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However, Quine and those influenced by his paradigm are enjoining the “field linguist” to depart radically from the procedures of the sciences, limiting themselves to a small part of the relevant evidence, selected in accordance with behaviorist dogma; and also to reject the standard procedures used in theory construction in the sciences.

It is ironic that these moves should be presented as in the spirit of the later Wittgenstein, who constantly argued against the practice of constructing artificial concepts, divorced from ordinary usage, in defense of certain philosophical doctrines. The Wittgensteinian construal of knowledge as a species of ability is a paradigm example of the practice that Wittgenstein held to be a source of philosophical error.