Philosophical Investigations 600-End

Just finished Part 1 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. What a ride.

606. We say "The expression in his voice was genuine". If it was spurious we think as it were of another one behind it.--This is the face he shews the world, inwardly he has another one.--But this does not mean that wen his expression is genuine he has two the same.
(("A quite particular expression."))

607. If I say, I read it off from an inner clock,--that is a picture, and the only thing that corresponds to it is that I said it was such-and-such a time. And the purpose of the picture is to assimilate this case to the other one. I am refusing to acknowledge two different cases here.

618. One imagines the willing subject here as something without any mass (without any inertia); as a motor which has no inertia in itself to overcome. And so it is only mover, not moved. That is: One can say "I will, but my body does not obey me"--but not: "My will does not obey me." (Augustine)
But in the sense in which I cannot fail to will, I cannot try to will either.

629. When people talk about the possibility of foreknowledge of the future they always forget the fact of the prediction of one's own voluntary movements.

649. "So if a man has not learned a language, is he unable to have certain memories?" Of course--he cannot have verbal memories, verbal wishes or fears, and so on. And memories etc., in language, are not mere threadbare representations of the real experiences; for is what is linguistic not an experience?

652. (("If you want to understand a sentence, you have to imagine the psychical significane, the states of mind involved."))

654. Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to look at what happens as a 'proto-phenomenon'. That is, where we ought to have said: this language-game is played.

655. The question is not one of explaining a language-game by means of our experiences, but of noting a language game.

669. One can refer to an ovject when speaking by pointing to it. Here pointing is a part of the language-game. And now it seems to us as if one spoke of a snesation by direction one's attention to it. But where is the analogy? It evidently lies in the fact that one can point to a thing by looking or listening.
But in certain circumstances, even pointing to the object one is talking about may be quite inessential to the language-game, to one's thought.

671. And what do I point to by the inner activity of listening? To the sound that comes to my ears, and to the silence when I hear nothing?
Listening as it were looks for an auditory impression and hence can't point to it, but only to the place where it is looking for it.

691. When I make myself a sketch of N's face from memory, I can surely be said to mean him by my drawing. But which of the processes taking place while I draw(or before or afterwards) could I call meaning him?
For one would naturally like to say: when he meant him, he aimed at him. But how is anyone doing that, when he calls someone else's face to mind?
I mean, how does he call HIM to mind?
How does he call him?

693. "When I teach someone the formation of the series....I surely mean him to write....at the hundredth place."--Quite right; you mean it. And evidently without necessarily even thinking of it. This shews you how different the grammar of the verb "to mean" is from that of "to think". And nothing is more wrong-headed than calling meaning a mental activity!


Key words:
language-game picture imagine.... pointing
remembering think mean mathematics
say (to oneself) will pain chess
description explanation