Wittgenstein on the Mind - Norman Malcolm (1968)

Suppose you have two old friends, both

named Tom, and you are writing to one of

them. Both are ardent fishermen, and

your letter tells about a recent fishing

exploit of your own. Thus, the content

of the letter is suitable for either of

them. One of them lives in Buffalo and

the other in Omaha, but you have not yet

addressed the envelope. Your letter

begins with the greeting, "Dear Tom,"

and ends with, "Past regards. Hope to

hear from you soon," followed by your

signature. Let us suppose it is to the

Tom in Omaha you are writing.

What does your writing to him rather

than to the other Tom consist?

What connects your letter with the one

and not the other? Vickenstein presses

these questions on us.

Consider another example. You motioned

with your hand in the direction of two

people A and B and said, "Come here." It

was A you meant, not B. What went on

which made it the case that you meant A?

Another example. You hear a piano being

tuned at the same time you have a

headache. You say it will soon stop.

What would be the difference between

meaning the piano tuning and meaning the

headache?

Or while walking with a companion, you

point towards a flower and exclaim,

"Look,

let us say that you meant the flower's

color and not its shape or size or

species."

What did that difference consist in?

In these examples, a person meant

something. Closely related is the notion

of intention. Consider an example of the

latter.

In conversation, you were interrupted.

you were going to say, "So, I must leave

by 10:00." In what form did your

intention to say those words exist

before you said them?

We feel that we should be able to answer

these questions. Yet, we are frustrated

since none of the answers that occur to

us carry much conviction.

We think half-heartedly that perhaps

your writing to the one Tom rather than

the other consisted in your having an

image of the one but not of the other as

you wrote the letter.

But should we really want to say that

you would not have been writing to the

Tom of Omaha unless you had an image of

him? Surely not. And in the example in

which you motioned in the direction of A

and B and said, "Come here."

But it was A you meant not B. Should we

say that this consisted in your fixing

your attention on A?

But your attention might not have been

fixed on A. You might have been thinking

about B. You were watching the

expression on his face, hoping that he

would not be offended by your choosing

to speak to A first.

In the example of the simultaneous

headache and piano tuning, would it be

the case that you meant the headache

when you said it will soon stop if your

attention was concentrated on it more

than on the piano tuning? Could the

question arise for you as to whether

your attention was sufficiently

concentrated on the headache in order

for you to amend it?

We find that we are unable to specify

what it was that it's being a letter to

the one tom rather than to the other

consisted in or what went on when you

motioned and said come here which was

your meaning that a should come and not

b.

We cannot say in what form your

intention to say a sentence existed

before you said it. We cannot seem to

give an account of what you did at the

time you were pointing at the flower

such that your meaning its color

consisted in doing that.

Meaning the color did not consist in

looking hard at the color or in saying

to yourself, "What a great color."

Those things could have occurred and yet

you might not have meant the color and

likewise you might have meant the color

without their occurrence.

At this stage, our thinking is likely to

take a peculiar turn. We meant the

color. Yet, we cannot specify anything

we did or anything that occurred which

can be identified with meaning the

color.

So, we think meaning the color is just

something that occurs in the mind.

You can't say what it is, but you know

what it is. It is a unique indescribable

mental occurrence. It is something

definite but intangible.

As Vickenstein remarks, this inclination

to think of meaning something as being

intangible is of the greatest

importance. It is the emerging of the

notion of mind as a mystery.

Mental acts and experiences we feel are

tremendously significant but we cannot

say what they are.

Meaning the color just is a particular

mental act. We say remembering what you

ate for breakfast is a certain mental

experience.

Intending to say so I must leave at

10:00 is a perfectly concrete but

indescribable mental state.

William James produced a splendid

expression of this way of thinking. I

quote, "And has the reader never asked

himself what kind of a mental fact is

his intention of saying a thing before

he has said it? It is an entirely

definite intention, distinct from all

other intentions, an absolutely distinct

state of consciousness, therefore, and

yet how much of it consists of definite

sensorial images, either of words or of

things? Hardly anything.

linger and the words and things come

into the mind. The anticipatory

intention, the divination is there no

more. But as the words that replace it

arrive, it it welcomes them successively

and calls them right if they agree with

it. It rejects them and calls them wrong

if they do not. It has therefore a

nature of its own of the most positive

sort. And yet, what can we say about it

without using words that belong to the

later mental facts that replace it? The

intention to say so and so is the only

name it can receive.

