PDS 1                                                        06.08(21)
1.1.1	Few people seriously doubt the things and events apprehended in their everyday encounters with the world are 'there', or  that they exist independently of the knowledge and experience gained of them. [02a Philwk doc]
1.1.2	Yet every such encounter involves, in some sense, a denial of this independence. Even the most elementary characteristics of the things experienced are determined by factors inherent in or associated with the circumstances in which they occur and are experienced. In the light of our notion that they have an independent existence this is puzzling. [Ibid.]
1.1.3	From a philosophical point of view the inconstancy and mutability of the world as it is experienced is considered undesirable in something which is supposed to be independent and autonomous. It seems to undermine our claim to be able to acquire a knowledge of events beyond our experiences. [Ibid.]
1.1.4	There must be a doubt whether entities can be said to exist independently when they cannot pass from one mind to another without changing confusingly and even radically; and whether they can be said to exist autonomously when their attributes are determined by the circumstances in which they happen to be apprehended. [Ibid.]
1.1.5	Establishing that entities and events have the independence and autonomy ordinarily assigned them would seem to involve reconciling the claim to this status with the equally valid (but apparently conflicting) claims of determinism. [-] 
1.2.1	'Seeing things in a context' involves seeing them in circumstances which could include light, distance, motion, space, time, other things, ideas, feelings, memories, etc. [2/87]
1.2.2	On a sunny day the foliage is brilliant and luminous with colour; on a cloudy day it seems to be composed of monotones. But we see colour or the lack of it as belonging to things. After all, if these qualities don't belong to things where do they belong? Ayer cites the example of a coin which appears to be round and elliptical; both appearances seem to belong to the coin. [2/115]
1.2.3	It wouldn't make sense to suppose the appearance of something could remain unaltered by distance or other factors. Features which are visible near at hand or from a certain position may not be apparent or may look different at a distance or from a different position. Are the qualities or features there when we don't see them? Are they attributed to the object, when in fact they are only attributable to the object in the context of its relation to other entities? Does an object own all the qualities assigned to it? Or none of them? [2/87]
1.2.4	We have to be careful of nonsense here; nobody who saw an elephant at a distance would make the mistake of thinking it a small animal - unless they had no concept of distance or perspective. But it is hard to think of the stars as anything but twinkling pin-points of light; and difficult to think of the moon as a vast body in space, or of a building or even a moving vehicle as a heavy object. [2/87]
1.3.1	Why should proximity be a more reliable guide to the size of a thing than distance; why should the difference distance makes be regarded as not attributable to the object, if no comparable allowance is made for the effects of proximity? And if proximity is a good thing, how much of it is good; eg would a millimetre from the surface be good? [2/99]
1.3.2	In some of these instances, size and distance are related to functional factors; for example, size may be related to our ability to cope with a thing, the distance at which we react to it or manipulate it, the distance at which it is normally seen or at which it is fixed, etc. [2/99]
1.3.3	The application of the factors associated with determinism  is not governed by general principles or the uniformities of logic, but by the variety and complexity of the sequences in which entities are encountered, or concepts are arranged. It seems to be easy to overlook this. [-]
1.4.1	The way x appears is related to my seeing it in circumstances which may never exactly be repeated anywhere else. (Although there is a logic to these differences; and if there were not we would usually sense something wrong.) [2/115]
1.4.2	The problem is to square the apparent independence of things or qualities with the fact that they are tied to the specific contexts or circumstances which determine them. They are both distinct from and related to these determinants. 2/115]
1.4.3	'Seeing' is not the passive reception of an impression in a mind void of intent; something always determines what we see or understand. Yet what we see seems to have nothing to do with us, our ideas or circumstances. [001 Phn ANNEX, p.6]
1.4.4	The ambivalence of this process of engagement and disengagement is a source of perplexity, since it both influences the subject and denies it has an influence. [Ibid.]
