Labeling and Classification - Reading Wittgenstein

[Preface: I've decided to tackle the Philosophical Investigations again. The first time I tried, I got 86 pages in, and then stopped (not sure why). But after reading Robert Brandom's Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism, I thought it best to look back to W. But I must warn my readers that I may be coming to this text with specifically "inferentialist" concerns, which may not be fair to Wittgenstein. So, with this in mind, I offer some thoughts on the text, my reading of it (to the best of my ability).]

§§1-30: Labeling and Classification.  

I begin quoting §13: "When we say: 'Every word in language signifies something' we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make." 

From the very beginning of the book, W. is trying to get at how mistaken it is to think of language as a thing we attach to things, or correlate sounds and objects, etc, and then combine those labels (or names, as §1 has it) into larger and larger units. A simple correlation, e.g., when we say that "naming something is like attaching a label to a thing" (§15) really does nothing for us. And why? Because merely to name something is not yet to make a move in what W. calls a "language game" (§22). 

So what is a language game? W. says that "I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, a 'language game.'" (§7). Hence in these first thirty sections we hear this word "training" [Abrichten/Unterricht] quite a bit, because when we say "language" we're not merely talking about labeling or naming, but doing something. And so when you teach someone a particular word, you train them in the use of the word, and this "use" is set within an entire complex of various actions and words. And so when you tell someone to do something with a 'rod and lever,' "given the whole rest of the mechanism" (§6), they can do something. 

But if this holism is the case, then clearly when we train people in language, we have definite limits and bounds to a certain language game. So, if I want to teach a child how to cook, the notion of "measurement" takes on a very specific use that may or may not be the same if I were to teach them how to do scientific experiments. Grouping words together into certain "kinds" (W.'s examples are words like "slab" and numerals) thus is essential to any endeavor we enjoin. From this if follows that "how we group words into kinds will depend on the aim of classification, - and on our own inclination" (§17). 

And so we have a major distinction here between labeling and classification. When we analyze a word we are not analyzing how this word "name" something, we are not asking how we first "entertain" a notion. Instead, we are asking what "the part which uttering these words plays in the language-game" (§21), or rather how this word is used, and based on this use, come to something like an understanding through analysis.

Now, this brings up the last issue I'll deal with, and that is this word Lebensform, "form of life." In §23 W. brings up the fact that his use of language game is meant to emphasize how when we speak of language, we are talking about a certain activity, and there are lots of different types of activities (giving orders, reporting an event, play-acting, praying, etc). A form of life, in W.'s terms, seems to be just the things we do, and language is similar to the tools in a tool-box, with many different uses, depending on the objective of what is being done. "Classification" comes into play as we engage in these activities. 

This seems all too clear to me, and I'll give an example. I've meet a few people who are not from the U.S. complain about this thing Americans do - when we see someone we say "how's it going," or "how are you?" It is in the form of a question, but as my friends have complained, we don't really want to know how people are doing. In actual fact, this phrase is really just a greeting, and for whatever reason, we've developed it as just something you say, in a declarative way. But that doesn't also preclude this sentence from ever being used as a question. We can certainly imagine that there are times when the "proper" thing is not done and someone genuinely answers the question - much to our surprise, most likely.

And so Wittgenstein is right - "one has already to know (or be able to do) something in order to be capable of asking a thing's name" (§30). In order to label one must have first classified, and this classification occurs according to the language game (language plus action) it is a part of.