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Or again, B does not think of formulae. He watches A writing his
numbers down with a certain feeling of tension, and all sorts of vague
thoughts go through his head. Finally he asks himself: "What is the
series of differences?" He finds the series 4, 6, 8, 10 and says: Now I
can go on.
Or he watches and says "Yes, I know that series"—and continues it,
just as he would have done if A had written down the series i, 3, 5, 7, 9.
—Or he says nothing at all and simply continues the series. Perhaps
he had what may be called the sensation "that's easy!". (Such a sensa-
tion is, for example, that of a light quick intake of breath, as when
one is slightly startled.)
152. But are the processes which I have described here under-
standing!
"B understands the principle of the series" surely doesn't mean
simply: the formula "a
n
— . . . . " occurs to B. For it is perfectly
imaginable that the formula should occur to him and that he should
nevertheless not understand. "He understands" must have more in it
than: the formula occurs to him. And equally, more than any of those
more or less characteristic accompaniments or manifestations of under-
standing.
153. We are trying to get hold of the mental process of under-
standing which seems to be hidden behind those coarser and therefore
more readily visible accompaniments. But we do not succeed; or,
rather, it does not get as far as a real attempt. For even supposing I had
found something that happened in all those cases of understanding,—
why should // be the understanding? And how can the process of
understanding have been hidden, when I said "Now I understand"
because I understood?! And if I say it is hidden—then how do I know
what I have to look for? I am in a muddle.
154. But wait—if "Now I understand the principle" does not mean
the same as "The formula .... occurs to me" (or "I say the formula",
"I write it down", etc.) —does it follow from this that I employ the
sentence "Now I understand . . . . . " or "Now I can go on" as a
description of a process occurring behind or side by side with that of
saying the formula?
If there has to be anything 'behind the utterance of the formula' it is
particular circumstances', which justify me in saying I can go on—when
the formula occurs to me.
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
6ie
Try not to think of understanding as a 'mental process' at all.—
For that is the expression which confuses you. But ask yourself: in
what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say, "Now I
know how to go on," when, that is, the formula has occurred to me?—
In the sense in which there are processes (including mental processes)
which are characteristic of understanding, understanding is not a
mental process.
(A pain's growing more and less; the hearing of a tune or a sentence:
these are mental processes.)
155. Thus what I wanted to say was: when he suddenly knew
how to go on, when he understood the principle, then possibly he
had a special experience—and if he is asked: "What was it? What took
place when you suddenly grasped the principle?" perhaps he will
describe it much as we described it above——but for us it is the circum-
stances under which he had such an experience that justify him in
saying in such a case that he understands, that he knows how to go on.
156. This will become clearer if we interpolate the consideration
of another word, namely "reading". First I need to remark that I am
not counting the understanding of what is read as part of 'reading' for
purposes of this investigation: reading is here the activity of rendering
out loud what is written or printed; and also of writing from dictation,
writing out something printed, playing from a score, and so on.
The use of this word in the ordinary circumstances of our life is of
course extremely familiar to us. But the part the word plays in our life,
and therewith the language-game in which we employ it, would be
difficult to describe even in rough outline. A person, let us say an
Englishman, has received at school or at home one of the kinds of
education usual among us, and in the course of it has learned to read
his native language. Later he reads books, letters, newspapers, and
other things.
Now what takes place when, say, he reads a newspaper?——His
eye passes—as we say—along the printed words, he says them out
loud—or only to himself; in particular he reads certain words by taking
in their printed shapes as wholes; others when his eye has taken in
the first syllables; others again he reads syllable by syllable, and an
occasional one perhaps letter by letter.—We should also say that he
had read a sentence if he spoke neither aloud nor to himself during
the reading but was afterwards able to repeat the sentence word for
word or nearly so.—He may attend to what he reads, or again—as we
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PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
might put it—function as a mere reading-machine: I mean, read aloud
and correctly without attending to what he is reading; perhaps with his
attention on something quite different (so that he is unable to say what
he has been reading if he is asked about it immediately afterwards).
