Wittgenstein denies psychological effects any necessary role in meaning while not denying their reality.

Evidence

Remarks like the last may have thrown off readers like Winter. These remarks do not mean that signs have no effect on the mind, nor do they mean that every langnage game is an island without connections to the rest of langnage. If this were so, one could never learn a language. Rather, passages like this are attempts to locate Wittgenstein’s purpose: He is attempting to work out a theory of meaning from a logical point of view, one that does not depend upon any particular empirical stimulus to account for its function. He is not denying reality to psychological effects; he is denying they have any necessary role in meaning. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 740

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what Wittgenstein’s denial of psychological effects in meaning actually asserts — a disambiguation of a common misreading.
• XREF: Distinguishes internal (logical) theories of meaning from causal/empirical theories — connects to philosophy of language debates between truth-conditional and use-based semantics. — connects to: 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.; Wittgenstein conceives language-games as parts of an activity or form of life. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 793; 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 that precedes them. Does anyone think that Wittgenstein would be shattered to be informed of such revelations? Or that it is really ‘news’ that we use knowledge from one domain in assessing another? Or that meaning is dependent on experience? To maintain otherwise would turn autonomy into autism.

Related

• Wittgenstein never treated practice as an isolated conceptual primitive (similarity 0.86)
• Wittgenstein conceives language-games as parts of an activity or form of life. (similarity 0.85)
• 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 0.84)
• Winter is not writing about Wittgenstein, but about the Wittgensteinian account, which I fear must mean me. (similarity 0.84)
• 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 0.83)
• Ethnophilosophers undermine their own thesis under Wittgenstein-Quine logic (similarity 0.83)
• Understanding a linguistic practice does not require understanding larger social practices first. (similarity 0.81)
• Winter misrepresents Wittgenstein by attributing to him a composite of several thinkers’ views. (similarity 0.79)
• Winter’s denial may be inconsistent with his own theory of meaning (similarity 0.79)
• Speaking a language means assuming its entire culture and civilization. (similarity 0.78)

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… #complicates (0.70)
• Wittgenstein conceives language-games as parts of an activity or form of life. #qualifies (0.60) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 793
• 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… #responds-to (0.60)