Thoughts on Truth - Philosophy

Lecture by Mark Risjord

born in 1889. 1908 went to England. At Cambridge for 2 years before WWI. Published one book in lifetime - Tractatus. Concerned with the problem of non-existants. In what do meaning of words consist? What is the connection between the two?

properties

logical form of sentences

1. picture theory of meaning - the meaning of words are things
2. idea theory of meaning - started with Locke

the logic of our sentences are misunderstood

back to Cambridge in 1929

Why does a name refer to what it does rather than something else.

language game - multifaceted concept. 1. a tool to help us find the limits of a theory of language. 2. real activities, practices, and social contexts of uses of language illuminate what the meaning is. (positive contribution of language games).

essentialism

what is the essence of game?

family resemblances

just because there is a word for something doesn't mean that there is a thing or hidden essence that all the cases refer to

Philosophical Investigations critique argues that language and the logic of our sentences does not mirror the world, so they can't give us first principles or any metaphysical insight.

the connection between the word and the thing is our linguistic practices and uses.

role that it has in our linguistic practices

the meaning of a word is its use in the language, the verbal behavior and the practices around it, that is its function.

meaning is public, it is on the surface, and is a communal thing.

there have to be ways to get it right and wrong.

no criterion of correctness, this would mean there is no rule

if there is no rule, the words have no meaning

subjective experiences have the second objective behavioral side, he says this must be the case, otherwise kids wouldn't be able to learn words like "headache" (I object with the cases of people who appear catatonic or who have things that don't have words but who say they experience things) stuff is going on but there is no way to communicate it or detect it from the outside, so it comes down to agnosticism on this point, for how are we to prove one over the other? This still might be what Wittgenstein agrees with, but then he is ignoring the subjective to only focus on language and begging the question that meaning is only found in language.

philosophical problems are still seen as linguistic problems but philosophical problems arise when our language games get tangled. Appropriate responses to philosophical problems is not a philosophical theory but therapy. We don't receive more information about the world but rearranging what we have already known. The bewitching of our intelligence by language.

Subjectivism vs. Objectivism - I say objectivism deals with problems like a socialist might, who starts off asking why certain complex parts of socialist socities are conflicted but refuses to call socialism itself into question, and so doesn't realize the problems might just be systemic to socialism itself. Do I have justification for my idea that the bigger problems are resolved by fixing the smaller foundational ones?

Philosophical Investigations

16. The color-sample shown in a language game is a sample of what one wanted to say so it is part of the language.

15. It is often usual in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming is like attaching a label to a thing

17. We have different kinds of word, some functions are more similar than others, but grouping into kinds depends on the aim of the classification and our inclination

18. Analogy of our language to a city that through time adds new buildings, streets and suburbs, and suggesting that our language is not complete

19. "Slab!" and "Bring me a slab!" can mean the same thing

20. Sentences having the same sense consists in them having the same use.

22. In reading a sentence we "mean" the sentence by thinking it. If I hear someone say "It's raining" but I do not know if I have heard the beginning and end of the period, this sentence does not tell me anything

23. There are countless kinds of symbols, words, and sentences; and new types of language and new language games come and go. Speaking a language is part of an activity, or form of life. He compares the various uses of language to various uses of tools, and that language is like a number of tools.

24. If one does not keep the multiplicity of language-games in view one may be inclined to ask questions like "What is a question?" One can substitute the form of a statement for the usual form of a question e.g. "I want to know whether..." but this does not bring the different language games any closer together.

25. Animals don't use language, except the most primitive forms; commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting are as much a part of our national history as walking, eating, drinking, playing.

27. We don't name things so we can refer to them in talk because the later is not given with the occurence of the former, sentences don't merely "talk about things". We do many things with them. There are language games that create new words and for learning names, for example, we are trained to ask "What is that called?"

28. An ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in every case.

29. One may think they can only ostensively define things in this way "this number is called...", "this color is..." but then color and number must be defined by using other words! For there is more than one way of taking the word "color" or "length". Whether the word "number" is necessary in the ostensive definition depends on whether without it the other person takes the definition otherwise than I wish. And that depends on the circumstances and person it is given to. And how he takes the definition is seen in the use he makes of the word.

30. So the ostensive definition explains the use (the meaning) when the overall role of the word is clear. So if I know that somebody means to explain a color word to me, it can help me understand the word by saying "this is called sepia". And one can say this so long as they don't forget that all sorts of problems attach to the words "to know" or "to be clear". One must already know something to be capable of asking a thing's name.

31. Only someone who already knows how to do something with a chess piece can significantly ask a name.

35. In certain cases, especially when one points 'to the shape' or 'to the number' there are characteristic experiences and ways of pointing, characteristic because they recur often (not always) when shape or number are meant.

36. Here is something that we do a lot with similar cases because we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing to the shape (as opposed to the color) we say that a spiritual (mental, intellectual) activity corresponds to these words. Where our language suggests a body and there is none, there we like to say is a spirit.

37. The relation between a name and thing named is evident in language game (2), in the fact that hearing the name calls before our mind the picture of what is named, and among other things in the name being pronounced when the thing is pointed at or written on the thing.

38. Saying "this" and "that" are names will only produce confusion, and the conception arises from a tendency to sublime language. Really we call very different things names, and "name" is used to characterize many different kinds of use of a word related to one another in many different ways, but "this" is not among them. The word "this" often occupies the same position as a name in a sentence. But it is precisely characteristic of a name that it is defined by means of the demonstrative expression "that is N" or "that is called N" which we don't give those definitions with "this" in place of N. This results in the occult process. Naming appears as a connection of a word with an object. For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. And saying the word "this" to the object as addressing the object as "this" is a queer use of this word which doubtless only occurs in philosophy.

39. One is tempted to make "this" a name because one wants to make an objection against what is ordinarily called a name. A name ought to signify a simple, and if an object ceases to exist, it is difficult to make sense of why the name still makes sense, here is the temptation. So the name must disappear when the sense is analyzed and its place be taken by words which name simples. It will be reasonable to call these words the real names.

40. "Meaning" is being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that corresponds to the word. That is to confound the meaning of a name with the bearer of the name. When a man dies the bearer dies, not the meaning of his name.

43. For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in language. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer.

44. There can be a language game with names in which they are only used in the presence of the bearer.

45. "This" can never be without a bearer and is not a name, for a name is never used with, but only explained by means of the gesture of pointing.

47. To the philosophical question: "is the visual image of this tree composite, and what are its component parts?" the correct answer is: "that depends on what you understand by 'composite'." Which is a rejection of the question.

48. ? Is Witt wrong about the smaller being composed of greater parts? At the end he says it doesn't matter what we consider the elements of a sentence out of multiple possibilities as long as we avoid misunderstanding in any particular case. (He gives an example of this).

