Tuesday 11/27

Philosophical Investigations, Part II I-IX

Discussion Questions

First Question: Hopeless (i)

Why can't dogs hope?

Second Question: Meanings on Parade (ii)

How shall we answer Wittgenstein's closing (admittedly rhetorical) question in the following thought experiment?

If I say "Mr. Scot is not a Scot", I mean the first "Scot" as a proper name, the second one as a common name. Then do different things have to go on in my mind at the first and second "Scot"? (Assuming that I am not uttering the sentence 'parrot-wise'.)—Try to mean the first "Scot" as a common name and the second one as a proper name.—How is it done? When I do it, I blink with the effort as I try to parade the right meanings before my mind in saying the words.—But do I parade the meanings of the words before my mind when I make the ordinary use of them?

Third Question: Psychology (v)

Has the picture that emerges of psychology from the following passage merit? Or ought it be rejected?

Suppose we were observing the movement of a point (for example, a point of light on a screen). It might be possible to draw important consequences of the most various kinds from the behaviour of this point. And what a variety of observations can be made here!—The path of the point and certain of its characteristic measures (amplitude and wave-length for instance), or the velocity and the law according to which it varies, or the number or position of the places at which it changes discontinuously, or the curvature of the path at these places, and innumerable other things.—Any of these features of its behaviour might be the only one to interest us. We might, for example, be indifferent to everything about its movements except for the number of loops it made in a certain time.—And if we were interested, not in just one such feature, but in several, each might yield us special information, different in kind from all the rest. This is how it is with the behaviour of man; with the different characteristic features which we observe in this behaviour.

Then psychology treats of behaviour, not of the mind?

What do psychologists record?—What do they observe? Isn't it the behaviour of human beings, in particular their utterances? But these are not about behaviour.

Fourth Question: The Feeling of Meaning (vi)

What is the 'if-feeling' if not the "feeling which accompanies the word 'if'"?

Fifth Question: What Does It Really Mean? (ix)

What contexts make sense of the following, and what does answering this question tell us about the 'real meaning' of 'I am frightened'?

"No, no! I am afraid!"

"I am afraid. I am sorry to have to confess it."

"I am still a bit afraid, but no longer as much as before."

"At bottom I am still afraid, though I won't confess it to myself."

"I torment myself with all sorts of fears."

"Now, just when I should be fearless, I am afraid!"