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Q&A: Language Games and Translation

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Language Games and Translation

Question

Festive greetings!
1- Early Wittgenstein argues that concepts (words?) that do not point to empirical entities have no meaning. If so, must one necessarily hold like Aristotle that there are no ideal concepts (since the idea itself is not observable)?
2- According to later Wittgenstein, there is no connection at all between concepts and reality (both because the connection between signifiers and what they signify is in every case arbitrary, and because every concept is loaded according to its cultural context).
If so, it is difficult for me: how can one translate one language into another? On the other hand, how can a person communicate with someone else, if according to this view each person has a personal charge that colors the signifier?
At first I thought of resolving this by saying that it is true that the full meaning of a signifier does indeed depend on culture, and that cannot be translated, but the minimal concept included in the signifier can be conveyed (for example, the concept “lion” also includes associations such as bravery and so on, but the biological species itself is included for everyone). But according to my assumption above, that Wittgenstein (both the early one and certainly the later one) holds that there are no conceptual ideas, then there is no connection between one specific lion and another specific lion (rather, one can simply point to a particular lion and call it by a label, but not “signify” the species of lions), and if so, how is it possible to translate and understand the other person.
3- And in general, it is difficult for me: if he indeed holds like Aristotle, then how does a person make generalizations between items even for himself, since that is a private language? And one cannot answer as Aristotle himself does, that this is only conceptualization by the intellect and the human user, because for the positivists a private language has no meaning, and therefore private conceptualization has no meaning either (for early Wittgenstein because the ideal concept is not something observable, and all the more so for later Wittgenstein, for whom there is no connection at all between signifiers and what they signify)?
Thank you very much!

Answer

  1. Obviously. Even according to a less extreme positivist, or an empiricist—those who think that non-empirical concepts have meaning—they still would not recognize their existence.
  2. You should ask a Wittgenstein expert about that. As far as I know, what you said is not an accurate description of his view. You turned him into a full-fledged postmodernist.
  3. Same as above.

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