Witlesstein's private language argument.

Wittgenstein introduced what is now known as 'the private language argument in §243 of part one of the Philosophical Investigations. He says:

“But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences – his feeling, moods, and the rest – for his private use? –

Sure. We can imagine anything we like.  

Well, can’t we do so in our ordinary language?

Sure. Systematic 'catachresis' (i.e. the use of the wrong word) can occur such that nobody understands what Mrs. Malaprop is getting at.  

– But that is not what I mean. The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations.

This presents no great problem. There are plenty of people who speak in a garbled manner. We guess at what they want and try to supply them with it if we are well disposed to them. 

Remark 256 is as follows

Now, what about the language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can understand? How do I use words to stand for my sensations? -- As we ordinarily do?

You do things in the way you ordinarily do, though sometimes you may act in an extraordinary fashion.  

Then are my words for sensations tied up with my natural expressions of sensation?

They may be. They may not. We sometimes speak in a very unnatural way under the impress of strong sensations. O.Henry wrote a short story about two writers. One preferred to use a 'naturalistic' idiom. The other spoke in a bombastic manner. But when tragedy struck both of them, the 'naturalist' spoke in bombastic terms while the bombastic fellow spoke like a Hemingway hero.  

In that case my language is not a 'private' one.

Sez you. Anything you write or say which is not meant for other eyes or ears is 'private'.  

Someone else might understand it as well as I.

They may understand it better. I describe my sensations to my Doctor. He has a superior understanding of the aetiology and diagnostic criteria of my ailment. He asks me leading questions which initially I indignantly refute. Later, I realize that he knew what I was experiencing better than I do. I tell him so. He nods his head sagely. It is a characteristic of my illness that my ability to report on the sensations induced by it is impaired.  

-- But suppose I didn't have any natural expression for the sensation, but only had the sensation?

Then you have a linguistic deficit. You may learn the word for the thing you experience from others. That may be the first step in your getting the help you need. Karen Armstrong describes her relief at finding out that she had a medical condition which made her more prone than average to sensations of a religious or spiritual kind.  

And now I simply associate names with sensations and use these names in descriptions.

In which case, you have overcome a linguistic deficit. This may be helpful for you.  

So another person cannot understand the language.”

Unless they have a superior structural causal model of what causes the sensation and how or why there may be a linguistic deficit which people overcome in different ways. 

In life, we frequently have to learn the 'terms of art' of our profession in order to discharge our duties in a proper manner. The question is whether those duties are utile and beneficial to the commonweal or if they are useless or mischievous. 

