In his philosophy of psychology, Wittgenstein gives what he calls "paraphrases" a considerable role, which he sometimes reproaches himself for not emphasizing enough (BPP I, § 853).
A paraphrase can be characterized as an expression that:
- (1) is theexplicitation of a feeling or intuition ;
- (2) is not used literally, but transposed from one form of expression to another (it is a verbal image);
- (3) is produced without rule or analogy (unlike a metaphor), and is justified only by the sense of self-evidence of those who use or understand it;
- (4) is the most direct and immediate description of what it's about. Typical 1st-person expressions(Äusserungen) are paraphrases of moods such as depression ("I feel a weight on my shoulders") or panic ("I have a feeling of imminent catastrophe"). But in many respects, expressions of the experience of the appearance of a new aspect ("now I see a rabbit"), or those of the experience of meaning ("the word 'si' has a different physiognomy for me now that I hear it as the name of a musical note and no longer as a subordinating conjunction") are also paraphrased. Their phenomenology cannot ignore these paraphrased statements, and indeed must rely on them, lest it distort the description of these experiences. But also paraphrased, in Wittgenstein's sense, are many of our 3rd-person descriptions and characterizations of our lived experiences, whether expressed in ordinary language ("an aspect lights up briefly and then goes out", "a word can be experienced as the image of its meaning") or as theoretical assertions ("every sensation has a phenomenal content specific to it", "in the experience of a change of aspect, it is the whole organization of the perceived that is suddenly modified" [Köhler], "there are feelings of tendency" [James]). Philosophers and psychologists frequently make the mistake of thinking they're producing a theory, when in fact they're merely providing a paraphrase. And "a paraphrase is not an explanation" (Ms, 135, 50). But, because of the attention they force us to pay to our forms of expression, the study of ordinary or learned paraphrases (whether appropriate or misleading) and the conscious invention of new paraphrases are indispensable tools of grammatical clarification: they help us to avoid "predicating of the thing what resides in the mode of representation" (PU, § 104). In seeking to construct a synoptic vision of the concept of paraphrase, we shall endeavour to see more clearly two delicate questions:
1. The question of the relationship between expression and image. What is the grammar of expressive images, i.e. images that are the expression of what they describe?
2. The question of the relationship between phenomenology and grammar. How do phenomenological description and grammatical description fit together in Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology?
