Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

A Clue to the Exit

London

Chatto & Windus

2000

"Someone suggests he is in a mental fog."

Patrick sighed and looked out of the unrevealing window. It was impossible for him to concentrate on the question of consciousness for long, impossible to turn away from it for any longer. At the conference, Galen Strawson had shown him Michael Frayn's parody of Wittgenstein about the man who doesn't know that there is fog on the road unless there is a sign saying 'fog'. 'This is the man who philosophers are always telling us about, the man who goes on asking for explanations when everything has been explained.' After going through some moves typical of a certain kind of analytic philosophy, this inquiring character asks, 'But how do I know that the expression "fog", where "fog" means "fog", means "fog", where "fog" means "fog"?' Someone suggests he is in a mental fog. 'Now one asks: "But how do you know it's a mental fog you're in?"' He, in turn, needs an illuminated sign saying 'mental fog'. The author concludes: 'If a lion could speak, it would not understand itself.'
(p. 134)

Weather::Fog

Reading

Edward St. Aubyn, A Clue to the Exit (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000).

09/19/2015