## 1. Overview: Wittgenstein's Argument and its Interpretations



Wittgenstein's main attack on the idea of a private language is
contained in SSSS244-271 of *Philosophical
Investigations* (though the ramifications of the matter are
recognizably pursued until SS315). These passages, especially
those from SS256 onwards, are now commonly known as 'the
private language argument', despite the fact that he brings
further considerations to bear on the topic in other places in his
writings; and despite the fact that the broader context, of
SSSS243-315, does not contain a singular critique of
just one idea, namely, a private language--rather, the passages
address many issues, such as privacy, identity, inner/outer relations,
sensations as objects, and sensations as justification for sensation
talk, amongst others.



Nevertheless, the main argument of SSSS244-271 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.



We should, however, note that Wittgenstein himself never employs the
phrase 'private language argument'. And a few commentators
(e.g., Baker 1998, Canfield 2001 pp. 377-9, Stroud 2000 p. 69)
have questioned the very existence in the relevant passages of a
unified structure properly identifiable as a sustained argument. This
suggestion, however, depends for its plausibility on a tendentiously
narrow notion of argument--roughly, as a kind of proof, with
identifiable premisses and a firm conclusion, rather than the more
general sense which would include the exposure of a confusion through
a variety of reasoned twists and turns, of qualifications,
weighings-up and re-thinkings--and is a reaction against some
drastic and artificial reconstructions of the text by earlier writers.
Nevertheless, there is a point to be made, and the summary above
conceals, as we shall see, a very intricate discussion.



Even among those who accept that there is a reasonably self-contained
and straightforward private language argument to be discussed, there
has been fundamental and widespread disagreement over its details, its
significance and even its intended conclusion, let alone over its
soundness. The result is that every reading of the argument (including
that which follows) is controversial. Some of this disagreement has
arisen because of the notorious difficulty and occasional elusiveness
of Wittgenstein's own text (sometimes augmented by problems of
translation). But much derives from the tendency of philosophers to
read into the text their own preconceptions without making them
explicit and asking themselves whether its author shared them. Some
commentators, for instance, supposing it obvious that sensations are
private, have interpreted the argument as intended to show they cannot
be talked about; some, supposing the argument to be an obvious but
unsustainable attempt to wrest special advantage from scepticism about
memory, have maintained it to be unsound because it self-defeatingly
implies the impossibility of public discourse as well as private; some
have assumed it to be a direct attack on the problem of other minds;
some have claimed it to commit Wittgenstein to behaviourism or
verificationism; some have thought it to imply that language is, of
necessity, not merely potentially but actually social (this has come
to be called the 'community view' of the argument).



The early history of the secondary literature is largely one of
disputation over these matters. Yet what these earlier commentators
have in common is significant enough to outweigh their differences and
make it possible to speak of them as largely sharing an Orthodox
understanding of the argument. After the publication in 1982 of Saul
Kripke's definitely unorthodox book, however, in which he suggested
that the argument poses a sceptical problem about the whole notion of
meaning, public or private, disputation conducted by Orthodox rules of
engagement was largely displaced by a debate on the issues arising
from Kripke's interpretation. (However, there is overlap: Kripke
himself adheres to the community view of the argument's implications,
with the result that renewed attention has been paid to that issue,
dispute over which began in 1954.) Both debates, though, show a
tendency to proceed with only the most cursory attention to the
original argument which started them off.



This rush to judgment about what is at stake, compounded by a
widespread willingness to discuss commentators' more accessible
accounts of the text rather than confront its difficulties directly,
has made it hard to recover the original from the accretion of more or
less tendentious interpretation which has grown up around it. Such a
recovery is one of the tasks attempted in this article. The criterion
of success in this task which is employed here is one of coherence: a
good account should accommodate all of Wittgenstein's remarks in
SSSS244-271, their (not necessarily linear) ordering as
well as their content, and should make clear how these remarks fit
with the context provided by the rest of the book. (One of the
problems with many of the commentaries on this matter, especially the
earlier ones, is that their writers have quarried the text for
individual remarks which have then been re-woven into a set of views
said to be Wittgenstein's but whose relation to the original is
tenuous. A striking example of this approach is Norman Malcolm's
famous and influential 1954 review of *Philosophical
Investigations*, which was commonly taken as an accurate
representation of Wittgenstein's own thinking and formed the target of
many "refutations".)


### 1.1 Recent Developments and Their Consequences



Interpretation of Wittgenstein started to become even more complex at
the close of the twentieth century, as commentators began to focus on
broad questions of method. In both Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical
Investigations there is a tension between some statements that
seem to be stating controversial philosophical positions and others
that seem to be saying that philosophy ought not to offer
controversial theses but only work with what we already know by being
competent language users embedded in human circumstances. In the
latter book there are passages that seem to support an
anti-philosophical position and others that seem to offer interesting
new philosophical views in the process of criticizing more traditional
philosophical doctrines such as foundationalism and Cartesianism.
Along these lines, two overlapping distinctions concerning how to read
Philosophical Investigations have arisen: the
resolute-substantial distinction, and the
Pyrrhonian-non-Pyrrhonian distinction. In general, the resolute
and Pyrrhonian readings make Wittgenstein out to be an
anti-philosopher, one who is not offering positive philosophical
theses to replace false ones; rather, his goal is to show the
nonsensical nature of traditional philosophical theorizing. It is this
goal that is partly responsible for the unique style of
Philosophical Investigations (its dialogical and, at
least at times, anti-dogmatic, therapeutic character). On the
substantial and non-Pyrrhonian readings, Wittgenstein is not only
presenting a method for exposing the errors of traditional
philosophers, but also showing how philosophy should rightly be done
and thereby offering positive philosophical views, views which must
often be inferred or reconstructed from an elusive text. 



There is neither a single resolute/Pyrrhonian nor a single
substantial/non-Pyrrhonian reading of Wittgenstein. Moreover, there is
an important difference between the resolute-substantial and
Pyrrhonian-non-Pyrrhonian distinctions. The former distinction
arises from a continuing debate on how to read Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, both on its own and in relation to
Philosophical Investigations (see, e.g., Conant 2004 and
Mulhall 2007), and is associated with the so-called New
Wittgensteinians (see, e.g., Crary and Read 2000). The Pyrrhonian and
non-Pyrrhonian discussion is to be found, for example, in Fogelin
(1994), Sluga (2004), and Stern (2004, 2007), and concerns the ways in
which Wittgenstein might be considered as writing in the tradition of
the ancient Pyrrhonian sceptics, who were philosophically sceptical
about the very possibility of philosophy (see Fogelin 1994, pp. 3ff
and 205ff). These distinctions cut across the distinction between
Orthodox and Kripkean non-orthodox readings of the text: both Orthodox
*and* Kripkean non-orthodox interpreters have tended to offer
substantial or non-Pyrrhonian readings of Wittgenstein--though
the line may not always be clear and some (e.g., Hacker, 1990) move
from a resolute/Pyrrhonian to a substantial/non-Pyrrhonian reading
without remarking the fact.



