Scrap from a non-existent story

Mon 25 May 2015 10:09 AM

Another scrap of paper unearthed by the process of moving.

All of the fictional parts of this story are made up, because that is what it means to be fictional. All of the true parts correctly describe the world as it really is, because that is what it means to be true. What more would you expect? These are words, and they mean what they mean.

Things are never so simple (one might object) because meanings themselves are complex things produced by the give-and-take of language. Meanings are produced by talk and by books, as much as talk and books depend on language. What words mean depend on how we use them. Reality is not like that -- what a stone is and how much it weighs do not depend on how we use it.

I'm not sure when I wrote this, exactly. Perhaps it's a section of Philosophical Investigations in the possible world where Wittgenstein was a novelist.