A DILEMMA

Activity is central to Wittgenstein's account of meaning, whether or not that account is a theory, description, therapy or, simply, an investigation. But what kind of activity plays this foundational role – Im Anfang war die Tat? Philosophical Investigations describes many activities: buying apples, fetching building blocks, referring to objects, naming, continuing a series and, of course, learning how to continue a series, learning the meaning of a word. My primary focus in this essay is on learning. When I ask ‘What's doing?’, what I'm interested in is the activity that makes someone a language learner. What must we be able to do in order to be language learners?

If the activities that figure in Wittgenstein's descriptions of language learning are the activities of meaningful language use there will be no interesting explanatory answer to the above question. The activities of the language learner will be activities that already place them within the practice of language use. The learner's activities will not provide an entry into language, for they presuppose linguistic competence. Alternatively, for any account of activities that characterize a language learner where those activities fall outwith the practice of meaningful language use, it is tempting to think that an insurmountable bootstrapping problem faces any attempt to show how, on the basis of these rudimentary activities, one can explain entry into the full-blown intentional actions of concept-using subjects. This dilemma faces anyone trying to give an explanatory account of learning.