Talk:Private language argument

Kripke bit
It strikes me that Kripke has undermined the importance of practice in his theory. Wittgenstein showed that first and foremost we are participants in an activity in which language plays a role, and from the regularity in that practice we can derive rules and formalised meanings. Kripke seems to want to suggest that formalised rules are primary in understanding what a word means - that we need ad-hoc guesses at what words mean before we can use them. That subverts entirely the shared communal nature of language Wittgenstein uses to undermine the notion of a private language. Kripke seems not to agree with Wittgenstein's opposition to a private language - shouldn't there be more criticism of Kripke along these lines since his view is very much at odds with the rest of the article (or even cut that bit entirely)? --82.43.138.69 (talk) 01:06, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Previous incarnation
This seems like a copyright violation from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/. Nikke

It seems like Philosophical Investigations should be the place for expanding upon this topic. This topic is famous and enough has been published about it that eventually it should have its own Wikipedia article. For now, a redirect to Philosophical Investigations#Private language should do the trick, unless someone wants to repair, expand and provide references for Private language argument now. --JWSchmidt 00:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * 1) REDIRECT definitions

This is not possible. You will still be redirected to definitions but you will not be sent to the #G anchor. (from m:Help:Redirect) --JWSchmidt 23:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * For the record, redirects to an anchor work since December 2006 (r18220). --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 14:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

New incarnation
I have removed the re-direct in order to encourage some work on what is one of the pivotal arguments of modern philosophy. Writing the article will be a challenge! I suppose that the best way to proceed would be to present the various accounts in historic order. Banno 23:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Disproof?
A language for communicating with oneself cannot be incoherent if the communication is with oneself through time. See Personal journal and Constructed language. Did Wittgenstein or Kripke touch on this issue? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 02:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

He addresses diaries in the Philosophical Investigations: diaries which CAN be understood by others are acts of public language in the same way that an actor recording a monologue into a tape recorder is public. Diaries that cannot be understood by other people, ie. my diary that records when I had the sensation "S", are utterly private. Equally, a constucted language isn't the kind of private language that Wittgenstein is referring to, unless it is a constructed language that is used to describe private sensations. Indeed, it would be much better if the argument was known as the "Private Sensation Language Argument". For an example of what Wittgenstein is saying is not a language, check out William James's idea of languages of private introspection in the "Principles of Psychology".Pragmatism24 (talk) 14:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Definition of tautology
92.20.227.250 added:
 * However it must be pointed out that "P -> P" is not a tautology because there are conditions where this can be false. But Rush Rhees clearly is just mistaken and it should be noted that a tautology is "P or ~P".

Under what conditions can "P → P" be false? The article about operator → states that false → false = true, and true → true = true. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 16:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Which century?
The article says, "The argument was central to philosophical discussion at the end of the last century, and continues to arouse interest." That means that this argument was central to philosophical discussion in the 1990s, even though Wittgenstein died way before then? Very confusing. It should be changed to "discussion at the end of the 20th century" if that is correct, to avoid confusion, or "19th century", to correct the error. I'd make the edit myself, but I don't know which is correct.Eve Teschlemacher (talk) 23:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Call for rewrite
Back in 2006 when the article was created, Wikipedia policies and guidelines were less developed than they are now and less observed as well. But in 2021, it's time to have another look at this article with a view to better respecting policies such as WP:verifiability and original research, and guidelines like the lead being a summary of the article, and use of secondary rather than primary sources.

So I'm calling for a major revision or rewrite of the article to bring it up to current standards. This could either be a WP:TNT operation (blow it up and start over), or a pretty major slash-and-burn keeping a good kernel based on summarization of secondary sources and expanding from there. Just to be clear, this is in the nature of a call for improvement and not a criticism; we are fortunate that the creator and major contributor (67% of the article) is still active, and I'm thankful the article exists and I'd like to invite them to have first refusal on a rewrite if they are so inclined. I'll add a note at WT:PHILO as well so that other interested editors are aware and can join in if they wish.

One thought: I'd like to see some of the material at the SEP article used here, either to back existing content or to add new content. It's currently in the External links section, but it's not used in the footnotes and certainly could be. One thing I'm curious about, is that Candlish and Wrisley talk about some possible problems in English translation that may have muddied the waters ("it loses the crucial contrast, so evident in the original German...") and I'm not sure if other sources would agree and what they might have to say about that. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:47, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

"Memory scepticism" section
The part beginning "This interpretation (and the criticism of Wittgenstein that arises from it) is based on a complete misreading..." seems to be introducing and then trying to support the thesis that the criticism presented immediately above it does not apply to a correct interpretation of what Wittgenstein actually meant.

However, while I can understand the difference between the interpretation it is positing and the interpretation posited in the prior passage, it's unclear to me how the prior criticism would not apply equally to this new interpretation as to the old.

Specifically: If we accept the reading of Wittgenstein's claim as being about the incoherence of the very concept of reliability of memory in the absence of criteria of correctness, how is this reading immune from the criticism that it would apply to public language as much as to private language, in light of the thought experiment about Jim and Jenny and the tree? (In other words, in what sense could it be said that the idiosyncratic but public language of Jim and Jenny has a criterion of correctness beyond what a private language could be posited to have?)

I admit that the answer to my question might in fact be inferable from the text as it already stands, and that I am merely failing to see something that isn't missing in the text; but I would argue that, even if so, it could benefit from being clarified for the sake of the less astute reader (such as me!). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.106.55 (talk) 16:17, 12 March 2022 (UTC)