Direct Experiences and Feelings
Nonetheless, there still remains one other issue that Wittgenstein actually thought about in more detail than many other problems of language. This was the language of (direct) experiences and feelings, such as feeling pain.
Here, as on many other occasions, Wittgenstein makes a radical opening by asking: Why can't a dog simulate pain. Is he too honest? (Wittgenstein 1967, 250). What is the meaning of that opaque statement? Let us take an example. I prick myself in the arm with a needle, as a result of which I feel pain. This pain is expressed by yelling or by swiftly moving my hand. The Hintikkas call this the primary language of expressing pain (Hintikka 1976, 274).If someone doubts my expression of pain, he might presume I am merely faking it. It might just as well be that I am only playing with a needle and making gestures that simulate feelings of pain. Here we approach the core of Wittgenstein's sentence “Why can't a dog simulate pain”. The reason cannot be that the dog is too honest or timid to do so, because a dog lacks the ability to simulate language. This is not the case with humans. We can also hide our feelings through simulation, and if someone doubts my expression of pain, this doubt is no longer part of the primary language. The doubter has moved on to a language-game of the second degree (secondary language). What happens is that another (secondary) languagegame is superimposed on the primary one (Hintikka 1976, 278; Hintikka 1996b, 191). This game includes doubts, but also questions, lies, reasonings, etc. Its structure is of a completely different type than the primary language of expressing pain. The notions of error, correctness and verification do not apply in primary games. The language-games of DSL are in this very respect always of the secondary type. In their connection, one can ask the meaning.
In a certain way, the primary language is a vertical link to a person's (e.g.
my) own experiences. The primary language works as a mediator between secondary language-games of the higher degree and an individual's subjective experiential reality. In this language, one cannot state reasons for the expressions of pain. Hence the rules of the primary language are always followed blindly. When feeling pain, I do not play this game all the time thinking or explaining something. I must move to a language of the secondary level in order to ask myself: Did I really feel pain or merely simulate it? Or, in another case, I might say to my grandchild: Do not worry, I was only playing with the needle.Let us take one more example, presuming that person A is startled and shouts in pain. The shout tells us something about A's inner state. In this setting, sentence
P1: “A shouted in pain” is an argument for the sentence P2: “A was experiencing pain”.
As outsiders, we have no way of “directly” controlling A's state of pain, for it is his personal, private matter. The only way to approach it is to argue on grounds similar to sentence P1, which tells us something about A's “behaviour in pain”, but both P1 and P2 are parts of a secondary language and can thus be remedied, whereas A's actual feeling of pain is beyond error, repair and verification.
If we move the focus and look at Axel Hägerstrom’s value-nihilism, its core content is clear. For Hägerstrom, value-judgements are expressions of feelings, similar to an experience of an apple being sour. These feelings belong to the primary language that does not submit to argumentation. One cannot conceptually disagree with one's own expression of a feeling. The primary language is unique to every individual. As Carlos Santiago Nino, among others, has shown, value-judgements are fundamentally social matters, not “matters of taste” (Nino 1994, 14). They can also be contested, for which reason they must be counted as belonging to the secondary language.