Now compare a beginner with this reader. The beginner reads the
words by laboriously spelling them out.—Some however he guesses
from the context, or perhaps he already partly knows the passage by
heart. Then his teacher says that he is not really reading the words
(and in certain cases that he is only pretending to read them).
If we think of this sort of reading, the reading of a beginner, and
ask ourselves what reading consists in, we shall be inclined to say: it is a
special conscious activity of mind.
We also say of the pupil: "Of course he alone knows if he is really
reading or merely saying the words off by heart". (We have yet to
discuss these propositions: "He alone knows .... ".)
But I want to say: we have to admit that—as far as concerns
uttering any one of the printed words—the same thing may take place
in the consciousness of the pupil who is 'pretending' to read, as in
that of the practised reader who is 'reading' it. The word "to read"
is applied differently when we are speaking of the beginner and of the
practised reader.——Now we should of course like to say: What goes
on in that practised reader and in the beginner when they utter the
word can't be the same. And if there is no difference in what they
happen to be conscious of there must be one in the unconscious
workings of their minds, or, again, in the brain.—So we should like
to say: There are at all events two different mechanisms at work here.
And what goes on in them must distinguish reading from not reading.
—But these mechanisms are only hypotheses, models designed to
explain, to sum up, what you observe.
157. Consider the following case. Human beings or creatures of
some other kind are used by us as reading-machines. They are trained
for this purpose. The trainer says of some that they can already read,
of others that they cannot yet do so. Take the case of a pupil who lias
so far not taken part in the training: if he is shewn a written word
he will sometimes produce some sort of sound, and here and there it
happens 'accidentally' to be roughly right. A third person hears this
pupil on such an occasion and says: "He is reading". But the teacher
says: "No, he isn't reading; that was just an accident".—But let us
suppose that this pupil continues to react correctly to further words
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
63*
that are put before him. After a while the teacher says: "Now he can
read!"—But what of that first word? Is the teacher to say: "I was
wrong, and he did read it"—or: "He only began really to read later
on"?—When did he begin to read? Which was the first word that he
read? This question makes no sense here. Unless, indeed, we give a
definition: "The first word that a person 'reads' is the first word of the
first series of 5 o words that he reads correctly" (or something of the sort).
If on the other hand we use "reading" to stand for a certain
experience of transition from marks to spoken sounds, then it certainly
makes sense to speak of the first word that he really read. Pie can then
say, e.g. "At this word for the first time I had the feeling: 'now I am
reading'."
Or again, in the different case of a reading machine which trans-
lated marks into sounds, perhaps as a pianola does, it would be possible
to say: "The machine read only after such-and-such had happened to
it—after such-and-such parts had been connected by wires; the first
word that it read was ... ." .
But in the case of the living reading-machine "reading" meant
reacting to written signs in such-and-such ways. This concept was
therefore quite independent of that of a mental or other mechanism.—
Nor can the teacher here say of the pupil: "Perhaps he was already
reading when he said that word". For there is no doubt about what
he did.—The change when the pupil began to read was a change in
his behaviour, and it makes no sense here to speak of 'a first word in
his new state'.
158. But isn't that only because of our too slight acquaintance
with what goes on in the brain and the nervous system? If we had
a more accurate knowledge of these things we should see what con-
nexions were established by the training, and then we should be able
to say when we looked into his brain: "Now he has read this word,
now the reading connexion has been set up".——And it presumably
must be like that—for otherwise how could we be so sure that there
was such a connexion? That it is so is presumably a priori—or is it
only probable? And how probable is it? Now, ask yourself: what do
you know about these things?——But if it is a priori, that means that
it is a form of account which is very convincing to us.
