Would love to have the time to write some extended responses to some of these things you've been writing about recently. Primarily because I feel that Wittgenstein's work, and how he is interpreted are being misrepresented just a bit.
With respect to a criticism such as "By treating all language as a collection of discrete games, they failed to address the interconnectedness of linguistic practices and their relationship to broader human concerns" it's not even clear to me what this criticism consists in.
For example, what is a "human concern", if "human concerns" are discourses (such as philosophy, psychology, physics, literature, politics and so on) then Wittgenstein's view of language is explanatorily adequate.
i.e. in §21 of Philosophical Investigations:
"Here the term "language-game" is meant to bring into prominence
the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form
of life.
Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following
examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them—
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurementsConstructing an object from a description (a drawing)—
Reporting an event—
Speculating about an event—
Forming and testing a hypothesis—
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams—
Making up a story; and reading it—
Play-acting—
Singing catches—
Guessing riddles—
Making a joke; telling it—
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic—
Translating from one language into another—
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.
—It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language
and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and
sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language."
-- this can hardly be said to be a view of language disconnected from human concerns, rather it is one *motivated by* trying to explain the connections of language to human concerns, rather than imagining language to be about mysterious glassy essences and sanitised, hidden theoretical constructs such as an innate/context free grammar somehow "in our brains" or a reduction to some formal logical system such as Russell and early Wittgenstein tried to demonstrate.
With regard to the criticism "[the purpose of philosophy, which Wittgenstein ignores is] to grapple with profound and often intractable questions about reality, knowledge, and existence", it's not as if Wittgenstein is unaware that people engage in philosophy in this way. The Tractatus (his earlier work) is one of the most influential books attempting to do this kind of philosophy, and Wittgenstein makes many references in his later work to these kinds of motivations. However, Wittgenstein provides reasons to think that these kinds of questions are a confusion of our grammar (in Wittgenstein's sense, our ways of forming questions), rather than a product of our minds representational relationship to "Reality".
PI §116: "When philosophers use a word—"knowledge", "being",
"object", "I", "proposition", "name"—and try to grasp the essence
of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually
used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?—
What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their
everyday use."
PI §132-133: "We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use
of language: an order with a particular end in view; one out of many
possible orders; not the order. To this end we shall constantly be
giving prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of
language easily make us overlook. This may make it look as if we
saw it as our task to reform language.
Such a reform for particular practical purposes, an improvement in
our terminology designed to prevent misunderstandings in practice,
is perfectly possible. But these are not the cases we have to do with.
The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine
idling, not when it is doing work.
It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for
the use of our words in unheard-of ways.
For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But
this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely
disappear.
The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping
doing philosophy when I want to.—The one that gives philosophy
peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself
in question.—Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by examples;
and the series of examples can be broken off.—Problems are solved
(difficulties eliminated), not a single problem.
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed
methods, like different therapies."
Of course, there are many things missing from Wittgenstein's theory. I believe that Wittgenstein's view of language is missing many empirical discoveries about language (which I believe only complement, refine and make richer his theory). Additionally, there are psychological questions about affect and salience that I believe are unanswered by Wittgenstein's work that even today are not really robustly understood but, I believe, are beginning to be answered by the 4E approach to psychology/cognitive science. Additionally, to work as a "whole" philosophical system I believe that Wittgenstein's view of language must be incorporated into a full Pragmatist account of action, and the human organism, and society (this becomes then a sociological and political explanation of humanity too -- which will also connect human practises to history). -- I believe there are various philosophers and school of thought who have attempted this, for example the Postmodernists contribute the most to the historic lens, various Pragmatist thinkers such as Schiller, Ramsay, Huw Price, Hasok Chang etc all contribute to the Pragmatist picture.
Overall I guess, just upset to see that I don't think Wittgenstein is getting his fair due. That being said, I do appreciate your explication of schools of thought in linguistics that oppose and challenge my own views so please do continue.
Thanks for your comments. And I wish I had more time to reply to your feedback and comments. I have just scanne through and will read more thoroughly later.
I would recommend you read "The Language Game: How improvisation created language and changed the world" by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater (https://amzn.to/3DjDBu6).
They build on the idea that language is fundamentally a social activity shaped through use, aligning closely with Wittgenstein’s concept of Sprachspiele (language games).
The book argues that language did not evolve through innate structures (a direct challenge to Chomskyan Universal Grammar) but through improvisation—a dynamic, adaptive process emerging from interaction. It presents strong evidence from cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology to support the claim that linguistic meaning is fluid, context-dependent, and shaped by practical use rather than fixed rules.
Much like Wittgenstein, Christiansen and Chater emphasise how we use language rather than searching for an essential, underlying structure. They demonstrate that words and grammar emerge from patterns of social coordination, much like the spontaneous nature of a jazz performance rather than a rigid score.
For someone like you who appreciates Wittgenstein’s anti-essentialism, the rejection of a fixed ‘deep structure’ of language, and the idea that meaning arises from practice rather than inherent definitions, this book offers an engaging, well-researched, and thought-provoking exploration. It modernises and extends Wittgenstein’s insights with contemporary cognitive science.
We need to go even deeper to truly understand 'How Language Works'. I've posting on how language shapes perception and the illusion that we're a 'subject' looking out at a world of 'objects .'
