Seminar 5 - Wittgenstein and Language

After giving my seminar paper and hearing Sammy’s (which was very useful for me as it explained about the 7 main statements of the book, which I couldn’t make out because of the confusing structure of the book), we discussed at length the relationship between language and reality. This was an idea key to Wittgenstein’s philosophy in that he was exploring this relationship in an attempt to distinguish the limits of science. He argued that philosophy arises from a lack of knowledge and people trying to fill this gap. Wittgenstein’s work was therefore a completely new approach to philosophy, which makes it especially interesting. He looked acutely at language, but the question that is more interesting to me, is what is this based on? How did language start?

He also emphasises that signs and symbols can also be used to build propositions, in fact, language is really just a set of symbols that we have assigned meanings to. As a group, we thought the nature of language very interesting in that it evolves and changes over time, and it is impossible to know the true beginnings of it, was it originally perfectly logical? If it was, then this was quickly changed and forgotten, most likely due to cultural idiosyncrasies in the way that language is learnt and passed on and affected by way of life and the way it is used.

There are many influences on language and the way that it develops. One theory is that the environment that we are brought up in determines our language; another approach is that of Chomsky who argued that all humans are born with the basics of language; that it is innate, and the slight variations come from our environment. He thought that this was the same across the world which suggests that all languages would have the same basis. However, Wittgenstein backed the approach that you environment creates your language and therefore your understanding of the world.
One thing that Stefano pointed out, which gave me an ‘oh yeah’ light bulb moment, is that most philosophical books seem to exist purely to pick holes in other philosophical work, and yet Wittgenstein can be seen to be somewhat inward- looking and annoyingly presumptuous. This can be seen in the way that he addresses the reader as if he is speaking absolute truth, in a way which makes you afraid to challenge his ideas because he has made them so definite and confident. The way that he develops his logical argument adds to this feeling.

Another discussion point was the way that language is used in the media and in advertising. It is used to evoke emotion and specific thoughts, with the aim of spurring action. This is therefore manipulating people through the use of language. This lead to a discussion of Orwell and mind control.

The final part of the seminar was spent debating the way that symbols and meaning can be taught by culture, the example we were using was that of pain. Do we actually feel pain, or is it simply a trained response to something that we think would cause pain? For example when a child gets an ‘owie’ do they actually feel pain or are they simply crying because they have been taught that this is the normal reaction? This brought up many stories, including one of Shira’s from visiting different tribes in Africa. There is one such tribe (at least) which relishes pain or things that you would think would inflict pain, even sees it as an honour. There are also tribes in which to be seen as a ‘man’, males must inflict pain upon themselves. The question that I ask is; are these people still experiencing pain and simply enjoying this fact, or are they actually feeling pleasure? The difficulty is that these kinds of things are totally subjective, and we can never really know what is going on inside people’s minds. Another difficulty is that everyone has different meanings for each word or symbol; this is also one of the main difficulties of language and meaning.