the private language argument: what it is; what it isn't
We still, 71 years after the Philosophical Investigations was published, find ourselves surrounded by versions of its 'private language argument' (PLA) (§§243ff) which are both hopeless arguments and, in my view, unconvincing 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 - although the interpretative principle of charity alone should take us some of the way there...) LW annoyed at the bad PLAs Hopeless PLA To set the stage for this version of the PLA, let's start by elaborating a particular 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' or 'inner awareness', the 'goings on...
