On HipBone / Sembl moves and Wittgenstein’s PI

[ by Charles Cameron — I have fond memories of the Anscombe household ]

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In http://zenpundit.com/?p=47757 I said something that seems central to the way my HipBone mode of analysis works:

In each case, too, the associative process is the same, with some item perceived in the present calling up a past memory that is related to it — in a manner that can generally be articulated and annotated.

Such is the mechanism of a typical “move” in a DoubleQuote or HipBone game.

It’s so simple that it barely needs saying — one thing reminds us of another — and yet so basic that we can really benefit from paying attention to it.

Wittgenstein did, as I just discovered:

In his Philosophical Investigations, Part II, xl, he writes:

Two uses of the word “see”.

The one: “What do you see there?”—”I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness between these two faces” — let the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.

The importance of this is the difference of category between the two ‘objects’ of sight.

The one man might make an accurate drawing of the two faces, and the other notice in the drawing the likeness which the former did not see.

I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another.

I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience “noticing an aspect”.

Its causes are of interest to psychologists

So obvious. But it takes a Wittgenstein to see it, say it.