As James saw it, when we think and

speak, intending this or that by our

words, there is a continuous flow of

feelings and experiences which comprise

the thinking and the meaning. When we

intend a word in a certain sense, the

intention is a definite state of

consciousness. We are aware of it. James

gives the following example. I quote

again. Again, when we use a common noun

such as man in a universal sense as

signifying all possible men, we are

fully aware of this intention on our

part and distinguish it carefully from

our intention when we mean a certain

group of men or a solitary individual

before us. It cast its influence over

the whole of the sentence both before

and after the spot in which the word man

is used.

James thought that there were subtle

differences in the way the word man

feels when you use it in different

senses and that these different feelings

spread themselves throughout the

sentences in which the word occurs.

He says we all of us have this permanent

consciousness of whether our thought is

going. It is a feeling like any other a

feeling of what thoughts are next to

arise before they have arisen. end of

quotation.

But if you reflect on actual

conversations in which you uttered the

word man, sometimes meaning all men,

sometimes this or that man, sometimes

some man or other, sometimes using the

word as an exclamation, man. You will

not detect those subtly different

feelings that are supposed to go with

the different intentions.

James was trying to do what all of us

should like to do, namely to say what

went on in us when we uttered a word and

meant it in a certain sense. But we do

not succeed. So we are inclined to think

that what went on is indescribable.

We cannot get hold of it.

We should like to be able to say exactly

what intending the letter for the Tom in

Omaha is, but we cannot do it.

We cannot identify it with having an

image of the Omaha tom, nor with saying

the word Omaha silently to oneself, nor

with any feeling. We should like to say,

I pointed at him in my mind when I wrote

that letter.

At the same time, we are rather

embarrassed to say this, for how can one

point at him in one's mind? So we are

inclined to give up all comparisons and

characterizations and to say that

intending the letter for the tom in

Omaha just is a particular mental act.

Videnstein observes that when we speak

in this way part of the force of the

word mental is to indicate that we

mustn't expect to understand how these

things work.

The word mental serves here to signify

what is mysterious, inexplicable,

occult.

Now, let us see if we can do anything to

dispel a mysteriousness.

Perhaps we cannot explain what intending

the letter for the Tom of Omaha consists

in.

But we can say what connects the letter

with the one Tom rather than the other.

the connection would be different in

different cases.

Suppose that the Tom in Omaha was a

garage mechanic and the one in Buffalo

was a dentist. And I knew this. I

announced to my wife that I was going to

write to Tom and then I said, "I wonder

whether whether he still works in that

same garage."

In this way, I connected the letter with

the Omaha Tom. My remark occurred before

the letter was written, but also I might

have made it during the writing of the

letter and also after the writing. Or to

take another case, an hour before we had

talked about Tom and had remarked that

he still lives in Omaha and I declared

that I was going to write to him.

Or still another case after completing

the letter I wrote on the envelope the

address of the Tom of Omaha

or yet another case I might have said

while writing the letter this letter is

to Tom in Omaha

in these various ways the letter could

have got connected with him

or it could be that I was thinking of

the Omaha Tom as I wrote or it could be

that I had a mental image of

These facts would connect my letter with

him no less and no more than would my

writing the Omaha address on the

envelope or my saying aloud that I was

writing to the one in Omaha. My thoughts

may connect my letter with him but not

in a way that is superior to the way my

words do it.

I have spoken of certain facts as

connecting the letter with the tom of

Omaha. Is this connection an entailment?

This is a question that has previously

perplexed me and a good many other

philosophers. It might be called the

problem of criteria from the fact that I

said I wonder whether he still works in

that same garage or that I said this

letter is to Tom in Omaha or that I was

thinking of the Omaha Tom as I wrote.

Does it follow with logical necessity

that I meant the letter for him?

The answer is no. Certainly not.

But how then can such facts connect the

letter with him if they do not provide

an entailment? We want to ask. And it is

clear that we are moved by the desire to

find criteria for the phenomena of mind

which will be ironclad rules that can be

applied inflexibly.

Rules that we can learn and then go on

to use like yard sticks to obtain

absolutely certain results.

It is also clear that this desire cannot

be satisfied.

But it does not remove the perplexity to

merely say this. So let me propose an

analogy.

Um consider the following two schematic

phases.

At this point, Mr. Malcolm went up to

the blackboard.

>> Uh

this is phase A and this is face B.

B is a smiling face and A is not.

[laughter]

I hope that's not just my reaction.

Uh

and the difference lies in the mouth. So

we can say that the mouth makes

be a smiling face

or that the mouth gives be its smiling

aspect.

But is there an entailment that is would

that mouth make any face a smiling face?

Certainly not. If we draw a face, for

example, with only one eye in the center

of the forehead, it will not have a

smiling aspect. Or if there were two

eyes, but one of them vertically above

the other, or if there were no eyes at

all, Vitkinstein remarks,

"A smiling mouth smiles only in a human

face." Uh that's the end of that

quotation.

