I have taken detailed notes on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. I summarized what I felt to be the most important points of the work are. I really didn’t find interesting the second half of the book where he talks about what it means to will, to read, to expect, to see, etc. Maybe one day I will, but not now. For paragraphs one to 100 I sometimes included Lois Schawver’s analysis. From paragraphs 1 - 55 and from 135 until the end an apostrophe represents Wittgenstein’s exact words and a single apostrophe ’ represents a double apostrophe " in the Philosophical Investigations, sorry for the confusion. I have two summaries. The first is where I organized the notes into what I feel are the most essential points of the Philosophical Investigations (I know W does not believe you can come up with a criterion for determining the essential from the inessential). The second is where I list my notes chronologically. Sometimes I wrote question marks to indicate that I didn’t get something but I felt something important was being said. Where I felt the information was not important I took no notes. Sadly, after about paragraph 500 I found litte of use, but that doesn’t matter because the PI was still the second best philosophy book I’ve ever read, Common Morality by Bernard Gert, being the first. I like Wittgenstein because he writes without bullshit, he’s honest and does not try to sound more intelligent than he really is. I will say however that I do not think he is the king of philosophers, all too often he wrote things that I simply found to be pointless. There must be some other philosopher better than him but we do not know who it is because fallible human judgment is not capable of recognizing him.
Here are what I think to be the most critical points of the PI:
- What words are
- Words are mere comparisons
- Words are ambiguous
- Words bare a family resemblance
- There is no objective criterion for words’ meaning
- Although language is inexact it can still be used
- Words are not pure representations of an ideal world
- Humans decide what words mean
- Words cannot describe one’s private, spiritual life
Analysis in brief
What words are
- The meaning of a word is its use in language.
Words are mere comparisons
- When reading a simile do not say: this isn’t how it is, say this is how it has to be.
- We can avoid empty assertions by saying what our assertions really are: mere comparisons, “not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond.”
- One often chooses between words as between similar but not identical pictures
Words are ambiguous
- Two people can receive two different trainings when they learn the same word.
- you can never give unambiguous definitions of words
- When we label something, someone else might misunderstand our label.
- Even if we point to an object and say this is etc, we run into difficulties. If we point to a blue pillow, it is ambiguous whether or not we are pointing to the pillow or the color.
- It is not all clear what is always the point of the order. There is no fine line between what is essential and what is inessential.
- There are always cases where one person after seeing the examples will use the word in this way, and others will use it in a different way.
- If a chair keeps disappearing is it an illusion or is it a chair? Do we have rules for when is a chair not a chair?
- Does a signpost with a rule leave no room for doubt? Isn’t it possible that sometimes they are doubted and sometimes not?
- When two people follow the same rule but do it differently, who is right? “The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.”
- If you describe something by drawing a picture W does not question the existence or the correctness of the picture but its application.
Words bare a family resemblance
- Language games are related, there is not one thing that they all share in common.
- Look at games, they are related but there is not one thing that they all share.
- They bare a family resemblance.
- Can you give a boundary of when is a game not a game, no, you cannot.
Although language is inexact it can still be used
69, 70. We do not need to draw a boundary in order to use the word.
100. It isn’t a game if there is some vagueness in the rules, but that does not prevent it from being a game.
71. When I give examples of what a game is I do not mean for him to be able to tell what all those examples share in common. I mean for him to be able to use those examples.
75. What does it mean to know what a game is. Is not my knowledge completely expressed in the examples I give?
88. Inexact does not mean unusable.
138. I can use a word without knowing that I’m using it wrong.
There is no objective criterion for words’ meaning
- When you say I know what the color green looks like to me, that is a useless statement.
- “Imagine someone saying: “But I know how tall I am!” and laying his hand on top of his head to prove it.”
- What is the criterion for the sameness of two images? What is the criterion for the redness of an image?
- “How does one point to an image? How does one point twice to the same image?”
- I can interpret anything differently by putting it into a wider context.
