Quotes from Philosophical Investigations
Quotes from Philosophical Investigations
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In the following sections Wittgenstein discusses specific questions; the quotes are from Philosophical Investigations.
(Notes: The presence of "****" indicates a break I have made in the text. Similarly, the presence of "[....]" also indicates editing I have done--not what Wittgenstein did himself.)
From Philosophical Investigations:
1. "When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of the voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences. I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires" (Augustine, Confessions, I. 8).
These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects--sentences are combinations of such names. In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.
Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word. If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table," "chair," "bread," and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself.
Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples." He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in a table and finds a color sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers--I assume that he knows them by heart--up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an apple of the same color as the sample out of the drawer. It is in this and similar was that one operates with words. "But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the world 'five'?" Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere.--But what is the meaning of the word "five"?--No such thing was in question here, only how the word "five" is used.
2. That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours.
Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stonges: there are blocks, pillars, slabs, and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words "block," "pillar," "slab," "beam." A calls them out;--B brings the stone which he has learnt to to bring at such-and-such a call.--Conceive this as a complete primitive language.
3. Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in many cases where the question arises "Is this an appropriate description or not?" The answer is: "Yes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you of what you were claiming to describe."
It is as if someone were to say: "A game consists in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules..."-- and we replied: You seem to be thinking of board games, but there are others. You can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those games.
4. Imagine a script in which the letters were used to stand for sounds, and also as signs of emphasis and punctuation. (A script can be conceived as a language for describing sound-patterns.) Now imagine someone interpreting that script as if there were simply a correspondence of letters to sounds and as if the letters had not also completely different functions. Augustine's conception of language is like such an over-simple conception of the script.
5. If we look at the example in (1), we may perhaps get an inkling ho much this general notion of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of words.
A child uses such primitive forms of langauge when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training.
6. We could imagine that the language of (2) was the whole language of a tribe. The children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others.
An important part of the training will consist in the teacher's pointing to the objects, directing the child's attention to them, and at the same time uttering a word; for instance, the word "slab" as he points to that shape. (I do not want to call this "ostensive definition," because the child cannot as yet ask what the name is. I will call it "ostensive teaching of words." I say that it will form an important part of the training, because it is so with human beings; not because it could not be imagined otherwise.) This ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an association between the word and the thing. But what does this mean? Well, it may mean various things; but one very likely think first of all that a picture of the object comes before the child's mind when it hears the word. But now, if this does happen--is it the purpose of the word?-- Yes, it may be the purpose.--I can imagine such a use of words (of series of sounds). (Uttering a word is like striking a note on a keyboard of the imagination.) But in the language of (2) it is not the purpose of the words to evoke images. (It may, of course, be discovered that that helps to attain the actual purpose.)
But if the ostensive teaching has this effect,--am I to say that it effects an understanding of the word? Don't you understand the call "Slab!" if you act upon it in such-and-such a way?--Doubtless the ostensive teaching helped to bring this about; but only together with a particular training. With different training the same ostensive teaching of these words would have effected a quite different understanding.
"I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever."--Yes, given the whole of the rest of the mechanism. Only in conjunction with that is it a brake-lever, and separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing.
7. In the practive of the use of language (2) one party calls out the words, the other acts on them. In instruction in the language the following process will occur: the learner names the objects; that is, he utters the word when the teacher points to the stone.--And there will be this still simpler exercise: the pupil repeats the words after the teacher--both of these being processes resembling langauge.
We can also think of the whole proces of using words in (2) as one of those games by means of which children learn their native langauge. I will call these games "language-games" and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game.
And the process of nameing the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be called language-games. Think of much of the use of words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses.
I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the action into which it is woven, the "language-game."
* * * *
10. Now what do the words of this language signify?--What is supposed to shew what they signify, if not the kind of use they have? And we have already discribed that. So we are asking for the expression "This word signifies this" to be made a part of the description. In other words, the description out to take the form: "The word...signifies..."
Of course, one can reduce the description of the use of the word "slab" to the statement that this word signifies this object. This will be done when, for example, it is merely a matter of removing the mistaken idea that the word "slab" refers to the shape of building-stone that we in fact call a "block"--but the kind of 'referring' this is, that is to say the use of these words for the rest, is already known.
