop an alternative to the view that natural language has meaning only derivatively, as an encoding of thought, the primary bearer of meaning. Ill not follow Wittgenstein into ways of life, but will try to respect the uses of language. Since I think a primary use of language is to convey information about how things are in the world (and not how things are in the speakers head), I will fly in the face of Lockes dire warning that taking words as standing "for the reality of things" is
a perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own minds.
I will try to show how the meaning of natural language can be understood as a special case of natural meaning. Language, of course, is at least complicated by the presence of an intelligent language user. But I will argue that linguistic meaning is as much like natural meaning as it could be, given the presence of an intelligent agent in the causal chain linking world and linguistic representation.
Let us look first at physical systems designed to convey information, non-intelligent instruments that are such that their display states mean one thing or another. Having developed a case for a meaning for linguistic displays that is related to natur al meaning, Ill set out three ways in which meaning for natural language might be understood as derivative of natural meaning. Then, let us reconsider the arguments at the beginning of Paul Grices classic paper, Meaning, to see if there is as gr eat a difference between natural meaning and linguistic meaning as Grice makes out.
NATURAL MEANING
In the 40 years or so since Grices "Meaning" appeared, attention to his work has largely focussed on his theory of non-natural meaning. Independently, others have been developing accounts of various types of natural meaning. Much of this w ork has been done by Fred Dretske and Jerry Fodor, who have been interested in understanding the meaning of mental representations in terms of information they carry. While many have rejected Grices highly intellectualized theory of meaning, as far as I know they have not discussed Grices original distinction of the two types of meaning. That distinction remains very interesting, and it is useful, in light of subsequent developments, to revisit his paper.
Grice begins by making a distinction between two types of meaning, then in the rest of the paper he attends almost exclusively to the second of these, which he calls "non-natural meaning". At the very beginning of the paper, Grice invites re aders to consider three sentences having to do with meaning:
"Those spots mean (meant) measles."
"Those spots didnt mean anything to me, but to the doctor they meant measles."
"The recent budget means that we shall have a hard year."
These are all cases of natural meaning, or, following Grice, meaning(n). Note that not all bearers of natural meaning are natural events or facts the last example is a budget. Generally, natural meaning concerns symptoms or signs or some state of a ffairs. Other examples might be "smoke means fire", "that drop in barometric pressure means rain", and "the fact that the car is exhausting blue smoke means that it is burning oil.".
In these cases of natural meaning the connection between the bearer of natural meaning and the state that it indicates does not owe to agency. But even in cases like these one could suppose that although no agent is a component of the causal connection, n evertheless the existence of he causal connection itself is the result of an intelligent agent. For example, one could suppose that God has established the connection between measles and its characteristic red spots, or between fire and smoke, perhaps ju st so that we might know when someone has measles or that there is a fire. If God were to act in these ways, he would be what Dretske has called a "structuring cause" He would cause it to be the case that measles cause red spots, or that fire causes smoke. The meaning of smoke and spots would still be natural meaning, for God would not on each occasion of the appearance of spots or smoke cause them to appear. Rather He would have arranged things so that in the ordinary course of things, mea sles cause red spots and fire causes smoke, so that from red spots one may infer measles, and from smoke one may infer fire.
Cases where natural meaning is at work as the result of structuring agents are particularly interesting for exploring the connection between semantics and pragmatics, and the relation of natural and non-natural meaning. Accordingly, let us conside r the special case of instruments, devices which are designed to convey information about some condition. These have, as it were, artificial natural meaning.
INDICATING SYSTEMS
The lights and gauges on the instrument panel of a car indicate various facts about the condition of the vehicle. That the leftmost light is on may indicate that the oil pressure is low. Or, as we might also put it, that the light is on means that th e oil pressure is low. Although the light is an artifact, it functions as an indicator or symptom of states of affairs. Statements about what the display states of an instrument mean have the same logic as the natural meaning of red spots on the skin and clouds in the sky. Namely, they support inference to certain states of affairs, and it they do not support inference to anyone meaning anything by turning on the light. It is less clear (to use another one of Grices tests for non-natural meaning) whet her they support inference to something of the form:
The fact that the leftmost light is on means "the oil pressure is low".