49. Perhaps in a limiting case a complex consists of only one square its description is simply the name of the colored square. (though this easily leads to all kinds of philosophical superstition) We might say that a sign may sometimes a word and sometimes a proposition, but which ever iti s depends on the situation in which it is uttered or written. Naming and dscribing do not stand on the same level: naming is a preparation for description. A thing does not have a name except in the langauge-game, but naming is not a move in the language game (it is no more a move than putting pieces on the chess board is a move).

50. One might sya that everything we call "being" and "non-being" consists in the existence and non-existence of connections between elements it makes no sense to speak of an element's being; and the same for destruction. Certain things have a peculiar role in the language game liek the standard meter in Paris, which cannot be said to be a meter long nor that it isn't a meter long. This sample is an instrument of the language, a paradigm, and is a means of representation, not something that is represented, so it is an element in a langauage game. What looks as if it had to exist, is part of the language and to say "if it did not exist we could not name it" means "if this thing did not exist we could not use it in our language game."

54. He discusses various way show one learns the rules of the game (and from observation says "like a natural law governing the play.")

55. What the names in language signify (what corresponds to words) must be indestructible; for it must be possible to describe the state of affairs in which everything that is destructible is destroyed. An example of such a thing is a paradigm that is used in connection with the name in the langauge game a lost paradigm.

56. Memory is no better record than a sample and we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the highest court of appeal.

57. Suppose you cannot remember a color any more, when we forget which color this is the name of, it loses its meaning for us; that is we are no longer able to play a language game with it.

58. It is better if "x exists" means simply "x has a meaning" so it is a proposition about our use of language not of X. But what we really want is to take "'red' does not exist" and say that if this meant anything it would be saying "'red' has no meaning." This does not involve a contradiction to say this for the proposition looks as if it were about the color, while it is supposed to be saying something about the use of the word "red." We quite readily say that a particular color exists, and that is as much to say that something exists that has color. The first expression is no less accurate than the second; particularly where 'what has the color' is not a physical object.

59. The elements of reality are a particular picture which we want to use. We see a whole which changes (is destroyed) while its component parts remain unchanged. These are the material's from which we contruct reality.

60. When we ask for a broom we ask for the broom not the broomstick in a particular spatial relation to the brush. The broom is taken to pieces when one separates broomstick and brush, but does it follow that the order to bring the broom also consists of corresponding parts.

61. If this were made into a language game asking if one could order the individuals of two categories of such whole/part distinctions by the same meaning or if they acheive the same. The answer is yes, but that is not to say that Wit. and others have come to a general agreement about the use of the expression "to have the same meaning" or "to acheive the same" for they can be two forms of the same game.

62. Example to show that a person does not do the same thing when he carries out an order in the two categories because though the point of the two orders is the same, it is not everywhere clear what should be called the 'point' of an order for there is not always a sharp distinction between essential and inessential.

63. To say that a sentence in one is an analyzed form of one in the other seduces us into thinking that the former is the more fundamental form, because if you know the analyzed form it gives you everything, but can I not say that an aspect is lost in just considering the "analyzed" side as well?

64. Could we not imagine people who had names for such combinations of color, but not for the individual colors? In what sense do the symbols of this language-game stand in need of analysis? How far is it possible to replace this language game by one that uses single colors as simples? It is just another language-game related to the other.

65. Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying these phenomena are related to one another in many different ways, they have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all. We call them all language because of these relationships.

66. Don't think but look and see if there is something common to all games. There isn't but only similarities and relationships, a complicated network and them overlapping and criss-crossing, sometimes overall similarities, sometimes in detail.

67. The best expression to characterize these similarities is "family resemblance" so that 'games' form a family, the same for numbers (perhaps because a number has a direct relationship with several things that have been called number and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. If someone objected, "the disjunction of all their common properties is common to all" Wit responds "now you are playing with words," and now one might as well say "something runs through the whole thread - namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres."

68. There isn't a boundary to what we call a game, and within a game there need not be rules for everything, for example, Wit. can use the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept and also so that the concept is not closed by a frontier.

69. We do not know the boundaries of games because none have been drawn but this is not ignorance, you can draw one for a special purpose it doesn't require one to be usable. We explain a game to someone by describing games, and maybe adding "this is a game". He adds one can determine a pace to be 75cm. (to show one can draw a boundary) but though one might object that a pace wasn't an exact measure, Wit says fine it was an inexact measure but challenges one to give him a definition of exactness.

70. He doesn't think any picture should be taken as an exact representation and gives a couple of examples of vague communication that conveys meaning or even a in the concept as vague.

71. He answers the question, "is a blurred concept a concept at all?" with the fact that an indistinct picture is still of a person and is sometimes what we want over a sharp one. Any general definition can be misunderstood too. The point is that this is how we play the language game.

72. Wit. gives examples of showing someone examples of things in common for word learning.

73. There might be general samples of things, like pure green or a general leaf, but for such a sample to be understood as a schema and not as a particular leaf or shade of green, this resides in the way that samples are used.

74. If two people see a sample in two different ways one as a general another as a sample, this only means that as a matter of experience they use it in a particular way according certain rules. Of course, there is such a thing as seeing in this way or that and use it in general in a particular way because of that.

75. What does it mean to know what a game is? Isn't my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely expressed in the explanations that I could give? My describing examples of various kinds of game, showing how other kinds of games can be constructed on analogy of these, or that something else isn't a a game.

76. If someone draws a sharp boundary in his mind I cannot acknowledge it as the same one I drew, so his concept is not the same as mine but akin to it.

77. In a comparison of one blurred picture to a sharp one their resemblance depends on the degree of vagueness of the former, for we can reach a point when outline disappear and then anything and nothing is right, and this is the position one is in if they look for definitions corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics. Always ask oneself how we learned the meaning of good. From what kind of language games, and it will be easier to see the word has a family of meanings.

78. One can know something and not be able to say it, like how the word "game" is used, and how a clarinet sounds.

79. Wit. gives an example of what one means by Moses to show that the lmit of the propositions about him (that describe him) are vague. I use the name "N" without a fixed meaning and this doesn't detract from its usefulness.

80. Wit's disappearing chair example, designed to show that we attach meaning to a word in spite of the fact that we are not equipped with rules for every possible application of it.

81. In philosophy we often compare the use of words with games and calculi which have fixed rules, but we cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game. When one has attained a greater clarity about the concepts of understanding, meaning, and thinking it will become clear what can lead us to think that if anyone utters a sentence and means or understands it he is operating a calculus according to definite rules.

