| Abstract: | Wittgenstein: “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” (PI, p. 223) Wittgenstein bids us to be wary of trying to explain or interpret language and its use, instead of limiting ourselves – with a rigorous discipline – to describing such use as comprehensively and clearly as we can. This injunction, it seems to me, is important even when discussing ‘normal’, ‘everyday’ uses of language by fully sentient human beings, but even more so in such unique cases of sentient disability as Helen Keller’s. As the above quote suggests, explanatory extrapolation from the behaviour of animals risks even greater philosophical confusion. |