159. But when we think the matter over we are tempted to say:
the one real criterion for anybody's reading is the conscious act of
reading, the act of reading the sounds off from the letters. "A man
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PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
surely knows whether he is reading or only pretending to read!"—
Suppose A wants to make B believe he can read Cyrillic script. He
learns a Russian sentence by heart and says it while looking at the
printed words as if he were reading them. Here we shall certainly
say that A knows he is not reading, and has a sense of just this while
pretending to read. For there are of course many more or less charac-
teristic sensations in reading a printed sentence; it is not difficult to
call such sensations to mind: think of sensations of hesitating, of look-
ing closer, of misreading, of words following on one another more or
less smoothly, and so on. And equally there are characteristic sensa-
tions in reciting something one has learnt by heart. In our example
A will have none of the sensations that are characteristic of reading,
and will perhaps have a set of sensations characteristic of cheating.
160. But imagine the following case: We give someone who can
read fluently a text that he never saw before. He reads it to us—but
with the sensation of saying something he has learnt by heart (this
might be the effect of some drug). Should we say in such a case that
he was not really reading the passage? Should we here allow his
sensations to count as the criterion for his reading or not reading?
Or again: Suppose that a man who is under the influence of a
certain drug is presented with a series of characters (which need not
belong to any existing alphabet), fie utters words corresponding to
the number of the characters, as if they were letters, and does so with
all the outward signs, and with the sensations, of reading. (We have
experiences like this in dreams; after waking up in such a case one says
perhaps: "It seemed to me as if I were reading a script, though it was
not writing at all.") In such a case some people would be inclined to
say the man was reading those marks. Others, that he was not.—
Suppose he has in this way read (or interpreted) a set of five marks as
A B O V E—and now we shew him the same marks in the reverse
order and he reads E VO B A; and in further tests he always retains
the same interpretation of the marks: here we should certainly be
inclined to say he was making up an alphabet for himself ad hoc and
then reading accordingly.
161. And remember too that there is a continuous series of tran-
sitional cases between that in which a person repeats from memory
what he is supposed to be reading, and that in which he spells out every
word without being helped at all by guessing from the context or
knowing by heart.
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
6
5
e
Try this experiment: say the numbers from i to 12. Now look at
the dial of your watch and read them.—What was it that you called
"reading" in the latter case? That is to say: what did you do, to make
it into reading?
162. Let us trv the following definition: You are reading when
J
c?
o
you derive the reproduction from the original. And by "the original" I
mean the text which you read or copy; the dictation from which you
write; the score from which you play; etc. etc..—Now suppose we have,
for example, taught someone the Cyrillic alphabet, and told him how
to pronounce each letter. Next we put a passage before him and he
reads it, pronouncing every letter as we have taught him. In this case
we shall very likely say that he derives the sound of a word from
the written pattern by the rule that we have given him. And this
is also a clear case of reading. (We might say that we had taught him
the 'rule of the alphabet'.)
But why do we say that he has derived the spoken from the printed
words? Do we know anything more than that we taught him how each
letter should be pronounced, and that he then read the words out
loud? Perhaps our reply will be: the pupil shews that he is using the
rule we have given him to pass from the printed to the spoken words.—
How this can be shewn becomes clearer if we change our example to
one in which the pupil has to write out the text instead of reading it
to us, has to make the transition from print to handwriting. For in
this case we can give him the rule in the form of a table with printed
letters in one column and cursive letters in the other. And he shews
that he is deriving his script from the printed words by consulting the
table.
163. But suppose that when he did this he always wrote b for A,
c for B, 6? for C, and so on, and a for Z?—Surely we should call this too
a derivation by means of the table.—He is using it now, we might say,
according to the second schema in §86 instead of the first.
It would still be a perfectly good case of derivation according to the
table, even if it were represented by a schema of arrows without
any simple regularity.
Suppose, however, that he does not stick to a single method of
transcribing, but alters his method according to a simple rule: if he
has once written n for A
y
then he writes o for the next A, p for the next,
and so on.—-But where is the dividing line between this procedure and
a random one?