Equally one can say that the signs "a," "b," etc. signify numbers; when for example this removes the mistaken idea that "a," "b," "c," play the part actually played in language by "block, "slab," "pillar." And one can also say that "c" means this number and not that one; when for example this serves to explain that the letters are to be used in the order a, b, c, d, etc. and not in the order a, b, d, c.
But assimilating the descriptions of the uses of words in this way cannot make the uses themselves any more like one another. For, as we see, they are absolutely unlike.
11. Think of tools in a toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails, and screws.--The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.)
Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy!
* * * *
13. When we say: "Every word in language signifies something" we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make. (It might be, of course, that we wanted to distinguish the words of language [8] from words 'without meaning' such as occur in Lews Carroll's poems, or words like "Lilliburlero" in songs.)
14. Imagine someone's saying: "All tools serve to modify something. Thus the hammer modifies the position of the nail, the saw the shape of the board, and so on."--And what is modified by the rule, the glue-pot, the nails?--"Our knowledge of a thing's length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of the box." Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?--
15. The word "to signify" is perhaps used in the most straightforward way when the object signified is marked with the sign. Suppose that the tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shews his assistant such a mark, he brings the tool that has that mark on it.
It is in this and more or less similar ways that a name means and is given to a thing.--It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing.
26. One thinks that learning the language consists in giving names to objects. Viz., to human beings, to shapes, to colors, to pains, to moods, to numbers, etc. To repeat--naming is something like attaching a label to a thing. One can say that this is preparatory to the use of a word. But what for?
27. "We name things and then we can talk about them: can refer to them in talk."--As if what we did next were given with the mere act of naming. As if there were only one thing called "talking about a thing." Whereas in fact we do the most various things with our sentences. Think of exclamations alone, with their completely different functions.
Water! Away! Ow! Help! Fine! No!
Are you inclined to still call these words "names of objects"?
In languages (2) and (8) there was no such thing as asking something's name. This, with its correlate, ostensive definition, is, we might say, a language-game on its own. That is really to say: we are brought up, trained, to ask: "What is that called?"--upon which the name is given. And there is also a language-game of inventing a name for something, and hence saying, "This is...." and then using the new name. (Thus, for example, children give names to their dolls and then talk about them and to them. Think in this connection how singular is the use of a person's name to call him!)
28. Now one can ostensively define a proper name, the name of a color, the name of a material, a numeral, the name of a point of the compass and so on. The definition of the number two, "That is called 'two'"--pointing to two nuts--is perfectly exact.--But how can two be defined like that? The person one gives the definition to doesn't know what one wants to call "two"; he will suppose that "two" is the name given to thisgroup of nuts!--He may suppose this; but perhaps he does not. He might make the opposite mistake; when I want to assign a name to this group of nuts, he might understand it as a numeral. And he might equally well take the name of a person, of which I give an ostensive definition, as that of a color, of a race, or even of a point of the compass. That is to say: an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in every case.
29. Perhaps you say: two can only be ostensively defined in this way: "This number is called 'two.'" For the word "number" here shows what place in language, in grammar, we assign to the word. But this means that the word "number" must be explained before the ostensive definition can be understood.--The word "number" in the definition does indeed show this place; does show the post at which we station the word. And we can prevent misunderstanding by saying: "The color is called so-and-so," "This length is called so-and-so," and so on. That is to say: misunderstanding are sometimes averted in this way. But is there only one way of taking the word "color" or "length"?--Well, they just need defining.--Defining, then, by means of other words! And what about the last definition in this claim? (Do not say: "There isn't a 'last' definition." That is just as if you chose to say: "There isn't a last house in this road; one can always build an additional one.")
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 will depend on the circumstances under which it is given, and on the person I give it to.
And how he "takes" the definition is seen in the use that he makes of the word defined.
30. So one might say: the ostensive definition explains the use--the meaning--of the word when the overall role of the word in language is clear. Thus if I know that someone means to explain a color-word to me the ostensive definition "That is called 'sepia'" will help me to understand the word.--And you can say this, so long as you do not forget that all sorts of problems attach to the words "to know" or "to be clear."
