CONCEPT
Meaning as Use
Wittgenstein's foundational later thesis — for a large class of cases, the meaning of a word is its use in the language — and the philosophical axis on which the AI language moment turns.
The later Wittgenstein's most famous formulation appears at Philosophical Investigations §43: for a large class of cases — though not all — the meaning of a word is its use in the language. The thesis replaces reference, mental image, and logical form as candidates for what meaning is. A word means what it does within the practices in which it is employed. This is not relativism; use is governed by the community's shared practices, not by individual whim. But meaning is not a property the word has in isolation. It is a pattern of behavior the word participates in — a pattern that can be examined, described, and learned, but not reduced to a definition.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The thesis is the engine of the later philosophy. Every other concept — language game, family resemblances, forms of life, rule-following — elaborates it. If meaning is use, then understanding a word is