Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 07:49:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lois Shawver <rathbone-AT-crl.com>
Subject: Re: paralogy, art, and Lyotard (repost)



Toni,

Thank you for reposting your note on paralogy.  I'll try to look later 
today at your website that discusses the matter. 

I suppose my own interests gravitate more to the epistemological issues 
involved in Lyotard's work in the Postmodern Condition than towards a 
philosophy of art -- but it will stretch my mind for you to pull the 
topic here towards your own natural interests a bit.  Still, you'll need 
to take the lead.

Remember, though, that "language games" is a technical term in 
Wittgenstein, one of the few.  It does not mean "word games".  
Wittgenstein would not exclude the logical from the realm of "language 
games".  If you have Wittgenstein's Philosophical Inverstigations look at 
aphorism 24, an excerpt of which is:


"Here the term 'language game' is meant to bring into prominence the fact 
that the 'speaking' of language is part of an activity, or form of life.  

Review the multiciplicity of language games in the following examples, 
and in others:
   Giving orders, and obeying them--
   Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements--
   Constructing an object from a description (a draawing)--
   Reporting an event--
   Speculating about an event--
   Forming or tesing a hypothesis--
   Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams--
   Making up a story; and reading it--
   Play-acting--
   Singing catches--
   Guessing riddles--
   Making riddles--
   Making a joke; telling it--
   Solving a problem in practical arithmetic--
   Translating from one languge into another--
   Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. "

Wittgenstein also uses the word "language game" to refer to "primitive 
language games" which are imaginative language systems that are 
simplified to aid us in thought experiments, and he uses the term to 
refer to the whole of a living language.  

I have rather presumed that Lyotard, reading Wittgenstein, is using the 
term "language games" in this Wittgensteinian way.  I wonder though.  I 
will look today.  (Will some of you look with me?)  Is Lyotard thinking 
of "language games" as that which is restricted to paralogical reasoning 
(as opposed to things like stating and testing hypotheses or deduction, 
solving problems in arithmetic, etc.?  If so, then Lyotard is falling 
into a common misunderstanding of what Wittgenstein meant by language 
games -- although his revision of the concept may be useful and 
legitimate within the Lyotardian system of thought.  

So, what do folks here think?

..Lois Shawver