The private-language argument

Wittgenstein's objection to a Hobbesian private language depends, as I have said, on a claim about what is involved in following a rule. His Philosophical Investigations begins by introducing the idea of a language-game, which is any human activity where there is a sys­tematic rule-governed use of words.

Suppose, for example, Mary claims to be using the word “tonk” in a language-game. We watch her for a while, and she says the word “tonk” from time to time but we cannot detect any pattern to the way she uses the word. So we ask her what rule she is following. If Mary claims simply to know when it is appropriate to use the word but we cannot discover what it is that makes her use of the word appropriate, then we have no reason to think she is following a rule. Unless we can check on whether it is appropriate for Mary to use the word “tonk,” we cannot say that there is a difference between Mary's following a rule, on the one hand, and Mary's simply uttering a sound at random from time to time, on the other.

Let us now see how Wittgenstein can put the claim that rule fol­lowing involves a criterion of correctness to use in attacking the Hobbesian private language.

We can start by considering in a little more detail the kind of pri­vate use of language that Hobbes thought was possible.

This story seems to make sense. But Wittgenstein thought that if we analyzed the matter a little further, we could see that it does not. Here is the passage where Wittgenstein makes his objection to the sort of Hobbesian private language that I have described.

Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign “S” and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation.—I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.—But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.—How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation—and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.—But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A def­inition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.—Well, that is done pre­cisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connection between the sign and the sensation.—But “I impress it on myself” can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the con­nection right in the future.

Before we try to work out what the argument is that Wittgenstein is making here, we should notice a number of features of the way this passage is written. This passage is rather like a dialogue in a play. Some philosophers, such as Plato, whom we'll discuss in the next chapter, actually wrote philosophical dialogues in order to make their arguments. Wittgenstein doesn't give different names to the people expressing different points of view. Nevertheless you can see that what is going on here is, in effect, a discussion between some­one who believes that Hobbes's story makes sense and someone who does not. This means that we have to be careful to decide which of the positions is the one that Wittgenstein is actually defending. In fact, he was defending the point of view of the position which has the last word in this passage: the point of view of the person who says that “this means that here we can't talk about ‘right.' “ We must try to see what Wittgenstein means by this claim and how he argues for it.

So how does he get to this conclusion? Let's make explicit the fact that two opposed positions are represented here, by identify­ing each of them with a character. We might as well call one of these characters “Hobbes” and the other “Wittgenstein.” Then we can paraphrase this passage as if it were a philosophical dialogue; and, for the sake of concreteness, let's call the sensation a “twinge,” as we did before, rather than using Wittgenstein's rather neutral term “S.”

HOBBES: For there to be a private language, all that is required is that I associate some word, “twinge,” with a sensation and use that word to record the occasions when the sensation occurs.

WITTGENSTEIN: But how can you define the term “twinge”?

HOBBES: I can give a kind of ostensive definition.

WITTGENSTEIN: But for an ostensive definition to be possible, one must be able to point to something, and in this case pointing is not possible. I cannot point to my own sensations.

HOBBES: Naturally, you cannot literally point to a sensation, but you can direct your attention to it; and if, as you concentrate on the sensation, you say or write the name, then you can impress on yourself the connection between the name, “twinge,” and the sensation.

WITTGENSTEIN: What do you mean by saying you “impress the connection on yourself”? All you can mean is that you do something whose conse­quence is that you remember the connection correctly in future. But what does it mean, in this case, to say that you have remembered it correctly? In order to be able to make sense of saying that you have remembered it correctly, you must have a way of telling whether you have remembered it correctly, a criterion of correctness. And how would you check, in this case, that you had remembered it right?

This is the key step in the argument. Wittgenstein asks Hobbes in effect to consider the question “How do you know, when you say ‘Aha, there's another twinge,' that it is the same experience you are having this time?” “Well,” Hobbes might answer, “since nothing is more certain than what is going on in your own mind, there can be no doubt that you know.”

But if it is possible for you to remember correctly, then it must be possible that you remember incorrectly.

In order to bring out the force of Wittgenstein's argument, you might argue as follows. Hobbes's idea is that the name can help you remember that you have had the experience before. If it is possible that you have forgotten the experience of the twinge, however, then it is surely possible that you have forgotten the experience of nam­ing the twinge. Do you need another “mark” that names the experi­ence of naming the twinge? If every memory needs a name to help us remember it, then we seem to be caught in an infinite regress. Hobbes's use of marks seems to be like the old Indian theory that the world is supported on the back of an elephant. If the world needs supporting, then the elephant needs supporting too. And if the elephant doesn't need support, then why does the world?

An infinite regress argument like this shows

a)     that a proposed solution to a problem—in this case the prob­lem of how the world stays in place—only creates another one—in this case, the problem of how the elephant stays in place, and

b)     that every time we use the proposed solution to deal with the new problem there will automatically be yet another one to solve.

This shows that the proposed solution leads to the ridiculous posi­tion where we accept a strategy for solving a problem that creates a new problem for every problem it solves.