1.5.1	When people disagree about something seen, the disagreement doesn't arise because individuals hold different views. The views have to become confounded to produce a disagreement. [2/88]
1.5.2	If you say you thought the meal was good and I disagree and say it was bad, it isn't simply that I don't have access to your experience and you don't have access to mine. We seem to have communicated. I understand what you mean by 'good', but fail to consider the consequence of comparing your use of the word to my experience because I assume we're talking about something beyond the experience. [02 Phn NTE; p.4]
1.5.3	The fact that different points of view result in different perceptions need not itself be a problem. For example, when we're sitting opposite each other, the objects on my left should be positioned on your right. Problems arise when we attempt to isolate the objects of the perceptions from their determining factors or contexts and reconcile them with each other - when we take them out of context, or fail to see them in context. Don't we do this because they seem to us independent of (dissociated from) their contexts? That is, they seem to be 'there' in some peculiar way that denies the tangible fact of the physical and mental relations that link us to them... [2/88]
1.5.4	Imagine a dispute between two people of different proportions about whether a certain chair is comfortable or not. Each is convinced he or she is talking about a quality of the chair. (Nobody would challenge the claim to feel comfortable.) The dispute might turn on the depth of the seat or its height from the floor - which most people would see as features of the chair. In relation to a sitter the properties are not constant; yet though determined by an individual's physical characteristics, they may be assigned to the chair. [2/130]
1.5.5	If there is no such thing as a standard size and type of adult, perhaps the world which confronts people is infinitely variable, its characteristics infinitely elastic. Perhaps, to borrow a figure from the physicists, instead of there being a single, determinate chair, there is an amorphous wave of possible chair, which collapses into reality only when some specific determinant (person) sits on it. [2/130]
1.6.1	People quite often disagree about something seen differently  (context-bound), which yet seems to occupy a common space before their senses, or the mental equivalent of this common space before their minds. (Solipsism effectively denies the existence of such spaces, perhaps even between states of selfhood.) [2/88]
1.6.2	An infant and its parent are confronted by a dog; the infant sees the dog as large and threatening - the parent sees it as a boisterous household pet. Qualities determined by specific relations are being assigned to the dog. But do they belong to it? [2/90]
1.6.3	Don't we want to be able to say the dog and its attributes exist independently of the individual's experiences of them?  [02a Philwk doc]
1.6.4	In fact this very assumption underlies the failure of parent and child to understand each other. The child's fear and the equanimity of the parent correspond to something they take to have an objective existence. They are reacting to a dog, not to the experience of it. Yet the reality for each seems to be different enough to be irreconcilable in important respects. Can it be said to exist independently of them? [Ibid]
1.6.5	The problem with attempting to show that the same dog can be experienced by each is that what is actually experienced is determined by the specific relation to either the parent or the child. The problem would be resolved if we could resort to a dog independent of either experience - as for example in the common sense view that both experiences share the same dog. But unless there is evidence other than that supplied by experience that the dog exists, it seems we cannot do this.  [Ibid]
1.6.6	From a common sense point of view, it is easy to see why an animal which poses no threat to an adult might be a danger  to a small child. The problem arises here because qualities belonging to each of these relations are assigned to the dog. Relatively it can be large and threatening or small and harmless; but considered as an autonomous entity, it can't in itself be large and small. [Ibid]
1.7.1	'How does the child's weakness become the animal's strength; how does the adult's strength become the animal's weakness?'  What picture of relation enables me to ask such a question? [2/93]
1.7.2	Wouldn't it be absurd to be in the position of having to say 'the dog is only this size when x is in proximity to it'? As though its size were derived from the person confronting it, rather than a property of the animal itself... [2/95]
1.7.3	While it is in order for a person's nationality or height to affect the way things are seen, or the significance of their properties, it would be a distortion to suggest such factors in some way become part of an entity. They determine its qualities. [2/86]
1.7.4	But what does that mean? Does the adult (or the child) bring out qualities already there in the dog? Isn't it a commonly held view that knowledge is the discovery of what is already there? The ground for holding this view seems to be that the elements of the relation existed prior to the relation itself. [s2/90]
1.7.5	Both this and the alternative notion that the qualities are  imposed or introduced by the context are presumably attempts to accommodate the conclusion that since a relation involves discrete entities the qualities emerging must have originated in one or other party to the relation. [001 Phn ANNEX, p.4]
1.7.6	The dog's potency belongs to the dog relative to the child. Was the dog harmful to the child before this encounter? Does the quality cease when the proximity ceases? The quality did  not depend on the proximity, but on the relation. Distance does not alter the relation. [001 Phn ANNEX, p.4]
1.8.1	The dog is dangerous to the child - although it was harmless to the adult. So how can it be said (with sense) that the dog stays as it was? It doesn't stay harmless, and that's how it was!  [2/92].
1.8.2	Isn't the dog dangerous to the child because it remains the size it was relative to the adult? [2/92]
1.8.3	Doesn't the size of the dog change as we endorse different contexts in relation to it? [2/90]
1.8.4	The size of the dog doesn't change relative to the size of  other things around it. (They may be the context endorsed!) [2/92]
1.8.5	'This bottle is smaller than that one, but larger than this' - nobody would take that for a description of a change in a physical object's size. [2/98]
1.8.6	An observer who could see the relative size of the child and the dog might (depending on the circumstances) say the dog appeared large relative to the child or the child appeared small relative to the dog - where it served some purpose to make one or other observation. [001 Phn.ANNEX p.4]

1.8.7	Qualities are as constant as relations - and as predictable or unpredictable. What remains are the underlying principles governing relations. [s2/95]
1.9.1	An idea or a thing seen in a different context is changed to the degree appropriate to the difference made by the context - and the change should be consistent with the difference of context.  The difference between the child's and the adult's view of the dog corresponds to the difference between the determinants. When account is taken of these, there's no  conflict. [2/92 and 2/98] 
1.9.2 	A quality generated by a specific relation is assigned to  the dog; differing relations produce differing qualities.  The qualities can be reconciled by taking into account the relations that produced them; they don't belong to the dog in itself, but to the dog in the relation. It makes no sense to ask what the dog is 'really like', since properties are not discovered otherwise than by the relations which determine them. (But why does it seem to us that there might be an property NOT so determined?) [2/117]
1.9.3	We fail to make sense of those differences when we take the  perception of the dog or its qualities out of the context in which they are realised. It looks then as though the animal might be any size or possess any qualities in infinite combination; there appear to be a multitude of objective states which correlate to no specific contexts. [2/95]
