MAXIMILIAN DE GAYNESFORD
Consensus identifies an underlying continuity to Wittgenstein’s treatment of the self and “I” (“me,” “mine,” “my”), despite certain obvious surface variations and revisions. As representative here as they are influential are the commentaries of Peter Hacker (1990/93, pp.207–28) and Hans‐Johann Glock (1996, pp.160–4). Expressing this consensus view with a certain necessary roughness, four general points come to the fore:
These four general points can be assembled and condensed in various ways, of course, but this would be a typical form: throughout his philosophical writings, where Wittgenstein is concerned that the primary object of his attention is being distorted by an unwarranted, “exalted” view of the first person or what it represents, it is because he thinks that mistaken views of the possessive forms of the first‐person pronoun are in play, cultivating confused or unwarranted ideas about a sense of “ownership.”
One way to survey Wittgenstein’s treatment of the self and “I,” while gaining critical purchase on the relevant arguments and observations, is to test this consensus view for accuracy against the four main occasions on which Wittgenstein paid particular and extended attention to the self and “I,” viz., Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus 5.6–5.641, Philosophical Remarks VI. §§57–66, the “Blue Book,” pp.61–70, and Philosophical Investigations §§398–411. So that is how this chapter will proceed, examining each such occasion in turn and drawing summary conclusions about the consensus view.
Almost all Wittgenstein’s arguments and observations concerning “I” and the self in the Tractatus are arranged as attempts to explicate 5.6. Unfortunately, this is one of the obscurest parts of a difficult work. It is necessary to proceed slowly, taking care to use whatever aid is available, particularly the decimal ordering, which indicates which remarks are especially salient, and how they are related to other remarks.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (TLP 5.6)
The first course Wittgenstein takes in explicating 5.6 is to gloss what it is for something to count as the limits of the world (5.61). These limits are identified with the limits of logic, which is said to “pervade” (erfüllen) the world. And the notion of a limit here is explained in terms of what it is not coherent to exclude. If the limits of the world are the limits of logic, it would not be logically coherent to exclude certain possibilities, namely those that the world does not contain, as one would in saying “the world has this in it, but not that.” For this would mean that it is logically coherent to speak of things that the world does not include, and hence that logic is capable of transcending the limits of the world. But this would contradict the notion that the limits of the world are also the limits of logic. And Wittgenstein then expands the point. Logic determines what we can think, so we cannot think “the world has this in it, but not that.” And “what we cannot think we cannot say either” (5.61).
It is particularly worth bearing these remarks in mind, because Wittgenstein describes them as “the key” when he takes a second course to explicating 5.6 (5.62). Here he begins explaining the first‐person component of 5.6. Given that he has just provided a gloss on what it is for something to count as the limits of the world, we would expect him to set about explaining what it is for something to count as the limits of my world. And this is indeed what he goes on to do, though in a way that first leaps ahead and then works its way back:
This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.
For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest.
The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (TLP 5.62)
The solipsist is someone who would (if he could) state his position as “I alone exist, am real” or, equivalently, “The world has me in it, but nothing else.” So 5.62 leaps over what it is for something to count as the limits of my world and discusses instead the sense we might make of the claim that the limits of my world are the limits of the world.
If 5.61 is the “key” here, that is presumably because the puzzle it unlocks is in the second sentence of 5.62, for this is the only sentence on which the earlier remark has a clear, direct bearing. The idea seems to be this. Suppose we add the solipsist’s premise: that the limits of my world are the limits of the world. Then it seems we can move from the point made in 5.61 (that we cannot say “The world has this in it, but not that” because the limits of the world are the limits of logic) to the point made in the second sentence of 5.62 (that we cannot say “The world has me in it, but nothing else”). The background idea remains the same: given what it is for anything to be a “limit” in this sense, there are certain possibilities which it would not be logically coherent to exclude.
Wittgenstein says that “what the solipsist means is quite correct” (5.62). This is perhaps a loose way of speaking. For if the solipsist cannot state his position and he cannot think it, there is presumably nothing that he could mean by it either. It may be safer to put more weight on the first sentence, which goes no further than registering Wittgenstein’s interest in asking “how much truth there is in solipsism.”
