Note on language and reality, practices and things

Abstract

The paper explores the relation between language and reality from a particular point of view, which I call practical-poietic, that of our practical, material, social, productive, entanglement with the world, with practices and artifacts. It focuses mainly and critically on a Wittgensteinean (anti-referentialist, and considered here as linguocentric) position about the topic, although considering also, very briefly, a Peircean, alternative position, built around  the notion of mediation, and an anti-essentialist position about mind, based on ordinary language. That is done with an eye on overcoming “linguocentric” – post linguistic turn – philosophy, in favor of a “practical-materialist” position, of which are part, together with more presuppositions, the idea of human action as poiesis, the idea of belief as a habit of action, and the idea of the notion of a thing as essentially apprehending its sensible effects. Which entails a certain practical realism and a material perspectivism, together with implications for our understanding of language and reality, but also of meaning, action, knowledge, etc. Reflecting both influences of pragmatism and of a certain Marxian inspiration, reinterpreted, it understands forms of life as involving a material culture, as a whole of material-spiritual production that includes people, objects, objectivations – and language.