Comments on: Wittgenstein: Food Forms a Family

By: Jesper

Jesper — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 14:39:50 +0000

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.

By: Erik C

Erik C — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:30:58 +0000

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).

By: Alice

Alice — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 01:00:13 +0000

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.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 18:52:18 +0000

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. :)

By: Espen

Espen — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 17:58:19 +0000

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.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 15:48:55 +0000

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.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 15:31:36 +0000

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.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 11:41:25 +0000

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.

By: Kim Jacobsen

Kim Jacobsen — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 11:18:50 +0000

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.