Wittgenstein states that the claim “the world is my world” is “manifest” in the fact that “the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.” This is an ambiguous way of speaking, of course, in the German also (die Sprache, die allein ich verstehe). The next remark, tied to 5.62 by the number system, is no great help here: “The world and life are one” (5.621). It may mean the only language I understand, or the language only I understand. (The earlier C.K. Ogden translation favors the latter, but a later note in Wittgenstein’s hand favors the former.) It is important to determine which, because the claim that the limits of language mean the limits of my world is almost, but not quite, a straight repetition of the remark being explicated (i.e., 5.6). The one difference is that, here, the ambiguous parenthetical clause replaces the possessive “my” before “language.” So this clause appears to take on the burden of explicating the use of “my” here, and the ambiguity complicates things. If what Wittgenstein means is that a language is “my” language in being the one I alone understand, then it would be a private language, and so we are presumably to make sense of this as further explication of the solipsist’s position. For 5.62 identifies the limits of my world with the limits of this language, so the world thus limited is presumably to be taken as a private world and one which might fit the solipsist’s specifications: in which there is nothing but the referent of this use of the first‐person pronoun. If, on the other hand, Wittgenstein means that a language is mine in the sense that it is the only language I understand, then it might be a public language, but one limited by logic, what it is possible to think and understand, and so we are presumably to take 5.62 as an explication of the relationship between logic, language, and the world. The limits of my world are identified with these limits. But if this is what Wittgenstein means, it is difficult to see why he emphasizes “my world” (twice) in 5.62. This would serve no purpose, unless what is being said were peculiar to the particular one who is referent of these uses of the term. But the point being made is surely to be taken as holding for any who might use the term.
Here it is worth asking how Wittgenstein is able to say and think this, while the solipsist is unable to say or think his position. Evidently “the world is my world” is not meant to exclude any possibilities it would be logically incoherent to exclude. To explain how and why this is so is to work back to the question of what it is for something to count as the limits of my world. And it is to this issue that Wittgenstein now turns, postponing further discussion of solipsism until he is equipped to answer the “problem” posed in 5.62: namely, how much truth there is in that position.
The possessive pronoun is again central to the next set of remarks, in which Wittgenstein takes a third course toward explicating 5.6. These remarks start out from 5.63:
I am my world. (The microcosm.) (TLP 5.63)
First, Wittgenstein denies that there is such a thing as “the subject that thinks or entertains ideas” (5.631). He links this with the claim that the subject could not be mentioned in a book which set out to describe The world as I found it. This point is clarified somewhat in the next remark, which seems to qualify the earlier in another way: if there is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas, this is not to deny that the subject exists.
The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world. (TLP 5.632)
Note that, despite the aim of explicating 5.63 with its “my world,” the possessive has now been dropped (though this need not be a deep change; perhaps it is to be assumed). It is because the subject is a limit of the world that it could not appear in a description of the world. Wittgenstein evidently felt this argument needed support, since he moves to an analogy with the eye and the visual field: “But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye” (5.633). Similarly, we assume, it is not just that the subject that thinks or entertains ideas (what he now calls the “metaphysical” subject; 5.633) is not to be found within the world, but that it is not to be inferred from what is to be found within the world either. How then are we in a position to say that the subject is even “a limit of the world” (5.632)? The next remark seems to answer this question, though if so, it is stated more vaguely than we might expect: “This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is at the same time a priori” (5.634). If we overlook what is oddly tentative about this, the natural way to interpret 5.634 is as saying that it is a priori that the subject is a limit of the world, and perhaps a priori that the world is my world.
In the fourth and final course towards explicating 5.6, Wittgenstein returns to the solipsist:
Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides [fällt zusammen] with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co‐ordinated with it. (TLP 5.64)
When the solipsist was first mentioned (5.62), it seemed that we were being told his position might be correct, though he was confused in supposing he could express that position. 5.64 could perhaps be interpreted in this way, but if so, that must be because we are also being told that “pure realism” is quite correct. It is a better match with the resources made available at this point to suppose that something more modest is meant: for example, that there is an insight in solipsism which “coincides” with “pure realism” and which is not perhaps apparent to the solipsist himself, since it becomes apparent only when the “implications” of his position “are followed out strictly.”
