Wittgenstein returns to the question. "What is the object of a thought?" (e.g. when we say, "I think that King's College is on fire"). (Page 34)
This is, he says, typically metaphysical, because “an unclarity about the grammar of words” is expressed “in the form of a scientific (he has physics in mind) question”.

He identifies four “origins” of the question, which I think are intended to be confusions expressed in it. (Page 35)

1.. ‘One of the origins of our question is the use of "I think/expect" and “I think/expect” in two distinct ways. “I expect him” and “I expect that he will come”. We then compare “I expect him” to “I shoot him”.
He turns his attention to the shadows:-
2 a) Two different sentences can have the same sense, which becomes a shadowy being (unless perhaps it is a material object).
2 b) Shadowy sense to “be a picture” that “cannot be questioned”; it doesn’t need any interpretation.
3) Sometimes a sentence brings images before our mind's eye. These images are “translations” into pictorial language. But they must be similar to, copies of, what they are pictures of.

i) A map of all or part of our planet, he says, is not a picture by similarity or a copy in this sense. (Page 36)
ii) A picture of someone’s face projected it “in such a way that no one would normally call the projection ‘a good portrait of so-and-so’ because it would not look a bit like him”. This is, let us say, a bit complicated.

This gets him to where he wants to be. The sentence itself can do the work of the shadow, and so no shadow is needed. We can explain what the sentence means, perhaps, by an ostensive definition. That’s how words and things can be connected.

He can now go back and correct the path that he started down. (Page 37) The idea of the shadow is deeply rooted, but it is not what we really want to say. What we want to say is that “the fact which we wish for must be present in our wish”. Well, the answer just above cited ostensive definition to explain what “King’s College is on fire”. That works for expectation and wishing, too – after the event. But I could have given a similar explanation before it, as well.

At this point, a summary. How do our thoughts “connect” with the things they are about? The connection is made by means of ostensive definition. Ordinary language makes it seem that the connection must have been made during the act of thinking. But that’s not the case.
He gives us examples that could be taken to mean that thinking or meaning can be regarded as a mental activity, and so leading us to feel that something has been explained and no further questions are appropriate.

Now he returns to imagining and King’s College (Page 38) and subjects this to a cross-examination. I take it that links back to the rather unsatisfactory discussion of imagining earlier. But here, he concludes that our mistake is to think that images and experiences of all sorts, must be present in our mind at the same time.

Finally, a metaphor (Page 39) , - pulling a string of beads being pulled out of a box through a hole in the lid, to persuade us that “We easily overlook the distinction between stating a conscious mental event, and making a hypothesis about what one might call the mechanism of the mind.”

You speak as if “the color system” guarantees a metaphysical space for redness, as though the system enforces an ontological necessity. But the necessity is grammatical, not metaphysical. It comes from how we use color words, not from a hidden structure of reality. — Joshs

I get your point. But eventually realized that the peculiarity of this discussion is precisely that it is conducted, to put it this way, de re and not de dicto. If he asked whether we could abolish the concept of redness, that would have been one question. But he doesn't. He asks whether we could abolish redness, and compares it to destroying a watch. That comparison is a nonsense, to start with.

I keeping reaching for a key that will make all this fall in to place. But it still elude me. The discussion later on page 38 is all very well, but I don't see it clarifies this passage.

@Joshs

Sec 11 Our words’ connection to the world (p. 35-39)

The sentence itself can do the work of the shadow, and so no shadow is needed. We can explain what the sentence means, perhaps, by an ostensive definition. That’s how words and things can be connected. — Ludwig V

Nice work; my thoughts are along the same lines. He is showing us examples** of how we can correct the connection of word and world, as you say, by ostensive definition, or, alternatively, by explanation, demonstration, being an example, by force, etc., but words and the world don’t (usually) need to be (re-)connected because, by default, they just are connected (as you say, “no shadow is needed”). “…the interpolation of a shadow between the sentence and “reality” loses all point” (p.37) [my quote marks]. In the PI he will talk of this as there being no space “to get between pain and its expression”. (#245)

Philosophy imagines we make that connection every time (say, to “our understanding”). But there are events (in time, place) where “language” and the world actually do have a disconnect (along our criteria for judgment), but philosophy interprets the sheer possibility of disconnection, and the difficulty of reconnecting, as if the “problem” is in the activity of (always) connecting which is then just a puzzle to “know”, like a “a queer mechanism” (cue some neuroscience).

