To be cautious as W exegesis, I think you would need to add the qualifier "just" between the "not" and "the subjective experience". Some people read W as denying outright that the inner has any role to play at all in determining the meaning of words, which I do not think he does. What I think he does is challenge the idea that "inner" here means "necessarily private and unknowable to others". Anyway, that's my interpretation, which might be wrong of course. — jkg20

The obvious rejoinder to this is dreams. Our own dreams are the equivalent to a beetle in a box as nobody else can experience a dream we have. And yet we can easily communicate dreams we remember to other people.

So how does that work? People do legitimately dream and they do legitimately talk and write about dreams remembered. We can't check their accuracy. But we can certainly understand what is being related, more or less. — Marchesk

296. “Right; but there is a Something there all the same, which accompanies my cry of pain! And it is on account of this that I utter it. And this Something is what is important — and frightful.” — Only to whom are we telling this? And on what occasion?

298. The very fact that we’d so much like to say “This is the important thing” — while we point for ourselves to the sensation — is enough to show how much we are inclined to say something which is not informative. — Wittgenstein

That we can recognise pain behaviour when we see it is not the issue, of course we can. That Wittgenstein acknowledged this is not an insight of his. The issue that concerns metaphysics and on which Wittgenstein seems silent is embedded in Metaphysician Undercover's question: what makes the difference between mock pain behavoiur and real pain behaviour. — jkg20

303. “I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am.” — Yes: one can resolve to say “I believe he is in pain” instead of “He is in pain”. But that’s all. —– What looks like an explanation here, or like a statement about a mental process, in truth just exchanges one way of talking for another which, while we are doing philosophy, seems to us the more apt.
Just try — in a real case — to doubt someone else’s fear or pain! — Wittgenstein

109. It was correct that our considerations must not be scientific ones. The feeling ‘that it is possible, contrary to our preconceived ideas, to think this or that’ — whatever that may mean — could be of no interest to us. (The pneumatic conception of thinking.) And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light — that is to say, its purpose — from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language, and that in such a way that these workings are recognized — despite an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by coming up with new discoveries, but by assembling what we have long been familiar with. Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the resources of our language. — Wittgenstein

Pain behaviour and mock pain behaviour might be different, but there is also the apparent similarity to account for. If one suggests, quite naturally, that there is a common denominator between mock and genuine pain behaviour, e.g. the bodily movements, including the movements of the larynx and lips, then the question arises, "so what is added in the genuine case to distinguish it from the mock case?" The response, "it is not nothing but it is not something either " or "you are being lead astray by language" then just rings to some like a hollow refusal to engage with the issue. — jkg20

Hacker identifies the target of the beetle story as a form of semi-solipsism: the view that each of us "knows what 'pain' means only from one's own case, for it seems that it is the sensation one has that gives the word its meaning". [...]

[This] construal of the grammar of expression of sensation on the model of name and object, leads to a dilemma: [...]

"If what is in the box is relevant to the meaning of 'beetle' then no one else can understand what I mean by 'beetle'; and if 'beetle' is understood by others, it cannot signify what is in each person's private box." (Hacker 1990) — David G. Stern

305. “But you surely can’t deny that, for example, in remembering, an inner process takes place.” — What gives the impression that we want to deny anything? When one says, “Still, an inner process does take place here” — one wants to go on: “After all, you see it.” And it is this inner process that one means by the word “remembering”. — The impression that we wanted to deny something arises from our setting our face against the picture of an ‘inner process’. What we deny is that the picture of an inner process gives us the correct idea of the use of the word “remember”. Indeed, we’re saying that this picture, with its ramifications, stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is. — Wittgenstein

304. “But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain behaviour with pain and pain-behaviour without pain.” — Admit it? What greater difference could there be? — “And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a Nothing.” — Not at all. It’s not a Something, but not a Nothing either! The conclusion was only that a Nothing would render the same service as a Something about which nothing could be said. We’ve only rejected the grammar which tends to force itself on us here.

The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts — which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or whatever. — Wittgenstein

Therefore the premises of 1&2 describe a language-game in which "beetle" refers to something in the box, and 3&4 describe a completely different, unrelated language-game, within which "beetle" is used in a completely different, unrelated way. — Metaphysician Undercover

3. Suppose that the word "beetle" has a use in these people's language nonetheless.

4. Then the word "beetle" would not be as the name of a thing. The thing in the box does not belong to the language game at all. The box could effectively be empty, as this would make no difference to the language game or the meaning/use of the word "beetle".
— Luke

These are the questionable statements. This use of "beetle" is something completely distinct from, other than, to refer to the thing in the box. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's irrelevant, I'm not talking about "anyone", I'm talking specifically about the person whose box is empty. That person would be practising deception, according to the contradiction in the terms of the analogy. — Metaphysician Undercover

What is really the case is that when you have named the thing in your box "beetle", and there is nothing in your box, the word is necessarily used to deceive. The deception pervades all usage because you are implying that there is something in the box that you have named "beetle" when you know there is not. — Metaphysician Undercover

Until you make it known to others that there really is nothing in your box which is called "beetle", i.e. that the beetle is a fiction (in which case you are not using "beetle" to refer to the thing in your box anymore), all the usage of that term will be instances of deception. — Metaphysician Undercover

On the other hand, when there really is something in the box, one might still use the word for deception as well. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the "use" of the word is to refer to something which is not there, as if it were there, when the person knows that it is not there, then the "use" is deception. The person is using the words to deceive.

