Twentieth Century philosophical thought has expressed itself for the most part through two great Movements: the phenomenological and the analytical. Each movement originated in reaction against idealistic—or at least antirealistic—views of "the world". And each has collapsed back into an idealism not different in effect from that which it initially rejected. Both movements began with an appeal to meanings or concepts, regarded as objective realities capable of entering the flow of experience without loss of their objective status or of their (...) power to reveal to us an objective world as it would be if there were no subjective apprehensions of it. Both movements ended with a surrender of the objectivity of meanings and concepts in this strong sense, coming to treat them as at most more-or-less shareable components of a somehow communalized experience, but in any case incapable of revealing how things are irrespective of actual human experience. For the old Egocentric Predicament, with its "ideas" etc., is substituted a Lingocentric or Histrocentric Predicament of "language" and its elements. Hilary Putnam speaks for the current consensus: 'Internal realism says that we don't know what we are talking about when we talk about "things in themselves"' ( The Many Faces of Realism , p. 36). (shrink)

Wittgenstein at Work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations explores the least well-understood aspect of Wittgenstein's later work: his aims and methods. Specially-commissioned papers by twelve of the world's leading Wittgenstein scholars analyze the way he approached key topics such as rule-following and private language, and examine his remarks on clarification, nonsense and other central notions of his methodology. Many contributors touch on the therapeutic aspects Wittgenstein's approach, the focus of much current debate. Wittgenstein at Work provides both students and specialist (...) with a much-needed methodological companion to one of the greatest philosophical works of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn objects that Wittgenstein's private language argument overlooks the possibility that a private linguist can equip himself with a criterion of correctness by confirming generalizations about the patterns in which his private sensations occur. Crispin Wright responds that appropriate generalizations would be too few to be interesting. But I show that Wright's calculations are upset by his failure to appreciate both the richness of the data and the range of theories that would be available to the private linguist.

Although the proper formulation and assessment of Ludwig Wittgenstein's argument (or arguments) against the possibility of a private language continues to be disputed, the issue has lost none of its urgency. At stake is a broadly Cartesian conception of experiences that is found today in much philosophy of mind.

cannot understand the language.”[1] This is not intended to cover (easily imaginable) cases of recording one's experiences in a personal code, for such a code, however obscure in fact, could in principle be deciphered. What Wittgenstein had in mind is a language conceived as necessarily comprehensible only to its single originator because the things which define its vocabulary are necessarily inaccessible to others.

Some of Quine’s critics charge that he arrives at a behavioristic account of linguistic meaning by starting from inappropriately behavioristic assumptions (Kripke 1982, 14; Searle 1987, 123). Quine has even written that this account of linguistic meaning is a consequence of his behaviorism (Quine 1992, 37). I take it that the above charges amount to the assertion that Quine assumes the denial of one or more of the following claims: (1) Language-users associate mental ideas with their linguistic expressions. (2) A (...) language-user can have a private theory of linguistic meaning which guides his or her use of language. (3) Language learning relies on innate mechanisms. Call an antecedent denial of one or more of these claims illicit behaviorism. In this paper I show that Quine is prepared to grant, if only for the sake of argument, all three of the above claims. I argue that his claim that there is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behavior in observable circumstances is unscathed by these allowances (Quine 1992, 38). And I show that the behaviorism which Quine does assume should be viewed as a largely uncontroversial aspect of his evidential empiricism. I conclude that if one sets out to dismiss Quine’s arguments for internal-meaning skepticism, this dismissal should not be motivated by the charge that his conclusions rely on the illicitly behavioristic assumptions that some have suggested that they do. (shrink)

People see five kinds of views in epistemology and ontology as hinging on there being words a person can learn only by private ostensive definitions, through direct acquaintance with his own sensations: skepticism about other minds, 2. skepticism about an external world, 3. foundationalism, 4. dualism, and 5. phenomenalism. People think Wittgenstein refuted these views by showing, they believe, no word is learnable only by private ostensive definition. I defend these five views from Wittgenstein’s attack.