But in practice we fall back on the many separate ways we have for straightening things out. Philosophy needs to be shown any of these examples of means of reconnection—shown that language and the world “can be” reconnected—to realize the exception means that the word and world are not always mitigated by some object like “perception” or data, or other “shadow” But it then also follows that there is no “object” for there to be a “fact” of it to communicate. There are not certain, fixed, ever-present objects, as if part of “me”, like, “my understanding”, that I simply put into words.

The best juxtaposition is the difference between “…a thing I am thinking about, not 'that [thing] which I am thinking'.” (P.38) In the first, we are perhaps in a discussion (with ourselves even) considering, remarking on, analyzing, etc. a thing/object. Thinking in the second case is just the description of a thing/object which I have, “my thought”, which I take as a fact (as complete and without any need for context). But, like with the Napoleon example, there is no singular fact that is a certain, unique criteria (there, for identification).

Most importantly, understanding is not “present” during communication. Understanding happens after expression, in coming back to it, e.g., when you have demonstrated that you haven’t understood how to do something, or how to continue a series as expected, or that your expression makes it clear that you do not understand what I was trying to say (apart from disagreeing, etc.). We mostly say things that have already been said in situations similar enough to ours that it doesn’t need more elaboration (mostly). This public nature of language is because it is a record of our history, that “The connection between these words and [the world] was, perhaps, made at another time.” (P. 39)


**Sometimes I feel like his examples here are just terrible. I mean is it just me or waaaaay too unnecessarily esoteric for the point he is trying to make, except that he seems to feel he needs to chase the rabbit all the way down the hole to cover as many senses/analogies in which philosophy might frame our thinking as objects, etc.

Sometimes I feel like his examples here are just terrible. I mean is it just me or waaaaay too unnecessarily esoteric for the point he is trying to make, except that he seems to feel he needs to chase the rabbit all the way down the hole to cover as many senses/analogies in which philosophy might frame our thinking as objects, etc. — Antony Nickles

I'm glad you mention that. I agree with you, and there should not be a problem about recognizing that Homer sometimes nods. I still have no way of shifting my feeling that something has gone wrong in the discussion of imagination and the question whether we can imagine the abolition of redness.

Most importantly, understanding is not “present” during communication. Understanding happens after expression, in coming back to it, .... — Antony Nickles

Yes. I think that W is right to point to the importance of explanations after the event. But it seems odd to say that understanding is not "present" during communication. Surely understanding is expressed in communication and in even in non-communicative action. In any normal action, there is a huge amount of complexity and we may be unable to resolve various ambiguities simply of the basis of a single action. Then we need to clarify after the event. But a great deal of that complexity can be expressed in the processes of planning and preparation, before the action.

philosophy interprets the sheer possibility of disconnection, and the difficulty of reconnecting, as if the “problem” is in the activity of (always) connecting which is then just a puzzle to “know”, like a “a queer mechanism” (cue some neuroscience). — Antony Nickles

Philosophy wants to construct a logical structure of the action and then turn it into an actual structure "in the mind". It's like insisting that all arguments be expressed in formal logical format, even when we actually utter a short version, trading on shared assumptions and attitudes.

. I think that W is right to point to the importance of explanations after the event. But it seems odd to say that understanding is not "present" during communication. Surely understanding is expressed in communication and in even in non-communicative action. In any normal action, there is a huge amount of complexity and we may be unable to resolve various ambiguities simply of the basis of a single action. Then we need to clarify after the event. But a great deal of that complexity can be expressed in the processes of planning and preparation, before the action. — Ludwig V

I read W as making a distinction between what phenomenologists call the mode of givenness of an object and the object taken in a theoretical sense. It’s not that a mode of givenness doesn’t give us to understand a thing, but that what we are given to understand is a contextual sense of an object that cannot be swallowed up within a more general categorical definition on it. The particular givenness doesn’t imply the more general concept. On the contrary, the general meaning is secondary to and derivative of the particular sense.

But it seems odd to say that understanding is not "present" during communication. — Ludwig V

I believe he would say that understanding is not a quality or thing—that is present or not; it is that picture/analogy which leads to the feeling of oddness. I think understanding is more appropriately thought of as a process (not a mental mechanism, but: clarification, explication, distinction, etc.) I only mentioned the “after” version, but of course there is the “before” process as well; e.g., “Tell me your understanding?” or: trying to understand.

Yes, there can be a multiplicity of meaning and complexity “in” communication (the wording here is also misleading), but we are only aware of the need to explain or clarify before or after the expression. Sometimes there is no “understanding”; we don’t speak of it when I ask you to pass the salt, as you say, “trading on shared assumptions and attitudes.”

what we are given to understand is a contextual sense of an object that cannot be swallowed up within a more general categorical definition on it. — Joshs

Broadly, that's ok with me.

The particular givenness doesn’t imply the more general concept. On the contrary, the general meaning is secondary to and derivative of the particular sense. — Joshs

I'm a bit puzzled about what "swallowed up" means here. We only ever encounter particular houses and particular people. Even though they are particular, they can be described in terms of generalities.

we are only aware of the need to explain or clarify before or after the expression. Sometimes there is no “understanding”; we don’t speak of it when I ask you to pass the salt, as you say, “trading on shared assumptions and attitudes.” — Antony Nickles

Yes. There's an interplay between what we are aware of, what W calls a mechanism of the mind - I think of it as the unconscious. Understanding seems to occur in both ways. But perhaps we need a third category - our ability to explain ourselves, to answer questions. A disposition is odd. It manifests in certain circumstances and not in others. In between manifestations, there's nothing - except counter-factuals about what I would do or what might manifest itself in a different context.

There's an interplay between what we are aware of, what W calls a mechanism of the mind - I think of it as the unconscious. — Ludwig V

I take his point to be that we create the idea of a mechanism. We try to internalize the processes of thinking, understanding, and meaning to imagine we control what the words that we say do (or do not) mean, as if we could avoid the responsibility to make ourselves understood, or not have to answer for what we say.

And the “unconscious” aspect of meaning I would offer is that words have a history and are subject to circumstances, which are either so pedestrian that they operate without our doing (being conscious of) anything, or that at times their possibilities of meaning outstrip our ability to encompass and/or control (be conscious of) how they will come off in a particular (even novel) context.

@Joshs @Ludwig V

Sec. 12 Expression and its accompaniments—memory, judgment, thinking (p. 40-43)

the experience of thinking may just be the experience of saying, or may consist of this experience plus others which accompany it. — After “Let us sum up”, p. 43

And so we are adding layers back in, and I think we’re left to contemplate rather than being told, what “others”? Obviously we do many things along with saying things (Austin would even say “in” saying them), and it is just a matter of not getting caught in the old traps while looking into them.

At p. 40 I take him to be differentiating my “expression”, in the sense of “by me”, from me describing a mental object that I have. The analogous “tune”, which he divorces from the mechanism of the phonograph, is from the world (before us) and is not “kept, stored, before we express it”. We perform the tune, as we go. Now beforehand, or when that retelling is interrupted, we may search our memory, but not necessarily, as we may just start off (or continue).

We might exhibit pain or describe a vision because these are actual—though not necessarily unique—physical states. But I would venture that expecting is just the label for a judgment we make from the evidence of our response to anticipation (fear of the past, in the case of a gunshot). The answer to: “Why are you tense, steadying yourself, holding your breath?” is not: “I have an expectation.”

As well, I see “groping for a word” not as putting a word to something “already expressed” internally (p. 41), but as an activity (though perhaps just passive waiting). In this sense, the expression is only in having found the word, in the saying of it (to you or myself).

I see his use of “expression” as meant to capture the event of that initial introduction of a thought, hope, or wish to the world, to, as he says, “existence” (p. 40), without the need for any “independent” process or thing in a “peculiar medium” (p. 43). The “sentence” is “reality”. (p. 37, 41)

This, of course, doesn't mean that we have shown that peculiar acts of consciousness do not accompany the expressions of our thoughts! Only we no longer say that they must accompany them. — p. 42

(The power of this “must” I take as very important to why all the forced analogies and “fixed standards” (p.43), but so far he only goes so far as to blame our forms of speech—not yet seeing the need driving it).

I think it is worth noting that he wants to add back in a sense of “private” thinking and experiences, as I take all this here (and in the PI) to be for much more than just a conclusion about “private language”. Here he acknowledges certain senses of privacy, such as being hidden from others, like a secret we tell to ourselves in an aside; as we could reveal (and thus hide) the “muscular, visual, tactile sensations” of my body, in the sense of bringing attention to (like admitting) the fact that I have them.

His method allows us perspective on thinking as the assumption that we just speak our “thoughts” (not in the sense of voicing our inner dialogue), by asking “what do we say if we have no thought?” and then pointing out the sense of speaking thoughtlessly as simply not considering beforehand the consequences of saying something in a particular context.

Next, personal experiences, I think.

The particular givenness doesn’t imply the more general concept. On the contrary, the general meaning is secondary to and derivative of the particular sense.
— Joshs
I'm a bit puzzled about what "swallowed up" means here. We only ever encounter particular houses and particular people. Even though they are particular, they can be described in terms of generalities — Ludwig V

Yes, but each time we invoke the same generality we mean a particular sense that wasn’t already present in the generality. So it’s never the ‘same’ generality being used each time.