Monday, September 10, 2007

4.1221 We can also call an internal property of a fact a feature of that fact. (In the sense in which we speak of facial features.)

Cf. references to physiognomy in the Investigations, perhaps. This sounds as though LW really means it, but we can call anything anything, after all, and is the word ‘features’ used in a special way in connection with faces?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would guess he chose to use facial features because these are essential (internal) to the identity of those faces. Whereas (at least according to my intuitions) the features of a hand, say, aren't essential to its identity; in fact we don't usually think of hands as distinguished by their external features. The face is its features in a way that a hand isn't. I think you're right that similar points are made in the PI.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I should have read the next post before commenting.