1Wolfgang Köhler’s Gestalt Psychology [Köhler 1929, henceforth GP [1929]] is best known as a critical examination of major schools of psychology (introspectionism and behaviorism) and as an introduction to the Gestaltists’ treatment of specific topics in psychology (sensory perception, behavior, association, memory, and insight). But GP [1929] also contains a number of intriguing methodological remarks that convey an outlook on theorizing more generally and elucidate how Gestalt psychology constitutes a point of view or as Wittgenstein might say, a “way of looking at things” [Wittgenstein 2009a, § 144] in psychological inquiry. A key aspect of this outlook is a commitment to faithfully depict naïve experience, including in the classification systems psychologists choose to order their subject matter, as the following remark suggests:
The ways of real life do not coincide with those of classification, and if, by abstraction, we unite the members of one class, we very probably cut the live bonds of dynamical reality at the same time. Perhaps, the most interesting forms of dynamical context occur between members of altogether different classes. [Köhler 1929, 351]
- 1 See [Schulte 1993, chap. 3] for a helpful overview and discussion of Wittgenstein’s attempts at a (...)
- 2 Wittgenstein does not say all aspect-seeing experiences can be labelled either optical or conceptu (...)
2Wittgenstein read GP [1929] while composing his writings on philosophical psychology in the 1940s and refers to Köhler frequently in these writings, especially in his discussions of seeing and seeing aspects. Even when Köhler is not mentioned directly, his presence in Wittgenstein’s thinking and writing is felt. Köhler’s comment on classification likely resonated with Wittgenstein given Wittgenstein’s ongoing interest in issues of classification and the challenges of ordering one’s subject matter in ways that reveal its character rather than distort it. Around the time that he is reading GP [1929] and discussing Köhler’s ideas in his writings and lectures, Wittgenstein experiments with developing a systematic approach to his subject matter, philosophical psychology (i.e., the phenomena and concepts of experience, thinking, noticing, recognizing, interpreting, sensing, seeing, imagining, intending, wishing, and much more). For example, he explores the possibility of constructing a classification of psychological concepts [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 836], [Wittgenstein 1980c, §§ 63, 148]1 and experiments with introducing different labels for different kinds of aspects such as “organizational” aspects [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 220], “conceptual” aspects, and “optical” or “purely optical” aspects [Wittgenstein 1980b, §§ 970, 989, 1017], [Wittgenstein 1980c, § 509], [Wittgenstein 1982, § 582].2
3While we cannot be certain that Köhler’s remark on classification directly influenced Wittgenstein’s thinking because Wittgenstein does not reference it, in this paper, I argue that reflection on Köhler’s remark serves to illuminate how Wittgenstein thought about classification and concepts in his 1940s discussions of seeing and seeing aspects. When you look at how Wittgenstein characterizes concepts and conceptual boundaries in these discussions in the light of Köhler’s remark on classification, it provides insight into what is at issue for Wittgenstein in how to characterize concepts connected to seeing and seeing aspects.
- 3 1946 letter to Rush Rhees, quoted in [McGuinness 2008, 348].
4The discussion proceeds as follows. In the next section I begin by elucidating Köhler’s remark about classification and relating it to lines of critique that occur earlier in GP [1929] to draw out its significance. I then examine Wittgenstein’s stated interest in understanding the “place” of a concept among other concepts and consider how, for Wittgenstein, such an interest differs from attempting to construct a classification of concepts. Next, I describe three ways of characterizing concepts that Wittgenstein makes use of in his 1940s discussions of seeing and seeing aspects, especially in contexts where he is addressing the temptation to deny that aspects are really seen: “modified”, “elastic”, and “between”. In the final section I explore what is at issue for Wittgenstein in these characterizations of concepts. The discussion pays special attention to how Wittgenstein’s engagements with skeptical questions concerning whether aspect-seeing is really seeing are relevant to questions concerning concepts and how to individuate them. I suggest that Wittgenstein takes seriously the skeptic’s motivations for posing such questions and that this informs how he thought about concepts and conceptual interrelations in his 1940s discussions of seeing and seeing aspects. I conclude by underscoring some of the ways Wittgenstein’s characterizations of concepts and classification in his 1940s writings can be read as his getting to “the deep aspects of the matter”3 when it comes to problems of Gestalt psychology.
