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about them, he could then explain them to anyone with
whom he shared a language, including me.
Premise 3:
If N can explain to J what the words of L mean, then B is
false. If for every word of L, J knows how to specify exactly
what that word stands for, then she understands L. There
is at least a theoretical possibility that someone (apart from
the person who uses the language) can understand the
language even if a particular individual is unable to
understand it (perhaps for lack of intelligence).
A critic may object that such an understanding
would be incomplete. This objection might be inspired by
Russell’s distinction between knowledge by description
and knowledge by acquaintance. (Russell, 1988). The
observer may be able to gain a descriptive understanding
of L, but a full understanding requires that she has
acquaintance with the other’s inner experience. This is to
say that I can have a complete understanding of the
proposition “X is in pain” only if I am acquainted, not with
my pain, but X’s pain.
But isn’t this asking too much? If not, then every language,
private or public, would require that we plug into the other
person’s mental states to understand his utterances about
his sensations. In this case, we would probably have no
need for psychological language, that is, the language with
which we describe our sensations. All J needs do is simply
pick up N’s sensations at will and vice-versa. Moreover, if
acquaintance with a word’s referent is necessary for a full
understanding of the word, we could not have a full
understanding of words like “yesterday” and (when uttered
by someone else) “I”. Similarly, we could not fully
understand words referring to events before our birth or
after our death, since we cannot possibly have
acquaintance with these events. Yet, we do take ourselves
to have full understanding of these words.
Conclusion
My concern with the problem of private language involves
at least three important questions: (i) what a supposed
private language would be like; (ii) how the understanding
of a private language might throw light on the private
language argument and; (iii) how the impossibility of a
private language could impact on some other problems in
philosophy. On (i), I have argued that possession of a
language that is incomprehensible to anyone but its
speaker is either incompatible with possession of a public
language, or is known to no one else but its speaker. I
believe that a discussion of (ii) and (iii) must proceed from
this interesting feature. However, these are questions for
later consideration.
Literature
Russell, Bertrand 1988 “Knowledge by Acquaintance and
Knowledge by Description”, in: Nathan Salmon and Scott Soames
(eds.), Proposition and Attitudes, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 16-
32.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1953/2001 Philosophical Investigations
(trans. G.E.M. Anscombe), US: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Ayodele-Oja R. Olalekan
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Revisiting the Problem of ‚Private Language‘ – Olalekan R. Ayodeb-Oja