.
fruitless regress, which returns us to a previous, usually worse or less developed state.(wall relief in Northeast Thailand) The story of the blind men and an elephant originated in India from where it is widely diffused. It has been used to illustrate a range of truths and fallacies. At various times it has provided insight into the relativity, opaqueness or inexpressible nature of truth, the behaviour of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives.
For the philosopher, Wittgenstein, 'intermediaries' (our interpretations) do nothing to explain aboutness, but merely push the mystery back a step and gives rise to a
Why is this?
It is because our interpretations are themselves open
to interpretation; no interpretation interprets itself. Inserting an interpretation between a representation
and what is represented does not explain the connection between them.
Since the relationship of the intermediary to the original item presupposes the very aboutness it is supposed to explain, it doesn't explain it.
As to one's state, someone's feeling, disposition, or whatever, count as this one, as opposed to a slightly different one?
Compare the role of saying things
like "This is sensation X", which Wittgenstein revealed to be idle... as he puts it, "...one does not define a criterion of identity by emphatically stressing the
word 'this'"
Someone might respond, "Well, I believe that this is the sensation X ", to this, Wittgenstien replies briskly,
"Perhaps you believe that you believe it" (Wittgenstein 1976a, sects. 258, 260).
For Wittgenstien one does not learn to follow a rule by first learning the use of the word
'agreement'. Rather, one learns the meaning of 'agreement' by learning to follow a rule' (1978, p. 405). Therefore our
ability to follow rules is fundamental.
Our engagement in life doesn't so much
answer, as silence and render academic, our worries about how content and aboutness are possible.In the "seeing as" sections toward the end of the Investigations, Wittgenstein asks whether in aspect shifts we
really see something different, or only interpret what is seen differently. He then comments that interpreting can be recognized because it involves the forming of hypotheses that might prove false; whereas seeing, he suggests, isn't open to the same sort of verification.
Perhapsthen, we can regard
interpretation as a cognitive and theoretical matter and contrast its cognitive status, similarly, with the
noncognitive status of practice, which is not a matter of forming hypotheses that may be true or false.
We seem to have an infallible paradigm of identity in the identity of a thing with itself. Yet for Wittgenstein, we have to reject the myth of the given, ie the aboutness of something.
It is easy to have a false picture of the processes called 'recognizing'; as if recognizing always consisted in comparing
two impressions with one another. It is as if one carried a picture of an object with me and used it to perform an
identification of an object as the one represented by the picture. (Wittgenstein 1985, sect. 604.)
Agreement was said to provide the standard; but the standard for the claim that agreement occurs is a
further agreement; and the standard for the claim that that obtains is agreement once again. This means that there is
no standard, for the regress is vicious.
According to David Pears, Wittgenstein's view is that "...the meanings of our words are not guaranteed by any
independent pattern already existing in the world and waiting for language to be attached to it. On the contrary, the
pattern that we see depends on what we do with our words.Wittgenstein's point is that we shouldn't look for a unifying essence at all. Wittgenstein's hostility to philosophical theorizing, and habit of advising us to overcome the temptation to
These remarks seem to anticipate the phi;osopher Kant. Did Kant fully appreciated their import? According to Jonathan
Bennett, Kant wanted his schematism theory to explain how we recognize and classify. For example, I conjure up a
mental picture of dog and check this against the object I see in trying to classify it as a dog or otherwise. But any
problem about classifying this thing with dogs I have also with classifying this thing with this image and this image
with dogs. Interposing an image as intermediary replaces one concept application by two, as Wittgenstein points out.
And the point can be generalized: there cannot be a technique for concept application as such. In any such theory
there must be a description of the situation in which to apply a concept. But knowing whether that description applies
is applying a concept. Indeed, Kant says this himself! Any technique for concept application will require concept
application.
And so it goes on, and on...and on...and
And so it goes on, and on...and on...and
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