Monday, November 25, 2013

Utterance, Context, Meaning

In #23 of the Investigations, Wittgenstein names as one of those advocates of the concept of Language that he opposes--"the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philsophicus".  Now, the only uncertainty about the referent of that phrase is if it is a person living in 1922, or one living in 1945.  However, the Fregean Sense of it varies according to context, with the utterer of it a significant factor in its meaning.  For, while, from a publisher, it could connote simply a relation between a person and a book, in #23, it understates "I have come to repudiate a thesis which I once espoused', to which some readers might affix "thereby profoundly influencing contemporary Philosophy".  So, #23 is an example of how every utterance might constitute its own Language-Game, i. e. have a meaning that is unique to the context.

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