I read the idea of the impossibility of a private language as being based on the fact that if you tried to create a private language of your own from scratch, you would have to relate all your new words to, that is translate them into, the language you were already familiar with in order to establish their meaning.

Since you would be relying on the public language you are already familiar with, your new language would not really be a private language except in the sense that only you might know about it. Languages evolve naturally, we must think, over many generations, so to create one from scratch that relied on no existing language would be an insurmountable, and completely pointless even if it were possible, task.

The other salient question, it seems to me, is whether there could be any novel "private language" that could not be taught, even in principle, to others. If not, that might disqualify it as being a "private language". So again, this is because it seems that if you were to be able to teach it, it would need to be related to a public language the student was already familiar with.

The interpretation I dislike is the one that says that to ask "why are their clouds and why do they produce rain?" is to have become bewitched or fallen into incoherence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Would that question not be simply what produces clouds and how do they in turn produce rain— a scientific question? I can't think of any other way to coherently frame the question. I mean you could feel a sense of great wonder that there are clouds and rain, and indeed a world at all, but I don't see any coherent question that sense of wonder could be transformed into other than the scientific ones.

It's just incomplete. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I agree.

Of course we can say: "but this is no issue. It would be a total violation of common sense to say we can't follow public rules. When someone violates a rule in chess we can see it and point it out to them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A lot of sensible stuff has been said in this thread. I would argue that the central issue is with the idea of "following rules" which should be replaced by that of "acting freely within constraints".

Rule following is what you get when the constraints on free action become so restrictive as to completely eliminate an actor's degrees of freedom – which can include accidents and even just vagueness as well as other possible choices.

From a semiotic point of view, humans are shaped by constraints at the level our various informational coding mechanisms – genes, neurons, words, numbers. Each is some kind of system of syntax and semantics that can be used to construct states of constraint. Nature just comes with its physical constraints on the possibilities of actions. Life and mind then arise through the added semiotic machinery by which further constraints can be constructed on that physics and chemistry.

So when semiosis has evolved to the level of mathematical logic or computation, the constraints that can be imposed on a person's behaviour can seem so fixed and syntactic – lacking in semantic freedom and not in practical need of any personal interpretation – that they indeed become rule following. Arithmetic, chess games, rules of etiquette at a formal banquet, a computer program, are examples where the constraint on behaviour or action is intended to approach this mechanical extreme.

But down at a lower level, like the social sphere of human language, the constraints are deliberately more permissive. Rules are there to be interpreted by the person. An intelligent response is expected when applying a general limit to a particular occasion. It is this semantic relation which shapes humans as self-aware actors within a community of language users, all jostling to constrain each others actions in various pragmatic ways.

Further down the scale to neurology and biology and you see constraints being even less restrictive, more permissive. Our genetic programs indeed depend on the accidents of random recombination to try out a variety of rule settings and so let the constraints of the environment do their natural selecting and increasing the species' collective fitness.

So what confounds is the idea of black and white rule making which then treat all forms of freedom – other choices, accidents and chance, simple vagueness or ambiguity as to whether the rule is being broken or not – as a problem for the proper operation of a rules based order.

But hierarchy theory as applied by biologists is quite used to the idea of levels of constraint. You have general constraints and then more particularised constraints nested within them. This is how bodies develop.

Every mammal has a femur as a general rule. Then it can grow longer or shorter, thicker or thinner. For a species it will have some average size but also a genetic variety. Or it may be stunted by accidents like a break or period of starvation, over-grown due to some disease. The outcome is always subject to a hierarchy of constraints – constraints that are informational in being syntactically-encoded semantics. But eventually the constraints peter out as either the resulting differences in outcome become too vague, too unpredictable, or in fact part of the requisite variety that needs to be maintained just so that the lifeform as a whole remains selectively evolvable.

And we can look at humans – living as biological organisms at their language-organised sociocultural level – continuing the same causal story. Constraints on behaviour can be constructed by utterances. But utterances need to be interpreted. Some social constraints can in fact be quite soft and permissive, others rigorously enforced. And then the free or unconstrained actions of the interpreting individual could be due to the assertion of some personal agency, or just some accident of understanding, or even just a vagueness as to whether the demands made by a constraint are being met or not.

It is not a cut and dried business when language is the code. Maths/logic arose as an evolutionary next step to tighten up the construction of constraints so as to remove ambiguity, accident and agency from the semiotic equation.

