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Other Minds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Extract

There is a passage in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations in which he compares an answer that may be given to a philosophical question about someone else's pain with an answer that may be given to a question about the meaning of ‘It is 5 o'clock on the sun’. Wittgenstein does not compare other answers that may be given to the two questions. And he does not compare the questions themselves in respect of what lies behind them – making them ones which we can, or cannot, easily ‘see through’ – or in respect of how they should be answered. Yet there is material in what he says elsewhere in the Investigations and in other of his later writings for a manysided and, I think, useful development of the comparison. Anyway, that is what I shall attempt in this lecture.

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Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1973

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References

page 149 note 1 PI, I, 350Google Scholar: ‘“But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I have so often had.” – That gets us no further. It is as if I were to say: “You surely know what ‘It is 5 o'clock here’ means; so you also know what ‘It's 5 o'clock on the sun’ means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is 5 o'clock.”’

page 149 note 2 Particularly PE, pp. 275–6, 281, 290, 295–6, 301–3, 312–20Google Scholar; BB, pp. 46–9, 55–7, 103–5Google Scholar; PI I 244, 256–8, 261, 264, 268–9, 273–4, 283–4, 293, 304, 307–8, 350–1, 357, 363, 572–3, 580, 582, 585–7Google Scholar, II. i, ix, xii; Z, 78, 170, 469, 487, 532–4, 537, 540–2, 545–51.

page 149 note 3 I am grateful to Rush Rhees and Peter Hacker for comments on an early draft of this lecture.

page 152 note 1 PE, p. 296Google Scholar; PI, I, 244, 281, 304, 307.Google Scholar

page 153 note 1 Z, 540–5; cf. PI, II, ii: ‘My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul.’

page 153 note 2 PE, p. 295.Google Scholar See also PI, I, 244.Google Scholar

page 153 note 3 PE, p. 301.Google Scholar

page 153 note 4 PI, I, 256.Google Scholar

page 153 note 5 PI, I, 257.Google Scholar

page 153 note 6 PE, p. 290.Google Scholar

page 153 note 7 PE, p. 293.Google Scholar Some of these quotations might be interpreted as endorsing the experiential explanation of the meaning of pain-language in terms of behaviour. But (PE, p. 296)Google Scholar Wittgenstein writes: ‘“Do you mean that you can define pain in terms of behaviour?” But is this what we do if we teach the child to use the expression “I have toothache”? Did I define: “Toothache is such and such a behaviour”? This obviously contradicts entirely the normal use of the word!’

page 154 note 1 PE, p. 319.Google Scholar

page 154 note 2 PE, p. 312Google Scholar: ‘The idea is here that there is an “expression” for everything, that we know what it means “to express something,” “to describe something”. Here is a feeling, an experience, and now I could say to someone “express it!” But what is to be the relation of the expression to what it expresses? In what way is this expression the expression of this feeling rather than another?! One is inclined to say “we mean this feeling by its expression,” but what is meaning a feeling by a word like? Is this quite clear if, e.g., I have explained what “meaning this person by the name ‘N’” is like?’

page 154 note 3 BB, p. 103.Google Scholar

page 155 note 1 PE, p. 313.Google Scholar

page 155 note 2 PE, p. 315.Google Scholar See also p. 319.

page 155 note 3 Z, 487 (in terms of joy).

page 155 note 4 PI, I, 585–7Google Scholar and, especially, II, ix. But note that in PI, I, 290–2Google Scholar Wittgenstein says that describing my state of mind is not like describing my room, that ‘thinking of a description as a word-picture of the facts has something misleading about it’, and that you should not ‘always think that you read off what you see from the facts’. In PI, II, ixGoogle Scholar he says: ‘I can find no answer if I try to settle the question “What am I referring to?” “What am I thinking when I say it?” by repeating the expression of fear and at the same time attending to myself, as it were observing my soul out of the corner of my eye. In a concrete case I can indeed ask “Why did I say that, what did I mean by it?” – and I might answer the question; but not on the ground of observing what accompanied the speaking. And my answer would supplement, paraphrase, the earlier utterance.’ (My italics.)

