* Because The Investigations’ prose is extremely gnomic and opaque and consists largely of Wittgenstein having weird little imaginary dialogues with himself, the quotations here are actually from Norman Malcolm’s definitive paraphrase of L.W.’s argument, in which paraphrase Dr. Malcolm uses single quotation marks for tone quotes and double quotation marks for when he’s actually quoting Wittgenstein — which, when I myself am quoting Malcolm quoting Wittgenstein’s tone quotes, makes for a rather irksome surfeit of quotation marks, admittedly; but using Malcolm’s exegesis allows this interpolative demonstration to be about 60 percent shorter than it would be if we were to grapple with Wittgenstein directly. (back to text)
* There’s a whole argument for this, but intuitively you can see that it makes sense: if the rules can’t be subjective, and if they’re not actually “out there” floating around in some kind of metaphysical hyperreality (a floating hyperreality that you can believe in if you wish, but you should know that people with beliefs like this usually get forced to take medication), then community consensus is really the only plausible option left. (back to text)
*(The above, while true, is an obvious attempt to preempt readerly sneers/winces at the term’s continued deployment in this article.)(back to text)
* (Plus, because the teacher-Them are tall humorless punishers/rewarders, they come to stand for all adults and — in a shadowy, inchoate way — for the Parents, whose gradual shift from composing Us to defining Them is probably the biggest ideological adjustment of childhood.) (back to text)
* (That is, the teacher-/parent-Them becomes the Establishment, Society — Them becomes THEM.)(back to text)
