Topics Language

Question What is the best way to approach questions like "What is the meaning of the word x?"? Is there some kind of advisable generalised approach to such questions, based on the remarkable developments in philosophy of language? What would Wittgenstein probably say? I'm thinking for example of the debate in aesthetics concerning the meaning of the word beautiful.

Accepted:
July 21, 2011

Comments

The best way to approach questions about the meanings of words is to look in a good dictionary. (This isn't meant to be a smart-alecky response: J. L. Austin, perhaps the foremost practitioner of 'ordinary language philosophy' recommended the dictionary as a starting point for ordinary language investigations.) Insofar as most, if not all, words are to be found in a good dictionary, this is a generalized approach. The reason it may be a useful starting points for the kinds of question in which you seem to be interested is that dictionaries, as Austin noted, reflect the range of meanings, and hence of concepts, that speakers of the language have found useful. The reason that I think that the kind of question you're interested in is more related to ordinary language philosophy than more recent philosophy of language is because I would think that you would find the most illumination in attending to the kind of variation of which terms admit--as manifest in the question concerning different meanings of 'beautiful' and its cognates--than in the kinds of issues that are treated in more recent philosophy of language, especially that influenced by linguistics. (There may be certain developments in the treatment of 'vague' terms that may be relevant to your question: perhaps a panelist better versed than I in recent philosophy of language can speak to this issue.) Wittgenstein, although sometimes taken to be an ordinary language philosopher, differs from practitioners of ordinary language philosophy such as Austin in subtle, but very interesting and important ways (on this topic in particular, and on ordinary language philosophy generally, I highly recommend the work of Stanley Cavell: you might start out with three essays from his collection Must We Mean What We Say? that bear on this topic: "Must We Mean What We Say?"; "The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy"; and "Austin at Criticism"). Wittgenstein would not, I think, recommend looking to a dictionary as a starting point, as Austin did, in part because Wittgenstein wasn't as interested as Austin in fine distinctions between the uses of words, although Wittgenstein was interested in drawing distinctions: a proposed epigraph for the Philosophical Investigations was a line from King Lear: "I'll teach you differences". Wittgenstein would, moreover, have rejected the very idea of a "generalised approach" to philosophical questions, and indeed, his notion of 'family resemblance terms', of which 'beautiful' and its cognates might well be an example, was, I think, introduced to undercut the 'craving for generality' that drives certain kinds of philosophical questioning. Ultimately, although Wittgenstein's approach to the kind of question that you are raising would differ greatly from that of Austin, both would, I think, have emphasized the great range of things that can be called beautiful, and indeed, after consulting the dictionary, you might just attend to the various ways that the word and its cognates can be used, which is at least a way into the nest of issues in aesthetics in which you seem to be interested.