Private Language Argument Research Articles

Between Privacy, Alienation and Community

Abstract This paper is concerned with Stanley Cavell’s reading of the notion of privacy as it appears in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s private language argument (PLA). Defined as a fantasy or fear either of inexpressiveness or excessive expressiveness (cf. Cavell 1979: 254), I argue that such an account is partial, in that it does not represent those individuals that are exposed to epistemic injustice. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s seminal work Epistemic Injustice (2007) and on Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952), I trace some similarities between the conditions of marginalized subjectivities and the private language speaker. This comparison suggests a correction of Cavell’s words and discloses an understanding of the clarificatory import that Wittgenstein’s PLA conveys, rendering it a way to resist marginalization and alienation due to the logical impossibility of a private language. In the second part of the paper (section 3), I consider two other Cavellian notions, namely the “claim to community” and ‘the turn to the ordinary’. Following the line of criticism developed in section 2, which revolves around the need of considering the situatedness of marginalized subjectivities and the oppressive character of the dimension of the ordinary, I try to implement Cavell’s concepts. I do so by taking into account (i) the Wittgenstein-inspired wider conception of rationality Alice Crary (2015) purports and (ii) the practices of some feminist consciousness-raising groups that were active in Milan (Italy) during the Seventies and some ideas developed by feminist and art critic Carla Lonzi. These contributions show that it is possible to maintain the general asset purported by Cavell, but they also call for criteria for better defining on which principles a community can form and which role the collectivity plays in revising the structure of the ordinary.

Experience and expertise: Could a Person's Experience of Mental Illness Be the Basis of Professional Expertise?

Abstract: The title Expert-by-Experience has been used frequently in mental health literature and policy making in recent years. The implication is that by virtue of suffering from a mental disorder, the person has access to a unique form of knowledge that would separate them from others, affording them the status of an expert. In this article, the concept is put under philosophical scrutiny. I use Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument and Ryle's work on introspection to show that personal experience could not be a basis for expertise. Personal experience and introspection could not be a basis for knowledge underpinning expertise.

Grace de Laguna’s 1909 critique of analytic philosophy: presentation and defence

Grace A. de Laguna was an American philosopher of exceptional originality. Many of the arguments and positions she developed during the early decades of the twentieth century later came to be central to analytic philosophy. These arguments and positions included, even before 1930, a critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction, a private language argument, a critique of type physicalism, a functionalist theory of mind, a critique of scientific reductionism, a methodology of research programs in science and more. Nevertheless, de Laguna identified herself as a defender of the speculative vision of philosophy, a vision which, in her words, ‘analytic philosophy condemns’. I outline her speculative vision of philosophy as well as what is, in effect, an argument she offers against analytic philosophy. This is an argument against the view that key parts of established opinion, e.g. our best theoretical physics or most certain common sense, should be assumed to be true in order to answer philosophical questions. I go on to bring out the implications of her argument for the approaches to philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Willard V. Quine and David Lewis, and I also compare the argument to recent, related arguments against analytic philosophy. I will suggest that de Laguna offers a viable critique of analytic philosophy and an alternative approach to philosophy that meets this critique.

Über die Assoziation von Namen mit privaten Empfindungen – ein Kommentar zu Wittgensteins Privatsprachenargument (PU 256 – 265)

Abstract On the Association of Names with Private Sensations – A Commentary on Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument (PI 256 – 265). This commentary on PI 256 – 265, informed by Wittgenstein’s Nachlass and the recently published Skinner dictations, shows that Wittgenstein uses a particular method in these sections: He investigates what kind of meaning one might give to the parts of a philosophical sentence. Wittgenstein recommended this method already in TLP and BBB – it marks a continuity in his thought. The sentence under investigation is the following: “And now I simply associate names with sensations” (PI 2009: 256). PI 257 – 265 discuss three proposals of what it might mean to associate a name with a private sensation. PI 257 investigates the claim that the association is set up by means of inventing a name, PI 258 proposes that it consists in a private ostensive definition, and PI 262, 263 suggest that it works by (inwardly) resolving to call this like that. All of these ideas turn out to be unsatisfactory. The reason why PI 258’s private ostensive definition fails is that for a private sensation there is by definition no difference between “it is the same” and “he recognized it”. This is why one cannot talk of recognition here, and therefore the private ostensive definition is an empty ceremony. The result of PI 256 – 265 is not a proof of the impossibility of a private language, but these sections show that the meaning of “And now I simply associate names with sensations” cannot satisfactorily be explained by means of the three aforementioned proposals.

