“Bring Me an Apple!”. Wittgenstein on Meaning, Customs and Training

This paper explores remarks in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy that implicitly engage with contemporary reflections on habits, customs, and practices. It begins by presenting his idea that our diverse activities, ranging from following rules to playing chess, constitute customs that we learn through training, much like animals. It then traces how the theme of training emerges from the outset of the Philosophical Investigations, particularly in relation to meaning and language learning. As will be shown, for Wittgenstein, learning fundamentally rests not on understanding or explanation, but on training; yet training alone cannot fully account for how practices are learned. It is decisively shaped by both our individual and species-specific nature and is complemented by a ‘feeling’, refined through experience and education, that enables us to recognise when to modify, reinterpret, maintain, or abandon a learned rule, rather than follow it ‘blindly’.