Philosophical Investigations

A posthumously published work by Ludwig Wittgenstein that examines language, meaning, rule-following, and philosophical confusion through numbered remarks.

Language-game: A practice in which words are used within activities governed by shared conventions. Wittgenstein uses varied language-games to show that words do not all work the same way.
Philosophical method: A systematic way of investigating philosophical problems and evaluating proposed answers. Wittgenstein’s method compares uses of words rather than constructing a general explanatory theory.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: An Austrian-British philosopher whose work reshaped twentieth-century discussions of logic, language, and mind. He composed the remarks and revised the manuscript over many years.
Augustine's theory of language: An account of language learning in which words name objects and speech conveys thought. The book opens by examining this picture as an influential but limited account of language.
Wittgensteinian philosophy: A family of philosophical approaches shaped by Wittgenstein’s investigations of language and practice. The Investigations became a central source for later Wittgensteinian approaches.
Family resemblance: A relation of overlapping similarities among members of a group, without one feature shared by all. The book uses games to illustrate how a concept can lack a single defining essence.
Socratic method: A form of inquiry that tests claims through questions and dialogue. The work’s imagined exchanges resemble questioning, but its aim is often to dissolve a question.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Wittgenstein’s early book presenting a picture theory of language and a logical account of the world. The later work challenges assumptions associated with Wittgenstein’s earlier account of language.
Picture theory of language: The view that meaningful propositions represent possible states of affairs by sharing logical form. The later work moves beyond the representational model developed in the Tractatus.
Philosophy of mind: The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of mental states, consciousness, and their relation to the body. Its remarks about sensation, intention, and inner experience reshaped debates about mental concepts.

Linked from 4 pages

Logical atomismCompared with: It marks Wittgenstein’s departure from the early picture theory associated with logical atomism.