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WillowOne's Positions

Philosophical Investigations

Overview

Wittgenstein's second great work, published two years after his death, and a repudiation of his first. Where the Tractatus held that language pictures the world, the Investigations argues that the meaning of a word is its use, that language consists of countless "language games" with no single essence, that many philosophical problems arise from language going on holiday, and that a private language, one whose words refer to sensations only the speaker can know, is impossible. It is written in numbered remarks, with no chapters and few conclusions.

Notes

On my reading list rather than my read list, so this is a description and not an opinion. I expect it to matter to the positions here on Knowledge and on Moral claims are incomplete assertions, since the claim that a moral statement is an incomplete sentence is a claim about use, and Wittgenstein is the philosopher of use. I will update this note when I have read it.

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