Table of Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction to Part I: Essays xiii
Note to the paperback edition 2009 xix
Abbreviations xx
I The Augustinian conception of language (§1) 1
1 Augustine's picture 1
2 The Augustinian family 4
a word-meaning 4
b correlating words with meanings 6
c ostensive explanation 7
d metapsychological corollaries 9
e sentence-meaning 11
3 Moving off in new directions 14
4 Frege 19
5 Russell 23
6 The Tractatus 26
II Explanation (§6) 29
1 Training, teaching and explaining 29
2 Explanation and meaning 33
3 Explanation and grammar 35
4 Explanation and understanding 39
III The language-game method (§7) 45
1 The emergence of the game analogy 45
2 An intermediate phase: comparisons with invented calculi 54
3 The emergence of the language-game method 57
4 Invented language-games 61
5 Natural language-games 63
IV Descriptions and the uses of sentences (§18) 65
1 Flying in the face of the facts 65
2 Sentences as descriptions of facts: surface-grammatical paraphrase 67
3 Sentences as descriptions: depth-grammatical analysis and descriptive contents 70
4 Sentences as instruments 73
5 Assertions, questions, commands make contact in language 76
V Ostensive definition and its ramifications (§28) 81
1 Connecting language and reality 81
2 The range and limits of ostensive explanations 83
3 The normativity of ostensive definition 88
4 Samples 92
5 Misunderstandings resolved 97
6 Samples and simples 103
VI Indexicals (§39) 107
VII Logically proper names (§39) 113
1 Russell 113
2 The Tractatus 117
3 The criticisms of the Investigations: assailing the motivation 120
4 The criticisms of the Investigations: real proper names and simple names 124
VIII Meaning and use (§43) 129
1 The concept of meaning 129
2 Setting the stage 136
3 Wittgenstein: meaning and its internal relations 144
4 Qualifications 152
IX Contextual dicta and contextual principles (§50) 159
1 The problems of a principle 159
2 Frege 164
3 The Tractatus 170
4 After the Tractatus 171
5 Compositional theories of meaning 173
6 Computational theories of understanding 181
X The standard metre (§50) 189
1 The rudiments of measurement 189
2 The standard metre and canonical samples 192
3 Fixing the reference or explaining the meaning? 193
4 Defusing paradoxes 197
XI Family resemblance (§65) 201
1 Background: definition, logical constituents and analysis 201
2 Family resemblance: precursors and anticipations 208
3 Family resemblance: a minimalist interpretation 212
4 Sapping the defences of orthodoxy 216
5 Problems about family-resemblance concepts 219
6 Psychological concepts 222
7 Formal concepts 224
XII Proper names (§79) 227
1 Stage-setting 227
2 Frege and Russell: simple abbreviation theories 230
3 Cluster theories of proper names 233
4 Some general principles 235
5 Some critical consequences 238
6 The significance of proper names 239
7 Proper names and meaning 244
XIII Turning the inquiry round: the recantation of a metaphysician (§89) 251
1 Reorienting the investigation 251
2 The sublime vision 253
3 Diagnosis: projecting the mode of representation on to what is represented 256
4 Idealizing the prototype 259
5 Misunderstanding the role of the Ideal 263
6 Turning the inquiry round 266
XIV Philosophy (§109) 271
1 A revolution in philosophy 271
2 The sources of philosophical problems 277
3 The goals of philosophy: conceptual geography and intellectual therapy 284
4 The difficulty of philosophy 287
5 The methods of philosophy 290
6 Negative corollaries 294
7 Misunderstandings 299
8 Retrospect: the Tractatus and the Investigations 303
XV Surveyability and surveyable representations (§122) 307
1 Surveyability 307
2 Precursors: Hertz, Boltzmann, Ernst, Goethe, Spengler 311
3 The morphological method and the difficulty of surveying grammar 320
4 Surveyable representations 326
XVI Truth and the general propositional form (§134) 335
1 The demands of the picture theory 335
2 'That's the way the cookie crumbles' 340
3 '...do we have a single concept of proposition?' (PG 112) 344
4 '...the use of the words "true" and "false" ... belongs to our concept "proposition" but does not fit it...' (PI §136) 346
5 Truth, correspondence and multi-valued logic 349
XVII Understanding and ability (§143) 357
1 The place of the education of understanding in the Investigations 357
2 Meaning and understanding as the soul of signs 359
3 Categorial misconceptions of understanding 362
4 Categorial clarification 367
a Understanding is not an experience 368
b Understanding is not a process 369
c Understanding is not a mental state 371
d Understanding is neither a dispositional state of the brain nor a disposition 373
5 Powers and abilities 375
6 Understanding and ability 380
Index 387