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Last Rites for the Private Language Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2017

Geoffrey Madell
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Abstract

Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument has had an extraordinary influence, but examination reveals it to be nothing but multi-layered confusion. Section 1 argues that it is quite unclear what exactly Wittgenstein took to be his target, but one approach clearly leads to an infinite regress. Section 2 argues that his comments on the ‘private object’ commit him to the rejection of the principle ‘like cause, like effect’, with disastrous results, and to the absurdity that, although I may be woefully inept in identifying my sensations, the relation between the private object and the public world miraculously changes in such a way that this ineptitude is never discovered. Section 3 argues that Wittgenstein has nothing remotely acceptable to say about what it is to speak of sensations. Sections 4 and 5 argue that Wittgenstein's rejection of the notion of privileged access means that he cannot distinguish between genuine manifestations of consciousness and agency and mere mechanical or computerised happenings (‘mind the gap’; ‘doors closing’), a distinction which ultimately rests on the primacy of the first-person perspective.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 93 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 53 - 67
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Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2017 

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References

1 Ayer, A.J., ‘Can There Be a Private Language?’, in Ayer, A.J., The Concept of a Person (London: Macmillan, 1963), 36–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 1st (1953) edition.

3 Wright, Crispin, ‘Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy of Mind: Sensation, Privacy and Intention’, The Journal of Philosophy (1989), 622–634 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Pears, David, The False Prison, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988), 419 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Jackson, Frank, ‘Phenomenal Qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly (April 1982), 127–136 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Robinson's, Howard excellent recent book, From the Knowledge Argument to Mental Substance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)Google Scholar for a comprehensive demolition of all attempts to escape the force of the Knowledge Argument.

7 Chalmers, David, The Conscious Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 84 Google Scholar.

8 Strawson, P.F., Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), 100 ff. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 I develop this claim in considerable detail in my The Essence of the Self: In Defence of the Simple View of Personal Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 2015)Google Scholar especially in chapters 1 and 2.