ABSTRACT
In an edited collection of his work Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951 (1993) Wittgenstein observes that philosophy often leads us into seemingly fruitless confusion. We ask questions that sound sensible, answerable questions, but they often turn out to be nothing of the sort. In explaining how this works he says that philosophers habitually behave like children who jot some random lines on a piece of paper and then ask an adult ‘What is that?’ Wittgenstein explains that this kind of thing usually happens in the following way: the adult had drawn some pictures for the child several times and said ‘This is a house’, ‘This is mummy’, ‘This is a dog’ and so on. And then the child makes some marks on a piece of paper too and asks the adult ‘What is this then?’