82. The "rule by which one proceeds" is the hypothesis that satisfactorily describes his use of words, which we observe; or the rule which he looks up when he uses signs; or the one which he gives us in reply if we ask him what his rule is. But if observation and our question does not bring any clear rule to light, one might ask the better question "what meaning is the expression 'the rule by which he proceeds' supposed to have left to it here?

83. Doesn't the analogy between language and games throw light here? Analogy of people playing in a field. Do we not sometimes play and make up rules as we go along or alter them as we go along?

84. The application of a word is not everywhere bounded by rules. Can't we imagine a rule determining the application of a rule and a doubt which removes it? That is not to say that we are in doubt because it is possible for us to imagine a doubt.

85. Wit's example of the vagueness and interpretability of sign posts analogues to our rules.

86. Gives example of using the same table differently in different situations.

87. An explanation may indeed rest on another one that has been given, but none stands in need of another, unless we require it to prevent a misunderstanding, that would occur for the explanation, not every one I could imagine. A sign post is in order, if under normal circumstances it fulfills its purpose, It may easily appear that every doubt revealed an existing gap.

88. "Inexact" does not mean unusable, does exactness always have a function? And remember we have not yet defined what counts as overstepping an exact boundary, how it is to be established, and so on. Inexact and exact are defined in relation to a goal. Am I inexact if I do not give our distance from the sun to the nearest foot? No single ideal of exactness has been laid down. We do not know what we should be supposed to imagine under this head. You can determine for yourself but won't find a conventional use.

89. In what sense is logic something sublime? We use it to understand something that is already in plain view. Something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give an account of it, is something that we need to remind ourselves of.

90. ? The investigation is therefore a grammatical one, clearing misunderstandings away concerning the use of words, caused, among other things by certain analogies in different regions of language. Some can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another, i.e. analysis.

91. But now it may come to look as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalyzed; as if there was something hidden that needed to be brought out.

92. This finds expression in questions as to the essence of language, of propositions, of thought. 'The essence is hidden from us' is now the form our problem now assumes.

93. One person might say "A proposition is the most ordinary thing in the world" and another "A proposition - that's something very queer!" and the latter is unable simply to look and see how propositions really work. The forms that we use in expressing ourselves about propositions and thought stand in his way. We say a proposition is remarkable because on the one hand there is enormous importance attached to it. On the other hand, a misunderstanding of the logic of language, seduces us into thinking that something extraoridinary and unique must be acheived by propositions, which is where the germ of our subliming of our whole account of logic lies.

94. The tendency to assume a pure intermediary between the propositional signs and the facts. For our forms of expression prevent us from seeing that nothing out of the ordinary is involved, by sending us in pursuit of chimeras.

95. When we mean that such-and-such is the case, our meaning does not stop anywhere short of the fact. This paradox (which has the form of a truism) can also be expressed in this way: Thought can be of what is not the case.

96. ?

97. The essence of thought is logic and it presents an order of the world, that is the order of possibilities, common to world and thought. The order is prior to and runs throughout all experience and no empirical cloudiness or uncertainty can be allowed to affect it. We are under the illusion that what is esential is to grasp the essence of langauge, i.e. the order exisitng between the concepts of proposition, word, proof, truth, experience, etc. But actually the words "language", "experience", "world" have a use as humble as "table", "lamp", "door".

98. On one hand it is clear that every sentence in our language is in order as it is. On the other hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect order. So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence.

99. Is it true that sentences must have a definite sense?

100. Does vagueness in the rules prevent something from being a game? We misunderstand the role of the ideal in our language, we should call it a game too, only we are dazzled by the ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the word "game" clearly.

101. We want to say that there can't be any vagueness in logic, so we think the ideal "must" be found in reality. But we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this "must". We think it must be in reality because we think we already see it there.

102. I see the strict and clear rules of the logical structure of propositions for I understand the propositional sign, I use it to say something.

103. We think of the ideal as unshakeable and inescapable. Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses thorugh which we see things but it never occurs to us to take them off.

104. We predicate of the thing what lies in the method of representing it. Impressed by the possibility of a comparison, we think we are perceiving a state of affairs of the highest generality.

105. When we believe that we must find that order, must find the ideal, in our actual language, we become dissatisfied with what are ordinarily called "propositions", "words", "signs".

106. We must stick to the subjects of our everyday thinking, and not go astray and imagine that we have to describe extreme subltleties.

107. The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. The conflict becomes intolerable, the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty.

108. The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination around. The question "What is a word really?" is analogous to "what is a piece in chess?" But we talk about the phenomena of language as we do about the pieces in chess when stating the rules of the game not their physical properties.

109. It was true to say that our considerations could not be scientific ones. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations, we must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. Philosophical problems are solved by looking into the workings of our language, in spite of an urge to misunderstand them, and arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

110. Believing that language (or thought) is something unique proves to be a superstition (not a mistake) which is produced by grammatical illusions.

111. The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language are as deep in us as the forms of our language and as significant as the importance of our language.

112. A simile that has been absorbed into the forms of our language produces a false appearance.

113. I say to myself "but this is how it is___" and I feel that if I could just focus on this fact I could grasp the essence of the matter.

114. One thinks one is tracing the outline of a things nature when they say "the general form of propositions is: This is how things are" but one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.

115. A picture held us captive for our language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

116. When philosophers use a word (e.g. knowledge, being) one must always ask oneself is the word ever actually used in this way in the language game which is its original home? What we do is try to bring its metaphysical use back to its normal use.

117. ?

118. What we are destroying seems everything that is interesting, but they are really houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.

119. The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense. These problems in the understanding make us see the value of the discovery.

120. When I talk about language (words, sentences, etc.) I must use the language of everyday. In giving explanations I already have to use language full-blown (not some provisional one) this by itself shows that I can adduce only exterior facts about language. But then how can these explanations satisfy us? Your very questions were framed in this language, they had to be expressed in this language if there was anything to ask. Your questions refer to words, so I have to talk about words. But you say the point is the meaning and you think that the meaning is the same kind of thing as the word but different. The money and the cow you buy with it. (But contrast money and its use).

121. One might think that if philosophy uses the word "philosophy" there must be a second-order philosophy, but this isn't true.

122. A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words. OUr grammar is lacking in this perspecuity and the concept of a perspicacious representation consists in seeing connections and earmarks the account we give, the way we look at things.

123. A philosophical problem has the form: "I don't know my way about".

124. Philosophy cannot interfere with the actual use of language, it can only describe it.

125. It is the business of philosophy not to resolve a contradiction but to make it possible for us to get a clear view of our problem, we lay down rules for a game and sometimes we follow them and things don't turn out like we assumed, this entanglement of our rules is what we want to understand (i.e. get a clear view of). This throws light on our concept of meaning something as forseeing or anticipating a certain result, so the philosophical problem is the civil status of a contradiction.

