such as a secret code, he has in mind a logically private language, a language that
can only be understood by one person. He envisages a language for private
sensations that are only available to the person experiencing them.
The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the
person speaking; to his immediate private sensations.
Such a language would not be able to be made public because no one, apart from
the owner of those sensations, would know to what it referred. But is such a notion
of a private language coherent?
Traditionally philosophers have held that our personal experience forms the
foundation of our ability to talk about the world and ourselves. For instance it is held
that it is because of my personal experience of pain that I am able to use the word
pain in an appropriate way and I can only understand other peoples experience of
pain through analogy with my own experience. This leads to a conception of
language in which it primarily consists in naming things through some form of
ostensive definition arrived at through introspection.
In contrast to this position Wittgenstein, in the Philosophical Investigations,
argues that it is because of my participation in a shared language that I am able to
describe my experiences and those of others. If experience were not shared we
would not be able to articulate anything meaningful about the personal experiences
we do have. According to Wittgenstein to declare I am in pain is to give expression
to my pain, not to describe it. I am not giving information but asking for help. I do not
own my pain in the way that I can own a coat even though the possessive form of
words might mislead us into thinking that way. It is senseless to say I know I am in
pain because it is not possible to be in pain and not know it; if I didnt feel it I would
not be in pain.
There is therefore an important asymmetry between first person and third
person accounts of sensations and psychological states. There can be no room for
doubt in the first person present tense expression of my sensations so to prefix such
statements with the phrase I know is redundant and expressions of my feelings are
not descriptions of my state but expressions of it. On the other hand a third person
account can be in error and therefore it does make sense to say I know he is in pain
because it is always a possibility that I could be wrong.
Without external validation there is no guarantee that thinking you have followed a
rule correctly means that you have in fact succeeded in following it.
Wittgenstein exposes the weakness of the notion that sensation language is
based on some form of private ostensive definition with the beetle in the box
example:
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! - Suppose
everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a beetle. No one can look into
anyone elses box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his
beetle. Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in
his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. But suppose the
word beetle had a use in these peoples language? If so it would not be used as
the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all;
not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. No, one can divide
through by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. (PI s293.)
Thus agreement on the use of the word beetle cannot depend on some private
experience but rather on shared use.
Wittgenstein provides an alternative account of the basis of our use of words
at PI s244:
how is the connexion between the name and the thing named set up?
This
question is the same as: how does a human being learn the meaning of the names of
sensations? of the word pain for example. Here is one possibility: words are
connected with the primitive, the natural, expressions of the sensation and used in
their place. A child has hurt himself and he cries; and then adults talk to him and teach
him exclamations and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behaviour.
So you are saying that the word pain really means crying? On the contrary: the
verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it.
Language use is an extension of human behaviour and the use of words is founded
upon our forms of life; thus the Inuit have many finely graduated ways of referring to
different types of snow whereas European languages have a more limited vocabulary
for this phenomenon because these distinctions have greater utility for the Inuit form
of life. This is why later in the Investigations Wittgenstein says: If a lion could talk,
we could not understand him. (p223); he is speculating that the form of life of a lion
would be so radically different from ours that there would be no common basis for
understanding.
Wittgensteins private language argument is a part of a broader challenge to
commonly held beliefs re: the distinction between the inner and the outer. However,
Wittgenstein is not a behaviourist in that he does not seek to deny that mental
processes have a part to play. He is only making the point that their role is not that
commonly attributed to them by philosophers. For instance, in his account of the
notion of remembering he says:
But you surely cannot deny that, for example, in remembering, an inner process takes
place. . . . The impression that we wanted to deny something arises from our setting
our faces against the picture of the inner process. What we deny is that the picture
of the inner process gives us the correct idea of the use of the word to remember.
We say that this picture with its ramifications stands in the way of our seeing the use of
the word as it is. (PI s305)
Through the exploration of our actual use in ordinary language Wittgenstein aims to
expose the confusions inherent in philosophical ideas about inner mental processes.
4
In what sense are my sensations private? Well, only I can know whether I am really
in pain; another person can only surmise it. In one way this is wrong, and in another
nonsense. (PI s246).
Bibliography:
A.J. Ayer, Can There Be a Private Language? in George Pitcher (ed) Wittgenstein
(London 1966)
John Cook, Wittgenstein on Privacy in George Pitcher (ed) Wittgenstein (London
1966)
Rene Descartes, The Essential Descartes Margaret Wilson (ed) (New York, 1969)
Alan Donagan, Wittgenstein on Sensation in George Pitcher (ed) Wittgenstein
(London 1966)
P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein on Human Nature (London 1997)
Anthony Kenny, Cartesian Privacy in George Pitcher (ed) Wittgenstein (London
1966)
Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford 1982)
Marie McGinn, Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations (London 1997)
Stephen Mulhall, On Being in the World (London 1990)
Anthony OHear, Wittgenstein and the Transmission of Traditions in A. Phillips
Griffiths (ed) Wittgenstein Centenary Essays (Cambridge 1991).
Rush Rhees, Can There Be a Private Language? in George Pitcher (ed)
Wittgenstein (London 1966)
Jenny Teichman, Wittgenstein on Persons and Human Beings, in Godfrey Vesey
(ed) Understanding Wittgenstein (London 1974)
Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations (Oxford 1958)