私的言語論と二次的意味

Wittgensteinʼs so-called “private language argument” denies the normativity of private definitions, and suggests that sensation words are taught through replacing primitive behaviour expressive of sensations. However, these observations fail to provide a full understanding of mental concepts of our ordinary language. In this article, the relevance of the concept of secondary sense is brought to the fore through examining the concept of particular feelings inherent in various experiences and also that of calculation in the head. It is shown that natural linguistic reactions present in the use of words in the secondary sense are essential in gaining an overview of our ordinary language.

Unravelling Meaning in Therapeutic Conversations

This paper inspects the relationship between problem analysis—a fundamental part of many therapeutic approaches—and meaning. In the first part, I argue that problem analysis emerges from the representational theory of meaning. I introduce Wittgenstein’s version of this theory as presented in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and examine its difficulties. Later, I focus on two fundamental themes of late Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: private language and rule-following. I argue that the rule-following paradox has disproven the representational theory of meaning. I briefly describe the private language argument and rule-following paradox—a sceptical paradox. Then I provide my reading of Kripke’s sceptical solution to it. I present its implications regarding the meaning and how this is relevant to problem analysis and therapeutic conversations in general.

The Availability of Jim Jarmusch’s Film-Philosophy: Wittgenstein, Derrida and Private Language in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

To date, film scholars have found the films of Jim Jarmusch to be tantamount to works of postmodern philosophy. For as intriguing and productive as such interpretations of Jarmusch’s films have been, I submit that the postmodern framework occludes a crucial aspect of Jarmusch’s film-philosophy, namely, his investment in the ordinary. From this perspective, I intend to show the availability of Jarmusch’s films to Wittgensteinian interpretation. More specifically, I plan to situate Jarmusch’s arthouse action film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida in order to demonstrate the profound affinities between Jarmusch’s film-philosophy and Wittgenstein’s conception of ordinary language. Through a consideration of character dialogue, I will demonstrate the extent to which Jarmusch rejects the private language argument – which, by extension, amounts to a rejection of linguistic relativism as an instance, or species, of skepticism – in favor of ordinary conceptions of language, expressiveness, knowledge, and responsibility.

The unbearable lightness of the personal, explanatory level

I begin this paper by demonstrating that there is a perceived overlap between phenomenology and the personal level. This perception has recently played a decisive role in evaluating phenomenological contributions to discussions within cognitive science, for example, on topics of social cognition. In this paper, I aim not only to understand what might be meant by associating phenomenology with the personal level, but to cast this association in a critical light. I show that the personal level is essentially an explanatory level, whereby perceptions and mental state terms (paradigmatically, belief and desire) explain purposive action. I then separate the notion of consciousness from the notion of the personal level. To do so, I advance Wittgenstein’s private language argument in conjunction with Sellars’ account of how the meaning of mental state terms derives from their explanatory function. Using the Wittgenstinian/Sellarsian picture as guide, I show that characterising personal level explanations by reference to conscious experiences imputes excess baggage over and above the commitment to a unique explanatory level. Yet, for many, ‘phenomenology’ is the level of conscious experience. I argue that it is when the extra baggage of assuming that we are aware of our explanatory, personal level mental states is coupled with the controversial claim that phenomenology is tantamount to the verbalisation of conscious states that the ill begotten association between them is arises.

A natureza intersubjetiva do significado em Bakhtin e Wittgenstein

ABSTRACT This article aims at comparing the philosophies of language of Bakhtin and Wittgenstein. The main problem to be addressed is how these two authors thought the idea that linguistic meaning necessarily has an intersubjective nature. To this end, the article will address the Wittgensteinian “private language argument,” as discussed in Philosophical Investigations, particularly in §258, and the Bakhtinian thesis of the “dialogical orientation of discourse,” as discussed at the beginning of chapter 2 of Discourse in the Novel.