1.9.4	We take the qualities out of the contexts in which they are realised because they seem to be independent of the factors employed to determine them. Our grasp of an entity or event seems to be unmediated by any context or set of determining circumstances. [-]
1.9.5	We need to take things out of context, but we have to take account of the context. This is one of the challenges of sound thinking, isn't it? [2/101]
1.10.1	Endorsing contexts (in relation to things) yields a sense of change. And endorsing contexts is 'seeing'. That's what we mean by 'a way of seeing'. [2/90]
1.10.2	Contextual determinism (along with the shift of aspect dealt with in notes 2.12.1-13) is the transformative principle in relation. [2/165] 
1.10.3	Changes or differences in the way a thing looks in various circumstances which may be regarded as mysterious, inexplicable or incomprehensible in philosophical contexts, wouldn't strike people as anything of the sort in ordinary contexts. [2/209:8]
1.10.4	Consider the philosopher's penny seen from different points of view. [2/67]
1.10.5	Applying logic to the product of an ordinary (contextually-determined) observation seems to have generated a problem of perception; the coin can't be elliptical and round. [2/221:4]
1.10.6	Logic takes no account of the role of contextual determinants in this situation - isolating the product of the determinants as a fact, without considering how or why it comes to be the way it is. [2/67, 2/221:5]
1.10.7	The perspectives logic introduces are absolute.  Either a thing is the same or it isn't; either we see the same thing or we don't. [2/67]
1.10.8	Ordinary language contexts aren't meant to function in that way; they shift the aspect seen by invoking a different (but related) context or perspective. [2/79]
1.10.9	Language aims to make sense of the differences which are the differences of relation. [2/101]
1.10.10	To say everything is context-bound may not be misleading in itself; but the view that each context-bound encounter with the world is unique and must be judged accordingly misrepresents the way we usually deal with reality. [2/142]
1.10.11	A good part of the skill of knowing consists perhaps of being able to anticipate correctly the nature of the changes to be expected in the object of knowledge encountered in any given set of circumstances. It is equally useful in anticipating the likelihood of errors and misunderstandings. [2/156]
1.11.1	I watch a group of people performing an unfamiliar ritual and  exclaim, 'That's strange!'. A native of the culture, hearing me, says no - it's quite a common custom. The pair of us are convinced we are observing an objective event; yet apparently it is a different event for each of us. The aspect changes. [1/21]
1.11.2	'That's strange!'. Isn't it the case that this 'strangeness', though contextually-determined, depends on something beyond the knower's context for its sense? [1/61]
1.11.3	Imagine we deliberately interpret this form of activity, intended to be part of a solemn ritual, in a way which makes it appear ridiculous... [1/171]
1.11.4	When we assign the activity to a context in which it appears absurd, isn't the quality of absurdity seen in the activity  itself? Can any tangible evidence be offered of the absurdity which isn't an inseparable aspect of the performance of the ritual? [1/171]
1.11.5	How does absurdity get into the solemn ritual? (How does the aspect change?) [1/171]
1.11.6	Does it make sense to assign what is mocked to the original setting - considering the investment of ridicule? Well, though they aren't in touch, it bears both aspects... [-]
1.11.7	In fact isn't the subject of the ridicule still determined by the original setting when seen thus? Could it even be absurd without the significance this setting assigns to it? (See eg Dryden's mockery of transubstantiation in Catholic ritual in 'Absalom and Achitophel'.) [s1/171] 
1.11.8	What is seen in the determining context forms an aspect (though only provisionally here) of what is beyond it. [-]
1.11.9	What the context 'pictures' seems to be (and usually is) beyond the context. The impression that the picture makes no difference to what is pictured (that it merely reflects an aspect of what is 'there') is an illusion - though it might be difficult to point to anything in the picture as evidence of the difference it makes. [2/96:1]
1.12.1	'Knowledge is context-bound'. But does that tell us anything?  So too, are ignorance and error. Contexts transform whatever is placed in them. [2/55]  
1.12.2	What seems to trouble us is the suggestion that the context determines what is seen or understood, what things look like, what they mean or the significance attached to them. We want something beyond this process that gives sense to the view we discover what is the case. [s2/52]
1.12.3	I mistake the image of a ballpoint pen printed on a magazine page for a ballpoint pen, and reach to pick it up. Seen as an object which can be picked up, it isn't real; seen as the printed image of a ballpoint it is real. [1/70]
1.12.4	Do I determine its unreality by trying to pick it up? Isn't its unreality a consequence of applying the wrong context? The interpretation makes it seem unreal because it is at variance with the nature of the object... [2/16]
1.12.5	The context in which an entity is seen determines what it is seen as, not what it is. The 'ballpoint' might be seen by more than one observer - that wouldn't make it real. [2/55]
1.12.6	The fact that a thing may not be what it is seen as indicates other sources of determinacy are operating on it. [2/55]
1.12.7	The context of interpretation determines what is or isn't seen. But the agent has no power - other than that derived from applying contexts and changing relationships - to make a difference to things. Nor a power to change the determining effect of the contexts applied, other than by introducing further contexts to modify these relationships. The concepts used may resist the intention underlying expression because they retain an independence of any particular context employed to determine their meaning. [1/70]
1.12.9	Things don't offer a meaning or significance, they have to be seen as having one in the light of a perspective that relates them to other things. This might mean nothing more than that the piece of the world we relate something to determines what we see - we may not necessarily acquire a knowledge of anything. We can relate things in ways which render them  absurd, false, trivial or pointless. [s1/70]
1.12.9	The contexts I bring to bear on a subject make a difference to what I see. It is drawn into the orbit of my ideas or perceptions, the aspect shifts and the subject seems to become inseparable from the way I see it. Still what is seen and the aspects of it that concern me have their independence within the contexts I bring to bear. So do the contexts I bring to bear; I don't invent them, though I may misapply them.  [1/84]
1.13.1	I run my hand over the surface of a piece of wood - perhaps because it gives me a feeling of pleasure, or maybe to try to judge whether it is smooth enough to varnish. The quality I experience (smoothness) is constituted by the relationship between the surface of the wood and my senses - not the wood itself. Yet it doesn't seem so to me... [1/118]
1.13.2	The experience I have may or may not reflect the quality  of the surface. But it would seem to me, either way, it was the wood that was smooth. 1/118]
1.13.3	I have a notion in my head that 'The exam is at 9.30'. My being certain of it means that I shall miss the exam (it begins at 9.00) because the idea I have is 'of' or 'about' something - ie it relates to a subject or a state of affairs independent of my notion. Again, what I know or believe I know seems not be mediated by my ideas, but to stand beyond them. Doesn't the sense of my 'knowing' something get confounded with this impression that what I know or experience is dissociated from my knowing or experiencing it? [12 Phn.NTE, p.28].
