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Hereuntoforthwith, "hypocracy" is the new "hypocrisy"
1. Suppose I am with Smith. He points and says to me: “What a pretty girl that is!” But I reply: “Smith, I’m not so sure that’s a girl.” How could we check this? “You ought to look for a penis.” But why would this be conclusive? The first problem: what kind of a role do propositions like “that girl is pretty” play?
2. “The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.” A proposition makes a picture of reality. It says: “Things are like this!” It points to something - “That’s what it’s like!” For the proposition to have a sense I must understand what it is pointing at. I must know what the picture is representing. A proposition on its own does not explain anything past: “It’s like this!”
3. But the game goes beyond pictures. Suppose I have a certain picture in mind when I hear the word “girl.” “A girl - they’re thus and so.” I do not know if this is the same picture that everyone else has. But I never think about this. Suppose that I were to say, without any philosophical intention: “That’s a girl.” When I tell this to someone, the thought never crosses my mind that this “girl” is only my own picture. I feel no need to add, “By ‘girl’ I mean they’re without any kind of dick, etc..” Conversation could not proceed if we prefaced every sentence with a series of definitions and axioms. (in any case this would not eliminate the problem)
4. I don’t think about a picture that I have, the picture that you have, or whatever all the pictures might share in common. I only say: “that girl,” “this girl,” etc..
5. “That’s a girl” - something is queer about this sentence. When would I say this? This moves us from one subject matter to another.
6. Suppose I’m working a problem on the blackboard. Afterwards Jones tells me, “You’ve made a mistake, look!” And it turns out that I didn’t carry a number somewhere. I wouldn’t hear this and tell him, “No, this is a question of taste.” Mathematics is not a matter of “appreciation.”
7. “You made a mistake!” This disagreement can happen because Jones knows the rules of what I am doing. He knows how it is properly done, and how you might make an error. A grade school teacher instructing children: “This is how you do mathematics.”
8. Jones tells me he’s going to work a math problem. He goes to the blackboard and begins to write poetry in blank verse. I wouldn’t say: “You’re making a mistake!“ Instead I would tell myself: “I don’t know what Jones means when he says ‘math.’” The poetry is sensible, but only in a different game than I expected.
9. “What a pretty girl that is!” “I don’t think that’s a girl.” I shouldn’t say that Smith is making an error, but that we don’t agree on what girls are.
10. Think of a scenario where everyone keeps a girl in a box. These girls may be completely different, (one is short, another tall, another has a penis, etc.) but no one is allowed to look into another’s box to see what kind of girl they have. But this comes to nothing: here I can still talk about girls with others without knowing at all what they keep in their own box. What matters is how the girl is used, and everything else comes out in the wash. You can simply drop the girls in the boxes altogether.
11. Smith says: “That girl is pretty.” What he says could be understood in two ways. First, as simply two distinct propositions “P(x) = x has no penis” and “Q(x) = x is pretty,” or second as under the argument “((P(x) → Q(x)) & P(x)) ∴ Q(x).” In the second case Q(x) fails if x has a penis (Smith only intended to call x pretty because he believed x was a “girl” in the strict sense). But I do not take back a compliment to well-cooked trout because I believed I was actually eating salmon. (I simply meant this food here)
12. A and B attend a concert.
A: “That Brahms piano piece was really beautiful.”
B: “Well, that was by Beethoven, not Brahms.”
A: “It was beautiful just the same!”
It is reasonable to say: even if x fails the criterion for lacking a penis, Smith thinks x is pretty. This sounds like an aesthetic judgment.
13. Problem: are sexual judgments aesthetic? I want to say: they are like aesthetic judgments. Then the question is what is meant by aesthetics.
14. I have a friend who is a great collector of Middle Eastern art. But I would not say that he understands it. You have to distinguish between aesthetic understanding and aesthetic enjoyment. The latter is much more queer. It does not describe a state of affairs. “How lovely!” - what does this say?