Words are not pure representations of an ideal world
- People think that thought, proposition, world, language, correlate directly. [Me: they are unaware of the ambiguity of language]
- We cannot accept the fact that language is imperfect, that we must find the ideal in our actual language.
- We are unable to describe subtleties with the means at our disposal. It is like we are trying to put back a spider’s web with our fingers.
- We lay down rules for a game, and things then do not turn out as they ought and we then become entangled in our own rules. This entanglement is what we want to understand.
Humans decide what words mean
- “‘So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?’ - It is what human beings say that is true and false, and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.”
- “If a language is to be a means in communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also … in judgments.” This does not abolish logic. “It is one thing to describe methods of measurement and another to obtain and state results of measurement.” Me: We agree what an inch is, we do not agree on the distance of the Sun from the Earth.
- “Orders are sometimes not obeyed. But what would it be like if no orders were ever obeyed? The concept ‘order’ would lose its purpose.”
Words cannot describe one’s private, spiritual life
- Only the individual understands the words he uses to describe his private sensations. Me: and even that doesn’t help because he can forget what they mean.
- We cannot use language to describe interior, private sensations. If we write a mark to describe a sensation we have no reference in the outside world to make sure we record the sensation correctly in the future.
- When one writes S in their diary to describe a sensation all they are really saying is that they have something.
- When you invent a private definition of a word you also invent a rule to define it. Do you invent the rule or is the rule invented by someone else?
- If you invent a word and the rule or table for its use exists only in your imagination then you cannot use your memory as a guide for using the word in the future since memory is flawed. You cannot test the correctness of the first memory.
- It is ridiculous to assume that our private definition for a word is the same definition everyone else has.
- How can I be certain that the image in my head will be understood by someone else with my words?
- We cannot ask anyone what went on inside you when you imagined that and expect a good answer.
Analysis in detail
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The Augustinian picture of language is this: “Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.”
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The Augustinian picture of language is useful “only for this narrowly circumscribed region.”
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“A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training.”
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Two people can receive two different trainings when they learn the same word.
Schawver: “Unless one knows how to weave the word into some form of human activity, the saying of the word is not yet language. It is like a break that is not yet connected with the entire mechanism. The parts seem to be there, but it does not yet have the connections to function as it should.”
- In trying to teach what “that” and “this” mean, it is very hard. Does it suffice to say simply “this” and point to something? [Me: you can never give unambiguous definitions of words]
11,12. Words appear rather uniform but their actual application is extremely varied. It is like looking at the handles of a locomotive: they all look alike but they all do different things.
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Do we gain anything when we say what characteristics all tools share?
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How we classify things depends on our own inclination.
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“Ask yourself whether our language is complete;—whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language … Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.”
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“Frege’s idea that every assertion contains an assumption, which is the thing that is asserted, really rests on the possibility found in our language of writing every statement in the form: “It is to assert that such-and-such is the case.”” We could come up with a notation where we note questions, suppositions and assertions, but that would do us no good because notation can be wrong.
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“But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question, and command?— There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use 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.)”
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We name and label objects so as to prepare ourselves. But for what? [Me: to master our environment]
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When we label something, someone else might misunderstand our label.
We cannot remove the ambiguity of words by using more words. [Me: that’s using water to reduce a flood]
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Shawver: Someone from another country wants to teach you a word in her native language. She points to a pillow and makes a strange sound “upapal” and your question is, “What is she pointing to? Is it the pillow or the shape of the pillow, or what?” But if you knew somehow that she was pointing to the color of the pillow, then that would make all the difference in the world. But that is because you know what “color” means. Imagine, then, how difficult it must be to learn a color word from an ostensive definition if you don’t even have a concept of color. And, of course, all of us were in that place initially. Isn’t it remarkable that we learned anything at all from the experience?
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Even if we point to an object and say this is etc, we run into difficulties. If we point to a blue pillow, it is ambiguous whether or not we are pointing to the pillow or the color.
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When we point to a color we are pointing to a spirit which is much more difficult.
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Shawver: If we call “this” a name, then it is a name that can be applied everywhere. It offers no specificity at all. Yet, at a certain point in doing philosophy it seems like the only legitimate name. To call something a “chair” classifies it with other often dissimilar objects. But what can be purer than just calling it a “this.” This is a way of trying to make our logic more lofty, our statements more pure. And when we do this, it leads to queer conceptions.
“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 “this” has is not shared by all of the things that have that name. [Me: for example, many games have a different use or goal.]
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A word has no meaning if it refers to nothing.
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The meaning of a word is its use in language.
Shawver: In many situations in life, we know what people are referring to, but we do not know the language game they are playing – we do not know the use (or meaning) of the terms in the language game. Someone says, “Nice tie,” and what is the use of this statement in the language game? Is it meant to butter you up? Is it meant to get you to give them your tie? Most of the time when you wonder what people “mean” you are wondering how they are using terms. Someone says, “yes,” after everything they say. What do they mean by that? Do they mean they agree with you? Do they mean they understand you? In these examples you will need to know the use of the word “yes” in the language game being played.
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Elements or simples have nothing but their name, they are not composed of anything, they are like quarks. “the essence of speech is the composition of names.”
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“‘Is the visual image of this tree composite, and what are its component parts?’ the correct answer is: “That depends on what you understand by ‘composite’.” (And that is of course not an answer but a rejection of the question.)”
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“Compare the ‘composition of forces’, the ‘division’ of a line by a point outside it; these expressions shew that we are sometimes even inclined to conceive the smaller as the result of a composition of greater parts, and the greater as the result of a division of the smaller.”
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Words must be unable to be separated from their meaning, that is what gives them their power, their inability to be destroyed. One cannot saw off the branch on which one is sitting.
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But this is impossible because we can always forget the meanings of words. We do not always refer to memory as the highest court of appeal in establishing the meaning of words.
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When we tear up a red image we do not tear up the idea of red, red still exists, but if we forget about red then red is gone. A word is only destroyed when it is forgotten.
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If I say the word X exists then I’m asserting that X is used by humans.
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A name only signifies what is an element of reality.
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In what sense is bring me the broom and bring me the stick and the brush an analysed form of the latter?
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It is not all clear what is always the point of the order. There is no fine line between what is essential and what is inessential.
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Do you not lose an aspect when you focus on only the analysis or the fundamental sentence?
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Language games are related, there is not one thing that they all share in common.
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Look at games, they are related but there is not one thing that they all share.
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They bare a family resemblance.
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Can you give a boundary of when is a game not a game, no, you cannot.
69, 70. We do not need to draw a boundary in order to use the word.
- Isn’t an indistinct photo often just as good as photo without blurred edges.
When I give examples of what a game is I do not mean for him to be able to tell what all those examples share in common. I mean for him to be able to use those examples.
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?
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There are always cases where one person after seeing the examples will use the word in this way, and others will use it in a different way.
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What does it mean to know what a game is. Is not my knowledge completely expressed in the examples I give?
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The kinship is just as undeniable as the difference in a blurred-edged photo and a sharp-edged photo.
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This is the task you have if you look for concepts in ethics and aesthetics, how do you draw the right sharp triangle on a blurred triangle? If the colors merge in no distinct way, then anything and nothing is right. [do not agree with entirely. For instance, if we have several colors that merge into each but there is no clear point where they do that, then we cannot just draw any line to point where they merge]
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The sentence Moses did not exist has several meanings. There are several ways to describe Moses. If you say by Moses I mean the man who did much of what the Bible relates, but how much? Where do you draw the line?
78b. If you say N is dead, and N is defined as such and such, and one of those statements proves to be false does that mean N is not dead? Where do you draw the line between essential and incidental information?
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If a chair keeps disappearing is it an illusion or is it a chair? Do we have rules for when is a chair not a chair?
