Brown Book: Difference between revisions

1).  Its function is the communication between a builder A & his man B. B has to reach A building stones. There are cubes, bricks, slabs, beams, columns. The language consists of the words “cube”, “brick”, “slab”, “column”. A calls out one of these words, upon which B brings a stone of a certain shape. Let us imagine a society in which this is the only system of language. The child learns this language from the grown-ups by being trained to its use. I am using the word “trained” in a way strictly analogous to that in which we talk of an animal being trained to do certain things. It is done by means of example, reward, punishment, and such like. Part of this training is that we point to a building stone, direct the attention of the child towards it, & pronounce a word. I will call this procedure demonstrative teaching of words. In the actual

2).  Let us now look at an extension of language 1). The builder's man knows by heart the series of words from one to ten. On being given the order, “Five slabs!”, he goes to where the slabs are kept, says the words from one to five, takes up a plate for each word, & carries them to the builder. Here both the parties use the language by speaking the words. Learning the numerals by heart will be one of the essential features of learning this language. The use of the numerals will again be taught demonstratively. But now the same word, e.g., “three”, will be taught either by pointing to slabs, or to bricks, or to columns, etc. And on the other hand, different numerals, will be taught by pointing to groups of stones of the same shape.

3).  Let us introduce a new instrument of communication, – – a proper name. This is given to a particular object (a particular building stone) by pointing to it and pronouncing the name. If A calls the name, B brings the object. The demonstrative teaching of a proper name is different again from the demonstrative teaching in the cases 1) & 2).

4).  On being ordered “This slab!”, B brings the plate to which A points. On being ordered, “Plate, there!”, he carries a plate to the place indicated. Is the word “there” taught demonstratively? Yes & no! When a person is trained in the use of the word “there”, the teacher will in training him make the pointing gesture and pronounce the word “there”. But should we say that thereby he gives a place the name “there”? Remember that the pointing gesture in this case is part of the practice of communication itself.

5).  Question and answer: A asks, “How many plates?” B counts them and answers with the numeral.

6).  Asking for the name: we introduce new forms of building stones. B points to one of them & asks, “What is this?”; A answers, “This is a … ”. Later on A calls out this new word, say “arch”, & B brings the stone. The words, “This is a … ” together with the pointing gesture we shall call ostensive explanation or ostensive definition. In case 6) a generic name was explained, in actual fact, the name of a shape. But we can ask analogously for the proper name of a particular object, for the name of a colour, of a number || numeral, of a direction.

7).  B has a table in which written signs are placed opposite to pictures of objects (say, a table, a chair, a tea-cup, etc.). A writes one of the signs, B looks for it in the table, looks or points with his finger from the written sign to the picture opposite, & fetches the object which the picture represents.

8).  If in a language-game similar to 1) A calls out an order: “slab, column, brick!” which is obeyed by B by bringing a slab, a column & a brick, we might here talk of three propositions, or of one only. If on the other hand,

9).  the order of words shews B the order in which to bring the building stones, we shall say that A calls out a proposition consisting of three words. If the command in this case took the form, “Slab, then column, then brick!” we should say that it consisted of four words (not of five). Amongst the words we see groups of words with similar functions. We can easily see a similarity in the use of the words “one”, “two”, “three”, etc. & again one in the use of “slab”, “column” & “brick”, etc., & thus we distinguish parts of speech. In 8) all words of the proposition belonged to the same part of speech.

10).  The order in which B had to bring the stones in 9) could have been indicated by the use of the ordinals thus: “Second, column; first, slab; third, brick!”. Here we have a case in which what was the function of the order of words in one language-game is the function of particular words in another.

11).  Consider this variation of our language-game 2). Instead of calling out, “One slab!”, “One cube!”, etc., A just calls “slab!”, “cube!”, etc., the use of the other numerals being as described in 2). Suppose that a man accustomed to this form (11)) of communication was introduced to the use of the word “one” as described in 2). We can easily imagine that he would refuse to classify “one” with the numerals “2”, “3”, etc.

12).  A gives B an order consisting of two written symbols, the first an irregularly shaped patch of a certain colour, say green, the second the drawn outline of a geometrical figure, say a circle. B brings an object of this outline and that colour, say a circular green object.