15. How does a musician judge a piece of music? They evaluate it according to a set of rules. “This modulation is too rough... the brass section is too loud here... what a stately finale!” I do not evaluate a single piece of art, but an entire tradition. Here I don’t say that a work is beautiful or ugly, only whether it agrees with the tradition. When an enthusiast judges the same piece, he may say: “It just clicks for me!” To understand what this means, we would have to describe the enthusiast’s entire biography. This is obviously impossible.
16. “What a pretty girl!” Not an empty thing to say. The girl accords with Smith’s likes. Why? Well, she just “clicks!” She “fits” for him. But say she does turn out to have a penis. Smith may say that he wouldn’t have made the exclamation had he known. But she was pretty. But her appearance counted as a valid move in Smith’s game.
17. Assume two different games with a superficially similar set of moves. I respond to the efforts of my opponent in a way appropriate to the rules I’m following - this does not mean that he is playing the same game.
18. Say Jones visits China and accidentally interprets someone’s broken furniture as art. But doesn’t it still “fit” as art?
19. I am repeatedly using these words even though in sexuality there’s really nothing which clicks or fits at all. “It fits!” is not a picture of anything.
20. How do we know: “that’s a boy, that’s a girl”? Where do we learn this? Rudimentary biology. But this has nothing to do with sexuality. I can imagine situations where typical sexual biology breaks down.
21. In the last half-century or so it has become fashionable to think of people as either “heterosexuals” (men attracted to women and women attracted to men) or “homosexuals.” (just the opposite) This gives people the impression that eventually biology and psychology are going to perfectly explain “sexual aesthetics.” This is why Freud is so misleading. But what am I doing when I try to “explain” something like this?
22. Suppose Freud explains someone’s dream. What he and they are looking for is an explanation that fits. “Well, that makes sense!” - this is no different from “how lovely”!
23. Suppose Smith gets a little drunk one night and accidentally has sexual relations with someone who has a penis. Or, suppose he abuses himself to a picture which is actually of a boy rather than a girl. Surely we can’t blame him for this, everyone will make bad choices now and then. But how do I understand what has happened?
24. I am thinking of a very “heterosexual” man. This person, aside from a perhaps unhealthy fascination with more adolescent types, has shown little interest in intercourse with other males before. Now suppose that this man has an ill-conceived liaison with what he thinks is an attractive young girl, whom he finds out later in flagrante delicto is actually an extremely feminine boy. Furthermore, let us assume the sexual encounter proceeds as planned, albeit with new methods. Does modern sexual psychology have a term for this?
25. What I am trying to do is to bring out a disguised sexual confusion as an obvious confusion.
26. Freud would say my encounter was the result of suppressed sexual tendencies. Well, perhaps. But I wouldn’t agree to this right off. I could think of other explanations.
27. “That’s a girl!” “No, she has a penis.” Is this a contradiction? What is the “penis” doing here?
28. “I don’t really know what counts as a girl anymore.” This is queer. I do know - “Girls are like this!” But despite the penis, everything is valid within the game.
29. Say A were to play Bach in a jazz style, with various kinds of improvisation - would this still be Bach? “That chord sounds queer there.” Is a queer chord similar to a penis?
30. A follows the rules in one sense and breaks them in another. I want to say: a penis is like this as well. A penis seems normal here and queer there. But the game is undisturbed.
31. “So you can have intercourse with a girl who has a penis and not be a ‘poof’? (as the English say)” I wouldn’t say this. I would ask: how are you using the word “poof”?
32. It is very easy to take a young boy for a young girl - the curves are the same in many places. What do I mean by the same? How do I judge this?
33. Say I was to place a large number of penises side by side. They will vary greatly in terms of length, color, etc.. A queer thing to say: “They must have something in common, or they wouldn’t all be penises!” You ought not say this at the start. You have to look at all of them and tell from there. You find one schlong that is such and such a length, and it will be similar to some, but there will be others of a shorter or longer length. Some schlongs will be skewed this way, some will be circumcised, some erect or flaccid, etc.. You could conclude of this collection, after comparing them all, that “a penis is like this and this,” but that doesn’t always account for all that you might find. You can always say: “There might be another penis not like these.” We should instead think of schlongs in terms of resemblances, such as those between family members. This one is short, fat, and rather pale; it relates to this other which is pale and long, which in turn relates to this third which is long and rather dark. They are all penises even though the first may have little in common with the third. Think of a spider weaving a web: its use is in the constant criss-crossing of some threads with others, even though not all the threads have to be connected. I mean the same thing with “girls and boys are the same in many places” as I do for “these are all dicks.”
