07 October 2008

Wittgenstein's Papierkorb

The following fragments have been found in Wittgenstein's wastepaper basket (Papierkorb):

* What does a person mean when he says he is motivated to do something? What is a motive? Have you ever seen one?

* What can anyone mean by saying that they have had experiences they cannot exactly describe? What are you unable to describe? Tell me.

* When I see a man walking across the road, and think, ‘Perhaps that man is an automaton.’ – what is the result of that? I get a strange feeling.

* It is important to realise that there is nothing other than the language game. If there were anything else, what could we say about it?

* What people call thinking is an illness; it is what happens when the language game gets disordered. Philosophy should lay down rules for the language game so that it never gets disordered; then philosophy can stop.

(from the forthcoming book The Corpse and the Kingdom)