It Looks as If…

G.E.M. Anscombe:

[Ludwig Wittgenstein] once greeted me with the question, “Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?” I replied, “I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” “Well,” he asked, “what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?” This question brought it out that I had hitherto given no relevant meaning to “it looks as if” in “it looks as if the sun goes round the earth.”

An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, p. 151.

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