[Wittrs] Re: [C] Picture the Picture
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 12:28:52 -0700 (PDT)
... this idea of a "picture of a picture" has me thinking. I wonder what
Wittgenstein would have said about this idea? Compare these ideas:
1. aspect seeing. duck-rabbit. You come to the idea of "seeing-as." And so,
there is a picture of a duck or there is a picture of a rabbit. But once you
attain the height of the "aspect-see" -- once you see that that you are only
seeing AS AN ASPECT -- could you then say that THIS was an "aspect?" I'd say,
not without changing the sense. But perhaps there is another thing to add. What
would Wittgenstein think about this line of thought:
Seeing that there is aspect cannot, itself, become an "aspect see" until there
is another modality to that phenom. It actually pains the brain to think of it.
Give it a try. You see a duck, then a rabbit. So you say: this is "aspect see."
Then you say, "but seeing the aspect-see itself is only an aspect-see." The
only way this could be true is if seeing the duck-and-rabbit switch was
beholden
to some other cognitive phenom that gave rise to yet another dimension of
transforming it. It's really hard to even language about.
Let's try it this way. You know those funny dotted pictures that become images
or shapes when you look past the plane of regard? I think it's called Magic
Eye?
The idea is you hold the dots close to your nose but look past the photo (say,
to the wall), and the dots then form some picture. This would be an example of
"aspect see." But now, imagine that the very seeing of this dynamic could be
manipulated into another dynamic. Imagine an alien having eyes and brains like
us to see the Magic Eye aspect, but also being able to see back from the dots
to
the face, as though one could also see oneself looking at it. So you would have
a plane of regard difference going "out" and a plane of regard difference going
back "in." Then, we would say that the duck-rabbit phenom is only an aspect
see,
because THAT VERY DIMENSION could be out-dimensioned.
There is a tradition throughout Wittgenstein about unsayable things -- about
the
mind reaching it's limits. Limits have been expressed by the following ideas: I
am my world; some things are unsayable; grammar; form of life; "the beginning;"
and imponderable evidence. There is also the idea that things without opposites
aren't really anything special. I would think one could harvest various quotes
from these thoughts for this current problem (picturing as a picture).
Let's suppose one said the following. "A thought is just a thought." What would
one do with this idea? "An idea is just an idea." These expressions clearly
have
sense, but it is because the sense of "thought" or "idea" switches. (Just as
"sense" just shifted). One wants to say: "a thought is just a thought" is only
true as a sense of expression. All it really says is: "the notion you throw up
in the mind may not be considered 'final.' " It's a whimsical sort of
expression.
How about this. A person says "when a person thinks, he or she is 'thinking."
Then another person says back: "but isn't that just your thought?" Quite
clearly, the two are bewitched in the language game. There is absolutely no
question that this is a traffic accident in the language game.
Imagine a comic book where there was a thought bubble inside itself. It would
be
very easy to imagine a person, X, thinking with a thought bubble, and, inside
the bubble, there appears someone else, Y, thinking with a bubble. That would
broadcast the idea: "I'm thinking about you thinking about [something]." If one
adopted this sort of drawing convention, surely it could be understood. But
could a comic have a thought bubble where, inside the bubble, was the same
person thinking about the very same thing? The thinking being just a thought.
Surely for purposes of the comic, it would seem purely superfluous. It would
also seem to offer the absolute worst in folk psychology (the "little man in
the
head.")
An interesting twist, however, would be if we change the subjects of the
thoughts. Imagine a person thinking about himself thinking about something
ELSE.
E.g., you think about your thinking of Q at last year. But even here, it
doesn't seem to be a dual process. It seems to be your looking directly into
a remembrance. How is a remembrance drawn in comics? In the
movies, cinematography does it in very interesting ways. My point: the
remembrance is treated differently in DEVICE than the simple thought
(introspection).
But still yet again, one could, I suppose, imagine a person thinking about how
HE was thinking about something in the past. So he would be remembering it as
an
aspect-see. He might say, "the way I was thinking about that issue was
childish." If this were in a comic, surely it would just be expressed with
words
(inside the bubble). But what if one drew a bubble containing the same exact
person inside the bubble, thinking in another bubble about something in the
past? The trouble is that what would be missing is the key point: how the
person
thought about how he was thinking. That is, the point he was drawing from it.
You wouldn't be able to tell he thought it childish.
What I'm trying to say is this. The problem of oneself being inside one's own
thought bubble raises a difficulty not unlike the language game of "the
picturing is the picture."
And I'm also saying this, though I haven't yet said it: THIS IS WHAT REAL
PHILOSOPHY IS. It has nothing to do with trying to prove free will, play
Gettier
games and so forth. It has to do with reflecting upon what is said and how the
same implicates the conditions of saying, based on how these things are
arranged
in our other language games and in the form of life itself. Thought bubbles in
comic books do more for philosophy than debates about free will or existence or
what not.
Regards and thanks.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs
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