Rules, Language & Reality
George Wrisley considers how some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas on language relate to reality.
On the other hand the analogy breaks down in that the king as a piece on the chess board really is constrained by rules of the game which are applicable to everyone. You can’t just decide that the king can be moved like the knight or the bishop or the rook. Whereas if we were discussing a king on the throne of one or another nation, there are still the facts we can garner about him in which all agree. Here, in the either/or world, the rules of language are in turn applicable to all. But, again, once the discussion shifts to our reaction to a monarchy itself, we can all use the same language but come to very different interpretations of how we should react to conflicting political assessments of monarchism.
But that’s not where the author goes. He sticks with chess.
But: how are the rules of grammar the same or different in either the either/or or the is/ought world? When in one world or the other can following the rules lead either to consensus or conflict? When and where and why does communication seem to break down time and again more in the latter? Sure, if the assessment here revolves solely around the language we use in describing or discussing a chess match, grammar can be wholly in sync with a game played strictly be the rules of chess. But once the discussion shifts to a context in which it’s about kings and noblemen and peasants and serfs?
Where here are the words chosen to describe and discuss feudalism such that all can agree on whether words like, say, freedom and justice and honesty and integrity and good and bad and true and false are in sync with the political lay of the land back then. What of grammar then? When does someone “misspeak” when the discussion shifts to evaluating feudalism as a good or a bad social, political and economic system?