34. Smith is playing poker with some friends. He believes twos are wild, and only when the game ends is he told otherwise. He plays one game in his head without realizing that he really plays a somewhat different one. Being aroused by an effeminate boy is like this.
35. “He plays one game in his head...” This is a queer thing to say. I do not play poker in my head.
36. Say I did have sex with a boy who initially thought was a girl. Say I decided, at the end of it all, that I’d had enough of girls, that I now found them too boring, and I would now privilege effeminate boys in my sexual entertainment. (this seems somewhat queer: is sexual intercourse like a motion picture?) I think I would have to get extremely drunk in order to admit this to myself. (“admit to myself...” - what kind of an action is this?)
37. Jones tells me: “You’re going to hell, Wittgenstein!!” I would say: “I’m sorry. I don’t connect any meaning to those words. (yet)” But I know what he means in one sense and not another. I don’t know what hell is. But I understand what he’s telling me.
38. I have read that hell is a place for guilty people. An English saying: “guilty as hell!” I know I’m guilty, but I don’t know about hell. So I understand Jones here but not there. A problem: what does it mean when I say, “I’m guilty”? For I’m not just saying I was responsible for x. I want to say: I feel a certain way about it.
39. “I’m guilty” - now a proposition describing responsibility. “I’m guilty” - now an expression. Suppose I hypothetically scapegoat a misjudgment I made onto Smith. Smith is now the one who thought the girl (with a penis) was pretty, rather than myself. I do not make myself any less responsible, but I no longer feel as guilty. This is useful sometimes for relieving anxiety, and in this case for pedagogy. (“relieve anxiety” - is anxiety like a weight?)
40. Say after the first incident, which was accidental, I now feel a lot of sexual desire for young effeminate boys. I know that this is a situation where I should feel very guilty. Where did I learn this? Parents, etc.: “This is how you know when you’re guilty as hell.”
Original may contain dongs.
2. “The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.” A proposition makes a picture of reality. It says: “Things are like this!” It points to something - “That’s what it’s like!” For the proposition to have a sense I must understand what it is pointing at. I must know what the picture is representing. A proposition on its own does not explain anything past: “It’s like this!”
3. But the game goes beyond pictures. Suppose I have a certain picture in mind when I hear the word “girl.” “A girl - they’re thus and so.” I do not know if this is the same picture that everyone else has. But I never think about this. Suppose that I were to say, without any philosophical intention: “That’s a girl.” When I tell this to someone, the thought never crosses my mind that this “girl” is only my own picture. I feel no need to add, “By ‘girl’ I mean they’re without any kind of dick, etc..” Conversation could not proceed if we prefaced every sentence with a series of definitions and axioms. (in any case this would not eliminate the problem)
4. I don’t think about a picture that I have, the picture that you have, or whatever all the pictures might share in common. I only say: “that girl,” “this girl,” etc..
5. “That’s a girl” - something is queer about this sentence. When would I say this? This moves us from one subject matter to another.
6. Suppose I’m working a problem on the blackboard. Afterwards Jones tells me, “You’ve made a mistake, look!” And it turns out that I didn’t carry a number somewhere. I wouldn’t hear this and tell him, “No, this is a question of taste.” Mathematics is not a matter of “appreciation.”
7. “You made a mistake!” This disagreement can happen because Jones knows the rules of what I am doing. He knows how it is properly done, and how you might make an error. A grade school teacher instructing children: “This is how you do mathematics.”
8. Jones tells me he’s going to work a math problem. He goes to the blackboard and begins to write poetry in blank verse. I wouldn’t say: “You’re making a mistake!“ Instead I would tell myself: “I don’t know what Jones means when he says ‘math.’” The poetry is sensible, but only in a different game than I expected.