One has already to know (or to be able to do) something in order to be capable of asking a things name. But what does one have to know?
Could one define the word "red" by pointing to something that was not red? That would be as if one were supposed to explain the word "modest" to someone whose English was weak, and one pointed to an arrogant man and said "That man is not modest." That it is ambiguous is no argument against such a method of definition. Any definition can be understood.
But it might well be asked: are we still to call this "definition"?--For, of course, even if it has the same practical consequences, the same effect on the learner, it plays a different part in the calculus from what we ordinarily call "ostensive definition" of the word "red." [Note added by Wittgenstein.]
31. When one shows someone the king in chess and says: "This is the king," this does not tell him the use of this piece--unless he already knows the rules of the game up to this point: the shape of the king. You could imagine his having learnt the rules of the game without ever having been shown an actual piece. The shape of the chessman corresponds here to the sound or shape of a word.
One can also imagine someone's having learnt the game without ever learning or formulating rules. He might have learnt quite simple board-games first, by watching, and have progressed to more and more complicated ones. He too might be given the explanation "This is the king,"--if, for instance, he were being shown chessmen of a shape he was not used to. This explanation again only tells him the use of the piece because, as we might say, the place is already prepared. And in this case it is so, not because the person to whom we give the explanation already knows rules, but because in another sense he is already master of a game.
Consider this further case: I am explaining chess to someone; and I begin by pointing to a chessman and saying: "This is the king; it can move like this,...and so on."--In this case we shall say: the words "This is the king" (or "This is called the 'king'") are a definition only if the learner already 'knows what a piece in a game is.' That is, if he has already played other games, or has watched other people playing 'and understood'--and similar things. Further, only under these conditions will he be able to ask relevantly in the course of learning the game: "What do you call this?"--that is, this piece in a game.
We may say: only someone who already knows how to do something with it can significantly ask a name.
And we can imagine the person who is asked replying: "Settle the name yourself"--and now the one who asked would have to manage everything for himself.
32. Someone coming into a strange country will sometimes learn the language of the inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to guess the meaning of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And "think" would here mean something like "talk to itself."
33. Suppose, however, someone were to object: "It is not true that you must already be master of a language in order to understand an ostensive definition: all you need--of course I--is to know or guess what the person giving the explanation is pointing to. That is, whether for example to the shape of the object, or to its color, or to its number, and so on." And what does 'pointing to the shape,' 'pointing to the color' consist in? Point to a piece of paper.--And now point to its shape--now to its color--now to its number (that sounds queer).--How did you do it?--You will say that you 'meant' a different thing each time you pointed. And if I ask how that is done, you will say you concentrated your attention on the color, the shape, etc. But I ask again: how is that done? [....]
* * * *
37. What is the relation between name and the thing named?--Well, what is it? Look at language-game (2) or at another one: there you can see the sort of thing this relation consists in. This relation may also consist, among many other things, in the fact that hearing the name calls before our mind the picture of what is named; and it also consists, among other things, in the name's being written on the thing named or being pronounced when that thing is pointed at.
38. But what, for example, is the word "this" the name of in language-game (8) or the word "that" in the ostensive definition "that is called..."?--If you do not want to produce confusion you will do best not to call these words names at all.--Yet, strange to say, the word "this" has been called the only genuine name; so that anything else we call a name was one only in an inexact, approximate sense.
This queer conception springs from a tendency to sublime the logic of our language--as might put it. The proper answer to it is: we call very different things "names"; the word "name" is used to characterize many different kinds of use of a word, related to one another in many different ways;--but the kind of use that "this" has is not among them.
What is it to mean the words "That is blue" at one time as a statement about the object one is pointing to--at another as an explanation of the word "blue"? Well, in the second case one really means "That is called 'blue'"--Then can one time mean the word "is" as "is called" and the word "blue" as "'blue,'" and another time mean "is" really as "is"?
It is also possible for someone to get an explanation of the words out of what was intended as a piece of information. [Marginal note: Here lurks a crucial superstition.]