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If you say that our languages only approximate to such calculi then we are on the brink of misunderstanding.
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What meaning is there to the phrase the rule by which one determines what a word means if one alters and changes the rule?
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Is it not the case that we make up the rules as we go along?
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?
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Does a signpost with a rule leave no room for doubt? Isn’t it possible that sometimes they are doubted and sometimes not?
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A signpost is an order if it fulfills its purpose. An explanation is designed to clear a misunderstanding. It seems as though secure understanding can only be obtained if we doubt everything, then clear up all the doubts.
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Inexact does not mean unusable.
88b. If we draw a boundary on an area with chalk, have we not yet determined what constitutes a good boundary? Might this boundary be unacceptable? If we set a pocket watch exactly, what does it mean to constitute ideal exactness? -
When researching phenomena we do not research the thing itself but the possibility of the thing itself, we research a statement about phenomena.
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If we were to do a final analysis where we resolve all our misunderstandings it would seem that the point of our investigation is exactness.
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We mistakenly believe that propositions must do something extraordinary.
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People think that thought, proposition, world, language, correlate directly. [Me: they are unaware of the ambiguity of language]
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We mistakenly believe that in order to obtain the truth we must find that realm that is prior to experience and resides in trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language.
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We mistakenly think that “where there is sense there must be perfect order.”
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It isn’t a game if there is some vagueness in the rules, but that does not prevent it from being a game. We are dazzled by the ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the word game clearly.
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Man stubbornly assumes that the ideal must be grounded in reality.
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I see the ideal albeit through a medium (language), so it must exist, says tradition.
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The ideal is like looking through a pair of glasses in which we see whatever we like, it never occurs to us to take them off.
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We cannot accept the fact that language is imperfect, that we must find the ideal in our actual language.
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We are unable to describe subtleties with the means at our disposal. It is like we are trying to put back a spider’s web with our fingers.
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The philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words in exactly the sense in which we use them. We are talking about something located in time and space, not something outside time and space. Asking what is a word is like asking what is a piece in chess.
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We must do away with explanation. Description alone must take its place. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
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When reading a simile do not say: this isn’t how it is, say this is how it has to be.
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Tradition believes that if one could get into focus the phrase this is how it is then one could grasp the essence of the matter.
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Philosophers try to elevate a word to its ideal state but words are never used this way. We must bring words back from the metaphysical to their everyday use.
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Our investigation is important not because we have destroyed buildings but because we have destroyed houses of cards.
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We’re healing the wounds of a head got by running up against the limits of language.
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Philosophy cannot alter the actual use of language, it can only describe it. It cannot give it a foundation either, it can only leave things as they are.
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We lay down rules for a game, and things then do not turn out as they ought and we then become entangled in our own rules. This entanglement is what we want to understand.
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[I disagree] Philosophy simply puts everything before us and neither explains nor deduces anything.
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“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.”
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We can avoid empty assertions by saying what our assertions really are: mere comparisons, “not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond.”
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“It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of ways.”
134-137 [do not fully understand] “One feature of our concept of a proposition is sounding like a proposition.”
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I can use a word without knowing that I’m using it wrong.
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“The picture of the cube did indeed suggest a certain use to me, but it was possible for me to use it differently … The fact that one speaks of the appropriate word does not show the existence of a something … One often chooses between words as between similar but not identical pictures.”
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“Is there such a thing as a picture, or something like a picture, that forces a particular application on us, so that my mistake lay in confusing one picture with the other?” There is more than one solution to one problem just as there is more than one application to one word (I think is what he’s saying).
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[don’t understand]
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We know what word to use in normal cases, in abnormal cases we do not. Language would lose its point if “rule became exception and exception rule.”
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At one point can you declare a student has learned a concept?
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When do you know an algebraic application? Always? Day and night? “or is what you call knowledge a state of consciousness or a process.”