9. “What a pretty girl that is!” “I don’t think that’s a girl.” I shouldn’t say that Smith is making an error, but that we don’t agree on what girls are.
10. Think of a scenario where everyone keeps a girl in a box. These girls may be completely different, (one is short, another tall, another has a penis, etc.) but no one is allowed to look into another’s box to see what kind of girl they have. But this comes to nothing: here I can still talk about girls with others without knowing at all what they keep in their own box. What matters is how the girl is used, and everything else comes out in the wash. You can simply drop the girls in the boxes altogether.
11. Smith says: “That girl is pretty.” What he says could be understood in two ways. First, as simply two distinct propositions “P(x) = x has no penis” and “Q(x) = x is pretty,” or second as under the argument “((P(x) → Q(x)) & P(x)) ∴ Q(x).” In the second case Q(x) fails if x has a penis (Smith only intended to call x pretty because he believed x was a “girl” in the strict sense). But I do not take back a compliment to well-cooked trout because I believed I was actually eating salmon. (I simply meant this food here)
12. A and B attend a concert.
A: “That Brahms piano piece was really beautiful.”
B: “Well, that was by Beethoven, not Brahms.”
A: “It was beautiful just the same!”
It is reasonable to say: even if x fails the criterion for lacking a penis, Smith thinks x is pretty. This sounds like an aesthetic judgment.
13. Problem: are sexual judgments aesthetic? I want to say: they are like aesthetic judgments. Then the question is what is meant by aesthetics.
14. I have a friend who is a great collector of Middle Eastern art. But I would not say that he understands it. You have to distinguish between aesthetic understanding and aesthetic enjoyment. The latter is much more queer. It does not describe a state of affairs. “How lovely!” - what does this say?
15. How does a musician judge a piece of music? They evaluate it according to a set of rules. “This modulation is too rough... the brass section is too loud here... what a stately finale!” I do not evaluate a single piece of art, but an entire tradition. Here I don’t say that a work is beautiful or ugly, only whether it agrees with the tradition. When an enthusiast judges the same piece, he may say: “It just clicks for me!” To understand what this means, we would have to describe the enthusiast’s entire biography. This is obviously impossible.
16. “What a pretty girl!” Not an empty thing to say. The girl accords with Smith’s likes. Why? Well, she just “clicks!” She “fits” for him. But say she does turn out to have a penis. Smith may say that he wouldn’t have made the exclamation had he known. But she was pretty. But her appearance counted as a valid move in Smith’s game.
17. Assume two different games with a superficially similar set of moves. I respond to the efforts of my opponent in a way appropriate to the rules I’m following - this does not mean that he is playing the same game.
18. Say Jones visits China and accidentally interprets someone’s broken furniture as art. But doesn’t it still “fit” as art?
19. I am repeatedly using these words even though in sexuality there’s really nothing which clicks or fits at all. “It fits!” is not a picture of anything.
20. How do we know: “that’s a boy, that’s a girl”? Where do we learn this? Rudimentary biology. But this has nothing to do with sexuality. I can imagine situations where typical sexual biology breaks down.
21. In the last half-century or so it has become fashionable to think of people as either “heterosexuals” (men attracted to women and women attracted to men) or “homosexuals.” (just the opposite) This gives people the impression that eventually biology and psychology are going to perfectly explain “sexual aesthetics.” This is why Freud is so misleading. But what am I doing when I try to “explain” something like this?
22. Suppose Freud explains someone’s dream. What he and they are looking for is an explanation that fits. “Well, that makes sense!” - this is no different from “how lovely”!
23. Suppose Smith gets a little drunk one night and accidentally has sexual relations with someone who has a penis. Or, suppose he abuses himself to a picture which is actually of a boy rather than a girl. Surely we can’t blame him for this, everyone will make bad choices now and then. But how do I understand what has happened?
24. I am thinking of a very “heterosexual” man. This person, aside from a perhaps unhealthy fascination with more adolescent types, has shown little interest in intercourse with other males before. Now suppose that this man has an ill-conceived liaison with what he thinks is an attractive young girl, whom he finds out later in flagrante delicto is actually an extremely feminine boy. Furthermore, let us assume the sexual encounter proceeds as planned, albeit with new methods. Does modern sexual psychology have a term for this?
