The Inner and the Outer
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概要
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Not only in philosophy or literature but also in our daily life, we rather often encounter the idea that I can never understand other people in the sayme way as I do myself. People who hold this idea say that they know what they think and feel directly, whereas other people can only surmise it, or know it indirectly by means of words or some other physical, perceptible signs. But what is the difference between knowing something 'directly' and knowing it 'indirectly'? What is the criterion for this distinction? And above all, is it right to hold this distinction? In this paper, I would like to show that there is an intimate connection between epistemology and theory of meaning, and consider whether or not the above idea is right "The inner and the outer !"-Wittgenstein exclaims. What makes him exclaim this is one of the problems of great importance, not only in his later philosophy but through the whole history of philosophy, especially after Descartes. When we use the word 'inner' to mean sensaion, feeling, emotion, mood, etc., i.e., something mental which is not perceived or observed by other people unless the person who has got these mental things expresses them in some way, we are much inclined to say that the inner, the mental, is hidden to other people. Even soliloquy might be included in the inner, because it cannot be heard unless we give utterance to it. If we think in this way, the thought naturally leads us to the position which answers 'Yes' to the question, 'Is the inner hidden and best known to its bearer?' This may well be the answer of the people who hold the above idea, i.e., that I can never understand other people in the same way as I do myself, and what I know myself derectly, while other people know that I feel or think indirectly, through physical, perceptible signs or expressions I make. The distinction of the inner and the outer is almost the same as the distinction of the mental and the physical. We may say this distinction itself is innocent and natural (for people who reduce all of our mental activities to cerebral activities, the distinction is not innocent and natural but simply wrong, depending on our ignorance. But such reduction itself is quite dubious). But the problem occurs when someone distinguishes these notions in terms of 'direct' and 'indirect' understanding, saying that the former, the inner or the mental, is perceived directly or first-personally by its bearer and therefore known with certainty, while the latter can be perceived by another person, not directly but indirectly, and not first-personally. If we follow this line of though, only I really or driectly know what I think and feel, ie, my inner states. Another person knows it only indirectly. We have to pay heed : this idea does not deny the indirect knowledge as a kind of knowledge. Even though it is indirect, a person who perceives another person's expression knows something, though not with certainty. This comes to mean that there are two kinds of knowledge i.e., knowledge which can be known (accessible) to all human beings and knowledge which is known (accessible) only to an indiviual. This view is clearly expressed by one of the voices in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (PI). According to it, "only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it" (PI 246) : even though our normal use of the word 'know' does not prevent other people from saying that they know I am in pain, according to this voice, it is "not with the certainty with which I know it myself !" (ibid). This view is easily applied when we think of understanding the meanings of words. We can see, for example, in Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations (LI), that he takes a very similar view in developing this theory. And he is one of those who think that soliloquy is included in the inner, which is, according to them, immune from any misunderstanding. It will be helpful and illuminating to look into his theory which is based on this view, to understand why he thinks so, before we make up our mind about the idea that the 'inner' is hidden and best known to its bearer, that there are two ways of understanding according to the distinction of the inner and the outer.
- 科学基礎論学会の論文
- 1999-03-05