Wittgenstein’s Central Point

#Wittgenstein‘s central point is that the meaning of a word is its use in language. If I say “pick up the red apple,” you know what I mean because the language is functional. If I say “what is the soul?” then we have philosophical problem on our hands. Wittgenstein believed that such questions were nonsense. Our approach to understanding the physical world consists in asking questions about the nature of phenomenon and we encounter. A questions like, what is red?, can be answered somewhat satisfactorily by giving an account of radiation, wavelengths, the way our eyes function and so forth. We seem to be able to give an explanation. When we apply similar questions to more abstract objects or concepts or to more fundamental phenomenon we find that no good explanation can be given. We have reached the limits of language. Yet philosophers try to reach further by creating grand theoretical frameworks aimed at somehow accessing reality as it really is. The misapplication of questions was something Wittgenstein called the theoretical attitude. When asking such a question we want the answer to give some new insight into the object. The best we can do is to give an account of how the word is used in the language, an ostensive definition. We want something deeper but you simply cannot go beneath language. This view either does away with Platonism (the assertion that abstract objects and concepts like numbers and goodness exist independently of the human mind) or shows that language is limited in its ability to describe the platonic realm. Therefore Wittgenstein’s philosophy dissolves much of philosophy by declaring the questions nonsense.