Malcolm Budd - Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology
Chapter Three: Thought and intention
The Harmony of Thought and Reality
● Wittgenstein’s examination of the idea of an agreement between thought and reality has
two aspects:
○ thoughts, intentions, wishes, hopes, commands etc have a content that
may or may not agree with reality (the picture?)
■ e.g. - expectation that p is fulfilled by the state of affairs
that p
■ this is what W means when he says that ‘it is in language
that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact’ - the content of the
expectation and its fulfilment are made using the same language
■ a description of an expectation in terms of what is
expected is an internal description
● an external description would be an
description in terms of what might remove the expectation
● the internal description is not equivalent
to a causal hypothesis to the effect that the state of affairs referred to will
make the expectation disappear
● there must be an internal description
which specifies the content of the thought/expectation/wish etc, because
this is the internal connection between thought and reality, and without
this, there would be no sense to the idea of a thought’s content
○ in virtue of what does my expectation have that content?
Sign, Shadow, and Reality
● Something beyond ‘a mere sign’ (picture?) must be present in your mind when you form
an expectation etc
○ this is because a mere sign/picture can be interpreted in various ways
○ it is a mistake to think that sense of signs being present or going through
your mind is a necessary condition of thought content
■ no mental intermediary will stand in any closer relation
to reality than the signs themselves
■ nothing is gained by postulating a third item that
intervenes between expression of thought in signs and reality
■ no accompaniment or replacement for a sign can solve
the problem of interpretation
The Problem of Intentional Representation
● For an image in your mind to be an image of Jack it doesn’t have to be a surrogate, or
shadow, of Jack
○ it is an image of Jack because Jack is the person you understand yourself
to be imagining
○ likewise a thought can be of Jack not in virtue of the particular words,
Chapter Three: Thought and intention
The Harmony of Thought and Reality
● Wittgenstein’s examination of the idea of an agreement between thought and reality has
two aspects:
○ thoughts, intentions, wishes, hopes, commands etc have a content that
may or may not agree with reality (the picture?)
■ e.g. - expectation that p is fulfilled by the state of affairs
that p
■ this is what W means when he says that ‘it is in language
that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact’ - the content of the
expectation and its fulfilment are made using the same language
■ a description of an expectation in terms of what is
expected is an internal description
● an external description would be an
description in terms of what might remove the expectation
● the internal description is not equivalent
to a causal hypothesis to the effect that the state of affairs referred to will
make the expectation disappear
● there must be an internal description
which specifies the content of the thought/expectation/wish etc, because
this is the internal connection between thought and reality, and without
this, there would be no sense to the idea of a thought’s content
○ in virtue of what does my expectation have that content?
Sign, Shadow, and Reality
● Something beyond ‘a mere sign’ (picture?) must be present in your mind when you form
an expectation etc
○ this is because a mere sign/picture can be interpreted in various ways
○ it is a mistake to think that sense of signs being present or going through
your mind is a necessary condition of thought content
■ no mental intermediary will stand in any closer relation
to reality than the signs themselves
■ nothing is gained by postulating a third item that
intervenes between expression of thought in signs and reality
■ no accompaniment or replacement for a sign can solve
the problem of interpretation
The Problem of Intentional Representation
● For an image in your mind to be an image of Jack it doesn’t have to be a surrogate, or
shadow, of Jack
○ it is an image of Jack because Jack is the person you understand yourself
to be imagining
○ likewise a thought can be of Jack not in virtue of the particular words,
