What’s the Point of Seeing Aspects? Avner Baz, University of Illinois at Chicago The game, one would like to say, has not only rules but also a point. (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 564) 1 Introduction Recent years have seen several commentaries on Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘seeing aspects’, and there is a growing sense that these remarks have a significance that goes beyond the curiosities of an esoteric phenomenon. I believe, however, that something important about the seeing of aspects, as Wittgenstein saw it and in so far as it isn’t simply an isolated experience or mental state, but one embedded in a language-game, 2 has so far been missed. It has to do with the role ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Philosophical Investigations 23:2 April 2000 ISSN 0190-0536 1. Abbreviations for works of Wittgenstein cited: PI Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees (eds.), tr. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963). RPPI Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.), tr. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980). RPPII Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. II, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.), tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980). LWI Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I, G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman (eds.), tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). LWII Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. II, G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman (eds.), tr. C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 2. Much has been written about the notion of ‘language-game’ in Wittgenstein. But for the purposes of this paper, and since I will occasionally be talking about ‘the language-game of aspects’, and contrast it with what I will call, after Wittgenstein, ‘the language-game of information (or reporting)’, let me briefly say what I take ‘language- game’ to mean. I am using the term in the same way that Wittgenstein uses it when he talks about ‘the language-game of ‘‘lying’’’ (PI, 249), or ‘the language-game of ‘‘making a prediction from the expression of a decision’’’ (PI, 632), or ‘the language- game of ‘‘reporting’’’ (PI, 190i). These ‘language-games’ are not well-circumscribed activities of the kind we often associate with the notion of ‘games’. In this respect they are also different from the imaginary language-games that appear earlier in the Investigations. Rather they are patterns, strands, moments that go into the making up of our conversations or even into the making up of a single utterance. Very rarely do