Some (Fogelin, Stern, and Mulhall, for example) have come to question
whether it makes sense to suppose that either one or the other,
resolute/Pyrrhonian or substantial/non-Pyrrhonian, must be
*the* correct way to read Wittgenstein. Fogelin and Stern see
the tension in the text of Philosophical Investigations
as the expression of a tension, indeed a struggle, within its
author, between his wanting to uncover the 'disguised
nonsense' of philosophical theses and his being tempted and
drawn into still other philosophical positions on the nature of
language, reference, private experience, and philosophy itself. In
what is surely a reference to SS133c--which reads: 'The
real discovery is the one that enables me to break off philosophizing
when I want to. -- The one that gives philosophy peace, so that
it is no longer tormented by questions which bring *itself* in
question'--Wittgenstein is reported by Rush Rhees to have
said 'In my book I say that I am able to leave off with a
problem in philosophy when I want to. But that's a lie; I can't'
(Rhees, 1984, p. 219 n. 7). According to Stern, the Wittgenstein of
the Philosophical Investigations is more Pyrrhonian than
not, while understanding all too acutely the attraction of philosophy
and the difficulty of giving it up. One's stance on these matters
affects how one reads the private language sections, in particular by
raising the question whether Wittgenstein intends to argue that the
positive claim of the possibility of a private language is false, or
is some kind of nonsense. 


### 1.2 Are Claims Affirming the Possibility of a Private Language False or Nonsense?



If someone were to insist that a private language is possible, one way
to argue against him would be by employing the method of *reductio
ad absurdum*: assume that it is true that a private language is
possible, show that that assumption leads to certain absurdities or a
contradiction, and then conclude that it is actually false that a
private language is possible. This is the way in which the argument
was typically understood. But this understanding has come into
question. In contrast to his earlier commentaries, for example, Gordon
Baker has since called into question whether the private language
sections should not be read as attempting to show that the notion of a
private language is intelligible but false, but rather that it is
nonsense masquerading as an important possibility (Baker, 1998).



There is, however, in Wittgenstein's thinking an inclination to think
of contradiction in terms of the disintegration of sense, so that even
argument by *reductio* might be understood not in terms of
falsehood. (The appearance of this inclination in Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, for example, is well mapped by Fogelin
[1995, Ch. IV].) And it is characteristic of Wittgenstein to talk of
*philosophical* error in terms of nonsense. In SS119 of
Philosophical Investigations he writes, e.g., 'The
results of philosophy are the discovery of some piece of plain
nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has got by running up
against the limits of language. They -- these bumps --
make us see the value of that discovery.' And in SS464:
'What I want to teach is: to pass from unobvious nonsense to
obvious nonsense.' In the discussion of the possibility of a
private language it may well at first seem as though we understand the
possibility under consideration. After all we seem to understand the
question in SS256, 'Now, what about the language which
describes my inner experiences and which only I myself can
understand?' But is Wittgenstein suggesting we *only*
seem to understand this question? 



The matter may not be clear. Shortly after the main private language
sections, the following remark occurs as part of a dialogue, 'It
amounts to this: that only of a living human being and what resembles
(behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it
sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious'
(SS281). The dialogue continues in SS282:



> 
> 
> "But in a fairy tale a pot too can see and hear!"
> (Certainly; but it *can* also talk.)
> 
> 
> 
> "But a fairy tale only invents what is not the case: it does not
> talk *nonsense*, does it?" -- It's not as simple as
> that. Is it untrue or nonsensical to say that a pot talks? Does one
> have a clear idea of the circumstances in which we'd say of a pot that
> it talked? (Even a nonsense poem is not nonsense in the same way as
> the babble of a baby.)
> 
> 
> 



Here the question of how the Investigations is to be read
intrudes. For example, part of the distinction between what Mulhall
calls resolute and substantial readings of Wittgenstein concerns the
sense in which Wittgenstein aimed to 'overcome our attraction to
the idea that there is something that we cannot do in
philosophy' (Mulhall, 2007, p. 8; cf. Philosophical
Investigations SS374). Mulhall claims that that idea goes
against the moral of Investigations SS500:
'When a sentence is called senseless, it is not, as it were, its
sense that is senseless. Rather, a combination of words is being
excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation.'
Further, this substantial reading attributes to Wittgenstein an
implicit philosophical theory of meaning, 'of the (now
grammatical) conditions of sense--quite as if our everyday
abilities to distinguish sense from nonsense require at the very least
a philosophical grounding or foundation (perhaps a criterial
semantics, or a theory of language-games, or an anthropology of the
human life form' (Mulhall, 2007, p. 9). By contrast, on a
resolute reading of Philosophical Investigations,
Wittgenstein's appeal to the notion of a grammatical investigation
involves the deployment of 'our everyday capacity to distinguish
sense from nonsense in a philosophical context, and hence as depriving
itself of any claim to expertise or authority that exceeds that form
of practical ability--an ability that can equally well be laid
claim to by any competent speaker, and hence by any philosophical
interlocutor' (ibid., p. 10). Further, the resolute reading is
especially firm in rejecting the idea that there is something
determinate that we cannot do, the idea that there is something,
namely, a private language, that cannot be achieved; there is not a
limitation on language. Rather, the idea is simply nonsense, or as
Mulhall later puts it (ibid. p. 18): no sense can be given to the idea
of a *philosophically substantial* private language.



Though Mulhall claims that the private language sections can
justifiably be read either resolutely or substantially--because
'each reading can ... point to an aspect of the text that
it fully acknowledges, and whose proper acknowledgment by the other is
at the very least an issue for it, it would seem profitless to insist
that one reading is essentially faithful to Wittgenstein's text and
the other intrinsically faithless' (ibid., p. 20)--it is
plain that he thinks the resolute reading is to be preferred. However,
we may not need to choose. We might view the private language sections
as Wittgenstein's asking, 'Do we have a clear picture of the
circumstances in which we should say that someone spoke a private
language?' The line of reasoning that follows SS243 can be
read as various attempts to achieve a clear picture of what it might
mean to speak a private language, where the attempts ultimately fail,
with the result that what at first sight seemed intelligible ('a
language which describes my inner experiences and which only I myself
can understand') turns out not to be intelligible after all. And
in so far as we cannot make intelligible the circumstances in which
there could be a private language, we should say that the idea of a
private language is nonsense. However, as we saw above, in SS282
Wittgenstein seems to suggest that the border between nonsense and
falsehood is itself unclear; and moreover, in trying to make sense of
the possibility of a private language, we may find, in different parts
of the chain of reasoning, suggestions of falsehood as well as of
nonsensicality. 


## 2. The Significance of the Issue



The issue's significance can be seen by considering how the argument
is embedded in the structure of *Philosophical Investigations*.
Immediately prior to the introduction of the argument
(SSSS241f), Wittgenstein suggests that the existence of the
rules governing the use of language and making communication possible
depends on agreement in human behaviour--such as the uniformity
in normal human reaction which makes it possible to train most
children to look at something by pointing at it. (Unlike cats, which
react in a seemingly random variety of ways to pointing.) One function
of the private language argument is to show that not only actual
languages but the very possibility of language and concept formation
depends on the possibility of such agreement.



Another, related, function is to oppose the idea that metaphysical
absolutes are within our reach, that we can find at least part of the
world as it really is in the sense that any other way of conceiving
that part must be wrong (cf. Philosophical Investigations
p. 230). Philosophers are especially tempted to suppose that numbers
and sensations are examples of such absolutes, self-identifying
objects which themselves force upon us the rules for the use of their
names. Wittgenstein discusses numbers in earlier sections on rules
(185-242). Some of his points have analogues in his discussion
of sensations, for there is a common underlying confusion about how
the act of meaning determines the future application of a formula or
name. In the case of numbers, one temptation is to confuse the
mathematical sense of 'determine' in which, say, the
formula *y* = 2*x* determines the numerical value of
*y* for a given value of *x* (in contrast with
*y* > 2*x*, which does not) with a causal sense in
which a certain training in mathematics determines that normal people
will always write the same value for *y* given both the first
formula and a value for *x*--in contrast with creatures
for which such training might produce a variety of outcomes (cf.
SS189). This confusion produces the illusion that the result of an
actual properly conducted calculation is the inevitable outcome of the
mathematical determining, as though the formula's meaning itself were
shaping the course of events.



In the case of sensations, the parallel temptation is to suppose that
they are self-intimating. Itching, for example, seems like this: one
just feels what it is directly; if one then gives the sensation a
name, the rules for that name's subsequent use are already determined
by the sensation itself. Wittgenstein tries to show that this
impression is illusory, that even itching derives its identity only
from a sharable practice of expression, reaction and use of language.
If itching were a metaphysical absolute, forcing its identity upon me
in the way described, then the possibility of such a shared practice
would be irrelevant to the concept of itching: the nature of itching
would be revealed to me in a single mental act of naming it (the kind
of mental act which Russell called 'acquaintance'); all
subsequent facts concerning the use of the name would be irrelevant to
how that name was meant; and the name could be private. The private
language argument is intended to show that such subsequent facts could
not be irrelevant, that no names could be private, and that the notion
of having the true identity of a sensation revealed in a single act of
acquaintance is a confusion.



The suggestion that a language could be private in the way described
appears most openly in the second of Bertrand Russell's published
lectures 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism', where
Russell says:



> 
> 
> In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more
> for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be
> expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of
> course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word
> for each simple component. A language of that sort will be completely
> analytic, and will show at a glance the logical structure of the facts
> asserted or denied. ... A logically perfect language, if it could
> be constructed, would not only be intolerably prolix, but, as regards
> its vocabulary, would be very largely private to one speaker. That is
> to say, all the names that it would use would be private to that
> speaker and could not enter into the language of another speaker.
> 
> 
> 
> ... A name, in the narrow logical sense of a word whose meaning
> is a particular, can only be applied to a particular with which the
> speaker is acquainted, because you cannot name anything you are not
> acquainted with.
> 
> 
> 
> ... One can use 'this' as a name to stand for a
> particular with which one is acquainted at the moment. We say
> 'This is white'. ... But if you try to apprehend the
> proposition that I am expressing when I say 'This is
> white', you cannot do it. If you mean this piece of chalk as a
> physical object, then you are not using a proper name. It is only when
> you use 'this' quite strictly, to stand for an actual
> object of sense [i.e., a sense-datum], that it is really a proper
> name. And in that it has a very odd property for a proper name, namely
> that it seldom means the same thing two moments running and does not
> mean the same thing to the speaker and to the hearer.
> 
> 
> 
> ... [I]n order to understand a name for a particular, the only
> thing necessary is to be acquainted with that particular. When you are
> acquainted with that particular, you have a full, adequate and
> complete understanding of the name, and no further information is
> required.
> 
> 
> 



Although Wittgenstein does not explicitly say so, it is likely that
this is the inspiration of his argument: his writing is marked in many
places by criticism of Russell, both explicit and otherwise. 



In this context, we should take a moment to note a set of issues of
increasing interest, namely, ones found in Cora Diamond's claim in
'Does Bismarck Have a Beetle In His Box' that:



The *Tractatus* provides us with arguments against the
Russellian idea of someone else's private object, the beetle in
Bismarck's box. It lets us see that any such beetle would have no role
in language or thought, but it left unmolested the beetle in one's own
box. Russell's conception of how we can think about things in the
minds of others was subjected to a critique, but the
*Tractatus* left unexamined a questionable conception of what
it is for our words to be about things in our own minds. (p. 283)



