Meaning, Intention, Uncertainty

In #2.6 of Speech Acts, Searle challenges the concept of Meaning as Intention: "Meaning is more than intention, it is also at least sometimes a matter of convention", for, otherwise, "any sentence can be uttered with any meaning whatsoever".  However, as is evident in even the simplest case of 'convention'--two people with a long history of verbal exchanges--misunderstanding is always possible, which demonstrates that what is additional to Intention in any Communication is a combination of uncertainty and trust, not some mysterious property of the language itself.  In other words, that extra dimension is Moral, not Semantic, as Searle himself exploits in his study of False Promising in chapter 8.

Meaning and Pragmatism

Peirce and his successors associate Meaning with Consequences, which are determinable by some controlled procedure, e. g. 'solid' = 'cannot be penetrated'.  So, because an operation is essential to their concept of Meaning, it is classified as 'Pragmatist'.  However, a Consequence is a cognized Effect, i. e. an object of scientific knowledge, so, in that regard, it remains a component of Theory.  In contrast, the concept of Meaning as Purpose or as Intention is fully incorporated into Action, and is, thus, completely Pragmatist.  If Wittgenstein had addressed those forerunners, he might have acknowledged their legacy, and its shortcomings that he corrects.

Meaning, Purpose, Intention

The Use-Purpose relation is essentially one of Mechanical Causality, i. e. to use U in order to bring about P presupposes that U causes P.  Thus, if, as Wittgenstein posits, Meaning is identical to Purpose, the Signal-Response relation is a mechanical one.  But, as has been previously argued here, a response to an utterance is fundamentally voluntary, and, hence, does not reduce to a mechanical effect of it.  Instead, a Pragmatist concept of Meaning that is more accurate than Purpose is Intention, the fulfillment of which cannot be taken for granted, and which conforms to how it is conceived in ordinary conversation, e. g. 'What do you mean by that?' is commonly regarded as synonymous with 'What do you intend by that?.

Purpose and Meaning

Wittgenstein's repudiation of Logicism is not based on the detection of some hitherto overlooked subtle detail, but on a profound shift of orientation in his concept of Semantics--from that of a Theoretical discipline to that of a Practical one.  That is, Meaning is now no longer a property of Language, but one of the act that produces Language.  In other words, he re-casts Meaning as Purpose, and, hence, as Pragmatist beyond even Dewey's concept of it as Consequence.  However, he stops short of explicitly recognizing that Semantics, accordingly, becomes a branch of Psychology and/or Morality, preferring to attend to painstakingly disconnecting it from its subsumption under Logic, perhaps because he prefers to think of his procedure as discovery and observation, rather than as positing and constructing.  As a result, the Investigations less shows the fly the way out of the bottle, than tries to convince it that it is inside a bottle, by repeatedly leading it to bump up against the insides of the bottle.

The Analytic Fly-Bottle

To assert, as Wittgenstein does, that the 'meaning' of a word' is its 'use', is to equate Meaning and Purpose.  Now, with a shift in method, from micro-analysis to macro-interpretation, it can be argued that the ultimate purpose of Language is Communication, and, furthermore, that the ultimate purpose of human communication is to promote the growth of the species.  On that basis, it follows that the meaning of every specific utterance is, at bottom, the growth of the species, a perhaps relatively uninteresting result that, nevertheless, reveals the contemporary Anglo-American fascination with Philosophy of Language to be due more to methodology than to substance.  So, Wittgenstein's concept of Meaning shows a way out of the Analytic Fly-Bottle, though he himself seems to prefer to remain inside it with Russell, as his comments at the end of #51 of the Investigations suggest.

Language and Content

According to one common concept of it, Language has 'content', i. e. its Meaning.  So, Wittgenstein not only de-mystifies that concept, he everts it.  For, in his Language-Game model, what any conversation is 'about' is the participants, things, actions, etc., in which it is imbedded.  Thus, in other words, the Meaning of Language is not contained in it; rather--Language is contained in its Meaning, according to Wittgenstein.

Using and Playing

Consistent with the image of Language-Game, Wittgenstein, in #108 of the Investigations, suggests that a word is "analogous to" a chess-piece.  However, the analogy founders on his concept of 'using a word', i. e. a bishop is something that is part of playing chess, not something brought along to a match, and inserted for use when relevant.  Furthermore, his argument, in #65-71, that the meaning of 'game' is context-bound, implies that so, too, is that of 'playing'.  In contrast, he generally treats 'using' as univocal', suggesting a privileged, primitive status for it, indicative of a "foundation', even though, in #124, he prohibits the latter from Philosophical discourse.  So, rather than reinforcing his Language-Game image, the analogy in #108 only exposes Wittgenstein's uncertainty involving a distinction that some, e. g. Kant, regard as Philosophically vital--between Communication fundamentally as purposeful, or as purposeless.