I could, however, try to express my
solipsism in a different way: I imagine that I and
others draw pictures or write descriptions of what each of us
sees. These descriptions are put before me.
I point to the one which I have made and say:
“Only this is (or was) really
seen”. That is, I am tempted to say:
“Only this des
cription has reality
(visual reality)
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behind
it”. The others I might call ‒ ‒ ‒
“blank descriptions”. I could
also express myself by saying: “
This
description only was derived from reality; only this was compared
with reality”. Now it has a clear meaning when
we say that this picture or description is a projection, say, of
this group of objects ‒ ‒ ‒ the trees I look at ‒ ‒ ‒, or that
it has been derived from these objects. But we must look
into the grammar of such a phrase as “this description is
derived from my sense datum”. What we are
talking about is connected with that peculiar temptation to
say: “I never know what the other really means by
‘brown’, or what he really sees when he
(truthfully) says that he sees a brown object”.
‒ ‒ ‒ We could propose to one who says this to use two
different words instead of the one word “brown”;
one word “
for his particular
impression”, the other word with that meaning which
other people besides him can understand as well. If he
thinks about this proposal he will see that there is something
wrong about his conception of the meaning, function, of the word
“brown”, and others. He looks for a
justification of his des
cription where there is
none. (Just as in the case when a man believes that
the chain of reasons must be endless. Think of the
justification by a general formula for performing mathematical
operations; and of the question: Does this formula
compel us to make use of it in this particular case as we
do?) To say “I derive a description
from visual reality” can't mean anything
analogous to: “I derive a description from
what I see here”. I may,
e.g., see a chart in which a coloured
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square is correlated to the word
“brown”, and also a patch
of the same
colour elsewhere; and I may say: “This shows me
that I must use ‘brown’ for the description of
this patch”. This is how I may derive the word
“brown” for the use of my
description. But it would be meaningless to say that
I derive the word “brown” from the particular
colour-impression which I receive.