Human understanding

Eddy M. Zemach

pp. 31-48

in: Synthese 83 (1), 1990.

Abstract

Contemporary thinkers either hold that meanings cannot be mental states, or that they are patterns of brain functions. But patterns of social, or brain, interactions cannot be that which we understand. Wittgenstein had another answer (not the one attributed to him by writers who ignore his work in psychology): understanding, he said, is seeing an item as embodying a type Q, thus constraining what items will be seen as “the same”. Those who cannot see things under an aspect are meaning-blind.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig