r0b’s Reviews > Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy > Status Update

...on whether the king of France is bald...’Geach adds: “This view agrees, I think with common sense; a plain man, if pressed for an answer, would be very likely to reply ‘Don’t be silly; there isn’t a king of France.’”

I always think it amusing when these Philosophers refer to non-philosophers as ‘a plain man’

‘In other words, we have been led to this conclusion: if an expression like “Now I understand “ is taken as a report (or a description) of a mental act of understanding, we must acknowledge that it cannot be a report (or description) of anything.’
Quoting Wittgenstein: “Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ at all- for that is the expression which confuses you.”

‘What do the different language-games have in common that entitles them to be called a language? Wittgenstein’s answer is simple; they have nothing in common.’

‘In the Tractatus a meaningful proposition was said to be one made up of the names of objects, and to serve as a picture of fact; language depicted world. In the Philosophical Investigations language is no longer said to act like this. Picturing or depicting the world is discarded as a meaningless notion...Now if a language is no longer to be understood as a picture of the world, how else is it to be defined?...

Quoting G. H. Von Wright: “Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is, so far as I can see, entirely outside any philosophical tradition and without literary sources of influence...The author of the Philosophical Investigations has no ancestor in philosophy.”