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If the word "chair" packed a punch

Image result for comfy chair drawing


If the word "chair" packed an emotional punch: if for example, people measured their neighbor's worth by the number of chairs owned, considering it a disgrace even to visit a house with an inadequate number of chairs, then there would of course be lots of disputes over the meaning of the word.

What exactly is a chair? As a first approximation, we might define a chair as a piece of furniture designed to seat one person. But this counts a stool as a chair, and that might be controversial. In our hypothetical world, elitists who were proud that they had a lot of chairs in their homes might resent the poseurs who boost their numbers by bringing in inexpensive stools.

As a more demanding definition: a chair might be defined as a piece of furniture, defined with a single seat, that is also supplied with a back. But does it need to have arms as well? Is it something that looks a lot like the paradigmatic chair portrayed above?

There might be semantic pressure in the opposite direction, from populists proud of their sparsely furnished homes who think their sofas and love seats ought to count. Why aren't they chairs? Is the one-person requirement arbitrary?

This is an example of what Ludwig Wittgenstein called a "language game." It isn't one of his examples (he did have an example involving a chair, but he developed it along different lines from those above). Still: the above is a fair example of the style of his thought. I believe that it is likewise fair to say that through the growth of his understanding of the game-like nature of any human language, he freed himself from the logical positivism/atomism of his early phase, that of the Tractatus.

Now, excuse me, I'm trying to remember the right verb for the act of presiding over a meeting. And is the word the same even if the presiding official is standing the whole time?  
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  1. HenryJuly 25, 2015 at 6:29 AM

    Christopher,

    As I am sure you know, but do not make clear, Wittgenstein thought the sort of questions you ask about chairs to be misguided. He claimed that abstract concepts such as "chair," "game," "truth," or "beauty" cannot be defined by a set of necessary or sufficient conditions--in other words, by listing their features (in the case of a chair: legs, back, seat, and so forth). The meaning of an abstract concept is its use: A chair is whatever we as a group would call a chair. (And we certainly call some things without arms "chairs.")

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  2. ChristopherJuly 25, 2015 at 9:26 PM

    Henry, that is certainly true and I should have been clear about Ludwig's attitude toward this sort of dispute. Thanks.

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