⍈
He || The
solipsist || I pointed but I took the meaning || the
sense away from the pointing || but I robbed the pointing of its
sense || but I withdrew the sense from the pointing by
removing the || leaving no possibility of a
choice. He || I constructed a
clock with all its wheels etc. &
in the end fastened the dial to the pointer & made it go
round with it. Of
course one of the things
that || which tempt us to make our
pseudo-proposition is the
proposition “I see this”
where I point to certain objects around me as opposed to others or in
a certain direction in physical space (not in visual space) as
opposed to other directions in physical space. And
if,
pointing in this sense, I say “this is what is really
seen” one may answer me “this is what you
L.W. see” & there is no objection to
adopting a notation in which what we used to call “things
which L.W. sees” is replaced by “things really
seen
”.
If however in
saying
“this is seen
” I point to that of which I say that it has no
neighbour. I make a
similar mistake as
when || mistake absolutely analogous to this when I
say || think that the sentence “I am
here” makes sense & is always true
(although possibly
one which other people can't understand || no one else can understand it) when
¤ I say it under conditions different from
those special conditions under which it makes sense,
e.g. when my voice is recognized by the other
person & the
dire
ction from which I speak,
& others. Again a case where you can learn that the
word has meaning by the particular use we make of it. We
are like people who think that pieces of wood
s
haped more or less like chessmen or
dra
ught stones standing on a chessboard constitute
a game even if nothing has been said as to how they are
to be used. To say “it
approaches me” has sense even when in the physical
sense nothing comes nearer to my body. And in the same way
“it has reached me” or “it is here
now” when nothing has reached my body & on the other
hand “I am here” makes sense if my
voice is recognized & heard to come from a particular
Euclidian place.
I could however
try to express my solipsism in a different way.
I imagine that I & others make descriptions of what
we see || each of us sees by writing,
drawing etc. These descriptions are put before
me. I point to the descriptions which I have
made & say “only this is (or was)
seen”. That is, I am tempted to say only
this description has reality (visual
reality)
behind it. The others I might call blind
descriptions. I could also express myself
by saying “
This
description only
was taken || was
derived from a reality only this was compared with a
reality.
” Now it has a clear meaning when we say that this
picture or description is a projection of say this group of
objects the trees I look at or has been derived from
it. But we must look into the grammar of such a
phrase as “this description is derived from
my sense datum”. What we are talking about is
connected with
the || that temptation to say
such a
thing as: “
We || I
never know what the other really means by ‘brown’ or
what he really sees when he sa
ys
(truthfully) that he sees brown.” –
We could propose to one who sa
ys this to use
two different words instead of the one word
‘brown’; one word “
for his
particular impression”, the other word
with that meaning which
the other people can understand as well. If
he thinks about this proposal he will see that there
was || is something wrong
in || about his conception of the meaning
function of the word ‘brown’ &
others. He looks for a justification of his
description where there is none. (Just as in the case
when
one || he believes that the chain of reasons must
have no end || be endless. Think of the
justification
for
the performance of a mathematical operation by a general formula || by a general formula for the performance of a mathematical
operation & of the question: does this
formula compel us
to use it as
we do in this particular case). To say “I
derive a
sentence || description from
visual reality” can't
have a
sense analogous to that of || mean anything
analogous to the sentence “I derive a description
from
this part of reality || what I see here” for
otherwise the
¤ method
of derivation || which we use for deriving the
description from reality would have as it were to be
described by means of a sample of reality which did not belong to
reality.
That is to
say: I may e.g. see a
table || chart in which a
co
lour
patch || sample is
correlated to the word “brown” &
besides a patch of the same colour els
ewhere
& I may say: “
so I must || this shows me
that I must for the description of this patch use
the word ‘brown’”
. But
it would be meaningless to say that I derive the word
“brown
” from the
particular colour-impression which I receive.
Let us now ask: “can a human
body have pain? One is inclined to say how can
the body have pain? The body in itself is something dead;
a body isn't conscious.” And here again
it is as though we
saw || looked into the
nature of pain &
as though we
¤ saw that it lay in its nature
that a body couldn
't have it. And it
is
as though we found that
¤ what had
pain must be an entity of a different nature than
a material object in fact a spiritual object.
But to say that the ego is spiritual or
mental is like saying that the number 3 is of a mental or of
an immaterial nature when we recognize that ‘3’
isn't used as a sign for
the numeral
‘3’ || a physical object.
On the other hand we can perfectly well adopt the expression
that a body feels pain || “this body feels pain”, & we would
just
as usual talk || tell it to go to the
doctor, lie down, & even to remember that the last time he had
pains they were over in a day. But wouldn't this
form of expression at least be an indirect one?
As when one
strikes the ◇◇◇ …? – Is it
only an indire
ct expression when we say
“write ‘3’
instead of || for ‘x’ in this formula”
instead of “substitute 3 for x”
? (Or on the other hand is the
first the only direct expression as some mathematicians
think)?!
¥ All depends
how we go on using our words.
Don't
imagine || Let us not be misled by imagining
meaning as an occult process or
relation || interaction between
the || a word a
mind & a thing which contains the whole usage of the word as a
seed might be said to contain the future tree.