This infinite regress argument is the one that shows that there is no possibility in this case of checking that you are using the term “twinge” correctly. And, once this point is established, we have reached the heart of Wittgenstein's line of reasoning. Using the word “twinge” to refer to a private state involves conforming to the rule that you should say to yourself “twinge” only when you experi­ence that private state. But the idea of trying to conform to a rule essentially involves the possibility that you might fail to apply it cor­rectly, and in this case there is no such possibility. “Whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about ‘right.'” If we have mental states that are private, the argument shows that we can't talk about them, even to ourselves! Since it doesn't make sense to talk about such private states, Wittgenstein drew the conclusion that there could not be any: after all, if the sentence “There are private states” makes no sense, it cer­tainly can't be true!

We might be able to turn the strategy of the infinite regress argument against Wittgenstein at this point, however. For the idea of a criterion of correctness is, presumably, the idea of some stan­dard against which we can check whether we are following the rule properly. But isn't this the idea that we are applying the rule: check your use of the first rule against the standard? And if so, don't we need a criterion of correctness to apply this second rule? Once this chain begins, there's no stopping it. So perhaps we shouldn't let it begin. Perhaps there can, in fact, be rules that we apply without cri­teria of correctness.

Actually, Wittgenstein himself pointed something like this out. For he argued that when we continue a numerical series (such as 1, 3, 5... ) it doesn't help to say that we are following a rule, because any way we go on conforms to some rule or other. So he seems to have concluded that it was just a fact that human beings presented with a series eventually just start to “go on in the same way.”

Notice that these problems about following rules don't seem to have anything special to do with the point about privacy. If I had introduced the word “twingle” to refer to a kind of marble, there would need to be some criterion of correctness to decide whether I was using the word correctly. It would not be enough for me to say “Yes, a twingle” or “No, not a twingle” when each marble is shown to me: that could be like Mary's using the word “tonk.” You would only be persuaded I was following a rule if there was something about each twingle—that it had more green than red in it, or that it was of a certain size, or something of the sort—that made me pick it from other marbles. It would not be satisfactory if “whatever was going to seem right to me was right.”

Now, this may seem persuasive when it's applied to kinds of mar­ble, but what about the concepts in terms of which you check my use of a rule like “Call it ‘a twingle' only if it's green and large.” What criterion of correctness is there for the use of the word “green” here? You could say the rule I'm following is:

G: Call it “green” only if it's green.

But if that will do as a criterion of correctness, why won't

T: Call it a “twinge” only if it's a twinge

do as a criterion of correctness in the original case? The difference between G and T seems only to be that G is a rule that other peo­ple can check that I am using correctly, whereas T isn't.

But that suggests that the problem of the mental twinge isn't so much that I can't check on myself, but that other people can't check on me. And if that is what Wittgenstein thinks is the problem, then he seems to be begging the question. (An argument begs the ques­tion if it assumes what it sets out to prove.) For the private-language argument was meant to show that there couldn't be mental states that are knowable only by the person who has them; but now it looks as though that is one of the premises of the argument!

There has been a good deal of philosophical discussion about whether Wittgenstein was right to make his claim about rule follow­ing. As I have said, much of the first part of his Philosophical Investigations is concerned with an attempt to defend this claim. If it is right, this seems to be a very powerful argument against the Hobbesian view that the primary function of language is to help us remember our own experiences. So you might want to think about whether you should accept Wittgenstein's view that following a rule requires a criterion of correctness. If you do accept Wittgenstein's claim about rules, you have good reason to prefer behaviorism to Cartesianism. (Though it's worth insisting at this point that Wittgenstein himself did not endorse behaviorism.)

The behaviorist view of belief solves Descartes' problem: there is no difficulty for the behaviorist about the causal relations of mind and body. So the view has an answer to the mind-body question, namely, that having a mind is having a body with certain specific dispositions. And behaviorism certainly isn't open to the private­language argument. So it solves the other-minds problem because it says that we can know about other people's minds just as easily as we know about any dispositions. We can know about your pain just as easily as we can know that a glass is fragile.

But behaviorism seems to create new problems as it solves these old ones. Here is one of them. The behavior that most obviously dis­plays belief is speech: if you want to know what I believe, the first step is to ask me. So, as I've said, some behaviorists have held that to believe something is to be disposed (in certain specific sorts of circumstances) to say certain sorts of words—the words, in fact that would ordinarily be taken to be the expression of that belief. The trouble is that this theory makes it impossible, for example, to explain the beliefs of nonspeaking creatures (including infants) and has led some philosophers to deny that such creatures can have beliefs at all. Though there is something rather unsatisfactory about the privacy of the Cartesian mind, there is something simply crazy about the publicness of the behaviorist one. “Hello; you’re fine. How am I?” says the behaviorist in a well-known cartoon, and the cartoonist has a point. We do know better than others about at least some aspects of our mental life. And the question for behaviorism is: why? It isn’t just that we witness more of our actions than others. For in interpreting the minds of others we rely very much on their facial expressions; but we hardly ever see our own facial expressions at all. And, in fact, it seems obvious that I can tell what I am going to do next—what my current dispositions are—because I know (by, as it were, “looking inward”) something of my own beliefs, desires and intentions.

Neither behaviorism nor Descartes’ theory seems to be quite right.

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