PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
Wittgenstein
1953A
B3376
W563P53
16April75
Linguistic Analysis
Uses Augustine's comments as to initial word and associated
object training.
"In consequence it is impossible to give an account of any
primary element; for it, nothing is possible but the bare name; its name is all
it has. But just as what consists of these primary elements is itself complex,
so the names of the elements become descriptive language by being compounded
together. For the essence of speech is the composition of names."
(Socrates) (p. 21e)
"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 related to one another in many different ways." (p. 31e)
When looking for relationships don't think but look.
Thought is surrounded by a halo. Its essence, logic, presents an order, in fact the a priori order of the world: that is, the order of possibilities, which must be common to both world and thought. But this order, it seems, must be utterly simple. It is prior to all experience, must run through all experience; no empirical cloudiness or uncertainty can be allowed to affect it. It must rather be of the purest crystal. But this crystal does not appear as an abstraction; but as something concrete, indeed, as the most concrete, as it were the hardest thing there is.
We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound,
essential in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable
essence of language. That is, the order existing between the concepts of
proposition; word, proof, truth, experience, and so on. This order is a
super-order between - so to speak - super-concepts. Whereas, of course, if the
words "language," "experience," "world," have a
use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words "table," "lamp,"
"door." (p. 44e)
"If language is to be a means of communication there must
be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in
judgements. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so. It is one thing to
describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain and state results of
measurement. But what we call "measuring" is partly determined by a
certain constancy in results of measurement." (page 88e)
"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." (page 95e)
"One ought to ask, not what images are or what happens when
on imagines anything, but how the word imagination is used. But that does not
mean that I want to talk only about words. For the question as to the nature of
the imagination is as much about the word "imagination" as my question
is. And I am only saying that this question is not decided - neither for the
person who does the imagining, nor for any one else - by pointing; nor yet by a
description of any process. The first question also asks for a word to be
explained; but it makes us expect a wrong kind of answer." (p. 116e)
"'When one thinks something, it is oneself thinking; so one
is oneself i motion. One is rushing ahead and so cannot also observe oneself
rushing ahead." (p. 132e)
"Understanding a sentence is much more akin to
understanding a theme in music than one may think." (p. 143e)
"It is correct to say 'I know what you are thinking,' and
wrong to say "I know what I am thinking,'" (p. 222e)
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