126. Philosophy simply puts everything before us and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. What is hidden is of no interest to us. One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

127. The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.

128. If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them because everyone would agree to them.

129. ?

130. Language games are set up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way of similarities and dissimilarity.

131. We can only avoid emptiness in our assertions by presenting the model as what it is, a measuring rod, an object of comparison, not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond (which we often fall into in philosophy).

132. We want to establish an order in language toward a particular end, one possible order among many, so we shall often give prominence to distinctions which our ordinary form of language make us overlook, but we are not concerned at present with reform for practical purposes. The confusion that occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is working.

133. It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words, we want complete clarity, meaning all philosophical problems should disappear. The real discovery is the one tha t gives philosophy peace, that allows one to stop doing philosophy when one wants to, so that one is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question. Now we give a method for this by demonstration of examples. There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.

134. "This is how things are" How is this the general form of propositions? It is a proposition itself, so how is this sentence applied in everyday language? For I got it from there and no where else. Though it is a proposition it gets employed as a propositional variable, to say that this agrees with reality or not is obviouse nonsense. Thus, it illustrates the fact that one feature of our concept of a proposition is sounding like a prop.

135. We have a concept of what a proposition is, of what it means, by examples (compare the concept of a proposition with the concept of number).

136. To say that a proposition is whatever can be true or false amounts to saying: we call something a proposition in our language when we apply the calculus of truth functions to it, but then we define the concept of truth as involving a prop. So it is circular. But what a prop is is in one sense determined by the rules of sentence formation, and in another sense by the use of the sign in the language game. And the words "true" and "false" are among the constituent parts of this game.

137. "True" and "False" can be said to fit propositions in the same sense that we learn that L is after K in the alaphabet. A child might be told that propositions are those expressions which one can attach "is true" after it.

138. We understand the meaning of a word when we hear or say it in a flash and is different from its use which is extended in time. Sometimes one may imagine they understand a word and then realize they did not. (like a math calculation)

139. [Obj. - When someone says the word "cube" to me, I understand what it means, but the whole use of the word doesn't come before my mind, isn't this inconsistent with understanding being use?] Doesn't something like a picture come before our mind when we understand a word? Suppose a picture does come before our mind, in what sense can this picture fit or fail to fit a use of the word "cube"? If one has the picture befoe one's mind and points to something that isn't a cube, doesn't it still fit? The picture of the cube did indeed suggest a certain use to us, but it was possible for me to use it differently, it is quite easy to imagine a method of projection according to which the picture doesn't fit. He answers two objections to the picture idea.

140. ? What is essential is to see that the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the owrd and the application still be different, and I think we would say the meaning is different.

141. ?

142. It is only in normal cases that the use of a word is clearly prescribed. The more abnormal the case the more doubtful it becomes what we are to say. If rule became exception and exception rule then our normal language games would lose their point.

143. Language game where A gives an order and B has to write down a series of signs according to a certain formation rule. But what if he writes down the wrong series of signs? We are tempted to say he has understood wrong, but notice that there is no sharp distinction between a random mistake and a systematic one. Perhaps it is possible to wean him from the systematic mistake, or perhaps we try and teach him ours as an offshoot of his - and here too our pupils capacity to learn may come to an end.

144. By that last proposition I mean to put a picture before the reader and his acceptance of the picture consists in his now being inclined to regard a given case differently, to compare it with this rather than that set of pictures. I have changed his way of looking at things.

145. Now suppose we teach the student to continue the series as we do it (as in numbers) how far need he continue the seriers for us to have the right to say that he has mastered the system? Clearly there is not a limit here.

146. What if one objects that understanding doesn't consist in continuing the series up to this or that number, saying that is only applying one's understanding? The point is we can think of more than one application of an algebraic fomula, but this does not get us any further. The application is still a criterion of understanding.

147.

148. When do you know the application? Always or only when you think of the rule? Do you know it in the same way you know the alphabet and multiplication table? Or is what you call "knowledge" a state of consciousness or process?

149. If one says knowing the alphabet is a state of mind one is thinking of a disposition, a state of a mental apparatus (perhaps of the brain) by means of which we explain the manifestations of that knowledge. ?

150. The grammar of the word "knows" is evidently closely related to that of "can", "is able to", but also closely related to that of "understands".

151. There is also this use of the word "to know": we say "now I know", "Now I can do it", and "Now I understand". Wit gives an example of person B searches for the algebraic law that determines the sequence of numbers person A is writing. ? The understanding of B of what A is doing is something that makes its appearance in a moment, perhaps he had what may be called the sensation "that's easy".

152. But are these processes "understanding"? For it is perfectly imaginable that the formula should occur to him and that he should nevertheless not understand. Understanding must have more in it than that the formula occurs to him, and more than those other characteristic accompaniments of understanding.

153. We are trying to get hold of the mental process of understanding which seems to be hidden behind these coarser and therefore more realiy visible accompaniments. bu this puts us in a muddle for how would I know when I found the understanding? How do I know what I have to look for if it is hidden? And could it be hidden if I could say "Now I understand" because I understand?

154. But if "now I understand the principle" does not mean the same as "the formula occurs to me" does it follow from this that I employ the sentence "Now I understand..." as a description of a process occuring behind or side by side with that of saying the formula? If there has to be anything behind the utterance of the formula it is particular circumstances, which justify me in saying I can go on when the formula occurs to me. "Mental Process" is the expression that confuses you. Ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what sor of circumstances do we say "now I know how to go on", isn't it when the formula has occured to me? In the sense in which there are processes which are characteristic of understanding, understanding is not a mental process. (A pain growing more and less; the hearing of a tune or sentence are mental processes).

155. Perhaps when one understands the principle he has a special experience, but for us it is the circumstances under which he had such an experience that justifies him in saying in such a case that he understands or knows how to go on.

156. The word "reading" is familiar in ordinary use but the language game in which we employ it would be difficult to describe. Imagine one reading aloud but not paying attention to the content, or someone acting like they are reading but really rehearsing what they already know. This inclines us to say that reading is a special conscious activity but as far as concerns uttering any one of the printed words the same thing may take place in the consciousness of the pupil who is pretending as in the reader who is reading. The word is applied differently to each so we like to say there must be two different mechanisms at work that distinguishes reading from not reading. But these are only hypotheses, models to explain, sum up what you observe.

157. When can one say that someone has started reading instead of by chance uttering the correct sounds with a particular text? We could make up a rule to determine this but otherwise it is vague. And we also use "reading" in the case of a machine. So there are many instances where this concept was therefore quite independent of that of a mental or other mechanism. The change when the pupil began to read was a change in his behavior, and it makes no sense here to speak of a 'first word in his new state.'