The problem is that making behaviour actually mechanical is not necessarily a good thing in life. It rather eliminates the basis of a self-balancing or adaptive hierarchical order.

Right, but the questions I think his philosophy points to is: "from whence rules? Why are they useful? How do we come to understand them? Why are they natural to human behavior?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a fragment in Philosophical Investigations that I remember in accordance with what you say:

258. 'Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. -- But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition. -- How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation -- and so, as it were, point to it inwardly. -- But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign. -- Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connection between the sign and the sensation. -- But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connection right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'."

I would say that the possibility of following the rule, even in a self-imposed way, is given by repetition as meaning. That is, memory here plays a revealing function: at the moment I remember a sensation there is a repetition, not of the sensation itself, but a trace of it, something of that sensation that is repeated. Signs help us to remember and repeat. That is why the sign ("S" in this case given by Wittgenstein) is not an accident but a necessary possibility given by repetition and "being a trace", "being an indication". That is, memory and sensation function as a system of signs, whereby the external force of another system of signs (the conventional one) can be applied. But, beyond our will, the external force of signification is already operating at the moment of the sensation, the memory, and the sign of the example given by Wittgenstein. By repetition and force it is convention building within ourselves.

From this it follows that an individual and unconventional language is possible to the extent that even in our interiority the external element of language is already functioning. That is to say, when the system of signs [sensing - remembering - writing] is established, there is already an external imposition on the writer of "S"'s own will that senses and remembers. That is why the writer of "S" can understand the correctness (the imposed force) of having to refer to his sensations always as "S".

Accordingly we follow rules (rules are sign systems that function in a certain way but are imposed by force) because we are composed of sign systems and sign systems interact with each other as contending forces. That is, we are linguistic (or semiotic) animals, but at the level of composition, in our case at the level of how the relationship between sensation, memory and writing is given. But even beyond that, for example, at the biological level: Genetics, is not what Wittgenstein calls "forms of life" just the set of rules (system of signs) that make us common as a species? We are already made by rules and rule-process-constitutiing.

Someone else can read the note, so it doesn't count as private language — Ludwig V

I don't think it matters if someone can read the note, it matters if the criteria for the correctness of words is socially enforced or not.

But the fact this counterexample exists doesn't change the point of the private language argument imo. Imo the private language argument is about showing that when you have no external enforcement of these criteria, any kind of stable foundation for word meaning evaporatrs because we simply don't need words to engage with the world. The counterexample introduces the same kind of practical enforcement as the social case and so it doesn't contradict the point being made imo.

How does any individual ever know that they are properly chastising someone for following a rule wrong? Per Wittgenstein, they can't be sure that they ever understand a rule — Count Timothy von Icarus

The point is that it doesn't matter. People do whatever they are going to do anyway. They aren't even thinking about these skeptical possibilities. I think what Wittgenstein is making a point about time and time again in PI is that the relations between words or rules or whatever... and what we mean by them is chronically indeterminate or underdetermined. But people can behave coherently anyway. Wittgenstein wasn't trying to pin down rules or fix a problem.

What is happening is inverting the idea that there is some realm of fixed kind of platonic abstract meanings that determine our behavior. No, it is the opposite. Meanings and rules are metacognitive idealizations of an organism that is intelligent enough to make inferences about its own cognizing, its own behaviors, its own perceptual processes. We don't need a strict way to agree rules because all the heavy lifting regarding rules is done by the underlying cognizing and complicated percetual and behavioral abilities latent in us and that we have in common with other people.

In artificial intelligence, a common complaint is that much of what these things do are not human-interpretable in the sense that even tough these machines are very good at what they do, its hard to work out exactly why they do certain things, describable in a way that makes sense to people. And in many ways, why should it? Our abilities to do things like object recognition or motor control or mental calculations far outstrips our ability to talk about these things semantically. Our own abilities are not necessarily easily human interpretable which might make sense given that how neurons compute things shouldn't be a universe away from A.I.

Words meanings and rules are more like signposts pointing in the right direction for the rest of our highly complicated cognitive, motor, perceptual faculties to do the job. In the same way that looking at the dictionary definition of a word is just a signpost where the rest of your brain already has inside of it much of the information from our developmental histories required to generalize from the definition to using the word.

