Topics Language

Question I have a question about the the usage of words. If a word has a particular meaning in a specific context that contradicts, ignores or stretches beyond the way that word is used in more general context, is that word being used wrong? For instance, consider the term "game." I've frequently come across arguments in different spheres about what constitutes a "game" and how such-and-such use of the term is mistaken. In some contexts a "game" can be all sorts of things (consider the bewildering variety of video games that have almost nothing in common with one another), in others it must be something competitive (there are people who express hesitation at calling solitaire a true "game"), in other contexts "games" need to have a structure of some kind or another (some say that children's imaginative games are not games, but merely "play" in a vague sense). My question is, if certain contexts use a term in a certain way, one that deviates from the understanding of that term in broader contexts, are those contexts making incorrect use of the term? Is it legitimate to say "When we talk about games we usually mean X, so saying that Y is a game is wrong." even if Y is frequently considered a game within the specific context where the discussion is taking place? I hope that makes sense.

Accepted:
April 19, 2012

Comments

Great question(s). Your choice of examples is interesting, as the philosopher Wittgenstein used the term "game" to make his case that the meaning of some terms is not at all strict and relies more on what he called "family resemblance" than a strict appeal to necessary and sufficient conditions. His view is that we might meaningfully use terms without precision and he then went on to speak of different "language games," by which (I believe) he meant different contexts or domains in which different rules (or practices) apply. So, in the "language game" of the physical sciences, the term "cause" may have a different meaning than in the "language game" of religion. That aside, certain practices like philosophy may stipulate that terms have special meaning that may not match ordinary usage. Philosophers in the recent past have used terms like "manifest image" that is vaguely related to the way we ordinarily use the terms "manifest" and "image" but give it a special, specific meaning (the world as it manifests itself in ordinary observations as opposed to how the world appears to us from the standpoint of the physical sciences). But you are definitely on to an important, even vital, issue in terms of the use of terms in philosophical methodology. If a philosopher claims to have a proper analysis of what it is to be a person, or to be a work of art, or to be morally right, or free, or to feel pain and (let us imagine) such philosophical usage is wildly, even radically different from what most of us mean by "person" or "art" or "morally right" or "free" or "to be in pain" this is problematic. The philosopher then (I suggest) needs to account for why her or his analysis is somehow better than ordinary usage. And that is a live option: it is (at least remotely possible) that we ordinary people using common terms are doing so in a way that is muddled or incoherent and somehow the philosopher can give powerful reasons that when we use such terms we are either radically mistaken or need to translate such terms into an improved vocabulary (substitute talk of persons into talk of a projected "narrative self" etc).

I myself am entirely in sympathy with the direction of your question, though. I think our ordinary use of language and insights needs to be taken seriously and as a starting point. Further inquiry may compel us to take up a different position, but let's begin with what appears to be the case.

I would say that there is, in any general sense, a right or wrong way to use a word. There are various generalizations about how people actually use words that are captured in dictionaries. Dictionaries tell us how people do use words, not how they should use them. There is no such thing as the correct use of the term 'game', or any other term. If a person uses a word intending to mean something by it that is not in line with the dictionary, there is nothing wrong with that per se. We do it all the time. for many reasons, many of them very good. We just need to be careful not to be misunderstood. And we might use a word thnking we are using it in line withe dcitionaries and be wrong about that.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynmann said "People often complain of the unwarranted extension of the ideas of particles, paths etc. into the atmomic realm." He responds to the complaint that the extension is unwarranted "Not so at all; there is nothing unwarranted about the extension. We must, and we should and we always do extend as far as we can beyond what we a;ready know, beyond those ideas that we have already obtained ... it is the only way to make progress" (The Character of Phusical Law). He could have said the same thing about using the words 'particle' etc. in a new way. Calling something 'a particle' when it isn't a particle in the usual sense, can be a vital way to make progress.

Extending the use of terms in the way Feynman discusses is vital to the progress of knowledge. But of course we have to try our best to be carful when we do this, so as not to create confusion.