Remarks on the philosophy of psychology

Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology is the record of Wittgenstein's most concentrated work on the concepts of the mind. In two typescripts, prepared in 1947 and 1948 from notebooks begun in 1946, he worked through seeing and seeing-as, believing, intending, imagining, feeling and knowing what others feel. The two volumes appeared together in 1980, almost thirty years after his death.

It is a working text, not a finished book. But it is the place where his late thinking about psychology can be followed in full, rather than in the selections that readers knew before.

How it came about

After finishing the typescript of Part I of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein turned to the philosophy of psychology. He filled manuscript volumes in 1946-1948 and twice had a selection dictated into a typescript: the first, completed in 1947, became volume I; the second, from 1948, became volume II. Part of this material was later reworked into what used to be called Part II of the Philosophical Investigations, and he cut many remarks out of the first typescript for his box of slips, published as Zettel.

Volume I was edited by Elizabeth Anscombe and G.H. von Wright and translated by Anscombe. Volume II was edited by von Wright and Heikki Nyman and translated by C.G. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue. Both were published by Blackwell in 1980, and in the United States by the University of Chicago Press, bilingual, German and English. The work continues in the Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, from 1948-1951.

What it says

Wittgenstein is not doing psychology. He is mapping the grammar of psychological words: how we use "think", "believe", "see", "fear" and "mean", and how they differ from each other. Several lines run through the volumes.

• Seeing aspects. The longest discussion of the duck-rabbit and similar figures in his work. What changes when a picture "flips", if the lines stay the same? Is it seeing or interpreting? And what would it be like to be "aspect-blind"?
• First person and third person. "I am in pain" is not a report based on observation, while "he is in pain" rests on behaviour. Wittgenstein explores this asymmetry without turning it into a theory of inner objects.
• Belief and Moore's paradox. Why is it absurd to say "it is raining but I don't believe it", although it could be true? The question leads him into the logic of first-person statements.
• A survey of psychological concepts. In the second volume he sketches a classification of mental concepts: sensations, emotions, images, convictions, each with its own kind of duration, expression and verification.
• The inner and the outer. Our knowledge of others' feelings rests on "imponderable evidence": glances, tones, gestures, which cannot be reduced to rules but are not mere guesses either.

How to read it

These volumes are hard in a particular way. Single remarks are usually clear; the difficulty is that there are so many of them, often variations on the same example. Wittgenstein circles a problem, tries a formulation, rejects it, comes back to it fifty remarks later. Readers who want a thesis per page will be frustrated.

A practical approach: read the section on aspects in Philosophy of Psychology - A Fragment (the 2009 name for the former Part II of the Investigations) first, then the corresponding stretches of volume I, to see how the polished version grew out of the drafts. The Zettel selection works as a shorter sampler. The bilingual Blackwell and University of Chicago Press editions are the standard ones. French readers have Remarques sur la philosophie de la psychologie, translated by Gérard Granel; there is, as far as we know, no Dutch translation.

Why it matters

The publication in 1980 changed the picture of the late Wittgenstein. Philosophers could now see that the philosophy of psychology was not an afterthought to the Investigations but a major project of his last years, continuous with the remarks on certainty and colour. Interest in aspect-seeing, in the experience of meaning and in the classification of psychological concepts has grown since, among philosophers of mind and also in aesthetics and psychology. As the editors' arrangement shows, much of Zettel and the later Investigations material had its first home here.

Verdict

Read this if seeing-as fascinates you, or if you want to watch Wittgenstein at work rather than read his conclusions. It is the fullest text we have on his philosophy of mind. Do not start here: first read the Investigations, and use these volumes when you want to go deeper. Expect repetition, and treat it as part of the method.