5Let me once again quote in full the remark from GP [1929] that is my focus:
The ways of real life do not coincide with those of classification, and if, by abstraction, we unite the members of one class, we very probably cut the live bonds of dynamical reality at the same time. Perhaps, the most interesting forms of dynamical context occur between members of altogether different classes. [GP [1929], 351]
6Köhler’s remark echoes aspects of his critique of machine theory earlier in GP [1929] and the atomism machine theory assumes. Machine theory construes retinal stimuli as sets of independent, isolated bits. Köhler argues that the dynamic relations between retinal stimuli must be taken into account to correctly describe the character of visual experience. Machine theory cannot adequately explain a key feature of visual experience: “altogether different experiences” can correspond to a local stimulus when there has been a change in “surrounding stimulation” [GP 1929, 106]. One can make sense of differences in experience without differences in local stimulation by taking into account the wider dynamical context and interdependence between parts of the whole. In a similar spirit, in the above remark, Köhler warns that classification, uniting members of one class, can obscure dynamics. In real life, the members of one class are meaningfully related to and interact with members of altogether different classes. When one isolates the members of one class from the members of another class, one cuts the live bonds between them. The dynamical reality between members of altogether different classes is rendered static by isolating members of different classes from one another. The resulting classification is artificial in the sense that it invites one to regard classes in the taxonomy as independent from one another even though they are interdependent in the ways of real life.
7Put another way, through abstraction the classification makes the members of altogether different classes independent from one another. Earlier in GP [1929] Köhler explicitly names abstraction as a methodological practice whereby one unifies phenomena at the expense of preserving their dynamic context. Abstracting phenomena from their context and arranging them by judged similarities abstracts “from their dynamic context like dead specimens in a museum” [Köhler 1929, 64]. Köhler’s remark suggests that classification, a way of abstracting from dynamic context, can turn the classified phenomena into something dead. This renders the classified phenomena remote from the ways of real life and makes it difficult to perceive how members of different classes are actually related in experience and everyday life.
8There is a connection to be drawn between Köhler’s remark and a key methodological commitment of the Gestalists: to enable observers to perceive relatedness. Ash [1995] insightfully describes how this commitment was reflected in Gestaltists’ experimental design:
Instead of being asked to fixate on a single point or part of a stimulus array for minutes or even hours at a time, observers were allowed literally to open their eyes wider, to take in more of the field. The purpose was to enable observers to perceive the relatedness among parts or dimensions of stimulus fields, rather than creating situations in which only atomistic sensations were possible. [Ash 1995, 221]
9Köhler’s remark is an application of this methodological commitment to classification practices. A classification is a tool that orders a subject matter. A classification that orders phenomena by like parts or structures does not allow one to perceive relatedness between the different kinds of parts of the dynamic, interactive whole. An ordering of the phenomena that enables one to perceive relatedness would reveal the most interesting forms of dynamical context. That is, it would show how members of altogether different classes are related. Köhler provides an anatomical example:
It is instructive to see hundreds of hearts together in a collection; but, in operation, a heart has much more to do with a lung than with another heart. We should not learn very much about their specific cooperation in a classifying museum. [GP 1929, 351]
10Grouping by anatomy is artificial. It cuts the live bonds between hearts and other anatomical parts that are interdependent for their operation. Köhler encourages his readers to look at hearts when they are “in operation”—when they are functioning in the dynamic context of real life. Ordinarily, in real life hearts function in connection with lungs. The classification by anatomical part (i.e., grouping hearts with hearts) does not coincide with actual life. In a sense, what a heart is when considered in isolation is different from what it is when it is considered in the dynamical context of the whole circulatory system, where it interacts with other organs and anatomical structures that participate in circulatory processes of the functional whole.
11So, while Köhler’s remark on classification is made in passing, it is a provocative application of a key Gestalt methodological commitment (i.e., to enable observers to perceive relatedness). The remark invites conscientiousness about classification practices and how classifications abstract the classified phenomena from their contexts and render it difficult if not impossible to perceive the relatedness of the phenomena classified. These are key issues that exercise Wittgenstein at the time he is reading GP [1929] and thinking and writing about seeing and seeing aspects and the concepts we use to characterize these phenomena.
