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The Private Language
Argument and the
Philosophy of
Psychology
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Private Language

A plausible example of a private language would
be our language for sensations.
Why? Because is through introspection that
we grasp the essence of our particular
psychological states.
The essentiality of such a language is an inward
pointing (ostension) referring to our immediate
(private) sensations.
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
Eight main arguments against the idea of a
private language.
See Wilson, B. 1998. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations. Edinburgh UP
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1. The Consequence Argument
A private definition is not a real definition of a
world, for it is impossible for it to have a
practical consequence, i.e. a genuine practical
use.
Let say that I name “S” a given sensation: How
can “S” have a practical use?
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2. The Stage-Setting Argument
There is a gap between knowing a correlation
and possessing a definition.
One could not use “S” as a name unless one
already possesses a language in which “S” has
already a role.
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
Privately established correlations could not be
the basis of a language because they could
count as definitions only for someone who
already has a language.
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3. The Practice Argument
A person could not obey a rule only once.
And an individual cannot be the only arbiter of
the correctness of her own usage.
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4. The Interpretation Argument
Without a degree of regularity, of correlations
between utterances and action, there is nothing
we can call a language.
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
So in the case of an agent writing “S” in her own
diary we do not find the required regularity.
Hence “S” would not be a sign of a language
and, therefore, a private language cannot be
possible.
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5. The Identification Argument
If a private language were to exist a criterion of
identity for my sensation would be needed.
How do I know that my last week headache is
the same as this week headache without
mastering the word “headache”?
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6. The Verificationist Argument
If a private language were possible, a private
language user would be required to check each
time she uses “S” whether or not it means the
same today as it meant yesterday.
That is, for an appropriate use of “S” it would be
necessary to be able to check any present
utterance against the original definition: if this
check is impossible, “S” is meaningless.
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7. The Beetle-in-the-box Argument
If I name what I have in my box “beetle” and
you name what you have in your box “beetle”,
how do we know what we are naming the same
thing?
This also suggests that the language of
sensations cannot be understood on the model
of the name-object relation.
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8. The Use Argument
Questions about meaning can often be replaced
by questions about use.
Meaning and understanding do not consist in
any experience of fitness or mental act of
grasping.
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
They have to be understood as practical abilities.
As such meanings do not have to be reified as
abstract entities
E.g. what gets named by a numerical) or mental
entities (e.g. what gets named by a colour or
sensations word).
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
General remarks against the possibility of
a private language
In looking at how we teach a child the world
“pain”, Wittgenstein draws our attention to the
fact that we teach the use of the word without
ever attempting to direct the child’s attention
inwards.
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
We train the child in the use/exploit of a
linguistic technique which enables her to express
what she feels, not merely in cries and
exclamations, but in articulate language.
The verbal expression of pain replaces crying
and does not describe it. (PI: # 244)
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
The grammar of “pain”.
The connection between the word “pain” and
the relevant sensation is not secured by an inner
ostension, but by the fact that this word is used
as a mean to express what it is felt.
It is by making ourselves aware of how we use
words such as “pain” that we articulate the
criterion of identity for pain, and not by looking
inwards and saying “this”.
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
The act of naming presupposes a grammar or
technique of employing a word within a
language game.
The mere act of looking inside or inwards does
neither supply this grammar nor provide a
technique of employment.
For “sensation” is a word of our common language, not
one intelligible to me alone. So the use of this word
stands in need of a justification which everybody
understand. (PI: # 261)
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
General moral
(i) Introspection plays no role in defining
psychological concepts.
(ii) The distinction between psychological states
and behaviour, which the appeal to
introspection aimed to capture, is a
grammatical distinction which is properly
understood through a careful attention to
the differences in how we use the relevant
concepts.
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The Philosophy of Psychology

The Cartesian picture
It pictures sensations as inner processes.
So if one, God, could see into human
consciousness, she would know what we can
only guess is happening. Humans cannot
penetrate what lies behind behaviour.
So our use of psychological expression, unlike
God’s use, is indirect.
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
The Cartesian picture legitimates the following
question:
What is the connection between a sensation, S,
which is supposed to lies inside us and the
behaviour triggered by S?