The nature of this “coincidence” is left vague. It may be that solipsism collapses into pure realism, so that they make the same claims. But to make this interpretation work, we have to supply much that Wittgenstein does not overtly supply here. Again, it is a better match to assume something more modest: not that they make the same claims, but that the claims they do make, individually, can be made consistent with each other. More precisely, solipsism may be said to “coincide” with “pure realism” in the sense that the insight that may be forced out of it is consistent with, and can usefully be conjoined with “pure realism.” The advantage of this interpretation is that this conjunction is exactly what Wittgenstein takes himself to have shown in the previous set of remarks (thus explaining his “Here it can be seen that…”). The insight is that the self is a point without extension. The “pure realist” claims that there is a reality coordinated with the self. And these two claims are not only consistent but usefully conjoin in a straightforward repeat of 5.632 (transposing from subject to self). As a “limit” of the world, the self does not belong to the world, and is thus an extensionless point, but there is nevertheless a world for it to be the limit of, namely that world with which it is coordinated. This is in keeping with the way Wittgenstein summarizes and concludes:
Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non‐psychological way.
What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.
The philosophical self [das philosophische Ich] is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world – not a part of it. (TLP 5.641)
We are now in a position to ask how closely Wittgenstein’s one extended treatment of the self and “I” in the Tractatus corresponds to the consensus view, with its four general points (i)–(iv).
There seems to be little or no match. The explicitly possessive form of the first‐person pronoun does play a salient role in these remarks (my world, my language), as point (iv) would lead one to expect. But if Wittgenstein identifies a source of confusion here, he finds it in the attempts of solipsists to express their position, together with their failure to “follow out strictly” the implications of their view. Had they done so, they would achieve the insight that the self, as a limit of the world, is an extensionless point. Wittgenstein does not claim that there is anything confused or confusing about the first‐personal form itself or its use.
Nor does Wittgenstein make any obvious attempt to “denigrate” “I” or the self in these remarks, as point (iii) requires. Certainly, he makes no attempt to eliminate the self or to treat use of “I” as redundant. It turns out that there is a perfectly appropriate use for the notion of a self: the “philosophical” self, identified with the “metaphysical” subject, that which “thinks or entertains ideas.” Equally, it turns out that there are perfectly valid uses of first‐person forms, e.g., “my world,” “my language.” Wittgenstein corrects confusions here precisely so as to make the existence and nature of this self, these uses of the first‐person form, stand out clearly.
Pace (ii), the claims Wittgenstein makes about this self follow from his arguments concerning the limits of language quite generally. They do not appear to be either directed by or dependent on any specific claims about the first‐person pronoun as a linguistic device. And pace (i), there is nothing “second fiddle‐ish” about this discussion of “I” and the self. It may well be that Wittgenstein conceived coming to a correct understanding of these features as part of his fundamental aim in the Tractatus rather than a mere ancillary task, imposed by other concerns.
This is not, of course, to claim that all uses of “I” or all senses of “self” or “subject” pass muster in the Tractatus. Indeed, something very like the consensus view may well match what Wittgenstein has in mind in one particular case: “the subject as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day” (5.5421). “Subject” in this sense arises in relation to the logical analysis of belief sentences of the form “A believes that p” and “A has the thought that p.” Wittgenstein discusses such sentences in explicating 5.4, noting that “if these are considered superficially, it looks as if the proposition p stood in some kind of relation to an object A” (5.541). He continues as follows:
It is clear, however, that ‘A believes that p’, ‘A has the thought that p’, and ‘A says p’ are of the form ‘“p”’ says p’: and this does not involve a correlation of a fact with an object, but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects. (TLP 5.542)
In the remark immediately following, he makes a passing reference to “the soul” and “the subject etc”:
This shows that there is no such thing as the soul – the subject, etc – as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day.