The point is that our faculties do not come from platonic abstractions of words. They are extremely messy and build skills from a long history of observations, using billions of parameters capable of extremely complex non-linear abilities.

Meanings and rules emerge from these things and just are a way of efficient communication to help people's behaviors synchronize in some sense. They are pragmatic. The behaviors they signify don't need to be rigorously determined because biological self-organization does not require it. In the same way that Darwinian evolution isn't based on perfect forms, it is based on blind, messy selection.

Its about what works, not directly tapping into some inherent kind of truth well or something. Sure you might think of "plus" as a pretty perfect concept that everyone obviously follows doing math. But if we do do this, this doesn't get prescribed from up-high by some well, determined, platonic realm of abstract rules. It comes bottom up from an extremely complicated brain which is exactly why brains have no problem acting coherently even when our metacognitive interpretations of what we are doing are chronically underdetermined. When you think about it, you won't even be able to give a nice non-circular foundational definition for what plus is that isn't underdetermined. Yet we just have a kind of meta-cognitive, intuitive confidence in out ability to distinguish and perform some kind of act. Doesn't matter how we do it. We apply the labels after the fact and insofar as there are multiple ways to draw boundaries, we can apply labels in many different chronically indeterminate ways. But that doesn't matter because our intuitive abilities do the heavy lifting. What is the criterion for "coherence" then? Just whatever people agree with, and the reason for such agreement is then open to the same skeptical games regressing ad infinitum. But again, this doesn't really matter because that is like a meta-cognitive inferential labelling process that is not necessarily identical to the development of those actual behaviors (I guess similar to how everyone has the perceptual ability to see the same colours but cultures may draw boundaries differently - there is a distinction between the seeing of the color and the metacognitive act of labelling). You don't need a theory of 'plussing' to do addition. Just like most people have no idea from a theoretical linguistic perspective what is happening in their mouths or the sounds they make when they talk coherently.

I remember hearing somewhere a view that philosophy often had a pre-scientific role in fields before those fields like physics or biology become more mature. And I think you could argue much of this analytic philosophy regards to characterizing meaning and language takes a similar pre-scientific rule with regard to things like psychology, neuroscience, machine learning etc etc. That is what this kind of philosophy will give way to if you want to know why and how people do things. Its a scientific question. Hence Quine's idea for naturalized epistemology. There is no rigorous foundation for knowledge, how we know things, what meanings are. All you can do is study how the behavior and cognition that people do works. What people do doesn't trickle down from rigorous formal constraints. It emerges and self-organizes from blind physical interactions.

:up:

This is a perfect example of what I mean by a solid investigation of the "form of life."

Would that question not be simply what produces clouds and how do they in turn produce rain— a scientific question? I can't think of any other way to coherently frame the question. I mean you could feel a sense of great wonder that there are clouds and rain, and indeed a world at all, but I don't see any coherent question that sense of wonder could be transformed into other than the scientific ones.

Certainly. And this could likely be true for language to some extent. I personally think that the hard dividing line between "science" and "philosophy" is just an artifact of a specific and not particularly fruitful brand of philosophy of science that became dominant in the 20th century. The "anti-metaphysical movement," would be a key example, and I think it did real damage to scientific inquiry.

The reality is that theoretical work, particularly paradigm defining work, always has a lot of philosophy involved in it. The line between "philosophy of physics," and "philosophy of biology," and physics and biology is very blurry. I think we would be well served to returning to thinking of science as the systematic and rigorous study of a topic, rather than a sort of discrete discipline cut off from other forms of inquiry.

Imo the private language argument is about showing that when you have no external enforcement of these criteria, any kind of stable foundation for word meaning evaporates... — Apustimelogist

I agree with that.

The counterexample introduces the same kind of practical enforcement as the social case and so it doesn't contradict the point being made imo. — Apustimelogist

Yes. But I thought that was one of Wittgenstein's points. Because you said it was a counter-example, I thought that you were saying that because we can write notes to ourselves (which we clearly can), Wittgenstein was wrong. I regularly write notes to myself and they work perfectly well. But Wittgenstein's point is not that we need to be validated every time we follow a rule - that's absurd - but that we need validation sometimes - a practice of validation - , so that there is agreement about how to apply the rule.

I think this is reinforced by the observation that at the social level, social rules tend to drift, almost without anyone noticing. Language drifts, patterns of behaviour change, but there is general agreement, so communication doesn't break down. (Though in practice, of course, social unity is only partial, so the drift is more complicated than that.)

