Talk:Private language argument

Philosophy: Epistemology / Language / Analytic B‑class Mid‑importance

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Kripke bit

It strikes me that Kripke has undermined the importance of practice in his theory. Wittgenstein showed that first and foremost we are participants in an activity in which language plays a role, and from the regularity in that practice we can derive rules and formalised meanings. Kripke seems to want to suggest that formalised rules are primary in understanding what a word means - that we need ad-hoc guesses at what words mean before we can use them. That subverts entirely the shared communal nature of language Wittgenstein uses to undermine the notion of a private language. Kripke seems not to agree with Wittgenstein's opposition to a private language - shouldn't there be more criticism of Kripke along these lines since his view is very much at odds with the rest of the article (or even cut that bit entirely)? --82.43.138.69 (talk) 01:06, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Previous incarnation

This seems like a copyright violation from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/. Nikke

It seems like Philosophical Investigations#Private language should be the place for expanding upon this topic. This topic is famous and enough has been published about it that eventually it should have its own Wikipedia article. For now, a redirect to Philosophical Investigations#Private language should do the trick, unless someone wants to repair, expand and provide references for Private language argument now. --JWSchmidt 00:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

REDIRECT [[definitions#G]]

This is not possible. You will still be redirected to [[definitions]] but you will not be sent to the #G anchor. (from m:Help:Redirect#A redirect to an anchor) --JWSchmidt 23:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, redirects to an anchor work since December 2006 (r18220). --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 14:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New incarnation

I have removed the re-direct in order to encourage some work on what is one of the pivotal arguments of modern philosophy. Writing the article will be a challenge! I suppose that the best way to proceed would be to present the various accounts in historic order. Banno 23:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disproof?

A language for communicating with oneself cannot be incoherent if the communication is with oneself through time. See Personal journal and Constructed language. Did Wittgenstein or Kripke touch on this issue? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 02:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

He addresses diaries in the Philosophical Investigations: diaries which CAN be understood by others are acts of public language in the same way that an actor recording a monologue into a tape recorder is public. Diaries that cannot be understood by other people, ie. my diary that records when I had the sensation "S", are utterly private. Equally, a constucted language isn't the kind of private language that Wittgenstein is referring to, unless it is a constructed language that is used to describe private sensations. Indeed, it would be much better if the argument was known as the "Private Sensation Language Argument". For an example of what Wittgenstein is saying is not a language, check out William James's idea of languages of private introspection in the "Principles of Psychology".Pragmatism24 (talk) 14:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Definition of tautology

92.20.227.250 added:

However it must be pointed out that "P -> P" is not a tautology because there are conditions where this can be false. But Rush Rhees clearly is just mistaken and it should be noted that a tautology is "P or ~P".

Under what conditions can "P → P" be false? The article about operator → states that false → false = true, and true → true = true. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 16:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Which century?

The article says, "The argument was central to philosophical discussion at the end of the last century, and continues to arouse interest." That means that this argument was central to philosophical discussion in the 1990s, even though Wittgenstein died way before then? Very confusing. It should be changed to "discussion at the end of the 20th century" if that is correct, to avoid confusion, or "19th century", to correct the error. I'd make the edit myself, but I don't know which is correct.Eve Teschlemacher (talk) 23:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]