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A quote from Anscombe



The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe once wrote the following:

For years, I would spend time, in cafés, for example, staring at objects saying to myself: 'I see a packet. But what do I really see? How can I say that I see here anything more than a yellow expanse?' ... I always hated phenomanlism and felt trapped by it. I couldn't see my way out of it but I didn't believe it. It was no good pointing to difficulties about it, things which Russell found wrong with it, for example. The strength, the central nerve of it remained alive and raged achingly. It was only in Wittgenstein's classes in 1944 that I saw the nerve being extracted, the central thought "I have got this, and I define 'yellow' (say) as this" being effectively attacked.

Phenominalism is in essence, George Berkeley without the God. The tree was not there in the Quad yesterday, except in some hypothetical sense -- if some perfceiving being HAD been there, he/she would have seen....

What exactly is Anscombe saying about it here? 

Comments

  1. HenryAugust 25, 2026 at 6:30 AM

    What exactly is Anscombe saying about it here? Does "it" refer to her words that you quote or to your final paragraph? I don't see a connection between the two. What she means by the words you quote is that, if she sees a packet, then she sees a packet, because language is use and, in our language, what she sees we call "a packet."

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