In part this uncertainty, at least on my part, is because I am not sure that this claim, that a fact means a sentence, is coherent. But perhaps we could say :
The fact that the leftmost light is on means the same as would a talking car that said, "the oil pressure is low".
This would relate the meaning of one state of affairs, the fact that the light is on, to the meaning of another state of affairs, one that involves producing an instance of a sentence. This at least seems coherent, unlike Grices own example involving a quoted sentence. In any case, it seems reasonable to suspect that Grices example has paraphrases that are coherent in idiolects other than his own.
The oil pressure light can malfunction. Then its being on might not mean that the oil pressure is low. Of course, it is supposed to mean that the oil pressure is low. And it usually means that. But, if it is malfunctioning, that is no t what its being on now means. This may appear to be a difference with some forms of natural meaning, where there is an invariable connection between the thing or state said to have the meaning and the meaning. But it is not unusual even with par adigms of natural meaning for the connection not to be invariable. Clouds that usually mean storms sometimes appear without the storms, (and the storms may arrive unheralded by any clouds). Most disease symptoms can appear in a variety of conditions. S o there can be lack of an invariable connection between bearer of natural meaning and its meaning. We might then say "x usually means p".
Common simple single-purpose dashboard indicators are always each directly connected with the sensors for the conditions they indicate. Such single purpose indicators may be supplanted by more sophisticated indicator systems. And in order to understa nd meaning, it may be useful to consider what would happen to meaning in more sophisticated indicator systems.
Suppose then we replace the multiple gauges and indicator lights that typically are placed on the instrument panel of a car with a single digital display that can display numerals and words a single channel universal display or "scud". A s mall digital processor, with a simple program, will be part of a scud. Let us turn to some plausible design considerations for a scud.
Traditional multi-display instrument panels display a great deal of information in parallel; a scud is a serial system and can only display one item at a time. It can move through items and display one after another. As a result, scud designers will need to make some decisions as to what will be displayed when, and implement those decisions in the commands used in programming the scud.
The program for the scud must implement rules for what symbols should be displayed under what conditions. For example, the display might be capable of displaying
1. an icon of a car outline, next to icon of a thermometer, next to the numerals 72.
Or, alternatively, the sentence
2. "The outside temperature is 72 degrees F".
When should these icons or this string be displayed?
First, given the point of having an instrument panel on the car, namely that a driver wants information, we need a display that will provide the driver with information. Icons have their place, but they may well be thought excessively ambiguous and d ifficult for a driver to discern and interpret. If the primary users of the vehicles will be English speakers, our designers might prefer a linguistic display such as 2). Suppose then our designers decide to program the scud to that it will display 2) o nly if the temperature is 72 degrees F. They will program the scud computer so that it complies with the rule
Rule: Display (2) only if the outside temperature is 72 degrees F.
Let us call this rule the semantic condition on displaying. Note that it sets a necessary condition, namely that the temp be 72 degrees, but not a sufficient condition for displaying. It cant be a sufficient condition because other messages m ust be displayed, messages carrying information that may be more important to the driver or ones that should be more important to the driver, such as information about abnormally high current coolant temperature, even if the driver is unconcerned .
So the sufficient conditions for displaying a scud message will be much more complicated than the necessary conditions They will be pragmatic. These pragmatic conditions on displaying must take account of when it is appropriate to display different messages.
Another complication arises because automobile instrument displays typically have more than one mode. For example, at startup (key-on, engine not running) traditional automotive instruments may enter a test mode where all the various lights display. T his enables the user to detect burnt out light bulbs and other malfunctions in the instrumentation system. Fancier displays than those typically found on autos may also have a "demo" mode in which they demonstrate their capabilities. Or a suff iciently complex system could have a "simulation" mode in which its displays simulate what would be displayed in interesting but non-actual conditions a simulation that might be for training or for entertainment purposes. These modes all con trast with the normal functioning of instrument displays in providing information about monitored conditions.
Let us then suppose that the scud system has other modes, including test modes or demo modes. Then the conditions we have discussing apply only to the normal mode of providing information. Let us call that normal mode "assert" mode. Thus t he semantic condition we have discussed applies only in assert mode, as do the pragmatic conditions discussed above. There will be different pragmatic conditions for test, demo and simulation modes. And the semantic conditions will not be operative in t hese modes. The necessary and sufficient conditions discussed above then are conditions for assert mode only.
