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Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on meaning, rules, minds and seeing, laid out as a wiring diagram. Nodes are ideas tagged by section number; edges show what grounds, mirrors, or strains against what. The loops on the right are the circuits the remarks keep running.
Coda — thought loops
The big ideas the remarks keep cycling through, each followed from one concept to the next until it comes back around.
A word seems to stand for a thing. The picture fits a few cases, but watching words at work shows them doing many jobs, and each new puzzle tempts us back to the naming picture.
Where it settlesMeaning as the role a word plays in a shared activity.
Any rule can be read many ways, and every reading needs another reading. The chain stops in practice, in how people actually go on, which is what gave the rule its sense.
Where it settlesBedrock: following a rule is something we do together.
A name for something only I can feel has nothing to hold it steady. The words we have for sensations hook onto cries, winces and circumstances, and through them back onto the feeling.
Where it settlesThe beetle drops out; the word stays usable.
Wanting a definition sends us looking for a common core. Games have none, only criss-crossing resemblances, and the concept holds together through the cases themselves.
Where it settlesFamily resemblance, with blurred edges that still work.
Problems appear when words leave the work they normally do. A picture grips us, we trace the words back to everyday use, the problem vanishes, and a new one forms elsewhere.
Where it settlesThe fly finds the way out of the fly-bottle, for now.
Understanding looks like something happening inside. What shows it is going on correctly, in the right circumstances, and that is something we see in people, not in their heads.
Where it settlesAn attitude toward a person rather than a theory about a mind.
A drawing flips from duck to rabbit while nothing on the page changes. Noticing aspects depends on what we can share with others, and a lion that talked would share too little.
Where it settlesSeeing is shaped by the life we see it from.