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We might say that reading “is a special conscious activity of mind.”
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How do you know when someone reads, that he is really understanding what he is reading? (I think)
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If you learn a sentence of a foreign language by heart and then you read it without knowing the alphabet by having your eyes fixed on the signs then certain sensations will not accompany you. This is not reading.
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What is the difference between repeating the numbers 1 to 12 then reading the numbers 1 to 12?
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“We use the word ‘to read’ for a family of cases. And in different circumstances we apply different criteria for a person’s reading.”
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All forms of being guided share a resemblance
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A description of the essence of being guided.
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You draw a spiral. Then you draw it again being guided by the first. No one guided you but you were still guided. This is “just a single form of guiding which forces the expression on us.”
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“The criteria which we accept for ‘fitting’, ‘being able to’ and ‘understanding’ are much more complicated than might appear at first sight. … their employment … is more involved … than we are tempted to think… definitions usually fail to define them.”
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[don’t understand] We say that a machine has such and such possibilities of movement. We speak of the ideally rigid machine which can only move in such and such a way. What is this possibility of movement? … The possibility of a movement is, rather, supposed to be like a shadow of the movement itself. But do you know of such a shadow?" We learned the machine’s possibilities when you showed me a picture of them. We can doubt pictures so we must rely on experience. We misinterpret the pictures, in the same way when we do philosophy we misinterpret the words. (I think)
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What connexion is there between intending and the thing intended?
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Interpretations do not determine the meanings of words … What is the connexion between one’s act and one’s reading a signpost that commands the act?
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When one alters the rules of chess at one point does the game become not chess?
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“Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about, you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.”
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When two people follow the same rule but do it differently, who is right? “The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.”
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How am I to know when intuition misleads me?
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How am I to obey a rule?
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There is an infinite number of applications to a rule. [I disagree]
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When I obey a rule, I do not choose.
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What is the difference between obeying inspiration and obeying a rule?
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If you calculate according to your own inner voice then you are composing.
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Words are definitions not explanations.
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“‘So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?’ - It is what human beings say that is true and false, and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.”
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“If a language is to be a means in communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also … in judgments.” This does not abolish logic. “It is one thing to describe methods of measurement and another to obtain and state results of measurement.” Me: We agree what an inch is, we do not agree on the distance of the Sun from the Earth.
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Only the individual understands the words he uses to describe his private sensations. Me: and even that doesn’t help because he can forget what they mean.
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We can doubt when others are in pain but not when we are in pain.
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No two pains are alike, no two people can have the same pains.
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Normally we use already-used words to describe our pains, but what do we do when we have a new pain.
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If no one grimaced when they had a toothache how would a child learn what a toothache is? Let’s say the child invents a name for it, but then he couldn’t make himself understood.
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We cannot use language to describe interior, private sensations. If we write a mark to describe a sensation we have no reference in the outside world to make sure we record the sensation correctly in the future.
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When one writes S in their diary to describe a sensation all they are really saying is that they have something.
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When you invent a private definition of a word you also invent a rule to define it. Do you invent the rule or is the rule invented by someone else?
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If you invent a word and the rule or table for its use exists only in your imagination then you cannot use your memory as a guide for using the word in the future since memory is flawed. You cannot test the correctness of the first memory.
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?
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“The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else.”
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For the word “pain” (W uses red) is this something we all confront or does each person have their own definition of the word.
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It is ridiculous to assume that our private definition for a word is the same definition everyone else has.
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When you say I know what the color green looks like to me, that is a useless statement.
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“Imagine someone saying: “But I know how tall I am!” and laying his hand on top of his head to prove it.”
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It is impossible to describe pain to someone who doesn’t know what pain is.
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“If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word ‘pain’ means, must I not say then the same of other people too?” Imagine if everyone had a box with a beetle in it and they referred to what’s in the box with language, but no one can look inside another’s box. It is possible that everyone has something different in their own box.
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“Suppose everyone does say about himself that he knows what pain is only from his own pain.” This pain is just a picture.