It requires that environment.

Vickenstein notes how we may say that

what makes a certain person's face look

friendly is his friendly eyes. Yet, we

should admit that this face would not

look friendly if some other features

were different.

We are tempted to think that the eyes

cannot make the face look friendly if

another face with the same eyes would

look unfriendly. But this is wrong.

As Viginstein says, it is true that

other traits in this face could take

away the friendly character of this eye.

And yet in this face, it is the eye

which is the outstanding friendly

feature.

Now, the point of this analogy is that

it's intended to show both that

something I say or think can make my

letter a letter to the Tom of Omaha can

connect the letter with him, but also

that this will be so only in certain

surroundings.

Change these in various ways. Then the

same words or thoughts do not make the

letter refer to him.

Let us return to the example of your

pointing towards a flower and exclaiming

look

where what you meant what you were

pointing at was its color.

[clears throat]

How would this differ from a case in

which you meant its shape or its size or

its species? The way to get the answer

is to imagine various surroundings for

the act of pointing.

Suppose that you and your companion

belong to a group that is studying

colors in nature. The leader of the

group has just given a lecture on pure

colors and now the group is on a walk

through the woods for the purpose of

observing examples of pure natural

colors. Each member is to keep a record

of the examples he spots. You point at a

flower and say, "Look."

You and your companion write in your

notebooks saw a pure yellow near a large

sycamore tree.

Now the feeling of mysteriousness has

vanished.

In these circumstances, you meant the

color. If the circumstances had been

different in certain ways, you would

have meant something else. We are

tempted to think that you're meaning the

color must have been something that went

on in your mind.

But it could be that what went on in

your mind or thoughts had nothing to do

with what you meant. You might have

thought to yourself, "What a huge

flower." But still, in our example, it

was its color you meant when you pointed

and not its size. Or you might have been

impressed by its shape,

following the outline of it with your

eyes. But given the other circumstances

as described,

it still would not have been the shape

you meant when you spoke and pointed.

We begin to see that it was the pattern

of circumstances, the game as

Bitkinstein calls it, in which your act

of pointing was a part that gave this

act its specific meaning. We have an

inclination to think that your meaning

the color was an event that accompanied

the pointing but was hidden underneath

it.

We thought we had to go down and in to

find it. That is the idea we have. When

puzzled about how we are able to mean

something, we say that it is a mental

event or act. Vickenstein says to us,

"Don't make that move. You're going in

the wrong direction."

Instead of looking inside ourselves, we

should be looking around us at the

context in which our words and pointing

are located.

We should be searching horizontally

instead of vertically.

I mean looking around us at the

surroundings instead of trying to find

the uh the act of meaning inside

ourselves.

This temptation to look in the wrong

direction besets us whenever we are

perplexed about the concepts of mind.

Vitinstein's admonition applies to all

of them. He says for example that you

should not think of the un sudden

understanding of some problem as a

mental occurrence.

Why not? Not because this is false.

Your thinking here is too nebulous to be

false.

The reason for avoiding that way of

speaking is that it confuses you. It

leads you astray.

It throws you off the track. It makes

you want to search in the wrong place

for the way out of your perplexity. You

become a fly in a fly bottle.

As Vickinstein remarks, he does not deny

that remembering an engagement, for

example, is an inner event. An inner

event or a mental event. How could he?

What event? No one can say. He describes

his own aim in this way. I quote, "The

impression that we wanted to deny

something arises from the fact that we

turn against the picture of the inner

event. What we deny is that the picture

of the inner event gives us the correct

idea of the use of the word remember. We

say that this picture with its

ramifications stands in the way of our

seeing the use of the word as it is.

End of the quotation. Vickenstein is

rejecting a picture and the mode of

expression that conveys that picture. He

does not hold that remembering. For

example, remembering an engagement is

not an inner event or a mental event

in so far as there is any concrete

meaning in saying

quote the mental event of remembering

the picnic has just taken place in me.

It comes to the same as saying I have

just remembered the picnic.

Thus to deny the mental event would mean

to deny the remembering which would be

absurd.

The picture of remembering or meaning or

thinking as being a mental event, an

inner occurrence, something that happens

in the mind

has a remarkable effect. It prevents a

philosopher from observing the

situations and activities, the games to

which the words remember, mean, think,

and so on belong. and which give them

all the significance they have. The

picture makes it seem that such

observation is really irrelevant because

it can only show us in what cases we say

of someone he meant the color or he

meant the shape as if that could be

disregarded.

