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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2010
The philosopher is the man who has to cure himself of many sicknesses of the understanding before he can arrive at the notions of the sound human understanding. (Wittgenstein, 1967, no. 302)
1 It is the kind of knowledge one has, not only from within a social situation, a group, or an institution, and which thus takes into account (and is accountable within) the social situation within which it is known. It is also knowledge that one has from within oneself as a human being and as a socially competent member of a culture—hence I know ‘from the inside’, so to speak, what it is like to be involved in conversation. So, although I may not be able to reflectively contemplate the nature of that knowledge as an inner, mental representation, according to questions asked of me (by myself, as by others), I can nonetheless call upon it as a practical resource in framing appropriate answers. Wittgenstein (1953) clearly makes use of this kind of ‘dialogue with oneself in his investigations, in which he makes many such remarks as 'Let the use of words teach you their meaning’ (p. 220).
2 Here I am using an expression of William James (1890).