Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?—
If you try to make them all fit into one definition and then one doesn't, you will try to force it in artificially, or exclude it artificially. And what's the point of that? Why would this be useful? - why is the craving for generality so strong? - one potential answer: there is an instinct to treat philosophy as science (to generalize and theorize) when philosophy is not like science
Imagine someone's saying: "
Suppose someone said "all words mean something" - what is being asked is, what do all words have in common - what that persons is getting to is the "essence" of language - looking for generality
nothing whatever;
"what do you mean?" - the story must be hashed out
We see handles all looking more or less alike
Handles may look alike but each handle plays a different role
Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy!
There are all of these tools in the tool box and they look more or less alike, "Scarf", "Chloe", "Red", "The": they are all different but they look the same so it is easy to think that they are all the same.
it may be anything, or nothing.
context matters
Doubtless the ostensive teaching helped to bring this about
helpful but not the purpose
But what does this mean?
how does the association between word and object happen? - maybe a picture develops in their mind when the word is uttered, and then they will know what is meant - "already there" : this is dangerous territory as it sounds like it is referring to the mental image - is it the purpose of the word to illicit an image?
This ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an association between the word and the thing
accepts that words do refer to objects in some capacity
and to react in this way to the words of others.
pattern recognition
tribe
/ culture
with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of the words.
clear vision is impeded by a certain picture - we cannot see clearly due to a distorted filter (the job of the philosopher is to remove the filter to see things clearly --> Tractatus)
Task of philosopher is to come to an Übersehung (birds eye view): allows us to see things as they are (this is not a philosophical theory)
Example: If the essence of language is that words refer to objects, and someone asks, what about the number 5? Immediately, more theorising is required: well the word five refers to the number five, which does not exist in the real world. This requires believing in non-material objects. - In theorizing, problems come up, which need more story telling/ theorizing to solve
You can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those games.
force all games into your description, or the things that fall out of it are not actually games --> same thing is being done with language
-both cases falsify what you're saying
-Frege did this falsely with concept/object
Is this an appropriate description or not?"
Does Augustine's description capture knowledge? - answer, yes, but not to a full extent (good for bread/butter/some proper names.) It does not, however, give us a good conception of the essence of language (essentialism)
Essentialism is natural for us - humans have a craving for generality
definition
ostensive definition: a prior knowledge of a thing required before asking what it's called (kids can't have this if they are being told what things are called)
"block", "pillar", "slab", "beam".
entire language - this is a description of their culture microcosm of culture
But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours
it could work in a more basic language than ours, let's create it
It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words
not what it really feels like to deal with words, but rolling with it
Now think of the following use of language
First language game
will take care of itself.
Logic will take care of itself (we don't need to do anything about logic, no investigation is required)
words other than nouns will take care of themselves and are derivative (actions, properties, numbers, etc.)
only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties
"I want" refers to an action (maybe - but this is complicated) "wanting milk" is a state of mind
meaning.
Bedeutung
It is this: the individual words in language name objects
essence of human language according to Augustine
desires.
desires are clothed with words