Wittgenstein

Meaning and Mind (Volume 3 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations), Part 2: Exegesis, Section 243-427

P. M. S. Hacker

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781119585152
  9781118951750
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118951774
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

WITTGENSTEIN MEANING AND MIND

Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Part II – Exegesis §§243-427 explores and clarifies the patterns, developments, and conclusions of Wittgenstein's arguments in §§243-427 of Philosophical Investigations. Each numbered remark in Wittgenstein's text is systematically analysed. Hacker's thoughtful, rigorous commentary clarifies problematic expressions, phrases, and sentences, and elaborates source remarks in Wittgenstein's Nachlass that shed light on the text, illustrating their bearing on deep philosophical problems.

This volume of exegesis of §§243-427 has been extensively revised, incorporating numerous references to original and secondary texts of Wittgenstein that were not known to exist in 1990.The second edition features new comprehensive tables of correlation between the remarks of the Investigations and the source of the remarks in the Nachlass, and addresses a variety of controversies from the last quarter of a century concerning the private language arguments, the nature of thought and imagination, consciousness, and the self, settling them explicitly or implicitly in the new exegesis. All references to Wittgenstein's text have been adjusted to the revised fourth edition, although page references to the first and second editions have been retained in parentheses.

These revisions bring the book up to the high standard of the extensively revised editions of Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Blackwell 2005) and Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Wiley Blackwell, 2009). They ensure that this survey of Investigations §§243-427 will remain the essential reference work on Wittgenstein's masterpiece for the foreseeable future.

Analytical Commentary

Chapter 1
The private language arguments (§§243 – 315)

INTRODUCTION

§§243 – 315 constitute the eighth ‘chapter’ of the book. Its point of departure is a natural query with respect to the conclusion of the immediately preceding argument, viz. that for a language to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also in judgements. Could there not be a language which was wholly independent of such interpersonal agreement or even any possibility of such agreement? Can we not imagine a language the words of which cannot be explained to other people, although the speaker of such a language knows perfectly well what they mean? Indeed, on certain natural philosophical assumptions, is the language each person uses to talk about his inner experiences not, in some deep and important sense, such a private language?

Part A (§§243 – 55) opens by clarifying what a ‘private’ language is supposed to be — not a contingently private language which no one else happens to understand, but an essentially private language which it is logically impossible for another to understand. What the words of such a language refer to are the speaker’s immediate private sensations and experiences, which only he can know. §244 clarifies what it is for a word to refer to or name a sensation such as pain. ‘S’ names a sensation of pain if the first‐person use of ‘S’ in an utterance replaces the natural behavioural expression of the sensation. This verbal expression of a sensation, however, is not a description of the behaviour it replaces or of the sensation itself; for it is incoherent to suppose that one might even want to insert language (in this case, a description) between pain and its expression (§245). §§246 – 8 subject the supposition of epistemic privacy to critical scrutiny. ‘Only I can know whether I am in pain’ is in one sense simply wrong, in another nonsense. The only truth here is that it makes no sense for me to doubt whether I am in pain. §§249 – 50 can be connected to §246 in as much as they exemplify cases where doubts about the experiences of others based on the possibility of pretence are excluded. They can also be viewed as raising an objection to the argument of §244: if verbal expressions of pain are learnt as replacements for natural pain‐behaviour, might the infant’s natural pain‐behaviour not be mere pretence? The possibility of pretence would cast a cloud of scepticism over judgements of others’ experiences, just as the possibility of illusion enshrouds in doubt our knowledge of objects. But one’s scruples are groundless. §§251 – 2 pick up the theme of §248, viz. that ‘sensations are private’ is a grammatical proposition in metaphysical guise — one cannot imagine the opposite, but not because of limitations on one’s powers of imagination — rather because there is here nothing to imagine. For the negation of a grammatical proposition is not a description of an impossibility, any more than a grammatical proposition is a description of a (necessary) actuality. §§253 – 5 examine the idea that another person cannot have my pain, but only a similar one. What looks like a metaphysical limitation on sharing or transferring mental objects merely conceals a grammatical confusion. For different people can have the same pain. It appears otherwise only because we misguidedly project the grammar of ‘same object’ onto ‘same pain’, and hence misconstrue the criteria of identity for pain. §255 closes this set of remarks with a methodological observation on the therapeutic character of philosophical investigation.

The structure of Part A:

Part B (§§256 – 71) reverts to §243: having clarified confusions concerning what only I can have and concerning what only I can know, W. examines the hypothesis that a ‘private’ language as envisaged in §243 is intelligible to its alleged speaker. The words for sensations cannot be tied up with the natural expression of sensation, for then the language would not be ‘private’. So the speaker must be conceived to associate names with sensations and to use them in descriptions (§256). The intelligibility of this conception is the subject of Part B. That such a name of an unexpressed sensation could not be taught is brushed aside as irrelevant, for W. concentrates on the question of what it is to name a sensation (§257). Naming, as argued (§§26 – 37), presupposes stage‐setting. The moot question is whether the mind can supply the appropriate stage, and whether its furniture can constitute a serviceable set. The example of a private diary (§258) is introduced to demonstrate the unintelligibility of private ostensive definition. For here there would be no distinction between remembering correctly the connection between the sign ‘S’ and the sensation that defines it, and seeming to remember it. But the rules of a private language cannot be merely impressions of rules, for one cannot determine whether one has what is to be called ‘S’ by reference to an apparent rule relative to which there is no distinction between being right and seeming right (§259). Falling back on the pious hope that one may believe that one has re‐identified S correctly is useless, since nothing has been fixed to determine what counts as S — that was what was intended to be effected by the private ostensive definition (§260).

§261 is a pivotal remark: an ostensive definition, e.g. of ‘red’, presupposes the grammar of the definiendum, viz. that it is a colour‐word. Hence a ‘private’ ostensive definition of ‘pain’ must presuppose that it is a sensation‐word. But ‘sensation’ is a word in our common (public) language, and sensations have perceptible expression in behaviour. Hence the private ostensive definition of the word ‘S’ in the private language cannot be identified as a definition of a sensation‐word by invoking the grammar of ‘sensation’ in the public language to determine the grammatical post at which ‘S’ is to stand (cf. §257). Nor does it help to reduce one’s commitments by saying that ‘S’ names something the private linguist has. For these expressions too have a fixed (public) grammar. §§262 – 4 examine the futility of the supposition that one can invent the technique of using ‘S’ (i.e., what corresponds in the private language to the technique of using sensation‐words in our public language) merely by concentrating on one’s private experience and undertaking to call it ‘S’ in the future. The myth behind this misguided thought is the Augustinian picture of language.

§265 – 9 introduce a mental table (a kind of dictionary that supposedly exists only in the mind) that is intended to function as a subjective justification for the use of the words of a private language. This is unintelligible, for it provides no independent justification for the use of a word, hence no distinction between correct application and an application that only seems correct. §§266 – 8 give three co‐ordinate examples of similar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Note to the second edition
• Acknowledgements for the first edition
• Introduction to Part II: Exegesis §§243 – 427
• Abbreviations
• Analytical Commentary
• Index
• End User License Agreement