Philosophical Investigation Summary: Section 154
Section 154 of Wittgenstein’s guides the student on the correct ways of conducting philosophical investigations, especially the use of formulae in conducting the investigations. According to Wittgenstein, it is wrong to think about the issue of understanding as a process that goes on inside the mind. Instead on relying on understanding as a process of the mind, Wittgenstein directs the philosophical investigators to rely on the circumstances. Before deciding that a concept is true and the philosophical researcher can now ho ahead with his research, the researcher must consider the circumstances. Wittgenstein considers thinking about the concept of understanding by relying on the mind as a thing that misleads the investigator (Wittgenstein 271).
Wittgenstein uses the concept of how humans relate with pictures to develop his cases. To get the correct meaning and interpretation of a picture, the author advises that the philosophical researcher should not understand the picture as a single entity. Instead, the philosopher should interpret the picture by tying it to how the society or culture uses pictures. What the author suggests is that by understanding pictures from the society’s way of using them, there emerges a coherent philosophy of images (pictures). Understanding the motive is important in philosophical research. Using the concept of the picture, the author explains that the language that the picture uses for communication relies on the motive or intention of the communicator. He further explains that if the researcher detaches the idea of motive from the picture, it loses its grammar.
The issue of intention is clear in his discussions about how film communicates using pictures. Wittgenstein (272) explains that in film, scenes of dream show the characters under blue light. However, the blue light is not the accurate representation of how dreams really occur. It means that the society has devised its own culture of indicating that what the viewer sees on the screen is a dream. To arrive at the truth, therefore, the viewer does need to rely on his mind so that he translates the picture correctly (Wittgenstein 272). The truth about pictorial communication lies outside of what the viewer sees. The suggestion that the author makes is that philosophical investigations should not seek the truth by relying on what they see. Reality is beyond what one sees, and tying the image to the context or circumstances is the correct way of investigating the truth.
It is important, however, for philosophical investigators to consider that the intention of an image is not in it. Understanding section 154, especially the concept of circumstances or intentions, requires relating it to some of the concepts he discusses earlier. Wittgenstein (73) discusses the deficiency of human language. Wittgenstein explains that the human language lacks the means to describe color by terming the object as its possession. The author, for example, says that it is wrong for someone to say the green of my chair. Such an example shows that language has the deficiency of not enabling the concept of color to possess an object. To clarify the issue, it means that philosophical investigations should not rely on the verbal explanations of what the investigator sees. The mind of the investigator may lack the competence of determining the truth in an accurate way. If someone, for instance, has the disability of reading colors correctly, he can say that a color is blue yet it is green. It is the reason Wittgenstein directs philosophers to rely on the circumstances, for example, where the color occurs in relation to the culture. It is when the investigator gets the accurate meaning of the color.
The student considers the author’s perspective as correct. Philosophical investigators should rely on the context of an object’s occurrence to understand it better. Colors serve as good examples. In certain cultures, a red tape or flag means danger (e.g. America). In other contexts, however, the same color stands for peace (e.g. China). It means that a philosophical investigator must understand the sign communication of the color by relating it to the cultural circumstances.
Works Cited
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, 4th Edition. Willey-Blackwell. 2009. Print.
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