It would not be until post-Tractarian work that Wittgenstein would
turn his attention to question of private objects in one's own
mind. Regarding Russell, as Diamond sees it, his commitment both to
private objects and their possibility/admissibility comes primarily
from his views on knowledge by acquaintance in contrast to knowledge
by description, an important part of which is his holding that
"...the chief importance of knowledge by description is
that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of our private
experience. In spite of the fact that we can only know truths which
are wholly composed of terms which we have experienced in
acquaintance, we can yet have knowledge by description of things which
we have never experienced" (quoted in Diamond [2000],
p. 267). Further, according to Diamond, it is Russell's
understanding and use of quantification that he employs to provide a
way to get around the problem of not being acquainted with the
'private' objects in the minds of others. While Bismarck
knows by direct acquaintance the meaning of '*This* is
excruciating' said of his sensation, another can only say,
'Bismarck's sensation is excruciating'. However,
this can be meaningful once we understand that the its meaning is to
be analyzed in terms of, 'Something is a sensation, had now by
Bismarck, and it is excruciating' (p. 273). Once she has
identified the importance of the issue of privacy for Russell, and
laid out the details of his position, she is primarily concerned to
show how Wittgenstein's views in the *Tractatus*
(particularly on quantification, logical space, and there not being
logical objects that serve as the referents of terms such as
'some' and 'all') undermine Russell's
position on quantification and private objects in other people's
minds. Further, she argues, briefly, for the importance of there being
a 'private language argument' in the
*Tractatus* along two main lines. First, she takes it to be
important for our understanding of Wittgenstein's work and its
development (and here her argument is firmly in line with her
Pyrrhonian and resolute reading of the *Tractatus* and its
continuity with Wittgenstein's later work). Second, she takes it to
have implications for Michael Dummett's way of framing the realism and
anti-realism issue, especially as it relates to the
*Tractatus*. Against Dummett, she sees the *Tractatus*
as putting forward an anti-realist position, "...at any
rate about other people's private objects" (p. 284).



As this entry is focused on the private language considerations found
primarily in the *Philosophical Investigations*, we will not go
into further detail regarding Diamond's argument. However, as
noted above, the issues she raises are of increasing interest both
directly and indirectly. Directly, they are engaged by William
Child's recent 'Does the *Tractatus* contain a
private language argument?' in which he argues that Diamond is
more or less wrong across the board in her main contentions regarding
there being a private language argument in the *Tractatus* and
her assessment of the *Tractatus* as anti-realist. His central
contention is that Diamond projects views attributable to the later
Wittgenstein into the *Tractatus*, particularly those
concerning naming and use. However, he also argues that
Wittgenstein's 1929 views on sensation language
'challenge' 'new' readings of
the *Tractatus*, such as Diamond's, where by 'new
readings' he means ones that, "find in
the *Tractatus* an absence of positive philosophical doctrines,
a kind of quietism, and an explicitly therapeutic approach that have
traditionally been associated with Wittgenstein's later
philosophy" (p. 143). 



Indirectly, Diamond's piece is in line with an increasing interest in
questions of how to read Wittgenstein, such as those we noted above in
our discussion of the resolute-substantial and
Pyrrhonian-non-Pyrrhonian 'Wittgensteins'. The issues raised in these
contexts have further relevance for understanding other central
Wittgensteinian themes such as how best to respond to the temptations
of solipsism (see Stern [2010] for a helpful overview of many of these
issues; he does not discuss Diamond directly, but he does focus on the
question of the development of Wittgenstein's thought and, for
example, the question of solipsism in the context of private language
considerations. Another recent example of interest in Wittgenstein's
philosophical development, and explicitly one that concerns private
language, is Nielson [2008]). 



To return to our exposition of the private language concerns found in
the *Philosophical Investigations*, in distinction from
Russell's work, for example, the idea of a private language is more
usually hidden: the confusions supposed to belong to it allegedly
underlie a range of articulated philosophical notions and theories,
without themselves being so articulated. The argument is thus perhaps
most profitably read as targeting, not any particular theory, but
rather the motivation for considering a range of apparently
independent or even competing theories along with their associated
tasks, problems and solutions.



For example, a still very common idea, often attributed to John Locke
and openly embraced by Jerry Fodor in the nineteen seventies, is that
interpersonal spoken communication works by speakers' translation of
their internal mental vocabularies into sounds followed by hearers'
re-translation into their own internal vocabularies. Again, Descartes
considered himself able to talk to himself about his experiences while
claiming to be justified in saying that he does not know (or not until
he has produced a reassuring philosophical argument) anything at all
about an external world conceived as something independent of them.
And he and others have thought: while I may make mistakes about the
external world, I can infallibly avoid error if I confine my judgments
to my immediate sensations. (Compare The Principles of
Philosophy, I, 9.) Again, many philosophers, including John
Stuart Mill, have supposed there to be a problem of other minds,
according to which I may reasonably doubt the legitimacy of applying,
say, sensation-words to beings other than myself.



In each of these examples, the implication is that the internal
vehicle of my musings could in principle be private (as Kenny [1966,
p. 369] showed, this vehicle does not have to be a *language*
for the argument to apply to it): for these problems and theories even
to make sense, sharability must be irrelevant to meaning and it must
be at least conceivable that my knowledge, even my understanding, is
necessarily confined to my own case. The implication is of course
often denied. The terms of Fodor's language of thought, for example,
are supposed to be able to refer to public objects. But the question
is, on what basis does this ability rest? However this question should
be answered, Fodor himself was concerned enough about Wittgenstein's
argument to try to show both that it did not apply to his views
and--apparently superfluously--that it is not a good
argument anyway (Fodor pp. 68-73). The matter is clearer with
Descartes (compare Kenny 1966): for his sceptical question to be
raised without being immediately self-defeating, he must hold it
possible to identify his experiences inwardly--where
'inwardly' means without relying on resources supplied by
his essential embodiment in a world whose existence is independent of
his own mind and accessible to others (e.g., such resources as the
concepts acquired in a normal upbringing). The question which
accordingly looms large in the private language argument is: How is
this identification of one's experiences to be achieved?



However, it cannot be emphasized too strongly that the significance of
the private language argument does not rest on the scholarly detail of
whether this or that thinker can be correctly described as committed
to the idea. The target is a way of thinking which generates
philosophical theories, not the theories themselves.


## 3. The Private Language Argument Expounded


### 3.1 Preliminaries



As already noted, the private language sections of Philosophical
Investigations are usually held to begin at SS243 (though
we shall see that Wittgenstein relies on points made much earlier in
the book). The methodological issues canvassed above arise at the
outset, in the interpretation of SS243's crucial second
paragraph.



On a substantial/non-Pyrrhonian reading, Wittgenstein begins to
clarify what kind of philosophically important notion of private
language is to be examined, i.e., one that is necessarily private and
which refers to one's immediate private sensations. In the remarks
that follow, Wittgenstein argues that the idea of such a private
language is nonsensical or incoherent because it is a violation of
grammar (i.e., Wittgenstein draws on his substantive views on
meaning). 



