Colin Pink
Wittgenstein’s private language argument and the Cartesian picture of the
mind.
A Cartesian picture of the world might be rendered something like this: the world
consists of bodies and minds; I am intimately acquainted with my mind and its
contents, more so than anything else. I therefore have a greater certainty about my
own mind and its contents (thoughts, feelings, impressions) than I have about other
things e.g. bodies and other people’s minds.
Through a series of sceptical arguments (utilising the notions of the fallibility
of perception, dream states and the concept of an Evil Genius deceiving him)
Descartes claims to throw into doubt the existence of everything other than his own
mind; but that he cannot doubt because the very act of doubting it proves to himself
that it does exist (‘I think therefore I am’). Having established his own mind as the
only thing he can be certain of Descartes then has the task of working his way, so to
speak, out of his mind in order to retrieve the rest of existence, which he set to one
side in his exercise of hyperbolic doubt.
Having started from the lone, isolated individual mind Descartes is saddled
with a number of difficult problems: avoiding solipsism, proving that anything other
than his mind exists, and the interraction between such radically different
‘substances’ as mind and body, to name a few.
Wittgenstein’s private language arguments challenge a number of
assumptions that are commonly made about the privileged nature of private mental
contents and, in the Cartesian picture of the world, the foundational epistemic role of
private sensations.
Wittgenstein’s arguments against the notion of a private language in the
Philosophical Investigations are important because they question widely held
philosophical views exemplified in both Cartesian ideas and the tradition of
empiricism stretching from Locke to Russell and beyond.
To call something private is normally to acknowledge that it could become
public. Thus we can read someone’s private papers even though they wouldn’t like
it, or walk through the door marked ‘private’ in the pub or hotel. A coded language or
cipher is a private language in just that way: it is intended for a limited or private
consumption but could (if the code is broken) become publicly available. But when
Wittgenstein talks of a private language he does not mean a restricted language,
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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.
So another person cannot
understand the language.’ PI s243)
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 people’s 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 didn’t 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.
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Wittgenstein challenges the priority and the foundational nature of personal
experience in the formation and use of language. One important aspect of
Wittgenstein’s private language argument is the fact that it draws our attention to the
public or shared nature of language. Language is essentially a means of
communication between a community of language users for specific purposes (it is
this that the examples of particular ‘language-games’ are designed to bring out). It is
therefore essentially social and practical in nature. In an important sense we can
only imagine a private language because we partake of a public language.
In order for language to function as a means of communication it has to be
rule governed; the meanings of words cannot change on a whim but must be
accepted and understood by the community. To use language is, therefore, to
participate in a rule governed activity. In any rule governed activity mistakes can
happen when someone misapplies or does not understand a rule. Others, who are
competent in the language, can correct their usage if mistakes are made. This is
possible because language is shared, a public tool of communication. In the case of
a private language it would not be possible to know if the user ever made an error
since there is no community of use to compare the linguistic performance against it.
As Wittgenstein says:
…to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible to obey a
rule ‘privately’: otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as
obeying it. (PI s202)
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 else’s 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 people’s 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.)
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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.
Wittgenstein’s 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.
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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).
It is wrong because we commonly do know when another person is in pain; in fact it
is quite a major achievement to be able to hide the fact that one is in pain from
others. It is nonsense because ‘it makes sense to say about other people that they
doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.’ (PI s246). The use of the
phrase ‘I know’ is only applicable in circumstances in which it makes sense that I
might not know, but having a pain precludes me from not knowing that I have it.
Another position that Wittgenstein opposes is the idea that it is impossible for
two people to have the same pain. Wittgenstein points out that we do frequently say
that we have the same pain. If you and I both complain of a throbbing pain over our
left temple we are naturally inclined to say we have the same headache. A
scientifically minded critic would be inclined to point out that we do not have the
same pain in that the same nerve endings are not being stimulated. But this is not
the use of ‘same’ here. It is helpful here to think in terms of the type/token distinction.
Where we say we have the same pain we mean the same type even though the
token is different. Thus if you and I write the word ‘cat’ we have written the same
word but the tokens are different. In the same way it makes sense to say we can
have the same pains.
Wittgenstein’s arguments in the Philosophical Investigations remove the
foundations of the Cartesian notion of the mind. He has shown that a logically
private language makes no sense but such a language would need to exist for
Descartes' Cogito to work. In addition Wittgenstein shows that our ability to talk
about sensations is not based on some private experiential data (a fundamental idea
running through empiricist philosophy) but on shared use and forms of life.
Wittgenstein’s arguments are also a powerful defence against solipsism since to use
language is to bring with it a community of users; the other is therefore not something
apart from the individual mind but already embedded in the use of language. If a
private language is a logical impossibility then the moment I formulate a solipsistic
argument I defeat myself. I think therefore I am; I use language therefore I am not
alone.
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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 O’Hear, ‘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)
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