Westphal, Jonathan - Philosophical Investigations #693: "Meaning..."

10/11/2013 and 10/25/2013

Unpublished paper

Author's main point is to agree with Wittgenstein during his Philosophical Investigations that meaning and thinking are distinct, and to deny that "meaning" is a mental activity emanating from a speaker. Author starts with scholia #693 from the Investigations that talks about teaching the construction of a series and then 'meaning' that the student write the right number in the hundredth place of the series. This is taken to be a case of meaning something without thinking it.

Author starts with discussing the difference between teaching the construction of a series with the construction of a particular series (one without any tricks or traps). Author argues that Wittgenstein is unclear when he talks about teaching the construction of a particular series, if the student already knew how to construct series in general (cf #691, #143).

An additional problem that author introduces is the idiomatic use of "mean" in English compared to the German verb "meinen", which is more "dynamic" and therefore might have been a better target for Wittgenstein. In English, some uses of "mean" are commonly considered "stative". 

The next problem is whether 'meaning to write' in this case means that the student write the series to the hundredth place, or does the teacher mean for the student to write the actual number at that place. In other words, does the teacher mean for the student to do the task, or for the student to write a particular number/calculation. Author takes Wittgenstein to mean the latter, which, while it encompasses the former, also implies meaning a specific answer.

To get greater clarity about what "to mean it" implies, author turns to #692, which turns to a criterion (behavioristic?) for accomplishing what was 'meant', rather than requiring the student's actions to match the teacher's mental state/activities. Author sees a favorable comparison with the activity of thinking, in this case thinking of a class does not mean thinking of each individual that makes up the class. So the resolution of the problem of what particularly is meant (the task or the number), can be resolved by claiming that the class of right answers was meant.

Author then turns to a positive account of what "to mean" in this case is doing: it is picking out a thing by "contrast or contraposition, in a non-logical sense". It is "removal of some definite ambiguity or some ignorance". For author, meaning in this sense is only required when things need to be distinguished for the sake of clarity or teaching. Author argues that "to mean" here mostly means "to pick" or "to choose". This picking is dynamic, but it is also subject to external criteria for whatever method we have of distinguishing (asking for clarification, pointing, showing, etc).

More broadly, however, author argues that Wittgenstein is trying to establish that the best understanding of "to mean" (not the ones where "meaning" is "picking"), is as a "stative or fientive" verb, not an active one. By contrast, "to think", has both dynamic and stative applications. Of course there are idiomatic uses of "meaning" that can be dynamic, but that is usually because the usage of "meaning" is filling in for another verb, like "picking", or, in some cases, for "intending" or "thinking".