158. One might object that if we know the brain better we should be able to tell when someone is reading.

159. One might also object that there are certain characteristic sensations of reading and others for reciting.

160. But imagine a case where we give someone something new and they read it aloud but perhaps with the influence of a drug he has the mental experience of reciting it. Should we say he isn't really reading the passage? Or imagine a case that a man is presented with an entirely new script and speaks words in relation to the symbols and has the feeling of reading, some would be inclined to say that he was reading those words, others that he was not. or he is making up an alphabet for himself ad hoc.

161. Try this experiment: say the numbers from one to twelve. Now look at the dial of your watch and read them. What did you do in the later case to make it into reading.

162. Let's try this definition: one is reading when one derives the reproduction from the original. And this can be taught by the 'rule of the alphabet' of how to derive a sound of a word from the written pattern by the rule that we give him.

163. Suppose someone uses a different method according to a rule in his transcribing but where is the dividing line between this procedure and a random one? But this doesn't mean that the word "derive" has no meaning since the meaning seems to disintegrate when we follow it up?

164. In (162) the meaning of the word "to derive" stood out clearly, but it was a special case of deriving and its essence was not hidden but its surface was one case out of the family of cases of deriving. Like an artichoke we musn't look for it under its leaves, and in the same way we use "read" for a family of cases.

165. The characteristic of reading consists in the words that I utter come in a special way, as though I am not making them up, neither do the spoken words occur to me as if something reminded me of them, but the spoken words as it were, slip in as one reads. And if I look at a word there occurs a peculiar process of hearing the sound inwardly.

166. When one reads the spoken words come 'in a special way'. Wit gives as a thought experiment with an odd symbol and an associated sound and then points out that after a while the sound comes automatically when we look at the symbol (compare with this the idea that memory images are distinguished from other mental images by some special characteristic.)

167. Reading is 'a quite particular process' means that when we read one particular process takes place, which we recognize. But suppose that I read a sentence in print and later on in Morse code, are the mental processes really the same? On the other hand there is a some uniformity in the experience of reading a page of print a sentence has features that are repeated and enormously familiar to us, like well known faces. Remember that the look of a word is familiar to us in the same kind of way as its sound.

168. Our eyes pass over with ease printed words and at the same time involuntary speech goes on in the imagination. But what is essential to reading? Not any one feature that occurs in all cases of reading.

169. We seem to feel that there is a connection between signs and their utterance? It makes a difference whether I say "i" when I see "I" instead of when I see "S", because when I see the letter it is automatic for me to ther the sound "i" inwardly, it happens even against my will and I pronounce it more effortlessly when looking at "i".

170.

171. When one reads the word intimates the sound to me, or letter and sound form a unity, an alloy, and one feels this unity. But when one reads without thinking about the concept of reading one doesn't experience such unity or being influenced.

172. Wit gives a number of instances of being guided which are similar but he asks what is common to all the experiences.

173. Objection "But being guided is surely a particular experience!" - Wit says this person is thinking of a particular experience of being guided. Being guided is something inward and essential, not what seems to be the experience of being guided when I imagine a particular experience of being guided. ?

174. Imagine what is the experience of deliberation and at once a particular look or gesture will occur to you, and a particular inner experience adds nothing. (This is connected with the problem of the nature of intention, of willing).

175. When I say "guidance" or "influence" and other such words to myself, only then does the idea of intangible, ethereal influence arise and I feel that there must have been something indescribable beyond my behavior, but while I'm copying something I notice nothing special.

176. When I look back on what happened I have the feeling that there was an "experience of being influenced" but I don't want to extend that to every experience.

177. Wit says I "experience this influence because..." not because I remember such an experience but because I look at it through the medium of the concept "influence" or "because".

178. If one says "But I am guided" thinking that the movement of the hand in copying a figure expresses guiding, but Wit objects saying act like you are guiding someone with your hand and you want to call it guiding because the word forces itself upon us, but it does not contain the essence of guiding, it is just a single form of guiding which forces the expression on us.

179. ? We can also imagine that nothing occured in ones mind but they say "I know how to continue the series" and they do continue it, and in certain circumstances we should say he did know how to go on.

180. This is how these words are used. To call the words a description of a mental state is quite misleading. They are better called a sign that is either rightly or wrongly employed, by what he does.

181. Suppose a person says he knows how to go on but then can't go on, do we say he didn't know or that he knew then but not now? We will say different things in different cases.

182. The grammar of "to fit", "to be able" , and "to understand" are more involved in the game then we are tempted to think. In what circumstances would it count as a justification to say "When I answered 'yes' I could do it, only now I can't"? And he gives a bunch of exercises to this point. The role of these words in our language game is what we need to understand to resolve philosophical paradoxes, and definitions are unable to resolve them.

183. "Now I can go on" and "Now the formula has occured to me" may have the same sense in these circumstances but in general they don't. But we must be on guard against thinking that there is some totality of conditions corresponding to the nature of the case that determine if it is if they are fulfilled.

184. Knowing a tune, what does knowing it consist in? In what sense is it present to his mind.

185. The example of the student who was taught the rules for creating a series but then at some arbitrary point he does something different. How would you correct him?

186. But how is it decided what is the right step to take at any particular stage?

187. "But I already knew when I gave the order that he ought to write 1002 after 1000" - but don't be misled by the grammar of the words "know" or "mean", for you didn't think of the step from 1000 to 1002 at that time, what you mean is "If I had been asked what follows 1000 I would have replied 1002"

188. What you would like to say is that your meaning had already traversed all those steps, and it seemed that in some unique way they were anticipated.

189. ?

190. The criterion for the way a formula is to be meant (which determines the steps to be taken) is the way we always use it, the way we were taught to use it. ?

191. The result of crossing different pictures suggests an expression to us that we could 'grasp in a flash' (the whole use of a word)

192. You have no model of this superlative fact, but you are seduced into using a super expression (philosophical superlative)

193.

194. ? We misinterpret certain kinds of expressions so that when we do philosophy we are like savages who have put a false interpretation on the expressions of civilized men and then draw the queerest conclusions from them.

195. Grasping a sense now does not determine the future use causally and as a matter of experience but the use is in some sense present. This only seems queer when using a different language game for it that the one in which we actually use it.

196. In our failure to understand the use of a word we take it as the expression of a queer process (as we do with time and the mind).

197. ? There is nothing astonishing or queer about what happens when we grasp the whole use of a word in a flash, it only becomes so when we are led to think that the future development must in some way already be present in the act of grasping the use and yet isn't present. The connection that exists between thing intended and the act of intending is in the list of rules of the game, in the teaching of it, and in the day-to-day practice of playing.

198. Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning, so our actions are brought into accordance with the rules because we are trained to react to this sign in a particular way and goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom.

199. According to the grammar of the expression "to obey a rule" it is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which someone obeyed a rule. To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess are customs (uses, institutions) so are impossible to have been performed by one person or on one occasion. To understand a sentence means to understand a language, which is to be master of a technique.

