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11. Rule-Following
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CHAPTERI E LEV E N Rule-Following Games, including language games, are defined and played by following rules. Wittgenstein, having interpreted the problem of understanding meaning in language as involving families of language games with no essential properties but an overlapping and criss-crossing of features, now turns to the question of the rules that govern human activities, including ordinary games, language games, social-institutional transactions, and calculations in mathematics. Wittgenstein is as much interested in the teaching and learning of rules as in the particular content and constitution of rule-governed activities. Wittgenstein has two main concerns about rules. He wants to show that rules cannot provide alternative absolute foundations for semantic reductivism. Rule-following cannot replace logical atomism and the picture theory in a new but equally univocal essentialist account of meaning. Wittgenstein maintains that rules by themselves cannot provide absolute foundations for language because rules can always be variously interpreted. Rules underdetermine the exact ways in which their instructions are to be carried out except by an indefinite regress ofrules for following rules that takes language users beyond the practical limits of language game playing. Second, Wittgenstein relates the function of language game rules to the extrasemantic praxeological foundations of semantics. Individual rules must be understood as serving the purposes of a particular type ofhuman activity; they are followed or infringed only as part of an evolving form of life. The constitution of language games as rule-governed activities is emphasized by Wittgenstein's comparisons with ordinary games. His favorite example is chess, and the definition of indiI 254 255 I Rule-Following vidual pieces and the game itself by the rules of play. The problem of explaining different kinds of words in language or of tools or instruments in a language game is related to the problem of classifying chess pieces as game tokens. Wittgenstein remarks: 17. It will be possible to say: In language (8) we have different kinds ofword. For the function ofthe word "slab" and the word "block" are more alike than those of"slab" and "d". But how we group words into kinds will depend on the aim ofthe classification,-and on our own inclination. Think of the different points of view from which one can classify tools or chess-men. The same analogy is given with respect to defining chess pieces as chess pieces, as embodying a certain pragmatic function and role in playing the game as defined by its rules. Game tokens are understood as doing complex things when moved on the board, such as capturing a bishop or forcing an opponent to ~x pose a queen, rather than merely as, particularly shaped samples of wood, ivory, or bone. The function of a game piece as of a word in language is a part of empirical reality, something spatiotemporal rather than abstract. The words in language games can similarly be understood in terms of their real world functions, the actions they make possible in the complex network of extralinguisticactivities in which they are integrated, by the rules that define their use and constitute the language games to which they belong. The chess king is not fully explained as a physical object, but is defined by its role in the game according to the rules of chessnot only the rules directly concerned with the king's possible movements, but the entire system of rules defining the interactions of the king with pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, and queen, in the interplay oftwo opponents each trYing to achieve a certain strategic purpose: 108. We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomena oflanguage, not about some non-spatial, non-temporal phantasm . [Note in margin: Only it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety ofwaysJ. But we talk about it as we do about the pieces in chess when we are stating the rules of the game, not describing their physical properties. The question "What is a word really?" is analogous to "What is a piece in chess?" It is not until much later that Wittgenstein finds himselfin a position to answer these questions. The problem of specifying rules is largely one of distinguishing what is essential from what is inessential in the practice of game playing and the game's [44.222.231.51] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:21 GMT) 256 I C HAP T ERE LEV E N official statement of rules, where the two need not agree. The analogy between language games and ordinary games...