Hauser defends the proposition that our languages of thought are public languages. One group of arguments points to the coincidence of clearly productive (novel, unbounded) cognitive competence with overt possession of recursive symbol systems. Another group relies on phenomenological experience. A third group cites practical and methodological considerations: Occam's razor and the "streetlight principle" (other things being equal, look under the lamp) that motivate looking for instantiations of outer languages in thought first.

In this exciting new collection, a distinguished international group of philosophers contribute new essays on central issues in philosophy of language and logic, in honor of Michael Dummett, one of the most influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. The essays are focused on areas particularly associated with Professor Dummett. Five are contributions to the philosophy of language, addressing in particular the nature of truth and meaning and the relation between language and thought. Two contributors discuss time, in particular the (...) reality of the past. The last four essays focus on Frege and the philosophy of mathematics. The volume represents some of the best work in contemporary analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Oddity One : Kripke claims that Wittgenstein has invented "a new form of scepticism", one which inclines Kripke "to regard it as the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date, one that only a highly unusual cast of mind could have produced" (K, p. 60). However, Kripke also claims that there are analogies (and sometimes the analogies look very much like identities) between Wittgenstein's sceptical argument and the work of at least three and maybe four (...) other philosophers, viz., Quine, Goodman, Hume and Berkeley. Strange stuff indeed. The originality of Wittgenstein's work is especially difficult to see after Kripke claims that Wittgenstein presents a problem concerning the nexus between past . . . 'meanings' and present practice" (K, p. 62), and says that Hume is said to have questioned "the causal nexus whereby a past event necessitates a future one, and the inductive inferential nexus from the past to the future." (K, p. 62). Whither the originality? And the connection with Goodman's work with 'grue' is even closer than that between Kripke's Wittgenstein and Hume. Given that Kripke had read Goodman before "discovering" the rule-following paradox in Wittgenstein, one ought to be sceptical of Kripke's claim that Wittgenstein has invented a new form of scepticism. It would be much more accurate to say that Kripke has strapped Wittgenstein with a hybrid scepticism drawn from Hume and Goodman. (shrink)

A common complaint against Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that whereas the aim of “the real” Wittgenstein’s private language argument is to establish the impossibility of a necessarily private language, the communitarian account of meaning proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein (KW), if successful, would establish the impossibility of a contingently private language. I show that this common complaint is based on a failure of Kripke’s critics (a failure that is justified, in part, by Kripke’s text) to recognize and (...) understand his distinction between a “physically isolated” individual (PII) and an individual “considered in isolation” (ICl) . It is only an ICI for whom rule following and language are rendered impossible by KW. l then show that an lel speaks a necessarily private language. Thus, KW’s private language argument gives us, at best, the same story about the impossibility of private language as pre-Kripke accounts of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (shrink)

The demand for 'criteria of correctness' to identify recurring particulars in Wittgenstein's private language argument favors an idealist interpretation of quantum phenomena.The indeterminacy principle in quantum physics and the logic of the private language argument share a common concern with the limitations by which microphysical or sensation particulars can be reidentified. Wittgenstein's criteria for reidentifying particular recurrent private sensations are so general as to apply with equal force to quantum particulars, and to support the idealist thesis that quantum phenomena are (...) themselves essentially mental or dependent on mental occurrences. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's private language argument in his philosophical investigations is explained and critically evaluated. The implications of Wittgenstein's conclusion that there can be no private sensation language are examined, in light of claims that Wittgenstein by the private language argument also proves that there can also be no private mental objects. The concept of a criterion of correctness is discussed as the key to Wittgenstein's reflections, and counterexamples are considered that raise doubts about the soundness of the private language argument. Difficulties (...) identified in standard interpretations of Wittgenstein's argument indicate that the rejection of private sensation languages does not automatically imply a third-person hard psychological theory, such as logical behaviorism, nor does the argument effectively support reductivist or anti-intentionalist philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In this book Saul Kripke brings his powerful philosophical intelligence to bear on Wittgenstein's analysis of the notion of following a rule.

