Winter misrepresents Wittgenstein by attributing to him a composite of several thinkers’ views.

Evidence

And he iguores his own citation shortly thereafter to Wittgenstein, who says, “[flor a large class of cases-though not for all-in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” Winter has apparently become aware of these inconsistencies, for in his reply to Patterson, composed after his principal paper, he attempts to distance himself from the reader’s understandable conclusion that he intends to portray Wittgenstein’s views when he gives us, in his first paper, long quotations from Wittgenstein, and numerous citations to texts of Wittgenstein. When, Winter says, he referred to “‘the Wittgensteinian,’ the careful reader will have discerned, I trust, that this was not old Ludwig himself but a composite of Bobbitt, Rorty, and Fish as documented by my citations.” I will return to this bizarre alibi in a moment, but for present purposes it really does not matter whether Winter is providing his understanding of Wittgenstein or of Wittgensteinians. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 698

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to scholarly-debate norms around accurate attribution and the ethics of citing authorities in legal theory. — connects to: Winter is not writing about Wittgenstein, but about the Wittgensteinian account, which I fear must mean me.; Winter’s denial may be inconsistent with his own theory of meaning — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 366; Winter insists that ‘[t]he importance and ubiquity of imaginative processes such as metaphor undermine the Wittgensteinian claim that there is no more to meaning than its performative significance within a social practice.’ Is the use of ‘metaphor’ not a social practice?

Related

• Winter is not writing about Wittgenstein, but about the Wittgensteinian account, which I fear must mean me. (similarity 0.89)
• 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 0.88)
• Winter’s denial may be inconsistent with his own theory of meaning (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 0.85)
• 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 0.82)
• Wittgenstein never treated practice as an isolated conceptual primitive (similarity 0.81)
• Ethnophilosophers undermine their own thesis under Wittgenstein-Quine logic (similarity 0.80)
• Wittgenstein denies psychological effects any necessary role in meaning while not denying their reality. (similarity 0.79)
• Wittgenstein’s teaching-by-examples passage actually supports, not refutes, saying things about practices. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• 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… #exemplifies (0.85)