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PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
But does this mean that the word "to derive" really has no meaning,
since the meaning seems to disintegrate when we follow it up?
164. In case (162) the meaning of the word "to derive" stood out
clearly. But we told ourselves that this was only a quite special case
of deriving; deriving in a quite special garb, which had to be stripped
from it if we wanted to see the essence of deriving. So we stripped
those particular coverings off; but then deriving itself disappeared.—
In order to find the real artichoke, we divested it of its leaves. For
certainly (162) was a special case of deriving; what is essential to
deriving, however, was not hidden beneath the surface of this case, but
his 'surface' was one case out of the family of cases of deriving.
And in the same way we also use the word "to read" for a family
of cases. And in different circumstances we apply different criteria for
a person's reading.
165. But surely—we should like to say—reading is a quite particular
process 1 Read a page of print and you can see that something special
is going on, something highly characteristic.——Well, what does go on
when I read the page? I see printed words and I say words out loud.
But, of course, that is not all, for I might see printed words and say
words out loud and still not be reading. Even if the words which I say
are those which, going by an existing alphabet, are supposed to be read
off from the printed ones.—And if you say that reading is a particular
experience, then it becomes quite unimportant whether or not you read
according to some generally recognized alphabetical rule.—And what
does the characteristic thing about the experience of reading consist
in?—Here I should like to say: "The words that 1 utter come in a special
way." That is, they do not come as they would if I were for example
making them up.—They come of themselves.—But even that is not
enough; for the sounds of words may occur to me w^hile I am looking at
printed words, but that does not mean that I have read them.—In
addition I might say here, neither do the spoken words occur to me
as if, say, something reminded me of them. I should for example not
wish to say: the printed word "nothing" always reminds me of the
sound "nothing"—but the spoken words as it were slip in as one
The grammar of the expression "a quite particular" (atmosphere).
One says "This face has a quite particular expression," and maybe
looks for words to characterize it.
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
67*
reads. And if I so much as look at a German printed word, there
occurs a peculiar process, that of hearing the sound inwardly.
1 66. I said that when one reads the spoken words come 'in a
special way': but in what way? Isn't this a fiction? Let us look at
individual letters and attend to the way the sound of the letter comes.
Read the letter A. — Now, how did the sound come? — We have no
idea what to say about it. —— Now write a small Roman a. — How
did the movement of the hand come as you wrote? Differently from
the way the sound came in the previous experiment? — All I know is,
I looked at the printed letter and wrote the cursive letter. —— Now look
at the mark
an(
^ l
et a
sound occur to you as you do so; utter it.
The sound 'U' occurred to me; but I could not say that there was any
essential difference in the kind of way that sound came. The difference
lay in the difference of situation. I had told myself beforehand that I
was to let a sound occur to me; there was a certain tension present
before the sound came. And I did not say 'U' automatically as I do
when I look at the letter U. Further, that mark was not familiar to
me in the way the letters of the alphabet are. I looked at it rather
intently and with a certain interest in its shape; as I looked I thought
of a reversed sigma.——Imagine having to use this mark regularly as
a letter; so that you got used to uttering a particular sound at the sight
of it, say the sound "sh". Can we say anything but that after a while
this sound comes automatically when we look at the mark? That is
to say: I no longer ask myself on seeing it "What sort of letter is that?"
—nor, of course, do I tell myself "This mark makes me want to utter
the sound 'sh' ", nor yet "This mark somehow reminds me of the
sound 'sh' ".
(Compare with this the idea that memory images are distinguished
from other mental images by some special characteristic.)
