PRIVATE LANGAUGE ARGUMENT ON WITTGENSTEIN
AUTHOR: JOSHUA NNADIMMA AYOZIE
EMAIL:michealjoshua6@gmail.com
Phone contact: +2347061124641
Classroom assignment/paper
University of Nigeria,Nsukka

OUTLINE
1. INTRODUCTION
2. WHAT IS PRIVATE LANGUAGE?
3. PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT BEFORE WITTGENSTEIN
4. PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT THESIS
5. AYER’S RESPONSE TO WITTGENSTEIN PRIVATE LANGUAGE
6. CONCLUSION

1.0-Introduction
Since the birth of philosophy of man and the study of his nature, activities and his interaction with his environment, there have been various questions revolving around the study of man. One of these questions is the question of “man as a language user or speaking human, or a communicator”. Was language in existence before man or man before language? Who taught man how to use language as a means of communication with his environment and with his fellow human? These and many other questions remained a thing of debate among scholars and philosophers especially among the Anthropologists and philosophers of language. While some are of the view that language was prior to man (i.e) that language existed before man others are of the view that there was no language in existence instead man came into existence creating various languages as means of communication for interaction among his fellow human and his environment.
Be that as it may, one should always have in mind the performative use of language. Again there is no doubt that there have been an ongoing argument and debates from Descartes to versions of the representational theory of mind which became prominent in late twentieth century cognitive science.
Therefore it is of importance to note that the scope of this essay is on “private language argument on Wittgenstein”. In order to achieve the objective of this paper, the below outline following this concise introduction shall be taken.

2.0- What is Private Language?
A language that is not merely secret or accidentally limited to one user, but that cannot in principle be communicated to another
3.0-Private Language Argument before Wittgenstein (Carnap’s and Neurath’s)
Before I discuss Wittgenstein’s PLA, I will first present Carnap’s and Neurath’s PLAs. The presentation of these two PLAs is meant to lay the basic foundation of what a PLA is meant to achieve. Neither Carnap nor Neurath is the main attraction of this paper, but it is both necessary and helpful to present and explain two PLAs from two thinkers that came in conflict with one another regarding the purpose of language. Both Carnap and Neurath were members of the Vienna Circle and as such subscribed to verificationism, however, their differing views of what language was meant to achieve eventually yielded conflict.

Carnap’s principle aim in his work “Unity of Science” was to promote physicalism – the view that every meaningful sentence could be translated into other sentences containing purely physical language – i.e., any meaningful sentence could be translated into terminology from physics or some language from the physical sciences. Carnap’s project entailed that all meaningful language could be translated into a language consisting of physical terms. The translation of language into a language of physical terms would also apply to what Carnap called protocol sentences – sentences describing the immediately given. Protocol sentences included among other things sentences about sensations.
This is Nielsen’s presentation of Carnap’s private language argument. Carnap’s initial assumption entails that sensational and physical domains are separate for each speaker. Adopting Carnap’s assumption, (2) entails that if S1 utters a proposition like ‘I hurt’ implying that S1 is in pain, thus referring to the pain sensation of S1, where pain belongs in the sensational domain, then S2 who is presented with S1’s utterance will not be able to understand the utterance ‘I hurt’ because this proposition belongs to S1’s sensational domain, and this domain is not accessible to S2. According to Carnap, (3) obtains; a proposition is meaningful only if verifiable. Therefore, from premises (2) and (3) the implication is that the proposition ‘I hurt’ uttered by S1 cannot be communicated to S2 because the sensation domain of S1 is private resulting in referential privacy. Premise (4) cannot be true, however, because of (5), which Carnap maintains as true.
According to (5), two individuals can consciously communicate and understand propositions about the sensational and physical domain of different speakers. For instance, S2 consciously understands S1’s proposition, ‘I hurt’. This is verifiable in a number of different ways. I could infer from S1’s behavior that she is in pain, I could ask what caused the pain, I could ask where the pain is, I could also offer to help alleviate the pain, etc. Thus, given all these verifiable states of affairs, I understand ‘I hurt’. The inconsistency in the argument is between (4) and (5). As Carnap claims, one speaker can understand propositions about sensations uttered by one speaker to another because of intersubjective communicability, which contradicts (4), a proposition uttered by one speaker is meaningless to another. Hence we must logically reject the assumption that physical and sensational domains are not shared between speakers. In Carnap’s argument, there is level of accepted privacy in a linguistic framework. Nielsen explains via Carnap, “‘Now thirst’ in the original protocol of S2 has no entity ‘I’ which can be replaced by ‘S1’. Accordingly, ‘He is thirsty’ cannot be understood on analogy with the situation in which I feel thirst.” What this yields is that if a protocol sentence such as ‘Now pain’, or to use Carnap’s example, ‘Now thirst’, presents what is immediately given in experience, then in a given scenario where S1 utters something to the effect of ‘Now thirst’ to S2 where it is empirically proved that S1 is thirsty but S2 is not, S2 cannot understand the content of S1’s sentence. The proposition ‘Now thirst’ only describes a present state of affairs of a certain singular subject and not of any others. Thus Carnap is forced to accept the privacy of the immediately given, but he is not willing to concede to the privacy of the protocol language.
What will be made evident is how much more radical Neurath’s approach is to protocol sentences compared to Carnap’s. Neurath identified two main problems with Carnap’s framework: “first, Carnap’s system failed to represent actual scientific practice. Secondly, it was not radical enough; there were still a number of idealistic elements in it.” Neurath took issue with Carnap’s claim that protocol sentences are unrevisable because unrevisable protocol sentences assumed atomism wherein the truth of sentences are independent of one another. According to Neurath, there was no reason why two protocol sentences could not contradict one another. In a case where two protocol sentences contradicted one another like ‘Thirst now’ and ‘Not thirst now’, it is obvious that one would have to be discarded based on scientific investigation. Nielsen explains protocol sentences could be revised because they were part of scientific discourse, thus a protocol sentence could not be accepted without proper critical assessment. In short Neurath’s PLA was meant to refute Carnap’s conception of the protocol sentence. For Carnap, a protocol sentence contained the immediately given, however, Neurath’s argument will show that protocol sentences could not be private or “correspond directly to the immediately given.”
4.0- Private Language Argument Thesis
The idea of a private language was made famous in philosophy by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who in §243 of his book Philosophical Investigations explained it thus: “The words of this language are to refer to what only the speaker can know — to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language.” This is not intended to cover (easily imaginable) cases of recording one’s experiences in a personal code, for such a code, however obscure in fact, could in principle be deciphered. What Wittgenstein had in mind is a language conceived as necessarily comprehensible only to its single originator because the things which define its vocabulary are necessarily inaccessible to others.
Immediately after introducing the idea, Wittgenstein goes on to argue that there cannot be such a language. The importance of drawing philosophers’ attention to a largely unheard-of notion and then arguing that it is unrealizable lies in the fact that an unformulated reliance on the possibility of a private language is arguably essential to mainstream epistemology, philosophy of mind and metaphysics from Descartes to versions of the representational theory of mind which became prominent in late twentieth century cognitive science. Nevertheless, the main argument of §§244–271 is, apparently, readily summarized. The conclusion is that a language in principle unintelligible to anyone but its originating user is impossible. The reason for this is that such a so-called language would, necessarily, be unintelligible to its supposed originator too, for he would be unable to establish meanings for its putative signs.
5.0-Ayer’s Response to Wittgenstein Private language
Suspending for the moment my remarks regarding Wittgenstein’s private language argument, I turn now to A. J. Ayer and Rush Rhees’ essay, “Can There Be a Private Language?” Though I will only address Ayer’s comments because he, unlike Wittgenstein and Rhees, argues for the possibility of a private language, I find his arguments will aid in the overall paper. In his preliminary remarks, Ayer admits outright, “it is obvious that there can be private languages. There can be, because there are.” Ayer goes on to describe particular instances of private languages that exist such as the jargon of family units or a guild of thieves; certain pirates, perhaps, might have a private language. I accept Ayer’s claim. His definition of a private language is a language “devised to enable a limited number of persons to communicate with one another in a way that is not intelligible to anyone outside the group.” It is conceivable to suppose that there are private languages where the scope of understanding applies to only one individual. The scope of Ayer’s definition goes beyond a single individual and encompasses small groups of individuals; this kind of private language, described by Ayer, is not wholly private because the rules of the language can be shared with other individuals.
Saul Kripke responding to Wittgenstein private language argument, and any private language argument, is the paradox proposed by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations and further developed by Saul Kripke in his book, “Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language”. In his treatment of this problem, Kripke refers to this paradox as the skeptical paradox.
6.0- Conclusion
Having completed this intellectual voyage on philosophy of language which hinges itself on Wittgenstein’s stand to refuting private use of language, in the sense that only the subject, the individual speaking understands himself but not any language understood by any other person outside the person speaking. One thing that remains is why Wittgenstein failed to address the formulation and origin of language and words that are in use today. Were they collectively formed or formed and used by an individual who then transferred it to the general public? This question remains unanswered.

ENDNOTES
Private language, definition and meaning, Collins Online dictionary, assessed 7th July, 2021
Nielsen, Private language
Nielsen, private Language Argument
Ibids
ibid
ibid
Private Language, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, First published Fri Jul 26, 1996; substantive revision Tue Jul 30, 2019
Ayer and Rhees, Private Language
Ayer and Rhees, Private Languages
Wittgenstein, philosophical Investigation

Further Research
Ayer, A. J., and Rush Rhees. “Can There Be a Private Language?” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 28 (1954): 63-94. Block, Ned. “Inverted Earth.” Philosophical Perspectives 4 (1990): 53-79.
Carnap, Rudolf. “Psychology in Physical Language.” In Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, edited by David J. Chalmers, 39-44. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Chumley, Lily Hope, and Nicholas Harkness. “Introduction: QUALIA.” Anthropological Theory 13 (2013): 3-11. Dejnožka, Jan. “Origins of the Private Language Argument.” Diálogos 66 (1995): 59-78.
Frege, Gottlob. “Sense and Reference.” The Philosophical Review 57, no. 3 (1948): 209-230.
Gibbard, Alan. Meaning and Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Grice, H. P. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts, edited by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press, 1975.
Kripke, Saul. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Vol. I of The Works of John Locke. New York: Dover Publications, 1959. ———. Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Vol. II of The Works of John Locke. New York: Dover Publications, 1959.
Nagel, Thomas. “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974): 435-50.
Nielsen, Keld Stehr. The Evolution of the Private Language Argument. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008.
Putnam, Hilary. “Brains and Behavior.” In Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, edited by Ned Block, 24-36. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. ———. “Meaning and Reference.” Journal of Philosophy 70, no. 19 (1973): 699-711.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. ———. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Edited by G. H. von Wright, Rush Rhees and G. E. M. Anscombe. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. London, England: MIT Press, 1978.

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