“You talk as though one couldn't || can't see a red patch without if one doesn't || can't say

that one does; as || As if seeing something was saying that one sees it”.
“Seeing something” of course doesn't mean the same as saying that one sees something but the senses of these expressions are closer related than it might appear to you.
We say a blind man does not see anything. But not only do we say so but he too says that he does not see. I don't mean “he agrees with us that he does not see”, “he does not dispute it”, but rather, he too describes the facts in this way having learnt the same language as we have. Now whom do we call blind, what is our criterion for blindness? A certain kind of behaviour. And if a || the person behaves in that particular way we not only call him blind but teach him to call himself blind. And in this sense his behaviour also determines the meaning of blindness for him. But now you will say: “Surely blindness isn't just a behaviour; it's clear that a man can behave like a blind man & not be blind. Therefore ‘blindness’ means something different: in fact something this behaviour only helps him

to understand what we mean by ‘blindness’. The outward circumstances are what both we & ⇄ he || he & we know. Whenever he behaves in a certain way we say that he sees nothing & he notices that a certain private experience of his coincides with all these cases & thereby knows || so concludes that we mean this experience of his by saying that he sees nothing¤.
The idea is that we teach a man || person the meaning of expressions relating to personal experiences indirectly. – Such an indirect mode of teaching we could imagine as follows. № ) We || I teach a child the names of colours & a game, say, of bringing objects of a certain colour if when the ‘name of the colour’ is called out. I don't however teach him the colournames by pointing to a sample which we both see which both of us see which I & he see saying e.g. the word ‘red’. but Instead we let him look at a white wall sheet of paper through various || a pair of spectacles which if we look through them make us see the paper red & we say the word ‘red’ whenever we put these spectacles on his nose. I have various spectacles each of which when we || I look through it makes us || me see the white paper in a different colour. These spectacles are also distinguished by their

outside appearance: the red one that makes me see red has round || circular glasses the green || another one elliptical ones etc. We now teach the child in this way that when I see it looking through the putting the round || circular ones on his nose I say the word ‘red’, etc. when the elliptical ones ‘green’ & so forth. This one might call teaching the child the meanings of the colournames in an indirect way because I || one could here || in this case say that I led the child to correlate the word red with something that I didn't see but hoped the child would see if it looked through the circular glasses. And this way is indirect as opposed to the direct way of pointing to a red object etc..

(2015–) Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (WS-BNE). Edited by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Wittgenstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-Kathrein (2020–). (N) Bergen: WAB.