On Wittgenstein's notion of meaning-blindness: Its subjective, objective and aesthetic aspects
Journal
Philosophical Investigations
Journal Volume
33
Journal Issue
3
Pages
201-219
Date Issued
2010
Author(s)
Abstract
Das Aussprechen eines Wortes ist gleichsam ein Anschlagen einer Taste auf dem Vorstellungsklavier. (Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.) (PU §6) Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words! (Hamlet, act 2, scene 2) Wittgenstein in his later years thought about experiences of meaning and aspect change. Do such experiences matter? Or would a meaning- or aspect-blind person not lose much? Moreover, is this a matter of aesthetics or epistemology? To get a better perspective on these matters, I will introduce distinctions between certain subjective and objective aspects, namely feelings of our inner psychological states versus fine-tuned objective experiences of the outer world. It seems to me that in his discussion of meaning-blindness, Wittgenstein unhappily floats between these two extremes, the subjective and the objective. I will also introduce some notions from Kant's aesthetics, to get a better understanding of the interplay between feeling and meaning. This will shed some new light on Wittgenstein's enquiry into meaning- and aspect-blindness. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Type
journal article