Private Language Arguments in Wittgenstein

A private language is a language, the referents of the words of which can only be known by

the speaker; it is a language in which words only refer to the speaker’s private and immediate

sensations. A private language is untranslatable to any public language or to someone else’s

private language; it can only and necessarily be known by one person. Wittgenstein analyzes

private concepts and private language, and makes several remarks on the subject in

Philosophical Investigations. His concludes that it is impossible for a language to be private.

Suppose, for example, a man has a private specific sensation, and he writes down in his diary

S to refer to that sensation. Some time passes, and he thinks that he has the same sensation

again, and uses S again to refer to it. Wittgenstein asks what S does/can mean in that private

language. He notes that, first of all, to associate the sign “S” with a specific sensation, and to

claim that S is a meaningful part of a private language, one already presupposes a language in

which there is already an established grammar for S to have a role.1 But how can a private

language that is perhaps only constructed to refer to inner sensations have a structured

grammar if the only words in that private language are names for inner sensations?

Another problem is that in a private language only an ostensive definition would be possible

at best. Suppose that when I use S the second time, my memory has failed me, and the

sensation I’ve used S to refer to is different than the one before. In this case, would I be

correct in using S? Wittgenstein argues that the concept of correctness or truth cannot work in

a private language, since for there to be correctness, there must be a “distinction between the

source of the meaning, and the source of the truth;”2 and that the user is both the authority on

meaning and correctness in a private language. This argument can be extended to an argument

regarding the meaningfulness of records of private sensations from a verificationist point of

view. If a proposition is meaningful as long as it is verifiable, S becomes meaningless since it

can’t be verified. Hence, all signs in a private language would be meaningless.

There is also the interpretation argument3 and an argument about pragmatics. The definition

of language involves recursivity, and to some extent regularity. Recordings of a private

sensation, however, is more similar to a cat purring when it is content, rather than a system of

signs complex enough to be called a language. An argument about the use of a private

language can be made as to what would be the function of a private language. While the

argument suggests that S can have no practical function, it may be argued that its function

would be to prove the possibility of a private language.

One point to care for in Wittgenstein’s remarks on private language is that when arguing, he

also utilizes his general understanding of languages. His understanding of a language briefly

is that to speak a language is to follow the rules of the language-game one is playing. He

argues that languages are social phenomena, similar to games, and when someone follows the

rules that govern a specific language-game, which can be the whole of a natural language or

different modes of using that natural language, he says something meaningful. In this view,

following a rule of a language-game is not something that a person can check whether one is

following a rule. Since any action can be interpreted as conforming to a rule, whether or not

one is following a rule of a language-game, thus whether or not one is making sense, is a

matter of social determination by the other members of that language, by other people who

intersubjectively accept each other to be following the same rules. In this view, which also

goes by as the “community view”4, meaning is social. So, a private language cannot contain

any meaning.

I think these and any other arguments against the possibility of a private language have

different presuppositions, and that affects the arguments’ persuasiveness. The community

view argument, for example, presupposes a “meaning is use” attitude. The verificationist

argument, as the name suggest, presupposes the verification criteria of meaning. However, I

think that when arguing on the concept of language, if an argument’s central assumption were
on the concept of language, rather than on the concept of meaning, it would put the argument

one step next in the persuasiveness spectrum. From this point of view, the argument, which

briefly is that “a series of signs referring to private sensations alone is not a language; they

would be just names” would be at an advantage, for example.

While there are undoubtedly more arguments against the private language, one can’t help but

ask why there are such-and-such arguments when they all seem to argue for the same thing.

John Locke, for example, may be interpreted as having believed in the possibility of a private

language, for he believed that words represented ideas. Locke wrote: “Words, in their primary

or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them.”

But I think Wittgenstein’s arguments were not against specific philosophers or texts, rather

the way dualist thinking that it is possible for each word to represent, to refer to an internal

sensation, and it is possible for that private system of reference to be a language. The

argument that is it nonsense for one to know that he has a certain private sensation, for one to

know that he has S, is a criticism of Cartesian possibility of knowledge about internal

sensations. Wittgenstein argues that one cannot know he is in pain, for example; if pain is a

private sensation, to say “I know I have pain” would always necessarily be true in a private

language when said sincerely. This is because of the non-existence of any correctness criteria

in a private language. However, if we cannot check for correctness, there cannot be

knowledge about private sensations, which Cartesian dualism claims possible; because

knowledge requires the alleged-knowledge to be checkable.

Wittgenstein’s and other his scholars’ conclusion that a private language is not possible have

also been interpreted to be an argument in favor of behaviorism. I think it is possible to

interpret it that way, but not necessarily. Classical behaviourism treats internal sensations as

not-study-worthy, but private language argument doesn’t suggest that. Even if Wittgenstein

had thought that to speak of internal sensations was nonsense, he might have argued that some
non-sense are better than complete non-sense. Pain, for example, is only measurable by pain

behavior and exists as long as the subject shows pain behavior in classical behaviourism.

However, it presupposes that private sensations of pain, if there are any, are unobservable. If

we are to interpret Wittgenstein as motivating behaviorism, I think it is at best the radical

behaviourism of B. F. Skinner, whose views are most of the time dismissed and ignored just

because they have “behaviourism” in the title. It is radical in a physicalist sense that it treats

everything a person does as behavior. Skinner argued that private events are observable; just

because they can only be observed by the person feeling them does not make them

non-behavior. While pain is still private in that sense, and still a subject of private language

arguments, radical behaviourism allows pain to be observable; and this system of thought is

consistent with pain being observable, about which it should be noted that neuroscience and

cognitive science in 21st century can arguably observe and explain pain.

I think private language arguments in general successfully show that a language is not merely

a system of signs representing ideas. The arguments show that a language is not even a system

of signs, but a sign-system of communication. As for behaviorism, I don’t think arguments

against private languages prove too much by leading to classical behaviourism, or that private

language arguments and behaviorism is not as simple as the latter can be proved by the

former. As Quine would put it, one has to consider his commitments to other aspects; to his

beliefs on what behavior is, what pain is, what language is etc.
1
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. §257
2
Candlish, Stewart and Wrisley, George, "Private Language", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/private-language/.
3
Taken from a power-point file, accessed on 31 May 2015. URL = http://tinyurl.com/pebf5ny.
4
Candlish, Stewart and Wrisley, George, op.cit.