Devising a Logical Notation in a Contextualist Setting

Abstract

In this paper, my first proposal is to trace the notion of a language-game back to the idea of a logical notation as formulated in the Tractatus. In my reading both are motivated by the same project of rendering the actual use of our language clearly visible and thereby understandable by employing a certain artificial symbolism. To this effect, they form an important continuous thread in Wittgenstein’s conception of the form philosophical investigation has to take and of the kind of intelligibility of language one has to search for. But they also differ because of the change in Wittgenstein’s conception of language. To put it blankly, the synoptic representation (übersichtliche Darstellung), such as it is practised in the Philosophical Investigations, is nothing but the idea of a logical notation reshaped in such a way that it fits into a contextualist semantic picture. This interpretation implies—and this is my second proposal—reading the opening sections of the Philosophical Investigations in a specific way. In my view, they proceed through the use of language-games (that of the builders, in the first instance), which, when compared with our own language, allow us to see the latter more clearly by countering aspects that have a hold over us (such as the one that surfaces in Augustine’s narrative).

Suppose you look at a picture-puzzle:

At first you can see in it only a maze of lines;

then, suddenly, you recognize a human face (F. Waismann, “How I See Philosophy”, (1956, p. 376)).