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Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Graeme Wilson
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Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in the areas of logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

For further biographical details see the Ludwig Wittgenstein Wikipedia entry.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Concept of the Will

From The Philosophical Investigations §611-630:

611. “Willing too is merely an experience,” one would like to say (the ‘will’ too only ‘idea’). It comes when it comes, and I cannot bring it about.

Not bring it about?—Like what? What can I bring about, then? What am I comparing willing with when I say this?

612. I should not say of the movement of my arm, for example;, it comes when it comes, etc. . And this is the region in which we say significantly that a thing doesn’t simply happen to us, but that we do it. “I don’t need to wait for my arm to go up—I can raise it.” And here I am making a contrast between the movement of my arm and, say, the fact that the violent thudding of my heart will subside.

613. In the sense in which I can ever bring anything about (such as stomach-ache through over-eating), I can also bring about an act of willing, In this sense I bring about the act of willing to swirn by jumping into the water. Doubtless I was trying to say: I can’t will willing; that is, it makes no sense to speak of willing willing. “Willing” is not the name of an action; and so not the name of any voluntary action either. And my use of a wrong expression came from our wanting to think of willing as an immediate non-causal bringing about. A misleading analogy lies at the root of this idea; the causal nexus seems to be established by a mechanism connecting two parts of a machine. The connexion may be broken if the mechanism is disturbed. (We think only of the-disturbances to which a mechanism is normally subject, not, say, of cog-wheels suddenly going soft, or passing through one another, and so on.)

614. When I raise my arm ‘voluntarily’ I do not use any instrument to bring the movement about. My wish is not such an instrument either.

615. “Willing, if it is not to be a sort of wishing, must be the action itself. It cannot be allowed to stop anywhere short of the action.” If it is the action, then it is so in the ordinary sense of the word; so it is speaking, writing, walking, lifting a thing, imagining something. But it is also trying, attempting, making an effort,—to speak, to write, to lift a thing, to imagine something etc.

616. When I raise my arm, I have not wished it might go up. The voluntary action excludes this wish. It is indeed possible to say: “I hope I shall draw the circle faultlessly”. And that is to express a wish that one’s hand should move in such-and-such a way.

617. If we cross our fingers in a certain special way we are sometimes unable to move a particular finger when someone tells us to do so, if he only points to the finger—merely shews it to the eye. If on the other hand he touches it, we can move it. One would like to describe this experience as follows: we are unable to will to move the finger. The case is quite different from that in which we are not able to move the finger because someone is, say, holding it. One now feels inclined to describe the former case by saying: one can’t find any point of application for the will till the finger is touched. Only when one feels the ringer can the will know where it is to catch hold.—But this kind of expression is misleading. One would like to say: “How am I to know where I am to catch hold with the will, if feeling does not shew the place?” But then how is it known to what point I am to direct the will when the feeling is there?

That in this case the finger is as it were paralysed until we feel a touch on it is shewn by experience; it could not have been seen a priori.

618. One imagines the willing subject here as something without any mass (without any inertia); as a motor which has no inertia in itself to overcome. And so it is only mover, not moved. That is: One can say “I will, but my body does not obey me”—but not: “My will does not obey me.” (Augustine.)

But in the sense in which I cannot fail to will, I cannot try to will either.

619. And one might say: “I can always will only inasmuch as I can never try to will.”

620. Doing itself seems not to have any volume of experience. It seems like an extensionless point, the point of a needle. This point seems to be the real agent. And the phenomenal happenings only to be consequences of this acting. “I do . . .” seems to have a definite sense, separate from all experience.

621. Let us not forget this: when ‘I raise my arm’, my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?
((Are the kinaesthetic sensations my willing?))

622. When I raise my arm I do not usually try to raise it.

623. “At all costs I will get to that house.”—But if there is no difficulty about it—can I try at all costs to get to the house?

