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“But didn't I mean that ‘red’ came in
a different way from ‘two’?” ‒ ‒
You may have meant this, but the phrase, “They come in
different ways”, is itself liable to cause confusion.
Suppose I said, “Smith and Jones
always enter my room in different ways”: I might go on and
say, “Smith enters quickly, Jones
128.
slowly”, I am
specifying the ways.
I might on the other hand say, “I don't know
what the difference is”, intimating that I'm
trying to specify the difference, and perhaps later on I shall
say, “Now I know what it is; it is … ”
‒ ‒
I could on the other hand tell you that they came in different
ways, and you wouldn't know what to make of this statement, and
perhaps answer, “Of course they come in different ways;
they just are different.” ‒ ‒
We could describe our trouble by saying that we feel as though we could
give an experience a name without at the same time committing ourselves
about its use, and in fact without any intention to use [a|i]t at
all.
Thus when I say “red” comes in a particular
way … , I feel that I might now give this way a name if it
hasn't already got one, say “A”.
But at the same time I am not at all prepared to say that I
recognize this to be the way “red” has always come
on such occasions, nor even to say that there are, say, for ways, say
A, B, C, D, in one of which it always
comes.
You might say that the two ways in which “red” and
“two” come can be identified by, say, exchanging the
meaning of the two words, using “red” as the second
cardinal numeral, “two” as the name of a colour.
Thus, on being asked how many eyes I had, I should answer
“red”, and to the question, “What is the
colour of blood?”, “two”.
But the question now arises whether you can ◇◇◇ identify
the “way in which these words come” independently of
the ways in which they are used, – – I mean the ways just
described.
Did you wish to say that as a matter of experience, the word when
used in this way always comes in the way A, but may, the
next time, come in the way “two” usually
comes?
You will see then that
129.
you meant nothing of the
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