If a lion could talk

Abstract

This paper treats Wittgenstein's aphorism, "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him," not as absurd, nor as a comment about sensation reports, as various commentators have explained it. Rather, it is argued that an examination of its context(Section xi of Part II of philosophical Investigation) demands an account first of percepion (and of objectivity and subjectivity in the case of 'seeing-as'), and then of meaning (which is not itself an experience, but which otherwise is richly analogous to 'seeing-as'). The concept of 'social space' is then employed to explain the lion's meaning and our (mis-)understanding of him.