Wittgenstein opens the Philosophical Investigation by quoting Confession of Augustine where Augustine depicts language in the way that the words in language name objects a sentences are combinations of such names. This illustration of language implies that “every word has a mean- ing. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.”

Yet he questions the foundation of the common belief that there is a definite bond that correlates the word and the object in the real world it designates. First, the philosophical foundations of the existence of that bond is not clear: what ensures such bond, what makes up such bond. If the material of language is based on personal experience or transcendental knowledge and the world exists outside of the subject, then such a bond bridges the subject-object opposition is particularly nontrivial.

Such a common understanding of language mentioned nature is untenable. Philosopher can’t resolve the philosophical basis for determine the connection.

The influence of Descartes’ philosophy makes people absolutely oppose the subject’s self and the external world as object. This dualism makes it impossible for philosophers to interpret the language that connects two. The solution proposed by Wittgenstein is to defy objective existence such “bond” between the word and the object it designates, and in my understanding, he even abandon the ontological meaning of language: words and sentence has no exact meaning it self, the meaning of language is its “use”.

My understating of his theory can be roughly stated as follows: each individual has internal ideas. We are not bother here to discuss the foundation of internal ideas, it can be the product of external things and experience effecting on our senses (the “sense data” put by Russell). We would emphasise here that Wittgenstein believes that everyone’s private thought are unknown to other. Language is the product of people’s interaction and communication. Though Wittgenstein doesn’t explicitly say how communication becomes possible among human, the solution we gave during the class is it is based on the the homogeneity part of human, or the similarities among all human being, or this group of one particular language user.

In Philosophical Investigation, Wittgenstein uses the expression of experience and colour to support his idea which give very insightful illustrations. I would also give an example that echoes in my mind when reading his arguments. The essence of love confounds human throughout history, even right now neither biology or psychology can give us an explanation on the mechanics of love (there are theories but not convincing enough.) Such word without exact referent, has always been the subject of praise. But when you ask the deeply affectionate writers what are they praising, they can’t give an answer but offers more depiction. One is often told when they ask what is love when his was a child, and the typical answer he gets is “you will understand it when you meet the right one.” In this scenario, love is the defined directly, but a special object in a hypothetical situation, and you will not truly get this idea if you’ve never been in love. Later in life, if you might say you’ve experienced love, yet there can’t be any another one help you check if the word is misused, for others can not get your innate feelings. You are just used one of you vocabulary to communicate. You may even begin to chant ancient verses. Although you and the ancients are not contemplating, your education contains enough samples to let you know what other people are expressing. So you follow their pattern.

It is quite like grasping the concept of king in the chess game. If you don’t know how to play chess, you will not understand what is the king. If you already know how to play it, then you already know everything about the “king” except for the name that everybody knows when others speak of that word they are referring to the “king”. Note that that string of letters can be replaced by whatsoever.

Then how is its meaning achieved? As the title indicates, the meaning of a word is the use of that word. Its function in our communication system is the meaning of that word. But how could people recognise the same word usage? There are two mechanisms. One is called “consensus”, that is, based on the similarities among all human being, we try to make a general agreement. Though each person possess his own cognition and can’t be shared, we will collaborate in social practices. In the long run, we gradually built up some shared knowledge—you know that, I know that, I know you know that, you know I know you know that and so on so forth, “so the use of a word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands”. Note that this system is delicate and largely depends on the social conditions. The other is “training”, as the agreement are already built. (That consensus will always develop as society evolves and culture and civilisation develop, the already built means a newborn are to be engaging in this already existing system.) Wittgenstein specifically discussed this situation. For a language learner (as we all are), there seems to be pre-existing rules set before him. The rules can not be taught doctrinally, for entities can not be grasped isolatedly but only in the system which involves how the word is used.

It is not legitimate to ask what is language. Language is not a specific attribute of human, nor is it a feature embedded in the human cognition, it is more like a derivative created by people in the course of social activities. The only meaningful question is how is language used in social activities. In this sense, Wittgenstein argued the impossibility of private language, for language is intrinsically public.