Can I say "bububu" and mean "If it doesn't rain I shall go for a walk"?--It is only in language that I can mean something by something. This shows clearly that the grammar of "to mean" is not like that of the expression "to imagine" and the like. [Note added by Wittgenstein.]
It is quite clear that, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we often point to the object named and say the name. And similarly, in giving an ostensive definition for instance, we say the word "this" while pointing to a thing. And also the word "this" and a name often occupy the same position 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'"). But do we also give the definitions: "That is called 'this,'" or "This is called 'this'"?
This is connected with the conception of naming as, so to speak, an occult process. Naming appears as a queer connection of a word with an object.--And you really get such a queer connection when the philosopher tries to bring out the relation between name and thing by staring at an object in front of him and repeating a name or even the word "this" innumerable times. For philosophical problems arise when languagegoes on holiday. And here we may indeed fancy naming to be some remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object. And we can also say the word "this" to the object, as it were address the object as "this"--a queer use of this word, which doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy.
39. But why does it occur to one to want to make precisely this word into a name, when it evidently is not a name?--That is just the reason. For one is tempted to make an objection against what is ordinarily called a name. It can be put like this: a name out really to signify a simple. And for this one might perhaps five the following reasons: The word "Excalibur," say, is a proper name in the ordinary sense. The sword Excalibur consists of parts combined in a particular way. If they are combined differently Excalibur does not exist. But it is clear that the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp blade" makes sense whether Excalibur is still whole or is broken up. But if "Excalibur is the name of an object, this object no longer exists when Excalibur is broken in pieces; and as no object would then correspond to the name it would have no meaning. But then the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp blad" would contain a word that had no meaning, and hence the sentence would be nonsense. But it does make sense; so there must always be something corresponding to the words of which it consists. So the word "Excalibur" must disappear when the sense is analyzed and its place be taken by words when name simples. It will be reasonable to call these words the real names.
40. Let us first discuss this point of the argument: that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it.--It is important to note that the word "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 Mr. N. N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that, for if the name ceased to have meaning it would make no sense to say "Mr. N. N. is dead."
* * * *
43. For a large class--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 the language.
And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer.
44. We said that the sentence "Excalibur has a sharp blade" made sense even when Excalibur was broken in pieces. Now this is so because in this language-game a name is also used in the absence of its bearer. But we can imagine a language-game with names (that is, with signs which we should certainly include among names) in which they are used only in the presence of the bearer; and so could always be replaced by a demonstrative pronoun and the gesture of pointing.
153. We are trying to get hold of the mental process of understanding which seems to be hidden behind those coarser and therefore more readily visible accompaniments. But we do not succeed; or, rather, it does not get as far as a real attempt. For even supposing I had found something that happened in all those cases of understanding,— why should // be the understanding? And how can the process of understanding have been hidden, when I said "Now I understand" because I understood?! And if I say it is hidden—then how do I know what I have to look for? I am in a muddle.
154. But wait—if "Now I understand the principle" does not mean the same as "The formula ... . occurs to me" (or "I say the formula", "I write it down", etc.) —does it follow from this that I employ the sentence "Now I understand ..... " or "Now I can go on" as a description of a process occurring 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.
Try not to think of understanding as a 'mental process' at all.— For that is the expression which confuses you. But ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say, "Now I know how to go on," when, that is, the formula has occurred to me?— In the sense in which there are processes (including mental processes) which are characteristic of understanding, understanding is not a mental process. (A pain's growing more and less; the hearing of a tune or a sentence: these are mental processes.)
155 . Thus what I wanted to say was: when he suddenly knew how to go on, when he understood the principle, then possibly he had a special experience—and if he is asked: "What was it? What took place when you suddenly grasped the principle?" perhaps he will describe it much as we described it above——but for us it is the circum- stances under which he had such an experience that justify him in saying in such a case that he understands, that he knows how to go on.
Philosophical Investigations:
23. But how many kinds of sentences are there? Say assertion, question, and command?--There are countless different kinds of what we call "symbols," "words," "sentences." And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. (We can get a rough picture of this from the changes in mathematics.)
