Dissolve disagreements by asking how a word is used

Two people argue for twenty minutes about whether the kitchen is “clean”. One means: no dishes in the sink. The other means: counters wiped, floor swept, nothing sticky. Neither is lying, neither is stupid, and the argument cannot be settled by staring harder at the kitchen. It can be settled, or at least calmed, by noticing that the word “clean” is doing two different jobs.

This is the everyday core of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. In the Philosophical Investigations he suggests that, for a large class of cases, the meaning of a word is its use in the language. If that is right, a lot of disagreement is not about the world at all. It is about which use of a word is in play.

Die Bedeutung eines Wortes ist sein Gebrauch in der Sprache.

The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

Philosophical Investigations §43

Why words cause quarrels

Wittgenstein compared words to the tools in a toolbox: a hammer, pliers, a saw, glue (PI §11). The handles look alike, the jobs are completely different. He called language together with the activities it is woven into a language game (PI §7). “Fair” means one thing in a football match, another when a parent splits a cake, another again in a pay negotiation.

Trouble starts when we forget this. We assume a word must have one real meaning, and that whoever uses it differently has got it wrong. Wittgenstein's own targets were philosophers doing this with words like “knowledge”, “being” or “object”. His remedy was modest:

Wir führen die Wörter von ihrer metaphysischen, wieder auf ihre alltägliche Verwendung zurück.

What we do is bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

Philosophical Investigations §116

You do not need to be doing metaphysics to need this. A word turns “metaphysical” whenever we treat it as if it had one fixed essence, detached from any situation: “freedom”, “respect”, “done”, “honest”, “natural”.

An exercise: the use check

Next time a discussion goes round in circles, try these steps. They take a minute and work best when you do them out loud and without irony.

1. Find the hinge word. Which word keeps coming back? Often it is the word both sides are most attached to.
2. Ask for a case, not a definition. “Can you give me an example of something you would call finished?” Definitions tend to be abstract and defensive. Cases show the use.
3. Ask for a borderline case. “Would this still count?” Where your answers diverge, you have found the difference in use.
4. Ask what follows. In a language game, words are tied to actions. If the report is “done”, what happens next: does it go to the client, or to a colleague for review?
5. Name both uses. “So for you, done means ready to send; for me it means a first full draft.” Now you can decide which use you need here, instead of fighting over who owns the word.

Everyday examples

At work

A manager says a project is “a priority”. The team hears “drop everything”, the manager meant “somewhere in the top five”. A developer calls a feature “done”, the product owner hears “tested and live”. Many software teams write an explicit “definition of done” for exactly this reason. That is Wittgenstein in practice: fixing a use for a particular purpose, without pretending it is the one true meaning.

In relationships

“You never listen” is rarely about the word “never” in its logical sense. Asking “when did you feel unheard?” moves from a verdict to a case. The point is not to win on a technicality (“I listened on Tuesday!”), which would be a misuse of the method, but to see what the sentence is doing. Often it is a request, not a report.

Online

Threads about “free speech” or “censorship” often stall because one side uses the words legally (what the state may forbid) and the other socially (what a platform or an employer tolerates). One reply, “do you mean the law or the platform's rules?”, can do more than ten paragraphs of counter-argument.

With children and students

“That's not fair!” from a child is worth taking seriously as language. Does it mean “not equal”, “not what you promised” or “not what I wanted”? Children learn words by using them in games and routines, as Wittgenstein stresses at the start of the Investigations, and asking them for examples is how they learn to sharpen their own words. In class, asking what an exam word is doing (“discuss”, “explain”, “evaluate”) is the same move.

What this method cannot do

Be honest about the limits. Some disagreements survive every clarification. Two people can agree completely on what “fair” means in a pay negotiation and still want different outcomes. Conflicts of interest, of values or of facts are not dissolved by looking at grammar. Wittgenstein never claimed they were. His remarks were aimed at philosophical confusion, and he insisted there is not one method in philosophy but several, like different therapies (PI §133). The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a clear overview of this later method.

The use check can also be abused. “It depends what you mean by...” can be a way of dodging a fair question. If you catch yourself reaching for it to avoid admitting something, stop. The aim is shared clarity, not an escape hatch.

And this is not therapy or mediation in the professional sense. A long-running conflict in a couple, a family or a team may need someone trained for it. What Wittgenstein offers is a habit of attention: before deciding who is right, look at how the words are being used. Often the quarrel was never quite where you thought it was. For the background, see meaning is use and philosophy as therapy, or the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Wittgenstein.