Philosophical Problems: A Wittgensteinian Solution

Mihir Ranjan Biswas

Most of the philosophical problems arise from the miss- interpretation of language. But it is not true that language is responsible for this problem, only user of the language is responsible. Because, if the philosopher who use language and he fail to understand the logic of language then philosophical problem comes to being. Some philosopher can say- ideal language is better to solve the philosophical problems, because ideal language is stronger in nature than the ordinary language. But, Wittgenstein proved that ordinary language is so much strong as ideal language. He said ordinary language function like exact calculus as mathematics and there are certain definite and unique rules; and ordinary language can give a precise definition of every word.                                                                                           Another source of philosophical problem is ‘craving for generality’ of word meaning. Wittgenstein by introduce ‘language game’ shows a word meaning is not unitary and unchangeable. He has shown language is constituted by the species of the rule like the cluster of properties as game.

 In this paper, I intending to show with Wittgenstein that (i) miss-interpretation of language & (ii) Craving for generality are the two fundamental problems to philosophizing for linguistic philosopher’s. The status of language is far different between the Tractatus- Logico- Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations but, causes of the philosophical problems remain same. The earlier Wittgenstein highlighted the importance of the ‘Picture theory of meaning ’ in his book Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus to abolish so called unitary meaning of a proposition and to set-up craving for unity by criss –cross relations of properties. And, by admitting ‘Logical Atomism’ he solved the ‘miss – interpretation’ of words in a proposition. According to later Wittgenstein the problem of philosophy is the occupational disease of linguistic philosopher. He goes on to say that when a person thinks about something philosophically, he inevitably becomes puzzled. But, he hopes that a good philosopher might have managed to avoid it. To know the fullest sense, what a philosophical problem is, entails being thus settled. A philosophical problem has the form as “I do not know my way out”to a linguistic philosopher. A linguistic philosopher if never lost or suffers he will not feel the need for further philosophical investigation. He will always try to point out the puzzles and confusion into certain philosophical notion. In philosophical Investigation Wittgenstein say “My aim is to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised non-sense to something that is patent non – sense”. He farther asserts that “philosophical confusion to a person caught in a philosophical confusion is like a man in a room who want to get out but does not know how it possible”. He (the man) tries to get out by the window but it is too tight, he tries to get out by the chimney but it is too narrow. Similarly, when one thinks about sense perception of physical objects can be directly perceived or not, the same sort of thing happens when one thinks about the nature of God, about our knowledge of other mind. In the case of puzzlement, a man in the grip of a philosophical problem is a man who is intellectually sick, one who has a conceptual illness. A philosopher seeks to be free himself from this deplorable condition by developing a theory as system to deal with the puzzles. Wittgenstein prescribed about such types of conceptually sick philosophers “show the fly (here, philosophers) the way out of the fly-bottle (here, philosophical problems)”. So, necessarily I become bound in my paper to discuss and high lighten the later wittgensteinian philosophical conception where he had introduced the concept of (i) game      (ii) Language game (iii) family resemblance (iv) forms of life etc. Lastly, it is well known to all students of philosophy that the early Wittgenstein had used ‘ideal language’ to set-up philosophical discussion on the certain way. Similarly, also, he had proved the certain ways of philosophical discussion like ‘calculus’ in his later writing by dependent on the ‘usage’ theory.