Tuesday 10/30

Philosophical Investigations, 243-307

Discussion Questions

First Question: And My Spade is Turned

What point is Wittgenstein making when he says at 217,

"How am I able to obey a rule?"—if this is not a question about causes, then it is about the justification for my following the rule in the way I do.

If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

Second Question: Inspiration

Starting at 232 and extending to 235 ('233' rendered as '235'--I mean the real 235, "This merely shews..."), Wittgenstein draws a distinction between acting from inspiration and acting according to a rule. What point do you suppose he's making in drawing this distinction?

Third Question: Designating Sensations

Starting at 243, Wittgenstein zeros his investigation in on the sensations (pains, in particular, but also colors). Why? And what conclusions does he draw?

Fourth Question: Qualia Inversion?

Is the point he makes at 272 correct?

272. 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. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another.

How, in particular, would it be both possible and untestable "that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another"?

Fifth Question: The Beetle in the Box!

Much has been written in the philosophical literature subsequent to Wittgenstein's Investigations about the skeptical argument he presents in 293:

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 the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case!——Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.—Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.—But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language?—If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.—No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.

What is the skeptical argument here? What is its import?