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In an article written by A. J. Ayer, he contends that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s claim in the Philosophical Investigations that there cannot be a private language is mistaken. At the onset of the article, Ayer wrote: “In a quite ordinary sense, it is obvious that there can be private languages. There can be, because there are” (1985, p. 453). This philosophical paper’s task is to answer the question: “Does Ayer misunderstand the idea of a private language? Clearly the way by which this question may be properly and adequately answered is by considering (1) What Wittgenstein meant by a private language and what his arguments are so as to see why he rejects the possibility of a private language; and (2) What Ayer meant by a private language and what his arguments are so as to see why he contends that the idea of a private language is not only possible but also that there are, indeed, languages that may be called private.
The philosophical problem of a private language, as Wittgenstein sees it, just like most philosophical problems, stems out of a ‘linguistic confusion’.
What may be called linguistic confusion is actually a failure to understand the very notion of a language and a failure to understand the ‘grammar’ of a language within which words, expressions, linguistic devices and markers function and are being actually used.
Thus, in a sense, what Wittgenstein claims in the Philosophical Investigations is that the idea of a private is unintelligible and is not actually a philosophical problem; it is a pseudo-problem for if one looks and sees how words in a given language-game is actually used and employed by the linguistic community in question, one may understand that language is both ‘public and social’ and not private.
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What exactly is the private language argument that Wittgenstein rejects in the Philosophical Investigations?
The private language argument rests on the notion of the ‘privacy of sensations’ [Sections 257 and 258]. In what sense can sensations be considered private? According to this view, sensations are private in the sense that only an individual, say x, can experience sensation y, and this is not something that another individual may also literally experience. Sensations are said to be private in the sense that nobody can feel the other person’s sensations such as pain.
This is something that only the individual experiences. Indeed, many philosophers upheld the privacy of sensations from both the rationalist and empiricist traditions. One such example is David Hume who claims that ‘thinking or reasoning is only a species of sensation and as such cannot go beyond immediate experience’. This is also the case for reductionism. It states that each meaningful statement derives its meaning from some logical construction of terms which refers ‘exclusively’ to immediate experience.
Even Rudolf Carnap’s ‘protocol sentences’ puts priority on the individual’s private experience [that is, immediate experience to be precise]. Once it is accepted that sensations are private in the sense that nobody can feel the sensations of another then it leads us to think that sensations are private and if sensations are private, it is only the individual who experiences his sensations and these sensations are intelligible or understandable to him, and this is possible because of a private language.
Otherwise, how can sensations be intelligible to an individual if there is no private language? The private language argument as Wittgenstein sees it is nonsense. Language, as he sees it, operates on rules. And these rules are constitutive for language and the meaning-making process. He sees language as a rule-governed social activity and for this reason he considers that the idea of a private language is unintelligible. It is unintelligible for human beings to be said to be creating their own language [and this language is based on the notion of the privacy of sensations].
The idea behind his contention that it is altogether unintelligible is that an individual [who creates a private language for himself] may not be really said to be ‘using a language’ since (1) language must be public and social, meaning it should be communicable, and (2) that individual has no way of checking or verifying if he is using a word or a concept. Another possible construal of Wittgenstein’s position regarding his rejection of the private language is that language is a matter of conceptual necessity before an individual can possibly think of the sensation or the thought of the sensation.
Language is already presupposed, so to speak. First, we need language for us to be able to:
(1) think of our thoughts about having such sensations, and
(2) be able to articulate our thoughts through meaningful statements or utterances such as performatives or speech acts. Why is this so? Language or anything that functions like language [meaning, any system that uses symbols or devices for ‘representation’ makes possible thought and the articulation of thought through the process of communication.
Language makes and gives human beings access not only to their own thoughts but also to other human beings’ thoughts and it is only by positing that this is possible can communication be possible. This further strengthens Wittgenstein’s claim that language is both public and social and thus, the idea of a private language is altogether unintelligible and nonsense. What does Ayer meant by a private language and what are his arguments for contending that private languages do exist?
Ayer’s view on the notion of a private language is that ‘it satisfies the purpose of being intelligible only to a single person, or to a restricted set of people’. Later, he stated that ‘what philosophers [excluding himself] usually mean by a private language is one that is used by one person to refer only to his own private experiences’. As may be noticed, the inclusion of the phrase ‘or to a restricted set of people’ makes a relevant difference on his take on the problem of a private language as posited by Wittgenstein.
They clearly have different notions of what would count as a private language. A restricted set of people using a private language is very different from a single person using a private language to refer only to his private experiences. It would not really matter to Wittgenstein since he rejects wholesale the idea that a private language [whether used by an individual or a restricted set of people] is a language. It is not even intelligible to him. It is but a failure to understand the grammar of a language and how it operates.
Ayer identified two assumptions which he believed to be false in Wittgenstein’s claim: (1) that it is impossible to understand a sign unless one can either observe the object which it signifies, or at least observe something with which this object is naturally associated; and (2) that for a person to be able to attach meaning to a sign, it is necessary that other people should be capable of understanding it too. Ayer used hypothetical situations to argue that it is not necessarily the case that (1) and (2).
He argues that there is nothing self-contradictory in the event that a person invents for himself a language as in his example of a Robinson Crusoe left alone in an island while still an infant without being introduced to language. To this argument, I would say that it does not say or prove much. As stated earlier, Ayer claims that there are indeed, private languages. What he seems to do in this argument is to play with the notion of logical possibility and/or logical impossibility by saying that ‘there is nothing self-contradictory in the event that a person invents for himself a language’.
Of course, it is logically possible but anything that does not involve a contradiction is in theory, logically possible since the only kind of impossibility is a logical impossibility. But at the onset of his paper, he claims that there are private languages and to say that they are merely possible would not be an acceptable argument. Moreover, to say that there exist languages that are private requires not mere possibility. The burden of proof is on Ayer’s side.
I shall argue that Ayer’s identification of the two assumptions by Wittgenstein, which he considers to be false, is partly mistaken. Ayer failed to see the problematic as presented by Wittgenstein. Assumptions (1) and (2) are, I would like to maintain, only secondary points that he should consider in what Wittgenstein is trying to say regarding the unintelligibility of the notion of a private language [built upon the notion of the privacy of sensations].
The unintelligibility of a private language and Wittgenstein’s consequent rejection of it is based on the very notion of what a language is. Language, along with its constitutive rules, makes possible for an individual x to think that he has a sensation y. The mere fact that x can even think of having y, presupposes language for how can x possibly think of y without the linguistic elements or devices such as words to serve as markers or tools for ‘representation’?
Language makes possible x to think of y and it is also the case with other individuals. In a sense, it is by positing that language is a conceptual necessity that the process of communication can take place. And since language is a rule-governed social activity, the whole meaning-making process is generated out of certain linguistic rules [which involves pragmatical rules] that a linguistic community appropriates for itself which are both public and social.
Ayer’s notion of a private language is clearly different from that of Wittgenstein’s and his arguments were not substantive enough to dismantle or disprove Wittgenstein’s contention that the very notion of a private language is both unintelligible and nonsense. Ayer, as I reckon it, misunderstood the idea of a private language and even if he did, he was not attacking the root of the problematic handed over by Wittgenstein. It is a failure to understand the very notion of language, its constitutive rules, its operations and the grammar of the linguistic elements in the complex structure of language.
Assessing Ayer's Criticisms of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument. (2020, Jun 01). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/ayer-wittgenstein-assessing-j-ayers-criticisms-wittgensteins-rejection-private-language-argument-new-essay
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