On a resolute/Pyrrhonian reading, it is emphasized that the reader is
asked in the first sentence of the second paragraph whether one can
actually *imagine* a language for one's inner experiences, for
private use. Wittgenstein at this point reminds the interlocutor that
we already use ordinary language for that. But the interlocutor
quickly replies in the last three lines of SS243 that what he is
asking is whether we can imagine *a private language that refers to
what only the speaker can know*. In the following sections,
Wittgenstein examines 'whether there is a way of meaning the
words of the penultimate sentence [of SS243] that does not simply
return us to a banality, whether in fact his interlocutor means
anything in particular with those words' (Mulhall 2007, p. 18).
The question is whether the notion of a language 'which only I
myself can understand' can be given any substantial meaning to
begin with. On this latter reading, SSSS258 and 270, for
example, are attempts to give the interlocutor what he says he wants,
but which, in the end, amount to nothing (in the case of 258) or bring
us back to a publicly understandable language (in the case of
270).



As we saw above, in section 1.2, it is not clear that we must choose
between these two readings. On either, the point of the private
language argument is that the idea is exposed as unintelligible when
pressed--we cannot make sense of the circumstances in which we
should say that someone is using a private language.



So, having introduced the idea of a private language in the way
already quoted, Wittgenstein goes on to argue in a preliminary
discussion (SSSS244-255) that there are two senses of
'private' which a philosopher might have in mind in
suggesting that sensations are private, and that sensations as they
are talked about in natural languages (such as English and German) are
in fact private in neither of them. He then turns, at SS256, to
the question whether there could be a private language at all. He
continues to talk of sensations, and of pain as an example, but one
should remember that these are not *our* sensations, the
everyday facts of human existence, but the supposed exemplars of
*philosophical accounts* of the everyday facts. Thus, for
instance, they might be the sensations of something like a Cartesian
soul (perhaps one associated with a physical body, as indicated in
SSSS257 and 283), something which has no publicly available
mental life and whose "experiences" are accordingly
private. (It is worth noting that the earlier Anscombe translation is
misleading here: in SS243, for example, where the idea of a
private language is introduced, it loses the crucial contrast, so
evident in the original German, between the ordinary human beings
described as solitary speakers in the first paragraph and the second
paragraph's mysterious 'one' who is the
'speaker' of a private language and whose nature is
carefully left unclear. See the recent 4th edition translation of this
paragraph, a relevant part is in the first sentence of this article,
to find a version closer to the original German.) Consistent with this
point is that in SS256 Wittgenstein suggests that one cannot
arrive at the idea of a private language by considering a natural
language: natural languages are not private, for our sensations are
expressed. But neither can we arrive at the idea by starting with a
natural language and just subtracting from it all expression of
sensations (temporary paralysis is clearly not in question), as he
considers next, for as he says in SS257, even if there could be
language in such a situation as this where teaching is impossible, the
earlier argument of Philosophical Investigations
(SSSS33-35), concerning ostensive definition, has shown
that mere "mental association" of one thing with another
is not alone enough to make the one into a name of the other. Naming
one's sensation requires a place for the new word: that is, a notion
of sensation. The attempt to name a sensation in a conceptual vacuum
merely raises the questions of what this business is supposed to
consist in, and what is its *point*. But, for the sake of
getting to the heart of the matter, Wittgenstein puts the first of
these questions on one side and pretends that it is sufficient for the
second to imagine himself in the position of establishing a private
language for the purpose of keeping a diary of his sensations.



However, to investigate the possibility of the imagined diary case by
exploring it from the inside (the only way, he thinks, really to
expose the confusions involved) requires him to use certain words when
it is just the right to use these words which is in question. Thus he
is forced to mention in SS258 examples like ostensive definition,
concentrating the attention, speaking, writing, remembering, believing
and so on, in the very process of suggesting that none of these can
really occur in the situation under consideration (SS261).



This difficulty has often gone unnoticed by commentators on the
argument, with particularly unhappy results for the understanding of
the discussion of the diary example. Fogelin [1976], for instance, a
paradigm representative of Orthodoxy, treats this as a case where
*he himself*, a living embodied human being, keeps a diary and
records the occurrences of a sensation which he finds it impossible to
describe to anyone else. But we are not to assume that the description
of the keeping of the diary is a description of a possible or even
ultimately intelligible case. In particular, we are not to think of
such a human being's keeping a real diary, but of something like the
Cartesian internal equivalent. It is thus vital to the argument that
the diary case is presented in the first person, without our pressing
the question, 'Who is speaking?' At this stage we are
simply not to worry about whether the diary story ultimately makes
sense or not. But the fact that it may not make sense must be
remembered in reading what follows, which in strictness should
constantly be disfigured with scare quotes. (We shall, as we have
already, occasionally supply them as a reminder, reserving double
quotes for this purpose.)



To summarize the argument's preliminary stage: In SS256
Wittgenstein asked of the "private language",
'*How* do I use words to signify my sensations?',
and reminded us in SS257 that we cannot answer 'As we
ordinarily do'. So this question, which is the same question as
'How do I obtain meaning for the expressions in a "private
language"?' is still open; and the answer must be
independent of our *actual* connections between words and
sensations. In the attempt to arrive at an answer, and explore the
question in its full depth, he temporarily allows the use of the
notions of sensation and diary-keeping (despite the objections of
SS257), and imagines himself in the position of a private linguist
recording his sensations in a diary. The aim is to show that even if
this concession is made, meaning for a sensation-word still cannot be
secured and maintained by such a linguist. The crucial central part of
the argument begins here, at SS258.


### 3.2 The Central Argument



Wittgenstein points out in the diary case 'I first want to
observe that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated'.
(The translation here obscures the reason why. Wittgenstein's word is
'aussprechen', better translated as
'expressed' than 'formulated': the point
follows by definition from the fact that the case is one where the
definition is private.) So if meaning is to be obtained for the
"sign", this must be achieved through a private exercise
of ostensive definition, where I concentrate on the sensation and
produce the sign at the same time. (In these circumstances, meaning
cannot be extracted from a pre-existing practice of private use, since
what is in question is how such a use could be established in the
first place.) But if this exercise is to be genuine and successful
ostensive definition, it must *establish* the connection
between sign and sensation, and this connection must *persist*.
As Wittgenstein says, '"I commit [the connection] to
memory" can only mean: this process brings it about that I
remember the connection *correctly* in the future'. For I
do not define anything, even to myself let alone anyone else, by
merely attending to something and making a mark, unless this episode
has the appropriate consequences.


### 3.3 Interlude: the Rejection of Orthodoxy



At this point we should suspend our exposition of the argument, in
order to examine closely the remark 'this process brings it
about that I remember the connection *correctly* in the
future'.



This remark has usually been interpreted as a demand that, for the
sign '*S*' to have been given a meaning, it must
always figure thereafter (if used affirmatively and sincerely) as a
true statement: that is, I must use the sign '*S*'
affirmatively only when I really do have the sensation *S*. And
it has usually been thought that the subsequent argument concerns the
adequacy of memory to ensure that I do not later misidentify my
sensations and call a different kind of sensation
'*S*' in the future. This account of the argument
and its history is summed up by Anthony Kenny as follows:



> 
> 
> Many philosophers have taken 'I remember the connection
> right' to mean 'I use "*S*" when and
> only when I really have *S*'. They then take
> Wittgenstein's argument to be based on scepticism about memory: how
> can you be sure that you have remembered aright when next you call a
> sensation '*S*'? ...
> 
> 
> 
> Critics of Wittgenstein have found the argument, so interpreted, quite
> unconvincing. Surely, they say, the untrustworthiness of memory
> presents no more and no less a problem for the user of a private
> language than for the user of a public one. No, Wittgenstein's
> defenders have said, for memory-mistakes about public objects may be
> corrected, memory-mistakes about private sensations cannot; and where
> correction is impossible, talk of correctness is out of place. At this
> point critics of Wittgenstein have either denied that truth demands
> corrigibility, or have sought to show that checking is possible in the
> private case too. (Kenny[ 1973] pp. 191-2)
> 
> 
> 



This interplay of criticism and defence characterizes the Orthodox
interpretation of the argument. (See Fogelin [1976], pp. 162-4,
for a good example.) There seem to be at least two reasons why this
interpretation should have become established. First, philosophers
committed to the idea of a private language are often looking for an
arrangement in which mistakes of fact are impossible; that is, they
are trying to overcome scepticism by finding absolute certainty.
(Descartes is the example usually cited.) And this would make
sceptical arguments appear to be natural weapons to use in reply to
them. (See, e.g., Fogelin [1976] p. 153.) Secondly, it is
plausible--which is not the same as correct--to suppose that
one cannot be mistaken concerning the natures of one's present
sensations, and a supposed proof that the idea of a private language
entails that one is just as fallible on this subject as on any other
could thus seem crippling to that idea.



But, as Kenny first showed, the question of factual infallibility in
future uses of the sign '*S*' is not the issue. If
we look closely at SS258, we see that 'I remember the
connection *correctly*' refers to remembering a
*meaning*, namely, the meaning of the sign
'*S*', not to making sure that I infallibly apply
'*S*' only to *S*'s in the future. (Nor does
the private language argument depend on taking the latter to be an
effect of the former.)


### 3.4 The Central Argument Continued



Now that we are clearer about what the connection is which has to be
remembered right, we can return to the exposition of the argument. I
am to imagine that I am a private linguist. I have a sensation, and
make the mark '*S*' at the same time, as I might in
an ordinary case introduce a sign by ostensive definition. Afterwards,
I "believe" myself to have established a meaning for this
sign '*S*', and I now use it to judge that I am
again experiencing the same sensation. What do I mean by
'*S*' on this second occasion? Wittgenstein
considers two possible answers.


#### The First Answer



One of the answers is that what I mean by '*S*' is
just the sort of sensation I am now having. Of this Wittgenstein says
merely:



> 
> ... whatever is going to seem correct to me is correct. And that
> only means that here we can't talk about 'correct'.
> 



The point is highly condensed. Here is a more explicit version. For
there to be factual assertion, there must be the distinction between
truth and falsehood, between saying what is the case and saying what
is not. For there to be the distinction between truth and falsehood,
there must be a further distinction between the source of the meaning,
and the source of the truth, of what is said. Suppose that I confront
some object and say of it 'This is *S*'. If I must
also appeal to this very object to make this utterance intelligible to
myself, I deprive it of any claim to the status of factual
assertion--it becomes, at best, ostensive definition. (The
'at best' is important here, for the same reason that the
diary example is not to be assumed genuinely possible.)


#### The Second Answer



The second answer Wittgenstein considers to the question of what I
mean by '*S*' is this: I mean by
'*S*', not this current sensation, but the
sensation I named '*S*' in the past. We have
already seen, in Kenny's rejection of the Orthodox reading of the
argument, that scepticism about memory has no place in the discussion
of "private language"; the text simply does not support
it. But at this point we must break with Kenny too. For according to
his account the crucial claim becomes: 'If it is possible for me
to misremember my previous ostensive definition of
"*S*", then I do not really know what
"*S*" means.' (See, e.g., Kenny [1973] p.
194.) This is just conventional scepticism about memory extended to
include meanings as well as judgments. And it is an elementary point
of epistemology that knowing something does not obviously entail just
as a result of the definition of knowledge that it is
*impossible* for one to be wrong about that thing, only that
one is not in fact wrong.



What has gone wrong? The answer is that Kenny's and the Orthodox
accounts share an unnoticed assumption: that even in the circumstances
of the "private language" there is actually an application
of a sign to a private sensation by a private linguist. The problem as
Kenny then conceives it is one of later remembering this earlier
application in order that '*S*' should have
retained its meaning. The question then seems to be whether one's
admittedly fallible memory is adequate for the maintenance of meaning.
But why should this assumption be allowed? What entitles us to assume
that a private linguist could even ostensively define his sign to
himself in the first place? As we have seen, this is one of the
matters in question; and SSSS260 and 261 show that
Wittgenstein was not prepared to let an argument in favour of private
language proceed from this assumption. In these two sections
Wittgenstein reminds us that his arguments in the earlier sections
(e.g., 33-35) of *Philosophical Investigations* showed
that ostensive definition was not achieved by any performance unless
certain circumstantial conditions are fulfilled; and nothing about the
diary case as so far described shows them to be fulfilled. It is only
later (SSSS270-271) that Wittgenstein imagines a partial
fulfilment of them, and the result there is to render the language
public.



One cause of the muddle is Wittgenstein's insistence that there must
be a distinction between obeying a rule and merely thinking that one
has. This does not result, as the Orthodox have supposed, in a demand
for, and eventual rejection of, 'memory-infallibility in a
private language': demand and rejection being based respectively
on the grounds that without infallibility one could always be going
wrong and would never know if one were, and with infallibility one
would collapse the distinction between obeying a rule and merely
thinking one was obeying it. Rather, the argument is this. The private
linguist cannot legislate a meaning for a sign by "private
ostensive definition" *merely*--for this has to
establish a technique of using the sign (SS260). The technique
cannot function by means of repeated "ostensive
definitions", as we saw in examining the first answer, since
this collapses the distinction between meaning and truth and thus
destroys the possibility of making factual judgments. So the so-called
"definition" has on some other basis to establish a
constancy in use of the sign.



