‘Is there then no such thing as a mental picture?’ The proper answer to a question thus worded would be || is: ‘People at times have mental pictures || images’. But this isn't really the sort of answer we wanted. We meant to ask: have we a right, under the circumstances under
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which it's normally said that a person || man sees || has a mental image, to say that he has such an image or picture? Have we a right to say that a man || someone marries || married money? This may mean did he ‘marry money’ or is the expression an appropriate one. Think of the ways in which such a question is decided? – Suppose we ask the question: are people murdered in tragedies or aren't they? One answer is: In some tragedies some people are murdered& not in others || . Another answer: ‘people aren't really murdered
on the stage’. || they only pretend to murder & to die’. But the use of the word pretend here is again ambiguous for it may be used in the sense in which Edgar pretends to have led Gloucester to the Cliff. || But you may say: oh no! They || some people really die in tragedies e.g. Juliet at the end of the play whereas before she pretended to have died. || ‘Oh no they don't all pretend; Edgar pretends to lead Gloucester to the edge of the cliff, Gloucester is really blind.’ ||
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be a peasant, he is really Gloucester's son.
We shall say the word ‘really’, ‘pretend’, ‘die’ etc. are used in a peculiar way when we talk of a play & differently in ordinary life. Or: the criteria for a man dying in a play aren't ¤ the same as those of his dying in reality. But are we justified to say that Lear dies at the end of the play? Why not. And, analogously, that there is no reason for objecting to saying we have || see a mental
picture does not mean ¤ that the criteria for the existence of a non-mental picture are the same as those for the existence of a mental picture. One may even say that the former & the latter criteria need not even be similar as one may say that the criteria for the death of a person in the play & outside a play are utterly dissimilar though there is of course a connection.
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