13).  A gives B an order consisting of one symbol, a geometrical figure painted a particular colour, say a green circle. B brings him a green circular object. In 12) patterns correspond to our names of colours and other patterns to our names of shape. The symbols in 13) cannot be regarded as combinations of two such elements. A word in inverted commas can be called a pattern. Thus in the sentence, “He said, ‘Go to hell’”, ‘Go to hell’ is a pattern of what he said. Compare these cases:

14).  A shews the sample to B, upon which B goes and fetches the material “from memory”.

15).  A gives B the sample, B looks from the sample to the materials on the shelves from which he has to choose.

16).  B lays the sample on each bolt of material & chooses that one which he can't distinguish from the sample, for which the difference between the sample & the material seems to vanish.

17).  Imagine on the other hand that the order has been, “Bring a material slightly darker than this sample”. In 14) I said that B fetches the material “from memory”, which is using a

14a).   B has a memory image before his mind's eye when he goes for the material. He alternately looks at materials and recalls his image. He goes through this process with, say, five of the bolts, in some instances saying to himself, “Too dark”, in some instances saying to himself, “Too light”. At the fifth bolt he stops, says, “That's it”, & takes it from the shelf.

14b).   No memory image is before B's eye. He looks at four bolts, shaking his head each time, feeling some sort of mental tension. On reaching the fifth bolt, this tension relaxes, he nods his head, & takes the bolt down.

14c).   B goes to the shelf without a memory image, looks at five bolts one after the other, takes the fifth bolt from the shelf.

18).  The object of the training in the use of tables (as in 7)) may be not only to teach the use of one particular table, but it may be to enable the pupil to use or construct himself tables with new coordinations of written signs & pictures. Suppose the first table a person was trained to use contained the four words “hammer”, “pincers”, “saw”, “chisel” & the corresponding pictures. We might now add the picture of another object which the pupil had before him, say of a plane, & correlate with it the word “plane”. We shall make the correlation between this new picture and word as similar as possible to the correlations in the previous table. Thus we might add the new word and picture on the same sheet, and place the new word under the previous words and the new picture under the previous pictures. The pupil will now be encouraged to make use of the new picture and word without the special training which we gave him when we taught him to use the first table.

19).  The pupil could also be trained to give things names of his own invention and to bring the objects when the names are called. He is, e.g., presented with a table on which he finds pictures of objects around him on one side and blank spaces on the other, and he plays the game by writing signs of his own invention opposite the pictures and reacting in the previous way when these signs are used as orders. Or else,

20).  the game may consist in B's constructing a table and obeying orders given in terms of this table. When the use of a table is taught, and the table consists, say, of two vertical columns, the left hand one containing the names, the right hand one the pictures, a name and a picture being correlated by standing on a horizontal line, an important feature of the training may be that which makes the pupil slide his finger from left to right, as it were the training to draw a series of horizontal lines, one below the other. Such training may help to make the transition from the first table to the new item.

{{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,22}} 21).  Consider this example: We introduce different ways of reading tables. Each table consists of two columns of words & pictures, as above. In some cases they are to be read horizontally from left to right, i.e., according to the scheme:

22).  One game is played with a fixed number of such cards, say 32. In the other game we are under certain circumstances allowed to increase the number of cards to as many as we like, by cutting pieces of paper and writing numbers on them. We will call the first of these games bounded, the second unbounded. Suppose a hand of the second game was played & the number of cards actually used was 32. What is the difference in this case between playing a hand a) of the unbounded game & playing a hand b) of the bounded game?

23).  Like 2) A orders B to bring him a number of building stones. The numerals are the signs “1”, “2”, etc. … “9”, each written on a card. A has a set of these cards and gives B the order by shewing him one of the set & calling out one of the words, “slab”, “column”, etc.

24).  Like 23), only there is no set of indexed cards. The series of numerals 1 … 9 is learned by heart. The numerals are called out in the orders, & the child learns them by word of mouth.

25).  An abacus is used. A sets the abacus, gives it to B, B goes with it to where the slabs lie, etc.

26).  B is to count the slabs in a heap. He does it with an abacus, the abacus has twenty beads. There are never more than 20 plates in a heap. B sets the abacus for the heap in question & shews A the abacus thus set.

27).  Like 26). The abacus has 20 small beads & one large one. If the heap contains more than 20 plates, the large bead is moved. (So the large bead in some way corresponds to the word “many”).

28).  Like 26). If the heap contains n plates, n being more than 20 but less than 40, B moves n-20 beads, shews A the abacus thus set, & claps his hand once.

