Cogency v2 n2

COGENCY Vol. 2, N0. 2, Spring 2010
that, etc.) is a motivating factor for many of the theses of the Notebooks and
Philosophical Investigations. 3 I now turn to Wittgenstein’s remarks in Philosophical
Investigations.
3. Pictures and Picturing in Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical Investigations (hereafter PI, for brevity’s sake) is riddled with
references to pictures and picturing, but there are four portions of this work
in particular that are of special importance for the topic of visual argumentation.
These are passages 139b-140, 422-427, 300-302 and all of Part II,
section xi. Because of their individual importance I will treat each of these
sections individually. I will treat them in this order for the sake of clarity of
exposition.
3.1. PI 139b-140
PI 139b-140, in many ways, could be seen as starting where Wittgenstein’s
remarks in the Blue and Brown Books leave off:
139(b). “I see a picture; it represents an old man walking up a steep path
leaning on a stick.–How? Might it not have looked just the same if he
had been sliding downhill in that position? Perhaps a Martian might describe
the picture so. I do not need to explain why we do not describe it so.”
140. Then what sort of mistake did I make; was it what we should like to
express by saying: I thought the picture forced a particular use on me?
How could I think that? What did I think? Is there such a thing as a
picture, or something like a picture, that forces a particular application
on us; so that my mistake lie in confusing one picture with another?–For
we might also be inclined to express ourselves like this: we are at most
under a psychological, not a logical, compulsion. [...] [T]here are other
processes, besides the one we originally thought of, which we should be
3
I owe this point to the late Barbara Humphries.
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