1.13.4	Why does claiming to know something seem to amount to a claim to be able to transcend the workings of a context and arrive magically at a certainty about what lies beyond? Why does what I claim to know (that this is smooth...) seem to be beyond the impression which yields this information? [2/169]
1.13.5	Say we are told; 'There's a meeting with X today in Room 31A, at 11.15 a.m.'. The subject of knowledge (which we may have misunderstood or got wrong - or may have been wrong when we were given it) is what we have learned. Yet we have a sense of events beyond what was communicated; an impression we know  more than the information given us. Unless we have grounds for doubt (such as a source we suspect may be unreliable or conflicting information) don't we tend to discount the medium? [2/177:7 and 2/192:4-6]
1.13.6	Properly constituted knowledge contexts relate to something beyond themselves. Though this criteria isn't always satisfied, we can still have the impression it has been. If the exam had been at 9.30, I would have known a fact; but it wouldn't have seemed any different. [2/229:2; 14 Phn.NTE, p.15]
1.13.7	We interpret the content of a knowledge context as a reference to something beyond it because we can't do otherwise. Though distinct from the state or object we seek to know, the picture seems to merge with what it was meant (ie intended) to picture. That was why I tried to pick the ballpoint pen up. [2/208:2] 
1.13.8	The statements, 'Iago is an honest man...' 'The exam is at 9.30...' are conjunctions of elements, which may be rightly or wrongly associated. But a truth or falsehood doesn't just depend upon the combination of elements. Imagine somebody is asserting them as propositions and then consider what would be required to disprove them. (What would you need to know?)  We'd be looking for something that isn't here, wouldn't we?  (Though it doesn't seem to be anywhere else either... See 1.17.1-1.18.6.) [2/176:8]
1.13.9	A context cannot constitute anything. It can only determine a meaning through the relation of its parts, on the basis of meanings extant in other contexts. A context establishes a set of determining relations between entities beyond itself; it has no substance beyond their meanings, and the meaning it aims (and may fail) to introduce by relating them.  [1/148]
1.13.10	But if the context is nothing in itself, how can it express  non-transcendent meanings, such as 'the exam is at half-past nine today' or 'Iago is an honest man'? Isn't it because a meaning derived from transcendent contexts or situations has been combined in a non-referential whole? The context creates a pseudo entity, which, seeming to have a bearing on reality,  hangs over a void. Such entities may become confounded with reality, producing forms which belong in neither realm. (See 1.15.3.) [2/177]
1.13.11	Unless the relations between the ideas that constitute a context take account of other relations they entail, the arrangement is without efficacy in manipulating reality. This suggests the sense in which we do and do not determine the relationships between the ideas expressed. The 'difficulty' of thinking and specifically of achieving knowledge resides in this relationship between the knower's power to determine the arrangement of ideas (or other entities) in a context and the constraining influence of what the mind does not control exercised through the mind itself on the context. [2/379:6]
1.14.1	Am I still inclined to ask how I can ever know more than the proposition itself, even where its sense agrees with that of (say) some state of affairs? [-]
1.14.2	Doesn't my doubt go with a mistaken notion of the kind of gap that exists between a context of knowledge and what is known? (See 1.13.4.) [-]
1.14.3	A knowledge context is validated (if at all) by embodying a sequence of relationships which render its meaning capable of translation into other forms of thought and activity - thus making it an aspect of something beyond itself. Isn't it in this sense (and no other) we see beyond it - and the intended application is achieved? (See 2.12.1-13.) [2/230:6]
1.14.4	I mistake an image of a ballpoint pen for a ballpoint pen. In trying to pick it up I assign the experience to a context which, in effect, determines the status (real or illusory) of what was perceived. In this instance the significance entailed in the interpretation doesn't survive translation into another context. [1/118]
1.14.5	The criteria of achieving transcendence is 'Does the sequence of relationships (eg between ideas and activities) work as an aspect of the intended context?'. The view that the dog was harmless didn't work in the context of the child's anxiety. The assumption that the exam was at 9.30 no more translated into the realities of that situation than did my attempt to varnish what turned out to be a mere impression of the timber's smoothness achieve a satisfactory result, or my impulse to pick up the image of a ballpoint pen any result at all... [2/216:8]
1.15.1	Sometimes in consequence of errors we make, relationships between ideas and activities become confounded to produce abortive forms which are neither sense nor nonsense - but an ironic affiliation of the two. [-]
1.15.2	Where a wrong word or idea is introduced into a context, the sense of the whole tends to seem wrong rather than that of the particular aspect. Nonsense gets into the form of meaning and only an unstable fleeting possibility of sense remains. [-]
1.15.3	For example; I arrange to see somebody tomorrow - then get the idea in my head I made the arrangement for today. So I go to a meeting that exists in my head. It isn't all in my mind though is it? Saying I go to a meeting in my head brings out the way I've confounded the real and the unreal. I go at the right time of day to the right place. These aspects can be distinguished from the nonsense they participate in. Without the ironic perception, my being in the right place at the right time dissolves in the nonsense of the whole business. [1/63]
1.15.4	Distinguishing the aspects; 'I put the book on the table'; 'You put it on the floor'. That rescues the statement from nonsense - the part worth rescuing anyway, the sense in the nonsense. Great confusions can and do arise from failing to see the possibilities of sense in nonsense - failing to see ironically how it might have been otherwise. [1/63]
1.15.5	We deny everything someone says - and that leads to greater confusion, whereas irony leads to clarification, to pinning down the source of the mischief. Failing to distinguish the aspects of sense in nonsense is itself a kind of nonsense - making nonsense of the word 'wrong' by applying it to what's right as well as what's wrong. [1/63]
1.15.6	I risk confounding forms in bringing them together. But if I insisted on preserving a distinction between when I thought the meeting was to be held and when it was to be held I would be unable to act. I have to assume my ideas and reality coincide, make a decision, and go - or impotence sets in. I could go with a certain amount of doubt or a sense of irony - but there's no such thing as going and not going. [1/63]
1.15.7	By going I abolish a distinction. What I do only has sense if there is no difference between what I suppose to be the case, and what is the case. [1/64]
1.15.8	When I say 'X seems honest' I am aware of an irony proceeding from my judgement, particularly if I say it only after some  deliberation. I want to identify my impression with him, and yet... 'Seems' establishes an ironic fellowship between X and my notion of him; it relates my impression to his character, but distinguishes between them as well. 'Seems' invokes my fallibility even as it bears witness in his favour. [1/65]
1.15.9	Error and nonsense are always possible. The autonomy sought in the ideas combined may be occluded by the context which combines them. The act of seeking knowledge is determinative for good or ill. [1/104]
1.16.1	'Language determines our view of reality.' Mightn't we see this as part of an account of why we make errors? [-]
1.16.2	'Fresh today!' - imagine how this guarantee might lose touch with the reality. But wouldn't we discover it had lost touch through language? [1/84]
1.16.3	Is the meaning of a word the object it denotes, or its use in the language? [2/284:1]
1.16.4	Isn’t that like asking whether the tick confers significance on the interval or the interval on the tick? The meaning of words is inseparable from their relationship to things and to other words. The referents (objects) of words are aspects of the meaning of a language; the definition of ‘freshness’ may be in language or things. [2/19]  
1.16.5	Yet they seem separate. It doesn't seem as though language depends on things - or things on language. [2/19]  
1.16.6	The invocation of an event with words can never be more than that. Sometimes we seem to think it can be and is more - that expression is indistinguishable from the event invoked. The word seems to become what it expresses. [2/170:2] 
1.16.7	Certainly propositions don’t always take other forms of expression as their subjects, they sometimes aim to be about the things and events themselves; and this entails a distinction, albeit one made in language. [2/183:7]
1.16.8	Wouldn't these things and events have to be expressed before their significance could become the focus of other forms of expression? [2/183:7]
1.16.9	Isn't it difficult to see how a thing or event would ever get expressed if it had first to be the subject of a form of expression? [2/184:1]
1.16.10	'There's the book!' Doesn't this seem to reflect an object before us to which the expression is being attached? [-]
1.16.11	Isn't that the illusion; that the things we see in a context must have existed in this form before they were seen because they seem to stand beyond the context? [2/200:8]
1.16.12	Then you try to think what things might be like in themselves, without the words used to express them and the difficulties emerge. Yet it is oddly conceivable (despite the absurdity) that what is expressed would be unaffected by the subtraction of expression. [2/219:9]
1.16.13	Don't things and events seem to take on a life of their own - dissociated from the forms of expression which introduced them? (Well if so, they are being seen that way!) [2/187]
1.16.14	Isn't it ironical that language seems to disengage itself from things for the purposes of expressing them? [1/65]
1.17.1	How do other contexts come to exercise an influence on forms of expression (eg 1.13.9-11)? Where are the contexts influencing the formation of these observations? There aren't any other contexts are there? [1/135]
1.17.2	Although what is expressed may sometimes exhibit evidence of these relationships, it isn't usually a function of the form of expression to show the sources which have influenced what is expressed. Where it does have that function, the sources are specifically invoked. [1/135]
1.17.3	Yet I'm trying to make sense of something beyond these ideas. Where is the subject? Why is this relation to what is beyond the form of expression so difficult to demonstrate? [1/135]
1.17.4	'The exam is at 9 a.m.' Isn't there supposed to be a subject  here - a particular association of ideas, actions and events corresponding to the proposition? But can I envisage anything of the sort being so without my having used these (or similar words) to express it? [2/230:3]  
1.17.5	I catch myself thinking of things, events and ideas as though these were resident in some specific context; but there is no subject in that sense, is there - nor a context? [2/185] 
1.17.6	Certainly, the examination arrangement exists independently of the proposition that it is at 9 am. But what specifically establishes this relative to the knower's context? Isn't it the context's function to determine that? Our analysis disrupts    this process... [2/268:11]
1.18.1	The view that the world comprises a matching set of entities - of ideas, actions, events, circumstances and so on - is an impression obtained from the normal uses of language, which  express (or seem to express) just what these are.... [-] 
