Our Knowledge of Other People

Abstract

In ‘A Feature of Wittgenstein’s Technique’¹Professor Wisdom speaks of the ‘mixed’ character of philosophical questions. He takes as an example the question of whether one can really know the mind of another person and the negative, sceptical answer that one cannot. The negative words are sometimes meant to convey something which could not be otherwise, though this may not be clear to the person using them. Furthermore the truth in what they convey may be intertwined with a falsehood which gives what they say an alarming aspect. Wisdom has done a great deal to help us disentagle what is true from what is false in this use of the words in question. ² In the above inaugural address he points out another use of these inaugural address he points out another what migth have been’. He express a ‘regret for what migth have been’. He mentions Proust who speaks of people as ‘a shadow which we can never succed in penetrating’, one ‘ behind which we can alternatively imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love’. He also mentions Matthew Arnold who in poem wrote that ’we mortal millions live alone’.