The sceptical problem of Kripkenstein pertains to both the notions of content of thought and linguistic meaning in such a way that if the sceptical solution allowed us to conclude that language is essentially public, then we should also be able to conclude that thought is essentially public. But, when addressing the question of the way in which one could, under this hypothesis, reach the conclusion that thought is essentially public, there would seem to be two possible types of answers. (...) The first one is that this follows from the fact that language is a necessary condition of thought, thus: there is no thought without language, but there can be no language without there being more than one speaker, hence there can be no thought without there being more than one thinker. The second answer (which does not exclude the first) is that we should then be able to formulate a version of the sceptical solution which applies directly to the question of knowing under which conditions one is justified in judging that someone has a certain thought, and that that thought is correct. But if an answer of this second type were possible, it would perhaps no longer be necessary to rely on the sceptical solution in order to conclude that language is public, for in all likelihood, this conclusion would follow from the fact that thought is public, together with the idea that thought is a necessary condition of language, thus: there is no language without thought, but there can be no thought without there being more than one thinker, hence there can be no language without there being more than one speaker. Hence, there seems to be at least three different ways in which one could try to reach the two desired conclusions. However, the foregoing remarks hide a few difficulties that can partly be disclosed by stating more precisely what the publicity of language and thought is supposed to consists in. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes five key interpretations of the argument presented by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations I, §258. I also argue that on none of these five interpretations is the argument cogent. The paper is primarily concerned with the most popular interpretation of the argument: that which that makes it rest upon the principle that one can be said to follow a rule only if there exists a 'useable criterion of successful performance' (Pears) or 'operational standard of correctness' (Glock) for its (...) correct application. This principle, I suggest, is untrue. The private language argument upon which it rests therefore fails. (shrink)

The primary concern of Stephen Mulhall's book is to investigate an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on private language, associated paradigmatically with Norman Malcolm. On this reading, the grammar of our ordinary concepts of language, reference, meaning, rule, etc. is held to prohibit or exclude the idea of a private language. The attempt to give expression to the idea is held to result in a violation of the grammar of these concepts, which connects them essentially with the idea of public criteria (...) that are accepted as establishing that a word has been correctly used. Something that philosophers have been inclined to regard as a possibility is shown to be excluded: the attempt to describe it results in .. (shrink)

Some of the methods for data collection in experimental psychology, as well as many of the inferences from observed behavior or image scanning, are based on the implicit premise that language use can be linked, via the meaning of words, to specific subjective states. Wittgenstein’s well known private language argument (PLA), however, calls into question the legitimacy of such inferences. According to a strong interpretation of PLA, all of the elements of a language must be publicly available. Thus the meaning (...) of words is not fixed by reference to our private experiences, and so data from subjective state claims indicates nothing about our subjective experiences. Application of PLA to psychological studies based on descriptions of the experience of orgasm offers support for the strong version of the conclusion of PLA. We show that PLA has deep implications for data collection methods and inferences in experimental psychology. In particular we critique two contemporary research projects in neuroscience: one studying the ability to remember emotionally loaded words and the other studying experience of attraction. Both of these projects attempt to link subjective experiences and thought processes to particular observable brain states. The research methods appeal to (implicit) inferences from linguistic usage to subjective states. Application of PLA will show that such inferences cannot be made because the meaning of a word is not determined by any subjective state of the speaker. (shrink)

Stephen Mulhall offers a new way of interpreting one of the most famous and contested texts in modern philosophy: remarks on "private language" in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. He sheds new light on a central controversy concerning Wittgenstein's early work by showing its relevance to a proper understanding of the later work.