200. One can go through the moves of a game of chess and even have the appropriate mental accompaniments, and if we see this we might say that they were playing chess, but if these people are doing things that we don't ordinarily associate with a game, like stomping and yelling, but these can be translated into a game of chess, what right or inclination is there to call it a game?

201. If one objects that everything can be made out to accord to a rule, it can also be made to conflict with it so there is no accord or conflict. I have given one interpretation after another following contentions but this shows that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation but is exhibited in going with it or against it in actual cases. Thus this inclines us to say every action according to the rule is an interpretation. But "interpretation" should only be used in the substitution of one expression of the rule for another.

202. Obeying a rule is a practice, not to think that one obeys a rule, hence it is not possible to obey a rule "privately".

203. Language is a labrynth of paths that changes when entering it from different directions.

204. Is it possible that mankind has never played any games, though someone invented one?

205. If it is objected that the queer thing about intention is that the existence of a custom, a technique, is not necessary to it, that two people can play chess in a world where otherwise no games existed; Wit responds that chess is defined by its rules and how are these rules present in the minds of those intending to play?

206. Following a rule is analogous to obeying an order, we are trained to react to an order in a particular way. What if one person reacts in one way to the order and someone else a different way? The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.

207. Thought experiment of the indigenous people who don't have regularity between the sounds they utter and their actions but everything else ? the same, but Wit says there is not enough regularity to call it a language.

208. In order to teach someone the concepts of certain words one teaches by means of examples and by practice, and in this I do not communicate to him less than I know. I influence him by expressions of agreement, rejection, expectation, encouragement. Imagine such teaching; none of the words would be explained by means of itself, no logical circle.

210. "But don't you get the other person to guess the essential thing by giving examples?" Wit says every explanation I can give myself I give to him too "He guesses what I intend" means various interpretations of my explanation come to his mind and he asks about one of them and I should answer him.

211. "How can he know how to continue a pattern by himself whatever instruction you give him?" Wit answers reasons will give out and one will act.

212. When someone I am afraid of orders me to continue the series, I act quickly, with perfect certainty, and lack of reasons do not trouble me.

213. A doubt was possible in certain circumstances (various interpretations being possible) but that is not to say that I did doubt or even could doubt. Wit dismisses intuition.

214. Objection to intuition

215. ?

216. "A thing is identical with itself" is a useless proposition.

217. "How am I able to obey a rule?" if it is not about causes then it is about justification and if I have exhausted the justifications I am inclined to say "this is just what I do."

218. We can understand this as unlimited appreciation of a rule.

219. Once a rule has been stamped with a particular meaning "all the steps are already taken," meaning I no longer have any choice. I obey the rule blindly.

220. The purpose of that symbolical proposition was to bring into prominence a difference between being causally determined and being logically determined.

221. ?

222. If I judge that it intimated to me what is irresponsible, I wouldn't be obeying it like a rule.

223. The rule always tells us the same and we do what it tells us.

224. If I teach anyone the use of the word "agreement" or "rule", he also learns the other, they are related.

225. The use of "rule" and "same" are interwoven as are "proposition" and "true".

226. Wit asks question about indexical expressions.

227. It makes no sense to say that if someone does something different everyday he isn't following a rule.

228. The idea that the way we see a series gives us everything in it isnot an observation about the series but expresses the fact that we only appeal to the rule and do something.

229. I believe I perceive a characteristic design in a segment of a series.

230. The line intimates to me means it is the last arbiter for the way I am to go.

231. "But surely you can see..." is just the characteristic expression of someone following a rule.

232. The difference between rule following and inspiration following.

233. How inspiration following would be like composing in arithmetic.

234. Isn't it possible for us to calculate and all agree and feel at every step a being guided by the rules as by a spell, and be astonished that we all agree.

235. This shows what goes to make up what we call obeying a rule in everyday life.

236. Calculating prodigies who get the right answer but cannot say how. Don't they calculate?

237. ?

238. ?

239. There is such a procedure as choosing the color which occurs to one when one hears the name of a color. "Red" means the color that occurs to me when I hear the word "red" - is a definition, not an explanation of what it is to use a word as a name.

240. Disputes not breaking out over the question of whether a rule has been followed is part of the framework on which the working of our language is based (for example, in giving descriptions)

241. It is what human beings say that is true and false and they agree on the language they use, which is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.

242. If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement of definitions and of judgements. What we call measuring is party determined by a constancy in results of measurement.

Private Language 243, 244

243. People who speak their own language can be translated into understandable actions but not to their private sensations. So another person could not understand the language.

244. Words can refer to sensations in our language because words are connected with the primitive, the natural, expressions of the sensation and are used in their place, children are taught new pain behavior. The verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it.

245. How could I go so far as to try and use language to get between pain and its expression.

246. ? If we use the word "to know" as it is normally used (how else could it be used?) then other people very often know when I am in pain, and it can't be said of me at all that I know I am in pain (what can it mean except that I am in pain?)

247. More on knowledge.

248. "Sensations are private" is comparable to "one plays patience by oneself."

249. Lying is a language game that needs to be learned just like any other, think about what our assumptoin of baby not lying is based on.

250. One night be able to teach a dog to howl as if it were in pain but the surroundings necessary for this behavior to be a real simulation are missing.

251. ?

252. Why are we inclined to say "of course" when someone says "this body has extention" instead of "nonsense".

253. pain and identity

254. There are questions in philosophy only as a result of the psychological temptation to use a particular kind of expression which is the raw material of philosophy.

255. This is something for philosophical treatment, which is like treating an illness.

256-259 Private language argument

Private language 256 – naming a pain is replacing the natural expression of pain with words. Naming a pain in private, what is that? One forgets that there is a great deal of language stage setting presupposed for naming to make sense, what is presupposed is the grammar of the word pain, the post where the word is stationed. One can only define a sensation by pointing to it through use of a sign and trying to remember it right in the future, but here there is no criterion of correctness so there is no right here.

260.

315. How do we know, or how can it be decided, that someon couldn't understand the word "pain" who had never felt pain?

316. The concept of thinking is not used how we arrive at the meaning of thinking by observing ourselves when we think.

317. The purpose of a proposition is not the expression of a thought or to convey to one person to another what one is thinking.

318. Wit thinks that we don't think faster than we talk, that the thought seems not to be separate from the expression but he considers other cases.

319. ?

320. an analogy of the speed of thought

321. "what happens in sudden understanding?" Might mean what are the physical signs of understanding. (there is no ground that a man feels his facial movements in understanding).

322. [322 is underlined for some reason] The question what the expression means is not answereed by such a description and so we are misled into concluding that understanding is a specific indefinable experience and we forget that what should interest us is "what criterion of identity do we fix for their occurences?"

