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In document PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS (Page 90-116)

I I Z C PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

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690. What about the case where I at one time make an apparently innocent remark and accompany it with a furtive sidelong glance at someone; and at another time, without any such glance, speak of somebody present openly, mentioning his name—am I really thinking

specially about him as I use his name?

691. When I make myself a sketch of N's face from memory, I can surely be said to mean him by my drawing. But which of the processes taking place while I draw (or before or afterwards) could I call meaning him?

For one would naturally like to say: when he meant him, he aimed at him. But how is anyone doing that, when he calls someone else's face to mind?

I mean, how does he call HIM to mind?

H.on> does he call himt

692. Is it correct for someone to say: "When I gave you this rule, I meant you to . . . in this case"? Even if he did not think of this case at all as he gave the rule? Of course it is correct. For "to mean it" did not mean: to think of it. But now the problem is: how are we to judge whether someone meant such-and-such?—The fact that he has, for example, mastered a particular technique in arithmetic and algebra, and that he taught someone else the expansion of a series in the usual way, is such a criterion.

693. "When I teach someone the formation of the series . . . . I surely mean him to write . . . . at the hundredth place."—Quite right; you mean it. And evidently without necessarily even thinking of it. This shews you how different the grammar of the verb "to mean" is from that of "to think". And nothing is more wrong-headed than calling meaning a mental activity! Unless, that is, one is setting out to produce confusion. (It would also be possible to speak of an activity of butter when it rises in price, and if no problems are produced by this it is harmless.)

One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not?

A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after to-morrow?—And what can he not do here?—How do I do it?—How am I supposed to answer this?

Can only those hope who can talk? (3nly those who have mastered the use of a language. That is to say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life. (If a concept refers to a character of human handwriting, it has no application to beings that do not write.) "Grief" describes a pattern which recurs, with different variations, in the weave of our life. If a man's bodily expression of sorrow and of joy alternated, say with the ticking of a clock, here we should not have the characteristic formation of the pattern of sorrow or of the pattern of joy.

"For a second he felt violent pain."—Why does it sound queer to say: "For a second he felt deep grief"? Only because it so seldom happens?

But don't you feel grief now? ("But aren't you playing chess «<?»>?" The answer may be affirmative, but that does not make the concept of grief any more like the concept of a sensation.—The question was really, of course, a temporal and personal one, not the logical question which we wanted to raise.

"I must tell you: I am frightened." "I must tell you: it makes me shiver."— And one can say this in a smiling tone of voice too.

And do you mean to tell me he doesn't feel it? How else does he

know it?—But even when he says it as a piece of information he does

not learn it from his sensations.

For think of the sensations produced by physically shuddering: the words "it makes me shiver" are themselves such a shuddering re- action; and if I hear and feel them as I utter them, this belongs among the rest of those sensations. Now why should the wordless shudder be the ground of the verbal one?

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In saying "When I heard this word, it meant . . . . to me" one refers to a point of time and to a way of using the word. (Of course, it is this combination that we fail to grasp.)

And the expression "I was then going to say . . . . ." refers to a

point of time and to an action.

I speak of the essential references of the utterance in order to dis- tinguish them from other peculiarities of the expression we use. The references that are essential to an utterance are the ones which would make us translate some otherwise alien form of expression into this, our customary form.

If you were unable to say that the word "till" could be both a verb and a conjunction, or to construct sentences, in which it was now the one and now the other, you would not be able to manage simple schoolroom exercises. But a schoolboy is not asked to conceive the word in one way or another out of any context, or to report how he has conceived it.

The words "the rose is red" are meaningless if the word "is" has the meaning "is identical with".—Does this mean: if you say this sentence and mean the "is" as the sign of identity, the sense disintegrates?

We take a sentence and tell someone the meaning of each of its words; this tells him how to apply them and so how to apply the sentence too. If we had chosen a senseless sequence of words instead of the sentence, he would not learn how to apply the sequence. And if we explain the word "is" as the sign of identity, then he does not learn how to use the sentence "the rose is red".