I examine what I take to be an important consideration for the later Wittgenstein: the understanding of a rule does not exceed or transcend an understanding of explanations or instructions in the rule. I contend that this consideration plays a central role in the later Wittgenstein's views on rule-following. I first show that it serves as a key premiss in a sceptical argument concerning our ability to follow rules. I then argue that this consideration is vital to Wittgenstein's case against (...) what I describe as a realist view of rules. This realist view requires that our understanding of a rule extend beyond what can be understood from any set of instructions or explanation. For Wittgenstein, because this is to transcend publicly available means of conveying understanding, this realist's understanding is a private understanding. He calls this private source of understanding an ‘intuition’ and the main line of argument against intuition in our understanding of a rule draws, appropriately, on what is called his ‘private language argument’. In this paper, I defend a non-verificationist reading of this argument and its use against the realist so-construed. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this paper I want to consider whether the 'phenomenal concepts' posited by many recent philosophers of mind are consistent with Wittgenstein’s private language argument. The paper will have three sections. In the first I shall explain the rationale for positing phenomenal concepts. In the second I shall argue that phenomenal concepts are indeed inconsistent with the private language argument. In the last I shall ask whether this is bad for phenomenal concepts or bad for Wittgenstein.

This is a concise and readable study of five intertwined themes at the heart of Wittgenstein's thought, written by one of his most eminent interpreters. David Pears offers penetrating investigations and lucid explications of some of the most influential and yet puzzling writings of twentieth-century philosophy. He focuses on the idea of language as a picture of the world; the phenomenon of linguistic regularity; the famous "private language argument"; logical necessity; and ego and the self.

Drawing on ten years of research on the unpublished Wittgenstein papers, Stern investigates what motivated Wittgenstein's philosophical writing and casts new light on the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. The book is an exposition of Wittgenstein's early conception of the nature of representation and how his later revision and criticism of that work led to a radically different way of looking at mind and language. It also explains how the unpublished manuscripts and typescripts were put together and why they often provide (...) better evidence of the development of his ideas than can be found in his published writing. In doing so, the book traces the development of a number of central themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy, including his conception of philosophical method, the picture theory of meaning, the limits of language, the application of language to experience, his treatment of private language, and what he called the "flow of life." Arguing that Wittgenstein's views are often much more simple (and more radical) than we have been led to believe, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language provides an overview of the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy and brings to light aspects of his philosophy that have been almost universally neglected. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to restore the interdependent or complementary relationship between self and others against the universalistic one (as I call it) that Kant, for example, once insisted on, by reexamining the concept of so-called private language. I shall consider some views in speech act theory and pragmatics, since there has often been discussion about such a private occurrence as the speaker's sincerity. For example, Jürgen Habermas situates it in the speaker's internal nature as will be seen (...) later. In my opinion, alter ego is an ego because we can empathize (einfühlen) with it, and yet it is alter ego because it has some private experiences which we cannot perfectly comprehend. (shrink)

This book provides a novel interpretation of the ideas about language in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Travis places the "private language argument" in the context of wider themes in the Investigations, and thereby develops a picture of what it is for words to bear the meaning they do. He elaborates two versions of a private language argument, and shows the consequences of these for current trends in the philosophical theory of meaning.

According to Barry Stroud, Wittgenstein thought that language is social only in this minimal way: we cannot make sense of the idea of someone having a language unless we can describe her as using signs in conformity with the linguistic practices of some community. Since a solitary person could meet this condition, Stroud concludes that, for Wittgenstein, solitary languages are possible. I argue that Wittgenstein infact thought that language is social in a much more robust way. Solitary languages are not (...) possible because we cannot make sense of the idea of someone having a language unless we can think of her as actively participating in the linguistic practices that fix the standards governing the applications of her words.Selon Barry Stroud, Wittgenstein pensait qu’une langue n’est sociale que de manière minimale: l’idée qu’une personne possède une langue n’a de sens que si nous pouvons la décrire comme se servant de signes conformément aux pratiques linguistiques de quelque communauté. Un solitaire pouvant satisfaire à cette condition, Stroud en conclut que pour Wittgenstein, les langues solitaires sont possibles.Je ferai valoir qu’en fait, Wittgenstein pensait qu’une langue est sociale en un sens beaucoup plus robuste. Les langues solitaires ne sont pas possibles, parce que l’idée que quelqu’un possède une langue n’a de sens pour nous que si nous le concevons comme participant aux pratiques linguistiques fixant les standards qui gouvernent l’application des mots qu’il emploie. (shrink)