Schemaspiele

Abstract

AbstractThe title of “Schema Games” is certainly insinuated by Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of “Language Games” as a social practice and “life forms” and “Gepflogenheiten” (usages), social practices, action forms and mores and institutions. However, in this article Wittgenstein’s conception is extended to forms of not only language usages and actions but also any form of modeling, structuring and scheme activation in cognition and action as well as subconscious, even neuro-physiologically activated networking and modeling processes. Schemes, schematization and scheme activations as well as reactivations are decisive for any stabilization of meanings, opinions, mental episodes as well as actions, social or individual. There is no cognition or action or thinking and speaking without the activation and reactivation of schemes on different levels.Wittgenstein’s approach of a pragmatic and social practice of language games and life forms based on common and repeated usages of special cases of scheme activations and processes of interpretative constructions (interpretative constructs) may also methodologically be analyzed on different levels, even subconscious ones, to grasp or to constitute cognitive and action-like activities. Active formation and usages play a fundamental and pragmatic role, not only according to Kant under his categories but after Wittgenstein and the present methodological approach in a more flexible way - somewhat like Wittgenstein’s “language games” approach. Not only socially based speech forms and actions as well as “life forms” are dependent on active pragmatic scheme interpretations, but also already many basic processes of representing, cognizing, acting, mustering and modeling, even on subconscious neuronal levels. Any cognition and action whatsoever is scheme-dependent, produced by scheme-interpretative activity on user-oriented and a socio-pragmatic, or even institutionalized basis. Not only do language games rely on scheme activations, but they are, methodologically speaking, special cases of these forms of activation. Thus, the parallelism between “language games” and life forms in Wittgenstein’s sense and “schema games” on the basis of methodological scheme-interpretationism seems to be well-founded.