Schlick and Wittgenstein on games and ethics

Abstract

In conversations with Schlick and Waismann from June to December 1930, Wittgenstein began to turn his attention to the topic of games. This topic also centrally concerned Schlick. In his earliest philosophical output, Schlick had relied on the results of evolutionary biology in setting out an account of the emergence of the human species' ability to play [Spiel] as a prerequisite for the genesis of scientific knowledge. Throughout his subsequent works, one finds fragmentary appeals to this early view, for example in his oft‐misunderstood claim that play constitutes the meaning of life. Wittgenstein's turn to the topic of games in 1930 not only happened while Professor Schlick was in the room but was also coupled with an explicit response to Schlick's 1930 book Fragen der Ethik. Schlick here employs the example of chess to distinguish between rules and their application—a distinction that underlies his whole attempt to naturalise ethics as a descriptive psycho‐sociological discipline. This paper investigates the relation between Wittgenstein's and Schlick's accounts of games in the light of Wittgenstein's criticisms of Schlick's ethics. Wittgenstein's objections can be answered by taking Schlick's theory of play into consideration.