But this is just what is in question. What would be *constancy*
here? What would *be* using the sign in the same way as before?
How *was* the sign used in the first place? As there cannot be
assumed to be a way of using the sign which the linguist succeeds even
in determining, let alone establishing, and which is the correct way,
independent of the linguist's later impression of the correct way,
then a defender of "private language" would have to show
that there was. It might now seem as if one could show this by
appealing to the private linguist's memory. He simply remembers how he
used the sign before. And this looks straightforward enough, because
one thinks: he certainly did something before, for he remembers it.
And we do not require his memory to be infallible. But the memory does
at least have to be a *memory*: that is, accurate or not, it
has to be of something determinate which existed independently of the
memory of it; and the "memory" alone cannot bring such a
thing into existence.



This is the argument of SS265, which has often been mistakenly
given an epistemological interpretation. Again we cannot assume that
there has been an actual table (even a mental one) of meanings in the
case of the private linguist, a table which is now recalled and about
which the linguist must rely on recall since the original has gone.
Rather, as SSSS260-264 show, there may be nothing
determinate other than this "remembering of the table". So
when we think that a private linguist could remember the meaning of
'*S*' by remembering a past correlation of the sign
'*S*' with a sensation, we are supposing what needs
to be itself established--that there was indeed some independent
correlation to be remembered. Fallibility of memory, even of memory of
meaning, is neither here nor there: the point is not that there is
doubt *now* about the trustworthiness of memory, but that there
was doubt *then* about the status of what occurred. And this
original, *non*-epistemological, doubt cannot later be removed
by "recollections" of a status inherently dubious in the
first place. That is, if there was no genuine original correlation in
the first place, a "memory" will not create one. But if,
alternatively, we do not suppose that there was something independent
of the memory to be remembered, again 'what seems right is
right'; the "memory" of the
"correlation" is being employed to confirm itself, for
there is no independent access to the "remembered
correlation". (Not even the independent access that we have as
posers of the example, since the question is, can we pose such an
example? The typical mistake commentators make here is to disguise the
problem by thinking of *S* in terms of some already established
concept, such as  *pain*, which they bring to the example
themselves.) This is why Wittgenstein says in SS265, 'As if
someone were to buy several copies of today's morning paper to assure
himself that what it said was true'.


#### The Closing Stages



So far the argument has been conducted in terms of an 'I'
not essentially related to body or related only to an inert body. At
SS269, however, it moves to examples where there is bodily
behaviour but despite this there is still the temptation to think of
private meanings for words independent of their public use. This
suggests a further chance for a defender of the idea of a private
language: that a private linguist might secure a meaning for his sign
'*S*' by correlating its private use with some
public phenomenon. This would apparently serve to provide a function
for the noting of '*S*' in the diary (SS260)
and thus give a place for ostensive definition, and would give as well
a guarantee that there is some constancy in the linguist's use of the
term '*S*' independent of his impression of such
constancy. Wittgenstein uses the example of the manometer in
SSSS270-271 to consider this idea, and his criticism of
it is in effect that this method of securing meaning works, but that
the secured meaning is public: the so-called "private
object", even if there were such a thing, is revealed to be
irrelevant to meaning. Presumably a defender of "private
language" would hope that the example would work like this: if I
keep saying, on the basis of my sensation, that my blood pressure is
rising, and the manometer shows that I am right, then this success in
judging my own blood pressure shows that I had in fact established a
private meaning for the sign '*S*' and was using
the sign in the same way each time to judge that my sensation was the
same each time. However, all the example really shows is that just
thinking that I have the same sensation now as I had when my blood
pressure rose formerly, can be a good guide to the rising of my blood
pressure. Whether in some "private sense" the sensation
was "actually the same" or not becomes completely
irrelevant to the question of constancy in the use of
'*S*'--that is, there is no gap between the
actual nature of the sensation and my impression of it, and
'*S*' in this case could mean merely
'sensation of the rising of the blood pressure'; indeed,
for all we are told of the sign's role, it could even mean just
'blood pressure rising'.


### 3.5 Are the Orthodox Objections Met?



Does the ruling out of memory-scepticism as irrelevant to the private
language argument mean that two associated Orthodox objections to it
are likewise irrelevant? The first of these is that the argument,
self-defeatingly, rules out a public language as well. The second
relies on the 'community view' interpretation: it is that
the argument, equally self-defeatingly, rules out as impossible
something perfectly conceivable: namely, the case of a so-called
'Robinson Crusoe', a human being who, unlike Defoe's
original Crusoe, is isolated from birth but devises a language for his
own purposes without his having first been taught another language by
someone else. Wittgenstein's Orthodox defenders, faced with this
second objection, looked to be on shaky ground, often being forced
into the position of conceding that the argument did indeed exclude
the case, but claiming (not very plausibly) that such a Crusoe is
after all impossible so that the concession was not damaging.



The question as it concerns the first objection has already been
answered. The supposed threat to public language arose entirely from
the claim that memory-scepticism could not be confined to the private
case. But since scepticism concerning memory is no part of the
argument, there is no reason to suppose that any question of such
confinement arises, and thus there is no question of the argument's
being self-defeating by excluding the possibility of something we know
to be actual, i.e., the language we already have. Now showing the
absence of any appeal to memory-scepticism involved transferring the
burden of the argument from the question of whether or not an
ostensive definition could be remembered or not to the question of
whether there could be an ostensive definition in the first place.



This enables us to answer the question as it concerns the second
objection. It is clear that an argument which has as its focus the
question of ostensive definition is not committed to ruling out in
advance all hypothetical cases of 'Robinson Crusoes'. For
there is no *a priori* barrier to imagining a form of life
complex enough for us to be assured that a determinate ostensive
definition had been accomplished by such a being. Such a Crusoe,
unlike a private linguist, lives in a world independent of his
impressions of it, and thus there could be definite occurrences in it
which he could remember or forget; and some of those occurrences could
be correlations of signs with objects. It is easy to describe such
hypothetical cases (a clear example appears in pages 486-8 of
Canfield [1996]), and difficult to give a plausible denial that in
some sense they are possible. There are, however, further
complications here, described briefly in section 4 below.


