Music and Aesthetic Reality: Formalism and the Limits of Description (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) by Zangwill Nick

Author:Zangwill, Nick [Zangwill, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780415661027
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2015-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

§3.2. Wittgenstein’s Interpretation

At this point I expect to be confronted with the question, Does not what I say run up against what Wittgenstein showed to be wrong in his ‘Private Language Argument’ (Wittgenstein 1953; see especially sections 243–272)? Of course, the interpretation of Wittgenstein is often problematic and disputable. Perhaps it is best to leave it to the disciples—the guardians of holy writ. Unfortunately, I cannot avoid tangling with interpretation. The standard view is that Wittgenstein thinks that private languages are not possible, where a private language is one in which we coin words to refer to properties of our thought and experience, which we pick out demonstratively (as ‘this property’) but which we cannot communicate. Moreover, it is usually thought that he is right to deny the possibility of a private language. On the standard view, Wittgenstein argues that the words of a private language cannot have meaning because there is no public check on the correctness of the application of such words. Without such a public check, there can be no meaning for the person who coins words of a private language.

However, the argument attributed to Wittgenstein is unimpressive, for someone who thinks that we can coin words for ‘private’ items will complain that an insistence on a public check begs the question. The idea, after all, is just that by inner ostention we fix meanings, and what we mean is the property of the sensation of which we are thinking. We are thinking of a certain property and we associate it with the word, and in the future we remember which property was associated with the word in our act of inner ostention, and given the reoccurrence of the same property, which we are introspectively aware of, we can reapply the word. Why do we need a public check?

The idea of being correct or right in the application of the coined word arises straightforwardly from whether the sensation has the property that the word names, and our basis for applying and reapplying the word is introspective. Such introspection may be reliable. It is not that what seems right is the same thing as being right (Wittgenstein 1953, section 258). The property of sensations is one thing and our judgments about it and applications of words to it are another. Nevertheless, seeming right to the person in question is the only basis for the ascription. That there is a difference between seeming right and being right does not mean that other people must have grounds for applying the word.7 The word applies correctly if the sensation has the property, and our application of the word is based on introspective awareness. The trouble is that another person lacks that basis. Hence the language has no public use because another lacks grounds for applying the words. What Wittgenstein is denying (for example, at Wittgenstein 1953, sections 258–261, 268–272, 275, 380) is that private languages have a use; he does not deny that they have a meaning. Wittgenstein does not identify meaning and use.

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