Warren Goldfarb, "I Want You to Bring Me A Slab: Remarks on the Opening Sections of the Philosophical Investigations"

The opening sections of the Investigations aim to reveal a groundless and usually unnoticed move from commonplace observations about meaning to the beginning of philosophical debates about theories of meaning. "Wittgenstein wishes to snap such debates off before they begin by showing at the start that we have misread the facts" (p. 280).