This picture of meaning, remembering and

so on as something I do in my mind turns

us away from the only study that could

give us a clear view of our concepts.

Thus, it is not just a picture but a

harmful influence.

There is an even more basic picture that

forces itself on us and seems to define

our problem. The picture is that

meaning or intending or remembering or

thinking or joy or anger

any one of a wide range of psychological

concepts that any one of these things

must be either something inner or

something outer.

The problem becomes one of determining

which it is that it's one or the other

is self-evident. we think.

But whichever horn of this dilemma we

choose, there are decisive objections.

Joy, for example, is often manifested in

joyful behavior. But as Vickenstein

says, joy is not joyful behavior.

A young woman's joyous exclamations,

movements, smiles, and so on would not

be manifestations of joy if they

occurred in quite different

circumstances.

Instead, they could belong to a bitter

parody of joy or they could be symptoms

of madness.

This difficulty cannot be remedied by

thinking up more complex constructions

out of behavior.

Uh for example, stimulus response

function in terms of which joy would be

defined.

The point holds for all of the

psychological concepts.

When you pointed towards the flower and

said, "Look, your meaning, its color,"

did not consist in that behavior of

pointing or in that utterance.

Nor did it consist in the conditional

fact that if the words, "Do you mean the

color had been addressed to you, you

would have answered yes." As Bitkinstein

remarks, quote, "Maning does not stand

for an activity which wholly or partly

consists in the outward expressions of

meaning." Unquote. In general, meaning

or joy or remembering cannot be

identified with any sequence of

behavioral manifestations, nor with any

disposition to manifest such behavior

given certain conditions of stimulation.

These reflections may make us turn away

from behaviorism and seize the other

horn of the dilemma which is the idea

that meaning, remembering, anger and joy

are inner occurrences or states.

But nothing of this sort that we can

specify is an adequate candidate. Anger

is often characterized by sensations

that go with the swelling of the chest

or the the flaming of the cheeks,

but it cannot be identified with such

sensations.

Meaning your letter for the tom of Omaha

did not consist in your seeing him in

your mind, even if this happened.

Realizing this we are inevitably pushed

towards thinking that joy is an

unspecifiable inner state that meaning

is an indescribable inner occurrence and

so on. Thus our desire to identify the

phenomena of mind together with our idea

that they must consist in something

inner or something outer carries us by

natural progression to the thought that

meaning, remembering, thinking, joy and

so on are each of them unspecifiable,

indescribable, inner state or events.

You feel that you know what meaning or

remembering are. You can almost see them

going on inside of you.

Yet you cannot say what they are. You

cannot you you know what they are but

you cannot tell anyone else. Through

these stages we are driven to the idea

that the phenomena of mind are inner,

indescribable and private.

And there is no doubt that this idea

gets a much deeper hold on us than does

its rival behaviorism.

But it can be seen that it produces

intolerable consequences. For if meaning

the color were something inner

indescribable and private,

the same being true for meaning the size

or meaning the shape, then how could I

possibly know that you meant the color

of the flower when you pointed and said,

"Look,

if you said I'm being questioned, I

meant the color." How could I know what

you meant by those words? How could I

learn which inner event it is that is

supposed to be designated by the phrase

meaning the color? How could I know

whether you and I use that phrase to

refer to the same kind of inner event?

How indeed could the belief that the

same kind of thing takes place in you as

in me even be intelligible to me?

How can I think that what goes on in us

is the same or is not the same? For I'm

supposed to not be able to specify how

it is the same. Am I to concentrate on

something in myself and then conceive

that you have it?

But what is it? Is it my meaning or my

frustration or possibly my concentration

itself? If I cannot say or show in any

way what I have picked out which is the

hypothesis

when I concentrate on something in

myself. What entitles us to assume that

I have picked out anything that I have

conceived of anything at all in

conceiving that you have it? Would it

matter if you and I picked out different

inner things? Supposing that means

something provided that we agreed in our

use of language.

Would that make any difference at all?

The conception of the phenomena of mind

as being inner indescribable

private leaves us floundering in such a

quagmire.

So where are we to turn? The picture of

intending, thinking, joy and so on as

consisting in either something inner or

something outer has let us down. It does

not give us any possible solutions

although it seems to do so. We have

reached this impass because according to

Vickenstein we made a fundamental error.

We assumed that meaning, joy,

remembering and so on must consist in

something.

And it seemed to us that the something

must be either inner or outer.

Vickenstein thinks, however, that it's a

mistake to say that you're meaning the

color consists in something.

And speaking of joy, he says that of

course it is not joyful behavior.