12As we just saw, Köhler’s remark prompts reflection on the limits of classification, especially when it comes to how classifications can impede the perception of relatedness. This theme resonates with Wittgenstein. Like Köhler, Wittgenstein seeks an approach to ordering his subject matter that enables us to see how things are connected and is interested in understanding the limits of classification in this regard. Compare two statements Wittgenstein makes about his aims and interests in his discussion of seeing aspects:
We are interested in the concept [“noticing an aspect”] and its place [Stellung] among the concepts of experience [Erfahrungsbegriffen]. [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 115]
- 4 [Cf. Wittgenstein 1967, § 464/1980c, § 311].
- 5 [Cf. Wittgenstein 1982, § 686]: not a classification of “all psychological concepts”.
(In giving all these examples, I am not aiming at some kind of completeness.4 Not a classification of psychological concepts5...). [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 202]
13These two comments taken together suggest that for Wittgenstein being interested in the concept “noticing an aspect” and its place among the concepts of experience differs from aiming at a classification of psychological concepts. Importantly, Wittgenstein here associates classifying psychological concepts with aiming at “some kind of completeness”. Aiming at completeness can lead one to falsify the subject matter:
Mere description is so difficult because one believes that one needs to fill out the facts in order to understand them. It is as if one saw a screen with scattered colour-patches, and said: the way they are here, they are unintelligible; they only make sense when one completes them into a shape.—Whereas I want to say: Here is the whole. (If you complete it, you falsify it.) [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 257; cf. § 723]
14Elsewhere Wittgenstein notes that there are “countless possible classifications” [Wittgenstein 1982, § 727], and a classification that does not attempt completeness may be better suited to a particular purpose than another one that aims at completeness. For example, a botanist may classify plants to show how diverse they are and mark fine distinctions between their many forms, but for this purpose “a system of classification” is not needed [Wittgenstein 1982, § 728]. Likewise in the case of our psychological concepts. Wittgenstein wants to showcase their rich diversity and bring into view similarities, differences, and other connections between them by juxtaposing them in various ways. For these purposes, a system of classification that pigeonholes the concepts may be useless [Wittgenstein 1982, § 122].
15For both Wittgenstein and Köhler a classification can undermine perception of relatedness, as it can cut the live bonds of dynamical reality between different categories of phenomena or concepts and thereby lead us to neglect relatedness. Severing these ties distorts the subject matter because in real life the phenomena and concepts are connected, and perceiving connections between them is central to understanding those phenomena or concepts. One way Wittgenstein goes beyond Köhler in his reflections on these issues is that he wishes to recognize a plurality of possible classifications and purposes in classifying. This leaves open the possibility that not all classifications are necessarily limited in this way, that there are ways of ordering phenomena and concepts that enable appreciation of their rich diversity and relatedness.
16One might say that Wittgenstein attempts to “find some road thru all the phenomena of ‘aspects’ ” [Wittgenstein 1988, 105], but in a way that does not isolate concepts from one another. Wittgenstein aims to faithfully depict the live bonds of dynamical reality of conceptual interrelations—concepts’ kinships and cross-cutting and overlapping similarities and differences, and we will see, in the next section, that he experimented with different ways of characterizing concepts and their boundaries to fulfill this aim in his 1940s discussions of seeing and seeing aspects.
17“I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another” [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 113]. Now the question arises whether my noticing the likeness is a case of seeing. Do I really see the likeness? In what sense, if any, have I undergone a perceptual change when I notice a previously unnoticed aspect (in this case, the likeness)?
- 6 Wittgenstein uses “between” to characterize expressions and sentences too in his 1940s writings on (...)
18Questions of the kind, “Do I really see the likeness?”, “Is ‘noticing an aspect’ ‘seeing,’ or is it ‘thinking’?”, “Is it [noticing an aspect] seeing, or isn’t it?”, embody the attempt to place “noticing an aspect” in a system of classification that tells us it is this and not that. Their very formulation encourages one to give unqualified yes or no answers to them and shape the inquiry around “either... or...” statements that screen problems and their solutions from view and neglect third possibilities [Wittgenstein 2009a, § 352], [Wittgenstein 1980a, 30]. Wittgenstein problematizes these kinds of questions in connection with aspect-seeing and resists rigid classification that fails to faithfully depict the complicated and variable character of the relevant phenomena and concepts of aspect-seeing. He cautions us not “to think in traditional psychological categories” citing as an example “dividing experience into seeing and thinking” [Wittgenstein 1982, § 542]. In his treatment of the question “Is ‘noticing an aspect’ ‘seeing,’ or is it ‘thinking’?” Wittgenstein characterizes the concept, “noticing an aspect” as “between”:6 “noticing an aspect” is “a concept that lies between that of seeing and thinking, that is, which bears a resemblance [Ähnlichkeit] to both” [Wittgenstein 1980c, § 462]. The in-betweenness of the concept is also conveyed in Wittgenstein’s response to the question “Is it [noticing an aspect] seeing, or isn’t it?” He writes:
It is seeing, insofar as...
