A colleague at another university had agreed to offer a seminar on the nature of concepts to social science students and asked me for my thoughts. I realised that the word ‘concept’ has probably never appeared in any index of any of my books. It isn’t the way I have thought about philosophical issues, despite believing in Wittgenstein’s commitment to semantic ascent for doing philosophy.
§370. One ought to ask, not what images are or what goes on when one imagines something, but how the word “imagination” is used. But that does not mean that I want to talk only about words. For the question of what imagination essentially is, is as much about the word “imagination” as my question. And I am only saying that this question is not to be clarified a neither for the person who does the imagining, nor for anyone else a by pointing; nor yet by a description of some process. The first question also asks for the clarification of a word; but it makes us expect a wrong kind of answer.
§371. Essence is expressed in grammar. (Wittgenstein 2009)
Still, I found that I wanted to persuade my colleague of the necessity of starting out any account of concepts by thinking about their general home in the philosophy of thought and language.
But also, post retirement, I found myself incapable of simply writing some serious notes.
So here are 11 entries on the philosophy of thought and language hidden in a fictional world aimed at kids. Whether anyone is mature enough to get the philosophy of thought while still wanting to hear about it from a bad tempered hippo explaining it to a bolshie axolotl is anyone’s guess.
https://juggins-the-false.blogspot.com/2024/05/l11-lotties-first-lesson-on-concepts.html
