No specific response for you just yet, but I know there is a similar discussion here

Thanks! I'll check it out.

To radically simplify: If I understand ED, there is a distinction between the physical and the non-physical, and that the physical (body activity) has a casual effect on the physical and non-physical.

If I have this correct, it is a jumble of concepts. First, simply because the body does all the things it does, does not make a movement an action. We need all the history of our lives, along with the procedure of the act (say, apologizing), plus the context it is expressed in, to recognize it as that "action"--waving hi, pointing, etc. So to say apologizing is a physical act is partial, as well as saying the physical is the "cause" of the apology, as we want a "cause" in order to skip over the public nature of the history, procedure, and the responsiveness that is necessary to have it accepted as/be an apology (Witt calls these, "concepts"). We want to ensure (beforehand) that my cause makes (I make) the action what it is, have the "meaning" it does, makes it certain, or ensure it works out predictable, universally, without my being responsible for my expressions. This is where people start talking about "solipsism"--or that I control, judge, or value everything, as it were, personally (without history, our lives, language, etc.)

Second, people get stuck on saying language cannot be private, missing that we do have personal experiences (the awe of a sunset by myself), secrets, and also our own desires, needs, and intuitions. More important is what Witt gets around to after the "Private Language Argument", that: 1) I do not "know" my own pain, I feel it/I express it (there is no space for knowledge between pain and its expression). We have the same pain, experience, etc. to the point we can express and accept them as similar (solipsism is also the desire to be unknowable, "special"). 2) I do not "know" your pain, I acknowledge it, I react (or not) to it--knowledge is not our only relation to the world; our "acts" at times define us, even adverse to our culture. 3) There are such things as deception, lies, faking, acting, etc. There is just no getting around this (other than reading credibility, the context, etc.), but the shear fact of it leads people off a cliff of skepticism. 4) there is a truth to skepticism: that we are separate(d) individuals. But we are responsible to answer for our expressions and we can always work to understand each other (though there is no assurance this will ensure agreement).

I do not "know" my own pain, I feel it/I express it (there is no space for knowledge between pain and its expression). — Antony Nickles

What does Witt make of the various ways feelings are experienced? We can imagine a feeling, remember a feeling, experience a vague sensation that is ambiguous and sets us off on trying to differentiate whether it is a tickle, pain or pleasure sensation. We may even be confused as to whether we are having a perception or a feeling. When I say to my self after some exploration , ‘Ah, that really was pain rather than tickle’, or when I correct an initial impression and say. to myself ‘I only imagined that pain’, what have I done? It seems in all cases of having a feeling , we are not dealing with something immediate but a mediated event , and therefore languaged in a certain respect.

What does Witt make of the various ways feelings are experienced? We can imagine a feeling, remember a feeling, experience a vague sensation that is ambiguous and sets us off on trying to differentiate whether it is a tickle, pain or pleasure sensation. When I say to my self after some exploration , ‘Ah, that really was pain rather than tickle’, or when I correct an initial impression and say. to myself ‘I only imagined that pain’, what have I done? — Joshs

Not to dismiss your concerns, but what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? We are "expressing" the pain, only to ourselves, but isn't that just to say: not out loud. What your two sentences "do" (Cavell would say Wittgenstein is drawing out the implications) are: correcting a mistake, and, realizing a presumption (like freaking yourself out when there is nothing actually there to be scared of).

More importantly for Wittgenstein is: what desire do we want from the picture we believe to be necessary?

what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? — Antony Nickles

I agree with you completely. I just wanted to make sure you thought about it this way.

what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? We are "expressing" the pain, only to ourselves, but isn't that just to say: not out loud. What your two sentences "do" (Cavell would say Wittgenstein is drawing out the implications) are: correcting a mistake, and, realizing a presumption (like freaking yourself out when there is nothing actually there to be scared of). — Antony Nickles

A question occurred to me. If it is the case that the above conversation with ourselves would be comparable to having it with someone else, would it not also be the case that a conversation with oneself is a language game, and public?

— Joshs

what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? We are "expressing" the pain, only to ourselves, but isn't that just to say: not out loud. What your two sentences "do" (Cavell would say Wittgenstein is drawing out the implications) are: correcting a mistake, and, realizing a presumption (like freaking yourself out when there is nothing actually there to be scared of). — -- Antony Nickles

A question occurred to me. If it is the case that the above conversation with ourselves would be comparable to having it with someone else, would it not also be the case that a conversation with oneself is a language game, and public? — Joshs

I re-wrote this in the Private Language Argument thread, and what I remembered is that, grammatically, we do not "know" or "doubt" or own experiences or feelings, we focus on or suppress them internally--we allow them to be known (reveal them) to ourselves. I was trying to capture this in saying we "express" them to ourselves similar to another, in that we acknowledge (accept) them to ourselves/as ours, say, out of repression (denial), trying to put them in words, etc. Though I find much the same to our public life, I am uneasy saying the workings here are a mirror (analogous) to our public conversation. We do, in the same sort of way, hide or express (reveal) our feelings and experiences publicly, and they are accepted or denied by the other, but our internal life is still ours, not in the sense it is special, but that it is owned (or not) by us, individually, maybe secretly, but in any case, separately.