It is seeing, only insofar as...
(That seems to me to be the solution.) [Wittgenstein1980c, § 390]
19“Between” suggests that we can cite conceptual comparisons that would speak in favor of including aspect-seeing experiences within the boundaries of the concept “seeing” and ones that would speak against such an inclusion [Wittgenstein 1982, § 637]. Aspect-seeing concepts and phenomena are in-between with respect to whether they are classifiable as seeing or not. “Noticing an aspect”, “experience of a change of aspect”, and other concepts of aspect-seeing straddle boundaries between them and other psychological concepts (e.g., “seeing”, “thinking”, “sensing”, and “imagining”). For example, in at least one appropriate sense of “what is seen” what I see has not changed when I go from (merely) seeing the two faces to seeing a likeness between them. That is, aspect-seeing allows for differences in visual experience without differences in what is seen. Like imagining, a feature of many aspect-seeing experiences is that they involve seeing something as what they are not. For example, you see a cloud as a person’s hand, although the cloud is not a hand, or you see a triangle in a triangle figure as having fallen. Unlike imagining, however, your eyes must be open to see the likeness, just as they must be open to see the two faces.
- 7 For example, to see the aspects of the duck-rabbit figure one must be “conversant with the shapes (...)
20Another way Wittgenstein characterizes some concepts in his discussions of aspect-perception experiences is as different though related concepts. Wittgenstein says that the concept of “experience” used in connection with aspect-seeing is related to but differs from the concept of “experience” that comes into play in primary experiences like that of the pain of toothache. What gives us grounds for saying this? That the “substratum” [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 222] of aspect-perception experiences is mastery of a technique:7
But how odd for this to be the logical condition of someone’s having such-and-such an experience! After all, you don’t say that one ‘has toothache’ only if one is capable of doing such-and-such.—From this it follows that we cannot be dealing with the same concept of experience here. It is a different concept, even though related. [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 223]
- 8 I say, “one might say” because Wittgenstein does not himself say here that the concept of “experie (...)
21Here we find Wittgenstein, like Köhler, reflecting on basic psychological categories such as “experience”. Wittgenstein appreciates that one may be tempted to deny that aspect-seeing is really an experience. Aspect-seeing has prerequisites, whereas the object of comparison, toothache, a paradigmatic case of experience, does not. In response to this reaction Wittgenstein suggests it makes sense to call aspect-seeing an experience, and we can come to appreciate that it does by recognizing that the concept of “experience” is, one might say,8 modified, in aspect-seeing contexts.
- 9 Another concept that Wittgenstein characterizes as modified in his 1940s writings on philosophical (...)
22In the very next passage Wittgenstein characterizes the concept “seeing” as modified9 in aspect-seeing contexts:
Only of someone who can do, has learnt, is master of, such-and such, does it make sense to say that he has had this experience.
And if this sounds silly, you need to remember that the concept of seeing is modified here. (A similar consideration is often needed to dispel a feeling of dizziness in mathematics.) [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 224]
23As with the concept of “experience” Wittgenstein anticipates and addresses a particular reaction from an interlocutor here—the temptation to deny that aspect-seeing is really seeing. He suggests that aspect-seeing’s reliance on mastery of a technique need not lead us to deny that aspect-seeing is really seeing. Instead, this requirement on aspect-seeing is an indication that the concept of “seeing” at play in aspect-seeing is modified. Aspect-seeing’s reliance on mastery of a technique is the only feature of aspect-seeing that Wittgenstein identifies as grounds for talk of a modified concept of “seeing” in the above passage. Other features of aspect-seeing might be candidates for calling the concept of “seeing” modified in the case of aspect-seeing. In a great many cases an interpretation is the primary expression of aspect-seeing experiences [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 20], [Wittgenstein 1988, 102, 332]. For example, Wittgenstein presents this figure [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 1]:
24The figure can be seen as an F or as a mirror-image of an F. If I see the mirror-image aspect, I express my experience by saying “I see it as a mirror-image of an F”. The expression of my visual experience relies on interpretation in that it draws on concepts other than those of color or shape to describe what is seen and makes use of “analogies from other domains” [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 989].
