From the end of 1929 onwards, Wittgenstein devoted a fair number of remarks to criticizing the philosophical images that underpin the search for a particularly immediate mode of reproduction of the spatiality (and temporality) inherent in visual sensations. Just think, for example, of his critique of Mach's drawing, which is supposed to represent the blurring of figures at the edges of the visual field (monocular), or of the kaleidoscope(Guckkasten) or the projection screen, which are supposed to represent the private space of manifestation of visual images to the seeing "subject".(PB § 213; BT §§ 97-98) In all these cases, the error lies, according to Wittgenstein, in the surreptitious use of an image (a two- or three-dimensional representation) of physical origin to describe the spatiality (and temporality) proper to the "data" of visual sensation. This grammatical confusion is at the root of the erroneous philosophical assumption of the existence of an inner image, corresponding to what we would then be tempted to call the phenomenal content (spatial and temporal) of experience.
The question we'd like to ask is what exactly happened to this critique in the second half of the 1940s, when Wittgenstein introduced the concept of experiential content (Erlebnisinhalt) to make a grammatical demarcation between different types of psychological phenomena. While he clearly takes up certain aspects of this critique in his writings of 1946-7, in particular those concerning "the myth of the inner image"(BPP II, § 109), how can we explain that he also rehabilitates certain uses of the concept of content by showing not only that we have a grammatical criterion for what we want to designate by this term, but that it is also possible to describe (or represent to oneself) under the image of content (Ms 134, 84-5) of non-perceptual experiences such as pain, emotions and even certain psychological phenomena that we would not, however, be inclined to call "experiences" (such as recollection and volition)?
