Abstract

Predictive statements deserve a specific grammatical inquiry, since they have not only an epistemological status, but also appear in Wittgenstein"s writings on philosophy of psychology and touch deeply the problem of free will. So predictive knowledge covers a very large spectrum of human experience. This grammatical exploration leads to acknowledge an essential difference between predictive statements, which are expressions or exteriorisations of will (Willensäusserungen) and predictions, which are made from the perspective of the third person (although they can be uttered in the first). As Wittgenstein notes: "Two things however, are important: one, that in many cases someone else cannot predict my actions, whereas I foresee them in my intentions; the other, that my prediction (in my expression of intention) has not the same foundation as his prediction of what I shall do, and the conclusions to be drawn from these predictions are quite differentâ€? (PI, Iixi, 224e). It is the grammatical elucidation of predictive language games that allows us to solve the problem of the incompatibility between predicted and at the same time free choices.