What were the contributions & claims made by Ludwig Wittgenstein and what was his (Wittgenstein's) background?

Question

What were the contributions & claims made by Ludwig Wittgenstein and what was his (Wittgenstein's) background?

Answer 1

He wrote quite a lot of things about logic and the philosophy of mind, but, as I see him, he's most famous for his contributions to philosophy of language (linguistics).

Wittgenstein came up with the idea of "language games". According to the theory, all philosophical problems buckled down to elaborate word games and confusion over terms. The example he uses is trying to define the term "game" where we ultimately fail because no matter what working definition we give it it ultimately fails to describe what we mean by a "game".

Ultimately, for Wittgenstein, we are all engaged in language games with one another stemming from culture, profession, time period, etc...etc... and all debate and confusion comes from trying to apply natural language to issues of religion, metaphysics, truth, knowledge or ethics.

This idea lead naturally to what Wittgenstein called "form of life". In this, he held that we are all members of groups that, knowingly or tacitly, consent to certain agreements as to what different words mean. An important example he provides and discusses at length is the religious "form of life". He held that religious circles are engaged in their own language game with it's own rules and internal logic. Problems, for Wittgenstein, arise when different "forms of life" attempt to interpret and interact with one another. Different forms of life are logically cut off from one another, self-referential, and (controversally) cannot be criticised by another form of life...

Hope some of that helps a bit!