29).  A & B use the numerals of the decimal system (written or spoken) up to 20. The child learning this language learns these

30).  A certain tribe has a language of the kind 2). The numerals used are those of our decimal system. No one numeral used can be observed to play the predominant role of the last numeral in some of the above games (27), 28)). (One is tempted to continue this sentence by saying, “although there is of course a highest numeral actually used”). The children of the tribe learn the numerals in this way: They are taught the signs from 1 to 20 as in 2) and to count rows of beads of no more than 20 on being ordered, “Count these”. When in counting the pupil arrives at the numeral 20, one makes a gesture suggestive of “Go on”, upon which the child says (in most cases at any rate) “21”. Analogously, the children are made to count to 22 & to higher numbers, no particular number playing in these exercises the predominant role of a last one. The last stage of the training is that the child is ordered to count a group of objects, well above 20, without the suggestive gesture being used to help the child over the numeral 20. If a child does not respond to the suggestive gesture, it is separated from the others and treated as a lunatic.

31).  Another tribe. Its language is like that in 30). The highest numeral observed in use is 159. In the life of this tribe the numeral 159 plays a peculiar role. Supposing I said, “They treat this number as their highest”, – – but what does this mean? Could we answer: “They just say that it is the highest”? ‒ ‒ They say certain words, but how do we know what they mean by them? A criterion for what they mean would be the occasions

{{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,27}} on which the word we are inclined to translate into our word “highest” is used, the role, we might say, which we observe this word to play in the life of the tribe. In fact we could easily imagine the numeral 159 to be used on such occasions, in connection with such gestures and forms of behaviour as would make us say that this numeral plays the role of an unsurmountable limit, even if the tribe had no word corresponding to our “highest”, and the criteria for numeral 159 being the highest numeral did not consist of anything that was said about the numeral. 32).  A tribe has two systems of counting. People learned to count with the alphabet from A to Z and also with the decimal system as in 30). If a man is to count objects with the first system, he is ordered to count “in the closed way”, in the second case, “in the open way”; & the tribe uses the words “closed” & “open” also for a closed and open door.

33).  B moves about according to rules which A gives him. B is supplied with the following table:  

34).  B is to draw various ornamental linear designs. Each design is a repetition of one element which A gives him. Thus if A gives the order “c a d a”, B draws a line thus:

35).  A game played with pieces of various shapes on a chess board. The way each piece is allowed to move is laid down by a rule. Thus the rule for a particular piece is “ac”, for another piece “acaa”, & so on. The first piece then can make a move like this:  

36).  Suppose that after playing the game 33) several times as described above, it was played with this variation: that B no longer looked at the table, but reading A's order the letters call up the images of the arrows (by association), & B acts according to these imagined arrows.

37).  After playing it like this for several times, B moves about according to the written order as he would have done had he looked up or imagined the arrows, but actually without any such picture intervening. Imagine even this variation:

38).  B in being trained to follow a written order, is shewn the table of 33) once, upon which he obeys A's orders without further intervention of the table in the same way in which B in

39).  A certain system of communication is used by a tribe. I will describe it by saying that it is similar to our game 38) except that no table is used in the training. The training might have consisted in several times leading the pupil by the hand along the path one wanted him to go. But we could also imagine a case:

40).  where even this training is not necessary, where, as we should say, the look of the letters abcd naturally produced an urge to move in the way described. This cause at first sight looks puzzling. We seem to be assuming a most unusual working of the mind. Or we may ask || perhaps we ask, “How on earth is he to know which way to move if the letter a is shewn him”? But isn't B's reaction in this case the very reaction described in 37) & 38), & in fact our usual reaction when for instance we hear and obey an order? For, the fact that the training in 38) & 39) preceded the carrying out of the order does not change the process of carrying out. In other words the “curious mental mechanism” assumed in 40) is no other than that which we assumed to be

41).  The game is similar to 33), but the pupil is not just trained to use a single table; but the training aims at making the pupil use any table correlating letters with arrows. Now by this I mean no more than that the training is of a peculiar kind, roughly speaking one analogous to that described in 30). I will refer to a training more or less similar to that in 30) as a “general training”. General trainings form a family whose members differ greatly from one another. The kind of thing I'm thinking of now mainly consists: a) of a training in a limited range of actions, b) of giving the pupil a lead to extend this range, & c) of random exercises and tests. After the general training the order is now to consist in giving him a sign of this kind:  