page 156 note 1 PI, I, 244Google Scholar: ‘“So you are saying that the word ‘pain’ really means crying?” – On the contrary: the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it.’ Also, PI, I, 357Google Scholar: ‘I do not say it from observation of my behaviour. But it only makes sense because I do behave in this way.’

page 156 note 2 PE, p. 319Google Scholar: ‘One wishes to say: In order to be able to say that I have toothache I don't observe my behaviour, say in the mirror. And this is correct, but it doesn't follow that you describe an observation of any other kind. Moaning is not the description of an observation. That is, you can't be said to derive your expression from what you observe.’ See also PI, I, 357Google Scholar; Z, 78, 487.

page 156 note 3 PI, I, 582Google Scholar, II, i; Z, 545.

page 156 note 4 Z, 549.

page 156 note 5 Z, 532–4.

page 156 note 6 PE, pp. 276, 290, 296, 312Google Scholar; PI, I, 244, 257, 264, 268, 274, 293Google Scholar, II, ix; Z, 545.

page 157 note 1 BB, p. 47.Google Scholar

page 157 note 2 PE, pp. 281, 319Google Scholar; BB, pp. 46, 48–9, 55–6Google Scholar; PI, I, 283, 293, 350Google Scholar; Z, 537, 542, 545–7.

page 157 note 3 Other Minds? (The Open University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

page 158 note 1 PE, p. 281Google Scholar: ‘“So if I say ‘he has toothache’ I am supposing that he has what I have when I have toothache.” Suppose I said: “If I say ‘I suppose he has toothache’ I am supposing that he has what I have if I have toothache” — this would be like saying “If I say ‘this cushion is red’ I mean that it has the same colour which the sofa has if it is red.” But this isn't what I intended to say with the first sentence. I wished to say that talking about his toothache at all was based upon a supposition, a supposition which by its very essence could not be verified.’

page 158 note 2 PE, p. 281Google Scholar; Z, 537, 542. See also PE, pp. 303, 313, 318.Google Scholar

page 158 note 3 BB, p. 47Google Scholar; PI, IIGoogle Scholar, ix: ‘We ask “What does ‘I am frightened’ really mean, what am I referring to when I say it?”’

page 159 note 1 Z, 547: ‘So he is having genuine pain, and it is the possession of this by someone else that he feels doubt of. – But how does he do this? – It is as if I were told: “Here is a chair. Can you see it clearly? – Good – Now translate it into French!”’ This is connected with the remark (Z, 548): ‘In order to doubt whether someone else is in pain he needs, not pain, but the concept “pain”’. See also PI, I, 283, 383–4.Google Scholar

page 159 note 2 PI, II, i: ‘And do you mean to tell me he doesn't feel it? How else does he know it? – But even when he says it as a piece of information he does not learn it from his sensations. For think of the sensations produced by physically shuddering: the words “it makes me shiver” are themselves such a shuddering reaction; and if I hear and feel them as I utter them, this belongs among the rest of those sensations. Now why should the wordless shudder be the ground of the verbal one?’ See also PE, pp. 313, 318Google Scholar; BB, p. 103Google Scholar; PI, I, 304, 363, 585Google Scholar, II, ix; Z, 78, 170, and, especially, 545.

page 160 note 1 TLP, 2.0211–2.

page 160 note 2 PI, II, xii.Google Scholar

page 160 note 3 Z, 532–4.

page 160 note 4 From the ‘original Treatment’ in Alphaville, a film by Jean-Luc Godard, English translation and description of action by Peter Whitehead (London: Lorrimer Publishing, 1966) p. 89.Google Scholar

page 160 note 5 Cf. Z, 383.

page 161 note 1 BB, pp. 104–5.Google Scholar

page 161 note 2 Alphaville, p. 75.Google Scholar

page 161 note 3 Ibid, p. 97.