> Wittgenstein invites readers to imagine a community in which the individuals each have a box containing a "beetle". "No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle."
> If the "beetle" had a use in the language of these people, it could not be as the name of something – because it is entirely possible that each person had something completely different in their box, or even that the thing in the box constantly changed, or that each box was in fact empty. The content of the box is irrelevant to whatever language game it is used in.
This doesn't make sense. The hypothesis already states that "beetle" has a use in the language of these people, and that it refers to the contents of each person's box.
That the boxes might have different contents from person to person or from time to time isn't an obstacle to that; most words can freely refer to different things as long as those different things have some similarity (such as being located within a special box). Does "salary" refer to a thing? Does "pet"? Does "sister"? How about "lucky charm"? Are these things the same for everyone, because they are referred to by the same words?
The closest analogy, of course, is "soul", but while souls do not exist, nobody claims that the word doesn't refer to a thing. It refers to a thing that doesn't exist.
> If the "beetle" had a use in the language of these people, it could not be as the name of something – because it is entirely possible that each person had something completely different in their box, or even that the thing in the box constantly changed, or that each box was in fact empty. The content of the box is irrelevant to whatever language game it is used in.
This doesn't make sense. The hypothesis already states that "beetle" has a use in the language of these people, and that it refers to the contents of each person's box.
That the boxes might have different contents from person to person or from time to time isn't an obstacle to that; most words can freely refer to different things as long as those different things have some similarity (such as being located within a special box). Does "salary" refer to a thing? Does "pet"? Does "sister"? How about "lucky charm"? Are these things the same for everyone, because they are referred to by the same words?
The closest analogy, of course, is "soul", but while souls do not exist, nobody claims that the word doesn't refer to a thing. It refers to a thing that doesn't exist.