AHTI-VEIKKO PIETARINEN Universityof Helsinki, Finland Logic, Language Games and Ludics Wittgenstein's language games can be put into a wider service by virtue of elements they share with some contemporary opinions concerning logic and the semantics of computa- tion. I will give two examples: manifestations of language games and their possible varia- tions in logical studies, and their role in some of the recent developments in computer science. It turns out that the current paradigm of computation that Girard termed Ludics bears a striking resemblance to members of language games. Moreover, the kind of in- terrelations that are emerging could be scrutinised from the viewpoint of fogic that virtually necessitates game-theoretic conceptualisations, demonstrating the fact that the meaning of utterances may, in many situations, be understood as Wittgenstein's language games of "showing or telling what one sees'. This provides motivation for the use of games in re- lation to logic and formal semantics that some commentators have called for. Many of the ideas can be traced to C.S. Peirce, for whom signs were vehicles of strategic com- munication. The conclusion about Wittgenstein is that the notions of saying and showing converge in his late philosophy. Keywords: Wittgenstein, logic, language games, computation, Ludics, Peirce 1. The making of language games The first pages of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations introduce the language game in order to show that the words of a text or a complete primi- tive language derive their meaning from the role they have in certain non- linguistic activities that he decided to call games. For Wittgenstein, the foun- dational purpose of games was not something that could be found in logic or language. He considered them conceptually prior to such symbolic codes, ac- tivities from which logic and language derived their meaning. His Nachlass, a Acta Analytica, Volume 18 - Issue 30/31, 2003; pp. 89-123