ABSTRACT
WHEN, in the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes of ‘criteria’ and when, in Individuals, P. F. Strawson writes of ‘logically adequate criteria’, they do not mean the same thing. But in both cases a relation is involved which is neither a matter of evidence contingently being evidence for something else nor a matter of entailment holding between propositions. It is important to the understanding of Wittgenstein’s work that the issue is not obviously one of a relation between propositions. I shall later argue that certain points follow from Wittgenstein’s views which are about logical relations between propositions, but that the core of his view cannot be put this way. Given this caution, there is a measure of agreement between the two philosophers which may be put as follows: that some human being is behaving in a certain way or has certain things happening to him entitles us to assert that he is in some mental state. And, to repeat, the entitlement does not arise out of empirically ascertained regularities nor is it a matter of entailment. (I am here using ‘mental state’ loosely to include pains, intentions, beliefs, and even dispositions; the looseness should not matter for present purposes.)
