Wittgenstein:
(Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to enhance commentary.) |
Shawver commentary: |
65. Here we come up against the great
question that lies behind all these considerations.-For someone might
object against me: "You take the easy way out! You talk about all
sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of
a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all
these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language.
So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once
gave you yourself most
headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language."
|
We have now shifted to a new topic that he announces
straightforwardly. The topic is presented in the form of an
Augustinian voce, or a "somone." This someone wants Wittgenstein
to defie the essence of the concept of a language game. Notice,
within the Augustinian frame, the 'essence" is equal to "what is common
to all these activities." This idea goes back to Plato who talks
of the essence of various things or the transcendental idea behind
their various sensual manifestations.
So, the question is: What is the essence of a language game?
and hence to all of language? What is the essence of language?
Also, notice that in the last part of this passage, the Voice reminds
LW that this search for the essence was once something that he tried
very hard to do, and it gave him considerable trouble.
|
| And this is true.-Instead of producing something common to all that
we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing
in common which makes us use the same word for all,-but that they
are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because
of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all
"language". I will try to explain this. |
It is true, LW is saying, that he hasn't yet presented
this essence that is common to all language (or all language games).
His answer here in this passage is very famous, and it is a powerful
move in developing the Wittgensteinian framework. Before this
move, it seems imperative that we define the essence of what we are
talking about. Now, LW is going to show us another way to see
things. |
66. Consider for example the proceedings that we
call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic
games, and so on. What is common to them all? -- Don't say: "There
must be something common, or they would not be called 'games' "-but
look and see whether there is anything common to all. -- For if you
look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but
similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To
repeat: don't think, but look! --
|
This aphorism has a little different structure
than some of the others that we are reading. Here LW is explicitly
guiding our reading and he does such a good job of it, I am not going
to offer much commentary.
But a few notes: Now, notice your inclination to say certain
things has become the Wittgensteinian voice. Now, we can begin
to listen to this voice within ourselves. The voice speaks within
us when we want to say "there must be something common among
"games." There must be an essence if we have a concept.
LW says, in a manner of speaking, "don't say to yourself that this
must be the case and then give yourself a headache trying to
see what is not there. Let's look at specific kind of cases
and ask if the essence is there in those cases.
Look through these aphorisms while putting the point that he is
making out of mind. Don't think so much, or ponder what you're
looking for, just look at your memories and understanding of games
and detail what you observe.
|
| Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious
relationships. |
Board games, what are some? Consider chess,
of course, but think also of monopoly. |
Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with
the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear.
|
Card games. What about poker? And
what about Old Maid. Remember that children's card game?
How are these card games alike and different from each other?
And how do they compare with board games? What about the element
of strategy? Or how many players can play and whether or not
there is a single winner or, as in Monopoly (I believe) there are
different degrees of winning. |
| When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained,
but much is lost.-- Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts
and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition
between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning
and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches
it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by
skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill
in tennis. |
Think of the way one wins or loses in tennis.
Winning is hierarchical. One can win a point, but lose the
game. One can win the game, but lose the set. And one can
win the set, but lose the match. One can win the match but lose
the tournament. Compare this with baseball (also hierarchical) or
with checkers. And howabout board games that revolve around
a throw of the dice? |
Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element
of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared!
sometimes similarities of detail.
|
Then we have children's ritual games. Do
they have a winner? What about drop the hankerchief? Or
London Bridge is falling down? How about "spin the bottle."?
Are you winning or losing if the bottle stops pointing to you?
What about jacks? Jacks is a girls' game that was popular
when I was a child and I was into the game. You have 10 little
objects called "jacks" that you toss onto the ground as the other
girls sit in a circle. Then each girl has a turn. She
starts with a ball in her preferred hand and she tosses the ball up
and lets it bounce and before it bounced again, she picks up one jack
and then catches the ball before it bounces again. She does
that with each jack. Then she does "twosees" which means she
picks up two jacks in one sweep. She continues that until she
has done all ten jacks. Then, if she completes that round without
difficulty, she starts again with a more difficult rule. Perhaps
she doesn't let the ball bounce at all, or she not only picks up the
jacks but she puts them in a particular place before she catches the
ball. There are a few of these rounds that are already invented,
but it is common for the winning player to invent the next game.
How does "jacks" compare with chess? Or with ring-a-ring-o-roses?
How are they different? How does it compare with tennis?
Or American football?
|
And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the
same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
|
Don't children invent games on the spot?
See who can spit the furtherest? Or see who can solve a particular
puzzle first? Or who can follow a rule the best (think of Simon
Says). |
And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network
of similarities overlapping and cries-crossing: sometimes overall
similarities.
|
And what you'll find, I think, if you go through
a careful study of these various types of games, is that there are
similarities and differences. Poker is like chess in certain
ways. They both have clear rules and the winner is likely to
have practice and skill. But they are different in some ways,
too, and if you look at how they are different, you'll find other
games that are not different in these ways, but different in other
ways. |
67. I can think of no better expression to characterize
these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various
resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour
of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and cries-cross in the
same way.-And I shall say: 'games' form a family.
|
Here is the key move, and the new metaphor that
LW extends to replace the old Platonic metaphor of essence.
The concept is one of "family resemblance."
|
Notice Al and Jack have the same eyebrows, while
Elmer and Bob have the same ears and Al and Bob have the same
smile. There is no common feature among them yet they
all resemble each other. |
Wittgenstein Family
Resemblance
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And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way.
Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has
a-direct-relationship with several things that have hitherto been
called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship
to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of
number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength
of the thread does not reside in the fact that some on e fibre runs
through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.
|
I suppose what LW means here is that we call positive
numbers, negative numbers, real numbers, or a sequence of characters
(a,b,c...z) numbers (see 8). How
are these "numbers" like and unlike a series of characters that we
would not consider numbers?
Also, consider phone numbers, and the numbers on football jerseys,
social security numbers, numbers that are ranks, verus numbers
that can be added and subtracted.
Or, let's take an example that requires less mathematical
sophistication. Take the word "food." Imagine a plate of food
composed of only vegetables, or a food concoction made of cheese and
tomato sauce, or food for the dogs, or for the goldfish. Also,
imagine spoiled food, or raw food, or petrified food. Is there some
single feature in these foods that runs through all of them?
Think of artificial food (like wax apples) and playfood (for children's
tea). And don't say that the single feature is that they are
all related to eating because that is a way we frame "wax food" and
"play food" but it is not a characteristic of this "food."
And, what a closer examination shows is that even if there isn't
a single thread that runs through everything (and there may be in
some cases, of course), there is a family resemblance between these
different items. Some are edible. Some are animal flesh.
Some are vegetable. But there need not be a single aspect that
is common to all the varieties.
Can you think of another example that can be analyzed in this
way? Take the concept of "thought." Do all the different
acceptable uses of this term have a common feature? Or take
the concept of "nothing." Is the meaning of "nothing" the same
in these two sentences:
1. There is nothing in the box.
2. There is nothing for me to do.
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| But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all
these constructions-namely the disjunction of all their common properties"
--I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as
well say: "Something runs through the whole thread- namely the continuous
overlapping of those fibres". |
This is an important passage, too. It points
to the tricks we play to keep ourselves in the fly-bottle. |
68. "All right: the concept
of number is defined for you as the logical sum of these individual
interrelated concepts: cardinal numbers, rational numbers, real numbers,
etc.; and in the same way
the concept of a game as the logical sum of a corresponding set of
sub-concepts." |
Here's the Augustinian voice, again. It
always seems to have a comback. To return to the concept of
"number," remember LW had said that there need not be a single common
feature in all "number" systems. |
| --It need not
be so. For I can give the concept 'number' rigid limits in this
way, that is, use the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept,
but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not
closed by a frontier. And this is how we do use the word "game".
For how is the concept of a game bounded?
|
Here is another important passage. Wittgenstein
is pointing to the way in which we can locally and provisionally define
a concept. How do we do this? In numerous ways.
Sometimes we set things up explicitly. We say, "I am using the
word number here to mean 'rational number.'" And sometimes this
slips in without our awareness. (We studied this 51-59, and see
especially 51). |
| What still counts as a game and what no longer does? |
I think we can count this as the Augustinian
voice. |
| Can you give the boundary? No. |
It is very hard to delineate what the boundaries
of a game are, to define it so that it includes both tic-tac-toe and
Rugby. |
| You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. |
But in a local and provisional context you might
say, "By game I mean something in which one keeps score and there
is a definite winner." |
| (But that never troubled you before when you used the word "game".) |
But ordinarily you use the word "game" without
trying explicitly to define it locally and provisionally. You
just say, "Is this some kind of a game?" and you take it that people
will understand you. |
| "But then the use of the word is unregulated, the 'game' we play
with it is unregulated." |
Now, the Augustinian feels uncomfortable with
where we're going. It seems we need to keep things more tied
down than this. |
| It is not everywhere circumscribed by rules; but no more are there
any rules for how high one throws the ball in tennis, or how hard;
yet tennis is a game for all that and has rules too. |
The rules of the game can't control every last
detail of the action. There is always a considerable amount
action that is beyond the rules of the game. |
| 69. How should we explain to
someone what a game is? |
If we don't have a common thread running through
everything we call a "game" it seems very chaotic! How on earth
do we teach people to use this term "game"? |
I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add:
"This and similar things are called 'games' ". And do we know any
more
about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly
what a game is? |
Still, don't we teach this term "games" to
children? And don't they learn it? Can it really be as
diffficult as all that if we manage to teach it so easily? |
| -But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries
because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary-for
a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not
at all! (Except for that special purpose.) No more than it took
the definition: 1 pace = 75 cm. to make the measure of length 'one
pace' usable. And if you want to say "But still, before that it wasn't
an exact measure", then I reply: very well, it was an inexact one.-Though
you still owe me a definition of exactness. |
The term "game" is not a difficult term
for a child to learn and the fact that it seems that it should be
is a flag for this being a confusion left over from our Augustinian
muddle.
The situation is that we imagine that we have one term here and
the different senses are just variations on a common theme, but in
practice we take these vague concepts that are loosely defined and
we tie them down to more particular definitions. It just takes
a moment to do this, and the practice is all around us. It is
just that we fail to notice that we do this. We have a theory
of terms having essential meanings (based on transcendental essences)
and this belief in the theory of language is so strong we simply overlook
the way in which we negotiate the language that we use, when other
people do it, and when we do it ourselves.
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| #[Someone says to me: "Shew the children a game." I teach them gaming
with dice, and the other says "I didn't mean that sort of game." Must
the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when
he gave me the order?] |
This is a footnote in which LW reminds us how
we teach this ostensibly difficult concept of "game." Notice
how we have practices of continuously clarifying our local and provisional
meanings. |
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