624. In the laboratory, when subjected to an electric current, for example, someone says with his eyes shut “I am moving my arm up and down”—though his arm is not moving. “So,” we say, “he has the special feeling of making that movement.”—Move your arm to and fro with your eyes shut. And now try, while you do so, to tell yourself that your arm is staying still and that you are only having certain queer feelings in your muscles and joints!

625. “How do you know that you have raised your arm?”—”I feel it.” So what you recognize is the feeling? And are you certain that you recognize it right?—You are certain that you have raised your arm; isn’t this the criterion, the- measure, of the recognition?

626. “When I touch this object with a stick I have the sensation of touching in the tip of the stick, not in the hand that holds it.” When someone says “The pain isn’t here in my hand, but in my wrist”, this has the consequence that the doctor examines the wrist. But what difference does it make if I say that I feel the hardness of the object in the tip of the stick or in my hand? Does what I say mean “It is as if I had nerve-endings in the tip of the stick?” In what sense is it like that?—Well, I am a any rate inclined to say “I feel the hardness etc. in the tip of the stick.” What goes with this is that when I touch the object I look not at my hand but at the tip of the stick; that I describe what I feel by saying “I feel something hard and round there”—not “I feel a pressure against the tips of my thumb, middle finger, and index finger . . . .” If, for example, someone asks me “What are you now feeling in the fingers that hold the probe?” I might reply: “I don’t know——I feel something hard and rough over there.”

627. Examine the following description of a voluntary action: “I form the decision to pull the bell at 5 o’clock, and when it strikes 5, my arm makes this movement.”—Is that the correct description, and not this one: ” . . . . . and when it strikes 5, I raise my arm”?——One would like to supplement the first description: “and see my arm goes up when it strikes 5.” And this “and see” is precisely what doesn’t belong here. I do not say “See, my arm is going up” when I raise it.

628. So one might say: voluntary movement is marked by the absence of surprise. And now I do not mean you to ask “But whyisn’t one surprised here?”

629. When people talk about the possibility of foreknowledge of the future they always forget the fact of the prediction of one’s own voluntary movements.

630. Examine these two language-games:

(a) Someone gives someone, else the order to make particular movements with his arm, or to assume particular bodily positions (gymnastics instructor and pupil). And here is a variation of this language-game: the pupil gives himself orders and then carries them out.

(b) Someone observes certain regular processes—for example, the reactions of different metals to acids—and thereupon makes predictions about the reactions that will occur in certain particular cases.

There is an evident kinship between these two language-games, and also a fundamental difference. In both one might call the spoken words “predictions”. But compare the training which leads to the first technique with the training for the second one.

Selected Works

  • Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung, Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 14 (1921)
    • Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by C.K. Ogden (1922)
  • Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953)
    • Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (1953)
  • Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik, ed. by G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G.E.M. Anscombe (1956) (a selection from his writings on the philosophy of logic and mathematics between 1937 and 1944)
    • Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, rev. ed. (1978)
  • Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright (1980)
    • Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vols. 1 and 2, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright (1980) (a selection of which makes up ‘Zettel’)
  • The Blue and Brown Books (1958) (Notes dictated in English to Cambridge students in 1933–35)
  • Philosophische Bemerkungen, ed. by Rush Rhees (1964)
    • Philosophical Remarks (1975)
    • Philosophical Grammar (1978)
  • Bemerkungen über die Farben, ed. by G.E.M. Anscombe (1977)
    • Remarks on Colour ISBN 0520037278. Remarks on Goethe’s Theory of Colours.
  • On Certainty — A collection of aphorisms discussing the relation between knowledge and certainty, extremely influential in the philosophy of action.
  • Culture and Value — A collection of personal remarks about various cultural issues, such as religion and music, as well as critique of Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy.
  • Zettel, another collection of Wittgenstein’s thoughts in fragmentary/”diary entry” format as with On Certainty and Culture and Value.

Works online

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