And yet there is something right about this 'disintegration of the sense'. You get it in the following example: one might tell someone: if you want to pronounce the salutation "Haill" expressively, you had better not think of hailstones as you say it.

Experiencing a meaning and experiencing a mental image. "In both cases", we should like to say, "we are experiencing something, only something different. A different content is proffered—is present— to consciousness."—What is the content of the experience of imagin- ing? The answer is a picture, or a description. And what is the content

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of the experience of meaning? I don't know what I am supposed to say to this.—If there is any sense in the above remark, it is that the two concepts are related like those of 'red' and 'blue'; and that is wrong. Can one keep hold of an understanding of meaning as one can keep hold of a mental image? That is, if one meaning of a word suddenly strikes me,—can it also stay there in my mind?

"The whole scheme presented itself to my mind in a flash and stayed there like that for five minutes." Why does this sound odd? One would like to think: what flashed on me and what stayed there in my mind can't have been the same.

I exclaimed "Now I have it!"—a sudden start, and then I was able to set the scheme forth in detail. What is supposed to have stayed in this case? A picture, perhaps. But "Now I have it" did not mean, I have the picture.

If a meaning of a word has occurred to you and you have not for-

gotten it again, you can now use the word in such-and-such a way.

If the meaning has occurred to you, now you know it, and the know- ing began when it occurred to you. Then how is it like an experience of imagining something?

If I say "Mr. Scot is not a Scot", I mean the first "Scot" as a proper name, the second one as a common name. Then do different things have to go on in my mind at the first and second "Scot"? (Assuming that I am not uttering the sentence 'parrot-wise'.)—Try to mean the first "Scot" as a common name and the second one as a proper name.— How is it done? When / do it, I blink with the effort as I try to parade the right meanings before my mind in saying the words.—But do I parade the meanings of the words before my mind when I make the ordinary use of them?

When I say the sentence with this exchange of meanings I feel that its sense disintegrates.—Well, / feel it, but the person I am saying it to does not. So what harm is done?——"But the point is, when one utters the sentence in the usual way something else, quite definite, takes place."—What takes place is not this 'parade of the meanings before one's mind'.

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What makes my image of him into an image of him? Not its looking like him.

The same question applies to the expression "I see him now vividly before me" as to the image. What makes this utterance into an utter- ance about him?—Nothing in it or simultaneous with it ('behind it'). If you want to know whom he meant, ask him.

(But it is also possible for a face to come before my mind, and even for me to be able to draw it, without my knowing whose it is or where I have seen it.)

Suppose, however, that someone were to draw while he had an image or instead of having it, though it were only with his finger in the air. (This might be called "motor imagery.") He could be asked: "Whom does that represent?" And his answer would be decisive.— It is quite as if he had given a verbal description: and such a description can also simply take the place of the image.

Suppose we were observing the movement of a point (for example, a point of light on a screen). It might be possible to draw important consequences of the most various kinds from the behaviour of this point. And what a variety of observations can be made here 1—The path of the point and certain of its characteristic measures (amplitude and wave-length for instance), or the velocity and the law according to which it varies, or the number or position of the places at which it changes discontinuously, or the curvature of the path at these places, and innumerable other things.—Any of these features of its behaviour might be the only one to interest us. We might, for example, be in- different to everything about its movements except for the number of loops it made in a certain time.—And if we were interested, not in just

one such feature, but in several, each might yield us special information,

different in kind from all the rest. This is how it is with the behaviour of man; with the different characteristic features which we observe in this behaviour.

Then psychology treats of behaviour, not of the mind?

What do psychologists record?—What do they observe? Isn't it the behaviour of human beings, in particular their utterances? But

these are not about behaviour.

"I noticed that he was out of humour." Is this a report about his behaviour or his state of mind? ("The sky looks threatening": is this about the present or the future?) Both; not side-by-side, however, but about the one via the other.

A doctor asks: "How is he feeling?" The nurse says: "He is groaning". A report on his behaviour. But need there be any question for them whether the groaning is really genuine, is really the expression of anything? Might they not, for example, draw the conclusion "If he ^ioans, we must give him more analgesic"—without suppressing a middle term? Isn't the point the service to which they put the descrip- tion of behaviour?

"But then they make a tacit presupposition." Then what we do in- our language-game always tests on a tacit presupposition.

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"I believe that he is suffering."——Do I also believe that he isn't an automaton?

It would go against the grain to use the word in both connexions. (Or is it like this: I believe that he is suffering, but am certain that he is not an automaton? Nonsense I)

Suppose I say of a friend: "He isn't an automaton".—What informa- tion is conveyed by this, and to whom would it be information? To a human being who meets him in ordinary circumstances? What information could it give him? (At the very most that this man always behaves like a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.)

"I believe that he is not an automaton", just like that, so far makes no sense.

My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul.

Religion teaches that the soul can exist when the body has dis- integrated. Now do I understand this teaching?—Of course I under- stand it——I can imagine plenty of things in connexion with it. And haven't pictures of these things been painted? And why should such a picture be only an imperfect rendering of the spoken doctrine? Why should it not do the same service as the words? And it is the service which is the point.

If the picture of thought in the head can force itself upon us, then why not much more that of thought in the soul?

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

And how about such an expression as: "In my heart I understood when you said that", pointing to one's heart? Does one, perhaps, not

mean this gesture? Of course one means it. Or is one conscious of

using a mere figure? Indeed not.—It is not a figure that we choose, not a simile, yet it is a figurative expression.

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I describe a psychological experiment: the apparatus, the questions of the experimenter, the actions and replies of the subject—and then I say that it is a scene in a play.—Now everything is different. So it will be said: If this experiment were described in the same way in a book on psychology, then the behaviour described would be understood as the expression of something mental just because it is presupposed that the subject is not taking us in, hasn't learnt the replies by heart, and other things of the kind.—So we are making a presupposition? Should we ever really express ourselves like this: "Naturally I am presupposing that . . . . ."?—Or do we not do so only because the other person already knows that?

Doesn't a presupposition imply a doubt? And doubt may be entirely lacking. Doubting has an end.

It is like the relation: physical object—sense-impressions. Here we have two different language-games and a complicated relation between them.—If you try to reduce their relations to a simple formula you go wrong.

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Suppose someone said: every familiar word, in a book for example, actually carries an atmosphere with it in our minds, a 'corona' of lightly indicated uses.—Just as if each figure in a painting were surrounded by delicate shadowy drawings of scenes, as it were in another dimension, and in them we saw the figures in different con- texts.—Only let us take this assumption seriously!—Then we see that it is not adequate to explain intention,

For if it is like this, if the possible uses of a word do float before us in half-shades as we say or hear it—this simply goes for us. But we communicate with other people without knowing if they have this experience too.

How should we counter someone who told us that with him under- standing was an inner process?——How should we counter him if he said that with him knowing how to play chess was an inner process?— We should say that when we want to know if he can play chess we aren't interested in anything that goes on inside him.—And if he replies that this is in fact just what we are interested in, that is, we are interested in whether he can play chess—then we shall have to draw his attention to the criteria which would demonstrate his capacity, and on the other hand to the criteria for the 'inner states'.

Even if someone had a particular capacity only when, and only as long as, he had a particular feeling, the feeling would not be the capacity.

The meaning of a word is not the experience one has in hearing or saying it, and the sense of a sentence is not a complex of such ex- periences.—(How do the meanings of the individual words make up the sense of the sentence "I still haven't seen him yet"?) The sentence is composed of the words, and that is enough.

Though—one would like to say—every word has a different character in different contexts, at the same time there is one character it always has: a single physiognomy. It looks at us.—But a face in a painting looks at us too.

Are you sure that there is a single if-feeling, and not perhaps several? Have you tried saying the word in a great variety of contexts? For

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example, when it bears the principal stress of the sentence, and when the word next to it does.

Suppose we found a man who, speaking of how words felt to him, told us that "if" and "but" felt the same.—Should we have the right

In document PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS (Page 90-116)