Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument

A few clips of a discussion on Wittgenstein's argument against there being a private language. The discussants include Stephen Mulhall and Denis McManus with the host Shahidha Bari. This comes from the BBC program Free Thinking. The full program can be found here: www.bbc.co.uk/...
“If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.”
#philosophy #wittgenstein #epistemology

[@ReynaSingh]

I suppose all of existence is relating inner and outer experiences, and somehow even though none of us really knows what’s going on in the mind of another, we all coexist. It’s quite beautiful

[@janari64]

Inner experience (the embodied mind) and outer experience (the array of social groups) flow into one another, creating the individual and the community through processes of categorization. Our interiority as beauty or as unforeseen predictability embraced in the event?

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

The very existence of an inner world is what wittgenstein is arguing against.

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of view that Wittgenstein rejects and argues against.

[@janari64]

@@Philosophy_Overdose Then we are left with the only answer in the post-structuralist model, that we are the effects of discourse. Is not it?

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

@@janari64 I don't need discourse to have pain. Robinson crusoe surely felt pain when he stubbed his toe. It's just that 'I have pain' is not a description of how things are with me in my 'inner world', but rather what we were taught to substitute crying out in pain with.

[@josephasghar]

Thank you so much. A tricky concept made clear.

[@annalisavajda252]

Well sure some people think and write in code too so if you read something private they wrote you might think it says or means something it does not but you should not have been reading it anyway perhaps either then you would not have gotten the wrong idea about it. Why do some think they are entitled to know or presume to know the private thoughts of others? It's invasive and they often project their own concepts and biases and then distort context.

[@yclept9]

I think it's more that society stabilizes criteria for concepts. As Levinas says, ethics comes before ontology, by which he means it stabilizes it. A private language doesn't have that. But even so, it's not stabilized into definiteness. You know what a chair is, and what can serve as a chair but isn't a chair (tree stump), and what cases remain doubtful even though nothing's unclear about the situation ("I don't know if I'd call that a chair"). That implied social history would not come up in a private language.

Agree. First question comes into my mind about a 'private' language is: What does it use for?

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

@ it doesn't really make sense to ask what a private language would be used for. The question is whether our language is a private language or not, i.e. whether words like 'pain' or 'red' are names for inner objects or not.

[@Vgallo]

Where can I learn more about this idea that ethics comes before ontology and the fact it has a Stabilising effect? This all sounds very intriguing

[@yclept9]

Levinas, Totality and Infinity, for ethics before ontology.

[@yclept9]

@@Vgallo Levinas, Totality and Infinity

[@Self-Duality]

“A human being can punish himself” - why did that cause me to laugh? 😅💭

[@oziaus]

Because the maths of metaphysics :D

[@Self-Duality]

@@oziaus 🤭💝

[@cloudoftime]

I can imagine a recognition of flawed memory and creating a map for your future self.

[@markruiz9056]

Once spoken,infinitely translated.

[@James-ll3jb]

???. Explain

[@mjolninja9358]

@@James-ll3jblets say “Its Whale Cheese Season” it can now be seen in different meanings.

[@potshangbamkhangamcha9927]

As a hypothetical view, what about the well known phenomenon of mind readers who can intuit into inner workings others minds? The first person inner sensation in one's mind is the starting point. Speaking about something in a group context always presuppose the fore-having structures of those inner workings of first person experience. Only then one can make oneself vocal. The question of private language seems to be incoherent in this sense of what already in mind which is the only thing one can speak about (Heudegger)

[@annalisavajda252]

I think what is often perceived as mind reading is actually just empathy if they know how a person is feeling they may know how feelings affect peoples thought process. Some people are just more intuitive than others. That's a spiritual not intellectual thing though.

[@cliffordhodge1449]

The gap between ostension and meaning (a definition) is apparently unbridgeable. Identifying the object of ostension (e.g., when pointing in the general direction of a tiger) in a spatial manifold is problematic; and this private language problem shows that ostension in a purely temporal manifold is also problematic.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

That's not at all wittgenstein's position. There is no gap between ostension and meaning, and meaning isn't definition. The meaning of a word is its use. You understand what a word means when you can follow the rules that govern its use. And these rules can either be given by a definition or by ostension. It's not ostension that's the issue, it's 'inner ostension'.

[@hss12661]

@@Ffkslawlnkn That's not Wittgenstein's position either. Wittgenstein doesn't say "meaning is use". He rejects the notion of meaning altogether.

[@shanejohns7901]

We clearly could think prior to language, or how else would we have developed language in the first instance? Which tells me, at least, that some form of rudimentary thinking can take place without any corresponding language.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

We learned to make certain sounds under certain circumstances - that's it. We didn't need to somehow think the meaning of a word we've come up with to endow it with this meaning, it's the other way around. Words only have meaning because they are to be used under certain circumstances. Animals didn't need to think in order to come up with different forms of verbal communication.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

@@chocolatefigure01 there are many things that aren't language, there are many things that don't mean 'to be', and wittgenstein's pla does not say that we don't think. Obviously, we do.

[@incocnicto]

Also non-human animals think but are not clearly linguistic

[@amihart9269]

Thinking isn't what is meant by private language, what is meant by private language is metaphysical thinking, distinct words which we assign discrete meaning to, which we tend to imagine existing as a world of concept in our mind's. A person in complete isolation would not think in the way we do these days which is a social product.

[@shanejohns7901]

@@amihart9269 A person in complete isolation would have fewer precepts and concepts, but they'd still exist. Keeping in mind that such a 'person' would have to be at least raised by (and therefore 'learn from') someone for some amount of time before being completely 'isolated'. Else, they'd die as a helpless child before long. Gestures usually develop well before vocalizations do. And you can analogize with a deaf person's ability to conceptualize concepts and precepts.