He then imagines someone declaring that

the word joy designates something inner

to which he replies, "No,

the word joy designates nothing at all,

neither inner nor outer."

Of course, Vickenstein is not saying

that the word joy is meaningless.

Its meaning is its use in the language

and it is not used to stand for some

constellation of behavioral responses.

There is no grouping of gestures,

movements, utterances such that we can

say that is what joy is.

We remarked before that any sequence of

such behavior could occur in a context

in which it would not be a manifestation

of joy but of something else.

So joy is not something outer. But if we

turn in the other direction and try to

identify it with something inner, we

make a hopeless move since here we do

not know what we are talking about. We

do not know what we mean.

A carpenter building a structure

sometimes works merely mechanically.

But at other times he puts thought into

his work. He measures, makes tests,

considers different possibilities, comes

to a decision, rejects this piece of

wood, searches for another of the right

length,

discovers a mistake in the structure,

hits upon a solution, expresses

satisfaction, and so on.

When he is thus putting thought into his

work, he will normally present a

different appearance than when he is

working merely mechanically.

In the one case, there are the

activities of measuring, testing, trying

the facial expressions, movements,

exclamations which express

dissatisfaction, hesitation,

searching, finding, deciding.

Little if any of this will be present in

the other case in which he's just

working mechanically, you know,

hammering nails.

But we cannot say that the thinking

which is present in the one case but not

the other is those activities, facial

expressions, movements and exclamations.

Nor yet can we say that the thinking is

a stream that flows underneath those

manifestations of thinking

any more than we can say that when you

read a sentence and understand it your

understanding of it is something that

flows along with the reading which is

what William James thought.

I want to say more about the kind of

mistake we make when we assume that

thinking or meaning or expecting or

remembering and so on consists in

something

when as one might say we seek to

identify it.

Let us consider remembering for example

suppose that after driving your car you

put the keys in the kitchen drawer.

Several hours later, someone else wants

to drive the car and asks, "Where did

you put the keys?" Now, imagine the

following cases. I'll I'll describe

half a dozen examples.

First case, nothing occurs to you. You

feel a loss and also as it were guilty.

Then you think to yourself, after I left

the car, I entered the house by the

kitchen door. You have an image of the

kitchen and of your hand pulling open

the door. You say, "I left them in the

kitchen drawer." Second case, you say,

"Now, let me think." Uh, you close your

eyes, but no images come. Nothing occurs

to you, and you feel embarrassed. You

say to yourself, "Where could I have put

them?" Suddenly, you exclaim, "The

kitchen drawer."

Third case, when the question was

addressed to you, you were speaking to

another person.

without interrupting your remarks which

were on a different topic.

You pointed at the kitchen drawer.

I mean, you're having a conversation and

somebody says, "Where'd you put the

keys?" And you keep on talking and just

point over there. Fourth case, when the

question was put to you, you were

writing a letter. You got up from your

chair, walked into the kitchen, took the

keys out of the drawer, and handed them

over. But all the while, you were

turning over in your mind a phrase of

the letter.

Fifth case, in response to the question,

you say to yourself, why does he want

the keys? Then you say aloud, I seem to

remember putting them in the kitchen

drawer, but I'm not sure.

SixK's without any hesitation or doubt

or reflection or imagery, you say

straight off, I put them in the kitchen

drawer.

In all of these cases, we should say

that you remembered where you put the

keys. We ought to be struck by the

variety exhibited in in these examples.

And of course, many more examples

exhibiting still other differences could

be provided very easily.

In one case, you tried to remember. In

another case, you didn't try to

remember. In one case, you were

preoccupied with other matters as you

indicated the whereabouts of the keys,

but this didn't happen in another case.

Your actions were different in these

examples. In one case, you there were

there were relevant thoughts and

imagery.

In another, there weren't any. In one

case, you knew the answer immediately,

and in another case, you didn't.

and the degree of your confidence

differed. In these examples,

we will agree that your remembering

where you put the keys did not consist

in your having an image of the drawer,

nor in your pointing at it, nor in your

feeling confident that you put them

there and so on. So, what did the

remembering consist? As Bitkinstein

remarks, no answer comes.

Here our philosophical thinking reaches

a crucial intersection.

We can take the familiar path which is a

dead end of assuming that in addition to

the phenomena we described in each of

those cases.

There was the remembering itself.

Therefore it's true in all these are all

cases in which you remembered where you

left the keys. But in addition to all

the the movements and the utterances and

the images and whatnot that I described

in the six cases, there was the

remembering itself.

And since the remembering cannot be

identified with any of those phenomena,

it must be something intangible and

hidden.

Or we can shift our whole viewpoint and

say, "No, our examples of remembering

were not incompletely described. We

didn't leave out anything.

