Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Language-Games and Truth

The Logicist concept of Language, i. e. that of Russell and of the Tractatus, is more than a rival  to his Pluralism, which Wittgenstein suggests in #23 of the Investigations--it is one among a multiplicity of Language-Games.  That Game can be called 'Determining the Truth-Value of Utterances', by, first, representing any utterance as a bivalent Proposition, as he proposes in #36, and then submitting it to a procedure which determines whether or not it preserves the Truth of antecedent propositions, i. e. to a Proof.  So, his demonstrating that Truth is irrelevant to many Language-Games suffices to challenge the status, accorded by Logicists, of Logic with respect to Language, e. g. that Logic is the 'essence' of Language.  Still, that challenge is weaker than the one that has been advanced here, which begins with the classification of an Utterance as a Consent-seeking Proposal, on the basis of which the Logicist concept of Truth is derivative, not merely irrelevant.  Wittgenstein's characterizations of Language as a 'tool' to be 'used', suggest a similar subordination of that concept, but one that seemingly remains underdeveloped.

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