25Likewise, features of what Wittgenstein calls “aspect-blindness” might be grounds for saying the concept of “blindness” is modified in aspect-blindness. For example, one can fail to see an aspect even when viewing conditions are optimal and one has 20/20 vision. And it is possible for multiple perceivers viewing the same object at a given time under the same viewing conditions to perceive that object under different aspects at that time, or for one perceiver to notice an aspect that goes unnoticed by the other perceiver. For example, both perceivers see the two faces, but only one perceiver notices the likeness between the two faces. The perceiver who does not notice the likeness may try and fail to see the likeness even though, we may suppose, both perceivers undergo the same sensory stimulation.
26A third way Wittgenstein characterizes concepts in his 1940s writings on seeing and seeing aspects is as elastic. In the following remark Wittgenstein uses “elastic” to describe three concepts that we use in describing our visual experiences:
The concept of a representation of what is seen, like that of a copy, is very elastic [dehnbar], and so together with it is the concept of what is seen. The two are intimately connected. (Which is not to say that they are alike.). [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 147]
27The concepts “what is seen”, “copy”, and “representation of what is seen” are characterized as elastic. “Elastic” describes a concept’s boundaries; it suggests the boundaries extend and flex, expand and contract. The expanding or contracting of conceptual boundaries is a way concepts can adapt to fit different purposes and interests in different contexts of use.
- 10 The double-cross appears at [Wittgenstein 2009b, § 212].
28To illustrate the elasticity of the concept of a “copy”, suppose someone experiences a change of aspect when viewing the double-cross figure:10
29If this individual wanted to use pictures to capture the change in experience, reproducing the ambiguous double-cross figure both before and after the shift will not capture the change. But they could describe the experience of a change in aspect by saying “I see the figure now in this way” (and then a figure follows), “now in this way” (and a different figure follows). Wittgenstein tentatively suggests that each of these two figures could be called a kind of copy of the double-cross figure [Wittgenstein 1980c, §§ 379–380].
30Of course, this kind of copy might need to be supplemented by a conceptual explanation [begriffliche Erklärung]:
[I]f I see the figure of a cross + now as a cross lying down, now as standing up, now as a diagonal cross set up askew—what are the corresponding copies?
A cross lying down is one which was laid on its side but should stand up. So the copy will be something shaped like a cross, and about which we know which it is—lying down or standing up [...]. [Wittgenstein 1980c, § 381]
31A copy of the cross figure together with a conceptual explanation (e.g., “cross lying down” or “diagonal cross set up askew”) expresses the aspect seen. While this kind of copy differs from a copy that can serve as a representation of what is seen without any conceptual explanation, it nonetheless makes sense to say that copy + conceptual explanation is a copy, a representation of what is seen and that the aspect is seen given the elasticity of these concepts and their more expansive boundaries in aspect-seeing contexts. The boundaries of the concept of a “copy” expand in cases where a pictorial representation of what is seen is supplemented by a conceptual explanation and contract in cases where such a supplement is not needed to capture one’s experience.
- 11 Dinishak [2014] examines this theme and how it connects with Wittgenstein’s interests and methodol (...)
32Before exploring further what is at issue for Wittgenstein in these characterizations of concepts, a few observations about how concerns about the limits of classification are bound up with Wittgenstein’s and Köhler’s attempts to address purist tendencies are in order. We find Wittgenstein raising questions about the limits of thinking in traditional psychological categories and of classification in the context of diagnosing the sources of two related tendencies: to deny that seeing an aspect is really seeing and to pose dichotomous questions that would seem to require a rigid classification of aspect-seeing to answer them.11 A similar set of issues is front and center in GP [1929], especially in Köhler’s critique of introspectionism in chapter III, where Köhler diagnoses and addresses skepticism concerning the sensory reality of organization. Both Wittgenstein and Köhler understand this hesitation to classify the phenomena in question (seeing aspects for Wittgenstein and seeing organization for Köhler) as genuine seeing as resting on too-narrow conceptions of experience in general and seeing in particular. For example, introspectionism, according to Köhler, identifies genuine experience with “pure” sensations. The trained analytical introspectionist accesses the pure sensation by stripping away “meanings” that infiltrate the layperson’s everyday experience [GP 1929, 73]. And as we saw above, for Wittgenstein skeptical questions like “Is it really seeing?” manifest an inclination to impose a restricted conception of seeing when assessing cases of aspect-seeing for genuineness.