Here the term "language-game" is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.
Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others:
Giving orders, and obeying them--
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements--
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)--
Reporting an event--
Speculating about an event--
Forming and testing a hypothesis--
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams--
Making up a story; and reading it--
Play-acting--
Guessing riddles--
Making a joke; telling it--
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic--
Translating from one language into another--
Asking, thinking, cursing, greeting, praying.
Imagine a picture representing a boxer in a particular stance. Now, this picture can be used to tell someone how he should stand, should hold himself; or how he should not hold himself; or how a particular man did stand in such-and-such a place; and so on. One might (using the language of chemistry) call this picture a propsition-radical. This will be how Frege thought of the "assumption." [Note added by Wittgenstein]
--It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)
* * * *
65. Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations.--For someone might object against me: "You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigations that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language."
And this is true--Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all,--but that they are relatedto one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all "language." I will try to explain this.
66. Consider for example the proceedings that we call "games." I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?--Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games'"--but look and see whether there is anything common on all.--For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look!--Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here your find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.--Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball-games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
67. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, color of eyes, gait, temperament, etc., etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.--And I shall say: "games" form a family.
And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a--direct--relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fiber on fiber. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fiber runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibers.
But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions--namely the disjunction of all their common properties"--I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread--namely the continuous overlapping of those fibers."
69. How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called 'games'". And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is? - But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary - for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all! (Except for that special purpose.) No more than it took the definition: 1 pace = 75 cm. to make the measure of length 'one pace' usable. And if you want to say "But still, before that it wasn't an exact measure", then I reply: very well, it was an inexact one. - Though you still owe me a definition of exactness.
587. It makes sense to ask: 'Do I really love her, or am I only pretending to myself?' and the process of introspection is the calling up of memories; of imagined possible situations, and of the feelings that one would have if...
588. 'I am revolving the decision to go away to-morrow.' (This may be called a description of a state of mind.)--'Your arguments don't convince me; now as before it is my intention to go away to-morrow.' Here one is tempted to call the intention a feeling. The feeling is one of a certain rigidity; of unalterable determination. (But there are many different characteristic feelings and attitudes here.)--I am asked: 'How long are you staying here?' I reply: 'To-morrow I am going away; it's the end of my holidays.'--But over against this: I say at the end of a quarrel 'All right! Then I leave to-morrow!'; I make a decision.
589. 'In my heart I have determined on it.' And one is even inclined to point to one's breast as one says it. Psychologically this way of speaking should be taken seriously. Why should it be taken less seriously than the assertion that belief is a state of mind? (Luther: 'Faith is under the left nipple.')
590. Someone might learn to understand the meaning of the expression 'seriously meaning what one says' by means of a gesture of pointing at the heart. But now we must ask: 'How does it come out that he has learnt it?'
591. Am I to say that any one who has an intention has an experience of tending towards something? That there are particular experiences of 'tending'?--Remember this case: If one urgently wants to make some remark, some objection, in a discussion, it often happens that one opens one's mouth, draws a breath and holds it; if one then decides to let the objection go, one lets the breath out. The experience of this process is evidently the experience of veering towards saying something. Anyone who observes me will know that I wanted to say something and then thought better of it. In this situation, that is.--In a different one he would not so interpret my behaviour, however characteristic of the intention to speak it may be in the present situation. And is there any reason for assuming that this same experience could not occur in some quite different situation--in which it has nothing to do with any 'tending'?
592. 'But when you say "I intend to go away", you surely mean if! Here again it just is the mental act of meaning that gives the sentence life. If you merely repeat the sentence after someone else, say in order to mock his way of speaking, then you say it without this act of meaning.'--When we are doing philosophy it can sometimes look like that. But let us really think out various different situations and conversations, and the ways in which that sentence will be uttered in them.--'I always discover a mental undertone; perhaps not always the same one.' And was there no undertone there when you repeated the sentence after someone else? And how is the 'undertone' to be separated from the rest of the experience of speaking?
593. A main cause of philosophical disease -- a one-sided diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example.