1.18.2	We have access to the subject only through the context which determines our knowledge of it. (How odd I should know this and constantly lose sight of it...) [2/230:6] 
1.18.3	The elusiveness of the focus of these propositions reflects the elusiveness of the world; until I determine what it is, it doesn't take a form. [2/205:4]
1.18.4	The phrase 'corresponding elements of reality' seems to imply the existence of a single identifiable element of reality we can use as a yardstick in judging the truth of a proposition, permitting a sort of one to one comparison with the parts of reality, or at least the corresponding propositions. But this entity, whether in the form of event, thing, or word remains elusive - on inspection turning out to comprise other pieces of reality or language, which in turn yield further pieces of reality or language. What seemed to exist beyond the context of knowledge does so in the sense of forming aspects of other circumstances or contexts determined by this context. [2/182]
1.18.5	Far from representing a problem this simply serves to underline the fact that the aim of propositions and statements is not to reflect such elementary components of reality, but to determine and comprehend other forms of expression and their associated activities within the knower's context. [2/182]
1.18.6	Particular relationships do generate the events which become the subject of diverse propositions, as particular relations generate particular concepts. But a quality of particularity only inheres in events and entities when it is contextually determined. Though the origins of an event might be present in the complex refractions of language and thought expressing it, they would be present in an indeterminate form and the process    of recovering them would be interpretative. It is a fact the exam is at 9.30; but the evidence invoked to support the fact could be diverse. [2/182]
1.19.1	Apropos language picturing or reflecting things; it probably does insofar as the application of a word follows convention or use (the thing already had that name). But when we say a form of expression is 'of' or 'about' something, we mean it relates to a subject generated in other contexts, which will in some degree (depending on circumstances) have transformed the conventions of expression. The term 'reflection' seems to reduce the complexities of this relationship to a static pairing of word and thing. [2/219:2]
1.19.2	Say for example language reflects a perception ('You left it on the floor!'). It is reflected for a purpose determined by factors beyond what is expressed; the aspect changes and the perception invoked becomes an aspect of the reproach. [2/219:4]
1.20.1	If a game were simply absolute, it could be neither right nor wrong. Its rightness or wrongness depends on the way the game organises other elements, other forms of life (linguistic or non-linguistic) - the relation it bears to them, and the way it relates them to each other. (See 1.13.9.) [1/81]
1.20.2	Though logically ultimate in the sense that it is this game and not some other being played, the game aims to have links with games beyond the limits it establishes. These links are its limits. [1/155]
1.20.3	And in expressing these links it aims to reconcile the internal and external relations expressed. [1/81]
1.20.4	Internal order depends on external order doesn't it?  Isn't the one a transformation of the other? [s1/101]
1.20.5	The difficulty of thinking lies in reconciling the elements within the knowledge context, bearing in mind these elements are subject to the determining influence of factors beyond the context - influences which it aims to reflect. [2/31]
1.20.6	The focus of interest here lies in the ability of a mind to allocate a role to concepts in a determining context devised for its own purposes which makes sense of the meanings these concepts have acquired in other contexts relevant to what is being expressed in this case. [2/302:7]
1.20.7	Reconciling conflicting concepts thus is a balancing process; if we don't see it that way it is probably because we have to  achieve the balance from one internal point or another - not godlike from somewhere outside the whole process. [2/167]
1.21.1	The autonomy of the object of knowledge warrants it against the influence of invalid determinants. It is independent, not of all contexts, but of any particular context - those that support and those that undermine sense. [1/131]
1.21.2	Though language uses do usually accord with the requirements of sense, there is no reason to suppose that individually they are more than contributory sources... [1/131]
1.21.3	But where, then, is the paradigm of order that distinguishes a permissible from an impermissible use? [1/131]
1.21.4	What makes me think there is one? Isn't it a function of the use of language to establish the limits of sense, as well as conform to them? [-]
1.21.5	If a use derives sense from the state of the lexicon as it bears on the individual concepts being related, in the case of a new use isn't the product of this relationship indeterminate until the concepts have been brought together? Don't we have to employ the words to bring it to light? [s2/94]
1.21.6	We can use words in ways which have no precedent, and recognise a truth in thoughts which hadn't occurred to us before. We understand words and ideas through words and ideas. [2/22]
1.21.7	Words tell us how to understand words; likewise words lead us astray - by indicating possibilities of sense where there are none. [2/18]
1.21.8	Nothing beyond the putting of words together (in the light of their meaning, or lack of it, in a language) establishes the ways in which they can or cannot be used. [1/140]
1.21.9	Use may involve distinctions hitherto indeterminate, meanings so subtle and unique that only in a specific context can they be seen as valid. Far from always anticipating the possibilities of sense introduced by use, we may discover them quite fortuitously in bringing other contexts to bear. [2/17]