A person can say "I hear sounds", whether or not the person actually hears sounds. The "use" is dependent on whether the person actually hears sounds or not, because if sounds are not actually heard the "use" is deception. The person is using the words to deceive. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the deaf person is not hearing sounds, recognizes and understands this, and yet is talking about hearing sounds, that is deception — Metaphysician Undercover

Whether or not there is something in the box is always relevant under the premise of the analogy, because what you would call "the same use" would be deception when there is nothing in the box, and therefore it would not really be the same, the use would be to deceive. — Metaphysician Undercover

There you go, changing the terms again to "contents" — Metaphysician Undercover

The word could still be used in exactly the same way even if the box was empty, despite your tirades about deception.
— Luke

No! Obviously this is false! if you are talking to me about the thing in your box, when there is nothing in your box, and you know that there is nothing in your box, then you are practising deception. — Metaphysician Undercover

The description is of something in the box. — Metaphysician Undercover

Did you not read what I wrote? Or do you have some sort of mental block which prevents you from understanding simple logic? The description is of something in the box. What it is, which in the box, is irrelevant to that description. It is simply stated that there is something in the box. How can you think that this means that it is also irrelevant whether or not there is even something in the box? It is described as something in the box, so whether or not there is something in the box is what makes the description true or false. How can you claim that whether or not there is something in the box is irrelevant, just because it is stipulated that what it is which is in the box is irrelevant. That is a completely illogical conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

People feel pleasure, pain, all sorts of emotions, and sensations. So the analogy of "beetle in the box" is completely inapplicable in the first place, because there must be all sorts of different things in the box, beetles, ants, caterpillars, butterflies, etc., just like there are all sorts of feelings other than pain within the person. — Metaphysician Undercover

So the issue is how do we know how to give which name to which thing in the box, and this is not even broached by Wiitgenstein, who is presenting the analogy as one thing in the box. — Metaphysician Undercover

The fact that the thing in the box could be anything does not mean that the thing in the box could be nothing. If there is nothing in the box the person is practising deception. — Metaphysician Undercover

Wittgenstein has indicated that this is a possibility, a person could imply "I have something in the box", by referring to the beetle in the box, when there is nothing in the box. — Metaphysician Undercover

Therefore it is possible that language could be used for deception. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with the first part here, "the particular contents of the particular box is irrelevant". — Metaphysician Undercover

The example does not indicate why any of us is inclined to call the thing in the box by that specific name. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not a real example. There is no rule, or convention, which stipulates when you have a feeling within your body (beetle in the box), you must call it "pain". There are all sorts of different feelings within your body, therefore all sorts of different things within your box. So Wittgenstein's example obscures this fact, the multitude of things in the box, hiding the need to be able to distinguish one thing from another, within one's own box, with the premise that there is only one thing in the box, thereby establishing the groundwork for the deception. Recognizing this fact brings the deception into focus. — Metaphysician Undercover

The whole idea that there is only one thing in the box is faulty. — Metaphysician Undercover

When everyone knows that what is in one's own box is not the same thing which is in another's box, and each person calls what is in one's own box a "beetle", why would anyone believe that what someone means by "beetle is the same as what someone else means by beetle? — Metaphysician Undercover

Clearly, under the terms of the example no one would think that any two people would mean the same thing with the word "beetle". — Metaphysician Undercover

Since "beetle" refers to what's in all those different boxes... — Metaphysician Undercover

...two people would only mean the same thing when using the word, if they were both referring to what's in one particular box. If this is case, then which beetle is being referred to, would have to be indicated in some other way. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's the way we use words, they indicate a type of thing, yet we also use them to refer to particulars. — Metaphysician Undercover

So the conclusion, that the thing in the box has no role in the language game is not valid, because it does not account for that role, in which the person uses the word to refer to the thing in their own box, or to the thing in someone else's box. — Metaphysician Undercover

This led to a contradiction in the reading of Wittgenstein. The premise of the example is that everyone has something in the box, but Wittgenstein later says "the box might even be empty". Clearly we have a contradiction here. "Everyone has something in the box", and "the box might be empty", are incompatible. — Metaphysician Undercover

307. "Are you not really a behaviourist in disguise? Aren't you at bottom really saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?"—If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.

308. [...] And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don't want to deny them.

3. If determinism is true, then whatever can be done, is done. (premise)

My question is, what is it in flux, or change, that provides sufficient reason for the permanence (or apparent permanence) of general laws, e.g. the laws of physics? The Second Law of Thermodynamics would appear to be permanent, for example. I grant you that the Second Law bears on change, but this does not locate the suffient reason for that law in change. — Pneumenon