Abstract
What holds together the things to which a general word applies and distinguishes them from other things? The idea behind Wittgenstein’s treatment of linguistic regularity is that the answers given to this question by traditional theories like classical realism and nominalism are empty because there is no independent way of identifying either the universal or the specific similarity invoked. Such theories are failed mimics of science and there is no place for them in philosophy. However, it is not so easy to identify the positive content of his treatment. Why do the pupils who are being taught the meanings of general words by examples of their correct application make such outlandish mistakes?
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Notes
- 1.
See Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982).
- 2.
Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics: Cambridge 1939, ed. C. Diamond (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976) (LFM).
- 3.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. Pears and B. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1961) (TLP).
- 4.
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann, ed. Brian McGuinness, trans. Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979), pp. 182–183.
- 5.
See Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (op. cit.).
- 6.
Cf. PI II, § xii.
- 7.
See Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1930–1932. From the Notes of John King and Desmond Lee, ed. Desmond Lee (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), p. 67.
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Pears, D. (2011). Linguistic Regularity. In: De Pellegrin, E. (eds) Interactive Wittgenstein. Synthese Library, vol 349. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9909-0_6
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