Expressing and Describing Experiences. A Case of Showing Versus Saying

Experiences are interpreted as conscious mental occurrences that are of phenomenal character. There is already a kind of (weak) intentionality involved with this phenomenal interpretation. A stricter conception of experiences distinguishes between purely phenomenal experiences and intentional experiences in a narrow sense. Wittgenstein’s account of psychological (experiential) verbs is taken over: Usually, expressing mental states verbally is not describing them. According to this, “I believe” can be seen as an expression of one’s own belief, but not as an expression of a belief about one’s belief. Hence, the utterance “I believe it is raining” shows that I believe that it is raining, although it is not said by these words that I believe that it is raining. Thinking thoughts such as “I believe it is raining, but it is not raining” (a variant of Moore’s paradox) is an absurdity between what is already said by silently uttering “It is not raining” and what is shown by silently uttering “I believe it is raining.” The paper agrees with a main result of Wittgenstein’s considerations of Moore’s paradox, namely the view that logical structure, deducibility, and consistency cannot be reduced solely to propositions—besides a logic of propositions, there is, for example, a logic of assertions and of imperatives, respectively.