History, Philosophy, Phineas Upham
By Phineas Upham
There is something about obeying a rule that must refer to the practice of obeying that rule. When a command is issues it does not exist without antecedent and it is not evaluated form a purely rational point of view. Instead it is taken as a part of a whole, where each new order becomes part of the next. “What this shows is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call ‘obeying a rule’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases” (Inv. 201). The practice of obeying a rule is not a one-time event and does not consist of a logical interpretation of the one valid meaning of the command. Instead it consists of habit and proactive and expectations. These customs and practices are not challenged or even fully conscious. They simply exist as the context in which we live and act. “Let’s not forget not forget that a word hasn’t got a meaning given to it, as if it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what the words really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it.” (Blue Book, 28). Further, “in general we don’t use language according to strict rules – it hasn’t been taught to by means of strict rules wither.” (Blue Book, 25). Language is merely a custom, not so very different from any other custom or game. “To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (uses, institutions). To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to master a technique.” (Investigations, 199).
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