257."What would it be like if human beings showed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)?  It would be like a person being insolvent or guilty of malpractice. No outward sign might show this but an auditor or a professional body may detect and confirm this.  Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth -- ache'."  If we can teach a child about God and Angels and Devils, we can certainly teach it 'tooth ache'.  -- Well, let's assume the child is a genius and itself invents a name for the sensation! -- Kids come up with such words by themselves without being geniuses. What happens is that they give up their babyish vocabulary and start using the words their parents and teachers use. Then they get to High School and start speaking the bizarre jargon of their peers.   But then, of course, he couldn't make himself understood when he used the word. Nonsense! He could point and mime to express himself while uttering the word vociferously.   -- So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone? Yes.   -- But what does it mean to say that he has 'named his pain'? It means he has given it a name. Churchill spoke of his 'black dog' or mental depression. Apparently Victorian nannies used the term to mean unpleasant or moody children.   -- How has he done this naming of pain?! By uttering that name and doing so in a consistent fashion.   And whatever he did, what was its purpose? It helped him in some manner which is easy enough to understand. When you give a thing a name you are halfway to getting help in dealing with that thing.   -- When one says "He gave a name to his sensation" one forgets that a great deal of stage setting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense. So what? Why recall that it took billions of years of evolution for language to exist?   And when we speak of someone's having given a name to pain, what is presupposed is the existence of the grammar of the word "pain"; Grammar is unnecessary. You can speak like Yoda and still be understood.   it shows the post where the new word is stationed. Words aren't stationed anywhere.   258.Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. 'S' is defined as a particular sensation. As knowledge increases the definition may be refined or discarded in favour of something more accurate or useful.   -- But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition. -- How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. You can point to the calendar and say 'I felt 'S' on these particular days. The Doctor may be able to deduce what causes the sensation from this information. Suppose you have this sensation every Saturday morning. The Doctor might ask what you do on Friday nights. Do you drink heavily? If the answer is 'yes', then the sensation is called having a 'hangover'.   But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation -- and so, as it were, point to it inwardly. -- But what is this ceremony for? A useful purpose. I feel a strange sensation every Tuesday morning. Why? Oh. Tuesday is the day the girl from the Accounts department comes to our weekly conference. OMG! I'm in love with her!   for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign. The thing may be a 'Tarskian primitive'- i.e. it might remain undefined.   -- Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connection between the sign and the sensation. -- But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connection right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. You have the same criterion of correctness for stuff you named yourself as for stuff whose names you learned from someone else.  If you suffer mental impairment you may misuse words you created yourself or those you learnt from others.  One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'. Sure we can. Rights are Hohfeldian immunities. Humpty Dumpty has every right to use words to mean anything he pleases. But, this would not be the case if he were acting in a professional capacity.   259.Are the rules of the private language impressions of rules? -- They may be or they may not. Rules can be helpful in some cases but, speaking generally, they don't matter.   The balance on which impressions are weighed is not the impression of a balance. Impressions are not weighed.   260."Well, I believe that this is the sensation S again." -- Perhaps you believe that you believe it! Perhaps you have shit for brains and are wasting the time of your students.   Then did the man who made the entry in the calendar make a note of nothing whatever? No. You stipulated otherwise. You are 'estopped' from now claiming otherwise.   -- Don't consider it a matter of course that a person is making a note of something when he makes a mark -- say in a calendar. Do so. It is useful.   For a note has a function, and this "S" so far has none. You stipulated otherwise. It had the function of recording the occurrence of a particular sensation.   (One can talk to oneself. -- If a person speaks when no one else is present, does that mean he is speaking to himself?) Yes.  261.What reason have we for calling "S" the sign for a sensation? Because you stipulated that was the case. You are making an argument but are so fucking stupid that you don't get that you are 'estopped' from claiming your own stipulation is wrong.   For "sensation" is a word of our common language. not of one intelligible to me alone. So the use of this word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands. And which you supplied by express stipulation.   -- And it would not help either to say that it need not be a sensation; that when he writes "S", he has something -- and that is all that can be said. "Has" and "something" also belong to our common language. Sensations are of various types. We understand that some may be very odd indeed and may have a medical aetiology. But, equally, the thing may be aesthetic or spiritual.   -- So in the end when one is doing philosophy i.e. shitting higher than your arsehole  one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound. or a loud and smelly fart.   -- But such a sound is an expression only as it occurs in a particular language-game, which should now be described Witless had got it into his head that you can only use language according to a set of rules. This is the 'i-language' theory. It is false because it entails the 'intensional fallacy'. Eubulides, in the fourth century BC had described it as the masked man (enkekalymmenos) paradox: 262.It might be said: if you have given yourself a private definition of a word, then you must inwardly undertake to use the word in such-and-such a way. Why say anything so stupid? True, Germans are supposed to be obsessed with rules- everything that is not compulsory is forbidden- but Witless was Austrian.   And how do you undertake that? Is it to be assumed that you invent the technique of using the word; or that you found it ready -- made? We must assume that the technique of farting was invented by Bismarck.   263."But I can (inwardly) undertake to call THIS 'pain' in the future." -- why bother?   "But is it certain that you have undertaken it? Are you sure that it was enough for this purpose to concentrate your attention on your feeling?" -- A queer question. A foolish question which arises because of an absurd assumption- viz. that habits are actually laws which we have legislated for ourselves on the basis of profound cogitation.   --264."Once you know what the word stands for, you understand it, you know its whole use." No. You may learn that it is not polite to use that word. Suitable euphemisms may be suggested to you.   265.Let us imagine a table (something like a dictionary) that exists only in our imagination. Imaginary stuff exists nowhere else.   A dictionary can be used to justify the translation of a word X by a word Y. Why would a justification be required? Either the translation serves its purpose or it does not.   But are we also to call it a justification if such a table is to be looked up only in the imagination? Looking up a table is like getting a girl pregnant. If the table or the girl are imaginary, there was no looking up or getting pregnant. This is the reason my claim to have fathered children on various stars of Stage and Screen are met with incredulity. I may have imagined having sex with such ladies, but imaginary sex can't get anyone pregnant.   -- "Well, yes; then it is a subjective justification." It is an impossibility.   -- But justification consists in appealing to something independent. -- Not if you have a Hohfeldian immunity to do the thing when and where you please. I am allowed to imagine having sex with beautiful women. I am not allowed to claim their children as my own.   "But surely I can appeal from one memory to another. For example, I don't know if I nave remembered the time of departure of a train right and to check it I call to mind how a page of the time -table looked. Only if you have a 'photographic' memory.   Isn't it the same here?" -- No; for this process has got to produce a memory which is actually correct. If the mental image of the time -- table could not itself be tested for correctness, how could it confirm the correctness of the first memory? It may be possible to recover such memories through hypnosis. But some people may possess 'eidetic' memories or they may have trained themselves in 'memory science'.   (As if someone were to buy several copies of the morning paper to assure himself that what it said was true.) One does buy several different morning papers. It would be foolish to buy many copies of the same paper because they would be identical.   Looking up a table in the imagination is no more looking up a table than the image of the result of an imagined experiment is the result of an experiment. A 'gedanken' or thought experiment might be confirmed experimentally. An imagined table may actually be created. 268.Why can't my right hand give my left hand money? Because both hands belong to you. We don't say you give yourself money. We say you give it to others or receive it from others.   -- My right hand can put it into my left hand. My right hand can write a deed of gift and my left hand a receipt. -- But the further practical consequences would not be those of a gift. When the left hand has taken the money from the right, etc., we shall ask: "Well, and what of it?" And the same could be asked if a person had given himself a private definition of a word; I mean, if he has said the word to himself and at the same time has directed his attention to a sensation. No. We say that man has invented something new. Others may take up the word he has invented- e.g. James Joyce's 'quark'- for some different purpose. In the case of money you already possess, there is no element of invention.  .269.Let us remember that there are certain criteria in a man's behavior for the fact that he does not understand a word: that it means nothing to him, that he can do nothing with it. And criteria for his 'thinking he understands', attaching some meaning to the word, but not the right one. And, lastly, criteria for his understanding the word right. In the second case one might speak of a subjective understanding. We would speak of 'catachresis' if he is using the word in a manner most people consider aberrant. However, his usage may prevail. President Harding used the term 'normalcy' when he meant 'normality' but his coinage entered the language.   