Abstract

According to "the General Interpretation" of Wittgenstein's private language argument, he argues that because correct and incorrect usage must be spelled out in terms of agreement or lack of agreement with communal practice, an isolated individual could not speak a private language. I argue that the General Interpretation is a bad account of Wittgenstein's actual argument and that any argument against the possibility of a private language which is based on the General Interpretation is unsound. ;The General Interpretation fails to make sense of the central argument in Philosophical Investigations, sections 243-289. In these passages Wittgenstein argues only against the possibility of languages in which terms for mental states are introduced by inner ostensive definition. The passages on rule following are shown to contain no argument against other types of private language. ;Several popular versions of the private language argument are evaluated on their own merits. In each case, it is argued that correct and incorrect usage can be spelled out in terms of coherence with individual, rather than communal, practice. It is argued that we can imagine fairly complex private languages in which the individual can make assertions that play roles analogous to the roles which assertions play in public language. ;Finally, it is argued that a Wittgensteinian account of rule following is consistent with the views presented in earlier parts of the thesis. Let a speaker's representational set be the speaker's total set of mental phenomena with a representational component. Two speakers may have the same representational sets, be in the same situation, take themselves to act on the basis of their representational sets, and yet act differently. The difference between the two is a difference in skill, not representation. Such skills are in most cases normatively assessed by the speaker's linguistic community. Consequences for functionalist philosophy of mind are suggested