“But surely there is a case in which I say ‘I see red’ & am telling the (subjective) truth & one in which I tell a lie!” – Yes, that is, we distinguish between telling the || a case of telling the truth & not telling || a case of not telling the truth. – But what does lying in this || such a case, consist in? We may try all sorts of explanations: “It consists in saying … & seeing green”, “It consists in saying … & knowing that I see … ”, “It consists in saying … & feeling that I'm not justified in saying this” & others. Now let me ask: do all these explanations come to the same or do they describe different facts? We might || may || can say: if they describe different cases || facts the differences are quite unimportant to us (here) || don't matter to us here. For our purpose they can all be said to describe the same fact || case. (We might have said lying consists in saying “I see red” & having stomach ache but as stomach ache is a private sensation why not rather consider the private sensation of just seeing green a colour other than red?) We may say therefore that these explanations for our purpose were no explanations at all. They left us just

where we were before, and they only (seem) (to) confirm || affirm say that the cases of lying & saying the truth are distinguished by the private experiences accompanying the sentence. So let us say ask put our questions like this: lying in our case consists in saying “I see red” & seeing green, || : What does seeing green consist in? As an answer we immediately give ourselves a sample of green || ‘for green’. But is it essential that this sample should be what the others also call green? No it might be what they call yellow or blue or red etc.. But are you inclined to say “it might be what they call hot, cold or tepid”? Then after all you are thinking of games played with the others though you left a certain latitude … .

(2015–) Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (WS-BNE). Edited by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Wittgenstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-Kathrein (2020–). (N) Bergen: WAB.