And sounds which no one else understands but which I 'appear to understand' might be called a "private language". or an idiolect unique to me.   270.Let us now imagine a use for the entry of the sign "S" in my diary. I discover that whenever I have a particular sensation a manometer shows that my blood -pressure rises. So I shall be able to say that my blood - pressure is rising without using any apparatus. This is a useful result. And now it seems quite indifferent whether I have recognized the sensation right or not. No. Your doctor will want you to describe the sensation more fully. There is extra information available there.   Let us suppose I regularly identify it wrong, it does not matter in the least. It may matter a great deal. Failing to recognize a repeated sensation may lead to an untimely death because medical help was not sought till too late.   And that alone shows he turned a knob which looked as if it could be used to turn on some part of the machine; but it was a mere ornament, not connected with the mechanism at all.) It shows nothing of the sort. The fact is sensations are 'embedded'. They are not disconnected from the body.   And what is our reason for calling "S" the name of a sensation here? An express stipulation on your part.   Perhaps the kind of way this sign is employed in this language-game. -- And why a "particular sensation," that is, the same one every time? Well, aren't we supposing that we write "S" every time? Why did Cambridge put up with this crazy nutter?   271."Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word 'pain' meant -- so that he constantly called different things by that name -- but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of pain" -- in short he uses it as we all do. Here I should like to say: a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism. A neurologist would say something much more useful. It is likely that the person has a specific impairment which may respond to treatment.   272.The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. Doctors and psychiatrists- but also poets and 'method' actors- can earn a lot of money and do a lot of good by investigating this.   The assumption would thus be possible -- though unverifiable -- that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. Apparently, people in different cultures see colours differently.   273.What am I to say about the word "red"? -- that it means something 'confronting us all' and that everyone should really have another word, besides this one, to mean his own sensation of red? Or is it like this: the word "red" means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each person, it means something known only to him? (Or perhaps rather: it refers to something known only to him.) This can be, and has been, usefully investigated for various commercial and scientific purposes.   274.Of course, saying that the word "red" "refers to" instead of "means" something private is simply false. Colour words are 'public'. I am asked by the police officer investigating a hit-and-run, what colour the car was. If I say 'I call that colour 'gxzwl''  the policeman may lock me up for obstructing justice. He may produce a colour chart. I point at red and say 'that's gxzwl'! The car was of that colour!'   does not help us in the least to grasp its function; but it is the more psychologically apt expression for a particular experience in doing philosophy. i.e. talking stupid bollocks.   It is as if when I uttered the word I cast a sidelong glance at the private sensation, as it were in order to say to myself: I know all right what I mean by it. Sadly, if you are 'doing philosophy' you will swiftly confuse yourself and decide you are actually a walrus.   275.Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself "How blue the sky is!" -- When you do it spontaneously -- without philosophical intentions -- the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of color belongs only to you. Because Mummy used to say 'look at the blue sky!' or 'look at the green grass!'   And you have no hesitation in exclaiming that to someone else. And if you point at anything as you say the words you point at the sky. I am saying: you have not the feeling of pointing -- into -- yourself which often accompanies 'naming the sensation' when one is thinking about 'private language'. You may point at your heart or your skull or your arsehole and speak or the private language in which alone you could fully express yourself on a given topic.  Nor do you think that really you ought not to point to the color with your hand, but with your attention. (Consider what it means "to point to something with the attention".) It is just a ponderous way of saying 'attend to x'.   276.But don't we at least mean something: quite definite when we look at a color and name our color -- impression? Yes.  It is as if we detached the color -- impression from the object, like a membrane. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.) Why? I point to a colour and ask if the shop has a shirt of that colour in my size. What's so suspicious about that?   277.But how is even possible for us to be tempted to think that we use a word to mean at one time the color known to everyone i.e. it has a well defined 'extension'  -- and at another the 'visual impression' which I am getting now? i.e. it is an 'intension' which may not have such an extension. I say ' I remember thinking the car was red. But, it's a funny thing, I think it was actually- I don't know- a tinge of maroon. The fact is, I was greatly upset, seeing the speeding car hit the old lady. Maybe that's why I think of the car as bright red- a colour I associate with danger.'  How can there be so much as a temptation here? Philosopher's are tempted to commit the intensional fallacy so as to come up with bogus 'paradoxes' or crazy claims- e.g. 