So I think we agree, and I'm sorry for my confusion.

Right, but you see the problem here right? How does any individual ever know that they are properly chastising someone for following a rule wrong? Per Wittgenstein, they can't be sure that they ever understand a rule. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is no criterion beyond agreement between us. So if I am understood and understand, everything is in order. (It's not a question of chastisement, really. Either communication works, or it doesn't). It is also true that communication can and frequently does, break down, for one reason or another. But, again, the point is that there are ways of restoring it and even ways of coping with failures.

analytics cut themselves off from most pre-analytic philosophy, did everything "in-house" which entailed a lot of reinventing of the wheel in ways that look horribly philistine and only appeal to a very specific niche of people who like goofy decontextualized thought experiments, [...] — Lionino

I like that. Though some analytics don't cut themselves off from their tradition, but re-interpret it into their own language. Mind you, a lot of all that has gone on throughout philosophy, hasn't it? It just means that analytic philosophy is less special than it thinks it is. But then, every new philosophical approach thinks that. It's all very confusing.

On that specifically, here is the exact continuation of the quote I posted:

[...] and then at a later phase, claim to have been conversant with the wider philosophical tradition all along / rediscover the wider philosophical tradition, but still subordinate that tradition to goofy analyticisms and still somehow retain the decontextualized feel of early analytic philosophy.
[...]

It just means that analytic philosophy is less special than it thinks it is. — Ludwig V

The fact that analytic philosophy (vaguely understood because the term really means little) has dumped itself into the same problems that philosophers were talking about 400 years ago with p-zombies (mind-body dualism), supertasks (Zeno), how it feels to be a bat (solipsism) and else, tells us enough; they are not solving any problems, just eating sand on the playground, let them have their fun. Maybe in 120 years they will reinvent Kant.

every new philosophical approach thinks that — Ludwig V

I am not sure if that arrogance is universal. Wittgenstein had quite the temper.

Yes I thimk we agree. To me I don't see the inherent distinction between a public language and a private one other than only one person uses it. So to me it is a counterexample to the private language used by only one person. But it is not counterexample to the deeper intended point imo. So for me, maybe a more general view of the private language argument is the point that language is meaningless without the need for the communication of inaccessible information, whether that communication being with other people or yourself.

Interesting paper perhaps relevant:

Language is primarily a tool for
communication rather than thought

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=language+primarily+communication&btnG=

(top link pdf)

Abstract/Intro:

"Language is a defning characteristic of our species, but the function, or functions, that it serves has been debated for centuries. Here we bring recent evidence from neuroscience and allied disciplines to argue that in modern humans, language is a tool for communication, contrary to a prominent view that we use language for thinking. We begin by introducing the brain network that supports linguistic ability in humans. We then review evidence for a double dissociation between language and thought, and discuss several properties of language that suggest that it is optimized for communication. We conclude that although the emergence of language has unquestionably transformed human culture, language does not appear to be a prerequisite for complex thought, including symbolic thought. Instead, language is a powerful tool for the transmission of cultural knowledge; it plausibly co-evolved with our thinking and reasoning capacities, and only refects, rather than gives rise to, the signature sophistication of human cognition."

Isn't the rule following paradox, which philosophers still debate to this day, solved by the way the language center of the brain is uniform for many newborn children? I don't see how else one would solve the rule following paradox.

Maybe that is a naïve point, but, since rats and other languageless animals are known to be able to perform mental simulations, doesn't that show in a straightforward manner that language is not necessary for thought?

Yes, that's true. But both have their uses in a building. Whether the same proposition can be a hinge and a foundation is hard to say. We could perhaps say that the same proposition might be used as a hinge in one context and a foundation in another. But not, I think, at the same time. Case studies would be interesting. — Ludwig V

I agree with holding to the metaphor -- the hinge is easy to replace, or even switch over, but the foundations we build upon -- whether they be river-beds or mountains, geological timescales don't care about the chemical distinction between solid and liquid and air -- are the sorts of things we identify as "OK I don't think I can pull that bit out yet" -- though, to continue the metaphor still, there are houses that are taken across the highway which gets us into Capital volume 3 and . . . :D

I agree with holding to the metaphor — Moliere

There's no harm in pushing a metaphor as far as it will go. But it is to be expected that it will break down sooner or later. I didn't quite follow the last half of your post.

