[This is #2 in a series of experimental writings: I am trying to write with styles and arugments that I would not normally use. Here, I take on Wittgenstein’s famous argument that “games” cannot be defined.]
[66.] Consider for example the objects we call ‘food”. I mean pork roast, waffles, pasta, lamb casseroles, and so on. What is common to them all? Don’t say, ‘There must be something common, or else they would not be all called “food”‘, but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to them all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! Look, for example, at pork roasts, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to waffles, here you will find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to pasta, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. Are they all ‘nutritious’? Compare pig’s stomach [Saumage] with Creme Brulee. Or is there always an appetizer and a main course, or even a swallowing of the food? Think of chewing gum. In breakfast cereal there is the process of eating and the feeling of being full afterwards, but when a child throws his potato mash into the air, this feature has disappeared. Look now at the parts played by spices, and at the difference between chili in in Kashmir Lamb and chili in Tom Yum Soup. Think now of cafeteria food; here is the social element of eating, but now many other characteristic features have disappeared. And we can go through the many, many other groups of food in the same way, and we can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
And the result of this examination is this: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing, sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
[67.] I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’, for the various resemblances among members of the same family: build, features, color of eyes, walk, temperament, etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say, food forms a family.’
(Wittgenstein 1958, segment 66-67.)
Fun! But, although it has obvious comic traits, it doesn’t convince me that Wittgenstein’s argument is necessarily wrong. I don’t have a problem with regarding the concept “food” as something referring to a family of only loosely interconnected phenomena.
What you are in fact showing with your exercise is that the argument Wittgenstein is posing has more to do with the limitations of defining concepts in general. Wittgenstein is idiosyncratic with the word “game” and the act of definition in language might apply in it self as a game. And showing the limits of the definition game by failing to define “game” wouldn’t be totally un-wittgensteinian.
This is actually something clearly shown by your distortion of the original argument, so to comment on your method, I think you are on to something.
I agree – but food does have something in common, namely that you eat it.
I suppose my point was that while it is hard to make a definition that captures any (assumed pre-existing) category, it is just as hard to prove that a set of phenomena have nothing in common.
So while I think Wittgenstein is on to something about the fuzziness of categories, his argument does not work as a “proof” that the members of any particular group (say food or games) have nothing in common.
Additionally, someone pointed out that most human family members do have many things in common – they are usually all mammals, have around 4 limbs and eat food.
I’m sorry, I’m with Kim on this one – a precise definition of ‘food’ is just as impossible to find as a definition of a ‘game’. And I’m not buying that being edible is a sufficient condition, either. :)
Which is really Wittgenstein’s point – that providing semantic denotation as a list of necessary and sufficient conditions is a doomed enterprise, since that’s not how language gets used in practice. Crisp definitions necessarily commit one to a particular ‘cut’ through the different models of the world, one that’s only appropriate for the purpose at hand.
I don’t entirely disagree, but the point I was probably making was that the opposite standpoint – that all categories are infinitely fluctuating and are nothing but lose relations and associations – is just as problematic.
Not all categories are created equal – and the interesting part is to examine specific categories rather than doing wholesale rejection of the idea of categories.
Food: “Material, usually of plant or animal origin, that contains or consists of essential body nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals, and is ingested and assimilated by an organism to produce energy, stimulate growth, and maintain life.”
This definition took me about 15 seconds to find online. Pretty precise, too.
As so many others, W. is just ab/using games to talk about something else. He doesn’t seem to care about games as such, so why should we expect him to come up with a good definition? Perhaps he simply forgot to look up the word in his dictionary.
Right, to claim that words are just descriptions of loose relations and associations would be silly indeed. And I didn’t think Ludwig was arguing for that, either. :)
By the way, there’s much to be gained from comparing different definitions of a ‘game’. But some recent attempts to find the logical definition (as a set of necessary conditions) did rub me the wrong way, because it seems impossible to find a set that forms a coherent conjunction. It leads to such absurdities as throwing The Sims, the biggest-selling game of all time, out of the ‘games’ category simply because it doesn’t have an end-goal. But we can’t completely dismiss end-goals either, because this selects against other games. Ugh.
Which is why I liked what you did in The Game, the Player, the World, moving away from a conjunction, and adding the “spheres of confidence” to the definition, in effect embedding numerous specialized definitions of a game within the general one. For example, removal of a single feature doesn’t necessarily make something not a game (e.g. Sims and rule #3, again). But removal of several features becomes highly problematic. You’ll probably disagree with it, but I found your approach to be very Wittgensteinian. :)
I get what you’re trying to do, Jesper. Funny and smart, as usual. Rob’s right, I think, that Wittgenstein’s argument stems from a situated perspective of language, one that would mean that what counts as “food” is different depending. “Food” for my dog is not necessarily food for me, etc. But I’m guessing that was your point, too.
I thought ‘Here, I take on Wittgenstein?s famous argument that ?games? cannot be defined]’ was rather for LW the definition of games cannot be a (singular) essentialist definition?
A word in a dictionary may have several definitions, we still call them definitions just not THE definition.
Wittgenstein was asking the history of philosophy (the footnote to Plato that is, a la Whitehead) if the quest for beauty truth and goodness was possible or a doomed essentialist venture. And he used games as an example. For non-essentialism makes Platonic ideas illusive and logical positivism fraught with difficulty.
As to games, LW must take them seriously, he risked his career and reputation (and mentorship) for his 180 degree swerve on language games. Not to mention his Norwegian teaching job (well ok that was for other misadventures).
I suppose I always veer towards being the devil’s advocate: I am not convinced that there is some terrible thing called essentialism that we should avoid at all cost. It’s certainly an idea that quickly degenerates to an unproductive stance where you can spend all your energy trying to convince yourself that no two things have anything in common.