42).  A gives orders to B: they are written signs consisting of dots and dashes and B executes them by doing a figure in dancing with a particular step. Thus the order “-.” is to be carried out by taking a step and a hop alternately; the order “..---” by alternately taking two hops and three steps, etc. The training in this game is “general” in the sense explained in 41); and I should like to say, “the orders given don't move in a limited range. They comprise combinations of any number of dots and dashes”. ‒ ‒ But what does it mean to say that the orders don't move in a limited range? Isn't this nonsense? Whatever orders are given in the practice of the game constitute the limited range. ‒ ‒ Well, what I meant to say by “the orders don't move in a limited range” was that neither in the teaching of the game nor in the practice of it a limitation of the range plays a “predominant” role (see 30)) or, as we might say, the range of the game (it is superfluous to say

43).  The orders and their execution as in 42); but only these three signs are used: “-.”, “-..”, “.--”. We say that in 42) B in executing the order is guided by the sign given to him. But if we ask ourselves whether the three signs in 43) guide B in executing the orders, it seems that we can say both yes and no according to the way we look at the execution of the orders.

44).  Imagine that for some purpose or other people use a kind of instrument or tool; this consists of a board with a slot in it guiding the movement of a peg. The man using the tool slides the peg along the slot. There are such boards with straight slots, circular slots, elliptic slots, etc. The language of the people using this instrument has expressions for

45).  Imagine a people in whose language there is no such form of sentence as “the book is in the drawer” or “water is in the glass”, but wherever we should use these forms they say, “The book can be taken out of the drawer”, “The water can be taken out of the glass”.

46).  An activity of the men of a certain tribe is to test sticks as to their hardness. They do it by trying to bend the sticks with their hands. In their language they have expressions of the form, “This stick can be bent easily” or “This stick can be bent with difficulty”. They use these expressions as we use “This stick is soft” or “This stick is hard”. I mean to say that they don't use the expression, “This stick can be bent easily” as we should use the sentence “I am bending the stick with ease”. Rather they use their expression in a way which would make us say that they are describing a state of the stick. I.e., they use such sentences as, “This hut is built of sticks that can be bent easily”. (Think of the way in which we form adjectives out of verbs by means of the ending “-able”, e.g., “deformable”.)

47).  A tribe has in its language commands for the execution of certain actions of men in warfare, something like “Shoot!”,

48).  The men of a tribe are subjected to a kind of medical examination before going into war. The examiner puts the men through a set of standardised tests. He lets them lift certain weights, swing their arms, skip, etc. The examiner then gives his verdict in the form “So-and-so can throw a spear” or “can throw a boomerang” or “is fit to pursue the enemy”, etc. There are no special expressions in the language of this tribe for the activities performed in the tests; but these are referred to only as the tests for certain activities in warfare.

49).  Imagine a tribe in whose language there is an expression corresponding to our “He has done so-and-so” and another expression corresponding to our “He can do so-and-so”, this latter

50).  Imagine how a child might be trained in the practice of “narration of past events”. He was first trained in asking for certain things (as it were, in giving orders. See 1).) Part of this training was the exercise of “naming the things”. He has thus learnt to name (& ask for) a dozen of his toys. Say now that he has played with three of them (e.g., a ball, a stick, and a rattle), then they are taken away from him, and now the grown-up says such a phrase as, “He's had a ball, a stick, and a rattle”. On a similar occasion he stops short in the enumeration

51).  Another example of a primitive kind of narration of past events: we live in a landscape with characteristic natural landmarks against the horizon. It is therefore easy to remember the place at which the sun rises at a particular season, or the place above which it stands when at its highest point, or the place at which it sets. We have some characteristic pictures of the sun in different positions in our landscape. Let us call this series of pictures the sun series. We have also some characteristic pictures of the activities of a child, lying in bed, getting up, dressing, lunching, etc. This set

52).  A variation of 51). There is a big clock in the nursery, for simplicity's sake imagine it with an hour hand only. The story of the child's day is narrated as above, but there is no sun series; instead we write one of the digits || numbers of the dial against each life picture.

53).  Note that there would have been a similar game in which also, as we might say, time was involved, that of just laying out a series of life pictures. We might play this game with the help of words which would correspond to our “before” and “after”. In this sense we may say that 53) involves the ideas of before and after, but not the idea of a measurement of time. I needn't say that an easy step would lead us from the narrations in 51), 52), & 53) to narrations in words. Possibly someone

54).  If we give a person the order, “Say a number, any one which comes into your mind”, he can generally comply with it at once. Suppose it were found that the numbers thus said on request increased – – with every normal person – – as the day went on; a man starts out with some small number every morning and reaches the highest number before falling asleep at night. Consider what could tempt one to call the reactions described “a means of measuring time” or even to say that they are the real milestones in the passage of time, the sun clocks, etc.

55).  This arises out of 1). If an order like “Slab!”, “Column!”, etc. is called out, B is trained to carry it out immediately. We now introduce a clock into this game, an order is given, and we train the child not to carry it out until the hand of our clock reaches a point indicated before with the finger. (This might, e.g., be done in this way: You first trained the child to carry out the order immediately. You then give the order, but hold the child back, releasing it only when the hand of the clock has reached the point of the dial to which we point with our fingers.)

56).  Let us now have the case of a description of the future, a forecast. One might, e.g., awaken the tension of expectation in a child by keeping his attention for a considerable time on some traffic lights changing their colour periodically. We also have a red, a green, and a yellow disc before us and alternately

{{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,52}} 57).  A game is played in this way: A man throws a die, and before throwing he draws on a piece of paper some one of the six faces of the die. If, after having thrown, the face of the die turning up is the one he has drawn, he feels (expresses) satisfaction. If a different face turns up, he is dissatisfied. Or, let there be two partners and every time one guesses correctly what he will throw his partner pays him a penny, and if incorrectly, he pays his partner. Drawing the face of the die will under the circumstances of this game be called “making a guess” or a “conjecture”.

58).  In a certain tribe contests are held in running, putting the weight, etc. and the spectators stake money || possessions on the competitors. The pictures of all the competitors are placed in a row, and what I called the spectators' staking property on one of the competitors consists in laying this property (pieces of gold) under one of the pictures. If a man has placed his gold under the picture of the winner in the competition he gets back his stake doubled. Otherwise he loses his stake. Such a custom we should undoubtedly call betting, even if we observed it in a society whose language held no scheme for stating “degrees of probability”, “chances” and the like. I assume that the behaviour of the spectators expresses great keenness and excitement before and after the result || outcome of the bet is known. I further imagine that on examining the placing of the bets I can understand “why” they were thus placed. I mean: In a competition between two wrestlers, mostly the bigger man is the favorite; or if the smaller, I find that he has shown greater

59).  If a man of our tribe has lost his bet and upon this is chaffed or scolded, he points out, possibly exaggerating, certain features of the man on whom he has laid his bet. One can imagine a discussion of pros and cons going on in this way: two people pointing out alternately certain features of the two competitors whose chances, as we should say, they are discussing; A pointing with a gesture to the great height of the one, B in answer to this shrugging his shoulders and pointing to the size of the other's biceps, and so on. I could easily add more details which would make us say that A and B are giving reasons for laying a bet on one person rather than on the other.

60).  Imagine in a similar way conjectures being made as to whether a certain load of gunpowder will be sufficient to blast a certain rock, and the conjecture to be expressed in a phrase of the form, “This quantity of gunpowder can blast this rock”.

61).  Compare with 60) the case in which the expression, “I shall be able to lift this weight”, is used as an abbreviation for the conjecture, “My hand holding this weight will rise if I go through the process (experience) of ‘making an effort to lift it’”. In the last two cases the word “can” characterized what we should call the expression of a conjecture. (Of course

62).  Let the game be this: A writes down a row of numbers. B watches him and tries to find a system in the sequence of these numbers. When he has done so he says: “Now I can go on”. This example is particularly instructive because “being able to

63).  Or, no formula came into B's mind. After looking at the growing row of numbers A was || is writing, possibly with a feeling of tension and with hazy ideas floating in his mind, he said to himself the words, “He's squaring and always adding one more”; then he made up the next number of the sequence and found it to agree with the numbers A then wrote down. ‒ ‒

64).  Or the row A wrote down was 2, 4, 6, 8. B looks at it, and says, “Of course I can go on”, and continues the series of even numbers. Or he says nothing, and just goes on. Perhaps when looking at the row 2, 4, 6, 8 which A had written down, he had some sensation, or sensations, often accompanying such words as, “That's easy!” A sensation of this kind is for instance, the experience of a slight, quick intake of breath, what one might call a slight start.

65).  But if we look at a language-game in which the phrase “I can … ” is used in this way (e.g., a game in which doing a thing is taken as the only justification for saying that one is able to do it), we see that there is not the metaphysical difference between this game and one in which other justifications are accepted for saying “I can do so-and-so”. A game of the kind 65), by the way, shows us the real use of the phrase, “If something happens it certainly can happen”; an almost useless phrase in our language. It sounds as though it had some very clear and deep meaning, but like most of the general philosophical propositions it is meaningless except in very special cases.

66).  Make this clear to yourself by imagining a language (similar to 49)) which has two expressions for such sentences as, “I am lifting a fifty pound weight”; one expression is used whenever the action is performed as a test (say, before an athletic competition), the other expression is used when the action is not performed as a test.

67).  Imagine that human beings or animals were used as reading machines, assume that in order to become reading machines they need a particular training. The man who trains them says of some of them that they already can read, of others that they can't. Take a case of one who has so far not responded to the training. If you put before him a printed word he will sometimes make sounds, and every now and then it happens “accidentally” that these sounds more or less agree with || correspond to the printed word. A third person hears the pupil || creature under training uttering the right sound on looking at the word “table”. The third person says, “He reads”, but the teacher answers, “No, he doesn't, it is mere accident”. But supposing now that the pupil on being shown other words and sentences goes on reading them correctly. After a time the teacher says, “Now he can read”. ‒ ‒ But what about the first word “table”? Should the teacher say, “I was wrong; he read that, too”, or should he say, “No, he only started reading later”? When did he really begin to read, or: Which was the first word, or the first letter, which he read? It is clear that this question here makes no sense unless I give an “artificial” explanation such as: “The first word which he reads = the first word of the first hundred consecutive words he reads correctly”. ‒ ‒ Suppose on the other hand that we used the word “reading” to distinguish between the case when a particular conscious process of spelling out the words takes place in a person's mind from the case in which this does not happen:

68).  But supposing now that a man who could read fluently and who was made to read sentences which he had never read before read these sentences, but all the time with the peculiar feeling of knowing the sequence of words by heart. Should we in this case say that he was not reading, i.e., should we regard his personal experience as the criterion distinguishing between reading and not reading?

69).  Or imagine this case: A man under the influence of a certain drug is shown a group of five signs, not letters of an existing alphabet; and looking at them with all the outward signs and personal experiences of spelling out a word, pronounces the word “ABOVE”. (This sort of thing happens in dreams. After waking up we then say, “It seemed to me that I was reading these

70).  assume that he reads off a text by transcribing it, say, from block letters into cursive script. For in this case we can assume the rule of the alphabet to have been given in the form of a table which shows the block alphabet and the cursive alphabet in parallel columns. Then the deriving the copy from the text we should imagine this way: The person who copies looks

71).  But what if, doing all this, he then transcribed an “A” into a “b”, a “B” into a “c”, and so on? Should we not call this “reading” “deriving” too? We might in this case describe his procedure by saying that he used the table as we should have used it had we not looked straight from left to right like this: but like this: though he actually when looking up the table passed with his eyes or finger horizontally from left to right. ‒ ‒ But let us suppose now

72).  that going through the normal processes of “looking up”, he transcribed an “A” into an “n”, a “B” into an “x”, in short, acted, as we might say, according to a scheme of arrows which showed no simple regularity. Couldn't we call this “deriving” too? ‒ ‒ But suppose that

73).  he didn't stick to this way of transcribing. In fact he changed it, but according to a simple rule: After having transcribed “A” into “n”, he transcribed the next “A” into “o”, and the next “A” into “p”, and so on. But where is the sharp line between this procedure and that of producing a transcription without any system at all? Now you might object to this by saying, “In the case 71), you obviously assumed that he understood the table differently; he didn't understand it in the normal way”. But what do we call “understanding the table in

1).  Take the case that B is shown a series of apparatus, – – a balance, a thermometer, a spectroscope, etc.

2).  B is shown a pencil, a pen, an inkpot, and a pebble. Or:

3).  Besides familiar objects he is shown an object of which he says, “That looks as though it served some purpose, but I don't know what purpose”.

4).  We could say, “B always knew what a pencil looked like; he could e.g., have drawn one on being asked to. He didn't know that the object he was given contained a pencil which he

5).  B is shewn a word written on a piece of paper held upside down. He does not recognize the word. The paper is gradually turned round until B says, “Now I see what it is. It is ‘pencil’”.

6).  Compare with this: You read a letter and can't read one of its words. You guess what it must be from the context, and now can read it. You recognize this scratch as an e, the second as an a, the third as a t. This is different from the case where the word “eat” was covered by a blotch of ink, and you only guessed that the word “eat” must have been in this place.

7).  Compare: You see a word and can't read it. Someone alters it slightly by adding a dash, lengthening a stroke, or suchlike. Now you can read it. Compare this alteration with the turning in 5), and note that there is a sense in which while the word was turned round you saw that it was not altered. I.e., there is a case in which you say, “I looked at the word while it was turned, and I know that it is the same now as it was when I didn't recognize it”.

8).  Suppose the game between A and B just consisted in this,

9).  Suppose even that he had said to himself, “Oh, this is a pencil”, could you compare this case with 4) or 5)? In these cases one might have said, “He recognized this as that” (pointing, e.g., for “this” to the covered up pencil and for “that” to an ordinary pencil, and similarly in 5)).

10).  Suppose someone shews you colours and asks you to name

a) There is a kind of experience which one might call being hardly able to distinguish. You see, e.g., two lengths, two colours, almost exactly alike. But if I ask myself, “Does this experience consist in having a peculiar feeling?”, I should have to say that it certainly isn't characterized by any such feeling alone, that a most important part of the experience is that of letting my glance oscillate between the two objects, fixing it intently, now on the one, now on the other, perhaps saying words expressive of doubt, shaking my head, etc. etc. There is, one might say, hardly any room left for a feeling of similarity between these manifold experiences.

b) Compare with this the case in which it is impossible to have any difficulty of distinguishing the two objects. Supposing I say, “I like to have the two kinds of flowers in this bed of similar colours to avoid a strong contrast.” The experience here might be one which one may describe as an easy sliding of the glance from one to the other.

c)   I listen to a variation on a theme and say, “I don't see yet how this is a variation of the theme, but I see a certain similarity.” What happened was that at certain points of

The troubles which since   ) we have been discussing || turning over were all closely bound up || connected with the use of the word “particular”. We have been inclined to say that seeing familiar objects we have a particular feeling, that the word “red” came in a particular way when we recognized the colour as red, that we had a particular experience when we acted voluntarily.

When we say, “This is a face, and not mere strokes”, we are, of course, distinguishing such a drawing from such a one . And it is true: If you ask anyone: “What is this?” (pointing to the first drawing) he will certainly say: “It's a face”, and he will be able straight away to reply to such questions as, “Is it male or female?”, “Smiling or sad?”, etc. If on the other hand you ask him: “What is this?” (pointing to the second drawing), he will most likely say, “This is nothing at all”, or “These are just dashes”. Now think of looking for a man in a picture puzzle; there it often happens that what at first sight appears as “mere dashes” later appears as a face. We say in such cases: “Now I see it is a face.” It must be quite clear to you that this doesn't mean that we recognize it as the face of a friend or that we are under the delusion of seeing a “real” face: rather, this “seeing it as a face” must be compared with seeing this drawing either as a cube or as a plane figure consisting of a square and two rhombuses; or with seeing this “as a square with diagonals”, or “as a swastika”, that is, as a limiting case of this ; or again with seeing these four dots .... as two pairs of dots side by side with

The case of “seeing as a swastika” is of special interest because this expression might mean being, somehow, under the optical delusion that the square is not quite closed, that there are the gaps which distinguish the swastika from our drawing. On the other hand it is quite clear that this was not what we meant by “seeing our drawing as a swastika”. We saw it in a way which suggested the description, “I see it as a swastika.” One might suggest that we ought to have said, “I see it as a closed swastika”; – – but then, what is the difference between a closed swastika and a square with diagonals? I think that in this case it is easy to recognize “what happens when we see our figure as a swastika.” I believe it is that we retrace the figure with our eyes in a particular way, viz., by starting at the centre, looking along a radius, and along a side adjacent to it, starting at the centre again, taking the next radius and the next side, say in a right handed sense of rotation, etc. But this explanation of the phenomenon of seeing the figure as a swastika is of no fundamental interest to us. It is of interest to us only in so far as it helps one to see that the expression, “seeing the figure as a swastika” did not mean seeing this as that, seeing one thing as something else, when, essentially, two visual objects entered the process of doing so. ‒ ‒ Thus also seeing the first figure as a cube did not mean “taking it to be a cube.” (For we might never have seen a cube and still have this experience of “seeing it as a cube”).

And this also describes what happens when in   ) we say to ourselves, “The word ‘red’ comes in a particular way … ” The reply could be: “I see, you're repeating to yourself some experience and again and again gazing at it.”

Now although the expression that seeing a drawing as a face is not merely seeing strokes seems to point to some kind of addition of experiences, we certainly should not say that when we see the drawing as a face we also have the experience of seeing it as mere strokes and some other experience besides. And this becomes still clearer when we imagine that someone said that seeing the drawing as a cube consisted in seeing it as a plane figure plus having an experience of depth.

I will try to elucidate this by an analogous case: We are inclined to be puzzled by the three-dimensional appearance of the drawing in a way expressed by the question, “What does seeing it three-dimensionally consist in?” And this question really asks, “What is it that is added to simply seeing the drawing when we see it three dimensionally?” And yet what answer can we expect to this question? It is the form of this question which produces the puzzlement. As Hertz says: “Aber offenbar irrt die Frage in Bezug auf die Antwort, welche sie erwartet” (p.9, Einleitung, Die Prinzipien der Mechanik). The question itself keeps the mind pressing against a blank wall, thereby preventing it from ever finding the outlet. To show a man how to get out you have first of all to free him from the misleading influence of the question.

{{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,145}} not anything which they have got in them or which is fastened to them irrespective of what use we make of them. Thus it is one use of the word “this” to go along with a gesture pointing to something: We say, “I am seeing the square with the diagonals like this”, pointing to a swastika. And referring to the square with diagonals I might have said, “What at one time appears to me like this at another time appears to me like that .” And this is certainly not the use we made of the sentence in the above case. ‒ ‒ One might think the whole difference between the two cases is this, that in the first the pictures are mental, in the second, real drawings. We should here ask ourselves in what sense we can call mental images pictures, for in some ways they are comparable to drawn or painted pictures, and in others not. It is, e.g., one of the essential points about the use of a “material” picture that we say that it remains the same not only on the ground that it seems to us to be the same, that we remember that it looked before as it looks now. In fact we shall say under certain circumstances that the picture hasn't changed although it seems to have changed; and we say it hasn't changed because it has been kept in a certain way, certain influences have been kept out. Therefore the expression, “The picture hasn't changed”, is used in a different way when we talk of a material picture on the one hand, and of a mental one on the other. Just as the statement, “These ticks follow at equal intervals”, has got one grammar if the ticks are the tick of a pendulum and the criterion for their regularity is the result of measurements which we have made on our apparatus, and another grammar if the ticks are ticks which

What now is the relation between a name and the object named, say, the house and its name? I suppose we could give either of two answers. The one is that the relation consists in certain strokes having been painted on to the door of the house. The second answer I meant is that the relation we are concerned with is established, not just by painting these strokes on the door, but by the particular role which they play in the practice of our language as we have been sketching it. ‒ ‒ Again, the relation of the name of a person to the person in   ) consists in the person having been trained to run up to someone who calls out the name; or again, we might say that it consists in this and the whole of the usage of the name in the language-game.

It is therefore not an unimportant question, but a question about the essence of the matter: “Are ‘A’ and ‘B’ to remind me of these aspects; can I carry out such an order as ‘See this drawing in the aspect ‘A’; are there, in some way, pictures of these aspects correlated with the names ‘A’ and ‘B’ (like and ); are ‘A’ and ‘B’ used in communicating with other people, and what exactly is the game played with them?”

Our sentence, “I have this feeling while I'm writing”, is of the kind of the sentence, “I see this.” I don't mean the sentence when it is used to inform someone that I am looking at the object which I am pointing to, nor when it is used, as in   ), to convey to someone that I see a certain drawing in the way A and not in the way B. I mean the sentence, “I see this”, as it is sometimes contemplated by us when we are brooding over certain philosophical problems. We are then, say, holding on to a particular visual impression by staring at some object, and we feel it is most natural to say to ourselves, “I see this”, though we know of no further use we can make of this sentence.