Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Philosophical Investigations Note 1

Meaning is sited in use, which depends on the language game, given within forms of life.

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But family resemblance is not a substitute for definition, for one must be able to say why one form of family resemblance applies and another does not, and for this, definition is still required.

These definitions are matters of convention, not fact, so the absence of consensus of what categories are at the boundaries speak to different definitions, and not to the metaphysical "blurriness" of definitions, as is claimed.

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Is truth and falsehood only meaningful within the context of a language game? We can develop a philosophical language game where it can be used.

Think of truth as a function that ties all the dimensions of a game together, like the concept of competition that gives meaning to the rules of a chess game. A proposition would be a general form of a chess game, like "a board game where the goal is to retain certain, or a maximum number of pieces".

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