323.

324. What could justify certainty of one's ability to continue a series better than success?

325. In induction isn't the previous experience the cause of my certainty not its ground? I don't argue with myself about past experiences. Whether or not it is the cause depends on the natural laws in which we are considering the phenomena of certainty what people accept as a justification is shown by how they think and live.

326. We expect this, are surprised at that, but the chain of reasoning comes to an end.

327. ?

328. ?

329. When I think in language there aren't meanings going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought.

330. ?

331. Thought experiment of imagining people who could only think aloud.

332. ?

333. ?

334. Various kinds of things persuade us to give up one expression and adopt another in its place, we are tempted to think that what someone "meant" was present in their mind before the expression.

335. ?

336. The case from 335 is similar to translating into certain languages, where one first has to think and then one arranges the words in that queer order.

337. An intention is embedded in its situation, in human customs and institutions. In so far as I do intend the construction of a sentence in advance, it is made possible by the fact that I can speak the language in question.

338. ?

339. ? Thinking is not possible to detach from speaking, and one may say it is an incorporeal process in order to distinguish the grammar of it from something like the word "eat" only it makes the difference look too slight and an unsuitable expression is a sure way of remaining in confusion.

340. One must look at a word's use to learn its function, the difficulty is to remove the prejudice in standing in the way of doing this, i.e. guessing functions.

341. Speech with and without thought is comparable to playing a piece of music with and without thought.

342. ? Mr. Ballard the deaf mute who supposedly thought before learning any language. Wit asks "is Mr. Ballard sure that this is the correct translation of your wordless thoughts into words?" What does Wit mean by Ballard's question otherwise seeming not to exist? Wit says Ballard's memories are a queer memory phenomena and Wit doesn't know what conclusions one can draw from them about the past.

370. One ought only to ask how the word "imagination" is udes, for the nature of imagination is as much abou tthe word imagination as is a question about its nature, and its nature can't be decided by pointing or a description of a process.

371. Essence is expressed by grammar

372. ?

373. Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.

374. ?

375. How does one know if one can read to oneself? How does he know he is doing what is required of him?

376. What is the criterion for saying I do the same mental thing as someone else? How do we compare images?

377. The criterion for someone else: is what he says and does, for myself when it is my image: nothing

378. If I recognize two images as the same, how do I know that the owrd "same" describes what I recognize? ONly if I can express that recognition in some other way and if someone else can teach me that "same" is the correct word. If I need a justification for using a word it must be one for someone else.

379. Consider in what cases it is right to say "I am aware of this first, then I remember what it is called."

380. How do I recognize that this is red? What kind of answer would make sense? I could not apply any rules to a private transition from what is seen to words, the institution of their use would be lacking.

381. An answer to the above question is "I have learned English"

382. What does "this image" mean? HOw does one point to an image?

383. We are not analyzing a phenomena (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking) and therefore use of a word. But this isn't nominalism.

384. You learned the concept "pain" when you learned language.

385. Thought experiment on learning to calculate in one's head.

386. The difficulty is not that I doubt whether I really imagine anything red but that pointing out or describing the color one has imagined to others presents no difficulty at all, so are they alike that one might mix them up?

388. How does one know that they will be able to pick out a correct color? How does one know from one's image what the color really looks like?

389. ?

390. Could one imagine a stone's having consciousness? And if so is this of any interest to us?

391. Wit is wrong.

392. Wit equates thinking with words, and thinks that any analysis of what goes on here besides natural science and grammar is nothing.

393. In imagining that someone else is in pain I don't necessarily imagine my being in pain, and where do we use the words "I imagine..."?

394. In what sort of circumstances should we ask anyone "what actually went on in you as you imagined this?" And what sort of answer do we expect?

395. In our investigation the extent that ensures a proposition makes sense in imaginability is unclear

396. It is not essential to the understanding of a proposition that one should imagine with it anything in connection.

397. Imaginability may be said representability and it may point to a further use of a sentence, but also a picture might obtrude itself and be no use.

398. Why no one owns or has a mental picture or personal experience.

399. ?

400. The visual room seems like a discovery but it is really a new way of speaking.

401. You have a new conception and have discovered a new way of looking at things but you interpret a grammatical movement as a phenomena which you are observing.

402. When we disapprove of an expression we have a picture in our heads which confliects with the picture of our ordinary way of speaking. We are tempted to say that our way of speaking does not descrive the facts as they really are. As if "he has pains" could be false is some other way then his not having pains. IN disputes between Idealists, Realists, and Solipsists the one party attacks the form of expression as if they were attacking a statement, but they state facts they believe would be recognized by any reasonable person.

403. Is he wrong? Would there still be pity?

404. "I am in pain" does not name person, just like a groan doesn't. There is a great variety of criteria for personal identity none of them determines the use of "I".

405. One doesn't intend to draw the attention of others to a particular person but to myself.

406. One might object that "I am..." is intended to distinguish between oneself and other people, but what about when one groans and does one really intend to distinguish L.W. and N.N.?

407. ?

408. ?

409. ?

410. "I", "here", "this" are not names but are used to explain names.

411. ?

412. ?

415. We are contributing observations which no one has doubted but have escaped remark because they are always before us.

416. Expressions of consciousness only have uses in everyday ways.

417. ?

418. ?

419/420. What the hell kinda arguments are these?!

421. Sentences mixing physical and mental states should be seen as an instrument and having an employment.

422. In physical and mental talk there is a picture but its sense or application is difficult in 2nd.

423. Wit says he wants to understand the application of the picture.

424. Wit says the picture is there and he doesn't dispute its correctness.

425. Many times we find a picture and the application it comes itself, then the picture forces itself on us.

426. A picture is conjured up and actual use (compared with use suggested by picture) becomes muddled (some analogy?)

429. Wit's agreement of thought and reality

432. Signs seem dead by themselves, use gives them life

433. ?

434. A gesture tries to portray but can't do it

435. You see how sentences manage to represent when you use them for nothing is concealed

436. This is where it is easy to get into that dead end philosophy of trying to capture something hard to get hold of, quickly coming and passing away, instead of ordinary language.

437. ?

449. (Word unknown) objections to what has been said one fails to get away from the idea that using a sentence involved imagining something for every word. We don't realize that we do all these things with words and that we sometimes translate them into one picture sometimes to another, as if the written word "cow" would lose its meaning if we didn't picture a cow.

[not sure if this belongs at the end of the last one or of the next one] Isn't it just as good as imagining?

450. Need one imagine someone's expression in order to mimic it?

451. Understand an order means knowing what it is like for it to have been carried out.

452. If you see the expression of an expectation you see what is being expected.

453. To say of an expectant person that he perceives his expectation instead of saying he expects distorts the expression.

