The Private Language Argument
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Modern philosophy, introspection and behaviourism
Equations are omitted for technical reasons - download the original pdf
Modern philosophers have a tendency to assume that scientific observation provides objective knowledge of physical reality. They contrast the empirical observations provided by the scientific method with other approaches that are unreliable, subjective and open to doubt. For example, scientifically minded philosophers would reject a psychology based on the following kinds of evidence. 1.When that man grinned I suddenly felt hot. 2.It was clear from the way that Alice acted that she thought she had seen a large rabbit. 3.I can tell from your preference for large cucumbers what your unconscious preferences are. 4.I am feeling pain. There are philosophical objections to psychological theories based on: 1. Introspective reports of one's own mind. 2. Statements about the beliefs, intentions, motives and conscious and unconscious desires of other people. Such theories are unverifiable and hence, it is claimed, are un-objective. Psychoanalysis is an example of a theory that is rejected on the grounds that it is unverifiable, meaningless, incapable of being communicated, subjective and unscientific. Any psychology based on introspective reports, or on statements about beliefs and intentions, would appear to regard the mind as independent of matter. It would appear to affirm that the only what to study the mind is through the distinct and specialized vocabulary of mental events. Behaviourism arose in reaction to a psychology based on introspection. The ideal of behaviourism is to describe behaviour in the purely 'objective' language of the 'movements of bodily parts from one set of coordinates in space to another. There is also implicit in behaviourism the hope that the laws of behavioural psychology may be reduced to neurological descriptions of the functions of the brain.
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Contents of
The Private Language Argument
1 Modern philosophy, introspection and behaviourism
2 Wittgenstein and the private language argument
3 Wittgenstein and the referential theory of meaning - meaning is use, following a rule
4 Wittgenstein and the disappearance theory of meaning
5 Wittgenstein and his answer to the transcendental deduction of Plato
6 The private language argument and the conceptual analysis of the term I - language games
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