1889-1951 AD Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein [WMQTIR]

Interviews by Bryan Magee

Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein:

From Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.53
“Identity of object I express by identity of sign, and not by using a sign for identity. Difference of objects I express by difference of signs.”
From Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.5303
“Roughly speaking, to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing at all.”
From Philosophical Investigations, section 52.
“If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse [meaning] has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust [dispositions to behavior] I shall do well to examine those rags very closely to see how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there so on. But if am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous.
But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an examination of details in philosophy.”

My remarks:
The reason you might think the meaning could not arise out of dispositions to behavior is that then whatever you said would have to be true. You couldn’t make a mistake because whatever you say would be what you’re disposed to say. What you’re disposed to say is the meaning so that whatever you say is true.
There are times when either we correct ourselves or we allow ourselves to be corrected by others. So, we don’t take is true whatever we are disposed to say. We realize we can make mistakes. We correct ourselves such as when we think a cow in the distance is a horse. When we get closer we see we made a mistake. Also, we accept corrections from other people. There is the individual language of dispositions we all have as individuals. There are also social groups from which we learn this language. And we modify our dispositions according to corrections from these other people or references such as dictionaries. So, meaning isn’t individual dispositions alone. Those individual dispositions are only part of meaning – they only occur in the context of social groups – linguistic communities. It is from those communities we learn language and learn to improve our use of language. Individual dispositions to behavior are an important part of meaning – not all of it. The social meanings are also not possible without the individual dispositions.