Indeed a composite soul would no longer be a soul. (TLP 5.5421)
A way to make these two Tractatus remarks connect up in analysis of the first‐person pronoun is suggested by a remark that Wittgenstein made to G.E. Moore in April 1914:
The relation of ‘I believe p’ to ‘p’ can be compared to the relation of ‘p says p’ to ‘p’: it is just as impossible that I should be a simple as that ‘p’ should be. (NM 119)
Here, the project may well be to “denigrate” a particular use of “I” (it is eliminable in the analysis of belief sentences of the relevant form) and a particular sense of “subject” (a composite, as conceived in “superficial” psychology). And it may well be that these notions play second fiddle in the discussion: Wittgenstein only discusses this use of “I” and this sense of “subject” to preserve bipolarity, since it turns out that belief sentences of the relevant sort are not such that they can be true and can be false. But the discussion does not match the consensus view at the other two points. Explicitly possessive forms of the first person play no role, and what Wittgenstein has to say about the metaphysics and epistemology associated with the subject is not directed by or dependent on what he has to say about the first‐person pronoun. Moreover, we can set the discussion to one side as an exceptional case. As we would expect, given the subsequent explication of 5.6, what Wittgenstein says at 5.5421 leaves us with a perfectly viable subject – a single, simple, enduring but non‐encounterable self, one that can be identified as a limit of the world – to whom some uses of “I” may make perfectly ineliminable reference.
The extended discussion of “I” and the self in Wittgenstein’s work of 1929–1930 is closely related to the mode of analysis in phenomenology: the inspection of individual examples of immediate experience in the attempt to uncover the essential character that makes them what they are. The discussion starts out from the observation that there is much uncovering work to be done: “the worst philosophical errors always arise when we try to apply our ordinary – physical – language in the area of the immediately given.” Wittgenstein associates these errors with the first person:
One of the most misleading representational techniques [irreführenden Darstellungsweisen] in our language is the use of the word ‘I’, particularly when it is used in representing immediate experience, as in ‘I can see a red patch’. (PR §57)
As his “Foreword” (dated November 1930) indicates, what Wittgenstein seeks is “clarity and perspicuity” about this “technique” in order to “grasp it in its essence” (PR §7). He makes a proposal to that end:
It would be instructive to replace [ersetzen] this way of speaking by another in which immediate experience would be represented without using the personal pronoun; for then we’d be able to see that the previous representation wasn’t essential [wesentlich] to the facts. Not that the representation would be in any sense more correct [richtiger] than the old one, but it would serve to show clearly what was logically essential [das logisch Wesentliche] in the representation. (PR §7)
The last sentence is particularly worth bearing in mind. The replacement that will be proposed is methodological only, a scenario that makes something “essential” stand out in “clarity and perspicuity.” Wittgenstein’s intention is not to eliminate anything. This is in line with the proposals of intent in the “Foreword”: not to “add one construction to another, moving on and up, from one stage to the next” but to allow a study to “remain where it is” since “what it tries to grasp is always the same.”
The exercise in methodological replacement takes the following form:
We could adopt the following way of representing matters: if I, L. W., have toothache, then that is expressed by means of the proposition ‘There is toothache’. But if that is so, what we now express by the proposition ‘A has toothache’, is put as follows: ‘A is behaving as L. W. does when there is toothache’. Similarly we shall say ‘It is thinking’ and ‘A is behaving as L. W. does when it is thinking’. (You could imagine a despotic oriental state where the language is formed [so gebildet ist] with the despot as its centre and his name instead of L. W.) It’s evident that this way of speaking is equivalent [gleichwertig] to ours when it comes to questions of intelligibility and freedom from ambiguity. But it’s equally clear that this language could have anyone at all as its centre. (PR §58)
Evidently we are not to interpret the penultimate sentence in an unrestricted way, as the claim that the replacement formulae of the new language – “Despotic” – are “equivalent” to all uses of “I.” This is just as well, since Despotic offers no equivalent for sentences like “I am six feet tall” or “I am N. N.” Wittgenstein’s interest is in a particular use of the term: to report on one’s mental goings on at the time of utterance, and not even all one’s mental goings on, but just one’s “immediate experience.” Moreover, we are not to interpret the exercise as an attempt to show that even this particular use of “I” can be replaced in toto. Again, this is just as well, since the ascription of immediate experience to others on the basis of what they say would not be equivalent for users of Despotic; it would require observation of the despot’s behavior. Wittgenstein’s aim is restricted: to seeing whether, from a purely phenomenological standpoint, this particular use of “I” could be replaced. Indeed, it was perhaps misleading to have used the term “equivalent” at all, at least if this implies sameness about the way in which self‐ascriptions of immediate experience are made. For no user of “I” is obliged to make such self‐ascriptions by observation of the despot’s behavior, as is incumbent on all users of Despotic, barring the despot himself.
