Ludwig Wittgenstein's argument, developed in the Philosophical Investigations (1953), that a language referring only to what is known solely to the speaker from his own immediate private sensations, a private language in this technical sense, is impossible. Wittgenstein argues that such a speaker would have no way to distinguish correctly applying a private sign from merely seeming to, since there is no independent check available even to the speaker, so the notion of following a rule collapses; a private language could not be a language at all, because rule-following requires the possibility of a genuine distinction between getting it right and getting it wrong. The argument has been read as undercutting Cartesian pictures of self-knowledge and as grounding meaning in shared, publicly checkable practice rather than in private inner episodes.
Facts
Origin YearLudwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953; sections 243 to 315 develop the argument. Classification
Position Kind Connections
Associated With
Source Private Language (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
In Branch
Sources
1. Private Language (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Private Language
The idea of a private language was made famous in philosophy by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Private Language, on sections 244 to 271
Wittgensteins main attack on the idea of a private language is contained in paragraphs 244-271 of Philosophical Investigations
- Associated With: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Baker and Hacker reject the community view that Saul Kripke's influential reading draws out of the private language argument, on which a rule's meaning is secured by agreement within a community of speakers rather than by any private mental fact. They argue this Kripkean reading rests on the very idea, that meaning needs an external check beyond the individual case, which Wittgenstein's own remarks argue against; on their reading Wittgenstein's target is the private object, not the individual's authority to follow a rule alone.
A dissenting reading, from G. P. Baker and P. M. S. HackerPrivate Language (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Frequently Asked Questions
Why would anyone think a private language, understood only by the single person who speaks it, is even possible in the first place?
Many philosophers, from Descartes onward, assumed that a person's inner sensations are private objects only that person can directly know, and built theories of meaning on that assumption; Wittgenstein's argument challenges whether a language naming only such private sensations could be coherent at all.
The private language argument, developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, targets the assumption, common since Descartes, that a person's inner sensations are private objects only that person can directly know, so that a word for a sensation gets its meaning by being privately attached to the sensation it names. Wittgenstein argues that a language like this, whose words are meant to refer only to what only the speaker can know, could not function as a language at all, because there would be no way, even for the speaker, to distinguish following the private rule correctly from merely seeming to.
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