Are these conditions connected with meaning? Consider a case where the scud displays 2). Then it may well be the case that the fact that the scud displays "The outside temperature is 72 degrees F." means that the outside temperature is 72 d egrees F. In the case of the scud, there is an internal program that contains a functional equivalent of the semantic assert condition. This embodiment of the condition thus plays a causal role in determining what this particular displayed string means. The pragmatic conditions do not play a role in determining the natural meaning of the display. Even if the display malfunctions such that it fails to adhere to the pragmatic conditions and so displays 2) when it should be displaying say road speed, as during hard acceleration, as long as the semantic condition is still operative, the fact that it displays 2) will still mean that the temp is 72. It shouldnt be displaying 2), but not because it is inaccurate.
A CONJUNCTION PROBLEM
Suppose we also have as a necessary condition on the display that messages be displayed only if the system voltage is between 11 and 14 volts DC say this is the range in which the system can function reliably. Then can we conclude that the fact that the system displays 1) means that the system voltage is between 11 and 14? Presumably, Yes it does mean that. However, the voltage condition is of a special type. It concerns a condition for meeting the semantic condition. The semantic condition is concerned with conventions of message what symbol string shall be indicative of what condition. The voltage condition is concerned with reliability given the conventions. Thus it is more akin to an epistemic condition. Display asserts should adhere to a convention, should be accurate, and should consider users need to know. The former is semantic, the latter pragmatic, and the middle is reliability. Reliability conditions are needed for adherence to the semantic convention.
Several counterfactuals are relevant here. Suppose the semantic rule were changed, so, for example, we made the rule
Display "The outside temperature is 22" only if the outside temp is 72 degrees F.
It would still be the case that, given no other changes in the system, we would need the voltage reliability condition. And similarly, if new system components became available that were more tolerant of supply voltage variation, we might relax the re liability condition. Then the scuds displaying 2) would no longer mean that the voltage is between 11 and 14.
Users are typically interested in the inference from the display of 2) to the ambient temperature. But a technician might be interested in the inference from the same display to a conclusion about the internal electrical conditions in the system. Th ere is an asymmetry between the two inferences: that any message is displayed will mean that the reliability conditions are met, whereas each differing displayed temperature message will mean something different about the temperature.
Moral: a displayed message will mean many different things, for different reasons. We typically single out the semantic meaning, the meaning that reflects the semantic condition. The reasons for doing this are non-arbitrary, and have to do with the information we are interested in.
A DISJUNCTION PROBLEM
A second problem may arise from the fact that conditions other than the ambient temp being 72 will cause the scud to display 2): for example, if bright sunlight or other source of radiant heat strikes the temp sensor. This type of problem has been a m ajor concern of advocates of indicator semantics such as Millikan, Dretske and Fodor. The first two have had recourse to some naturalistic way of accounting for what the indicator is supposed to indicate. This is certainly reasonable, and accords with the thought, in the scud example at hand, that the scud is supposed to indicate ambient temp, not level of infrared radiation on its temp sensor. Millikan, interested in biological systems, develops an account of proper function based on evolution , and Dretske, who has interests both in biological systems and in instrumentation, appeals more generally to the "structuring cause", which is what brings it about that the system responds as it does. Both of these accounts are historical. F odor tries an ahistorical account in terms of counterfactuals.
But common to all these accounts, it seems to me, is a neglect of a type distinction: between what a current token indication means, and what indications of a type mean. A display of a particular message on a particular occasion is a token display. I f one asks what it means that the scud is now displaying 2), the answer, given the way the scud is now operating, is that the outside temp is 72. This is compatible with the truth of the counterfactual that if there were an intense source of IR near the temp sensor, the scud would also display 2) even if the outside temp were substantially lower than 72. With natural meaning, things mean what they mean, and not another thing. These red spots mean measles, even though spots of that kind might be produc ed by, say, makeup. Those clouds mean rain, even though clouds of that type might be produced by, say, Industrial Light and Magic. We might say,
Given the way the scud is affected by the world, its display of 2) means the outside temperature is 72.
This is compatible with it meaning something else if the scud were affected by the world in a different way, as by IR irradiation of its sensors.
