“The words of this language are to refer to what can be
known only to the speaker; to his immediate, private, sensations. So another
cannot understand the language.”
This quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein is one that I believe best
sums up the purpose for his extensive work. His goal was to bring to light
human’s deep inner dialogue and convey its most profound sensitivity and unique
individuality while at the same time pushing people to attempt to share that of
which cannot be adequately expressed. He greatly respected language as a direct
means verbalizing our own identity and he believed the only way to do so
properly was to share your language with the rest of society.
In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein uses one
analogy in an attempt to explain some of the problems involved in thinking of
the mind as something over and above behavior. This experiment was known as The
Beetle and the Box Theory. In this experiment he asks for people to imagine
that everyone has a small box that holds a “beetle”. However, no one is allowed
to look in anyone else’s box, only in their own. So over time, people talk
about what is in their boxes and the word “beetle” comes to stand for what is
in everyone’s box. With this analogy, Wittgenstein is trying to point out that
the “beetle” is very much like an individual’s mind. No one can know exactly
what it is like to be another person or experience things from another’s
perspective but it is generally assumed that other people’s minds are very
similar to our own. However, he also states that it doesn’t really matter what’s
in everyone’s box, or whether everyone has a beetle, since there is no way of
checking or comparing them. In a sense, the word “beetle” simply means “what is
in the box”. From this point of view, the mind is simply “what is in the box” –
or rather “what is in your head”.
Wittgenstein argues that although we cannot know what it is
like to be someone else we in the same sense cannot assume there must be
special mental entity called a mind that makes our experiences private either.
Part of the reason he thinks this way is because he again considers language to
have meaning through public usage. In other words, when we talk of having a
mind (or a beetle), we are using a term that we have learned through
conversation and public dialogue. In order to reach outside of our own minds
(and boxes) one must only do so via communication with another. People cannot survive
or thrive if they remain as private beings. Our only hope of reaching our full intellectual
potentials in life is to reach out publically, sharing with other’s our own
personal stories and intellect and in turn gaining the wisdom that can only be
found within another being’s mind as well.
Beetle and Box TheoryFirst Installment: Installment 1
More info:
http://users.rcn.com/rathbone/lw65-69c.htm
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Wittgenstein/wittgenstein.html
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