1.22.1	'All the sentences in our language are in order as they are.' (Wittgenstein.) Including those that aren't? [2/34]
1.22.2	Even the uses that aren't in order ARE in order - since they have their remedies in language, and can't be prohibited by philosophers. [2/165]
1.22.3	A proposition which conflicts with the orthodoxies of knowledge or makes nonsense of some widely respected view might still be a valid use of language. [1/83]
1.22.4	Even if it were not, are we supposed to be able to prevent people speaking this way? [2/7]
1.23.1	Failures of sense and plunges into nonsense are inherent in  language and essential to the idea of a language. Excluding them produces an odd and distorted notion of what a language is and what it does. (Not that we could put a stop to people doing that either...) [2/69] 
1.23.2	There couldn't have been a language which excluded nonsense.  We discover it in expression as we go and transform it into sense. Confusions, ignorance, falsehood, deception, errors,  misunderstandings, misconceptions... How much of language is just this working towards clarity? [2/34]
1.23.3	The nonsense and disorder of the world emerge in language.  Oedipus' mother is the mother of his children. That makes sense of the reality; the reality is nonsense. [2/38]
1.23.4	The achievement of sense implies an engagement with nonsense. We don't come to terms with the reality of the world without  consenting to the expression of its misalliances, confusions and conflicts of sense and nonsense. [2/102]
1.24.1	If the purpose of language were to reveal things in the same light to everybody, would it have any purpose? Would we even be able to agree about what we saw? [s2/21]
1.24.2	A common language enables people who hold different views of the world to make sense of these differences. [s2/85]
1.24.3	Though not always without difficulty. When people communicate with us what we actually understand is what the words mean to us - not necessarily what someone else meant by them; and we tend to assume that what they mean to us is what they meant to them, unless we learn otherwise. This can make the act of communication a hollower process than it seems to us when we experience it. [2/318:1]
1.24.4	The difference made by a point of view may be consistent with the existence of something objective. [1/83]
1.24.5	Though contradictions opposed to sense are common enough, a difference of understanding need not contradict an idea's significance in another context; it may be congruous with it. This is a connection we sometimes miss - a unity proceeding from a change in the significance of an idea from context to context which is not contradictory and allows two contexts to be reconciled without ceasing to show a difference. [1/126]
1.24.6	It is the differences that are made sense of and reconciled,  and this is the basis of a common language facilitating the expression of a plurality of views of one world. [1/127]
1.25.1	The belief that the things we conceive or experience exist  independently of the ideas and experiences we have of them  is what is at issue here, isn't it? [2/20]
1.25.2	'Things exist when (or because) somebody conceives or experiences them...' If true, it would have to be a very different truth to the sense in which something doesn't exist at all - for example the kettle which is on the gas ring in the other room, and the kettle which isn't. [2/34]
1.25.3	What we need isn't something that persists when we don't see it, but a world (such as we have) in which the relationships between things remain logically constant. [2/348:5]
1.25.4	A particular relation doesn't cease to operate because we have ceased to know it is operating. We have to distinguish between those things which require the participation of the mind to be as they are and those which don't. [2/105]
1.25.5	The relations between things determined by our conceptions and experiences (including those wrongly determined) aren't otherwise affected by them. This is what gives the world its predictability. [-]
1.25.6	Everything we know of is a product of relation - although not everything is a product of relation to mind alone (even if it takes a mind to realise this). [2/132]
1.26.1	What purpose is served by requiring things to exist unexperienced?  Isn't it part of our criteria for judging autonomy? But if we can't resolve the matter how can it be? [2/115] 
1.26.2	Wouldn't it be absurd to have to show a connection between the movements of a dog as observed by two people? As though it had ceased to be itself in the interval between the two observations and required this attention to convey it safely from one mind to another. [2/145]
1.26.3	Do we need minds to prop up the world in this sense? And are they suited to the task anyway? Well - a god's mind perhaps.  Continuity couldn't be conferred on the world by experience - nor could its autonomy be furnished by the contents of the human mind. [s2/119]
1.26.4	There isn't and couldn't be a connection between two people's experiences of (say) a dog, dissociated from the contexts in which these occurred. The connection is the dog experienced by both and the factors or circumstances associated with the experiences and what is experienced - although we ourselves might have an incomplete knowledge of them. [2/145:8]
1.26.5	This incompleteness seems to point beyond knowledge itself to those self-sustaining forms of life existing unknown and unexperienced, whose autonomy is essential to our picture of the world and the sense it has for us. (We can only respond by trying to determine what it is we do not know...) [2/117] 
1.27.1	A view has consistently been held in philosophy that the only evidence we can have for the existence of physical objects (things) is provided by our senses and experiences, that an experience is not itself a physical object, and further that the existence of physical objects cannot be inferred from it. Since experience (and ideas derived from it) form the basis of our knowledge of things, we are prohibited from having any direct knowledge of physical objects. [001 Phn ANNEX, p.2]
