How the iconic philosopher's brilliantly subtle and original thoughts on language can be used to dispel a two-thousand year old philosophical problem. Possibly a misappropriation and possibly an oversimplification, but what the gee-whizz. I love Wittgenstein.
2. Solipsism
• An age-old problem in philosopy.
• “Solipsism” refers to the terrifying
possibility that you are the only
being that actually exists – that
everyone else is a figment of your
imagination.
• Most famous version: Descartes
doubt
• Cogito ergo sum – I think therefore
I am
• ie. The only thing I can be sure of is
that I exist. Everything else is open
to doubt.
3. The problem of other minds
• How to reconcile your “inner”
(subjective) experience with the
“outside” (objective) world...
• How do we know other people
think, feel and experience like we
do?
• How do we know anybody or
anything has a conscious
perspective like ours? There is no
observable test we can carry out
that consciousness/a perspective
is present in anybody/anything.
4. • For hundreds of years this seemed to be an intractable
problem that would never be answered:
• We simply have to accept that others do think and feel
and experience like we do. But we simply have to
accept that we can’t prove it.
• The problem lies in the fact that we haven’t even
agreed on what we mean by consciousness, let alone
found a direct way to study “it” – if it is an “it”.
6. To know the rules you must play the
game.
• Or, to know what a game is
in the first place you must
have played a game.
• What is the “Chess King”?
• Language is also a product
of human interactions and
behaviour – the sounds and
symbols alone are not
enough, they must be
accompanied by activity.
• “D-slab-here” “Five Red
Apples”.
7. Language games
• “Water!”
• Language is used in a multitude of
different ways, some ways bearing
little resemblance to each other,
each with its own set of rules.
• Language is woven into the various activities and
modes of being we can slip into – it is meaningless
outside of these.
• Language is an extension of action and behaviour and
the way we use it – for example commanding,
requesting, pleading, joking, debating - denotes which
mode we are in, and requires a response appropriate to
that language game.
8. The impossibility of a private
language
• Without interaction it would be impossible to learn language in the first
place – without feedback from others in active situations there would be
nothing to tie the system of rules and symbols to.
• Say someone decides that each time she has a particular sensation she
will place a sign S in a diary. Wittgenstein points out that, without a
public setting to check this against, one could have no criteria for the
correctness of one's use of S.
• You cannot learn language by watching TV in a room on your own – like
the “Chess King” there would be no feedback to tell you what “game”
was being played, what the rules were, what was a right or wrong
response –no frame of reference for the meaningless sounds and
pictures on the screen.
• But it’s not just that you could not develop your own language on a
desert island on your own – you would not. The need would never arise.
• For a language to come into existence you need to communicate with at
least one responsive other.
9. The link between language and
consciousness – a hypothesis
• Thought and language develop side by side, and both through
communication and interaction with the world and others –
language does not just express thought; thought is influenced by
language, since language solidifies and gives shape to concepts,
perspectives and ways of thinking – it structures thought, to the
extent that developing language may be essential to developing a
reflective consciousness, certainly to developing rationality.
• Without language we have no way to consistently pin down
thoughts and concepts, let alone analyze them; and in having to
consider how we are going to present our thoughts in language,
it makes us analyze and reflect on them.
• Without the need for, and practice of, communication with others,
there is really no need to be that conscious or reflective at all.
Language does not arise, neither does rational thought.
10. Conclusion
• We have language.
• Language only arises in a public setting
(via interaction with others).
• Language is interwoven with the
formation of “concepts” and
“thought”.
• To some extent, then, the our
“concepts” and “thought” only arise in
a public setting too.
• There must be others to interact with.
• WE ARE NOT ALONE. (And yet... That
also means the “content” of our
“heads” is never exclusively self-
generated....)
