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Wittgenstein on Seeing and Interpreting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
In those twenty or so pages of section xi of Part Two of the Philosophical Investigations in which Wittgenstein discusses the concept of noticing an aspect and its place among the concepts of experience, there are three passages which are explicitly concerned with the relations between seeing and interpreting in the experience of noticing an aspect.
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- Papers
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- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 9: Impressions of Empiricism , March 1975 , pp. 93 - 108
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1975
References
page 94 note 1 I shall refer to this figure as ‘the double-F figure’.
page 94 note 2 Although, with the exceptions of punctuation and emphases, the German is identical in the Investigations and in Zettel, the English translations are slightly, but not significantly, different.
page 94 note 3 The answer given to this ‘But why?’ in Zettel is similar in certain respects to the answer in the Investigations. I shall consider them later.
page 95 note 1 I shall refer to this figure as ‘the schematic cube figure’.
page 96 note 1 ‘— wir deuten sie also, und sehen sie, wie wir sie deuten.’
page 97 note 1 ‘… Die Beschieibung dei unmittelbaren Erfahrung …’
page 97 note 2 Locke, J., An Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingGoogle Scholar, Bk II, ch. 9. All references are to the 5th ed. as edited by Yolton, J. W. for Everyman's Library, 1961.Google Scholar
page 99 note 1 The German translated by ‘representation’ in ‘the representation of “what is seen”’ is ‘Darstellung’. Later, Wittgenstein speaks of ‘… two-dimensional representation whether in drawing or in words’. PI., p. 198.Google Scholar
page 99 note 2 Vesey, G. N. A., ‘Seeing and Seeing As’, P.A.S. (1955–1956).Google Scholar
page 100 note 1 See Vesey's postcript to his remarks as chairman of a discussion between Gregory, R. L. and Anscombe, G. E. M. on the topic ‘Perceptions as Hypotheses’, in Philosophy of Psychology, ed. Brown, S. C. (London, 1974).Google Scholar
page 104 note 1 The case of the double-F figure [Fig. 6.1] is different: we do not see different things represented in the figure, we do not see it now as the representation of F, now as the representation of a mirror image of an F. To justify saying that we see something different when we see the figure differently, one might fall back on the claim that, when we see the figure as an F, we would describe what we see as an F had we no reason to think otherwise; and, when we see the figure as a mirror image of an F, we would describe what we see as a mirror image of an F had we no reason to think otherwise.
page 107 note 1 In other words, ‘seeing an object according to an interpretation’, need not entail ‘seeing an object according to an act of interpreting’. Cf. Z., section 217. I am grateful to Vesey for emphasising this point in the course of the discussion following the presentation of the paper.