Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein's analysis of psychological phenomena

In the second part of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein moves outward from human language behavior and towards an examination of more general psychological issues.

Related Topics:
Human language - Psychological

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In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein deconstructs his own earlier arguments (as explained in the Tractatus) with respect to human language. In remark #23 of Philosophical Investigations, he points out that the practice of human language is more complex than the simplified views of language that have been held by people who want to explain or simulate human language by means of some formal system. It would be a disastrous mistake, according to Wittgenstein, to see language as being in any way analogous to formal logic.

Related Topics:
Tractatus - Formal system - Wittgenstein - Logic

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Instead, language showed indexicality and was context-bound (cf contextualism). To show this, he constructed many sentences that can be interpreted in more than one way. One of the most famous is, "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." Does this mean:

Related Topics:
Indexicality - Contextualism

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• that philosophers use language to combat bewitchments, or
• that philosophers battle bewitchments caused by language itself?

But to repeat, Wittgenstein did not view himself as arguing that language was indexical so much as showing that it was.

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In addition to such ambiguous sentences which can be understood in more than one way, Wittgenstein discussed figures which can be seen and understood in two different ways. One example Wittgenstein used was the "duckrabbit". What is going on when you see it as a duck then as a rabbit?

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Actually as the gnomic remarks in Investigations make clear (or rather, not), Wittgenstein wasn't sure. But one thing he was sure about was that what couldn't be happening was that the external world stayed the same, and an 'internal' cognitive change took place. For Wittgenstein, thought was ineluctably social, and therefore, there really was no 'inner' for anything to happen in. Some people have argued, therefore, that Wittgenstein was a behaviorist. In a sense this is true, but in another it misses the point. Wittgenstein did not want to be a behaviorist, but nor did he want to be a cognitivist or phenomonologist either. As always, for Wittgenstein, there is only one way to look at the matter, which is simply to look at the facts of linguistic usage. Then (according to him) one would see that no 'theory' is possible; there are only the facts of language use. The extent to which he succeeded in this task is, of course, very controversial.

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