Questions: Wittgenstein's Language-Games and the Use Theory of Meaning

Question 1

Someone claims to follow a private rule known only to themselves, with no possible external check on whether they are applying it correctly. According to Wittgenstein's later view, this is:

• A. Perfectly coherent — all rules are ultimately grounded in private mental events
• B. Incoherent — without public criteria and shared practice, there is no difference between following a rule and merely thinking you are
• C. How all meaningful language ultimately works, since language originates in individual minds
• D. Fine as long as the private rule is internally consistent

Answer: (B)

Meaning requires public criteria embedded in shared forms of life. If there is no way — even in principle — to distinguish 'following the rule correctly' from 'merely thinking you are following it,' the idea of a rule collapses entirely. This is the key move toward the private language argument: meaning is normative and public, and normativity requires shared practice, not private mental events.

Question 2

Why does Wittgenstein say we cannot give a single definition of 'game' that covers all games?

• A. Because the concept of 'game' is poorly defined and should be replaced with more precise terminology
• B. Because all games share a property too obvious to require stating
• C. Because games form a family of overlapping similarities with no single feature common to all — a case of family resemblance
• D. Because the word 'game' is context-dependent and has no stable meaning across cultures

Answer: (C)

Board games, card games, ring-around-the-rosie, and athletic competitions share overlapping similarities — some have winners, some involve skill, some are competitive — but there is no single property they all share. Wittgenstein calls this family resemblance, and uses it as an argument against the philosophical method of seeking necessary and sufficient conditions for concepts. The right model is overlapping criss-crossing similarities, not a shared essence.

Question 3

According to Wittgenstein's later view, the meaning of a word is a mental image or abstract object that the word refers to, which speakers access when they use it.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is exactly the picture Wittgenstein rejects. Meaning is not hidden behind use in some mental image or abstract entity — it IS the use in a language-game. 'Meaning is use' is not a slogan; it is a claim that there is nothing more to meaning than the role an expression plays in a practice. Looking for the mental image behind the word is looking in the wrong place.

Question 4

Wittgenstein's claim that 'meaning is use' implies that meaning is arbitrary and varies from individual to individual.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is a common misreading. Meaning is rule-governed and public, anchored in shared forms of life. 'Meaning is use' means meaning is constituted by communal practices — not that anything goes. There is a difference between using a word correctly and incorrectly, and that difference is settled by shared practice, not by private feelings of rightness.

Question 5

What does Wittgenstein mean by 'meaning is use,' and why does this position make a purely private language incoherent?

Model answer: Meaning is use means that a word's meaning is fully constituted by how it is correctly used in a language-game — a shared social practice embedded in a form of life. There is nothing hidden behind the use. This makes private language incoherent because meaning requires public criteria for correct vs. incorrect use: a word whose correctness could only be judged privately — with no external check possible — would be a word with no distinction between following the rule and merely thinking you are, which means no rule exists at all.

The key move is seeing that normativity (the distinction between correct and incorrect use) requires something beyond the individual. A 'language' only one person could understand — with no possible public criteria — cannot sustain the normative structure that makes it a language rather than noise.