Brown Book: Difference between revisions

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It is advantageous in treating our problem to consider parallel with the feeling or feelings characteristic for having a certain taste, changing one's taste, meaning what one says, etc. etc. the facial expression (gestures or tone of voice) characteristic for the same states or events. If someone should object, saying that feelings and facial expressions can't be compared, as the former are experiences and the latter aren't, let him consider the muscular, kinaesthetic and tactile experiences bound up with gestures and facial expressions.
It is advantageous in treating our problem to consider parallel with the feeling or feelings characteristic for having a certain taste, changing one's taste, meaning what one says, etc. etc. the facial expression (gestures or tone of voice) characteristic for the same states or events. If someone should object, saying that feelings and facial expressions can't be compared, as the former are experiences and the latter aren't, let him consider the muscular, kinaesthetic and tactile experiences bound up with gestures and facial expressions.


Let us then consider the proposition, “Believing something can not merely consist in saying that you believe it, you must {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,105}} say it with a particular facial expression, gesture, and tone of voice.” Now it cannot be doubted that we regard certain facial expressions, gestures, etc. as characteristic for the expression of belief. We speak of a “tone of conviction”. And yet it is clear that this tone of conviction isn't always present whenever we rightly speak of conviction wherever we should say there was conviction. “Just so”, you might say, “this shews that there is something else, something behind these gestures, etc. which is the real belief as opposed to mere expressions of belief.” – “Not at all”, I should say, “many different criteria distinguish, under different circumstances, cases of believing what you say from those of not believing what you say.” There may be cases where the presence of a sensation other than those bound up with gestures, tone of voice, etc. distinguishes meaning what you say from not meaning it. But sometimes what distinguishes these two is nothing that happens while we speak, but a variety of actions and experiences of different kinds before and after.
Let us then consider the proposition, “Believing something can not merely consist in saying that you believe it, you must {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,105}} say it with a particular facial expression, gesture, and tone of voice.” Now it cannot be doubted that we regard certain facial expressions, gestures, etc. as characteristic for the expression of belief. We speak of a “tone of conviction”. And yet it is clear that this tone of conviction isn't always present whenever we rightly speak of conviction || wherever we should say there was conviction. “Just so”, you might say, “this shews that there is something else, something behind these gestures, etc. which is the real belief as opposed to mere expressions of belief.” – “Not at all”, I should say, “many different criteria distinguish, under different circumstances, cases of believing what you say from those of not believing what you say.” There may be cases where the presence of a sensation other than those bound up with gestures, tone of voice, etc. distinguishes meaning what you say from not meaning it. But sometimes what distinguishes these two is nothing that happens while we speak, but a variety of actions and experiences of different kinds before and after.


To understand this family of cases it will again be helpful to consider an analogous case drawn from facial expressions. There is a family of friendly facial expressions. Suppose we had asked, “What feature is it that characterizes a friendly face?” At first one might think that there are certain traits which one might call friendly traits, each of which makes the face look friendly to a certain degree, and which when present in a large number constitute the friendly expression. This idea would seem to be borne out by our common speech, talking {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,106}} of “friendly eyes”, “friendly mouth”, etc. But it is easy to see that the same eyes of which we say they make a face look friendly, do not look friendly, or even look unfriendly, with certain other wrinkles of the forehead, lines round the mouth, etc. Why then do we ever say that it is these eyes which look friendly? Isn't it wrong to say that they characterize the face as friendly, for if we say they do so “under certain circumstances” (these circumstances being the other features of the face) why did we single out the one feature from amongst the others? The answer is that in the wide family of friendly faces there is what one might call a main branch characterized by a certain kind of eyes, another by a certain kind of mouth, etc.; although in the large family of unfriendly faces we meet these same eyes when they don't mitigate the unfriendliness of the expression. – There is further the fact that when we notice the friendly expression of a face, our attention, our gaze, is drawn to a particular feature in the face, the “friendly eyes” or the “friendly mouth”, etc., and that it does not rest on other features although these too are responsible for the friendly expression.
To understand this family of cases it will again be helpful to consider an analogous case drawn from facial expressions. There is a family of friendly facial expressions. Suppose we had asked, “What feature is it that characterizes a friendly face?” At first one might think that there are certain traits which one might call friendly traits, each of which makes the face look friendly to a certain degree, and which when present in a large number constitute the friendly expression. This idea would seem to be borne out by our common speech, talking {{Brown Book Ts reference|Ts-310,106}} of “friendly eyes”, “friendly mouth”, etc. But it is easy to see that the same eyes of which we say they make a face look friendly, do not look friendly, or even look unfriendly, with certain other wrinkles of the forehead, lines round the mouth, etc. Why then do we ever say that it is these eyes which look friendly? Isn't it wrong to say that they characterize the face as friendly, for if we say they do so “under certain circumstances” (these circumstances being the other features of the face) why did we single out the one feature from amongst the others? The answer is that in the wide family of friendly faces there is what one might call a main branch characterized by a certain kind of eyes, another by a certain kind of mouth, etc.; although in the large family of unfriendly faces we meet these same eyes when they don't mitigate the unfriendliness of the expression. – There is further the fact that when we notice the friendly expression of a face, our attention, our gaze, is drawn to a particular feature in the face, the “friendly eyes” or the “friendly mouth”, etc., and that it does not rest on other features although these too are responsible for the friendly expression.