33This section explores what Wittgenstein’s appeals to the elasticity or in-betweenness of concepts, or ways in which concepts are modified and the contexts in which these appeals are made (e.g., while Wittgenstein is treating purist tendencies) might reveal about how Wittgenstein thought about concepts, especially concept individuation.
- 12 I borrow the phrase “plasticity of our linguistic techniques” from Pears [2007], who uses it to ca (...)
34First, while “elastic”, “between”, and “modified” are all ways of underscoring the dynamical reality of psychological concepts and the plasticity of our linguistic techniques12, they sensitize us to different facets of this dynamical reality. Elasticity is a feature of a concept’s boundaries. To call a concept “elastic” is to flag that its boundaries can change. They can expand or contract across different contexts of use, at a time and across time, depending on our interests and purposes. For example, if someone sees a dog’s movements but does not notice the joyfulness in the movements, we can say either that they saw all there was to see or that they did not. Suppose someone produces a description that captures the dog’s movements, and we say that they saw all there was to see. In this case we use a more restrictive concept of “see”, and the boundaries of our concepts “what is seen” and “representation of what is seen” are more contracted than they would be had we said that someone who sees a dog’s movement but does not recognize it as joyful does not see all there is to see. To characterize a concept as “between” other concepts suggests that that concept is not neatly classifiable as either concept it is between. While theorizing about the in-between concept there is a tendency to engage in dichotomous thinking and to want to classify the in-between concept under one of the concepts it is between, but this would be to falsify the subject matter. “Noticing an aspect” is not neatly classifiable as either “seeing” or “imagining”, for example. Talk of a concept being “modified” suggests that some differences or changes in linguistic usage warrant individuating concepts and thus result in new concepts coming into being. So, for instance, Wittgenstein describes the modified concept of “seeing” as related to but different from the concept “seeing”.
- 13 [Klagge 2011] contains a subtle and insightful discussion of Wittgenstein on conceptual change in (...)
35Second, these characterizations of concepts illustrate Wittgenstein’s interest in issues to do with the individuation of concepts when there are variations and alterations in linguistic usage and prompt several related questions on this theme: Why cast the dynamical reality of a concept in terms of the need to recognize a related but different, modified concept rather than in terms of the in-betweenness or elasticity of a single concept? When there is variation or change in linguistic usage, what is our guide to concept individuation?13 When might it make sense to individuate concepts to capture variation or change in linguistic usage?
36Wittgenstein’s exchange with an interlocutor he calls the purist [Wittgenstein 1980b, §§ 1066–1070, 1101–1102] suggests a potential motivation for sometimes preferring to talk of two different concepts of “x” rather than a single concept of “x” characterizable as elastic or in-between in the context of aspect-seeing. Wittgenstein considers why the purist is compelled to pose “But is it really seeing?” style questions in response to descriptions of what is seen like the following: “I see that the child wants to touch the dog, but doesn’t dare” [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 1066] and “I see the eye’s glance” [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 1102]. He suggests that the purist is not saying that some other word besides “seeing” would be more correct here. Instead, he is only attempting to “draw attention to a division between concepts” [Wittgenstein 1980b, § 1102]. Wittgenstein sympathizes with the purist’s call to acknowledge a division between concepts of “what is seen”. There is, after all, a common tendency, especially while theorizing, to abstract away from differences to reach generalizations. We may fail to keep in mind the variety of our concepts of “what is seen” and “description of what is seen”. Drawing attention to a division in concepts can serve as a prophylactic, to discourage the tendency to overlook diversity of use.
- 14 Wittgenstein introduces the idea of finding room for a form or concept between other forms or conc (...)
37A division in concepts might be more effective in enabling one to appreciate differences than characterizing a single concept as elastic or in-between. But is this drawing attention to a division between concepts a matter of drawing attention to an already existing division between concepts or introducing a new one? In this connection, we might distinguish at least two ways of thinking about what the philosopher’s task is when it comes to the place of a concept. One task is to discern and carefully describe a concept’s already existing place in a network of concepts. Another task is to place a concept among other concepts in a variety of different ways for a particular purpose (e.g., to find “room” [Platz] for the concept)14 or to enable the perception of relatedness between different concepts, their similarities and differences and kinships. This placing activity might involve drawing new conceptual boundaries.
