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The Real Private Language Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Stewart Candlish
Stewart Candlish
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia
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Extract

It verges on the platitudinous to say that Wittgenstein's own treatment of the question of a private language has been almost lost to view under mountains of commentary in the last twenty years—so much so, that no one with a concern for his own health would try to arrive at a verdict on the question by first mastering the available discussion. But a general acquaintance with the commentaries indicates that opinion on the matter can be roughly divided into two categories: that of the Old Orthodoxy (both defenders and attackers of Wittgenstein are included), most recently represented by Robert Fogelin in his book Wittgenstein; and that of what may be termed the New Guardians of the Wittgenstein Tradition, apparently based in Oxford and headed by Anthony Kenny, who in his book Wittgenstein has proposed a new account of the argument of Philosophical Investigations §§256–271. The important difference between the old and new orthodoxies will be considered later.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 55 , Issue 211 , January 1980 , pp. 85 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1980

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References

1 London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976.

2 Other members appear to be Peter Hacker and Gordon Baker. Hacker expressly singles out Kenny, both in the Preface to his Insight and Illusion (London: Oxford University Press, 1975Google Scholar; originally published by the Clarendon Press, 1972) and in his ‘Frege and the Private Language Argument’ (Idealistic Studies, 2, Spring 1972, 265–287Google Scholar), as mainly responsible for his understanding of the private language argument. 3 London: Allen Lane, 1973. Subsequently reprinted under the Pelican imprint. All references here are to the earlier edition.

4 Fogelin, , op. cit., 153.Google Scholar

5 I do not entirely except myself from this: see my ‘Wittgenstein's Attack on the Idea of a Private Language’, Journal of the Philosophical Association, 14, No. 45, 1973, 1–20.Google Scholar But there seems to be a tradition here too. Cf. Max Black's amazing remark concerning the Tractatus: ‘… the device [of decimal numbering] is so misleading here as to suggest a private joke at the reader's expense’ (A Companion to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Cambridge University Press, 1964, 2).Google Scholar

6 I do not mean to imply that the question is not treated elsewhere in the Investigations; indeed, I believe that it is far more under discussion in other places than is generally realized. But this passage contains the crucial arguments.

7 Op. cit., 159

8 Fogelin does, however, think that Wittgenstein proves the weaker claim of the contingent impossibility of a private language.

9 Ibid., 153.

10 This makes what I said on the final page of my earlier article (see note 5) apply, not to Wittgenstein's argument itself, but rather to an application of it—an application which attempts to show that a ‘private language’ which attempts to retain our assumed infallibility concerning our actual sensations is self-defeating. This application is suggested in the final paragraph of §288; but I implicitly suggested formerly that §288 summed up the whole of what had gone before. The present interpretation makes no reliance on the assumption of infallibility concerning our actual sensations, and indeed the question of infallibility is here regarded as irrelevant.

11 This point is one on which Wittgenstein continually dwelt. Cf. Investigations, p. 18 nGoogle Scholar; ‘Notes for Lectures’, Philosophical Review, 77, 1968, 276–277, 314, 320Google Scholar; Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, II, §37.Google Scholar

12 Kenny, , op. cit., 194.Google Scholar Hacker's account of this passage, though more obscurely put than Kenny's, is essentially the same. Cf. p. 236 of Insight and Illusion (1975 edn).Google Scholar

13 Those who do not find this elementary enough to need no explanation may find one in Nesbitt, W. and Candlish, S., ‘Determinism and the Ability to Do Otherwise’, Mind, 89, 1978.Google Scholar

14 Fogelin, , op. cit., 162–169.Google Scholar

15 I have been assisted by discussion with Ben Tilghman and Peter Cole. Les Holborow has recently drawn my attention to his ‘Wittgenstein's Kind of Behaviourism?’ (Philosophical Quarterly, 1967Google Scholar, reprinted in Jones, O. R. (ed.) The Private Language ArgumentGoogle Scholar) which contains an account of §§258 and 265 that is close to mine at several points; however, we diverge on the interpretation of other passages, and his targets are Mundle and Ayer while mine are Kenny and Fogelin.