167. Now what is there in the proposition that reading is 'a quite
particular process'? It presumably means that when we read one
particular process takes place, which we recognize.—But suppose
that I at one time read a sentence in print and at another write it in
Morse code—is the mental process really the same?——On the other
hand, however, there is certainly some uniformity in the experience
of reading a page of print. For the process is a uniform one. And
it is quite easy to understand that there is a difference between this
process and one of, say, letting words occur to one at the sight of
arbitrary marks.—For the mere look of a printed line is itself extremely
at the mark
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PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
characteristic—it presents, that is, a quite special appearance, the letters
all roughly the same size, akin in shape too, and always recurring;
most of the words constantly repeated and enormously familiar to us,
like well-known faces.—Think of the uneasiness we feel when the
spelling of a word is changed. (And of the still stronger feelings that
questions about the spelling of words have aroused.) Of course, not
all signs have impressed themselves on us so strongly. A sign in the
algebra of logic for instance can be replaced by any other one without
exciting a strong reaction in us.—
Remember that the look of a word is familiar to us in the same kind
of way as its sound.
168. Again, our eye passes over printed lines differently from the
way it passes over arbitrary pothooks and flourishes. (I am not
speaking here of what can be established by observing the movement
of the eyes of a reader.) The eye passes, one would like to say, with
particular ease, without being held up; and yet it doesn't skid. And at the
same time involuntary speech goes on in the imagination. That is how
it is when I read German and other languages, printed or written,
and in various styles.—But what in all this is essential to reading as
such? Not any one feature that occurs in all cases of reading. (Compare
reading ordinary print with reading words which are printed entirely
in capital letters, as solutions of puzzles sometimes are. How different
it isl—Or reading our script from right to left.)
169. But when we read don't we feel the word-shapes somehow
causing our utterance?——Read a sentence.—And now look along the
following line
and say a sentence as you do so. Can't one feel that in the first case
the utterance was connected with seeing the signs and in the second
went on side by side with the seeing without any connexion?
But why do you say that we felt a causal connexion? Causation is
surely something established by experiments, by observing a regular
concomitance of events for example. So how could I say that I felt
something which is established by experiment? (It is indeed true
that observation of regular concomitances is not the only way we
establish causation.) One might rather say, I feel that the letters are
the reason why I read such-and-such. For if someone asks me "Why
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
696
do you read such-and-such?"—I justify my reading by the letters which
are there.
This justification, however, was something that I said, or thought:
what does it mean to say that I feel it? I should like to say: when I
read I feel a kind of influence of the letters working on me——but I
feel no influence from that series of arbitrary flourishes on what I
say.—Let us once more compare an individual letter with such a
flourish. Should I also say I feel the influence of "i" when I read it?
It does of course make a difference whether I say "i" when I see "i"
or when I see "§". The difference is, for instance, that when I see the
letter it is automatic for me to hear the sound "i" inwardly, it happens
even against my will; and I pronounce the letter more effortlessly
when I read it than when I am looking at "§". That is to say: this is
how it is when I make the experiment; but of course it is not so if I
happen to be looking at the mark "§" and at the same time pronounce
a word in which the sound "i" occurs.
170. It would never have occurred to us to think that we/<?// the
influence of the letters on us when reading, if we had not compared the
case of letters with that of arbitrary marks. And here we are indeed
noticing a difference. And we interpret it as the difference between being
influenced and not being influenced.
In particular, this interpretation appeals to us especially when we
make a point of reading slowly—perhaps in order to see what does
happen when we read. When we, so to speak, quite intentionally let
ourselves be guided by the letters. But this 'letting myself be guided' in
turn only consists in my looking carefully at the letters—and perhaps
excluding certain other thoughts.
We imagine that a feeling enables us to perceive as it were a con-
necting mechanism between the look of the word and the sound that
we utter. For when I speak of the experiences of being influenced,
of causal connexion, of being guided, that is really meant to imply that
I as it were feel the movement of the lever which connects seeing the
letters with speaking.
