Understanding a linguistic practice does not require understanding larger social practices first.

Evidence

This is not an argument. It is a complete misconstruction of Wittgenstein’s thought, and my own, to say that it “follows” from the relationship between a language game and a form of life that one cannot understand a practice without first understanding the “larger social practices,” whatever they may be. But perhaps my own unfamiliarity with Winter’s use of these terms concealed some consistency with my own convictions. Perhaps the “larger social practices” were not political and social movements, which are as irrelevant to being able to practice law legitimately as is an understanding of mortgage interest rates to being able to build a structurally sound house. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 798

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Wittgenstein’s distinction between language games and forms of life; echoes debates about legal formalism and social-context theories of law. — connects to: Culture is the interrelation of all social practices, not one practice.; Constitutional understanding is cultivated through practical exercises rather than passive reading — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 28; Yet, there is scarcely a page of Wittgenstein’s work, including his work on the foundations of mathematics, that is not devoted to an attempt to rescue our understanding of meaning by linking it to the ordinary practices of human beings using language; and the many striking examples of Wittgenstein’s imaginative anthropology are testimony to his commitment to the imaginative nature of rationality. Practice fetishism and particularism may indeed culminate in the denial that human beings can conserve and transmit shared experiences and in a related refusal to recognize the imaginative elements in human rationality. But because these very ideas-how human beings learn a language, how imagination plays a crucial part in that learning-are so much at the center of Wittgenstein’s work, it casts some doubt on whether Winter’s charges of fetishism, among others, are accurate. (+2 more)

Related

• Wittgenstein never treated practice as an isolated conceptual primitive (similarity 0.88)
• Wittgenstein conceives language-games as parts of an activity or form of life. (similarity 0.86)
• Winter insists that ‘the importance and ubiquity of imaginative processes such as metaphor undermine the Wittgensteinian claim that there is no more to meaning than its performative significance… (similarity 0.84)
• Yet, there is scarcely a page of Wittgenstein’s work, including his work on the foundations of mathematics, that is not devoted to an attempt to rescue our understanding of meaning by linking it… (similarity 0.84)
• Ethnophilosophers undermine their own thesis under Wittgenstein-Quine logic (similarity 0.84)
• Wittgenstein’s teaching-by-examples passage actually supports, not refutes, saying things about practices. (similarity 0.82)
• Wittgenstein denies psychological effects any necessary role in meaning while not denying their reality. (similarity 0.81)
• Winter is not writing about Wittgenstein, but about the Wittgensteinian account, which I fear must mean me. (similarity 0.80)
• Winter’s entire essay is structured around such small coups de theatre, which culminate in announcements of such banality that they are made ludicrous by the portentous, jargon-ridden analysis… (similarity 0.79)
• Speaking a language means assuming its entire culture and civilization. (similarity 0.79)
• Winter’s denial may be inconsistent with his own theory of meaning (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Yet, there is scarcely a page of Wittgenstein’s work, including his work on the foundations of mathematics, that is not devoted to an attempt to rescue our understanding of meaning by linking it… #contradicts (0.85)
• Deep Listening practice is comprehended through doing, not abstract study #contradicts (0.60) — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 653