[@joekulik999]

When my twin daughters were old enough to talk, they developed a secondary language, a "private language" that was only meaningful in the dialogues between the h em. This linguistic phenomenon is common among twins and other social groups for more adaptive purposes. But the type of private language discussed in this video would, in practical terms, be the sign of a very mentally ill person who has severe difficulties with dealing with social reality as it is naturally given.

[@languagegame410]

god, i love WITTGENSTEIN!!!

[@bmxt939]

What is the story behind that graffiti, does anyone know?

[@117Industries]

It’s cool isn’t it? Cute lil duckies.

[@behemoth5344]

according to what I read in his Geheime Tagebücher, during World War One Wittgenstein used to carry on his back two rabbit ducks that he would use to attack the French. The French couldn't even say "rabbit duck" nevermind imagine their existence, hence the famous catchphrase "the limit of your language is the limit of your world, motherfucker" uttered one instant before shattering them frogs' heads.

[@117Industries]

@@behemoth5344 I didn’t even know that Wittgenstein had served in the war. I can imagine him being the kind of crazy bastard to conk a rabbit over someone’s head though.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

Late wittgenstein wrote extensively about optical illusions. Afaik, he did this drawing himself.

[@Homunculas]

@@117Industries No! It's rabbits!

[@markruiz9056]

Welcome to the future

[@evinnra2779]

If I have sensation S and able to recall the fact that I named that sensation S and the likes of that sensation S, then it is by it self is meaningless indeed. However if I also have *memory* of sensation S being sometimes followed by sensation B sometimes by sensation C or A, frequently and repeatedly having either and I'm persistently naming these sensations B or C or A, then in my mind something fundamental to what we think of meaning emerges, despite the fact that nobody has access to what I sense. Right?

[@evinnra2779]

p.s. because meaning is supposed to be anticipatory, intentional and definitive.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

How would you know if you are having sensation A or B?

[@evinnra2779]

@@Ffkslawlnkn Sensation is basically differentiation.

[@Ffkslawlnkn]

@@evinnra2779 I'm not claiming that A and B feel alike, but how would you know you are having A and not B? Presumably by having memorized an instant of A and an instant of B and comparing your current sensation with them, right? Wittgenstein's point is that this cannot endow a word with meaning and thus that sensation words do not name inner objects. If sensations aren't inner objects, then they aren't private. I can absolutely see what you see by looking at the same thing, and if we're both feeling unwell after eating old fish, we're feeling the same pain. That's how we use the term 'the same pain'.

[@evinnra2779]

@@Ffkslawlnkn Thanks for the clarification, but I'm not claiming that sensation is registered as sensing something inner OR outer, to begin with, only that its is registered as different OR same/similar. I thought the strength of Wittgenstein's argument was that even being able to name something relies on comparison, which in turn would have to rely on something existing already in the perceiver. Am I missing something?

[@behemoth5344]

So the cops knew that internal affairs were setting them up?

[@IKnowNeonLights]

This private language argument, it is a Freudian/Nietzsche/Kafka technique bias, extremely possible, considering the historical period and location for anyone of the education level of Wittgenstein. Which is, in it's core structure, (the reasoning of a possible mental problem/condition, within a cultural and societal setting, through logic.) Why did Wittgenstein go to Russell?!!! To understand how to deal with elevated levels of well informed, well educated paranoia. What is the (private language) concept he has written about?!!!! A broken down, easy justifiable, through reason and logic in regards and relation to thinking, of all possible levels of (thinking thoughts) paranoia. A problem that can be avoided very easy, by involving the mind on the pre socratic way of philosophy. Such as!! Is one point two points, or (is) two points one point.?! Which would make any possible Wittgenstein go to a possible Heidegger, and not a possible Russell.

[@TheTranceCartel]

Why did you use the Jimmy Savile accent though

[@ghamessmona]

❤❤❤❤

[@somethingyousaid5059]

My (existential) rage is a language all its own. And it's because none of you can feel it that none of you read it (and thus appreciate it) for the language that it is.

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

Typical philosophy teacher assures the young students: there is no such a thing as a stupid question. I say there is. Why does something exist instead of nothing. Talking about language without referring to psychology is stupid. Private language is dream. Have you ever been surprised in a dream? It happens regularly.

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

@@chocolatefigure01 Yes. I fully agree with you. However, the rules, like grammar, logic, the other, God etc. all is illusion. I stopped reading like time ago: cogito ergo non sum...

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

@@chocolatefigure01 It looks like that I have finally encountered someone who can actually think. I make provocative remarks to get a reaction, but the reaction comes as personal attack, even insult. I shall be honest with you. First of all what Wittgenstein says is nothing new. I can think of other prominent thinkers saying the same thing, e.g. Plato and Kant. You are right. A hospital full of insane people can never understand that they are insane, because they have no common denominator. But look at it this way: Rules of logic or grammar is not reality. Language, in its universality, cannot grasp the thing-in-itself, except as a word/concept. But precisely this thing -in-itself is the privation of being. Incidentally, how would you define irony? Is it not a private language?

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

@@chocolatefigure01 it looks like there can be no point of agreement between us. I found my Wittgenstein PI, bilingual version, and found the marking on page 20, where I had stopped. Now I remember why I became bored and disatisfied with scribbling. He has nothing new to say, not to me. The private language is in the dream, where you have no name for the being you cannot perceive. It is called, I call it, revelation. Silence is better...I don't expect a reply and this will be my last email. All the best and I wish you success in future endeavors.