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2 results

  • Chapter 5 - Wittgenstein on ‘Seeing Meanings’

  • Edited by James Conant, University of Chicago, Sebastian Sunday, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
    Published online:
    15 August 2019
    Print publication:
    15 August 2019, pp 84-99

  • Summary

    This essay contextualises Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-seeing in connection with his reading of Wolfgang Köhler, and thereby within a wider discussion of seeing. Most commentators devote little attention to the use of ‘see’ with which aspect-seeing is contrasted. It tends to be interpreted in the literature in two contrasting ways which, the author suggests, could be lined up with Köhler’s distinction between ‘analytic’ and ‘normal’ modes of perception, corresponding to a distinction between ‘seeing shapes and colours’ and ‘seeing things’. It is argued that Wittgenstein’s ‘aspect-seeing’ use of ‘see’ contrasts differently with each of these. Moreover, it is argued that these three uses of ‘see’ work differently in the context of looking at pictures and looking at the world. Finally, it is suggested that understanding Wittgenstein’s claim that seeing an aspect is ‘seeing a meaning’ is an invitation to contemplate what would be missing from the life of the aspect-blind; and it is suggested that seeing a thingis likewise ‘seeing a meaning’.

  • 10 - Wanting to Say Something

  • Edited by William Day, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, Victor J. Krebs
  • Book:
    Seeing Wittgenstein Anew
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 March 2010, pp 204-224

  • Summary

    The mystery of why Wittgenstein takes an interest in the concept of aspect-seeing may be trumped only by the enigma of why he introduces the concept of aspect-blindness. We can find our way with aspect-blindness most easily if we begin by noting what aspect-blindness is not. The experience of having an aspect dawn, or of being struck by something, or of seeing the familiar in a new light, is thus as intimately and pervasively joined to the human form of life as talking. In this chapter, the author suggests that Wittgenstein's interest in the concept of aspect-blindness develops out of a preoccupation (found in Part I of the Investigations) with our attraction to the familiar philosophical ideal of perfect, mutual intelligibility that is the prize we would gain with the "solution" to the problem of meaning.