Private language Flashcards
243 (PLA intro)
243 We can encourage ourselves, give ourselves orders, obey, blame and punish ourselves, in normal language.
But can we imagine a language whose words refer to what only the speaker can know-to his immediate private sensations?
cf traditional philosophical views that develop private languages, e.g. Descartes, Kant- the foundations of all language lie in private experience. Russell suggests that psychology implicitly provides the foundations for logic itself within this paradigm.
244 (how do words refer to sensations?)
-244 How do words refer to sensations? This is the same as asking how a person learns the meaning of names of sensations.
One possibility: “…words are connected with the primitive, the natural, expressions of the sensations and used in their place….the verbal expression of pain replaces the crying and does not describe it.”
–Note that he doesn’t say this is the only possible way that words refer to sensations!
246-253 (in what sense are my sensations private?)
246 In what sense are my sensations private?
To say that “only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it” is in one way false, another nonsense. “If we are using the word ‘to know’ as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know when I am in pain….Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behavior,—for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them. The truth is: It makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.”
§247: we might say to someone that “only you can know if you had that intention” when explaining the meaning of the word “intention”- by explaining the use of that word. This is on the meaning of ‘know’ that states that the expression of uncertainty is senseless.
248 “The proposition ‘Sensations are private’ is comparable to: ‘One plays patience [solitaire] by oneself’.”
250 Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Lying is an LG that has to be learned like any other. “…the surroundings which are necessary…are missing.”
§251: when one says ‘I can’t imagine the opposite’ (e.g. one can’t imagine that one’s mental imaged might not be private), this isn’t saying that one’s powers of imagination aren’t equal to the task, but is more a statement of a grammatical proposition
§253: “another person can’t have my pains”. This depends on what counts as our criterion of identity here- in one respect we might indeed say that two people can have the same pain, in the same way as we might say that two tables are identical. So “in so far as it makes sense to say that my pain is the same as his, it is also possible for us both to have the same pain”.
257-261 (Naming a private sensation)
§257: if humans never manifested their pains (through grimacing etc.), we could never teach a child the meaning of ‘toothache’. In: the child might just name his pain, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone. But how has he managed this naming of pain? Much must be prepared in language already for naming to make sense, and if we speak of someone giving a name to pain, the grammar of the word ‘pain’ must have already been prepared.
258 Diary Case: “…“I impress it on myself” can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connexion right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘right’.”
-260 ““well I believe that this is the sensation S again.”- perhaps you believe that you believe it!” The man did not make a note of something when he made his mark, for so far this ‘S’ doesn’t have a function.
261- The person couldn’t o.d. ‘S’ as a sensation, or even a something or a ‘has’- for these are words of our common language, whose use needs to stand in need of a justification which everybody understands. Even emitting an inarticulate sound would only be an expression as it occurs in a particular LG.
265-268 (the need for an independent authority)
265 Imagine a “dictionary” table in the imagination. -“But justification consists in appealing to something independent”
Our memories wouldn’t suffice for this task, because they can’t themselves be tested for correctness. “Looking up a table in the imagination is no more looking up a table than the image of the result of an imagined experiment is the result of an experiment”.
“….if the mental image of the time-table could not itself be tested for correctness, how could it confirm the correctness of the first memory?” Buying several copies of the same newspaper for confirmation of a headline.
§267: were we to imagine load tests on the material of a bridge to be built, in order to justify the choice of dimensions for that bridge, would we also call this justifying an imagined choice of dimensions?
-268 “Why can’t my right hand give my left hand money?”
269 (what we could call a PL)
§269: we could imagine someone who ‘thinks he understands’ a word, without having the right explanation- this person might be thought to have a “subjective understanding”, who can make sounds that others don’t understand but he thinks he does. We could call these sounds a ‘private language’.
270 (a use for ‘S’)
§270: imagine that there is a use for the entry ‘S’ in my diary. For example, it predicts accurately when one’s blood pressure is rising. Now it seems quite indifferent whether I’ve recognised the sensation correctly or not- for it is judged on the basis of whether its use still holds (whether one’s blood pressure was rising on the days one wrote ‘S’).
“What reason do we have here for calling “S” the name of a sensation? […] and why a “particular sensation”: that is, the same one every time? Well, we’re supposing, aren’t we, that we write “S” every time.”
[and writing ‘S’ is of course something public]
272-278 (private and public sensation words)
§272: it would be possible (though unverifiable) to imagine that one section of mankind had one visual impression of red; and one another. The essential thing about private experience is not that each person possesses his own specimen, but that no one knows whether other people have the same thing.
§273: does this mean that each person should have a name for his own impression of red, as well as the common word ‘red’? Or perhaps that the word red signifies both a communal and private meaning?
§275: when we exclaim ‘how blue the sky is!’, either to oneself or to another, we don’t have the pointing-into-yourself feeling that often accompanies ‘naming sensations’ within a ‘private language’- we don’t think about whether this colour only appears so to us, or that we ought to point at the sky with our hand and not our attention [so as to reference the communal meaning]
-278 “‘I know how the colour green looks to me’—surely that makes sense!—Certainly: what use of the proposition are you thinking of?”
281-282 (pain and pain-behaviour)
281 “‘But doesn’t what you say come to this: that there is no pain, for example, without /pain-behavior/?”—It comes to this: only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations….”
§282: when we imagine inanimate objects like dolls having pain, we do so only in a secondary sense- imagine a case in which we said only of inanimate things that they felt pain!
289-291 (justifications and criteria)
§289: ““When I say ‘I am in pain’, I am at any rate justified before myself.” - What does that mean? Does it mean: “If someone else could know what I am calling ‘pain’, he would admit that I was using the word correctly”?“
“To use a word without a justification does not mean to use it wrongfully”
§290: “It is not, of course, that I identify my sensation by means of criteria; it is, rather, that I use the same expression. But it is not as if the LG ends with this; it begins with it”.
In: doesn’t it begin with the sensation, which I describe? W: we ought to remember the difference between different LGs of description here, e.g. describing one’s room as opposed to describing one’s state of mind.
§291 ‘descriptions’ are instruments for particular uses. It is somewhat misleading to think of them as idle word-pictures of the facts, rather than things being used for a purpose.
293 (beetle)
§293 beetle in the box. “The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.—No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
“If we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and name’, the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant”.
H: This is not a behavioristic passage. Cf., 286, 302, 304, and 307!
Cf., 398: “…if as a matter of logic you exclude other people’s having something, it loses its sense to say that you have it.” The visual room has no owner!