We can certainly talk about what displays of this type mean (that is, the type of which string 2) is a token). They will mean different things, depending on circumstances. If that seems unhelpful, as well it might, we can usefully report that displays of this type usually mean such and such, or that they are supposed to mean such and such. But talk of the meaning of a particular token display need not take note of such complications. And talk of what the display was intended by its designers to display may not be very helpful in the case of an instrument that is miscalibrated. For example, it may be the case that whenever my scud displays a temperature reading, it is reported 10 degrees higher than the actual temperature. Then someone who drives my car will be better informed by knowing how my scud reports temp rather than the conditions under which it is supposed to be displaying what it is displaying. Indeed, how it is supposed to read is neither here nor there, nor is it relevant what other scuds read. The only thing that matters is what there be lawlike connections between my scuds displays and conditions in the world. Then they mean something.
Moral: we must be careful to distinguish what it means for this string to be displayed now from talk about what this string means simpliciter, abstracting from actual displayings of the string by particular systems.
With a simple scud system, the semantic rules programmed into its computer may link entire sentences with conditions. But with even minimal complexity, syntactic rules and substitutional variables will likely appear. Thus even in the temperature case considered so far, it would be very inefficient program design to write rules for each temperature, each of which completely specified the whole sentence. In standard computing practice, we would specify a rule for the display that had the form:
Display "The outside temperature is" T "degrees."
"T" is in effect a substitutional variable that will determine what numeral gets displayed. If we extend the capabilities of the scud system so that it can report the temperature for not just the outside but also say 22 different components of the vehicle, we may well want new rules that introduce new substitutional variables, replacing "outside". If we add the capacity to report other parameters besides temperature for those same 22 components, we would want a variable instead of "temperature". Thus some syntactic competence would be added to the system as a natural result of enhanced information complexity, and in particular, as the result of being able to represent many values of each of a variety of parameters about a variety of different components and systems.
Summary: So far we have seen that in even a simple information display system, there
Will be meaning with the logic of Grices natural meaning.
Will be both semantic and pragmatic rules.
Will likely also be reliability rules akin to epistemic.
May well be both assertoric and other modes with different rules.
Will be multiple things that any particular displayed message means.
Will be multiple things that any particular displayed message could mean, but these will generally be other than what the display of the message does mean.
The meaning typically of greatest interest to users will be a causal result of the implementation of semantic assertion rules which establish the dependence of display of a particular string rather than other strings upon certain conditions in the worl d.
GRICE'S DISCUSSION OF MEANING
As noted above in passing, it seems that even simple traditional indicator systems can meet one of Grices conditions on non-natural meaning, namely "the lights being on means "the oil pressure is low". I surmise this is ellipti cal for something like "the fact that the light is on means the same as asserting "the oil pressure is low".
Now let us turn to reconsider the rest of Grices distinction between natural and non-natural meaning. Grice gives two examples of what he subsequently calls non-natural meaning, and then he draws five conclusions about the difference between natural and non-natural meaning. His examples:
"Those three rings on the bell (of the bus) mean that the bus is full."
"That remark, Smith couldnt get on without his trouble and strife, meant that Smith found his wife indispensable."
Regarding these, Grice says that it is characteristic of such cases of non-natural meaning that one can say "x means that p, but in fact not p". Thus his first conclusion is:
1. I can use the first of these and go on to say, "But it isnt in fact full the conductor has made a mistake"; and I can use the second and go on, "But in fact Smith deserted her seven years ago."
However it seems to me that this may not be true of the bell ringing example! If the bus is not full, then those three rings on the bell did not mean that the bus is full. Perhaps they are supposed to mean that the bus is full, and perha ps they usually mean that the bus is full, and perhaps they were intended to mean that the bus is full, but they did not in fact mean the bus is full. Similar considerations apply to the second example. The remark Smiths remarking did not mean that Smith finds his wife indispensable, although it is plausible to suppose that it was intended to be taken by Smiths auditors to mean that.
Ill return to this below. Also, as mentioned above, there appear to be cases of natural meaning where there is not an invariable connection between a type of sign and a type of indicated state of affairs. Thus, I can say "spots like those usual ly mean measles, but not in this case." And one could say much the same of the three rings of the bell on a bus not yet full.
Grices second point about natural and non-natural meaning:
2. I can argue from the first to some statement about "what is (was) meant" by the rings on the bell and from the second to some statement about "what is (was) meant" by the quoted remark.