594. 'But the words, significantly uttered, have after all not only a surface, but also the dimension of depth!' After all, it just is the cause that something different takes place when they are uttered significantly from when they are merely uttered.--How I express this is not the point. Whether I say that in the first case they have depth; or that something goes on in me, inside my mind, as I utter them; or that they have an atmosphere--it always comes to the same thing.
'Well, if we all agree about it, won't it be true?'
(I cannot accept someone else's testimony, because it is not testimony. It only tells me what he is inclined to say.)
* * * *
611. 'Willing too is merely an experience,' one would like to say (the "will" to only "idea"). It comes when it comes, and I cannot bring it about.
Not bring it about?--Like what? What can I bring about, then? What am I comparing willing with when I say this?
612. I should not say of the movement of my arm, for example: it comes when it comes, etc.. And this is the region in which we say significantly that a thing doesn't simply happen to us, but that we do it. 'I don't need to wait for my arm to go up--I can raise it.' And here I am making a contrast between the movement of my arm and, say, the fact that the violent thudding of my heart will subside.
613. In the sense in which I can ever bring anything about (such as stomach-ache through over-eating), I can also bring about an act of willing. In this sense I bring about the act of willing to swim by jumping into the water. Doubtless I was trying to say: I can't will willing; that is, it makes no sense to speak of willing willing. 'Willing' is not the name of an action; and so not the name of any voluntary action either. And my use of a wrong expression came from our wanting to think of willing as an immediate non-causal bringing-about. A misleading analogy lies at the root of this idea; the causal nexus seems to be established by a mechanism connecting two parts of a machine. The connection may be broken if the mechanism is disturbed. (We think only of the disturbances to which a mechanism is normally subject, not, say, of cog-wheels suddenly going soft, or passing through one another, and so on.)
614. When I raise my arm "voluntarily" I do not use any instrument to bring the movement about. My wish is not such an instrument either.
615. 'Willing, if it is not to be a sort of wishing, must be the action itself. It cannot be allowed to stop anywhere short of the action.' If it is the action, then it is so in the ordinary sense of the word; so it is speaking, writing, lifting a thing, imagining something. But it is also trying, attempting, making an effort,--to speak, to write, to lift a thing, to imagine something etc.
616. When I raise my arm, I have not wished it might go up. The voluntary action excludes this wish. It is indeed possible to say: 'I hope I shall draw the circle faultlessly'. And that is to express a wish that one's hand should movie in such-and-such a way.
617. If we cross our fingers in a certain special way we are sometimes unable to move a particular finger when someone tells us to do so, if he only points to the finger--merely shows it to the eye. If on the other hand he touches it, we can move it. One would like to describe this experience as follows: we are unable to will to move the finger. The case is quite different from that in which we are not able to move the finger because someone is, say, holding it. One now feels inclined to describe the former case by saying: one can't find any point of application for the will till the finger is touched. Only when one feels the finger can the will know where it is to catch hold.--But this kind of expression is misleading. One would like to say: 'How am I to direct the will when the feeling is there?
That in this case the finger is as it were paralyzed until we feel a touch on it is shown by experience; it could not have been seen a priori
618. One imagines the willing subject here as something without any mass (without an inertia); as a motor which has no inertia in itself to overcome. And so it is only mover, not moved. That is: One can say 'I will, but my body does not obey me'--but not: 'My will does not obey me.' (Augustine.)
But in the sense in which I cannot fail to will, I cannot try to will either.
619. And one might say: 'I can always will only inasmuch as I can never try to will.'
620. Doing itself seems not to have any volume of experience. It seems like an extensionless point, the point of a needle. This point seems to be the real agent. And the phenomenal happenings only to be consequences of this acting. 'I do...' seems to have a definite sense, separate from all experience.
621. Let us not forget this: when 'I rise my arm', my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?
((Are the kinesthetic sensations my willing?))
622. When I raise my arm I do not usually try to raise it.
623. 'At all costs I will get to that house.'--But if there is no difficulty about it--can I try at all costs to get to the house?