'a private language is impossible'.   279.Imagine someone saying: "But I know how tall I am!" and laying his hand on top of his head to prove it. Nothing wrong with that. I say 'the assailant was tall.' What was his height? I don't know but he was at least this much taller than me. The police officer says 'you are six foot one. The suspect must be about six foot five.  280.Someone paints a picture in order to show how he imagines a theater scene. And now I say: "This picture has a double function: it informs others, as pictures or words inform but for the one who gives the information it is a representation (or piece of information?) of another kind: for him it is the picture of his image, as it can't be for anyone else. It is the same for everybody else. We understand that Millais's Ophelia is how he imagined a particular character in Shakespeare's Hamlet.  To him his private impression of the picture means what he has imagined, in a sense in which the picture cannot mean this to others." But it does mean that to others!  -- And what right have I to speak in this second case of a representation or piece of information -- if these words were rightly used in the first case? Sadly, in this country, everybody has the right to talk bollocks. Indeed, the thing is de rigueur if you teach Philosophy at Cambridge.   281."But doesn't what you say come to this: that there is no pain, for example, without pain behavior?" -- Nobody says that. We get that our pain is forgotten when we become engrossed in something else. You are so busy running away from an assailant that you don't notice you have been stabbed.   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. Nonsense! We may say the Oval Office shrinks with shame every time a POTUS we don't like enters it.   282."But in a fairy tale the pot too can see and hear!" (Certainly; but it can also talk.) I suppose there now are electric pots which can talk to the user and guide her through a recipe.  "But the fairy tale only invents what is not the case: it does not talk nonsense." -- It is not as simple as that. Is it false or nonsensical to say that a pot talks? Have we a clear picture of the circumstances in which we should say of a pot that it talked? (Even a nonsense -- poem is not nonsense in the same way as the babbling of a child.) The babbling of a child isn't nonsense. Witless, of course, was notorious for beating the shit out of kids.    "And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing." -- Not at all. It is not a something, Yes it is. Sensations exist because they have survival value. Evolution causes them to be. Culture is a co-evolved process which may heighten certain sensations at certain times. Take 'Fear of Missing Out'. I suppose, this has gained salience because of greater technological innovation. If we don't adopt the new technology or jump on the latest bandwagon, we may greatly regret it. 'Regret minimization' appears to be an evolutionarily stable strategy.   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. Everything can be said about nothing at all. This conclusion is stoooopid.   We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here. Grammar doesn't matter unless you are paid to teach it or to enforce its rules on semi-literate journalists.   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, and evil, or anything else you please. Everybody made that radical break by the time they are 5 years old. We understand that language is strategic and, most of the time, phatic.   305."But you surely cannot deny that, for example, in remembering, an inner process takes place." -- What gives the impression that we want to deny anything? When one says "Still, an inner process does take place here" -- one wants to go on: "After all, you see it." And it is this inner process that one means by the word "remembering". -- 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". Why deny what nobody has asserted? There is no 'correct idea' of the use of any word whatsoever. It is a different matter that in a particular context, for a particular purpose, one word would be considered more seemly. There is a story of an elderly Bishop who had devoted himself to working with prostitutes in the East End of London. Society ladies were not pleased when he accosted them at parties by saying 'I remember you very well! How are you doing now my dear? Are you married?'  It was suggested to this cleric that he should say 'I recall seeing you when you were a debutante at the ball given by the Dowager Duchess. You outshone all the other girls present.'  We say that this picture with its ramifications stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is. It doesn't. Witless was obsessed with pictures. But language is not pictorial.  It is pragmatic and utile- or, at the very least, it helps pass the time.  What is your aim in philosophy? -- To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. Why bother? Flies evolved such that they have an algorithm for that sort of thing. Anyway, flies are many and fly bottles are few. One might say that Witless invented a fly bottle and made a bit of money by claiming to help his victims get out of it. But he didn't get himself out of a cascading intensional fallacy of a simple enough type.  His 'language-games' are silly. Game theory was useful because Evolution is itself game-theoretic. There are coordination and discoordination games whose solutions are linguistic. This means definitions don't matter. Verisimilitude does not matter. Even if some suspect that words like God and Love and Justice don't mean anything or are mischievous in some way, still they improve coordination and thus are useful.