38Third, considering continuities and discontinuities in how Wittgenstein thought about concepts in the Investigations and his 1940s writings on philosophical psychology, how are the labels “elastic”, “modified”, and “between” related to Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblance”? In the Investigations, “family resemblance” plays an important role in Wittgenstein’s rejection of the idea that all phenomena classified as x must have some feature(s) in common to properly be classified as x. His most famous example of a family resemblance concept is the concept of a “game”, which he also characterizes as a concept with “blurred edges” [Wittgenstein 2009a, § 71]. Games do not have one thing in common “in virtue of which we use the same word for all” [Wittgenstein 2009a, § 65]. Instead, games form a family. Like a rope made up of overlapping threads but with no single thread running the length of the whole rope, different uses of “game” are linked at most by family resemblances—networks of kinships and similarities and differences.
39Here is one connection between these ways of characterizing concepts. Like “elastic”, “modified”, and “between”, “family resemblance” and “blurred edges” speak to variation in linguistic usage and the plasticity of our linguistic techniques. They work to counteract intellectual tendencies Wittgenstein wishes to problematize by getting us to appreciate the rich diversity and plasticity of our linguistic techniques. The appeal to “family resemblance” counteracts the tendency to search for one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all. The appeal to “elastic”, “modified”, “between”, and “blurred edges” counteract the tendency to search for completeness and fixity. These searches, Wittgenstein suggests, are often misguided, threaten to falsify the phenomena and concepts we wish to faithfully depict, and are not useful for his philosophical activity. In the case of a complete classification of psychological concepts, at least, he suggests that success in the search may even be impossible.
40In a letter to Rush Rhees in 1946 Wittgenstein wrote, “I’m talking about problems of Gestalt psychology and am frightfully unclear myself and unable to get to the deep aspects of the matter” [McGuinness 2008, 348]. What are these deep aspects? Given their tentative and interrogative tone Wittgenstein’s 1940s writings on philosophical psychology do not give the impression that Wittgenstein was communicating settled answers on the questions that exercised him, including those concerning how to think about concepts and classification. But what I hope to have shown is that looking at Wittgenstein’s characterizations of key psychological concepts at play in our aspect-seeing language-games (“noticing an aspect”, “seeing an aspect”, and “experience of a change of aspect”) with Köhler’s remark on classification in mind helps illuminate some of the deep aspects of the matter and what was at issue for Wittgenstein in his characterizing various concepts as elastic, between, and modified.
41One deep aspect is how to depict a subject matter in ways that fulfill a methodological commitment that Köhler and Wittgenstein share: to enable the perception of relatedness. For Wittgenstein, the relatedness in question is the different kinds of relationships concepts can have to one another: of similarity, difference, and kinship. We see that Wittgenstein describes concepts and a concept’s boundaries in different ways (“elastic”, “modified”, “between”) to capture some of the variety of relationships psychological concepts can have to one another, and these particular relationships speak to the plasticity of our linguistic techniques.
42Another deep aspect of the matter is recognizing how classification practices can distort how things relate in real life. Köhler observes that in real life altogether different kinds of things are grouped together and function together. This contrasts with a system of classification that prioritizes grouping by having something in common and abstracts away from use and function, thereby cutting the live bonds that would reveal the dynamical reality where different kinds of things work together in real life. Wittgenstein’s reflections on the distorting effects of classification practices are many and varied. Even in the small sampling of ways of characterizing concepts discussed in this paper, we see that he finds importance in appreciating in-betweenness and its vulnerability to erasure in how we choose to order phenomena and concepts. Faithfully depicting what is in-between requires recognizing and accepting its in-betweenness, its failure to admit of rigid classification without distortion. Recognizing and accepting in-betweenness prompted Wittgenstein to explore and question the usefulness of classification when it comes to ordering psychological concepts and enabling us to perceive their in-betweenness. In working to aptly characterize the live bonds of dynamical reality of psychological concepts, Wittgenstein demonstrates how aiming at some kind of completeness in classification (e.g., fixed boundaries between categories, comprehensiveness) is ill-fitted to the subject matter. A misguided attempt at completeness could manifest not just in construing our concepts as being definite and fixed in ways that are not true to life but also in subtler pursuits of definiteness and fixity such as granting that a concept is elastic but then insisting that “it must be possible to state the elasticity” [Wittgenstein 1967, § 441] rather than accepting that it is not possible to have this kind of definiteness for this kind of concept.
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