Violations of Nature and Conditions of Sense

Abstract

Professor Phillips suggested that I might discuss the controversy which has surrounded Peter Winch’s lecture to the British Academy in 1982 entitled ‘Ceasing to Exist’. Stimulating replies to this by Roy Holland and the late Norman Malcolm can be found in the collection of essays dedicated to Winch entitled Value and Understanding, edited by Raimond Gaita. Since then Phillips himself has added to the discussion in his paper ‘Waiting for the Vanishing Shed’ (in Phillips 1993).

What if something really unheard-of happened? If I, say, saw houses gradually turning into steam without any obvious cause, if cattle in the fields stood on their heads and laughed and spoke comprehensible words; if trees gradually changed into men and men into trees. Now, was I right when I said before all these things happened ‘I know that that’s a house’ etc., or simply ‘that’s a house’ etc.? (Wittgenstein 1969, p. 67)