quote · Legacy record
Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word 'pain' meant—so that he constantly called different things by that name—but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of ‘pain’—in short he uses it as we all do. Here I should like to say: a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism
Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word 'pain' meant—so that he constantly called different things by that name—but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of ‘pain’—in short he uses it as we all do. Here I should like to say: a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism
Approximate author period: c. 1920 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1920 AD · modern
author lifetime midpoint (1889–1951)
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 46829; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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