6,094
edits
Blue Book: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 420: | Line 420: | ||
Thus the proposition “A has a gold tooth” and “A has toothache” are not used analogously. They differ in their grammar where at first sight they might not seem to differ. | Thus the proposition “A has a gold tooth” and “A has toothache” are not used analogously. They differ in their grammar where at first sight they might not seem to differ. | ||
As to the use of the word “imagine” – one might say: “Surely there is quite a definite act of imagining the other person to have pain”. Of course we don't deny this, or any other statement about facts. But let us see: If we make an image of the other person's pain, do we apply it in the same way in which we apply the image, say, of a black eye, when we imagine the other person having one? Let us again replace imagining, in the ordinary sense, by making a painted image | As to the use of the word “imagine” – one might say: “Surely there is quite a definite act of imagining the other person to have pain”. Of course we don't deny this, or any other statement about facts. But let us see: If we make an image of the other person's pain, do we apply it in the same way in which we apply the image, say, of a black eye, when we imagine the other person having one? Let us again replace imagining, in the ordinary sense, by making a painted image. (This could quite well be ''the'' way certain beings did their imagining.) Then let a man imagine in this way that A has a black eye. A very important application of this picture will be comparing it with the real eye to see if the picture is correct. When we vividly imagine that someone suffers pain, there often enters in our image what one might call a shadow of a pain felt in the locality corresponding to that in which we say his pain is felt. But the sense in which an image is an image is determined by the way in which it is compared with reality. This we might call the method of projection. Now think of comparing an image of A's toothache with his {{BBB TS reference|Ts-309,89}} toothache. How would you compare them? If you say, you compare them “indirectly” via his bodily behaviour, I answer that this means you ''don't'' compare them as you compare the picture of his behaviour with his behaviour. | ||
Again, when you say, “I grant you that you can't ''know'' when A has pain, you can only conjecture it”, you don't see the difficulty which lies in the different uses of the words “conjecturing” and “knowing”. What sort of impossibility were you referring to when you said you ''couldn't'' know? Weren't you thinking of a case analogous to that when one couldn't know whether the other man had a gold tooth in his mouth because he had his mouth shut? Here what you didn't know, you could nevertheless imagine to know; it made sense to say that you saw that tooth although you didn't see it; or rather, it makes sense to say that you don't see his tooth and therefore it also makes sense to say that you do. When on the other hand, you granted me that a man can't ''know'' whether the other person has pain, you do not wish to say that as a matter of fact people didn't know, but that it made no sense to say they knew (and therefore no sense to say they don't know). If therefore in this case you use the term “conjecture” or “believe”, you don't use it as opposed to “know”. That is, you did not state that knowing was a goal which you could not reach, and that you have to be contented with conjecturing; rather, there is no goal in this game. Just as when one says “You can't count through the whole {{BBB TS reference|Ts-309,90}} series of cardinal numbers”, one doesn't state a fact about human frailty but about a convention which we have made. Our statement is not comparable, though always falsely compared, with such a one as “it is impossible for a human being to swim across the Atlantic”; but it ''is'' analogous to a statement like “there is no goal in an endurance race”. And this is one of the things which the person feels dimly who is not satisfied with the explanation that though you can't know … you can conjecture …. | Again, when you say, “I grant you that you can't ''know'' when A has pain, you can only conjecture it”, you don't see the difficulty which lies in the different uses of the words “conjecturing” and “knowing”. What sort of impossibility were you referring to when you said you ''couldn't'' know? Weren't you thinking of a case analogous to that when one couldn't know whether the other man had a gold tooth in his mouth because he had his mouth shut? Here what you didn't know, you could nevertheless imagine to know; it made sense to say that you saw that tooth although you didn't see it; or rather, it makes sense to say that you don't see his tooth and therefore it also makes sense to say that you do. When on the other hand, you granted me that a man can't ''know'' whether the other person has pain, you do not wish to say that as a matter of fact people didn't know, but that it made no sense to say they knew (and therefore no sense to say they don't know). If therefore in this case you use the term “conjecture” or “believe”, you don't use it as opposed to “know”. That is, you did not state that knowing was a goal which you could not reach, and that you have to be contented with conjecturing; rather, there is no goal in this game. Just as when one says “You can't count through the whole {{BBB TS reference|Ts-309,90}} series of cardinal numbers”, one doesn't state a fact about human frailty but about a convention which we have made. Our statement is not comparable, though always falsely compared, with such a one as “it is impossible for a human being to swim across the Atlantic”; but it ''is'' analogous to a statement like “there is no goal in an endurance race”. And this is one of the things which the person feels dimly who is not satisfied with the explanation that though you can't know … you can conjecture …. | ||