I am not sure if that arrogance is universal. Wittgenstein had quite the temper. — Lionino

I wouldn't disagree ssewith you about either arrogance or bad temper. But I think a certain level of arrogance, or at least self-confidence, is necessary to do philosophy at all.
Don't all philosophies see their tradition through their own interpretations. Isn't that built in to the whole business of reading and understanding philosophy?
Yet I agree that the criticisms of analytic philosophy that you mention are appropriate.

To me I don't see the inherent distinction between a public language and a private one other than only one person uses it. So to me it is a counterexample to the private language used by only — Apustimelogist

Yes. Wittgenstein isn't very clear about defining his target. But that may be because he wants to target all the varieties of dualism, and doesn't want to tie himself down to any specific varieties.

that language is meaningless without the need for the communication of inaccessible information, whether that communication being with other people or yourself. — Apustimelogist

It depends on your definition of inaccessible. The only thing I'm clear about is that he intends "logically" inaccessible. I don't know about communication with myself. I find "mental notes" very unreliable.

Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought — Apustimelogist

I wouldn't fight over the question of priority. That it has multiple uses is not in question, I think.

Isn't the rule following paradox, which philosophers still debate to this day, solved by the way the language center of the brain is uniform for many newborn children? I don't see how else one would solve the rule following paradox. — Shawn

It might be. But I take his point to be logical, so the expectation would be that the sceptical arguments would still apply - unless you could take "This is what I do" to be identifiable with a brain state. Don't forget that the brain is very plastic, so we may well find a great deal of variation in the ways they work. I can't see that they are likely to work in the same way that our computers work.

Maybe that is a naïve point, but, since rats and other languageless animals are known to be able to perform mental simulations, doesn't that show in a straightforward manner that language is not necessary for thought? — Lionino

A lot depends on what you mean by language. But I wouldn't be dogmatic. It could be sufficient without being necessary and it could enable kinds of thinking that are not available to other modes. "Thinking" is a very flexible concept.

Yes, I would probably say so.

inaccessible — Ludwig V

Well I just mean in the sense like what is happening somewhere out of your direct perception is not accessible. You cannot know what is going on in that case.

I wouldn't fight over the question of priority. That it has multiple uses is not in question, I think. — Ludwig V

I think that quote is a bad phrasing. Its about the idea that language is not identical to thought. We don't need language to think about things. When we don't need language to think about things or engage with the world, I think this is how language becomes redundant in the private language scenarios.

We don't need language to think about things. — Apustimelogist

No, that's obviously true. I suppose there are questions about what's going on. But you could also say that you don't need language to communicate. Animals can do that as well. Then there's the question whether animal communication systems count as language, or what the limits of language without words are. Hence the temptation to posit a "language of thought" - "mentalese". (This was mentioned by someone earlier in the thread.) But without some empirical evidence, I don't think there's any useful mileage in speculation. Chomsky doesn't help.
Thought a Chomskian universal language wouldn't be private. Nor are animal languages. I'm not sure about this.

"Thinking" is a very flexible concept. — Ludwig V

Yes, I think that is key. To establish the relation between thought and language we need a good anatomy of thought, and that is no easy task.

But you could also say that you don't need language to communicate — Ludwig V

True. I would say that communication just generalizes language. Similarly, what an animal communicates about is different to their actual perceptual/cognitive/physica engagement with what they are communicating about.

Its about the idea that language is not identical to thought. We don't need language to think about things. When — Apustimelogist

It depends on how narrow your view of language is. Wittgenstein’s analyses of language were focused on contexts of interaction between persons. His was a ‘phenomenology’ of the intersubjective. If we want an analysis of perception, and thus of thinking,
we have to turn to the phenomenology of perception. In the work of Merleau-Ponty we find an account of perception that I think dovetails nicely with Witt’s intersubjective focus. For Merleau-Ponty, perception is ‘languaged’, but this cannot be understood in terms of a split between thinking and communicating. To think and perceive is to communicate with oneself by way of the world. Language isn’t simply a tool that we use to access concepts , in its very instantiation it uses us to transform the sense of our concepts and percepts by enacting them in the world. We dont think language, language thinks us.