25. What I am trying to do is to bring out a disguised sexual confusion as an obvious confusion.
26. Freud would say my encounter was the result of suppressed sexual tendencies. Well, perhaps. But I wouldn’t agree to this right off. I could think of other explanations.
27. “That’s a girl!” “No, she has a penis.” Is this a contradiction? What is the “penis” doing here?
28. “I don’t really know what counts as a girl anymore.” This is queer. I do know - “Girls are like this!” But despite the penis, everything is valid within the game.
29. Say A were to play Bach in a jazz style, with various kinds of improvisation - would this still be Bach? “That chord sounds queer there.” Is a queer chord similar to a penis?
30. A follows the rules in one sense and breaks them in another. I want to say: a penis is like this as well. A penis seems normal here and queer there. But the game is undisturbed.
31. “So you can have intercourse with a girl who has a penis and not be a ‘poof’? (as the English say)” I wouldn’t say this. I would ask: how are you using the word “poof”?
32. It is very easy to take a young boy for a young girl - the curves are the same in many places. What do I mean by the same? How do I judge this?
33. Say I was to place a large number of penises side by side. They will vary greatly in terms of length, color, etc.. A queer thing to say: “They must have something in common, or they wouldn’t all be penises!” You ought not say this at the start. You have to look at all of them and tell from there. You find one schlong that is such and such a length, and it will be similar to some, but there will be others of a shorter or longer length. Some schlongs will be skewed this way, some will be circumcised, some erect or flaccid, etc.. You could conclude of this collection, after comparing them all, that “a penis is like this and this,” but that doesn’t always account for all that you might find. You can always say: “There might be another penis not like these.” We should instead think of schlongs in terms of resemblances, such as those between family members. This one is short, fat, and rather pale; it relates to this other which is pale and long, which in turn relates to this third which is long and rather dark. They are all penises even though the first may have little in common with the third. Think of a spider weaving a web: its use is in the constant criss-crossing of some threads with others, even though not all the threads have to be connected. I mean the same thing with “girls and boys are the same in many places” as I do for “these are all dicks.”
34. Smith is playing poker with some friends. He believes twos are wild, and only when the game ends is he told otherwise. He plays one game in his head without realizing that he really plays a somewhat different one. Being aroused by an effeminate boy is like this.
35. “He plays one game in his head...” This is a queer thing to say. I do not play poker in my head.
36. Say I did have sex with a boy who initially thought was a girl. Say I decided, at the end of it all, that I’d had enough of girls, that I now found them too boring, and I would now privilege effeminate boys in my sexual entertainment. (this seems somewhat queer: is sexual intercourse like a motion picture?) I think I would have to get extremely drunk in order to admit this to myself. (“admit to myself...” - what kind of an action is this?)
37. Jones tells me: “You’re going to hell, Wittgenstein!!” I would say: “I’m sorry. I don’t connect any meaning to those words. (yet)” But I know what he means in one sense and not another. I don’t know what hell is. But I understand what he’s telling me.
38. I have read that hell is a place for guilty people. An English saying: “guilty as hell!” I know I’m guilty, but I don’t know about hell. So I understand Jones here but not there. A problem: what does it mean when I say, “I’m guilty”? For I’m not just saying I was responsible for x. I want to say: I feel a certain way about it.
39. “I’m guilty” - now a proposition describing responsibility. “I’m guilty” - now an expression. Suppose I hypothetically scapegoat a misjudgment I made onto Smith. Smith is now the one who thought the girl (with a penis) was pretty, rather than myself. I do not make myself any less responsible, but I no longer feel as guilty. This is useful sometimes for relieving anxiety, and in this case for pedagogy. (“relieve anxiety” - is anxiety like a weight?)
40. Say after the first incident, which was accidental, I now feel a lot of sexual desire for young effeminate boys. I know that this is a situation where I should feel very guilty. Where did I learn this? Parents, etc.: “This is how you know when you’re guilty as hell.”
Original may contain dongs.
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