Grace de Laguna’s Analytic and Speculative Philosophy

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna in order to renew interest in it. I show that, in the 1910s and 1920s, she develops ideas and arguments that are also found playing key roles in the development of analytic philosophy decades later. Further, I describe her sympathetic, but acute, criticism of pragmatism and Heideggerian ontology, and situate her work in the tradition of American, speculative philosophy. Before 1920, we will see, de Laguna appeals to multiple realizability to undermine reductionism in science, to support perspectival, scientific realism and, with help from a private language argument, to favour the view that mental states are classified by behavioural, teleological roles over what came to be called ‘type physicalism’. Her view of speech, mostly developed in the 1920s, tells us that its primary role is coordinating group behaviour rather than expressing thoughts. Belief is understood in terms of its causal role, including its causal relations to other kinds of mental states, when coordinating group behaviour. Thought is similarly understood. In developing her theory of mind, de Laguna rejects the pragmatist claims that belief can be reduced to dispositions to behaviour and that thought’s function is to address specific, rather than general, problems. She also favours meaning holism and rejects the analytic–synthetic distinction. In later work, de Laguna argues that individuals’ activity of self-maintenance brings universals, conceived of as irreducible potentialities, into being and makes them increasingly determinate. Further, she identifies the existence of all individuals with forms of self-maintenance and takes the existence of people to include maintenance of the cultural world. Such a unified treatment of existence, she holds, permits making its evolution intelligible. Heidegger’s view of being is rejected for not permitting this. All de Laguna’s work, we will see, fits a vision of philosophy as the systematic, imaginative and naturalistic examination of being as well as a source of criticism of science.

The Private Language Argument: Another Footnote to Plato?

A valid and arguably sound private language argument is built using premises based on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations augmented by familiar analytic distinctions and concepts of logic. The private language problem and the solution presented here can be plausibly traced to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both literatures missed the connection.

Wittgenstein on Other Minds

When philosophy of mind goes into every detail in explaining about consciousness and its every aspect, the problem of other minds being its part is not spared. In such context going against the traditional way of giving justification Wittgenstein novel approach to other minds is remarkable and is close to the phenomenological understanding. The analysis of the sensation of pain as one of its important factors in solving the other minds problem is unique and it is this that proves how Wittgenstein dissolves the problem rather than giving a solution. This article focuses Wittgenstein’s two important factors: Private Language Argument and the concept of the sensation of pain in dissolving the issue. And in this I have made an attempt to show how his novelty in approaching this problem gains importance even today.

The “grammatical” nature of Wittgenstein's private language investigation

AbstractIn this paper, I examine the grammatical nature of Wittgenstein's private language argument (PLA). On my interpretation, the definition of private language implies that the private speaker has no natural expressions for his sensations. This in turn implies that he has no criterion of correctness for using his sensation‐words. This then implies, together with the grammatical rule that a word is senseless without a criterion of correctness for its use, that private sensation‐words are senseless, and hence also that private language is senseless. So in my analysis, Wittgenstein succeeds in dissolving the problem of private language through a grammatical investigation, and therefore, his treatment of private language is consistent with his metaphilosophy. I further explain that Wittgenstein provides a diagnosis of the error of the philosopher who thinks that private language is possible and that he also offers a therapy consisting of analogies or objects of comparison. I also make a comparison with previous studies on the PLA and discuss a number of novelties in my interpretation.

A Critical Discussion of the “Memory-Challenge” to Interpretations of the Private Language Argument

In a recent paper, Francis Y. Lin proposes a “memory-challenge” to two main interpretations of Wittgenstein’s private language argument: the “no-criterion-of-correctness” interpretation and the “no-stage-setting” interpretation. According to Lin, both camps of interpretation fail to explain why a private language is impossible within a short time period. To answer the “memory-challenge”, Lin motivates a grammatical interpretation of the private language argument. In this paper, I provide a critical discussion of Lin’s objection to these interpretations and argue that Lin’s objection fails. In the case of the “no-stage-setting” interpretation, Lin suggests that the private language user can establish a stage within a short time period. However, I show that this stage is insufficient for a private language to be used correctly. In the case of the “no-criterion-of-correctness” interpretation, Lin believes that since memory is reliable within a short period, no criterion is needed for the correct use of a private language. However, I argue that his objection attacks a strawman, since the interpretation concerns the structure of justification, rather than the weakness of memory itself. I conclude with a critical discussion on memory and primitive expressions, the latter of which are crucial to Wittgenstein’s approach to public language. This discussion will help to draw a sharp line between private language and public language, and cast some doubt on Lin’s grammatical interpretation.

A private language argument to elucidate the relation between mind and language

I will defend the claim that we need to differentiate between thinking and reasoning in order to make progress in understanding the intricate relation between language and mind. The distinction between thinking and reasoning will allow us to apply a structural equivalent of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument to the domain of mind and language. This argumentative strategy enables us to show that and how a certain subcategory of cognitive processes, namely reasoning, is constitutively dependent on language. The final outcome and claim of this paper can be summarized as follows: We can think without language, but we cannot reason without language. While this still leaves several questions about the relation between mind and language unanswered, I hold that the insights defended in this paper provide the basis and proper framework for further investigation about the relationship between language and the mind.Keywords: Private language argument, Wittgenstein, thought/mind and language, reasoning, linguistic relativity, non-linguistic cognition.

