The Imbalance of Furniture and Meaning (an Exposition of Wittgenstein's Views on Language)

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Andy Masarik/ Philosophy 409 In section 79 of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes: "I use the name 'N' without a fixed meaning. (But that detracts as little from its usefulness, as it detracts from that of a table that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes wobbles.)" What does Wittgenstein mean by this? (And what's the table metaphor all about?) What would it be for a name to have a fixed meaning, in this sense? Is the thought that names do not have a fixed meaning, in Wittgenstein's sense, consistent with some version of the causal picture of reference? Why or why not? The Imbalance of Furniture and Meaning First off, the two terms doing most of the work in this passage are ‘usefulness’ and ‘fixed meaning.’ It would therefore be very appropriate to gesture at some of the things Wittgenstein might mean in his employment of each term. For something to be useful, or rather for the employment of a name ‘N’ to be useful, would seem to mean that the speaker’s employment of the name in the context of a language game would yield some desired result. If person A enters into a language game with the intention of identifying an object to person B, then a useful application of a name would be one which allows the person B to identify the object at which person A was hinting. Anytime a name allows for one of our typical jobs of language to be successful – this is when we can say that the application of the name is useful. For the meaning of a name to be ‘fixed,’ Wittgenstein suggests that the meaning would have stringent necessary and sufficient criteria to be met. And this allows us to decisively access the meaning without any doubt. To be clearer, let’s examine what it would take for the meaning of a term like ‘chair’ to be fixed. If I can think of necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s being a chair –

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