Brown Book: Difference between revisions

Thus also, acting voluntarily (or involuntarily) is, in many cases, characterized as such by a multitude of circumstances under which the action takes place rather than by an experience which we should call characteristic of voluntary action. And in this sense it is true to say that what happened when I got out of bed – when I should certainly not call it involuntary – was that I found myself getting up. Or rather, this is a {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,126}} possible case; for of course every day something different happens.

Now the use of the word “particular” is apt to produce a kind of delusion and roughly speaking this delusion is produced by the double usage of this word. On the one hand, we may say, it is used preliminary to a specification, description, comparison; on the other hand, as what one might describe as an emphasis. The first usage I shall call the transitive one, the second the intransitive one. Thus, on the one hand I say, “This face gives me a particular impression which I can't describe.” The latter sentence may mean something like: “This face gives me a strong impression.” These examples would perhaps be more striking if we substituted the word “peculiar” for “particular”, for the same applies || same comments apply to “peculiar”. If I say, “This soap has a peculiar smell: it is the kind we used as children”, the word “peculiar” may be used merely as an introduction to the comparison which follows it, as though I said, “I'll tell you what this soap smells like: … .” If on the other hand, I say, “This soap has a ''peculiar'' smell!” or “It has a most peculiar smell”, “peculiar” here stands for some such expression as “out of the ordinary”, “uncommon”, “striking”.

We distinguish seeing a drawing as a face and seeing it as something else or as “mere dashes.” And we also distinguish between superficially glancing at a drawing (seeing it as a face), and letting the face make its full impression on us. But it would be queer to say: “I am letting the face make ''a particular'' impression on me”, (except in such cases in which you can say that you can let the same face make different impressions on you). And in letting the face impress itself on me and contemplating its “particular impression”, no two things of the multiplicity of a face are compared with each other; there is only ''one'' which is laden with emphasis. Absorbing its expression, I don't find a prototype of this expression in my mind; rather, I, as it were, cut a seal from || after the impression.

We may shed light on all these considerations if we compare what happens when we remember the face of someone who enters our room, when we recognize him as Mr. So-and-so, – when we compare what really happens in such cases with the representation we are sometimes inclined to make of the events. {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,137}} For here we are often obsessed by a primitive conception, viz., that we are comparing the man we see with a memory image in our mind and we find the two to agree. I.e., we are representing “recognizing someone” as a process of identification by means of a picture (as a criminal is identified by his photo.) I needn't say that in most cases in which we recognize someone no comparison between him and a mental picture takes place. We are, of course, tempted to give this description by the fact that there are memory images. Very often, for instance, such an image comes before our mind immediately ''after'' having recognized someone. I see him as he stood when we last saw each other ten years ago.

But let us look at an example; consider this language-game: A sends B to various houses in their town to fetch goods of various sorts from various people. A gives B various lists. On top of every list he puts a scribble, and B is trained to go to that house on the door of which he finds the same scribble, this is the name of the house. In the first column of every list he then finds one or more scribbles which he has been taught to read out. When he enters the house he calls out these words, and every inhabitant of the house has been trained to run up to him when a certain one of these sounds is called out, these sounds are the names of the people. He then addresses himself to each one of them in turn and shews to each two {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,147}} consecutive scribbles which stand on the list against his name. The first of these two, people of that town have been trained to associate with some particular kind of object, say, apples. The second is one of a row || series of scribbles which each man carries about him on a slip of paper. The person thus addressed fetches, say, five apples. The first scribble was the generic name of the objects required, the second, the name of their number.

Look into this language-game and see if you can find the mysterious relation of the object and its name. – The relation of name and object we may say, consists in a scribble being written on an object (or some other such very trivial relation), and that's all there is to it. But we are not satisfied with that, for we feel that a scribble written on an object in itself is of no importance to us, and interests us in no way. And this is true; the whole importance lies in the particular use {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,148}} we make of the scribble written on the object, and we, in a sense, simplify matters by saying that the name has a peculiar relation to its object, a relation other than that, say, of being written on the object, or of being spoken by a person pointing to an object with his finger. A primitive philosophy condenses the whole usage of the name into the idea of a relation, which thereby becomes a mysterious relation. (Compare the ideas of mental activities, wishing, believing, thinking etc., which for the same reason have something mysterious and inexplicable about them.)

Consider this example: You tell me to write a few lines, and while I am doing so you ask, “Do you feel something in your hand || notice a feeling in your hand while you are writing?” I say, “Yes, I have a peculiar feeling.” – Can't I say to myself when I write, “I have ''this'' feeling”? Of course I can say it, and while saying “this feeling”, I concentrate on the feeling. – But what do I do with this sentence? What use is it to me? It seems that I am pointing out to myself what I am feeling, – as though my act of concentration was an “inward” act of pointing, one which no one else but me is aware of, this however is unimportant. But I don't point to the feeling by attending to it. Rather, attending to the feeling means producing or modifying it. (On the other hand, observing a chair does not mean producing or modifying the chair.)

“Surely it makes sense to say what I see, and how better {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,151}} could I do this than by letting what I see speak for itself!”

What has to be explained is this: Why do we talk to our impression? – You read, put yourself into a state of attention || particular state of attention and say: “Something peculiar happens undoubtedly.” You are inclined to go on: “There is a certain smoothness about it”; but you feel that this is only an inadequate description and that the experience can only stand for itself. “Something peculiar happens undoubtedly” is like saying, “I have had an experience.” But you don't wish to make a general statement independent of the particular experience you have had but rather a statement into which this experience enters.

When you read, as it were attending closely to what happened when you read || in reading, you seemed to be observing reading as under a magnifying glass and to see the reading process. (But the case is more like that of observing something through a coloured glass.) You think you have noticed the process of reading, the particular way in which signs are translated || pass over into spoken words.