This point seems correct. However, these sentences seem elliptical for an explicit attribution of agency to the bell ringer and the remarker. It is not that something is meant by the quoted sentence, rather it is meant by the speaker in using the quo ted sentence. Compare a statement about what was accomplished by blows to the midriff this presumably is a covert attribution of agency, elliptical for what x accomplished by xs blows to the midriff. Similarly, in speaking about what was meant by rin gs on a bell, I am speaking about what x meant by xs rings on a bell, or perhaps in the case of meaning, what x intended to mean by xs rings on a bell. The construction attributing meaning of this sort to bell rings and remarks instead of an agent may be a natural accommodation in cases where we dont know who the agent is.
Grice continues:
3. I can argue from the first sentence to the conclusion that somebody (viz., the conductor) meant, or at any rate should have meant, by the rings that the bus is full, and I can argue analogously for the second sentence.
Here Grice appears to be aware for the first time that we might say something about what the conductor should have meant, by the rings on the bell. But he does not seem aware that doing this creates difficulties for his theory. For he later go es on to hold that "A meant(nn) something by x" is (roughly) equivalent to
A intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention.
But when we substitute this equivalent of "meant" in Grices third point, we get
(3a) I can argue from the first sentence to the conclusion that somebody intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention, or at least should have intended the utterance of x to produce so me effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention.
But the last clause doesnt make sense the conductor presumably did intend the rings of the bell to produce an effect in an audience, so what is the point of saying that he should have done this? After all, if he should have intended, but did not intend, to produce an effect in the audience, then presumably his rings on the bell dont mean(NN) anything at all. He was just ringing for the joy of it, or perhaps by accident. On the other hand, if we interpret the "means" in 3 as natural meaning, then it does make sense to say that his rings should have meant(n) that the bus is full they should have indicated that the bus is full, they should have been equivalent in meaning(n) to the bus making a certain groaning no ise that it makes only when full. Presumably the only reason for having bus conductors ring bells to indicate busses are full is because busses do not reliably make certain sounds all by themselves only when full. Thus it seems Grice is conflicte d in point three, wishing to steer the discussion to speaker meaning, but also aware that it seems to make sense to talk about what someones signalling should have meant. But he seems not to notice that this talk of what should have been meant seems mor e naturally understood as indicative of something akin to natural meaning and not his own analysis of speaker intentions.
Grices fourth point:
(4) The first sentence can be restated in a form in which the verb "mean" is followed by a phrase in inverted commas, that is, "Those three rings of the bell mean the bus is full." So also can the second sentence.
As I have mentioned earlier, I find this an odd construction, saying that rings of a bell mean a sentence. The rings of a bell might have the same meaning as that had by a sentence, but I dont see how the meaning could just be a sentence. If it were so, if meanings could be sentences, then if would seem it should make sense to say that the three rings of the bell mean something with four words, or mean something with no xs, or in this example mean something that is English only. If the thre e rings of the bell mean, they dont mean something proprietary to English, such as a particular English sentence.
So I dont know what to make of this fourth point. Grice goes on to give an analysis of it later in the paper (at least, that is what I suppose he is doing):
"x means(nn) (timeless) that so-and-so" might as a first shot be equated with some statement or disjunction of statements about what "people" (vague) intend to effect by x."
But this wont do as stated, because it is about meaning that such and such, and Grices fourth point was about "x means s". Im left without knowing what he could have meant in saying that the rings on the bell mean "the bus is full", apart from the paraphrases earlier, to wit: Those three rings on the bell mean the same as saying "the bus is full". But that is compatible with the meaning involved being natural meaning. The bus could have an automatic bell t hat rings when it is suitably weighted down -- or an electronic voice
uttering "the bus is full". Or a human conductor making the utterance. In all cases, the point is to provide information to the passengers, and it seems only economics and the current state of technology might make the choice of means go on e way rather than another.
And now Grices final claim:
(5) Such a statement as "The fact that the bell has been rung three times means that the bus is full" is not a restatement of the meaning of the first sentence. Both may be true, but they do not have, even approximately, the same meaning.
This of course is a straightforward rejection of one way of attempting to assimilate meaning(nn), such as the meaning of the rings on the bell, to natural meaning. However, Grice does not offer us any explanation of why (5) is true. And he does not p ursue the point to see if we cant capture the way in which the rings on the bell mean as a manifestation of a univocal sense of meaning. Of course, by the end of the paper we are clear that this is because Grice is quite sure that there are (at least) t wo distinct senses of "mean", and that his interest appears to be entirely in what he identifies as the second sense, nonnatural meaning.
Grice also says that he thinks the distinction between natural and nonnatural meaning is what people are getting at when "they display an interest in a distinction between "natural" and "conventional" signs." But as we ha ve see in this very last point, this is not clear. Grices example in point 5, "The fact that the bell has been rung three times means that the bus is full", appears to centrally involve conventional signs, namely bell rings by a conductor, but Grice says it is not equivalent in meaning to the attribution of meaning that he calls nonnatural. He does not say what this sentence does mean, but it seems pretty clear that it is closer to the "logic" of natural meaning. (In saying t hat the fact that the bell has been rung three times means that the bus is full, I presumably support the inference to a conclusion that the bus is full, which is a feature of natural meaning and is not a feature of meaning(nn); see Grices point (1) abov e)). If that is true, then even on his own account, the distinction between natural meaning and nonnatural meaning does not parallel that between natural and conventional signs, contrary to what Grice says here.
NATURAL MEANING FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE
Grices point in "Meaning" was to drive a wedge between natural meaning (as in "Those spots mean measles") and the meaning of language, which he called "non-natural meaning" . But the discussion above suggests that the pr oject may not be successful. And there have emerged three ways in which we might understand linguistic meaning in terms of natural meaning. Let "means(nn)" represent nonnatural meaning, "means(n)" represent natural meaning. There is yet another sense of "mean" that is common, and may be seen to be at work in attributions of meaning that involves speakers and other humans agents. Agents can mean to do such and such they can intent to do such and such. So let "means(i )" represent meaning in the sense of intending, as in "x means to reply to her critics":
Then we can provide three possible analyses of non-natural meaning in terms of natural meaning:
Assertion s means(nn) that p means
1) assertion of s usually means(n) that p, or
2) speaker S means(i) his assertion/utterance of s to mean(n) that p, or
3) assertion of s is supposed to mean(n) that p.
Note first that all of these are compatible with p not following from a particular utterance of s. In the first analysis, the connection between the utterance and the indicated condition is made probabilistic. In the second two, the connection is imb edded in an intensional context (?), intentional and deontic respectively.
There is something to be said for each. Almost all complex indicating systems sometimes fail, so the connection between the indicator _type_ and the type of the condition indicated will be probabilistic. That the phone is ringing usually means that s omeone is calling the number but not always. That Jim asserts that the phone is ringing usually means that the phone is ringing, but not always. Both may issue false positives.
Of course, if there is no agent producing s, one cant infer that someone means something by s. And when there is an agent involved in meaning, an agent with a choice of indicators, we infer that the agent means something by assertion of s. But that does not mean that there are multiple kinds of semantic meaning at work.
Let us look more closely at agent or speaker meaning, as in "x means something" and "x means something by asserting s". We need not take this construction to be complete and explicit. It may be elliptical. It appears to have to do with intentions. Perhaps then it is reasonably interpreted as claiming "x means to indicate something (e.g. that p) by asserting s". And if indicating can be understood as a form of natural meaning, then speaker meaning of this sort can be unde rstood as equivalent to:
x means(i) to mean(n) that p by asserting s.
It is certainly reasonable to suppose that if it _does_ mean this, ordinary use would very quickly collapse it to a shorter form, reducing "means to mean" to "means". Or, more in the spirit of Grice, "x means something by s&qu ot; might even mean the same as
"x means(i) to be understood as meaning(i) to mean(n) that p by asserting s."
This makes it a second order intention to mean(n). Either way, on these interpretations natural meaning is at the root of speaker meaning.
The third listed way of understanding "x means that p" looks to the fact that language is normative: phonology, orthography, syntax all are governed by norms. It would certainly be surprising if semantics was not also governed by norms. N aturalistic philosophers have not been fond of norms, but there is no doubt that norms govern behavior in many areas, including almost all aspects of language. In asking about meaning abstracted from speakers, as in "what does Es Regnet mean (in G erman)", we arent interested in what any particular speaker might have meant or intended to mean on some particular occasion of uttering the expression. We might mean to ask about what such utterances usually mean, or are intended to mean or are int ended to be taken as meaning. But it may well be that we are asking about proper German usage, German regarded as a rule governed system, and are inquiring about what the German expression is supposed to mean. And again it seems plausible in all these i nquiries to interpret the meaning as natural meaning. Above in the discussion of the SCUD indicator system, we saw that it was reasonable to talk about what a particular display type was supposed to mean, and also what displays of that type usually mean.
