67). Imagine that human
beings or animals were used as reading machines, assume that in order
to become reading machines they need a particular training.
The man who trains them says of some of them that they already can
read, of others that they can't.
Take a case of one who has so far not responded to the
training.
If you put before him a printed word he will sometimes make sounds,
and every now and then it happens “accidentally”
that these sounds more or less
agree with || correspond to the
printed word.
A third person hears the
pupil || creature under training
uttering the right sound on looking at the word
“table”.
The third person says, “He reads”, but the
teacher answers, “No, he doesn't, it is mere
accident”.
But supposing now that the pupil on being shown other words and
sentences goes on reading them correctly.
After a time the teacher says, “Now he can
read”. ‒ ‒
But what about the first word “table”?
Should the teacher say, “I was wrong; he read that,
too”, or should he say, “No, he only
started reading later”?
When did he really begin to read, or: Which was the first
word, or the first letter, which he read?
It is clear that this question here makes no sense unless I give an
“artificial” explanation such as:
“The first word which he reads = the first word of the
first hundred consecutive words he reads correctly”. ‒ ‒
Suppose on the other hand that we used the word
“reading” to distinguish between the case when a
particular conscious process of spelling out the words takes place
in a person's mind from the case in which this does not
happen:
70.
– – Then, at least the
person who is reading could say that such-and-such a word was the
first which he actually read. ‒ ‒
Also, in the different case of a reading machine which is a mechanism
connecting signs with the reactions to these signs,
e.g., a pianola, we could say, “only after
such-and-such a thing has been done to the machine,
e.g., certain parts had been connected by wires,
the machine actually read; the first letter which it read was a
d”. ‒ ‒