We gave an accurate account of what

happened when you remembered. There was

not some further occurrence which was

the remembering itself.

If we go in this new direction, we will

be overcoming the inclination to think

that there must be a mental occurrence

of remembering in addition to the words,

gestures or actions by which remembering

is expressed.

We shall be ready to acknowledge that

the word remembering is actually used by

us to range over a diversity of events

and circumstances that are not united by

an essential nature of remembering. In

understanding this, we shall be freeing

ourselves from the obsessive desire to

penetrate the phenomena.

Vidinstein remarks that although we we

learn the use of the word remember or

think or mean, we do not learn to

describe its use

and we are not prepared for that task of

describing its use. Furthermore, we tend

to have a false picture of the use of

the word. As he says, we expect a smooth

regular contour and what we get to see

is right.

What we find is that an irregular

multitude of phenomena and situations

are called remembering.

Now why do we form the false picture at

all? Partly because the same word

remembering is used throughout. Yet as

Vitkinstein says, it ought not to be

expected that this word should have a

unified employment. We should rather

expect the opposite. Now, why should we

expect the opposite?

Because we were not taught to use the

word by means of a precise definition,

nor by any definition at all. We heard

the word used in this case and that case

and then we ourselves went on to use it

in other cases the same as everyone else

does. We were not shown the essential

nature of remembering whatever that

might be.

It is the same as with the words tree or

dog. Why should a greyhound and a peak

both be called dogs?

They are so different. Is it reasonable

to call them both dogs? We can easily

imagine people who would think there was

too much of a gap here.

Could we prove them wrong?

Consider the diversity in the

applications of the word remembering.

Remembering a word is different from

remembering a face. And remembering a

sensation is still different.

Remembering your uncle is different from

remembering that you have an uncle.

Remembering to fix the radiator is

different from remembering how to fix

it. Even with a single lousion such as

remembering where one put the keys,

there is as we saw a striking diversity

of phenomena. In one case, there was

uncertainty, anxiety, concentration,

putting questions to yourself and then

suddenly saying where one put the keys.

In another case, none of this happened.

One just walked over to the drawer,

pulled out the keys, all the while

engaged in a discussion of some other

topic. Is it justifiable to apply the

same word to these cases?

Whether justifiable or not, we do it.

What is the explanation of our applying

the same word over such a wide range of

heterogeneous cases? Is it because we

know the meaning of the word? Does its

meaning serve as our guide?

This is a foolish way of thinking.

For what is it to know the meaning of

the word other than to apply it here and

to refuse to apply it there and to be in

doubt in some other cases just like

everyone else. Our knowing the meaning

of the word is nothing other than our

applying it in substantial agreement

with others to that astonishing variety

of contexts and reactions. and therefore

it cannot explain or justify this fact.

Vickinstein says that his philosophical

observations, his philosophical

remarks are remarks on the natural

history of human beings.

Now I think it would be difficult to

exaggerate the significance of that

comment. His philosophical remarks are

remarks on the natural history of human

beings.

One hears it said that Vitkinstein's

work belongs to linguistic philosophy

and that he talks about words. True

enough. But he shows how the words are

tied up with patterns of response in

thought, judgment, and action. He makes

us reflect on human attitudes,

reactions, and abilities. His work is a

kind of philosophical anthropology that

enables us to have a clearer view of our

own human life.

Now, we've been noting an illustration

of this. It is a striking fact, although

one that's always under our noses, that

from an instruction in the application

of a word, an instruction that employs

only a few

examples and fragmentaryary

explanations, we go on to apply that

word in new case after new case. The new

cases differing in numerous ways from

the examples we were originally given.

Yet we largely agreed

in our application of the word. It would

seem that from the original instruction

we could branch out in an indefinitely

large number of paths, each of us going

a different way. And it's true that we

could, but we don't.

The fact that we don't. The fact that

almost everyone goes on in approximately

the same way is a feature of the natural

history of human beings. That's the kind

of creature we are.

We are tempted to think that our common

agreement in the use of the word

remembering for example must have an

explanation.

We feel that the explanation must be

that we perceived or intuited

[clears throat]

or guessed or somehow abstracted the

essence of remembering

the meaning of the word from the

examples that were presented to us. We

grasp the universal

as if in being given the examples we

were given at the same time something

deeper something that went beyond the

examples.

But this explanation

so-called is a pretense since we cannot

say what the supposed essence of

remembering is.

When a person learns to use a word,

there is as Vickenstein says no wheel

that he catches hold of and which once

grasp carries him on automatically

and that's how we tend to think of it as

if there were was a common structure of

remembering which we abstract from the

examples we encounter and once we have

laid hold of it we are drawn along from

case to case.