Language isn’t simply a tool that we use to access concepts , in its very instantiation it uses us to transform the sense of our concepts and percepts by enacting them in the world. — Joshs

I agree. Concepts do not exist independently of language in some separate platonic reality, in which concepts exist passively waiting to have a label slapped on them so that they can be thought. Understanding language gives us concepts in terms of which we can think about various things, and so our thinking is structured by them.

For Merleau-Ponty, perception is ‘languaged’, but this cannot be understood in terms of a split between thinking and communicating. — Joshs

Yes, the concepts of our language actually structure our perception.

To think and perceive is to communicate with oneself by way of the world. — Joshs

The idea of communicating with oneself is a bit awkward, isn't it? There are examples of thinking that one might call communicating with oneself - reminding oneself, exhorting oneself and so on. But I think there are also cases of thinking that are working out a problem, organizing one's thoughts and so forth. Those are not communicating with oneself or anyone else, but doing a different kind of job.

It needs to be said, as frequently as possible that the uses of language are multifarious. They are not confined to the communication of truths. I don't think it is possible to get a real understanding of language without taking that into account.

Language isn’t simply a tool that we use to access concepts — Joshs

Well.

To think and perceive is to communicate with oneself by way of the world. — Joshs

What are we communicating to ourselves?

True. I would say that communication just generalizes language. — Apustimelogist

I wouldn't disagree with that. But, having thought about it, I want to emphasize the multifarious uses of language, many, but not all, of which involve communication in one form or another.

Similarly, what an animal communicates about is different to their actual perceptual/cognitive/physical engagement with what they are communicating about. — Apustimelogist

I'm really sorry, but I can't get my head around what you're saying here. Could you break it down for me?

What are we communicating to ourselves? — Lionino

It's a good question and I agree that communication with others and with oneself (insofar as it happens) are different.
Two different examples of communication with oneself. I make a shopping list, to communicate with my future self so's I don't forget anything. When I have gathered some of the items, I may recite the list to myself, looking at or laying my hand on, each item as I name it, so as to make sure I don't forget anything.
When I get my receipt, with each item listed, I may keep it so's I can communicate with the manager or someone at home if there is a dispute.

To think and perceive is to communicate with oneself by way of the world.
— Joshs

What are we communicating to ourselves? — Lionino

When we speak to another we have certain expectations concerning the response, which will never be precisely fulfilled. Likewise when we think to ourselves we are communicating with an other, since the self returns to itself slightly differently moment to moment. We always end up meaning something slightly other than what we intended to mean.

When we speak to another we have certain expectations concerning the response, which will never be precisely fulfilled. — Joshs

That is true but I don't see the connection with my question.

Likewise when we think to ourselves we are communicating with an other, since the self returns to itself slightly differently moment to moment. — Joshs

Sure.

We always end up meaning something slightly other than what we intended to mean. — Joshs

I think that is somewhat paradoxical. But still that doesn't answer the question of what it is that we are communicating to ourselves.

Your post is all about things being lost in translation (trans-lation), but what is it that is being lost?

But, having thought about it, I want to emphasize the multifarious uses of language, many, but not all, of which involve communication in one form or another. — Ludwig V

Yes, true.

Could you break it down for me? — Ludwig V

I'm just stating that how an animal's communication isn't thought.

AC Grayling: "One need not take as one's target so radical a form of the thesis to show that cognitive relativism is unacceptable, however."

FORMS OF LIFE

As rules are private, a rule-based language must also be private

Suppose there is culture A with its own form of life, its own language, its own rules and its own truth and culture B with its own form of life, its own language, its own rules and its own truth.

The cognitive relativist says that because each culture has its own form of life it has its own truth, meaning that truth is relative between different cultures.

But AC Grayling argues that cognitive relativism is unacceptable, because its premise that there are different cultures each with its own form of life is an implicit acceptance of the fact that we can only recognize that cultures are different only if we understand what these differences are. If we understand these differences, then there is a common ground between different cultures, thereby negating the concept of cognitive relativism.

But cultures aren't Platonic entities, they are sets of individuals, whether one considers a single individual on a desert island or 6 billion individuals on planet Earth.

Each individual is an individual, receiving information about a world outside them through their five senses.

Knowledge is justified true belief.

The individual may have beliefs about a world existing outside them causing their perceptions, and may be able to justify their beliefs using logical reasoning, but cannot be said to have knowledge about any world existing outside them. Although the individual may be able to justify their beliefs about any outside world, they can never prove such beliefs.

