A defence of the role of language in philosophy and in knowledge.

1.1 It is a truism that without a shared system of public-language we would not be having this conversation.

1.2 Similarly without a shared system of public-language it is unlikely that you would have been able to understand the Tractatus, and to express your critical opinions of it to me, and for me to understand your critique of it.

1.3 That all three events, your cognition, your expressed analysis, my absorption and response, could consistently be thought to occur through coincidence is counter-intuitive.

1.4 This shared system of public-language enables us to attempt to understand each others experiences of something.

2.1 Early Wittgenstein characterises a word as like a picture. It stands for an external reality.

2.2 Philosophy cannot interfere with language it can only describe it.

2.3 “When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learned to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs I used them to express my own desires.” -Augustine of Hippo, Confessions.

2.4 “These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects - sentences are combinations of such names. - In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. The meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.” -Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.

3.1 Later Wittgenstein characterises a word as a tool, its meaning is discovered by the ways in which it is used.

3.2 Speaking a language is part of an activity.

3.21 “The Philosophy of symbolic forms starts from the presupposition that, if there is any definition of the nature of ‘essence’ of man, this definition can only be understood as a functional one, not a substantial one. We cannot define man by an inherent principle which constitues his metaphysical essence - nor can we define him by any inborn faculty or instinct that may be ascertained by empirical observation. Man’s outstanding characteristic, his distinguishing mark, is not his metaphysical or physical nature - but his work.” Cassirer, An Essay on Man.

3.3 Examples of the tools in language and the ways in which they are used. From How to Read Wittgenstein by R. Monk

3.31 “Giving orders, and obeying them.

3.32 Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements.

3.33 Constructing an object from a description ( i.e. a drawing).

3.34 Reporting an event.

3.35 Speculating about an event.

3.36 Forming and testing a hypothesis.

3.37 Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams.

3.38 Making up a story; and reading it.

3.39 Play-acting.

3.310 Singing Catches.

3.311 Guessing riddles.

3.312 Making a joke; telling it.

3.313 Solving a problem in practical arithmetic.

3.314 Translating from one language into another.

3.315 Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. “

3.4 Language is fundamental to inquiry, to types of thought or to explaining our experiences.

3.41 The types of thought are the differences between ‘to say something‘ and ‘to mean something‘.

3.42 “There is an unmistakeable difference between organic reactions and human responses.” Cassirer, An Essay On Man.

4.1 Language is a collection of words in a sentence.

4.2 Language evolved.

4.3 Language is taught and learned.

4.4 “Between the receptor system and the effector system, which are to be found in all animals species, we find in man a third link which we may describe as the symbolic system.” Cassirer, An Essay On Man.

4.41 “By culture we mean an extrasomatic, temporal continuum of things and events dependent upon symboling…no other species has or has had culture. In the course of the evolution of primates man appeared when the ability to symbol had been developed and became capable of expression. We thus defined man in terms of the ability to symbol and the consequent ability to produce culture.” L.A.White, The Evolution of Culture.

4.42 “The human capacity to communicate by means of a ’semantic symbol language’ does involve a genetically programmed predisposition to acquire such a language, and it is definitely known that no other species on earth shares the same predisposition… The behavioural implication of the unique language faculty of humans beings is that Homo Sapiens has a unique, genetically based capacity to override genetic determinisms by acquiring, storing, and transmitting gene-free repertories of social responses.” Harris, Cultural Materialism.

4.43 Where Chimpanzees have a potential for gestural communication (human taught sign language), this capacity has been manifested only through the intervention of man. Chimpanzees do not exhibit this capacity in the natural state.

4.44 Twitterings, moos, barks, miaows, grunts are examples of a language based on to say this does not infer the capacity for animal language to show meaning, to intend, or to know.

4.5 Wittgenstein has an anthropocentric view of language, which is not uncommon for a human.

4.51 There are thoughts which only a language-user can have, as well as thoughts which animals can share: a dog can believe that his master is at the door, but not that his master will come the day after tommorow, because he cannot master the complicated language in which alone such a hope can be expressed. (Paraphrasing PI II, 174).

4.52 “As compared with the other animals man lives in a broader reality; he lives, so to speak, in a new dimension of reality.” Cassirer, An Essay on Man.

4.6 It is possible to have thought and understanding without words, but only where the thought is one which could have been expressed in some way.

4.61 Some thoughts - e.g. about God and the creation of the world - seem to be incapable of expression except in language: one cannot take seriously the testimony of a deaf-mute to the effect that he had such thoughts before he learned language. (Paraphrasing PI I, 342)

4.62 We can imagine people who can only think aloud, as there are people who can only read aloud; but it is not possible to imagine people who spoke only to themselves and never aloud, since our criterion for somone’s saying something to himself involves what he tells us about himself. (PI I, 331, 344-8).

4.7 To understand a sentence involves understanding a language; and to understand a language is to master a technique: such mastery, unlike images, can be tested, and checked up on by others. This is one important difference between the criteria for having images and understanding. (Wittgenstein, The Blue Book 5).

4.71 A dog can believe that its master is at the door, but it cannot understand that the master may not be at the door in the future.

4.72 There can be thoughts without words, but thoughts with words indicate understanding.

4.73 Thoughts are processes, whereas understanding is a state of being.

4.74 The German language gives a a better example of the differentiation between ‘thinking’ (denken) and ‘belief’ (glauben).

4.75 “When I sat down on this chair, of course I believed it would support me. The thought of its collapsing never crossed my mind.”(PI I, 575).