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When we point to our pain and say this is the important thing we are giving no information.
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There is no essential difference between pain-behavior accompanied by pain and pain-behavior without pain to the outside observer.
Language does not always convey thoughts. “What we deny is that the picture of the inner process gives us the correct idea of the use of the word ‘to remember’.”
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?
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The main aim of philosophy is to show the fly out of the bottle.
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Could someone understand pain without ever having felt pain? If not, how do we know?
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The thoughts are already there before we write them down, we are just struggling to find the right expression for our thoughts.
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Even a deaf-mute that cannot write or understand language thinks about how the world comes into being. Thinking can happen without words.
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“Orders are sometimes not obeyed. But what would it be like if no orders were ever obeyed? The concept ‘order’ would lose its purpose.”
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“I know from my own case what it means ‘to say things to oneself’. And if I were deprived of the organs of speech, I could still talk to myself.’ If I know it only from my own case, then I know what I call that, not what anyone else does.”
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“The law of excluded middle says here: it must either look like this, or like that. So it really says nothing at all, but gives us a picture. And the problem ought now to be: does reality accord with the picture or not? And this picture seems to determine what we have to do, what to look for, and how - but it does not do so, just because we do not know how it is to be applied.” Saying that there is no third possibility expresses our inability to turn our eyes away from this picture.
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Can a machine think? [W unfortunately barely follows up on this question]
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When a man thinks where are the thoughts located?
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What is the criterion for the sameness of two images? What is the criterion for the redness of an image?
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“If one judges two images as the same, how does he know that the word same describes what he recognizes?”
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“How does one point to an image? How does one point twice to the same image?”
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How can I be certain that the image in my head will be understood by someone else with my words?
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“'I don’t see anything violet here, but I can shew it you if you give me a paint box.” How can one know that one can shew it if he sees it? How do I know from my image, what the color really looks like?" [This reminds me of the judge who said: “I can’t define pornography but I know it when I see it.”]
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We cannot ask anyone what went on inside you when you imagined that and expect a good answer.
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“You have a new conception and interpret it as seeing a new object… What you have primarily discovered is a new way of looking at things.” [This is vague because W does not explain what he means by conception. Would e = mc^2 be a conception?]
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It is paradoxical to mix in a report physical states and states of consciousness together. “He suffered great torments and tossed about restlessly.” But is not: ‘These three struts give the building stability’ the same? Are three and stability tangible? “Look at the sentence as an instrument and at its sense as its employment.”
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If you describe something by drawing a picture W does not question the existence or the correctness of the picture but its application.
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“In the actual use of expression we make detours, we go by sideroads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it because it is closed.”
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A gesture tries to portray but it cannot do it.
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In trying to describe phenomena that are hard to get a hold of we find that ordinary language is too crude but feel that we have to use language that “easily eludes us and in their coming to be and passing away, produce those others as an average effect.” Augustine: "They are perfectly obvious and ordinary, and yet the same things are too well hidden, and their discovery comes as something new.”
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It is in language that an expectation and its fulfillment make contact.
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“Are facts defined one way or the other by an expectation, that is, is it defined for whatever event may occur whether it fulfils the expectation or not? 'Yes, unless the expression of the expectation is indefinite, for example, contains a disjunction of different possibilities.”
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On the absurdity of not believing because something has happened in the past that it will happen in the future.
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How do you know the causes of your actions?
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“Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such and such an effect on human beings. It only describes and in no way explains the use of signs.”
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To draw a boundary line is not to state what is for.
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I can interpret anything differently by putting it into a wider context.
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Philosophy only states what everyone admits. [I disagree, this should be limited to non-philosophers]
i. Can only those who can talk, hope?
ii. What is the content of the experience of imagining? The answer is a picture or a description.
vi. If someone reads a book allowed the possible uses of a word float before us, but this only applies to us. We communicate with other people without knowing if they have this experience too.