Wittgenstein and Private Language

Nice point. However if we see those various "selves" as epiphenonena of a socially acquired language (Dennett) we still find that "private language" escapes us. This is perhaps why those who would advocate levels of higher consciousness which transcend "selves" are inevitably drawn to use the word "ineffable".

Language evolved/developed for communication between individuals; it is fundamentally social, not rooted in privacy. For instance, solipsism -- from the standpoint of the PLA -- becomes contradictory when expressed in language: "Who are you talking to? There is no community for you to convey this doctrine to. Could solipsism even be conceived without language, which is by definition public?" Since explicit knowledge is approved and/or formulated by a group effort (peer review, collective research, etc) and usually involves description, society by default must then reject any theory/argument which asserts society is not real. The individual may have such public nihilism open to him/her as a remote possibility ("Other people are my dream"), but the community does not.

Point of Information.

PQ is referring to "the committee model of self" familiar to Sufi inspired philosophies.

But is all the language we own socially acquired, or only the capacity? Surely, when we have acquired language, we hold the ability to use it as a model, and therefore the ability to use it privately? What such language would really 'achieve', I don't know. I am basically questioning whether context can exist internally, through what you term the 'committee meeting' model (I like that term).

(Btw in posting this, I am not really defending the notion of private language, just trying to understand it).

You should perhaps ask whether the "wanderings" of an individual blood would be "meaningful" without the macro-concept of bodily function. i.e. If the function and origin of language is defined macroscopically, Wittgenstein has a case. Individual creativity affects language of course (try Shakespeare !) but that effect is measured by social impact.

Yes, but the broad topic title itself is "Wittgenstein and Private Language", not the committe model of self . I mentioned one of the practical uses of Witt's PLA, the demolition of the problem of other minds, which is echoed by more than just me:

Stephen P. Thornton: Those philosophers who accept the Cartesian premises that make solipsism apparently plausible, if not inescapable, have also invariably assumed that language-usage is itself essentially private. The cluster of arguments – generally referred to as “the private language argument” – that we find in the Investigations against this assumption effectively administers the coup de grâce to both Cartesian dualism and solipsism. (I. § 202; 242-315). Language is an irreducibly public form of life that is encountered in specifically social contexts. [...] The proposition “I am the only mind that exists” makes sense only to the extent that it is expressed in a public language, and the existence of such language itself implies the existence of a social context. Such a context exists for the hypothetical last survivor of a nuclear holocaust, but not for the solipsist. A non-linguistic solipsism is unthinkable and a thinkable solipsism is necessarily linguistic. Solipsism therefore presupposes the very thing that it seeks to deny. That solipsistic thoughts are thinkable in the first instance implies the existence of the public, shared, intersubjective world that they purport to call into question. --Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds

I read and agree with most but we still can play devil´s advocate only for the joy of it and say in favour of Solipsism, that it may be the case that, we all, are one ENTITY, given as Functions in it, we relate to it all directly or indirectly...
So to say, that I am a part in the Whole which relates with the Whole, might be possibly understood as a vectorial expression of the Whole itself in me, or that I am the Whole itself speaking through me...

The "Public" is it "in", or is it "out" ? does that thing of in or out even makes sense, or is just more concepts ?

...counter that !

PQ That should have read....individual blood cell....
Note that for W, language was not a representational model. His adage was "meaning is usage".

GH. Perhaps we should let PQ be the judge of the relevance of answers.
In the interim, it has always seemed self-evident to me that Wittgenstein's general deconstruction of "philosophical problems" via the concept of "a language game" defeats the "solipsism problem" en passant. Paradigms in general, Cartesian or otherwise, are language games by another name.

This begs the question:

Am I the only one in my mind when I use language to dialog within myself?

Of course, then one must define "I" or "self."

In the "Jeremiah Johnson" movie, the character, actor Robert Redford, travels for a long time with a mute boy and an American Indian woman, with whom he cannot communicate with. The group runs into some White preachers and they begin to speak to him. He pauses a really long time, then asks for forgiveness for not responding, since he hasn't had anyone speak sh to him, much less in English, in such a long time that he had almost forgotten what it was like.

There is no connection between internal thought and communciation with others. Not the same dialogue or thought process at all.

Although perfectly knowing what you meant it seams reasonable to make some corrections...you see, even if what one think´s is understood by someone else standards, still there is a functional link between them as they actually interact...and such that there must exist a common set of shareable patterns right above the noise ratio...one rather must think then what communication is really about, instead of what one supposes of it as an ideal, since the actual communication going on seams to be useful independently on how we may look at it...In that regard is then clear, that whatever is said must be more or less understood. Otherwise interaction would n´t produce "work" but entropy...to my understanding the difference in the streams of patterns between emitters and receptor´s brings about the novelty that actually allows each of us to evolve not only by what was originally meant but by what we can get out of it, thus inhibiting a full rejection of the conceptual system brought to us in case of divergent evolution between the two agents, and consequently allowing a partial retrieval of their standing point conceptual advantages...it is just like having a child, meanings are a bit from the emitter and a bit more from the receptor, they have both "DNA´s"... how about that uh ? That actually went out of my mind just now, I amaze myself sometimes...

There again, not in what was originally intended to be expressed, but on what was actually understood, the notion of FUNCTION popping up in the rearrangement of fusing conceptual systems...

Yeah, but that would still seem more along the line of a conventional macrocosmic-scale universe that existed even when not observed, than the superficial microcosm of the solipsist -- where only the lawful regularities of the solipsist's "dream" lead to the inference of a huge realm existing beyond the immediate boundaries of the experience (and an incorrect inference if solipsism was indeed the case). That is, the former and grander "world-mind", "nomological system", or "integrated single entity" seems to surpass any categorization of "solipsism", especially if it has multiple agents generating varied personal POVs and simulations within it (or just carrying-out individual agendas if they're either p-zombie agents or purely mechanistic processes devoid of internal manifestations).



Indeed the fuel of solipsism: The external part of experience is just that -- as much a part of a particular brain's experience as its personal thoughts, no matter how much advocates of direct or commonsense perception might wail about mediating processes needing to be eliminated not only in the body but apparently those mediators between the observed and observer in the environment, (light waves, acoustic waves, wafting molecules [odor], etc.)

But if it's to be explained how schizoid Jane's hallucination of "reptilian aliens surrounding her" lacks the same appearance when the corresponding neural or electrochemical patterns in her head are scanned, then an internal or private dimension might have to posited for the externalized appearance, or for the physical properties constituting those patterns of activity. Either that or dodge explanation with eliminativism, phenomenal nihilism, etc.

In a vein similar to the broader definition of neutral monism (post-empiricist brands), I'd speculate that both public/private appearances (matter/mental) are actually the product of a more fundamental order. But such idle speculations often remain untestable.

Well think of it musically. The scales and typical chord progression we use in our music today, you and I are used to because society has given it to us and from there we can experiment with what kind of music like or dislike. And every country has their own scales and chord progressions as well, of which their people learn and recognize. And then you have composers. So I think society gives us a language and we use it build up our world and be creative, by using and breaking the rules of our language.