1.27.2	This idea isn't as remote from common sense as it sounds. When we kick a stone, we feel the resistance of its weight, hear it roll over the paving, see its shape, colour and size. These experiences form part of our idea of a stone. They are sensory experiences. Ordinarily, these are what count as experiences of a physical object. Someone who trips over a stone has the experience of tripping. What is tripped over, however, is not an experience. [001 Phn ANNEX, p.2]
1.27.3	Our ability, in normal discourse, to preserve the distinction between an experience and what is experienced is harder to explain than the ease with which we seem able to perform this feat might suggest. Indeed, to make the distinction clear in words needs a certain amount of care. In the sentence above, for example, it isn't obvious that 'what is experienced' is necessarily anything other than the experience itself. A modest elaboration of these terms would probably bring out the differences of application, but it would not establish the validity of the distinction to the satisfaction of a philosopher; and pointing out that we routinely make this distinction in the course of thinking about the world, doesn't help unless we can rationalise what we do - unless, that is, we can find reasons which justify the distinction we customarily make. [2/179]
1.27.4	Most people would see their experiences as being of physical entities and events - though if interrogated might concede they were experiences as well. The grounds for the distinction we make are less obvious than they appear at first sight. [2/179]
1.27.5	In many respects, physical objects are virtually identical to the corresponding experiences; it is hard to see how reality would work if it were not so. Despite this resemblance we do not usually confound them with experiences, though sometimes we mistake our ideas and perceptions for more solid entities. Such errors require the existence of a realm philosophers have failed to legitimise. [2/180]
1.28.1	Why is it so difficult to distinguish an entity or event from our idea or experience of it; and why is this distinction so precarious, so easily lost? [s2/11]
1.28.2	This is a philosophical problem, isn't it? It doesn't occur in ordinary language. Isn't it related to the inability to resolve the ambiguity of the relationship between the mind and its objects - so that depending on circumstances, these may seem distinct entities which confound efforts to relate them; or inseparable aspects of each other - which defy our efforts to draw a line between them? [s2/11]
1.28.3	Ordinary language easily transcends the difficulties which have baulked philosophical rationalism. In that respect, falling back on the practices of ordinary language users seems to have borne fruit. But at a cost, since it yields no rational insight into why one form of language succeeds, for example, in reconciling mind and matter, where the other, in seeking to explain the relationship, consistently fails. [2/222:1]
1.28.4	Ordinary language and the habits of thinking associated with it make sense of the assumption that things and events exist independently and can be experienced. The question ought not perhaps to be how do we obtain information about these things if not from the effect they have on the mind and senses, but what sort of picture induces us to suppose that neither the mind or senses can conduct us to an experience or a knowledge of entities beyond the realms of sensations and ideas. [2/180]
1.29.1	What lies beyond experience, though inaccessible in the sense implied above (for surely we can only have an idea or experience of it) is not a mystery, insofar as the 'beyond' invoked   is a determinate location which can be identified in relation to determinants other than the mind or senses. [2/145; 2/163]
1.29.2	What other kind of location is there....? [2/163]
1.29.3	Doesn't the knower's context generate an illusion that there could be another kind - a location which is not determinate, and really is beyond any context, any relation?  (See 1.13.4 1.14.1-5 and 3.10.3-4.) [2/163]
1.29.4	The apparently free-standing entity sought through a knowledge context is always located in some other context, situation or circumstance. It just seems weightless and free. [2/163]
1.29.5	We can resort to a dog independent of particular experiences (see 1.6.5), but not of ANY experience. [2/193]
1.29.6	Everything has its origin in some determining relation or circumstance, is sustained by a use or function and is experienced in a context. [2/127]
1.29.7	What is to be determined is already the subject of other determining relations, though these don't come to light unless (or until) apprehended. [2/253:1]
1.30.1	The notion that an entity could exist in itself, free of all relation, is an illusion produced by the dissociation of what is known from its determinants, including the mind. [2/127]
1.30.2	The confusion inherent in our view of the relationship between an experience and what is experienced is introduced by the dissociation and objectification of properties generated by relation. Entities which acquire properties through relations develop an autonomous claim to them. [2/140]
1.30.3	The same difficulties beset the relations between things. An object, for example, seems to have an autonomous claim to its shape and colour, though these qualities aren't separable from its relationship to the space and light surrounding it. [2/212:9]
1.30.4	Much of our perplexity stems from the additions of the mind (and senses) which we cannot subtract, but which seem to be subtractable. [2/116]
1.30.5	Dissociation seems to create an impossible object - one which has form, extension, appearance, etc. as permanent qualities, possessed independently of all relation. We equate the thing itself with what we experience; and every attempt to come at the 'thing in itself' is founded on the illusory possibility that we can know without knowing - that we can apprehend the nature of the thing itself without the determining relations and associated factors and circumstances which make it as it is. [2/117]