624. In the laboratory, when subjected to an electric current, for example, someone says with his eyes shut "I am moving my arm up and down'--though his arm is not moving. 'So,' we say, 'he has the special feeling of making that movement.'--Move your arm to and from with your eyes shut. And now try, while you do so, to tell yourself that your arm is staying still and that you are only having certain queer feelings in your muscles and joints!
625. 'How do you know that you have raised your arm?'--'I feel it.' So what you recognize is the feeling? And are you certain that you recognize it right?--You are certain that you have raised your arm; isn't this the criterion, the measure, of recognition?
626. 'When I touch this object with a stick I have the sensation of touching in the tip of the stick, not in the hand that holds it.' When someone says 'The pain isn't here in my hand, but in my wrist', this has the consequence that the doctor examines the wrist. But what difference does it make if I say that I feel the hardness of the object in the tip of the stick or in my hand? Does what I say mean 'It is as if I had nerve-endings in the tip of the stick?' In what sense is it like that?--Well, I am at any rate inclined to say: 'I feel the hardness etc. in the tip of the stick.' What goes with this is that when I touch the object I look not at my hand but at the tip of the stick; that I describe what I feel by saying 'I feel something hard and round there'--not 'I feel a pressure against the tips of my thumb, middle finger, and index finger...' If, for example, someone asks me 'What are you now feeling in the fingers that hold the probe?' I might reply: 'I don't know--I feel something hard and rough over there.'
627. Examine the following description of a voluntary action: 'I form the decision of pull the bell at 5 o'clock, and when it strikes 5, my arm makes this movement.'--Is that the correct description, and not this one: '...and when it strikes 5, I raise my arm'?--One would like to supplement the first description: 'and see! my arm goes up when it strikes 5.' And this 'and see!' is precisely what doesn't belong here. I do not say 'See, my arm is going up!' when I raise it.
628. So one might say: voluntary movement is marked by the absence of surprise. And now I do not mean you ask 'But why isn't one surprised here?'
629. When people talk about the possibility of foreknowledge of the future they always forget the fact of the prediction of one's own voluntary movements.
"The machine as symbolizing its action: the action of a machine - I might say at first - seems to be there in it from the start. What does that mean? - If we know the machine, everything else, that is its movement, seems to be already completely determined.
We talk as if these parts could only move in this way, as if they could not do anything else. How is this - do we forget the possibility of their bending, breaking off, melting, and so on? Yes; in many cases we don't think of that at all. We use a machine, or the drawing of a machine, to symbolize a particular action of the machine. For instance, we give someone such a drawing and assume that he will derive the movement of the parts from it. (Just as we can give someone a number by telling him that it is the twenty-fifth in the series 1, 4, 9, 16, ...)
"The machine's action seems to be in it from the start" means: we are inclined to compare the future movements of the machine in their definiteness to objects which are already lying in a drawer and which we then take out. - But we do not say this kind of thing when we are concerned with predicting the actual behavior of a machine. Then we do not in general forget the possibility of a distortion of the parts and so on. - We do talk like that, however, when we are wondering at the way we can use a machine to symbolize a given way of moving - since it can also move in quite different ways.
We might say that a machine, or the picture of it, is the first of a series of pictures which we have learnt to derive from this one.
But when we reflect that the machine could also have moved differently it may look as if the way it moves must be contained in the machine-as-symbol far more determinately than in the actual machine. As if it were not enough for the movements in question to be empirically determined in advance, but they had to be really - in a mysterious sense - already present. And it is quite true: the movement of the machine-as-symbol is predetermined in a different sense from that in which the movement of any given actual machine is predetermined."
Wittgenstein’s efforts to relieve us of the temptation to posit mental processes have been interpreted by some as implying an endorse- ment of behaviourism. This interpretation is incorrect. Wittgenstein considered behaviourism to not merely be as confused as cognitivism, but to have its roots in the very same prejudice. Consider PI §308:
How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and states and about behaviourism arise? – – The first step is the one that altogether escapes notice. We talk of processes and states and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know more about them – we think. But that is just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. For we have a definite concept of what it means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive move in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one we thought quite innocent.) – And now the analogy which was to make us understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we have to deny the yet uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don’t want to deny them.