Yet, not only is there no common

structure of a remembering, but even if

there were, it wouldn't help because we

should have to apply it in the right way

to new cases.

Whether it came to us as an image or a

formula or a definition or an intuition

or a rule, there would be the

possibility that different people would

apply it differently in new cases. In

whatever form it was presented to us, it

would be open to different

interpretations. There can be no way of

taking it that is so to speak logically

forced on us. There is no logical

compulsion. Thus, even if there was an

essential nature remembering to be

grasped, this would not get us out of

the predicament we feel that we are in,

which is really no predicament at all.

We thought we required an explanation of

why we generally agree in our employment

of the word remembering. And we imagined

that the explanation might be that all

of us got hold of the one essence of

remembering. We see now that even if

this were true, we should still be

confronted by the same difficulty. For

we should now need an explanation of the

fact of our agreeing on how to read that

essence of our agreeing on what it

requires us to say in each new

situation. And is not this the very sort

of fact we were wanting to explain?

We demand an explanation where there

cannot be one.

It is a brute fact that when human

beings are given a few examples of the

application of a word, they go on to

make further applications in agreement

with one another. They do not branch out

in innumerable directions. In other

words, there is a normal response to the

training. This is what Vitkinstein calls

a

proto phenomenon or phenomenon. He says

I quote our mistake is to look for an

explanation where we should see what

happens as a proto phenomenon. End of

the quotation. Why is it a mistake to

seek an explanation? Because the kind of

fact we are trying to explain, namely

the occurrence of a normal response,

will reappear in our supposed

explanation.

We shall have got nowhere. We deceive

ourselves if we think we have explained

something. This is why Vidgenstein says

that philosophy's job is not to give

explanations.

A demand for an explanation typically

arises in the following sort of case.

There is a phenomenon A and another

phenomenon C

that normally follows on A. There's an

intermediary phenomenon B which is

postulated to explain why C follows on

A. Now there's nothing wrong with this

schema as such. It is its philosophical

application that is wrong.

The following example will illustrate I

hope uh one of the inappropriate uses of

this schema. Suppose someone shows you a

green book and asks you to fetch one of

the same color from the next room.

You go into the next room immediately

pick up a book of the right color and

bring it back confident that you've done

the right thing.

Now we raise a philosophical question

which is a question about every such

case.

How did you know you had picked out the

right color? A proposed answer is you

had an image of the green color when you

walked into the other room and you

compared the books in the next room with

your image until you found one that

matched.

This intermediary process explains how

you knew that the book you fetched was

of the right color.

Only a tiny bit of reflection shows how

worthless is this intermediary.

First, it rarely occurs. Second, if it

did occur, the intermediary itself ought

to pose for us the same question we

started with. If there was a need to

ask, how do you know the book was green?

There's an equal need to ask how did you

know the image was an image of green

color and thus the explanation is

completely sterile.

If there is an inclination to say that

one just knows that the image is of

green color, wouldn't it be equally

correct to say that one just knows that

the book was green? The book in the next

room. I think this simple example

provides a prototype of philosophical

explanation and of how it leads to its

own frustration.

There are however many turns and twists

in our knotted understanding once we see

the futility of resorting to an

intermediary process to explain how you

knew the second book was the right

color. We are inclined to move to a

somewhat different question.

namely what caused you to pick out a

green book when you went into the other

room.

And here we feel the necessity of

postulating a physiological

intermediary.

We want to say that when you looked at

the first book in here,

there was produced in your brain or

nervous system an imprint, a memory

trace of its color. That is a uh

physiological state or process having

the same structure as the color or

better perhaps the memory trace was

identical in structure

not with the color but with your

experience of seeing the color. Then

when you saw the color of the second

book in the other room

the structure of that experience matched

the structure of the memory trace. This

caused you to pick out that book.

Without the assumption of a memory

trace, the occurrence of the correct

response would be incomprehensible.

This reasoning is bad philosophy

disguised as science.

Do we know what we're talking about?

What is the structure of an experience?

You saw the green color, but what is

meant by the structure of your seeing

the color? Does you're seeing the color

divide into elements which have an

organization? What are the elements and

how are they organized? If we don't know

how to use the terms element and

organization here, then we don't know

what is meant by saying that some

physiological state or process does or

doesn't have the same structure or the

same organization as does your seeing

the color. which is to say that we don't

understand what is meant by a memory

trace. Consequently, we don't understand

the supposed causal explanation of the

occurrence of your correct response.

The attempt to explain such a normal

response as you're bringing back a book

of the right color by postulating an

inner apparatinstein

calls a general disease of thinking.