All three of the ways of understanding natural language meaning base that meaning upon natural meaning. And all three invoke additional elements that a) seem required for understanding aspects of natural language and b) account for the differences Gri ce noted between natural meaning and meaning as it pertains to natural languages. Utterances will not always mean what one most naturally (!) take them to mean the connection with the world will be probabilistic. Secondly, they will be uttered with sp ecific conversational intent. And finally, there are norms governing how one should use language in indicating. Humpty Dumpty, in ignoring the norms, is useless, or worse, as a conversant.
CONCLUSION
We have seen three ways of understanding non-natural meaning, or the meaning of natural language use, that base that meaning upon natural meaning. We can understand the attributions of meaning to utterances as probabilistic natural meaning, as reflec ting speaker intention, at one or two removes, to naturally mean, or as normative, as reporting what the utterance is supposed to mean. Which of these analyses is best?
With regard to speaker meaning, an appeal to intention seems appropriate. So "x means something by s" seems to be captured by appeal to the speakers intentions, often are often intentions to indicate or at least be taken to be indicating som ething about the world. In Grices example, the bus conductor means something by ringing the bell namely he intends to indicate the bus is full. To move to the second order, and hold that he means to be understood as intending to indicate that the bus is full suggests a certain deviousness. And he may not care what auditors understand, he may just be doing his job, which in part is to indicate that the bus is full when it is full. On the other hand, perhaps his job is not merely to indicate that the bus is full, but to ensure that the bus is not filled past capacity, in which case his intention is that passengers not board when he rings the bell. In that case, he may have the second order intention, namely that he be understood by passengers as int ending to indicate that the bus is full. Or he may merely intend that passengers know that the bus is full from his indicating, by ringing the bell, that it is full. In the latter case, he need have no intention that they recognize his intention passen gers may not know that a human causes the bell to ring. They can still know that three rings mean that the bus is full.
In the case of linguistic meaning for a type, where we are interested in what "Es regnet" means, or what three rings on an English bus bell mean, abstracted from any particular situation, we may be interested in what they usually mean, or wha t they are usually used to indicate. But a pernicious disjunction problem sets it an utterance of "es Regnet" usually means that it is raining, and it usually means that the speaker speaks German, is alive, thinks it is raining, etc.
Hence we can either think of attributions of meaning to sentence production as picking out the operation of a semantic condition on the production of the sentence. And where speakers are involved, we can interpret such attributions of linguistic mean ing normatively. In asking what "Es regnet" means, we are interested in what it is supposed to indicate, in the semantic component of its assertion conditions. "Es regnet" is supposed to be used to indicate that it is raining. Its use will indicate that the speaker is alive, but that is not its semantic purpose. (It could be its pragmatic purpose in a particular situation.) This brings us full circle to the meaning of displays of a flexible instrument such as the SCUD.
Clever creatures that we are, we can (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) do many ironic, witty and indirect things with language. But language will be of value to even the most naïve, upon whom all this cleverness is lost. Language embodies information a bout the world. As a result, it is suitable as a medium of communication -- and thought.
BIBLBIOGRAPHY
Cole, David 1997 "Hearing Yourself Think: natural language, inner speech, and thought" http://www.d.umn.edu/~dcole
Dretske, Fred 1988 Explaining Behavior. MIT Press.
Dretske, Fred 1995 Naturalizing the Mind. MIT Press.
Fodor, Jerry 1987 Psychosemantics. MIT Press.
Fodor, Jerry 1990 A Theory of Content and Other Essays. MIT Press.
Fodor Jerry 1994 The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics. MIT Press
Gauker, Chris 1994 Thinking Out Loud. Princeton University Press.
Grice, H. Paul 1957 "Meaning" Philosophical Review 66: 377-88.
Locke, John (1690) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Dover.
Millikan, Ruth 1984 Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories

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