ABSTRACT
Despite all that Wittgenstein has said against what is generally characterized as mentalism – in essence the view that the self is fundamentally a Cartesian point of consciousness, in which a full catalogue of mental events and acts takes place – it is difficult to relinquish the idea that the self is, whatever else it may not be, the inner repository of thinking. It is in a sense natural, natural to philosophical thinking, or thinking in a metaphysical voice, to construe thought alone as the most private element in human experience. The very idea of suddenly understanding is one that possesses the power to revitalize our conception of the hidden, Cartesian self; it is, people are inclined to think, a process that occurs inwardly, and indeed that occurs only within the metaphysical confines of people's psychological interior. An autobiography, it is true, can be many things.