Why don't we accept it as a fact without

demanding an explanation that the

ability to respond in this way is a part

of the repertoire of a normal human

being.

Why do we feel that there must be some

intermediary process that explains the

ability?

This demand is unjustifiable. But what

is worse, it is self-defeating.

The intermediary states or processes we

assume will either pose the same

question we originally felt to be a

problem as in the assumption of a memory

image

or else we so little understand that the

supposed intermediary as in the

assumption of a memory trace

uh in the central nervous system that we

must appeal to the phenomenon to be

explained. We must appeal to the

phenomenon to be explained. That is the

occurrence of the correct response.

You're picking out the right book as our

criterion for the existence of the

intermediary

which was itself supposed to explain

that phenomenon.

We are like a dog chasing its own tail.

It is no exaggeration to call the kind

of intellectual striving that persists

in erecting these self-defeating

structures a disease of thinking.

When we do philosophy correctly, we

should neither try to identify nor to

explain the phenomena of mind. Our

undertaking should be rather to describe

the use in the language of the

psychological terms that puzzle us such

as think or remember. Vitkinstein calls

this describing grammar.

But of course it must not be confused

with such a study as say structural

linguistics. The purpose of each

description of grammar will be to remove

some particular puzzle we have about a

concept. Since there is no limit to the

number of things that can puzzle us

about the use of an expression, there

cannot be a complete description of its

grammar.

For example, we can easily be perplexed

by the question of whether remembering

something involves representing it or

involves a representation of it, which

is something that philosophers

frequently say, either an external

representation or an internal

representation.

That's a question

that puzzles us. So we have to remind

ourselves of how the words remember and

represent are used.

We need to recollect what we say. We

have to describe cases that we should

call representing in cases that we

should call remembering. We need to

compare the different systems of

behavior and of circumstances within

which these two words operate. The

difference in language gains. Our

perplexity may then be removed.

The material

for this kind of investigation is

available right now.

It lies in the grammar of the language

we speak.

We are in possession of it. All we have

to do is call it to mind.

No experiments or scientific

developments are relevant.

No new thing is to be found out but only

some old things is recalled.

Vitkinstein once put this point by

saying I quote in philosophy

one cannot discover anything.

He remarked that he partly understood

this when he wrote the tractatus

but he didn't understand it clearly

enough. He was still influenced by the

false conception that as he put it, we

might come upon something that we do not

yet see today that we could find some

entirely new thing. And he went on to

say that this is wrong in the following

words. In fact, we already have

everything and we have it now. We do not

need to wait for anything. We move about

in the domain of the grammar of our

ordinary language. And this grammar is

already there. So we already have

everything and do not have to wait on

the future.

Now the title of this paper might lead

one to suppose that I was going to tell

about vitinstein's solution of the

problem of the nature of mind of the

nature of remembering meaning thinking

and so on but it isn't so and it's the

whole idea that there is a nature of

remembering or meaning or thinking

to be comprehended to be found out

either by philosophy or by science is

perhaps the worst mistake we make in the

philosophy of mind.

The typical odyssey of a philosopher of

mind is summed up with marvelous

exactness and brevity in these remarks

by Vitkinstein which I quote. But how

does the philosophical problem about

mental processes and states and about

behaviorism arise? The first step is the

one that altogether escapes notice. We

talk of processes or events, dates,

and leave their nature undecided.

Sometimes 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 movement in the conjuring

trick has been made and it was the very

one that 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.

and a quotation.

We think in the following way. When you

suddenly remember that you have an

engagement, the remembering is of course

an event that occurs when you remember.

We hope that we shall eventually learn

its exact nature.

It might turn out to be an event in the

brain or maybe turn out to be purely

mental. That remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, there are difficult problems

to be worked out such as how one person

can know that this event has taken place

in another person and how this event is

connected with outward behavior and so

on.

The decisive movement in the conjuring

trick is the initial assumption that the

remembering is some event or state that

occurs when you remember or the

assumption that when you said it will

soon stop and meant your headache.

Meaning your headache was an event or

state that occurred when you meant your

headache. We think or hope that later on

we shall be able to identify those

events or states more exactly.

Our philosophical thinking about mind

will not be untangled until we break the

hold of that picture. We need to realize

that there is nothing to identify that

there is no nature of remembering or of

meaning to be comprehended or analyzed.

If we understand this, we shall see that

there is nothing for a philosopher to

study but grammar, the use of

expressions in the language.

And in this way, we may hope to replace

the wild conjectures and explanations

that are typical of philosophy with the

quiet weighing of linguistic facts.