Thinker
1 reading
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Thinker · 1 reading
A report about a tool and a request for it can use the same word differently. The reading sets selected early and later accounts of language side by side and asks what picturing a situation explains, and what attention to an activity adds.
All readings
1 reading · Title A–Z
Guided course · Module 11 · Lesson 63
Does language always work like a picture?
Wittgenstein’s early account treats a sentence as a picture of a situation; his later work looks at words in use, where requests, reports and corrections do different jobs. The lesson connects meaning with use without concluding that words can mean anything.
Selected reading groups
Picturing and using words
The workshop case introduces language-games and family resemblance without making meaning a matter of private preference. The reading introduces this selected contrast only; the private-language debate lies beyond it. Return to the module for other ways of examining meaning and experience.
Guided course · Module 11 · Lesson 63
Does language always work like a picture?
Wittgenstein’s early account treats a sentence as a picture of a situation; his later work looks at words in use, where requests, reports and corrections do different jobs. The lesson connects meaning with use without concluding that words can mean anything.