Context principle (Frege) and Language game (Wittgenstein)

Nice work. Been wondering about how the (CP) coincides with the apparent pragmatic touch of the later Wittgenstein.

Reply to Wallows Hi. What do you think? Was the seed of Wittgenstein's language game present in Frege's CP?

It looks very similar and to me the latter can be understood as an extrapolation of the former. After all what is use of a language but the propositions formulated in that language?

I'm confused by the fact that the later Wittgenstein was supposed to have rejected his earlier work in the tractatus which was heavily influenced by Frege.

Something I wrote in the PI thread not too long ago:

"I've always disliked calling language-games 'contexts', and on reflection I think I know why: the idea of a language-game captures something that the word 'context' seems to miss, which is a distinction among types or kinds of words. A language-game determines not 'just' the meaning of a word, but also, the kind of word any particular word is: the role it plays in that game.

'Contexts', to me anyway, seem to make words differ only be degree - ("in this context, this means that; in another context, something else"). Contexts are more general than language-games; they don't discriminate as much. It doesn't capture, in the same way, the typification at work when 'language-games' are employed. I suspect that it may be considerations of this kind that led Witty to invent the slightly clunkly neologism of the 'language-game', rather than resort to the already-available word 'context' to get his point across."

Reply to StreetlightX

philosophynow.org:Wittgenstein’s assent to the Context Principle continued long after the Tractatus. He remained committed to it while developing his mature conception of ‘meaning as use’ in the Philosophical Investigations, where he again quotes the Context Principle verbatim (§49). In the Tractatus, as we have seen, the Context Principle is essentially used in a structural way. However, it already contains in embryonic form the idea of the Philosophical Investigations that there is a ‘philosophical grammar’ to our claims about the world that is embodied in our practice of using language meaningfully. At the time he was writing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein could only understand this notion of ‘background’ – what was later to become ‘grammar’ – in terms of an abstract structure underlying our language-use but independent of it. It was only when the lessons of his mature conception of linguistic use had been absorbed that the full concept of ‘grammar’ emerged, and Wittgenstein saw that our most fundamental practical commitments as human language-users are an intimate part of what it means to characterise reality in language. So in the Investigations, although the Context Principle continues to be affirmed, the context shifts from propositions to include the entire language game and ourselves as competent language-users in the various forms of life we pursue. Yet to the extent that Frege recognised that the linguistic characterisation of reality is always contextual, and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus endorsed Frege’s insight, it is possible to represent the origins of Wittgenstein’s mature conception of language in the Investigations and beyond as already there in the Context Principle as it emerges in the Tractatus, and in the work of Wittgenstein’s illustrious forebear, Gottlob Frege.

© Rev. Dr Susan J. Lucas 2015

Quoting TheMadFool

Is there a link between the context principle (CP) of Frege and the later Wittgenstein's language game (LG)?

Yes. As I understand it, Wittgenstein was strongly influenced by Frege and adapted the context principle in both his Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations.

Marie McGinn describes Wittgenstein's use of the principle in the Tractatus:

Marie McGinn. Elucidating the Tractatus: Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy of Language and Logic :Wittgenstein's investigation of the logic of depiction has led him to a profound expression of a version of Frege's context principle: Only within a system of representation that stands in a projective relation to the world does a proposition have sense or a name meaning.

In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein refers to the principle himself:

PI 49:Naming is not yet a move in a language-game — any more than putting a piece in its place on the board is a move in chess. One may say: with the mere naming of a thing, nothing has yet been done. Nor has it a name except in a game. This was what Frege meant too when he said that a word has a meaning only in the context of a sentence.

I don't know whether this is what Frege actually meant. I suspect that Wittgenstein credits his own ideas to Frege here because they were based on his context principle.

Reply to Luke Thanks a lot. I ask because in the wikipedia article on the philosophical investigations they say that Wittgenstein was inspired by Piero Saffra. However the content seems to reflect Frege's line of thinking viz. the CP. Can I download the Philosophical Investigations for free? :smile:

Reply to TheMadFool No problem. I just did a quick search and found this which has a download option: https://www.docdroid.net/FmkyBAp/ludwigwittgenstein-philosophicalinvestigations.pdf

Quoting TheMadFool

Thanks a lot. I ask because in the wikipedia article on the philosophical investigations they say that Wittgenstein was inspired by Piero Saffra. However the content seems to reflect Frege's line of thinking viz. the CP. Can I download the Philosophical Investigations for free? :smile:

Saffra impressed Wittgenstein with his gesture that Wittgenstein applauded in the difference between saying and showing, so the CP doesn't quite fit into that description isolated within language only. This can be expanded on by someone more qualified.

Quoting Wikipedia

Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'.

Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?'

“Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and that which it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity', Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?'” -

--Norman Malcolm. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. pp. 58–59.