what the private language argument is and isn't
We still, 71 years after the Philosophical Investigations was published, find ourselves surrounded by versions of its 'private language argument' (§§243ff) which are both hopeless arguments and hopeless interpretations. To put this right, I've set out below how the principal hopeless PLA tends to go, and then present how I think the main argument in those sections actually does go. (Arguing the interpretative case isn't my task here. But perhaps the interpretative principle of charity alone should take us some of the way there...) LW annoyed at the bad PLAs Hopeless PLA To provide the stage-setting for this version of the PLA, let's start by elaborating and deploying a philosophical conception of mind as 'inner'. To construe mind as inner in this respect is to hold to the following two claims. We can i) usefully be said to know, perhaps through something we'll call 'introspection', the 'goings on' in our own conscious minds (we kno
