New Language Game+ : Digital Humanities for Wittgenstein

Abstract

The object of this study is to utilize data-focused tools to obtain novel insights into the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The project is inspired by the philosopher Mark Alfano (2019). Alfano’s investigation centered on the corpus of Nietzsche and approached it with computational techniques; this is a growing trend in research, loosely termed the “digital humanities.” While Nisioi (2017) maps out key terms in Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus, we work with the Tractatus and extend the analysis to the first part of Wittgenstein’s Logical Investigations. We begin by scraping and cleaning the text from public domain (German) versions of the two texts. Then, we use large language model and Jacqard index analyses to narrow down the terms we were analyzing to three: sinn (“sense”), bedeutung (“meaning”), and satz (“proposition”). Using this data and its visualizations we then return to the text and interpret it using a method similar to Alfano. While we are happy with the results of these calculations and visualizations, the “interpretative” value of the results is ambiguous at best—there are likely some writers for whom Jacqard or LLM-based analysis is enlightening (e.g., Nietzsche), though Wittgenstein doesn’t seem to be one of these.