Wittgenstein is the end-of-game boss in a philosophy degree. Like most bosses, not the toughest moment for most people – that would be the Kant level, or the nightmarish Hegel. But they save him till last because if you were taught him first, you’d quite reasonably get pretty frustrated with everyone else. Wittgenstein solved philosophy, so the arguments of his predecessors are completely trivial once you understand his method.

It was basically this: words don’t mean things. They’re just sounds and shapes we use. To learn how to use them, we learn how they’re used. They don’t have to be nametags hanging off objects real or imagined. Wittgenstein tried to show why it was impossible to coherently understand words as names, referrers and signifiers. But he needn’t – the superiority of his account of language is obvious the second you take it for a spin in philosophy. It just solves everything.

Consider a Christian who believes in evolution. Only the truly crazy ones don’t. This Christian – Christian, we’ll call him – thinks that while humans came about through natural selection, God is evidenced in all these stunningly complex organisms that came about; particularly humans. God is the design, the intelligence in these ecological systems, the grand masterplan into which they all neatly fit.

The response from a God-hating atheist like me, under Wittgenstein’s understanding of language, is “Whatever, man.” You say God, I say potato. I don’t have to accept the existence of some wishy-washy personification to understand what you’re saying. Hell, I agree with it. I don’t use the word God, but I’d have no objection to doing so if it makes you more comfortable. If I’d been brought up by religious people, I already would. But my understanding of the world would be functionally identical. This word God has use, for Christian, but whatever meaning he perceives in it is not a pre-requisite for understanding what he says, and believing it yourself, so long as you see the way he uses it.

Similarly, if a less scientifically minded Christian – let’s call him Idiotson – says “Homosexuality is wrong”, I don’t feel the need to argue the point. Wrong is not some Platonic form hanging out there in conceptual space – I am not concerned with its meaning and whether or not it’s been correctly applied. Its use is that we attach it to things we think the world would be better without. Each of us uses it very differently, and Idiotson’s sentence is the same as saying “Ick!” at the sight of men kissing. There’s no need to argue with ‘Ick’. It’s not a claim, and neither is “Homosexuality is wrong.” A widely respected proponent of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, Geoffrey Lebowski, famously put it best: