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| If by “believing” we mean an activity, a process, taking place while we say that we believe, we may say that believing is something similar to or the same as expressing a belief.
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| It is interesting to consider an objection to this: What if I said, “I believe it will rain” (meaning what I say) and someone wanted to explain to a Frenchman who doesn't understand English what it was I believed. Then, you might say, if all that happened when I believed what I did was that I said the sentence, the Frenchman ought to know what I believe if you tell him the exact words I used, or say, “Il croit ‘It will rain’”. Now it is clear that this will not tell him what I believe and consequently, you might say, we failed to convey just that to him which was essential, my real mental act of believing. ‒ ‒ But the answer is that even if my words had been accompanied by
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,109}} all sorts of experiences, and if we could have transmitted these experiences to the Frenchman, he would still not have known what I believed. For “knowing what I believe” just doesn't mean: feel what I do just while I say it; just as knowing what I intend with this move in our game of chess doesn't mean knowing my exact state of mind while I'm making the move. Though, at the same time, in certain cases, knowing this state of mind might furnish you with very exact information about my intention.
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| We should say that we had told the Frenchman what I believed if we translated my words for him into French. And it might be that thereby we told him nothing – – even indirectly – – about what happened “in me” when I uttered my belief. Rather, we pointed out to him a sentence which in his language holds a similar position to my sentence in the English language. – Again one might say that, at least in certain cases, we could have told him much more exactly what I believed if he had been at home in the English language, because then, he would have known exactly what happened within me when I spoke.
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| We use the words “meaning”, “believing”, “intending” in such a way that they refer to certain acts, states of mind given certain circumstances; as by the expression “checkmating somebody” we refer to the act of taking his king. If on the other hand someone, say a child, playing about with chessmen, placed a few of them on a chess board and went through the motions of taking a king, we should not say the child had checkmated anyone. ‒ ‒ And here too one might think that what distinguished this
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,110
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| case from real checkmating was what happened in the child's mind.
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| Suppose I had made a move in chess and someone asked me, “Did you intend to mate him?”, I answer, “I did”, and he now asks me, “How could you know you did, as all you knew was what happened within you when you made the move?”, I might answer, “Under these circumstances this was intending to mate him.”
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| What holds for “meaning” holds for “thinking”. ‒ ‒ We very often find it impossible to think without speaking to ourselves half aloud, – – and nobody asked to describe what happened in this case would ever say that something – – the thinking – – accompanied the || his speaking, were they || he not led into doing so by the pair of verbs, “speaking”: :“thinking”, and by many of our common phrases in which their uses run parallel. Consider these examples: “Think before you speak!”, “He speaks without thinking”, “What I said didn't quite express my thought”, “He says one thing and thinks just the opposite”, “I didn't mean a word of what I said”, “The French language uses its words in that order in which we think them.”
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| If anything in such a case can be said to go with the speaking, it would be something like the modulation of voice, the changes in timbre, accentuation, and the like, all of which one might call means of expressiveness. Some of these like the tone of voice and the accent, nobody for obvious reasons would call the accompaniments of the speech; and such means of expressiveness as the play of facial expression or gestures which can be said to accompany speech nobody would dream of calling thinking.
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| Let us revert to our example of the use of “lighter” and
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,111}} “darker” for coloured objects and the vowels. A reason which we should like to give for saying that here we have two different uses and not one is this: “We don't think that the words ‘darker’, ‘lighter’ actually fit the relation between the vowels, we only feel a resemblance between the relation of the sounds and the darker and lighter colours.” Now if you wish to see what sort of feeling this is, try to imagine that without previous introduction you asked someone, “Say the vowels a, e, i, o, u, in the order of their darkness.” If I did this, I should certainly say it in a different tone from that in which I should say, “Arrange these books in the order of their darkness”, that is, I should say it haltingly in a tone similar to that of, “I wonder if you understand me”, perhaps smiling slyly as I say it. And this, if anything, describes my feeling.
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| And this brings me to the following point: When someone asks me, “What colour is the book over there?”, and I say, “Red”, and then he asks, “What made you call this colour ‘red’?”, I shall in most cases have to say: “Nothing makes me call it red; that is, no reason. I just looked at it and said, ‘It's red’”. One is then inclined to say: “Surely this isn't all that happened; for I could look at a colour and say a word and still not name the colour.” And then one is inclined to go on to say: “The word ‘red’ when we pronounce it, naming the colour we look at, comes in a particular way.” But, at the same time, asked, “Can you describe the way you mean?” – – one wouldn't feel prepared to give any description. Suppose now we asked: “Do you, at any rate, remember that the name of the colour
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,112}} came to you in that particular way whenever you named colours on former occasions?” – – he would have to admit that he didn't remember a particular way in which this always happened. In fact one could easily make him see that naming a colour could go along with all sorts of different experiences. Compare such cases as these: a) I put an iron in the fire to heat it to light red heat. I am asking you to watch the iron and want you to tell me from time to time what stage of heat it has reached. You look and say: “It is beginning to get light red.” b) We stand at a street crossing and I say: “Watch out for the red light. When it comes on, tell me and I'll run across.” Ask yourself this question: If in one such case you shout “Green!” and in another “Run!”, do these words come in the same way or different ways? Can you || one say anything about this in a general way? c) I ask you: “What's the colour of the bit of material you have in your hand?” (and I can't see). You think: “Now what does one call this? Is this ‘Prussian blue’ or ‘indigo’?”
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| Now it is very remarkable that when in a philosophical conversation we say: “The name of a colour comes in a particular way”, we don't trouble to think of the many different cases and ways in which such a name comes. ‒ ‒ And our chief argument is really that naming the colour is different from just pronouncing a word on some different occasion while looking at a colour. Thus one might say: “Suppose we counted some objects lying on our table, a blue one, a red one, a white one, and a black one, – – looking at each in turn we say: ‘One, two, three,
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,113}} four’. Isn't it easy to see that something different happens in this case when we pronounce the words than what would happen if we had to tell someone the colours of the objects? And couldn't we, with the same right as before, have said, ‘Nothing happens when we say the numerals than just saying them while looking at the object’?” ‒ ‒ Now two answers can be given to this: First, undoubtedly, at least in the great majority of cases, counting the objects will be accompanied by different experiences from naming their colours. And it is easy to describe roughly what the difference will be. In counting we know a certain gesture, as it were, beating the number out with one's finger or by nodding one's head. There is on the other hand an experience which one might call “concentrating one's attention on the colour”, getting the full impression of it. And these are the sort of things one recalls when one says, “It is easy to see that something different happens when we count the objects and when we name their colours.” But it is in no way necessary that certain peculiar experiences more or less characteristic for counting take place while we are counting, nor that the peculiar phenomenon of gazing at the colour takes place when we look at the object and name its colour. It is true that the processes of counting four objects and of naming their colours will, in most cases at any rate, be different taken as a whole, and this is what strikes us; but that doesn't mean at all that we know that something different happens every time in these two cases when we pronounce a numeral on the one hand and a name of a colour on the other.
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,114}} When we philosophize about this sort of thing we almost invariably do something of this sort: We repeat to ourselves a certain experience, say, by looking fixedly at a certain object and trying to “read off” as it were the name of its colour. And it is quite natural that doing so again and again we should be inclined to say, “Something particular happens while we say the word ‘blue’”. For we are aware of going again and again through the same || identical process. But ask yourself: Is this also the process which we usually go through when on various occasions – – not philosophizing – – we name the colour of an object?
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| The problem which we are concerned with we also encounter in thinking about volition, deliberate and involuntary action. Think, say, of these examples: I deliberate whether to lift a certain heavyish weight, decide to do it, I then apply my force to it and lift it. Here, you might say, you have a full-fledged case of willing and intentional action. Compare with this such a case as reaching a man a lighted match after having lit with it one's own cigarette and seeing that he wishes to light his; or again the case of moving your hand while writing a letter, or moving your mouth, larynx, etc. while speaking. ‒ ‒ Now when I called the first example a full fledged case of willing, I deliberately used this misleading expression. For this expression indicates that one is inclined in thinking about volition to regard this sort of example as one exhibiting most clearly the typical characteristic of willing. One takes one's ideas, and one's language, about volition from this kind of example and thinks that they must apply – – if not in such an
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,115}} obvious way – – to all cases which one can properly call cases of willing. ‒ ‒ It is the same case that we have met over and over again: The forms of expression of our ordinary language fit most obviously certain very special applications of the words “willing”, “thinking”, “meaning”, “reading”, etc. etc. And thus we might have called the case in which a man “first thinks and then speaks” as the full fledged case of thinking and the case in which a man spells out the words he is reading as the full fledged case of reading. We speak of an “act of volition” as different from the action which is willed, and in our first example there are lots of different acts clearly distinguishing this case from one in which all that happens is that the hand and the weight lift: there are the preparations of deliberation and decision, there is the effort of lifting. But where do we find the analogues to these processes in our other examples and in innumerable ones we might have given?
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| Now on the other hand it has been said that when a man, say, gets out of bed in the morning, all that happens may be this: he deliberates, “Is it time to get up?”, he tries to make up his mind, and then suddenly he finds himself getting up. Describing it this way emphasizes the absence of an act of volition. Now first: where do we find the paradigm || prototype of such a thing, i.e., how did we come by the idea of such an act? I think the prototype of the act of volition is the experience of muscular effort. ‒ ‒ Now there is something in this above description which tempts us to contradict it; we say: “We don't just
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,116}} ‘find’, observe, ourselves getting up, as though we were observing someone else: It isn't like, say, watching certain reflex actions. If, e.g., I place myself sideways close to a wall, my wall side arm hanging down outstretched, the back of the hand touching the wall, and if now keeping the arm rigid I press the back of the hand hard against the wall, doing it all by means of the delta muscle, if then I quickly step away from the wall, letting my arm hang down loosely, my arm without any action of mine, of its own accord begins to rise; this is the sort of case in which it would be proper to say, ‘I find my arm rising’.”
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| Now here again it is clear that there are many striking differences between the cases of observing my arm rising in this experiment or watching someone else getting out of bed and the case of finding myself getting up. There is, e.g., in this case a perfect absence of what one might call surprise, also I don't look at my own movements as I might look at someone turning about in bed, e.g., saying to myself, “Is he going to get up?”. There is a difference between the voluntary act of getting out of bed and the involuntary rising of my arm. But there is not one common difference between so-called voluntary acts and involuntary ones, viz., the presence or absence of one element, the “act of volition.”
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| The description of getting up in which a man says, “I just find myself getting up”, suggests that he wishes to say that he observes himself getting up. And we may certainly say that an attitude of observing is absent in this case. But the observing attitude again is not one continuous state of mind or
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,117}} otherwise which we are in the whole time while, as we should say, we are observing. Rather, there is a family of groups of activities and experiences which we call observing attitudes. Roughly speaking one might say there are observation elements of curiosity, observant expectation, surprise, and there are, we should say, facial expressions and gestures of curiosity, of observant expectation, and of surprise; and if you agree that there is more than one facial expression characteristic for each of these cases, and that there can be these cases without any characteristic facial expression, you will admit that to each of these three words a family of phenomena corresponds.
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| If I had said, “When I told him that the train was leaving at 3.30, believing that it did, nothing happened than that I just uttered the sentence”, and if someone contradicted me saying, “Surely this couldn't have been all, as you might ‘just say a sentence’ without believing it”, – – my answer should be, “I didn't wish to say that there was no difference between speaking, believing what you say, and speaking, not believing what you say; but the pair ‘believing’::‘not believing’ refers to various differences in different cases (differences forming a family), not to one difference, that between the presence and the absence of a certain mental state.”
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| Let us consider various characteristics of voluntary and involuntary acts. In the case of lifting the heavy weight, the various experiences of effort are obviously most characteristic for lifting the weight voluntarily. On the other hand, compare with this the case of writing, voluntarily, here in most
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,118}} of the ordinary cases there will be no effort; and even if we feel that the writing tires our hands and strains their muscles, this is not the experience of “pulling” and “pushing” which we would call typical voluntary actions. Further compare the lifting of your hand when you lift a weight with lifting your hand when, e.g., you point to some object above you. This will certainly be regarded as a voluntary act, though the element of effort will most likely be entirely absent; in fact this raising of the arm to point at an object is very much like raising the eye to look at it, and here we can hardly conceive of an effort. ‒ ‒ Now let us describe an act of involuntary raising your arm. There is the case of our experiment, and this was characterized by the utter absence of muscular strain and also by our observant attitude towards the lifting of the arm. But we have just seen a case in which muscular strain was absent, and there are cases in which we should call an action voluntary although we take an observant attitude towards it. But in a large class of cases it is the peculiar impossibility of taking an observant attitude towards a certain action which characterizes it as a voluntary one: Try, e.g., to observe your hand rising when you voluntarily raise it. Of course you see it rising as you do, say, in the experiment; but you can't somehow follow it in the same way with your eye. This might get clearer if you compare two different cases of following lines on a piece of paper with your eye; A) some irregular line like this: , B) a written sentence. You will find that in A) the eye, as it were, alternately slips and gets stuck, whereas
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,119}} in reading a sentence it glides along smoothly.
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| Now consider a case in which we do take up an observant attitude towards a voluntary action, I mean the very instructive case of trying to draw a square with its diagonals by placing a mirror on your drawing paper and directing your hand by what you see by looking at it in the mirror. And here one is inclined to say that our real actions, the ones to which volition immediately applies || for which volition is immediately responsible, are not the movements of our hand but something further back, say, the actions of our muscles. We are inclined to compare the case with this: Imagine we had a series of levers before us, through which, by a hidden mechanism, we could direct a pencil drawing on a sheet of paper. We might then be in doubt which levers to pull in order to get the desired movement of the pencil; and we could say that we deliberately pulled this particular lever, although we didn't deliberately produce the wrong result that we thereby produced. But this comparison, though it easily suggests itself, is very misleading. For in the case of the levers which we saw before us, there was such a thing as deciding which one we were going to pull before pulling it. But does our volition, as it were, play on a keyboard of muscles, choosing which one it was going to use next? ‒ ‒ For some actions which we call deliberate it is characteristic that we, in some sense, “know what we are going to do” before we do it. In this sense we say that we know what object we are going to point to, and what we might call “the act of knowing” might consist in looking at the object before we point to it or in describing its position by words or
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,120
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| pictures. Now we could describe our drawing the square through the mirror by saying that our acts were deliberate as far as their motor aspect is concerned but not as far as their visual aspect is concerned. This could || would, e.g., be demonstrated by our ability to repeat a movement of the hand which had produced a wrong result, on being told to do so. But it would obviously be absurd to say that this motor character of voluntary motion consisted in our knowing beforehand what we were going to do, as though we had had a picture of the kinaesthetic sensation before our mind and decided to bring about this sensation. Remember the experiment (?) p. 62; if here, instead of pointing from a distance to the finger which you order the subject to move, you touch that finger, the subject will always move it without the slightest difficulty. And here it is tempting to say, “Of course I can move it now, because now I know which finger it is I'm asked to move.” This makes it appear as though I had now shown you which muscle to contract in order to bring about the desired result. The word “of course” makes it appear as though by touching your finger I had given you an item of information telling you what to do. (As though normally when you tell a man to move such-and-such a finger he could follow your order because he knew how to bring the movement about.)
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| (It is interesting here to think of the case of sucking a liquid through a tube; if asked what part of your body you sucked with, you would be inclined to say your mouth, although the work was done by the muscles by which you draw your breath.)
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| Let us now ask ourselves what we should call “speaking
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,121}} involuntarily”. First note that when normally you speak, voluntarily, you could hardly describe what happened by saying that by an act of volition you move your mouth, tongue, larynx, etc. as a means to producing certain sounds. Whatever happens in your mouth, larynx, etc. and whatever sensations you have in these parts while speaking would almost seem secondary phenomena accompanying the production of sounds, and volition, one wishes to say, operates on the sounds themselves without intermediary mechanism. This shews how loose our idea of this agent “volition” is.
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| Now to involuntary speaking. Imagine you had to describe a case, – – what would you do? There is of course the case of speaking in one's sleep; here the characteristic is that you know nothing about it while it happens and don't remember having done it afterwards. || this is characterized by our doing it without being aware of it and not remembering having done it. But this obviously you wouldn't call the characteristic of an involuntary action.
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| A better example of involuntary speaking would I suppose be that of involuntary exclamations: “Oh!”, “Help!”, and such like, and these utterances are akin to shrieking with pain. (This, by the way, could set us thinking about “words as expressions of feelings.”) One might say, “Surely these are good examples of involuntary speech, because there is in these cases not only no act of volition by which we speak, but in many cases we utter these words against our will.” I should say: I certainly should call this involuntary speaking; and I agree that an act of volition preparatory to or accompanying these words is absent, – – if by “act of volition” you refer to certain acts of
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,122}} intention, premeditation, or effort. But then in many cases of voluntary speech I don't feel an effort, much that I speak || say voluntarily is not premeditated, and I don't know of any acts of intention preceding it.
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| Crying out with pain against our will could be compared with raising our arm against our will when someone forces it up while we are struggling against him. But it is important to notice that the will – – or should we say “wish” – – not to cry out is overcome in a different way from that in which our resistance is overcome by the strength of the opponent. When we cry out against our will, we are as it were taken by surprise; as though someone forced up our hands by unexpectedly sticking a gun into our ribs, commanding, “Hands up!”
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| Consider now the following example, which is of great help in all these considerations: In order to see what happens when one understands a word, we play this game: You have a list of words, partly these words are words of my native language, partly words of foreign languages more or less familiar to me, partly words of languages entirely unknown to me, (or, which comes to the same, nonsensical words invented for the occasion.) Some of the words of my native tongue, again, are words of ordinary, everyday usage; and some of these, like “house”, “table”, “man”, are what we might call primitive words, being among the first words a child learns, and some of these again, words of baby talk like “Mamma”, “Papa”. Again there are more or less common technical terms such as “carburetor”, “dynamo”, “fuse”; etc. etc. All these words are read out to me, and after each one I have to say “Yes” or “No” according to whether I understand the word or
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,123}} not. I then try to remember what happened in my mind when I understood the words I did understand, and when I didn't understand the others. And here again it will be useful to consider the particular tone of voice and facial expression with which I say “Yes” and “No”, alongside of the so-called mental events. ‒ ‒ Now it may surprise us to find that although this experiment will shew us a multitude of different characteristic experiences, it will not shew us any one experience which we should be inclined to call the experience of understanding. There will be such experiences as these: I hear the word “tree” and say “Yes” with the tone of voice and sensation of “Of course”. Or I hear “corroboration” – – I say to myself, “Let me see”, vaguely remember a case of helping, and say “Yes”. I hear “gadget”, I imagine the man who always used this word, and say “Yes”. I hear “Mamma”, this strikes me as funny and childish, – – “Yes”. A foreign word I shall very often translate in my mind into English before answering. I hear “spinthariscope”, and say to myself, “Must be some sort of scientific instrument”, perhaps try to think up its meaning from its derivation and fail, and say “No”. In another case I might say to myself, “Sounds like Chinese” – – “No”. Etc. There will on the other hand be a large class of cases in which I am not aware of anything happening except hearing the word and saying the answer. And there will also be cases in which I remember experiences (sensations, thoughts), which, as I should say, had nothing to do with the word at all. Thus amongst the experiences which I can describe there will be a class which I might call typical experiences of understanding and some typical experiences of
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,124}} not understanding. But opposed to these there will be a large class of cases in which I should have to say, “I know of no particular experience at all, I just said ‘Yes’, or ‘No’.”
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| Now if someone said, “But surely something did happen when you understood the word ‘tree’, unless you were utterly absent minded when you said ‘Yes’”, I might be inclined to reflect and say to myself, “Didn't I have a sort of homely feeling || sensation when I took in the word ‘tree’?” But then, do I always have this feeling which now I referred to when I hear that word used or use it myself, do I remember having had it, do I even remember a set of, say, five sensations some one of which I had on every occasion when I could be said to have understood the word? Further, isn't that “homely feeling” I referred to an experience rather characteristic for the particular situation I'm in at present, i.e., that of philosophizing about “understanding”?
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| Of course in our experiment we might call saying “Yes” or “No” characteristic experiences of understanding or not understanding, but what if we just hear a word in a sentence where there isn't even a question of this reaction to it? ‒ ‒ We are here in a curious difficulty: on the one hand it seems we have no reason to say that in all cases in which we understand a word one particular experience – – or even one of a set – – is present. On the other hand we may feel it's plainly wrong to say that in such a case all that happens may be that I hear or say the word. For that seems to be saying that part of the time we act as mere automatons. And the answer is that in a sense we do and in a sense we don't.
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,125}} If someone talked to me with a kindly play of facial expressions, is it necessary that in any short interval his face should have been || looked such that seeing it at any other time || under any other circumstances I should have called its expression distinctly kindly? And if not, does this mean that his “kindly play of expression” was interrupted by periods of inexpressiveness? ‒ ‒ We certainly should not say this under the circumstances which I am assuming, and we don't feel that the look at this moment interrupts || interrupted the expressiveness, although taken alone we should call it inexpressive.
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| Just in this way we refer by the phrase “understanding a word” not necessarily to that which happens while we are saying or hearing it, but to the whole environment of the event of saying it. And this also applies to our saying that someone speaks like an automaton or like a parrot. Speaking with understanding certainly differs from speaking like an automaton, but this doesn't mean that the speaking in the first case is all the time accompanied by something which is lacking in the second case. Just as when we say that two people move in different circles this doesn't mean that they mayn't walk the street in identical surroundings.
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| 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
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,126}} possible case; for of course every day something different happens.
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| 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.
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| 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”.
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| We might ask, “Did you say it had a peculiar smell, as
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,127}} opposed to no peculiar smell, or that it had this smell, as opposed to some other smell, or did you wish to say both the first and the second?” ‒ ‒ Now what was it like when, philosophizing, I said that the word “red” came in a particular way when I described something I saw as red? Was it that I was going to describe the way in which the word “red” came, like saying, “It always comes quicker than the word ‘two’ when I'm counting coloured objects” or “It always comes with a shock,” etc.? ‒ ‒ Or was it that I wished to say that “red” comes in a striking way? ‒ ‒ Not exactly that either. But certainly rather the second than the first. To see this more clearly, consider another example: You are, of course, constantly changing the position of your body throughout the day; arrest yourself in any such attitude (while writing, reading, talking, etc. etc.) and say to yourself in the way in which you say, “‘Red’ comes in a particular way … ”, “I am now in a particular attitude.” You will find that you can quite naturally say this. But aren't you always in a particular attitude? And of course you didn't mean that you were just then in a particularly striking attitude. What was it that happened? You concentrated, as it were stared at, your sensations. And this is exactly what you did when you said that “red” came in a particular way.
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| “But didn't I mean that ‘red’ came in a different way from ‘two’?” ‒ ‒ You may have meant this, but the phrase, “They come in different ways”, is itself liable to cause confusion. Suppose I said, “Smith and Jones always enter my room in different ways”: I might go on and say, “Smith enters quickly, Jones
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,128}} slowly”, I am specifying the ways. I might on the other hand say, “I don't know what the difference is”, intimating that I'm trying to specify the difference, and perhaps later on I shall say, “Now I know what it is; it is … ” ‒ ‒ I could on the other hand tell you that they came in different ways, and you wouldn't know what to make of this statement, and perhaps answer, “Of course they come in different ways; they just are different.” ‒ ‒ We could describe our trouble by saying that we feel as though we could give an experience a name without at the same time committing ourselves about its use, and in fact without any intention to use it at all. Thus when I say “red” comes in a particular way … , I feel that I might now give this way a name if it hasn't already got one, say “A”. But at the same time I am not at all prepared to say that I recognize this to be the way “red” has always come on such occasions, nor even to say that there are, say, four ways, say A, B, C, D, in one of which it always comes. You might say that the two ways in which “red” and “two” come can be identified by, say, exchanging the meaning of the two words, using “red” as the second cardinal numeral, “two” as the name of a colour. Thus, on being asked how many eyes I had, I should answer “red”, and to the question, “What is the colour of blood?”, “two”. But the question now arises whether you can identify the “way in which these words come” independently of the ways in which they are used, – – I mean the ways just described. Did you wish to say that as a matter of experience, the word when used in this way always comes in the way A, but may, the next time, come in the way “two” usually comes? You will see then that
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,129}} you meant nothing of the sort.
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| What is particular about the way “red” comes is that it comes while you're philosophizing about it, as what is particular about the position of your body when you concentrated on it was concentration. We appear to ourselves to be on the verge of giving a characterization of the “way” || describing the way, whereas we aren't really opposing it to any other way. We are emphasizing, not comparing, but we express ourselves as though this emphasis was really a comparison of the object with itself; there seems to be a reflexive comparison. Let me express myself in this way: suppose I speak of the way in which A enters the room, I may say, “I have noticed the way in which A enters the room”, and on being asked, “What is it?”, I may answer, “He always sticks his head into the room before coming in.” Here I'm referring to a definite feature, and I could say that B had the same way, or that A no longer had it. Consider on the other hand the statement, “I've now been observing the way A sits and smokes.” I want to draw him like this. In this case I needn't be ready to give any description of a particular feature of his attitude, and my statement may just mean, “I've been observing A as he sat and smoked.” ‒ ‒ “The way” can't in this case be separated from him. Now if I wished to draw him as he sat there, and was contemplating, studying, his attitude, I should while doing so be inclined to say and repeat to myself, “He has a particular way of sitting.” But the answer to the question, “What way?” would be, “Well, this way”, and perhaps one would give it by drawing the characteristic outlines of his attitude. On the other hand, my phrase, “He has a particular way … ”, might
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,130
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| just have to be translated into, “I'm contemplating his attitude.” Putting it in this form we have, as it were, straightened out the proposition; || our expression; whereas in its first form its meaning seems to describe a loop, that is to say, the word “particular” here seems to be used transitively and, more particularly, reflexively, i.e., we are regarding its use as a special case of the transitive use. We are inclined to answer the question, “What way do you mean?” by “This way”, instead of answering: “I didn't refer to any particular feature; I was just contemplating his position.” My expression made it appear as though I was pointing out something about his way of sitting, or, in our previous case, about the way the word “red” came, whereas what makes me use the word “particular” here is that by my attitude towards the phenomenon I am laying an emphasis on it: I am concentrating on it, or retracing it in my mind, or drawing it, etc.
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| Now this is a characteristic situation to find ourselves in when thinking about philosophical problems. There are many troubles which arise in this way, that a word has a transitive and an intransitive use, and that we regard the latter as a particular case of the former, explaining the word when it is used intransitively by a reflexive construction.
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| Thus we say, “By ‘kilogram’ I mean the weight of one liter of water”, “By ‘A’ I mean ‘B’”, where B is an explanation of “A”. But there is also the intransitive use: “I said that I was sick of it and meant it.” Here again, meaning what you said could be called “retracing it”, “laying an emphasis on it.” But using the word “meaning” in this sentence makes it appear that
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,131}} it must have sense to ask, “What did you mean?”, and to answer, “By what I said I meant what I said”; treating the case of “I mean what I say” as a special case of “By saying ‘A’ I mean ‘B’.” In fact one uses the expression, “I mean what I mean” to say, “I have no explanation for it.” The question, “What does this sentence p mean?”, if it doesn't ask for a translation of p into other symbols, has no more sense than “what sentence is formed by this sequence of words?”
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| Suppose to the question, “What's a kilogram?” I answered, “It is what a liter of water weighs”, and someone asked, “Well, what does a liter of water weigh?” ‒ ‒
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| We often use the reflexive form of speech as a means of emphasizing something. And in all such cases our reflexive expressions can be “straightened out”. Thus we use the expression, “If I can't, I can't”, “I am as I am”, “It is just what it is”, also “That's that.” This latter phrase means as much as, “That's settled”, but why should we express “That's settled” by “That's that”? The answer can be given by laying before ourselves a series of interpretations which make a transition between the two expressions. Thus || So for “That's settled” I will say, “The matter is closed.” And this expression, as it were, files the matter and shelves it. And filing it is like drawing a line around it, as one sometimes draws a line around the result of a calculation, thereby marking it as final. But this also makes it stand out, it is a way of emphasizing it. And what the expression, “That's that” does is to emphasize the “That”.
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| Another expression akin to those we have just considered
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,132}} is this: “Here it is; take it or leave it!” And this again is akin to a kind of introductory statement which we sometimes make before remarking on certain alternatives, as when we say: “It either rains or it doesn't rain; if it rains we'll stay in my room, if it doesn't … ” The first part of this sentence is no piece of information (just as “Take it or leave it” is no order). Instead of, “It either rains or it doesn't rain” we could have said, “Consider the two cases … ” Our expression underlines these cases, presents them to your attention.
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| It is closely connected with this that in describing a case like 30) || 30) or 31) (?) we are tempted to use the phrase, “There is, of course, a number beyond which no one of the tribe has ever counted; let this number be … ” Straightened out this reads: “Let the number beyond which no one of the tribe has ever counted be … ” Why we tend to prefer the first expression to the one straightened out is that it more strongly directs our attention to the upper end of the range of numerals used by our tribe in their actual practice.
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| Let us now consider a very instructive case of that use of the word “particular” in which it does not point to a comparison || in which it doesn't indicate that I'm making a comparison, and yet seems most strongly to do so, – – the case when we contemplate the expression of a face primitively drawn in this way: . Let this face produce an impression on you. You may then feel inclined to say: “Surely I don't see mere strokes. || dashes. I see a face with a particular expression.” But you don't mean that it has an outstanding expression nor is it said as an introduction to a description of the expression, though we
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,133}} might give such a description and say, e.g., “It looks like a complacent business man, stupidly supercilious, who though fat, imagines he's a lady killer.” But this would only be meant as an approximate description of the expression. “Words can't exactly describe it”, one sometimes says. And yet one feels that what one calls the expression of the face is something that can be detached from the drawing of the face. It is as though we could say: “This face has a particular expression: namely this” (pointing to something). But if I had to point to anything in this place it would have to be the face || drawing I am looking at. (We are, as it were, under an optic delusion which by some sort of reflection makes us think that there are two objects where there is only one.) The delusion is assisted by our using the verb “to have”, saying “The face has a particular expression.” Things look different when, instead of this, we say: “This is a peculiar face.” (What a thing is, we mean, is bound up with it; what it has can be separated from it.)
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| “This face has a particular expression.” ‒ ‒ I am inclined to say this when I am letting it make || trying to let it make its full impression upon me.
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| What goes on here is an act, as it were, of digesting it, getting hold of it, and the phrase, “getting hold of the expression of this face” suggests that we are getting hold of a thing which is in the face and different from it. It seems we are looking for something, but we don't do so in the sense of looking for a model of the expression outside the face we see, but in the sense of sounding the thing with our attention. It is,
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,134}} when I let the face make an impression on me, as though there existed a double of its expression, as though the double was the prototype of the expression and as though seeing the expression of the face was finding the prototype to which it corresponded – – as though in our mind there had been a mould and the picture we see had fallen into that mould, fitting it. But it is rather that we let the picture sink into our mind and make a mould there.
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| 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
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,135}} each other, or as two interlocking pairs, or as one pair inside the other, etc.
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| 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”).
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| And in this way “seeing dashes as a face” does not involve
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,136}} a comparison between a group of dashes and a real human face; and on the other hand, this form of expression most strongly suggests that we are alluding to a comparison.
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| Consider also this example: Look at W once “as a capital double-U”, and another time as a capital M upside down. Observe what doing the one and doing the other consists in.
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| 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.
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| 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.”
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| 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.
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| {{BBB 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.
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| I will here again describe the kind of thing that happens in your mind and otherwise when you recognize a person coming into your room by means of what you might say when you recognize him. Now this may just be: “Hello!” And thus we may say that one kind of event of recognizing a thing we see consists in saying “Hello!” to it in words, gestures, facial expressions, etc. ‒ ‒ And thus also we may think that when we look at our drawing and see it as a face, we compare it with some paradigm, and it agrees with it, or it fits into a mould ready for it in our mind. But no such mould or comparison enters into our experience, there is only this shape, not any other to compare it with, and as it were, say “Of course!” to it. As when in putting together a jig-saw puzzle, somewhere a small space is left unfilled and I see a piece obviously fitting it and put it in the place saying to myself “Of course!” But here we say, “Of course!” because the piece fits the mould
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,138}} whereas in our case of seeing the drawing as a face, we have the same attitude for no reason.
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| The same strange illusion which we are under when we seem to seek the something which a face expresses whereas, in reality, we are giving ourselves up to the features before us,– – that same illusion possesses us even more strongly if repeating a tune to ourselves and letting it make its full impression on us, we say, “This tune says something”, and it is as though I had to find what it says. And yet I know that it doesn't say anything in which I might express in words or pictures what it says. And if, recognizing this, I resign myself to saying, “It just expresses a musical thought”, this would mean no more than saying, “It expresses itself.” ‒ ‒ “But surely when you play it you don't play it anyhow, you play it in this particular way, making a crescendo here, a diminuendo there, a caesura in this place, etc.”‒ ‒ Precisely, and that's all I can say about it, or may be all that I can say about it. For in certain cases I can justify, explain the particular expression with which I play it by a comparison, as when I say, “At this point of the theme, there is, as it were, a colon”, or, “This is, as it were, the answer to what came before”, etc. (This, by the way, shews what a “justification” and an “explanation” in aesthetics is like.) It is true I may hear a tune played and say, “This is not how it ought to be played, it goes like this”; and I whistle it in a different tempo. Here one is inclined to ask, “What is it like to know the tempo in which a piece of music should be played?” And the idea suggests itself that there must be a paradigm somewhere in our mind, and that we have
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,139}} adjusted the tempo to conform to that paradigm. But in most cases if someone asked me, “How do you think this melody should be played?”, I will as an answer just whistle it in a particular way, and nothing will have been present to my mind but the tune actually whistled (not an image of that).
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| This doesn't mean that suddenly understanding a musical theme may not consist in finding a form of verbal expression which I conceive as the verbal counterpoint of the theme. And in the same way I may say, “Now I understand the expression of this face”, and what happened when the understanding came was that I found the word which seemed to sum it up. || characterize its expression.
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| Consider also this expression: “Tell yourself that it's a waltz, and you will play it correctly.”
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| What we call “understanding a sentence” has, in many cases, a much greater similarity to understanding a musical theme than we might be inclined to think. But I don't mean that understanding a musical theme is more like the picture which one tends to make oneself of understanding a sentence; but rather that this picture is wrong, and that understanding a sentence is much more like what really happens when we understand a tune than at first sight appears. For understanding a sentence, “we say”, || one says, points to a reality outside the sentence || language. Whereas one might say, “Understanding a sentence means getting hold of its content; and the content of the sentence is in the sentence”.
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| We may now return to the ideas of “recognizing” and “familiarity”, and in fact to that example of recognition and familiarity which started our reflections on the use of these terms and of a multitude of terms connected with them. I mean the
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,140
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| example of reading, say, a written sentence in a well-known language. ‒ ‒ I read such a sentence to see what the experience of reading is like, what “really happens” when one reads, and I get a particular experience which I take to be the experience of reading. And, it seems, this doesn't simply consist in seeing and pronouncing the words, but, besides, in an experience of what I might call an intimate character || experience of an intimate character, as I should like to say. (I am || am as it were on an intimate footing with the words “I read”).
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| In reading the spoken words come in a particular way, I am inclined to say; and the written words themselves which I read don't just look to me like any kind of scribbles. At the same time I am unable to point to, or get a grasp on, that “particular way.”
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| The phenomenon of seeing and speaking the words seems enshrouded by a particular atmosphere. But I don't recognize this atmosphere as one which always characterized reading || the situation of reading. Rather, I notice it when I read a line, trying to see what reading is like.
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| When noticing this atmosphere I am in the situation of a man who is working in his room, reading, writing, speaking, etc., and who suddenly concentrates his attention on some soft uniform noise, such as one can almost always hear, particularly in a town (the dim noise resulting from all the various noises of the street, the sounds of wind, rain, workshops, etc.). We could imagine that this man might think that a particular noise was a common element of all the experiences he had in this
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,141}} room. We should then draw his attention to the fact that most of the time he hadn't noticed any noise going on outside, and secondly, that the noise he could hear wasn't always the same (there was sometimes wind, sometimes not, etc.)
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| Now we have used a misleading expression when we said that besides the experiences of seeing and speaking in reading there was another experience, etc. This is saying that to certain experiences another experience is added. ‒ ‒ Now take the experience of seeing a sad face, say, in drawing, – – we can say that to see the drawing as a sad face is not “just” to see it as some complex of strokes, (think of a puzzle picture). But the word “just” here seems to intimate that in seeing the drawing as a face some experience is added to the experience of seeing it as mere strokes; as though I had to say that seeing the drawing as a face consisted of two experiences, elements.
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| You should now notice the difference between the various cases in which we say that an experience consists of several elements || experiences or that it is a compound experience. We might say to the doctor, “I don't have one pain; I have two: toothache and headache.” And one might express this by saying, “My experience of pain is not simple, but compound, I toothache and headache.” Compare with this case that in which I say, “I have got both pains in my stomach and a general feeling of sickness.” Here I don't separate the constituent experiences by pointing to two localities of pain. Or consider this statement: “When I drink sweet tea, my taste experience is a compound of the taste of sugar and the taste of tea.” Or again: “If I hear
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,142}} the C major chord my experience is composed of hearing C, E, and G.” And, on the other hand, “I hear a piano playing and some noise in the street.” A most instructive example is this: in a song words are sung to certain notes. In what sense is the experience of hearing the vowel a sung to the note C a composite one? Ask yourself in each of these cases: What is it like to single out the constituent experiences in the compound experience?
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| 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.
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| Now when I felt that though while reading a certain constant experience went on and on, I could not in a sense lay hold of that experience, my difficulty arose through wrongly comparing this case with one in which one part of my experience can be said to be an accompaniment of another. Thus we are sometimes tempted to ask: “If I feel this constant hum going on while I read, where is it?” I wish to make a pointing gesture, and there is nothing to point to. And the words “lay hold of” express the same misleading analogy.
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| Instead of asking the question, “Where is this constant experience which seems to go on all through my reading?”, we should ask, “What is it in saying, ‘A particular atmosphere
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,143}} enshrouds the words which I am reading’, that I am contrasting this case with?”
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| 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.
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| Look at a written word, say, “read”, – – “It isn't just a scribble, it's ‘read’”, I should like to say, “It has one definite physiognomy.” But what is it that I am really saying about it?! What is this statement, straightened out? “The word falls”, one is tempted to explain, “into a mould of my mind long prepared for it.” But as I don't perceive both the word and a mould, the metaphor of the word's fitting a mould can't allude to an experience of comparing the hollow and the solid shape before they are fitted together, but rather to an experience of seeing the solid shape accentuated by a particular background. 1) , 11) .
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,144}} 1) would be the picture of the hollow and the solid shape before they are fitted together. We here see two circles and can compare them. 11) is the picture of the solid in the hollow. There is only one circle, and what we call the mould only accentuates, or as we sometimes said, emphasizes it.
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| I am tempted to say, “This isn't just a scribble, but it's this particular face.” ‒ ‒ But I can't say, “I see this as this face”, but ought to say, “I see this as a face.” But I feel I want to say, “I don't see this as a face, I see it as this face!” But in the second half of this sentence the word “face” is redundant, and it should have run, “I don't see this as a face, I see it like this.”
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| Suppose I said, “I see this scribble like this”, and while saying “this scribble” I look at it as a mere scribble, and while saying “like this”, I see the face, – – this would come to something like saying, “What at one time appears to me like this at another appears to me like that”, and here the “this” and the “that” would be accompanied by the two different ways of seeing. ‒ ‒ But we must ask ourselves in what game is this sentence with the processes accompanying it to be used. E.g., whom am I telling this? Suppose the answer is, “I'm saying it to myself.” But that is not enough. We are here in the grave danger of believing that we know what to do with a sentence if it looks more or less like one of the common sentences of our language. But here in order not to be deluded we have to ask ourselves: What is the use, say, of the words “this” and “that”? – – or rather, What are the different uses which we make of them? What we call their meaning the meaning of these words is
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| {{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
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,146}} we imagine. I might for instance ask the question: When I said to myself, “What at one time appears to me like this, at another … ”, did I recognize the two aspects, this and that, as the same which I got on previous occasions? Or were they new to me and I tried to remember them for future occasions? Or was all that I meant to say, “I can change the aspect of this figure”?
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| The danger of delusion which we are in becomes most clear if we propose to ourselves to give the aspects “this” and “that” names, say A and B. For we are most strongly tempted to imagine that giving a name consists in correlating in a peculiar and rather mysterious way a sound (or other sign) with something. How we make use of this peculiar correlation then seems to be almost a secondary matter. (One could almost imagine that naming was done by a peculiar sacramental act, and that this produced some magic relation between the name and the thing.)
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| 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
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| {{BBB 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| {{BBB 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.)
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| Now we might use the expression, “The relation of name to || and object does not merely consist in this kind of trivial, ‘purely external’, connection”, meaning that what we call the relation of name and object is characterized by the entire usage of the name, but then it is clear that there is no one relation of name to object, but as many as there are uses of sounds or scribbles which we call names.
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| We can therefore say that if naming something is to be more than just uttering a sound while pointing to something, there must come to it, in some form or other, the knowledge of how in the particular case the sound or scratch is to be used.
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| Now when we proposed to give the aspects of a drawing names, we made it appear that by seeing the drawing in two different ways, and each time saying something, we had done more than performing just this uninteresting action; whereas we now see that it is the usage of the “name” and in fact the detail of this usage which gives the naming its peculiar significance.
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,149
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| 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?”
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| When I say, “I don't see mere dashes (a mere scribble) but a face (or word) with this particular physiognomy”, I don't wish to assert any general characteristic of what I see, but to assert that I see that particular physiognomy which I do see. And it is obvious that here my expression is moving in a circle. But this is so because really the particular physiognomy which I saw ought to have entered my proposition. ‒ ‒ When I find that, “In reading a sentence, a peculiar experience goes on all the while”, I have actually to read over a fairly long stretch to get the peculiar impression uttered in this way || which makes one say this.
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| I might then have said, “I find that the same experience goes on all the time”, but I wished to say: “I don't just notice that it's the same experience throughout, I notice a particular experience.” Looking at a uniformly coloured wall I might say, “I don't just see that it has the same colour all over, but I see the || a particular colour.” But in saying this I am mistaking the function of a sentence. ‒ ‒ It seems that you wish to specify the colour you see, but not by saying anything about it, nor by comparing it with a sample, – – but by pointing to it; using it at the same time as the sample and that which
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,150
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| the sample is compared with.
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| 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.)
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| 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.
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| “Surely it makes sense to say what I see, and how better
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,151}} could I do this than by letting what I see speak for itself!”
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| But the words, “I see” in our sentence are redundant. I don't wish to tell myself that it is I who see this, nor that I see it. Or, as I might put it, it is impossible that I should not see this. This comes to the same as saying that I can't point out to myself by a visual hand what I am seeing; as this hand does not point to what I see but is part of what I see.
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| It is as though the sentence was singling out the particular colour I saw; as if it presented it to me.
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| It seems as though the colour which I see was its own description.
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| For the pointing with my finger was ineffectual. (And the looking is no pointing, it does not, for me, indicate a direction, which could mean contrasting a direction with other directions.)
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| What I see, or feel, enters my sentence as a sample does; but no use is made of this sample; the words of my sentence don't seem to matter, they only serve to present the sample to me.
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| I don't really speak about what I see, but to it.
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| I am in fact going through the acts of attending which could accompany the use of a sample. And this is what makes it seem as though I was making use of a sample. This error is akin to that of believing that an ostensive definition says something about the object to which it directs our attention.
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| When I said, “I am mistaking the function of a sentence”, it was because by its help I seemed to be pointing out to myself which colour it is I see, whereas I was just contemplating a
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,152}} sample of a colour. It seemed to me that the sample was the description of its own colour.
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| Suppose I said to someone: “Observe the particular lighting of this room.” ‒ ‒ Under certain circumstances the sense of this order || imperative will be quite clear, e.g., if the walls of the room were red with the setting sun. But suppose at any other time when there is nothing striking about the lighting I said, “Observe the particular lighting of this room”: – – Well, isn't there a particular lighting? So what is the difficulty about observing it? But the person who was told to observe the lighting when there was nothing striking about it would probably look about the room and say, “Well, what about it?” Now I might go on and say, “It is exactly the same lighting as yesterday at this hour”, or “It is just this slightly dim light which you see in this picture of the room.” | | Suppose I said to someone: “Observe the particular lighting of this room.” ‒ ‒ Under certain circumstances the sense of this order || imperative will be quite clear, e.g., if the walls of the room were red with the setting sun. But suppose at any other time when there is nothing striking about the lighting I said, “Observe the particular lighting of this room”: – – Well, isn't there a particular lighting? So what is the difficulty about observing it? But the person who was told to observe the lighting when there was nothing striking about it would probably look about the room and say, “Well, what about it?” Now I might go on and say, “It is exactly the same lighting as yesterday at this hour”, or “It is just this slightly dim light which you see in this picture of the room.” |
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| In the second case, when the room was just ordinarily lighted and there was nothing striking about its appearance, you didn't know exactly what to do when you were told to observe the lighting of the room. All you could do was to look about you waiting for something further to be said which would give the first order its full sense. | | In the second case, when the room was just ordinarily lighted and there was nothing striking about its appearance, you didn't know exactly what to do when you were told to observe the lighting of the room. All you could do was to look about you waiting for something further to be said which would give the first order its full sense. |
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,153 | | {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,153}} But wasn't the room, in both cases, lit in a particular way? Well, this question, as it stands, is senseless, and so is the answer, “It was … ” The order, “Observe the particular lighting of this room”, does not imply any statement about the appearance of this room. It seemed to say: “This room has a particular lighting, which I need not name; observe it!” The lighting referred to, it seems, is given by a sample, and you are to make use of the sample; as you would be doing in copying the precise shade of a colour sample on a palette. Whereas the order is similar to this: “Get hold of this sample!” |
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| But wasn't the room, in both cases, lit in a particular way? Well, this question, as it stands, is senseless, and so is the answer, “It was … ” The order, “Observe the particular lighting of this room”, does not imply any statement about the appearance of this room. It seemed to say: “This room has a particular lighting, which I need not name; observe it!” The lighting referred to, it seems, is given by a sample, and you are to make use of the sample; as you would be doing in copying the precise shade of a colour sample on a palette. Whereas the order is similar to this: “Get hold of this sample!” | |
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| Imagine yourself saying, “There is a particular lighting I must observe || which I'm to observe.” You could imagine yourself in this case staring about you in vain, that is, without seeing the lighting. | | Imagine yourself saying, “There is a particular lighting I must observe || which I'm to observe.” You could imagine yourself in this case staring about you in vain, that is, without seeing the lighting. |
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| When we obey the order, “Observe the colour … ”, what we do is to open our eyes to colour. “Observe the colour … ” doesn't mean “See the colour you see.” The order, “Look at so-and-so”, is of the kind, “Turn your head in this direction”; what you will see when you do so does not enter this order. By attending, looking, you produce the impression; you can't look at the impression. | | When we obey the order, “Observe the colour … ”, what we do is to open our eyes to colour. “Observe the colour … ” doesn't mean “See the colour you see.” The order, “Look at so-and-so”, is of the kind, “Turn your head in this direction”; what you will see when you do so does not enter this order. By attending, looking, you produce the impression; you can't look at the impression. |
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,154}} Suppose someone answered to our order: “Yes || “All right, I am now observing the particular lighting this room has”, – – this would sound as though he could point out to us the particular lighting || which lighting it was. The order, that is to say, may seem to tell || have told you to do something with this particular lighting, as opposed to another one (like “Paint this lighting, not that”). Whereas you obey the order by taking in lighting, as opposed to dimensions, shapes, etc. | | {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,154}} Suppose someone answered to our order: “Yes || “All right, I am now observing the particular lighting this room has”, – – this would sound as though he could point out to us the particular lighting || which lighting it was. The order, that is to say, may seem to tell || have told you to do something with this particular lighting, as opposed to another one (like “Paint this lighting, not that”). Whereas you obey the order by taking in lighting, as opposed to dimensions, shapes, etc. |
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| When, trying to see what reading consisted in, I read a written sentence, let it || the reading of it impress itself upon me, and said that | | When, trying to see what reading consisted in, I read a written sentence, let it || the reading of it impress itself upon me, and said that |
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,159}} I had a particular impression, one could have asked me such a question as whether my impression was not due to the particular handwriting || whether it was not, say, the handwriting which had given me the particular impression. This would be asking me whether my impression would not be a different one if the writing had been a different one, or say, if each word of the sentence were written in a different handwriting. In this sense we could also ask whether that impression wasn't due after all to the sense of the particular sentence which I read. One might suggest: Read a different sentence (or the same one in a different handwriting) and see if you would still say that you had the same impression. And the answer might be: “Yes, the impression I had was really due to the handwriting.” ‒ ‒ But this would not imply that when I first said the sentence gave me a particular impression I had contrasted one impression with another, or that my statement had not been of the kind, “This sentence has its own expression || character.” This will get clearer by considering the following example: Suppose we have three faces drawn side by side: a) , b) , c) . They should be absolutely identical, but for an additional stroke in b) and two dots in c). I contemplate the first one, saying to myself, “This face has a peculiar expression.” Then I am shewn the second one and asked whether it has the same expression. I answer “Yes”. Then the third one is shewn to me and I say, “It has a different expression.” In my two answers I might be said to have distinguished the face and its expression: for b) is different from a) and still I say they have the same expression, whereas the difference between c) and a) corresponds to a | | {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,159}} I had a particular impression, one could have asked me such a question as whether my impression was not due to the particular handwriting || whether it was not, say, the handwriting which had given me the particular impression. This would be asking me whether my impression would not be a different one if the writing had been a different one, or say, if each word of the sentence were written in a different handwriting. In this sense we could also ask whether that impression wasn't due after all to the sense of the particular sentence which I read. One might suggest: Read a different sentence (or the same one in a different handwriting) and see if you would still say that you had the same impression. And the answer might be: “Yes, the impression I had was really due to the handwriting.” ‒ ‒ But this would not imply that when I first said the sentence gave me a particular impression I had contrasted one impression with another, or that my statement had not been of the kind, “This sentence has its own expression || character.” This will get clearer by considering the following example: Suppose we have three faces drawn side by side: a) , b) , c) . They should be absolutely identical, but for an additional stroke in b) and two dots in c). I contemplate the first one, saying to myself, “This face has a peculiar expression.” Then I am shewn the second one and asked whether it has the same expression. I answer “Yes”. Then the third one is shewn to me and I say, “It has a different expression.” In my two answers I might be said to have distinguished the face and its expression: for b) is different from a) and still I say they have the same expression, whereas the difference between c) and a) corresponds to a {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,160}} difference of expression; and this may make us think that also in my first utterance I distinguished between the face and its expression. |
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| difference of expression; and this may make us think that also in my first utterance I distinguished between the face and its expression. | |
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| Let us now go back to the idea of a feeling of familiarity which arises when I see familiar objects. Pondering about the question whether there is such a feeling or not, we are likely to gaze at some object and say, “Don't I have a particular feeling when I look at my old coat and hat?” But to this we now answer: What feeling do you compare this || it with, or oppose it to? Should you say that your old coat gives you the same feeling as your old friend A with whose appearance too you are well acquainted, or that whenever you happened to look at your coat you get that feeling, say of intimacy and warmth? | | Let us now go back to the idea of a feeling of familiarity which arises when I see familiar objects. Pondering about the question whether there is such a feeling or not, we are likely to gaze at some object and say, “Don't I have a particular feeling when I look at my old coat and hat?” But to this we now answer: What feeling do you compare this || it with, or oppose it to? Should you say that your old coat gives you the same feeling as your old friend A with whose appearance too you are well acquainted, or that whenever you happened to look at your coat you get that feeling, say of intimacy and warmth? |
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| “But is there no such thing as a feeling of familiarity?” ‒ ‒ I should say that there are a great many different experiences, some of them feelings, which we might call “experiences (feelings) of familiarity.” | | “But is there no such thing as a feeling of familiarity?” ‒ ‒ I should say that there are a great many different experiences, some of them feelings, which we might call “experiences (feelings) of familiarity.” |
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| Different experiences of familiarity: a) Someone enters my room, I haven't seen him for a long time, and didn't expect him. I look at him, say or feel, “Oh, it's you.” ‒ ‒ (Why did I in giving this example say that I hadn't seen the man for a long time? Wasn't I setting out to describe experiences of familiarity? And whatever the experience was I alluded to, couldn't I have had it even if I had seen the man half an hour ago? I mean, I gave the circumstances of recognizing the man as a means to the end of describing the precise situation of the recognition. One might object to this way of describing the experience, saying that it brought in irrelevant things, and in | | Different experiences of familiarity: a) Someone enters my room, I haven't seen him for a long time, and didn't expect him. I look at him, say or feel, “Oh, it's you.” ‒ ‒ (Why did I in giving this example say that I hadn't seen the man for a long time? Wasn't I setting out to describe experiences of familiarity? And whatever the experience was I alluded to, couldn't I have had it even if I had seen the man half an hour ago? I mean, I gave the circumstances of recognizing the man as a means to the end of describing the precise situation of the recognition. One might object to this way of describing the experience, saying that it brought in irrelevant things, and in {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,161}} fact wasn't a description of the feeling at all. In saying this one takes as the prototype of a description, say, the description of a table, which tells you the exact shape, dimensions, the material which it is made of, and its colour. Such a description one might say pieces the table together. There is on the other hand a different kind of description of a table, such as you might find in a novel, e.g., “It was a small, rickety table decorated in Moorish style, the sort that is used for smoker's requisites.” Such a description might be called an indirect one; but if the purpose of it is to bring a vivid image of the table before your mind in a flash, it might serve this purpose incomparably better than a detailed “direct” description. ‒ ‒ Now if I am to give the description of a feeling of familiarity or recognition, – – what do you expect me to do? Can I piece the feeling together? In a sense of course I could, giving you many different stages and the way my feelings changed. Such detailed descriptions you can find in some of the great novels. Now if you think of descriptions of pieces of furniture as you might find them in a novel, you see that to this kind of description you can oppose another making use of drawings, measures such as one should give to a cabinet maker. This latter kind one is inclined to call the only direct and complete description (though this way of expressing ourselves shews that we forget that there are certain purposes which the “real” description does not fulfil). These considerations should warn you not to think that there is one real and direct description of, say, the feeling of recognition as opposed to |
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,161}} fact wasn't a description of the feeling at all. In saying this one takes as the prototype of a description, say, the description of a table, which tells you the exact shape, dimensions, the material which it is made of, and its colour. Such a description one might say pieces the table together. There is on the other hand a different kind of description of a table, such as you might find in a novel, e.g., “It was a small, rickety table decorated in Moorish style, the sort that is used for smoker's requisites.” Such a description might be called an indirect one; but if the purpose of it is to bring a vivid image of the table before your mind in a flash, it might serve this purpose incomparably better than a detailed “direct” description. ‒ ‒ Now if I am to give the description of a feeling of familiarity or recognition, – – what do you expect me to do? Can I piece the feeling together? In a sense of course I could, giving you many different stages and the way my feelings changed. Such detailed descriptions you can find in some of the great novels. Now if you think of descriptions of pieces of furniture as you might find them in a novel, you see that to this kind of description you can oppose another making use of drawings, measures such as one should give to a cabinet maker. This latter kind one is inclined to call the only direct and complete description (though this way of expressing ourselves shews that we forget that there are certain purposes which the “real” description does not fulfil). These considerations should warn you not to think that there is one real and direct description of, say, the feeling of recognition as opposed to | |
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| {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,162}} the “indirect” one which I have given.) | | {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,162}} the “indirect” one which I have given.) |