This question suggests a kind of spatial
distinction between a sensation and the
behaviour, a distinction between what is inside
(S) and what is outside (the behaviour triggered
by S).
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
To understand the connection or link between S
and S-behaviour merely on the basis of S
causing S-behaviour, would be to oversimplify
the phenomenon.
For there is also conceptual (or grammatical)
connection between the concept of S and Sbehaviour.
It comes to this: only of a living human being and what
resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one
say: it has sensations; it sees, is blind, hears; is deaf; is
conscious or unconscious. (PI: # 281)
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
When we investigate psychological concepts and
the way they are used in our language games,
we see that they do not work on the basis of a
distinction between what is inside (private) and
what is outside (public).
We do not say that a stone does not feel pain
because we have been able to investigate what
is inside the stone.
It does not make sense in our language game to
speak of a stone feeling pain.
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
These are conceptual data.
Our linguistic practice describes living human
beings: it does not describe bodies.
We do not say that a body feels pain, we do not
attribute pain to a hand.
We say that a person feels pain, we do not
comfort a person’s hand, …
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
When a child comes to learn how to use
sensation concepts she does not learn it on
the basis of what is inside, a hidden object.
She does not learn it using ostensive definitions,
etc..
So the Cartesian picture, which rests on the
distinction between what is inside and what is
outside, is not relevant and cannot be applied in
describing the learning process.
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
Sensations
The must not be conceived as objects.
This, though, does not entail that sensations do
not exist, i.e. that a sensation is a nothing, i.e.
that there is nothing behind behaviour.
It is not a rejection of qualia. It is a mere
rejection of the latter as objects.
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“But you will surely admit that there is a difference
between pain-behaviour accompanied by pain and painbehaviour without any pain?”—Admit it? What greater
difference could there be?—“And yet you again and
again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a
nothing.”—Not at all. It is not a something, but not a
nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing
would serve just as well as a something about which
nothing could be said. We have only rejected the
grammar which tries to force itself on us here.
The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break
with the idea that language always functions in one way,
always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts—
which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or
anything else you please. (PI: # 304)
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
Visual experience
If we focus on what it is like to see something,
we tend to think of visual experiences as images
we know directly by introspection.
This, though, is not the right picture.
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
For the visual impression as a private object of
experience is a philosophical illusion.
To overcome this illusion Wittgenstein invites us
to investigate visual experiences in a different
way, i.e. as a grammatical investigation on the
way this concept actually works within our
language game.
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
Goals
(i) To overcome the exaggerated sense of the
importance of introspection in understanding
the nature of visual experience.
(ii) To reveal the grammatical links existing
between this concept and the way agents
behave and react, i.e. to underline the link
between visual experience and being able to
do something.
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
Seeing and seeing as
E.g. the rabbit-duck picture.
Without noticing the ambiguity I see either a
picture-rabbit or a picture-duck, while noticing
the ambiguity I see the picture as a picturerabbit or as a picture-duck.
It is only when one knows that she is presented
with an ambiguous picture that one can answer
the question “what do you see?” with “I see it
as a rabbit or as a duck”.
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
The difference involved in seeing the picture as
a rabbit and as a duck can be captured neither
in invoking two different (inner) pictures one can
point to when saying “Now I see it as a duck”
and “Now I see it as a rabbit”, nor in the
objective world (the picture itself).
The difference ought to come from elsewhere.
The difference in the two visual experiences
arises from a difference in how the agent places
the pictures in two different contexts, i.e. in the
way she makes reference to other pictures of
rabbits or duck, etc.
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
General Moral
Introspection is of no help in characterising the
difference between seeing and seeing as.
The same happens with sudden recognition.
Our visual experience is not linked with a change
in the object perceived, but with a change in
how the perceiver is situated or disposed to act
vis-à-vis the object perceived.
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