For an individual, all the rules that they are aware of must be of their own invention, even if based on information received through their senses. As the tortoise said to Achilles, how can an individual discover just from the information received through their senses that a rule is a rule. Where is the rule that determines whether something is a rule or not, a problem of infinite regression.

As regards language, the individual perceives shapes, which are words, which are part of language, but as the rules of language cannot be included within the shapes themselves, the rules of language that the individual uses must have been created by the individual themselves. If language is rule-based, and these rules are private, then language must also be private, and must be a "private language".

An individual only gets information about any world outside them through their senses. There may or may not be different cultures in this world outside them. Dependent on what information the individual gets through their senses, some of these different cultures they may know about, and some they don't know about.

For those different cultures the individual is aware of, the individual creates the rules of that culture. The individual doesn't discover the rules of that culture in the information coming through their senses. As the form of life of a culture is dependent on the rules of that culture, the individual also creates the form of life of that culture. Therefore, if an individual is aware of different cultures, then not only has the individual created the rules of those cultures, but has also created the forms of life of those cultures. Of necessity, there is now common ground between these different cultures, and these cultures are not closed to each other. As Grayling says, the concept of cognitive relativism is negated. The important thing to note is that cognitive relativism is referring to the cognitive state of the individual who is aware of different cultures, not the cognitive states within these different cultures.

However, for those cultures the individual doesn't know about, the individual has no knowledge of either the rules or the forms of life of those unknown cultures. If the individual doesn't know about such cultures, they are obviously not able to recognize a different form of life. In this case, Grayling's assertion that cognitive relativism is unacceptable is clearly mistaken..

As rules are private, a rule based language and a rule based form of life must also be private. Grayling is correct when he says that cognitive relativism is unacceptable when an individual is able to recognize another form of life, but is turning a blind eye to those situations where the individual is not able to recognize another form of life, because the individual is not aware of them in the first place. An unknown remains an unknown.

One way to deal with [relativism/skepticism] would be to posit nested sets of "forms of life" that people belong to. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is true in that life takes various forms. There is our species (in itself and compared to others), our history, our practices, our cultures, etc. But these are not justification, nor decisions, nor rules we “agree” to; they come out of the fact that we live and have lived in similar ways: judging in the same manner (what an apology consists of, what pointing does), interested to make the same distinctions, anticipating particular implications, etc.

We imagine chaos because we want to only accept undeniable certainty and agreement (as “knowledge”), and cast everything else as “belief” or emotion or persuasion. But Witt shows is that the world has endless ways of being “rational” (having ways to account, though different), and so we can disagree intelligibly in relation from those practices. Ultimately we may not come to resolution, but that does not lead to the categorical failure of rationality, because a dispute also only happens at a time, in a context (which also gives our differences traction).

Now we can NOT understand talking lions, as a physical impossibility, but it is not impossible for us to learn about the gestures of the Chinese, or the traditions of others (PI, p. 223), so to preclude the other is a choice, being blind to the other because of being unable to look past ourselves.

As rules are private, a rule-based language must also be private — RussellA

It depends what you mean by "private".

For an individual, all the rules that they are aware of must be of their own invention, even if based on information received through their senses. As the tortoise said to Achilles, how can an individual discover just from the information received through their senses that a rule is a rule. Where is the rule that determines whether something is a rule or not, a problem of infinite regression. — RussellA

Dodgson's dialogue between Achilles and the tortoise makes a good point, but I'm not sure that your point is the same one. However, your concluding question is a good one. I assume you would not disagree that Wittgenstein's point is that no rule can determine its own application. I think that, for similar reason, no rule can determine application of another rule. We do make play with attempts to formulate such rules. But in the end, it is a matter of our agreement with each other; there is nothing else.

Can I make a rule for myself, privately? Here "privately" means "not subject to enforcement by anything else (human or otherwise)". In other words, is it possible for the correct application of my rule to be solely determined by my application of it? In yet other words, if I make my rule and determine what is the correct application of it, is it meaningful to say that I am bound by it? Consider sections 268 (Left hand giving right hand money), 270 (the diary thought experiment), 271, (remembering what "pain" means). The self-reference in the proposition makes that any such limitation empty. (I am reminded of the ancient problem whether a monarch (as law-giver and law-interpreter) is bound by the law.) Yes, I'm saying that whatever Wittgenstein's argument says or doesn't say, the idea has wider application. That's not a criticism, because Wittgenstein is preoccupied with the dualism of his day.

