Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning: Volume 1 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Part I: Essays Book

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction to Part I: Essays xiii

Note to the paperback edition 2009 xix

Abbreviations xx

I The Augustinian conception of language (§1) 1

1 Augustine's picture 1

2 The Augustinian family 4

a word-meaning 4

b correlating words with meanings 6

c ostensive explanation 7

d metapsychological corollaries 9

e sentence-meaning 11

3 Moving off in new directions 14

4 Frege 19

5 Russell 23

6 The Tractatus 26

II Explanation (§6) 29

1 Training, teaching and explaining 29

2 Explanation and meaning 33

3 Explanation and grammar 35

4 Explanation and understanding 39

III The language-game method (§7) 45

1 The emergence of the game analogy 45

2 An intermediate phase: comparisons with invented calculi 54

3 The emergence of the language-game method 57

4 Invented language-games 61

5 Natural language-games 63

IV Descriptions and the uses of sentences (§18) 65

1 Flying in the face of the facts 65

2 Sentences as descriptions of facts: surface-grammatical paraphrase 67

3 Sentences as descriptions: depth-grammatical analysis and descriptive contents 70

4 Sentences as instruments 73

5 Assertions, questions, commands make contact in language 76

V Ostensive definition and its ramifications (§28) 81

1 Connecting language and reality 81

2 The range and limits of ostensive explanations 83

3 The normativity of ostensive definition 88

4 Samples 92

5 Misunderstandings resolved 97

6 Samples and simples 103

VI Indexicals (§39) 107

VII Logically proper names (§39) 113

1 Russell 113

2 The Tractatus 117

3 The criticisms of the Investigations: assailing the motivation 120

4 The criticisms of the Investigations: real proper names and simple names 124

VIII Meaning and use (§43) 129

1 The concept of meaning 129

2 Setting the stage 136

3 Wittgenstein: meaning and its internal relations 144

4 Qualifications 152

IX Contextual dicta and contextual principles (§50) 159

1 The problems of a principle 159

2 Frege 164

3 The Tractatus 170

4 After the Tractatus 171

5 Compositional theories of meaning 173

6 Computational theories of understanding 181

X The standard metre (§50) 189

1 The rudiments of measurement 189

2 The standard metre and canonical samples 192

3 Fixing the reference or explaining the meaning? 193

4 Defusing paradoxes 197

XI Family resemblance (§65) 201

1 Background: definition, logical constituents and analysis 201

2 Family resemblance: precursors and anticipations 208

3 Family resemblance: a minimalist interpretation 212

4 Sapping the defences of orthodoxy 216

5 Problems about family-resemblance concepts 219

6 Psychological concepts 222

7 Formal concepts 224

XII Proper names (§79) 227

1 Stage-setting 227

2 Frege and Russell: simple abbreviation theories 230

3 Cluster theories of proper names 233

4 Some general principles 235

5 Some critical consequences 238

6 The significance of proper names 239

7 Proper names and meaning 244

XIII Turning the inquiry round: the recantation of a metaphysician (§89) 251

1 Reorienting the investigation 251

2 The sublime vision 253

3 Diagnosis: projecting the mode of representation on to what is represented 256

4 Idealizing the prototype 259

5 Misunderstanding the role of the Ideal 263

6 Turning the inquiry round 266

XIV Philosophy (§109) 271

1 A revolution in philosophy 271

2 The sources of philosophical problems 277

3 The goals of philosophy: conceptual geography and intellectual therapy 284

4 The difficulty of philosophy 287

5 The methods of philosophy 290

6 Negative corollaries 294

7 Misunderstandings 299

8 Retrospect: the Tractatus and the Investigations 303

XV Surveyability and surveyable representations (§122) 307

1 Surveyability 307

2 Precursors: Hertz, Boltzmann, Ernst, Goethe, Spengler 311

3 The morphological method and the difficulty of surveying grammar 320

4 Surveyable representations 326

XVI Truth and the general propositional form (§134) 335

1 The demands of the picture theory 335

2 'That's the way the cookie crumbles' 340

3 '...do we have a single concept of proposition?' (PG 112) 344

4 '...the use of the words "true" and "false" ... belongs to our concept "proposition" but does not fit it...' (PI §136) 346

5 Truth, correspondence and multi-valued logic 349

XVII Understanding and ability (§143) 357

1 The place of the education of understanding in the Investigations 357

2 Meaning and understanding as the soul of signs 359

3 Categorial misconceptions of understanding 362

4 Categorial clarification 367

a Understanding is not an experience 368

b Understanding is not a process 369

c Understanding is not a mental state 371

d Understanding is neither a dispositional state of the brain nor a disposition 373

5 Powers and abilities 375

6 Understanding and ability 380

Index 387