171. I might have used other words to hit off the experience I have
when I read a word. Thus I might say that the written word intimates
the sound to me.—Or again, that when one reads, letter and sound
form a unity— as it were an alloy. (In the same way e.g. the faces of
famous men and the sound of their names are fused together. This
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PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
name strikes me as the only right one for this face.) When I feel this
unity, I might say, I see or hear the sound in the written word.—
But now just read a few sentences in print as you usually do when
you are not thinking about the concept of reading; and ask yourself
whether you had such experiences of unity, of being influenced and
the rest, as you read.—Don't say you had them unconsciously! Nor
should we be misled by the picture which suggests that these phe-
nomena came in sight 'on closer inspection'. If I am supposed to
describe how an object looks from far off, I don't make the description
more accurate by saying what can be noticed about the object on
closer inspection.
172. Let us consider the experience of being guided, and ask
ourselves: what does this experience consist in when for instance our
course is guided?—Imagine the following cases:
You are in a playing field with your eyes bandaged, and someone
leads you by the hand, sometimes left, sometimes right; you have
constantly to be ready for the tug of his hand, and must also take care
not to stumble when he gives an unexpected tug.
Or again: someone leads you by the hand where you are unwilling
to go, by force.
Or: you are guided by a partner in a dance; you make yourself as
receptive as possible, in order to guess his intention and obey the
slightest pressure.
Or: someone takes you for a walk; you are having a conversation;
you go wherever he does.
Or: you walk along a field-track, simply following it.
All these situations are similar to one another; but what is common
to all the experiences?
173. "But being guided is surely a particular experience!"—The
answer to this is: you are now thinking of a particular experience of
being guided.
If I want to realize the experience of the person in one of the earlier
examples, whose writing is guided by the printed text and the table,
I imagine 'conscientious' looking-up, and so on. As I do this I assume
a particular expression of face (say that of a conscientious book-
keeper). Carefulness is a most essential part of this picture; in another
the exclusion of every volition of one's own would be essential. (But
take something normal people do quite unconcernedly and imagine
someone accompanying it with the expression—and why not the
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
7
ic
feelings?—of great carefulness.—Does that mean he is careful?
Imagine a servant dropping the tea-tray and everything on it with all
the outward signs of carefulness.) If I imagine such a particular
experience, it seems to me to be the experience of being guided (or of
reading). But now I ask myself: what are you doing?—You are
looking at every letter, you are making this face, you are writing the
letters with deliberation (and so on).—So that is the experience of
being guided?——Here I should like to say: "No, it isn't that; it is
something more inward, more essential."—It is as if at first all these
more or less inessential processes were shrouded in a particular
atmosphere, which dissipates when I look closely at them.
174. Ask yourself how you draw a line parallel to a given one 'with
deliberation'—and another time, with deliberation, one at an angle
to it. What is the experience of deliberation? Here a particular look,
a gesture, at once occur to you—and then you would like to say:
"And it just is a particular inner experience". (And that is, of course,
to add nothing).
(This is connected with the problem of the nature of intention, of
willing.)
175. Make some arbitrary doodle on a bit of paper.——And now
make a copy next to it, let yourself be guided by it.——I should like
to say: "Sure enough, I was guided here. But as for what was charac-
teristic in what happened—if 1 say what happened, I no longer find it
characteristic."
But now notice this: while I am being guided everything is quite
simple, I notice nothing special; but afterwards, when I ask myself
what it was that happened, it seems to have been something indescrib-
able. Afterwards no description satisfies me. It's as if I couldn't believe
that I merely looked, made such-and-such a face, and drew a line.—
But don't I remember anything else? No; and yet I feel as if there must
have been something else; in particular when I say "guidance
1
'', "/»-
fluence", and other such words to myself. "For surely," I tell myself,
"I was being guided."— Only then does the idea of that ethereal,
intangible influence arise.
176. When I look back on the experience I have the feeling that
what is essential about it is an 'experience of being influenced', of a
connexion—as opposed to any mere simultaneity of phenomena: but
at the same time I should not be willing to call any experienced phe-
nomenon the "experience of being influenced". (This contains the
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PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
germ of the idea that the will is not a phenomenon.") I should like to say
that I had experienced the 'because', and yet I do not want to call
any phenomenon the "experience of the because".
