Discussions pertaining to the philosophy of language often broach the subject of whether meanings can be private. In an attempt to answer this question, this essay will analyze Wittgenstein’s famous private language argument, which suggests that meanings cannot be private. After explicating Wittgenstein's argument in detail, I will then proceed to present a possible response to Wittgenstein’s famous argument. In doing so, my aim will be to determine whether or not Wittgenstein has ruled out the possibility of meanings being private. By coming to this determination, this essay will also answer the more general question of whether or not meanings can be private. Since our first endeavor will be to explicate Wittgenstein’s private language argument, …show more content…
To start, Wittgenstein feels as though there exists no “criterion of correctness” for determining if Sally’s use of the term “S” was indeed correct. In Wittgenstein's own words: “in the present case [Sally has] no criterion of correctness...whatever is going to seem correct to [her] is correct. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘correct’.” Reflecting on this quotation, readers are encouraged to ask first, why a language must have a criterion of correctness; and second why said criteria does not exist in Sally’s …show more content…
Namely, as Wittgenstein noted this rule-provided criterion of correctness does not address how users begin to understand the rules themselves, which are, after all, also comprised of words. The philosopher Scott Soames summarized this worry succinctly when he writes that “the problem…is that such rules are themselves made up of words or symbols which must be understood if the rules are to be any use. Obviously this sort of explanation cannot go on forever,”. Simply put, following a rule requires first an understanding of what that rule means. And since rules themselves are comprised of words, those rules require more rules in order to be intelligible and so on ad infinitum. As a result, it appears as though employing a rule-based criterion of correctness for words only results in an infinite