## 4. Kripke's Sceptical Wittgenstein



The Orthodox domination of the secondary literature on private
language was largely ended by Saul Kripke's account of Wittgenstein's
treatment of rules and private language, in which Wittgenstein appears
as a sceptic concerning meaning. Kripke (p. 5) denies commitment to
the identity of this sceptical figure with its historical source, and,
appropriately, his account has spawned a literature of its own in
which discussion often proceeds largely independently of the original
private language argument: Kripke's Wittgenstein, real or fictional,
has become a philosopher in his own right, and for many people, it is
not an issue whether the historical Wittgenstein's original ideas
about private language are faithfully captured in this version. The
complexities of the subsequent discussion of the
philosophical--as opposed to interpretative--questions
raised by Kripke's Wittgenstein need a separate article to themselves.
(For a survey, see Boghossian [1989].) All that will be settled here
is the interpretative question.



Kripke's account resembles that given here in its rejection of
Orthodoxy and in its emphasis on the logical priority of
Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following to that of private
language. It differs in the prominence it gives to the opening
sentence of Philosophical Investigations SS201:
'This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined
by a rule, because every course of action can be brought into accord
with the rule.' Kripke says of this (p. 68), 'The
impossibility of private language emerges as a corollary of
[Wittgenstein's] sceptical solution of his own paradox'.
Wittgenstein himself immediately brushed this "paradox"
aside in his very next paragraph: 'That there is a
misunderstanding here ...'; but Kripke takes the paradox to
pose a genuine and profound sceptical problem about meaning.



The example Kripke chooses to illustrate the problem is that of
addition. What is it to grasp the rule of addition? The application of
the rule is potentially infinite, and bizarre interpretations of the
rule, as well as the standard use of it, are compatible with any
finite set of applications of the usual sort such as 7 + 14 = 21. So
what is it which makes it true that when I say 'plus' I
mean the usual addition function and not some other? Kripke (pp.
62-71) understands this question as containing a Humean problem
to which, he claims, Wittgenstein gives a Humean,
'sceptical' solution.



What Kripke means by this comparison with a Humean problem is that
Wittgenstein is questioning the nexus between a past act of meaning
and subsequent practice in a way analogous to that in which Hume
questions the causal nexus between a single past event and a
subsequent one. And what he means by a Humean solution is that there
is a corresponding analogy between the ways in which Hume and
Wittgenstein handle their respective problems. Kripke's view is that,
just as Hume says, in effect, "Unique causation is
unintelligible; *A*'s causing *B* consists in
*A*'s being embedded in a pattern of the following of
*A*-type-events by *B*-type-events which inclines us to
assert that *A* caused *B*", so, comparably,
Wittgenstein says, in effect, "Unique meaning is unintelligible;
rather, someone's meaning the usual addition function when saying
'plus' consists in their being considered by a community
to have passed the community's test for employing that
function."



Kripke formulates the so-called Humean problem in two different
ways.



The first way is this: "[T]here is no fact about me that
distinguishes my meaning a definite function by 'plus'
... and my meaning nothing at all" (p. 21). The absence of
this fact, in Kripke's view, leads Wittgenstein to abandon the
explanation of the meanings of statements like "By
'plus', I meant addition" in terms of
truth-conditions, and to replace it with explanation in terms of
assertibility-conditions, which involve actual (not merely potential)
community agreement. (Hence the claim that this is a 'sceptical
solution': Wittgenstein is supposed to concede to the sceptic
the absence of truth-conditions for such statements.) This agreement,
on Kripke's account, legitimizes the assertion that I meant addition
by 'plus' despite there having been no fact of the
matter.



This requirement of community agreement for meaning (the
'community view') obviously rules out the possibility of
private language immediately, thereby rendering the argument of
*Philosophical Investigations* SSSS256-271
superfluous. This superfluity makes for an odd reading of the text;
and the oddness is highlighted by the observation that this first
formulation of the sceptical problem relies on Kripke's assumption
that we have some idea of what a fact is, independent of a statement's
being true. For one of the themes of Philosophical
Investigations is that there is no such idea, that the only
route to the identification of facts is through the uses of the
expressions in which those facts are stated, uses which give us the
truth-conditions. These uses are often very different from what we
would expect--hence the impression that truth-conditions are
lacking--and it is a matter of some philosophical difficulty to
see them clearly.



The other formulation of the problem is this (Kripke p. 62):
"Wittgenstein questions the nexus between past
'intention' or 'meanings' and present
practice: for example, between my past 'intentions' with
regard to 'plus' and my present computation ...
." The idea is that my grasp of the rule governing the use of
'plus' does not determine that I shall produce a unique
answer for each of indefinitely many new additions in the future. The
impression that something is missing here, though, is a result of just
that kind of confusion about determination identified in the section
headed 'The Significance of the Issue' above.



Kripke's account of the private language argument is thus vitiated by
his unargued reliance on ideas which Wittgenstein argued against. This
of course does not show that he has not hit upon a new and more
interesting notion of private language than that expounded here.
Further, his reading of the argument gave new life to the debate over
the community view.


### 4.1 The Community View Revisited



Although, as was just said, the community view is not easily
reconciled with part of Wittgenstein's text, the matter is less clear
than has been indicated so far. Significantly, even the most careful,
insightful and sympathetic of Wittgenstein's commentators have divided
on this matter (for example, Malcolm for the community view, and Baker
and Hacker against it). The dispute is partly explained by the fact
that the original texts (including some from Wittgenstein's
manuscripts) seem to point two ways, some supporting the account given
above (that the burden of the argument is that language must be
potentially social), others the community view that language is
essentially social.



That is, textual support can be found for two apparently conflicting
exegetical claims:


1. Language is essentially social.
2. It is conceptually (even if not psychologically) possible that a
lifelong Crusoe (i.e., a human being isolated from birth) should
employ some kind of linguistic system and follow rules in so
doing.



And the contending parties share the assumption that the conflict is
genuine.



There is, however, reason to believe that this assumption is false,
for investigation of Wittgenstein's notions of *essential*,
*possible* and *lifelong Crusoe* shows that admission of
the first claim does not commit him to the denial of the second. To
take the first notion: on Wittgenstein's view, while chess is
essentially a game for two players, this does not exclude the
possibility of playing it against oneself provided such solitary games
are not regarded as paradigm instances of chess. Similarly, he can
claim that language is essentially social, but still allow the
possibility of exceptions provided these are peripheral cases. The
issue is complex, and its pursuit would lead away from the current
article's purpose of articulating the central text. For a detailed
account, the reader is referred to Canfield [1996] (to which this
section is indebted, and which also contains a useful bibliography of
the debate over the community view), and to Hacker [2010].