Private Language and the Mind as Absolute Interiority

The private language argument in Wittgenstein has important implications for how self consciousness should be characterised. Some recent cognitivist theories claim that the self is really the sense of being a mental presence whilst the body is merely a container for these vital mental attributes. The cognitivist perspective emphasizes that mental states are internal to the mind thereby promoting the notion that the self is separate from the body. The private language argument is used to critique cognitivism through an examination of the notion of privacy which this conception of mental states depends upon. The assumption that the mental is essentially private leads to the supposition that it is intelligible to attribute self consciousness to either minds or bodies. On Wittgenstein’s view new theories of the self are not required but a grammatical investigation into the employment of ‘self consciousness’ and its cognates (including their psychological and neuroscientific uses) is.

Philosophical Investigations 17 pp. 552-565., 1994

A recently published Wittgenstein manuscript from the early 1940s, which contains some unusually explicit notes for a public lecture on private language, helps to clarify the nature of Wittgenstein's argument that a private definition is impossible because ostension always depends on a "technique of use." It also strongly supports the view that Wittgenstein was not arguing for a positive theory of mind and helps us to see how the treatment of training and practice in the opening sections of the "Investigations" is the basis for the subsequent discussion of both rule-following and privacy.

2005

The Private Language Argument (PLA) by Ludwig Wittgenstein is an innocuous-looking argument describing how a private language -a meaningful language that can in principle only be understood by its single "speaker" -cannot exist. The argument itself, described summarily in this paper, is complemented by several explanatory examples in Philosophical Investigations and appears to be easily understandable.

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, 2013

"The Private Language Sections of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, generally agreed to run from §§ 243 - 271, but extending to § 315 with the book’s continued treatment of the private object model and the inner and outer conception of the mind, have proved remarkably resistant to any generally agreed interpretation. Even today, ways of looking at these sections which were first in vogue half a century ago when discussions of this aspect of Wittgenstein’s work were at their height, still have their adherents, at a time when the emphasis in Wittgenstein exegesis has graduated towards anti-theoretical, non-doctrinal, and therapeutic conceptions of his entire methodology. Discussion about the rule-following considerations after Saul Kripke’s new interpretation of the argument against private language, which predominated during the last quarter of the 20th century,has tended to be superseded into the new millennium by controversy over substantial v resolute conceptions of nonsense in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a debate now seen by some interpreters to illuminate Wittgenstein’s later work.This paper sheds light on these complex matters firstly by studying a very popular interpretative approach to the relevant sections within its historical context, and secondly by attempting to grasp his overall methodology, primarily as practised in the private language passages themselves. This can help to show how they may reflect the content of §§ 89 -133. However, just as it can be argued that Hume never fully reconciles the sceptical and naturalistic tendencies in his writing, it can be surmised that Wittgenstein never really finds a proper balance between the avowedly therapeutic intent of those stated passages and what, at least for some commentators, are the clearly discoverable argumentative strategies that he employs throughout his treatment of private language and, indeed, throughout Part 1 of the Philosophical Investigations""

Mind, 2008

Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: A Critical Guide, edited by Arif Ahmed, pp. 178-196, 2010

The discussion of private language in the Investigations was written between 1937 and 1945, after the first 190 remarks of part I of the book had almost reached their final form. The post-1936 writing on private language represents a fresh start, both in wording and in conception, on the pre-1936 material. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein did repeatedly discuss the idea of a language which "only I myself can understand" during 1929-36. One strand in this discussion that is directly taken up in the Investigations is the idea that "If I were to reserve the word 'pain' solely for what I had hitherto called 'my pain', and others "L. W.'s pain," I should do other people no injustice, so long as a notation were provided in which the loss of the word 'pain' in other connections were somehow supplied." However, the discussion of this topic in the Investigations is much briefer than in the pre-1936 writing. I look at the relationship between section 403 and texts from the 1929 notebooks and the Philosophical Remarks, assembled in the spring of 1930, mapping out the earlier development of this line of argument and exploring the principal continuities and discontinuities in Wittgenstein's treatment of private language.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2006

The ‘private language arguments’ are a culmination point of thoughts developed throughout the whole Investigations. In §258 the issue of ostensive definition is taken up, initially this appeared in §28. The theme of rule-following explored around §201 plays a pivotal role in the example of the private diarist in §270. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Wittgenstein’s attack on the ‘Augustinian picture of language’ which initiates the Investigations in §§1ff. underlies and accompanies his criticism of a certain conception of the mind in the discussion of pain in §244 and others. In this paper I want to follow these threads back to their origin, thereby elucidating the issue at stake in the private language arguments. Consequently, I start with an examination of ostensive definitions, then I turn to rules and their following. Lastly, I show some examples from the history of philosophy which show what Wittgenstein was arguing against and discuss some implications of his theory for methodological assumptions for the philosophy of psychology.