We imagine chaos because we want to only accept undeniable certainty and agreement (as “knowledge”), and cast everything else as “belief” or emotion or persuasion. But Witt shows is that the world has endless ways of being “rational” (having ways to account, though different), and so we can disagree intelligibly in relation from those practices. Ultimately we may not come to resolution, but that does not lead to the categorical failure of rationality, because a dispute also only happens at a time, in a context (which also gives our differences traction). — Antony Nickles

I don't disagree with this. But I think that our practices are a bit more complicated than this seems to propose. If we say that rationality is a question of our agreement in ways of life, we seem to eliminate the distinction between those agreements that we call "correct" or "incorrect" by some standard that is not set by our agreement and those agreements that are simply a matter of making a deal, so that "correct" and "incorrect" do not apply. You will understand, I suppose, that I think that agreements that are correct or incorrect are, by and large, rational agreements and the other kind are, roughly, matters of taste or convenience or pragmatics. (The difficulty of agreements about values sits awkwardly between the two.)

But Witt shows is that the world has endless ways of being “rational” (having ways to account, though different), and so we can disagree intelligibly in relation from those practices. Ultimately we may not come to resolution, but that does not lead to the categorical failure of rationality, because a dispute also only happens at a time, in a context (which also gives our differences traction).

I don't think Wittgenstein shows this at all, as evidenced by the extremely diverse directions this thread is taken in by different Wittgensteinians. He leaves this incredibly vague; vague enough that a common take is that rationality just bottoms out in cultural presuppositions that cannot be analyzed. This view in turn makes any conflict between "heterogenous cultures" or "heterogenous language games," either purely affective/emotional or else simply a power struggle— i.e. "fight it out." This is especially true if the individual subject is just a nexus of signifiers and power discourses.

I think Grayling raises an important point on this subject. Can we identify these cultural differences? Can we understand differences in "forms of life?" If the answers are "yes," then reason maintains a sort of catholicity.

When you say reason doesn't suffer a "categorical failure" "because a dispute also only happens at a time, in a context," does this mean that such failures can eventually be overcome at other times and in other contexts? If so, then limitation doesn't seem to lie in reason itself, but in people's finite use of it, their patience, etc.

But of course the more relativist reading here is that nothing can ever overcome these differences.

Now we can NOT understand lions, as a physical impossibility

You can show a child videos of mammals, including lions, and they can tell you if it is demonstrating aggression or not. If the lion comment is taken head on it is just stupid. Mammals have a pretty good toolset for displaying basic emotions to one another, particularly at the level of aggression and threat displays. Horses and dogs are likewise quite capable of giving off signs that they are going to bite you or kick you if you get close to them, and in general people don't need to be taught these. Toddlers intuitively understand that the dog or cat with ears retracted, teeth bared, emitting a low growl, etc. is not friendly. These behaviors make sense as threats. Teeth and claws are dangerous to other animals. There is a shared reality that allows for translation here.

Pace Wittgenstein, we do understand Chinese gestures much better than Chinese. That's why people who don't share a language communicate through gestures. Gestures aren't arbitrary. There is a difference between stipulated signs and natural signs, and some gestures are more natural than stipulated (e.g. pointing, human signs of aggression, etc.).

I don't disagree with this. But I think that our practices are a bit more complicated than this seems to propose. If we say that rationality is a question of our agreement in ways of life, we seem to eliminate the distinction between those agreements that we call "correct" or "incorrect" by some standard that is not set by our agreement and those agreements that are simply a matter of making a deal, so that "correct" and "incorrect" do not apply. You will understand, I suppose, that I think that agreements that are correct or incorrect are, by and large, rational agreements and the other kind are, roughly, matters of taste. (The difficulty of agreements about values sits awkwardly between the two.)

Right, and on questions of things that are not matters of taste, nature sometimes offers a neat adjudication of the issue. Aspects of nature are law-like and this gives us a non-arbitrary standard for rule interpretation. The "culture all the way down view," obfuscates the fact that when culture contradicts nature it runs headlong into failure. Rule evolution and selection occurs in a world full of "law-like behavior."

Indeed, it's hard to see how "rules" could be particularly useful but for a world that itself has regularities.