Perceptual betrothal
I sometimes worry that I'll have a decent idea in a paper for class and then never pursue it, ultimately forgetting about it completely. In order to hasten the process (since when once brought out, I can never bear again to look on something I've written, generally), I'm just going to reproduce here the last few sentences of a paper I recently got back, written about Wittgenstein's use of "grammar", which few sentences received the comment "Nice. Tell me more" (and in such a great font—the comment, I mean, which was separately typed).
While Wittgenstein does acknowledge that we can introduce new ways of talking, it is often with disapproval, as when discussing unconscious toothaches and purely transitive fearing (Blue & Brown Books, pp 22–3). This leads to the correctness
view of grammar, which, on the other hand, conflicts with Wittgenstein's many dicta about philosophy not altering language or, for that matter, much of anything at all. To act as patrolman of our linguistic practices would interfere with the actual use of language
, which philosophy is not to do (PI, §124). And although we are currently in the grip of a grammatical picture, and although Wittgenstein wants to deliver us from it into a different grammatical picture, he seems to think that the new one will be better: we are taking glasses off (§103), not getting a new pair. It may be here that the proof of the glasses is in the seeing, though, and that, attentive to the features Wittgenstein is at least calling grammatical, we find ourselves free from our previous perplexities. But that approaches an idealization of language, albeit not a logical one.