p.7 This book offers what may with reservations be described as a theory of mind.
p.26 The main object of this chapter is to show that there are many activities
which directly display qualities of mind, yet are neither themselves intellectual operations nor yet effects of intellectual
operations.
p.27 this trick of talking to oneself in silence is acquired neither quickly nor
without effort; and it is a necessary condition to our acquiring it that we should have previously learned to talk intelligently
aloud and have heard and understood other people doing so. Keeping our thoughts to ourselves is a sophisticated accomplishment.
p.28 The well-regulated clock keeps good time and the well-drilled circus seal
performs its tricks flawlessly, yet we do not call them 'intelligent'. We reserve this title for the persons responsible for
their performances.
p.51 The statement 'the mind is its own place', as theorists might construe it,
is not true, for the mind is not even a metaphorical 'place'. On the contrary, the chessboard, the platform, the scholar's
desk, the judge's bench, the lorry-driver's seat, the studio and the football field are among its places. These are where
people work and play stupidly or intelligently. 'Mind' is not the name of another person, working or frolicking
behind an impenetrable screen; it is not the name of another tool with which work is done, or another
appliance with which games are played.
p.52 Anybody who can play chess already understands a good deal of what other players
do
p.54 If understanding does not consist in inferring, or guessing, the alleged inner-life
precursors of overt actions, what is it? ...Understanding is a part of knowing how. The knowledge
that is required for understanding intelligent performances of a special kind is some degree of competence in performances
of that kind.
p.55 Roughly, execution and understanding are merely different exercises
of knowledge of the tricks of the same trade.
p.57 Understanding must be imperfect.
p.76 Whenever a new science achieves its first big successes, its enthusiastic
acolytes always fancy that all questions are now soluble by extension of its methods of solving its questions.
p.104 we seldom pay much heed to sensations of these kinds, save when they are
abnormally acute.
p.109 Most sensations and feelings are neither enjoyed nor disliked. It
is exceptional to heed them at all.
p.111 I certainly can run upstairs two stairs at a time from force of habit and
at the same time notice that I am doing so and even consider how the act is done. I can be a spectator of my habitual
and of my reflex actions and even a diagnostician of them, without these actions ceasing to be automatic. Notoriously such
attention sometimes upsets the automatism. [JLJ - Sort of like playing a game, and trying to figure out what your
habits and reflex actions are when you are playing the game]
p.112 In ascribing a specific motive to a person we are describing the sorts of things that he tends to try to do or
bring about
p.132 To say that someone is now enjoying or disliking something entails that he is paying heed to it.
p.135-136 I begin by considering a battery of concepts all of which may be brought under the useful because vague heading
of 'minding'. Or they could all alike be described as 'heed concepts'. I refer to the concepts of noticing,
taking care, attending, applying one's mind, concentrating, putting one's heart into something, thinking what one is doing,
alertness, interest, intentness, studying and trying.
p.136 Enjoying and disliking entail, but are not entailed by,
heeding... We cannot, without absurdity, describe someone as absent-mindedly pondering, searching, testing,
debating, planning, listening or relishing.
p.136 Minding, in all its sorts, can vary in degree. A driver can drive a car with
great care, reasonable care or slight care
p.137 It is quite true that if a person has been doing or undergoing something and has been paying heed to what he was
doing or undergoing, he can then tell what he has been doing or undergoing (provided that he has learned the arts of telling)
; and he can tell it without rummaging for evidence, without drawing any inferences and without even momentarily wondering
what he should say.
p.141 to say that someone has done something, paying some heed to what he was doing, is not only to say that
he was, e.g. ready for any of a variety of associated tasks and tests which might have cropped up but perhaps did not; it
is also to say that he was ready for the task with which he actually coped. He was in the mood or frame of mind to
do, if required, lots of things which may not have been actually required; and he was, ipso facto, in the mood or frame of
mind to do at least this one thing which was actually required.
p.143 Now patently one cannot order a person merely to pay heed,
or merely to take notice. For the order to be obeyed or disobeyed, it must be understood as specifying just what is
to be done with heed.
p.144 There are many things which we cannot do, or do well, unless we pay heed
to appropriate and timely instructions, even when we ourselves have to be the authors of those instructions.
p.147 To describe someone as now doing something with some degree of some sort of heed is to say not
merely that he has had some such preparation, but that he is actually meeting a concrete call and so meeting it that
he would have met, or will meet, some of whatever other calls of that range might have cropped up, or may crop up.
He is in a 'ready' frame of mind, for he both does what he does with readiness to do just that in just this situation and
is ready to do some of whatever else he may be called on to do.
p.157 'Conscious' in this sense means 'heeding'
p.169 'What knowledge can one person get of the workings of another mind?'
p.176 if the agent is carrying out such a serial operation with any degree of heed, he must at any given stage
in it have in mind, in some sense, what is to be done next and what has already been done; he must have kept
track of where he has got to and he must be expecting, or even intending, to be getting on to the stages after the present
stage.
p.234 Getting a thing wrong entails what getting it right entails, namely, the use of a technique.
