DAVID PEARS: WITTGENSTEIN
(Pears(1) p.142) "...and an argument, which is
based ultimately on certain empirical facts about the meaning of the
word 'language', shows that (the language in which we express and
describe our sensations) cannot be private in this sense (of being
unteachable)".
Comment: We agree that this is the ultimate source of
the PLA. But nothing substantial follows from facts about language.
If we use 'language(0)', then it is indeed an empirical
linguistic fact that a private language(0) is contradictory, since
the usual meaning of 'private' includes 'uncheckable', while that of
'language(0)' includes being checkable. This is not substantially
interesting. I respond "So what?".
If instead we use 'symbolic system', then it is an
empirical linguistic fact that a private symbolic system is
not contradictory, since the chosen meaning of 'symbolic
system' does not include being checkable. This isn't substantially
interesting either.
(p.146) "...public criteria are needed...";
p.147 "meaning is linked...with public criteria". This is the
checkability.
On (p.159) is Pears' summary of the argument: "(i)
There would be, for any given statement that you might make, only two
possibilities: either you would be under the impression that it was
true, or you would be under the impression that it was false. (ii)
Neither of these two possibilities would subdivide into two further
cases, the case in which your impression was correct, and the case in
which your impression was incorrect. (iii) For since your statements
would have been cut off from their teaching links, there would be no
possible check on the correctness of your impressions. (iv) But it
is an essential feature of any language that there should be
effective rules which a person using the language can follow, and
know that he is following. (v) Yet in the circumstances described,
there would be no difference between your being under the correct
impression that you were following a rule, and your being under the
incorrect impression that you were following a rule, or, at least,
there would be no detectable difference even for you. (vi) So there
would be no effective rules in this so-called 'language'. (vii)
Anything that you said would do. (viii) Therefore, it would not
really be a language..." {My numbering}
Comment: (i), (iii), (v), (vi), and (vii), are
correct; they express uncheckability. (ii) depends on (iv), which is
either a statement of linguistic essentialism, or an empirical
linguistic fact (the tendentious word 'essential' should be removed).
Pears has already said he thinks that the latter is the best
interpretation - in which case (viii) follows, preferably rewritten
as (viii*): "Therefore it is not a 'language', in the ordinary
meaning of the word".
This conclusion is trivial. The argument "is
based ultimately on certain empirical facts about the meaning of the
word 'language'; it reduces to: "Since 'language', as normally used,
implies the existence of checkable, effective, rules, 'private
language' is contradictory". To which I respond: "True. I propose
the existence of a private symbolic system, with no checkable
associations. This is not contradictory".
Similarly, Pears writes that for a person
supposing a language just of sensations alone (p.160) "it would be
difficult, if not impossible, ... to rebut the contention that this
so-called 'language' would not be a language at all. For nothing
that the speaker said could ever be checked." This is again only the
trivial fact about normal linguistic use of 'language'.
Pears makes clear, in his chapter 'Sensations',
that a sophisticated empiricist view ('C-subtle', he calls it)
involves accepting that the overall meaning of 'red' or 'pain' - its
usual use - involves *two* aspects:
(i) the set of teaching links: public, observable,
patterns of behaviour
(ii) the inner reference: the private
sensation.
Only a primitive empiricist would think it involves
just the sensation.
Neither aspect is automatically dominant, in
establishing the truth of the consequently ambiguous claim "I am in
pain". For example it is mistaken to think that this view allows
(p.155) "that a person might always have had from birth the wrong
kind of sensation correlated with the teaching links of pain". This
is because (p.156) "it would not be the wrong kind of sensation, and
we would not say that he was not in pain. On the contrary, we would
say that he was in pain, whatever the precise further character of
his sensations might be. That is the function of the variable." On
this view - as I would express the point - there is no right or wrong
kind of sensation; what is in each person's box does not matter:
(p.154) "in the specification of the type of sensation, the variable
stands with promiscuously open, but never really embracing, arms.
What fills them, in each person's case, is a matter of indifference
to the meaning of the phrase".
Pears also makes clear the possibility of
accepting,as a consequence that a language only about (ii) would be
necessarily unteachable (p.158): "Someone might accept .. that our
language for sensations would be necessarily unteachable,
but...(this) only shows that, contrary to appearances, our language
of sensations is not really teachable, and that we do not ever really
communicate about such matters".
He recognises the role of verifiability in the
argument. The critic of the argument will make (p.161) "the charge
that Wittgenstein has simply assumed that, if it is impossible to
verify directly, whether the speaker's impression that he is
following a rule for the use of a sensation word is correct or
incorrect, then these are not two distinct possibilities...The
general question of the validity of the verification principle is
raised. Is the meaning of a statment the method of its verification,
and is an unverifiable statement therefore meaningless?" Good
question. Few people accept the logical positivist's verification
principle.
I conclude that David Pears' presentation and analysis of the PLA seems to be consistent with mine.