Description and Indexical

Any description is necessarily subsequent to its object, as is implied in the term 're-present'.  Thus, what is commonly formulated as 'S is P' is, more accurately, "It was the case that 'S is P'", or, simply, 'S was P'.  Now, Verb Tense is classified in contemporary Logicist Philosophy of  Language as an 'Indexical', i. e. as an indication of an orientation from the perspective of a speaker.  Hence, in all presumed 'impersonal' descriptive Logicist Propositions, e. g. the 'Language' that 'pictures' the 'world' in the Tractatus, their origin in interpersonal Communication is suppressed.

Proposition, Impersonal, Third-Person

Respect for Subject-Verb agreement in the standard Propositional formulation, i. e. 'S is P', not 'S am P', implies acceptance of the classification of its Subject as a grammatical 'Third Person'.  But Thirdness implies priority of Firstness and Secondness.  Thus, likewise, any grammatical Third-Person Subject implies the priority of an 'I' and a 'You' to it.  It therefore indicates that a presumed 'impersonal' Proposition, e. g. that of Logicism, is the product of an abstraction of a Third-Person formulation from the context of First- and Second-Person interaction, i. e. from Communication.

Reliability and Truth

A 'true' friend is a 'reliable' friend.  Likewise, a 'true' utterance can easily be defined as one which reliably serves to accomplice a purpose.  In contrast, the latter meaning is difficult to derive from the Logicist meaning of 'true'.  But, the bigger problem for that orientation is the formulation of any definition of 'true'.  For, the primary aim of Logicism is to distinguish appropriate concatenations of symbols from inappropriate ones, i. e. to define 'Validity', with respect to which not only the determination of the correct application of that criterion, but the very concept of the application of it, is extrinsic.  In other words, a concept of Truth can be derived from that of Reliability, but not conversely.  That conclusion likely aggravates Logicists, but it is a consequence of the insularity of their own program.

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.

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.

Language-Games and "Language-Game"

By Wittgenstein's own definition of it, the meaning of the term 'Language-Game' varies according to the Language-Game in which it appears.  For example, in the Language-Game 'Refuting Russell', it is defined as a relation between words and actions.  However, in the Language-Game' The Origin of Language', it can be defined as a relation between people and words.  To put it less obliquely--it is a familiar fact of experience that the meaning of words can be a function of the degree of intimacy of those conversing, with the possibility that every new interaction constitutes a unique Language-Game.  On that basis, Wittgenstein's concept of Language depersonalizes Communication as much as does Russell's, regardless of how effectively it debunks the privileged status of Logic entailed by the latter.

Language-Game, Signal, Rule

In #7 of  Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein defines a 'Language-Game' as a process constituted by "language and the actions into which it is woven", his primitive example of which is "one party calls out the words, the other acts on them".  Thus, the fundamental structure of a Language-Game is, as has been proposed here, that of Signal-Response.  However, thereafter, he seems to gloss that interweaving of Language and Action as the "use" of Language,  consequently apparently losing sight of that underlying structure,  e. g. as he begins, at #143, his examination of the Game that is often characterized as 'Following a Rule'.  As a result, he seems to miss the isomorphic relation between 1. fetching an object upon hearing the name of the object, and 2. writing out an infinite numerical series as an application of a mathematical formula--while he does classify the latter as a 'use' of Language, he fails to recognize that the former is as much a rule-governed activity as is the latter.  In other words, any Signal is implicitly a rule, and any Response is Rule-governed behavior, i. e. the section beginning at #143 is not an examination of a specialized Language-Game, but a making explicit what is implicit in all such contexts.