Pictures of the Soul

Abstract

Most of the remarks Wittgenstein wrote between the completion of the typescript of his Philosophical Investigations (1945–1946) and his visit to America in the summer of 1949 are connected with his investigations into our psychological concepts. Obviously, the words we use in using these concepts do not form a well-circumscribed class of linguistic expressions. Nor is Wittgenstein interested in supplying criteria that might help us decide whether or not a given expression is part of our psychological terminology. He does not examine the boundaries between different disciplinary vocabularies. What he does deal with, however, are certain complicated relations between our psychological concepts and facts of nature: ‘Indeed the correspondence between our grammar and general (seldom mentioned) facts of nature does concern us’ (RPP I, §46; cf. PPF, §§365–7). But this kind of concern is not of a scientific nature: it is not directed at possible causes of our having these (rather than other) concepts, even though comparing our actual concepts with possible concepts of a different kind forms an essential part of Wittgenstein’s philosophical enterprise. The following considerations are meant to throw some light on a particular aspect of Wittgenstein’s idea of a conceptual investigation. At the same time, they are meant to illustrate two points: first, for Wittgenstein there is no such thing as a purely conceptual (or ‘grammatical’) investigation; second, there are certain questions that arise again and again in his early as well as his latest writings, and questions of picturing and representation are chief among these.

Religion teaches that the soul can exist when the body has disintegrated. Now do I understand what it teaches? — Of course I understand it — I can imagine various things in connection with it.

After all, pictures of these things have even been painted. And why should such a picture be only an imperfect rendering of the idea expressed? Why should it not do the same service as the spoken doctrine? And it is the service that counts. (PPF, §23)