----> The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it but it isn't magical.

455. ?

456. ?

457. Meaning something is like going up to someone.

458. "An order orders its execution" so it know its execution then before it is there?

459. We can translate the previous proposition at one time as a proposition, or a demonstration, or an action

460.

461. ?

462. exactly

463. ?

464. My aim is to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense

465. ?

466. What does man think for? What use is it?

467. Does a man think because he thinks it is advantageous to think? What about raising children? Are they advantageous?

468. What would show why he thinks?

470. We do sometimes think because it has been found to pay ex. 469

471. It often happens that we discover the important facts by supposing "why?" and investigate

472. The character of the belief in the uniformity of nature is seen most clearly when we fear what we expect.

473. The belief that fire will burn me is of the same kind as the fear that it will.

474. Defines Certainty

475. When one inquires into the grounds of a supposition do they do the same thing as when they inquire into the causes of an event?

476. We should distinguish between the object of fear and the cause, the object is fear's target.

480. A general statement about the past (and they have effects) is simply what we call a ground for assuming something will happen.

481/482. Wit says something good here about inference.

486. Good stuff!

487-492. ?

493. Should we feel that a sentence has lost the character of a sentence if it ceases to result in its effect?

494. What we call language is the aparatus of our word-language, we call other things language by analogy to this

495. Learning a language is like adjusting a mechanism to respond to a certain kind of influence, and this is what allows me to direct a man as I want him.

496. Language's purpose is to have a particular effect on human beings and grammar only describes but doesn't explain the use of signs.

497. The aim of grammar is nothing but the aim of the langauge.

498. example of grammar having an effect but not necessarily the intended effect or at least not the order to that effect

500. When a sentence is called senseless it is that combination of words that are excluded from the language.

501. If the purpose of language is to express thoughts then what about the sentence "It's raining"?

503. Orders and answers using words or signs are quite enough and is what expect, I don't have to get behind them.

504. Wit answers question about knowing another's meaning just by signs by "how is he to know what he means when he has nothing but the signs?"

505. Isn't there a jump from knowing to doing?

507. Can't we do this though, can't we just talk without meaning?

508. Description of mastery of a language based on being used to uses, which is required for it to say something

509. internal sense does not have meaning. What is the criterion for experiencing meaning?

510. Thought experiment saying "it's cold" when meaning it's warm.

513. Examples showing that something can look like a sentence which we understand any yet yield no sense and this throws light on the concepts "understanding" and "meaning"

514. A philosopher believes he means something by a sentence even when he doesn't think how the sentence is used.

515. point?

516. Our understanding of certain questions only reaches as far as explanations reach

517. Can't we be mistaken in thinking that we understand a question? Certain math proofs lead us to revise the domain of imagination

518. What is the object of painting: the picture of a man or the man it portrays?

520. Wit thinks that what will be called logically possible depends wholly on our grammar and this is not arbitrary because of applications

521. Compare "logically possible" with "Chemically possible"

522. If we compare a proposition to a picture we have to keep in mind the type of picture it is for different kinds of pictures tell me different things

523. ?

524. ?

525. Some propositions by themself don't make sense but I know how they might be used and can invent a context for it.

526. To understand a picture there is understanding and failure to understand in different ways.

527. Understanding a sentence is similar to understanding a theme in music. There are very different kinds of justifications

531. We understand sentences in the sense that they can be replaced because the thought is common to different sentences, but also in the sense that it can't be replaced because of the positions of words (like in a poem)

532. Wit says the different senses make up its meaning, make up the concept

533. But how can one transmit comprehension? The answer tells us how meaning is explained.

The objective depends on the subjective reason and is itself a collection of subjective reasonings. Wit might be starting from the objective and moving to the subjective. So our only evidence is to the contrary of this.

He tries to objectify thought and reduce the realm of thought to the realm of language, and declare the rest illegitimate.

Perhaps it is language that bewitches us from philosophy.

Wit might think that doubting the existence of other minds is using doubt out of its appropriate use in language but that is one of those rules that was not clearly defined so I can doubt and Wit begs the question.

Wittgenstein can only deny our epistemic awareness.

Wit begs the question, I’m in a hole and Wit can’t tell me to assume I am out of the hole.

Nothingness is the absence of all properties and substratum and so it is a contradiction and is impossible. So there must be something and it must be what it is. But whether or not there could have been something different in its place is an open question. Our ideas must be metaphysically different in order to capture truth, so difference between all ideas is an absolute difference, in addition we know what our ideas are, so we know that they are different.

In response to Wit, if I think of a stone having a pain in what sense can I attribute it to the stone? 1. If I annhilate everything but the stone, the pain will continue to exist. 2. There is a correlation between the stone’s pain and something found in its immediate environment that I can understand as being the cause of the pain.

There can also be an association without necessary connection between the use of words and thoughts (Wit 305)

What does it mean to remember a particular pain? Do we actually recall the pain itself or do we have an idea that refers to the pain?

My present understanding of Wittgenstein is: Actions and thoughts are defined by certain objective communal rules. These rules are real though they are vague and not clearly defined.

Wit in 398 is right but the sense that further language and concepts make the “have” view wrong. But an even further correction is that we shouldn’t project our experiences onto others. There should not be others only the phenomena.

(361) How about the chair that is thinking depends on the dependence of thinking with that particular chair’s existence so that if I burn the chair and it ceases to think? Wit puts value on objective criteria or validation from his own subjective value.

Wit 293 and 294, Even if the object is changing and the person involved is saying “’X’ is what I mean by pain” at every instance, the fact is that the object of X is metaphysically different, it is present before the mind differently (experienced differently), and so the above expression has a different and valid meaning at each and every instance. The problem comes when thinking “this X is identical to the X 5 minutes ago” or when one wants to convey this to another person.

Wit says something crucial in 288 “This explanation…as in other cases”. Also in 289 because I would say he doesn’t need anyone else to be certain of the truth. And 305.

Why does Wit dismiss certain uses or meanings of language and allow for others (i.e. the philosophical)?

Wit 329, I disagree and this is critical

Wittgenstein assumes a world.

Some objections to Wit: 1. his meaning of knowledge 2. what he says does not affect my though, only language 3. Wit assumes that we have been taught language when we could have been created at any point in the past with an innate full understanding and use of language. 4. Witt believes that one can only point to a sensation by means of connection with a sign. 5. Past occurrences or associations don’t affect the present legitimacy of a sign. Language can be only a present phenomena. See #9 6. My idea of objective language related to private experiences 7. Why are the rules of a private language more secure in a group than in an individual? 8. Wit assumes the fallibility of memory and the infallibility of the external world 9. Wit allows for changes in the objective language game but not for changes in the private.