Notion of Private Language in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-philosophcus and some Contemporary Linguistic Refutations

In this paper, the possibility of private language argument in Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus is analyzed. The concept of ‘language that only I could understand” is connected to solipsism, or the impossibility to understand other people’s way of seeing the world. But all members of the same community are able to communicate using the same language, so this language is a general language, and there is no private language, just a private perception of the world. Contemporary linguistic theories of Chomsky and de Saussure are close to this interpretation of private language.

Reflective Equilibrium from a Wittgensteinian Perspective

The lingering mystery of John Rawls’s reflective equilibrium is that its nature is unclear. Rawls at times suggests he is merely describing people’s conceptions of justice, whereas at other times he implies that his reflective equilibrium is a way to justify his conception of justice. Faced with seemingly conflictual passages, most scholars privilege the justificatory ones. However, I argue that this is not an effective strategy because understanding how the descriptive and justificatory aspects of reflective equilibrium fit together is the key to unlocking its nature and actual force. This paper compares Rawls’s method to the philosophical method of later Wittgenstein in his so-called private language argument to argue how the descriptive and justificatory aspects of Rawls’s reflective equilibrium fit together. In my view, both philosophers’ methods are descriptive clarifications of our unclear conceptions. However, their clarification is not just descriptive; they also aim at their readers achieving enlightenment. Importantly, I argue, that enlightenment offers us justification of the conception resulting from their clarification. Hence, their methods are justificatory as well. Finally, I claim that this way of understanding reflective equilibrium makes us realise how Rawls could respond to a prominent objection to it.

Is a sensation a concept-involving object?

In the private language argument (PLA), Wittgenstein raises a paradox, namely that a sensation is not a something, but not a nothing either. McDowell argues that Wittgenstein unnecessarily eliminates inner sensations. By contrast, McDowell insists that sensations are perfectly good somethings, namely concept-involving objects. Hao Tang praises McDowell’s idea that Wittgenstein’s target is the myth of the inner given, namely the private object, but he criticises McDowell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein as eliminating inner sensations. On his interpretation, Wittgenstein does not eliminate the sensation as a concept-involving object. In this article, I advance two main arguments: (1) Wittgenstein objects to inner sensations being concept-involving objects because he rejects the model of “object-designation”; and (2) despite (1), Wittgenstein does not eliminate sensations nor does he deny that we can conceive of them; rather, he thinks that people conceptualise sensations in ways other than as concept-involving objects.

Wittgenstein’s Concept of Language Games

Austrian British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the greatest philosophers in the 20th century. He mostly works in analytic philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethic and religion, aesthetic and culture. Philosophers often create their own vocabularies by giving special meanings to ordinary terms and phrases. Wittgenstein coinages the term of “language games” and the ‘private language argument”. His argument on the language is the rules of the use of ordinary language is neither right nor wrong, neither true nor false, the language is merely useful for the particular applications in which they are applied . Language is defined not as a system of representation but as a system of devices for engaging in various sorts of social activity, hence ‘the meaning of the word is its use in the language.

Knowing qualia: reloading the displaced perception model

How does one know the phenomenal character of one’s own experience? I aim to present and defend a new view of the epistemology of qualia that addresses this issue. My view results from a reworking of Dretske’s displaced perception model. The guiding line is the key Wittgensteinian insight of his Private Language Argument, namely the claim that no inner perception of qualia can justify our corresponding qualia-beliefs. My reworking of the original model starts with the rejection of Dretske’s representationalism, as well as any other metaphysical views about the ultimate nature of qualia. The reworking of the displaced perception model I am proposing is supposed to be compatible with any available metaphysical view on qualia. The second step consists of rejecting the epistemological misgivings of the original model, namely the view that knowing qualia requires “connecting beliefs” along with “meta-representations.” Yet, Dretske’s crucial mistake has been to force knowledge of qualia into the “belief-box.” As a matter of fact, there is only one belief involved in introspecting qualia, namely the qualia-belief itself. The third final step is this. Assuming the key Wittgensteinian insight, I argue that introspection of qualia is a process that is both epistemically reliable and automatic. It is reliable because it dispenses with justification of any beliefs whatsoever. Moreover, it is automatic because it also dispenses with reflexive connecting beliefs. For example, it takes nonconceptual awareness of the color blue as an input and automatically yields the belief that phenomenal blue is the conscious character of my experience of the sky as an output just by employing the concept BLUE.