177. I should like to say: "I experience the because". Not because
I remember such an experience, but because when I reflect on what I
experience in such a case I look at it through the medium of the concept
'because' (or 'influence' or 'cause' or 'connexion').—For of course it
is correct to say I drew the line under the influence of the original:
this, however, does not consist simply in my feelings as I drew the
line—under certain circumstances, it may consist in my drawing it
parallel to the other—even though this in turn is not in general essential
to being guided.—
178. We also say: "You can see that I am guided by it"—and
what do you see, if you see this?
When I say to myself: "But I am guided"—I make perhaps a move-
ment with my hand, which expresses guiding.—Make such a move-
ment of the hand as if you were guiding someone along, and then ask
yourself what the guiding character of this movement consisted in. For
you were not guiding anyone. But you still want to call the movement
one of 'guiding'. This movement and feeling did not contain the
essence of guiding, but still this word forces itself upon you. It is just
a single form of guiding which forces the expression on us.
179. Let us return to our case (151). It is clear that we should not
say B had the right to say the words "Now I know how to go on",
just because he thought of the formula—unless experience shewed
that there was a connexion between thinking of the formula—saying it,
writing it down—and actually continuing the series. And obviously
such a connexion does exist.—And now one might think that the
sentence "I can go on" meant "I have an experience which I know
empirically to lead to the continuation of the series." But does B mean
that when he says he can go on? Does that sentence come to his mind,
or is he ready to produce it in explanation of what he meant?
No. The words "Now I know how to go on" were correctly used
when he thought of the formula: that is, given such circumstances as
that he had learnt algebra, had used such formulae before.—But that
does not mean that his statement is only short for a description of all
the circumstances which constitute the scene for our language-game.—
Think how we learn to use the expressions "Now I know how to go
PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS I
73'
on", "Now I can go on" and others; in what family of language-
games we learn their use.
We can also imagine the case where nothing at all occurred in B's
mind except that he suddenly said "Now I know how to go on"—
perhaps with a feeling of relief; and that he did in fact go on working
out the series without using the formula. And in this case too we
should say—in certain circumstances—that he did know how to go on.
180. This is how these words are used. It would be quite misleading,
in this last case, for instance, to call the words a "description of a
mental state".—One might rather call them a "signal"; and we judge
whether it was rightly employed by what he goes on to do.
181. In order to understand this, we need also to consider the
following: suppose B says he knows how to go on—but when he
wants to go on he hesitates and can't do it: are we to say that he was
wrong when he said he could go on, or rather that he was able to go on
then, only now is not?—Clearly we shall say different things in different
cases. (Consider both kinds of case.)
182. The grammar of "to fit", "to be able", and "to understand".
(Exercises: (i) When is a cylinder C said to fit into a hollow cylinder H?
Only while C is stuck into H? (2) Sometimes we say that C ceased to
fit into H at such-and-such a time. What criteria are used in such a
case for its having happened at that time? (3) What does one regard as
criteria for a body's having changed its weight at a particular time if it
was not actually on the balance at that time? (4) Yesterday I knew the
poem by heart; today I no longer know it. In what kind of case does it
make sense to ask: "When did I stop knowing it?" (5) Someone asks
me "Can you lift this weight?" I answer "Yes". Now he says "Do
it!"—and I can't. In what kind of circumstances would it count as a
justification to say "When I answered 'yes' I could do it, only now I
can't"?
The criteria which we accept for 'fitting', 'being able to', 'under-
standing', are much more complicated than might appear at first
sight. That is, the game with these words, their employment in the
linguistic intercourse that is carried on by their means, is more
involved—the role of these words in our language other—than we are
tempted to think.
(This role is what we need to understand in order to resolve
philosophical paradoxes. And hence definitions usually fail to
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