Would love to have the time to write some extended responses to some of these things you've been writing about recently. Primarily because I feel that Wittgenstein's work, and how he is interpreted are being misrepresented just a bit.
With respect to a criticism such as "By treating all language as a collection of discrete games, they failed to address the interconnectedness of linguistic practices and their relationship to broader human concerns" it's not even clear to me what this criticism consists in.
For example, what is a "human concern", if "human concerns" are discourses (such as philosophy, psychology, physics, literature, politics and so on) then Wittgenstein's view of language is explanatorily adequate.
i.e. in §21 of Philosophical Investigations:
"Here the term "language-game" is meant to bring into prominence
the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form
of life.
Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following
examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them—
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurementsConstructing an object from a description (a drawing)—
Reporting an event—
Speculating about an event—
Forming and testing a hypothesis—
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams—
Making up a story; and reading it—
Play-acting—
Singing catches—
Guessing riddles—
Making a joke; telling it—
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic—
Translating from one language into another—
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.
—It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language
and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and
sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language."
-- this can hardly be said to be a view of language disconnected from human concerns, rather it is one *motivated by* trying to explain the connections of language to human concerns, rather than imagining language to be about mysterious glassy essences and sanitised, hidden theoretical constructs such as an innate/context free grammar somehow "in our brains" or a reduction to some formal logical system such as Russell and early Wittgenstein tried to demonstrate.
With regard to the criticism "[the purpose of philosophy, which Wittgenstein ignores is] to grapple with profound and often intractable questions about reality, knowledge, and existence", it's not as if Wittgenstein is unaware that people engage in philosophy in this way. The Tractatus (his earlier work) is one of the most influential books attempting to do this kind of philosophy, and Wittgenstein makes many references in his later work to these kinds of motivations. However, Wittgenstein provides reasons to think that these kinds of questions are a confusion of our grammar (in Wittgenstein's sense, our ways of forming questions), rather than a product of our minds representational relationship to "Reality".
PI §116: "When philosophers use a word—"knowledge", "being",
"object", "I", "proposition", "name"—and try to grasp the essence
of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually
used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?—
What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their
everyday use."
PI §132-133: "We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use
of language: an order with a particular end in view; one out of many
possible orders; not the order. To this end we shall constantly be
giving prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of
language easily make us overlook. This may make it look as if we
saw it as our task to reform language.
Such a reform for particular practical purposes, an improvement in
our terminology designed to prevent misunderstandings in practice,
is perfectly possible. But these are not the cases we have to do with.
The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine
idling, not when it is doing work.
It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for
the use of our words in unheard-of ways.
For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But
this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely
disappear.
The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping
doing philosophy when I want to.—The one that gives philosophy
peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself
in question.—Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by examples;
and the series of examples can be broken off.—Problems are solved
(difficulties eliminated), not a single problem.
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed
methods, like different therapies."
Of course, there are many things missing from Wittgenstein's theory. I believe that Wittgenstein's view of language is missing many empirical discoveries about language (which I believe only complement, refine and make richer his theory). Additionally, there are psychological questions about affect and salience that I believe are unanswered by Wittgenstein's work that even today are not really robustly understood but, I believe, are beginning to be answered by the 4E approach to psychology/cognitive science. Additionally, to work as a "whole" philosophical system I believe that Wittgenstein's view of language must be incorporated into a full Pragmatist account of action, and the human organism, and society (this becomes then a sociological and political explanation of humanity too -- which will also connect human practises to history). -- I believe there are various philosophers and school of thought who have attempted this, for example the Postmodernists contribute the most to the historic lens, various Pragmatist thinkers such as Schiller, Ramsay, Huw Price, Hasok Chang etc all contribute to the Pragmatist picture.
Overall I guess, just upset to see that I don't think Wittgenstein is getting his fair due. That being said, I do appreciate your explication of schools of thought in linguistics that oppose and challenge my own views so please do continue.
Hi
Thanks for your comments. And I wish I had more time to reply to your feedback and comments. I have just scanne through and will read more thoroughly later.
I would recommend you read "The Language Game: How improvisation created language and changed the world" by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater (https://amzn.to/3DjDBu6).
They build on the idea that language is fundamentally a social activity shaped through use, aligning closely with Wittgenstein’s concept of Sprachspiele (language games).
The book argues that language did not evolve through innate structures (a direct challenge to Chomskyan Universal Grammar) but through improvisation—a dynamic, adaptive process emerging from interaction. It presents strong evidence from cognitive science, linguistics, and anthropology to support the claim that linguistic meaning is fluid, context-dependent, and shaped by practical use rather than fixed rules.
Much like Wittgenstein, Christiansen and Chater emphasise how we use language rather than searching for an essential, underlying structure. They demonstrate that words and grammar emerge from patterns of social coordination, much like the spontaneous nature of a jazz performance rather than a rigid score.
For someone like you who appreciates Wittgenstein’s anti-essentialism, the rejection of a fixed ‘deep structure’ of language, and the idea that meaning arises from practice rather than inherent definitions, this book offers an engaging, well-researched, and thought-provoking exploration. It modernises and extends Wittgenstein’s insights with contemporary cognitive science.
Thanks, its actually one of my favourite books!
We need to go even deeper to truly understand 'How Language Works'. I've posting on how language shapes perception and the illusion that we're a 'subject' looking out at a world of 'objects .'
https://hertzhoward.substack.com/p/how-does-language-work?r=18ndhf