Meaning as Use, Application, Employment, Purpose, Usefulness

TL;DR

This paper explores Wittgenstein's view that meaning is fundamentally linked to use, application, and purpose of language, analyzing his writings to understand his evolving perspective on language as a tool for understanding reality.

Contribution

It provides an open, searchable analysis of Wittgenstein's Nachlass, highlighting the consistent association of meaning with use and purpose across his entire body of work.

Findings

Meaning is consistently linked to use and application in Wittgenstein's writings.

Wittgenstein's perspective on language evolves but maintains focus on language as a tool for understanding reality.

The analysis traces the use of key terms like Gebrauch and Verwendung from early to late writings.

Abstract

Arising from the whole body of Wittgenstein's writings is a picture of a (not necessarily straight, linear, but admittedly tireless) journey to come to terms with the mechanics of language as an instrument to conceive `reality' and to communicate an acquired conception of the `world'. The journey passes through mathematics, psychology, color perception, certainty, aesthetic, but, looking at it from a sort of birdview, it seems reasonable to say that these are all used as `test beds' for his reflections and `experimentations' towards an all encompassing perspective of such a fundamental gateway to human reasoning and life-revealing as language. Whatever labelling of Wittgenstein as a mystic, a logicist, a conventionalist, a skeptic, an anti-metaphysics, an anti-realist, a verificationist, a pragmatist, a behaviorist, and many others, does not seem to do justice to his absolute obsession with being a persistent `deep diver' into the nature of language. Working with an open and searchable account of the Nachlass has allowed us to identify important aspects of the philosopher's possible common line of thinking, in spite of changes of directions, some of them acknowledged by Wittgenstein himself. One of those aspects is the association of meaning with use, application, purpose, usefulness of symbols in language, which happens to show itself from the very beginning through to the very late writings. The German terms Gebrauch, Anwendung, \emph{Verwendung}, Zweck in relation to meaning, sense of signs, words, sentences, appear in several texts since the WW1 Notebooks (1914--1916) up until very late manuscripts from 1950--51.