The Private Language Argument
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The private language argument and the conceptual analysis of the term I - language games
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The private language argument is just one of the ways in which modern philosophers have striven to dispense with the primacy of the mental, in other words, to reject the view that (a) our mental world exists apart from the physical world; and (b) we know the mental world but do not know the physical world except by a doubtful inference – or, to put it in philosophical terms – that the mental has epistemological primacy over the physical. We turn now to the 'conceptual analysis' of the term 'I'. Compare the following two sentences (a) The picture is hanging on the wall. (b) I like cream cakes. For Wittgenstein the term 'the picture' does not gain its meaning through the activity of naming – that is, through the practice of pointing to objects and saying, 'Look! This is a picture!' When we point at an object and name it, this is called ostention; to give an object a meaning by pointing is a process of ostensive definition. Wittgenstein says that no term gains meaning through ostention. However, in the pattern of behaviour that may legitimately accompany a word, pointing to a picture might be a reasonable thing to do. It is part of the language game. For instance, consider this imaginary conversation. A. The picture is hanging on the wall. B. Which picture? A. This picture, here! (pointing) The habit of pointing, and the habit of looking for an object when we use a substantive noun (like 'picture') creates an expectation that pointing and looking for objects is relevant to the use of all terms. It is an example of the 'bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language'. Grammatically, the sentences (a) 'The picture is hanging on the wall'. (b) 'I like cream cakes' are similar. But for Wittgenstein, this is the end of the similarity. The term 'I' only looks like a noun (grammatically, it is a personal pronoun). 'I' does not refer, and you cannot point to an object that is 'I'. Thus, according to Wittgenstein, the failure to recognize that 'I' belongs to a different language game has lead philosophers like Descartes and others to a false view of the mind. They have sought a referent to the term 'I', and not being satisfied with equating this referent with the material body, they have invented a spiritual substance, the soul, that can act as the referent to 'I'. Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind develops this line of argument, claiming that the whole Cartesian approach to the mind arises from conceptual errors; he offers a thorough-going conceptual analysis of every aspect of the mental. Neither Wittgenstein nor Ryle openly commit themselves to a materialist or mechanist view of mental processes. However, both of them, by 'debunking' Cartesianism, leave the filed open for materialist conceptions of mental functioning, and indeed many proponents of materialism (for example, the Australian school of materialism, that is lead by Smart, Armstrong and Place) express openly their admiration for Wittgenstein.
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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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