The relevance of the final point, that “this language [Despotic] could have anyone at all as its centre,” becomes clearer when Wittgenstein draws the moral from this exercise in methodological replacement: “Only their application really differentiates languages; but if we disregard this, all languages are equivalent.” The bridge between the two is the following:
Now, among all the languages with different people as their centres, each of which I can understand, the one with me as its centre has a privileged status. This language is particularly adequate. How am I to express that? That is, how can I rightly represent its special advantage in words? This can’t be done. For, if I do it in the language with me as its centre, then the exceptional status of the description of this language in its own terms is nothing very remarkable, and in the terms of another language my language occupies no privileged status whatever. – The privileged status lies in the application, and if I describe this application, the privileged status again doesn’t find expression, since the description depends on the language in which it’s couched. And now, which description gives just that which I have in mind depends again on that application. (PR §58)
The idea seems to be this: as regards self‐ascriptions of immediate experience “I” does not represent the self as other kinds of term do (names; pronouns). But this is not necessarily an unalterable or even very deep feature of our language. It comes about because we have chosen to have a center‐less language in which everyone is able to use the same form of expression (i.e., the type‐term “I”) to report their immediate experience. We could equally have chosen a centered‐language in which the referring task (to forestall the question “of which one are you speaking?”) is carried out by other means.
There is not so great a distance between Philosophical Remarks and the consensus view, with its four points (i)–(iv), as there is between the consensus view and the Tractatus. But still, it is the dissimilarities that rightly draw the attention.
Pace (iii), Wittgenstein is not attempting to denigrate the first‐person term by showing that it is eliminable in our language. He is using a contrast with a centered language to make salient what is the case when we use the term. Pace (ii), his points are not general but focus exclusively on the self‐ascription of immediate experience. And since analysis of the role played by the first‐person term is integral to analysis of this self‐ascription, pace (i), “I” is not playing second fiddle here. There is a hint of (iv) in these passages, since Wittgenstein does cite pretensions to “ownership” expressed in explicitly possessive forms of the first person as amongst the causes of confusion (e.g., the remarks on “I feel my pain” and on the locution “I have [toothache; a pain]” §§61–6.) But they remain hints. The discussion of these matters is hesitant and unordered, more like “notes to self.”
Perhaps the most influential of Wittgenstein’s remarks on “I” and the self are those in the so‐called “Blue Book,” where he distinguishes “two different cases in the use of the word I (or My),” calling one “the use as object” and the other “the use as subject.”
Examples of the first kind are these: ‘My arm is broken’, ‘I have grown six inches’. ‘I have a bump on my forehead’, ‘The wind blows my hair about’. Examples of the second kind are ‘I see so‐and‐so’, ‘I hear so‐and‐so’, ‘I try to lift my arm’, ‘I think it will rain’, ‘I have toothache’. One can point to the difference between these two categories by saying: The cases of the first category involve the recognition of a person, and there is in these cases the possibility of an error […] On the other hand, there is no question of recognising a person when I say I have toothache. To ask ‘are you sure that it’s you who have pains?’ would be nonsensical. Now, when in this case no error is possible, it is because the move which we might be inclined to think of as an error, a ‘bad move’, is no move of the game at all […] To say ‘I have pain’ is no more a statement about a particular person than moaning is. (BB 66–7)
It is not coincidental that this distinction divides neatly between uses of “I” for which Despotic would offer an accurate replacement (uses “as subject”) and uses for which it would not (uses “as object”). But the aim has broadened, beyond the attempt to get at the essence of statements that ascribe immediate experience. Hence there is a point to marking off and recognizing what is peculiar to statements whose purpose is not to ascribe such experience.
