Scepticism and the First Person by Coval Samuel Charles;

Author:Coval, Samuel Charles;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

IV Private Language

DOI: 10.4324/9781315694726-4

19 Systematically private language

A question which at several points may have seemed to have been waiting is whether systematically private ‘speech’ or ‘language’ (SPL) is possible. No one, of course, will argue whether language could be private in a non-systematic sense, whether, for instance, Robinson, alone on his island, could or would develop his own language. That kind of speculation sets only contingent limits to the notion of speech; we are interested in the makings of more necessary limits: would it still be ‘speech’ or ‘language’ if in principle only I could use it, if no one else could, in principle, understand certain aspects of it.

Actually I shall also be arguing the question of the possibility of a systematically private language when I argue the business of speech acts and systematically ulterior motives in Chapter V. Here I hope to come at the matter of SPL from another perspective making direct use of those aspects of the first-person which may bear on this matter.

As I've said, the issue worth arguing is not whether I alone on an island, without the stimulus of another might unpragmatically develop a ‘language’ or system of notation such as notches on the palm tree; the issue is not whether a hearer is actually involved but whether he is involvable or introduceable. In some ways these two, the worthy and the unworthy of argument, do come together; indeed the latter, as I hope to show, is a necessary condition of the former in the sense that the presence of others must be schemed for all along. At any rate I think, to make the issue of a systematically private language philosophically of interest, and germane here, we need to begin somewhat down the line and ask not whether that notion is articulate, for clearly it isn't, but why it is not. Let me draw out then a presupposition or two sunk, I think, into any description of an SPL in order to work toward this end.

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