The argument takes a simple form: (1) there is a certain phenomenon: it would make no sense to ask certain questions; and (2) to explain this phenomenon we need to realize that there is no recognition of a person involved in uses “as subject.” This claim holds common ground with another: that such uses of “I” cannot fail to refer. Both have antecedents: there are hints in Hume that one can use “I” to express thoughts about oneself without the need to identify what is being referred to, and it is sometimes said that Kant thought these claims applied to the “I think” of transcendental apperception. But Wittgenstein’s version is notably stronger than others have tended to hold, before or after him. In his view, such uses do not even count as being about the subject of the ascribed experience, let alone as referring to him.
A notable and potentially confusing feature of Wittgenstein’s examples is that they seem immune not only to mistakes of identification (“which individual is being spoken of?”) but to mistakes of ascription (“what is being said about the individual being spoken of?”). Where I express my immediate experience in saying “I have toothache,” it seems equally nonsensical to ask “I know I feel something, but is it toothache?” as it is to ask “I know the subject of this experience has toothache, but is it I that have it?” The set of examples of uses of “I” as subject ought, presumably, to be extended to include cases in which this double immunity does not hold. But then it becomes difficult to see why the original distinction should hold at all. For if we consider first‐personal statements simply in the light of possibilities of misidentification, immunity seems to apply equally to uses “as object.” I might well be mistaken in saying “I have grown six inches,” for example (I confuse someone else’s medical report for my own), but I will not thereby have misidentified myself; I will merely have falsely ascribed certain properties to myself, properties that in truth belong to another. The same applies to the other examples, like “My arm is broken” (numbed by an accident, and seeing an obviously broken arm before me, I may think it is mine when it is in fact yours).
If, as seems to be the case, the difference that Wittgenstein spots has to do with immunity to mis‐ascription rather than to misidentification, he was wrong to think of it as marking a distinction between uses of “I.” (Wittgenstein’s italicization in the quoted passage is itself evidence of a certain confusion, as if what is distinctive about uses “as subject” were audible, something we register if we attend to what bears emphasis in spoken utterance; but sentences using I “as object” bear similar emphasis, of course.) It marks instead a distinction in what one may self‐ascribe. But the overall effect is to toughen his position. For if there is no such distinction between uses of “I,” then what holds for uses “as subject” presumably applies to all. And if there is never a possibility of misidentification for me whenever I use “I,” then perhaps “there is no question of recognising a person” whenever I do so, and hence no making “a statement about a particular person.” It is presumably because he recognized this that Wittgenstein quickly dropped all mention of a distinction in uses of “I.”
This does not mean, of course, that there is no possibility of misidentification for others when I use “I.” Indeed, it is quite clear that this possibility exists and is often realized. So there is every reason to suppose that recognition of the referent is necessary if an “I”‐containing utterance of mine is to be understood by others. Indeed, my uses of “I” fulfill the referring task for others just as any singular term does: by providing a positive answer to the question “which individual is being spoken of?” Hence, for others, my “I”‐containing statements refer; they are about me. There is no evidence that Wittgenstein ignored the significance of these points, but he does sometimes express himself in a way that may mislead: a remark of 1936 reappears with slight modification in Philosophical Investigations as “I does not name [benennt] a person” (PI §410). (Context is usually ignored when this remark is quoted; there is a “but” aligned with the “not,” and it is the former that receives the stress and to which the point tends: “‘I’ does not name a person, nor ‘here’ a place, and ‘this’ is not a name. But they are connected with names. Names are explained by means of them.”) These sayings make sense if we assume what is explicit in the “Blue Book” discussion: that he is here abstracting from what is characteristic of “I” in general, which includes its essential function as a communicative device, so as to focus simply on what is required by the individual who uses the term in expressing their thoughts to themselves.
The consensus view with its four points (i)–(iv) does not adequately represent the “Blue Book” discussion.
Pace (iii), it is not an attempt to denigrate “I,” by denying that it is a referring expression. “I” does not fulfill the referring task for the one using it, but it does so for others, and the fact that it is capable of doing so is an essential feature of the term, one that holds even when it is being used without communicative intent. Pace (i), the first person does not play second fiddle in Wittgenstein’s discussion here.
There is a better match with the other two points. In line with (ii), one reason why the first‐person term has prominence here is that Wittgenstein uses his observations concerning it to support his attendant remarks about the metaphysics and epistemology associated with persons. And in line with (iv), Wittgenstein’s argument depends on identifying where it is and is not possible to make mistakes in self‐ascription, which ensures that confusions about ownership play a key feature in the discussion. This is so, despite the fact that Wittgenstein falls into confusions of his own here (quickly and silently corrected), which led to the false distinction between uses of “I.”
The dominating feature of these passages is that they read like a kind of inner musing. The points made arise out of questions addressed to Wittgenstein by a character who appears to hold very similar views. Moreover, the responses tend to press beyond to a stronger view, but in their own questioning way, so that the underlying sense is of a testing and probing rather than a settled stating of views.
Wittgenstein begins in the familiar, limited context: where one is expressing one’s thoughts for no one’s benefit but one’s own. Here, when I imagine an object or actually see it, and wish to say to myself what distinguishes me from those who do not imagine or see it, the words “At any rate only I have got THIS” would serve no purpose:
Indeed, can’t one add: “There is here no question of a ‘seeing’ – and therefore none of a ‘having’ – nor of a subject, nor therefore of the I either”? […] If you logically exclude other people’s having something, it loses its sense to say that you have it […] In so far as it cannot belong to anyone else, it doesn’t belong to me either. (PI §398)
It seems likely that the argument here shares a similar form with the “Blue Book” remarks concerning identification and reference, but with two differences. First, Wittgenstein is interested in testing stronger conclusions. The fact that it would make no sense to ask “I know the subject of this experience has got THIS, but is it I that do so?” suggests to him not only that there is no recognition of a person here, but that the use of “I” serves no purpose, and is perhaps eliminable. Second, Wittgenstein is interested in extending the argument, from the case of identification and reference to ascription and predication. The fact that, in this context, it would equally make no sense to ask “I know I have got something, but is it THIS?” suggests to him that there is no ascription of properties here either, and that the whole notion of a “having” may serve no purpose, is perhaps eliminable. Similarly, so it appears, with the particular mode of “having,” i.e., seeing. The fact that it makes no sense to ask “I know I have got THIS, but am I seeing it?” suggests to him that “there is here no question of a ‘seeing’ either.”
Wittgenstein then moves beyond the limited context to consider the role an utterance like “I now have such‐and‐such a visual image” might play for others (PI § 402). Wittgenstein imagines an interlocutor who treats the words “I have” like “Attention please!,” as if they do not serve a referring role for others either. They are “a sign” for them, but the speaker should really express himself differently if he wants to make clear what that sign is. Its purpose is to draw the hearer’s attention to the description of the visual image, not to the speaker; hence “Attention please!” rather than “I have…” But Wittgenstein baulks at this stronger view:
When, as in this case, one disapproves of the expressions of ordinary language (which, after all, do their duty), we have got a picture in our heads which conflicts with the picture of our ordinary way of speaking. (PI §402)
This “picture” is associated with the thought that “our way of speaking does not describe the facts as they really are.” And Wittgenstein finds this unappealing, not least because he identifies it with the underlying thought that sustains disputes between idealists, solipsists, and realists (PI §402).
So the interlocutor returns to the limited case, where only the interests of the speaker are invoked, claiming that “I am in pain” does not “point to a person who is in pain, since in a certain sense I don’t know who is.” In case this seems like mere repetition of a now familiar point, Wittgenstein turns it to another use in his response. He claims that it is indeed true that no person is being pointed to or named in this case. For although “person” has a great variety of identity criteria, none of them are invoked for one’s own benefit when one says “I am in pain.” For the same reason, we should not say that one “knows who” (i.e., which person) is in pain. Perhaps for this reason – he gives no other – Wittgenstein is willing to suggest that it may not be to a person that one draws attention when one says “I am in pain” for the benefit of others. “No, I just want to draw their attention to myself” (PI § 405). Again, he suggests that it is perhaps between myself and other people that I distinguish in using the words “I am…,” rather than “the person L.W. and the person N.N.” (PI §406).
Wittgenstein does describe a peculiar context in which it might make sense to say something like “I know who (which person) is in pain; it’s me” (PI §409). If I am amongst a group of people being given electric shocks by a machine, and I know that this machine is so set that it only ever shocks one person at a time, I might observe people’s faces to see who is receiving the shock, and then say “I know who is being shocked: it is X,” and on the next occasion, “I know who is being shocked: it is Y,” and on the next, “I know who is being shocked: it is me.” But the point of course is that this is a game with a standard response‐formula that the players are to use, no matter who is being shocked. The game would break down if the machine malfunctioned so that more than one person were shocked at the same time. And it is this possibility that indicates what is peculiar and relevant about this particular context: that, when the machine is functioning properly, I do have knowledge of persons to express, knowledge I have gained in an unusual way, by being aware of the sensation of being shocked and by knowing the conditions peculiar to this game. When I say “I know who is being shocked: it is me,” what I know, without needing to observe anyone else, is that, in this particular moment, no other person in this group is being shocked.
Change the context sufficiently, therefore, and even the oddest sentences gain practical application. Attending to the changes necessary tells us about those sentences. Wittgenstein goes on to suggest we learn about different uses of the possessive pronoun in this way (PI §411). Thus he compares several uses, where one’s imaginings must become progressively energetic if one is to give them practical application: (i) “Are these books my books?” (ii) “Is this foot my foot?” (iii) “Is this body my body? (iv) “Is this sensation my sensation?” Practical applications for (i) require little or no imagination. For (ii), one might imagine that one’s foot is anaesthetized or paralyzed. For (iii), one might imagine one was pointing to a reflection in a mirror, or that what one meant was “Does my body look like that?” The final use (iv), however, goes beyond any imaginative reconstruction that Wittgenstein is willing to fabricate. The problem, as he sees it, centers on the use of “this” rather than the use of “my”:
But which sensation is this one? That is, how is one using the demonstrative pronoun here? Certainly otherwise than in, say, the first example [i.e., (i)]. Here, again, one goes astray, because one imagines that by directing one’s attention to a sensation, one is pointing at it. (PI §411)
There is little in these passages to support the consensus view and its four points (i)–(iv). Ownership and the use of “my” are salient and much of the discussion is of the first person as a linguistic device, as (iv) specifies. But this issue is not dealt with purely to satisfy the demands of another discussion, as (i) requires, and the first person is not “denigrated” as (iii) requires. Indeed, Wittgenstein goes out of his way to blunt the eliminativist tendencies of his overeager interlocutor, showing how even the oddest uses of “I” and “know” may have practical uses.
The picture that forms around the consensus view is certainly enlightening about Wittgenstein on “I” and the self, but this is so because rather than in spite of the difficulties we face in making it match. Where the picture fits, it is straightforwardly illuminating about Wittgenstein’s thought. Where it does not fit, the way in which details are thereby made salient – as exaggerated, or oversimplified, or overlooked – turns out to be at least equally enlightening.
Where the first person does become a subject for Wittgenstein, it is sometimes, but not always, because he thinks a more “exalted” view must distort whatever is then the primary object of his attention. Where he thinks such distortion does occur, it is sometimes, but not always, because he thinks mistaken views of the possessive forms of the first person are in play, cultivating a confused or unwarranted sense of “ownership.”
Mismatches can be enlightening about details as well as connections. The regular rejection of more exalted views of the first person certainly gives underlying continuity to the great surface variance in Wittgenstein’s developing views of “I” and the self. But finding such continuities is so attractive that differences may be ignored, distinctions lost. Contrary to the consensus view, there is little or no “denigrating” of the first person in his thought, whether of the reductionist or eliminativist kind, and where it may be manifest, it is applied to particular, limited uses only, and by contrast with the general case.