Lenguaje y comunidad. El argumento contra el lenguaje privado en la propuesta de Kripke en Wittgenstein: reglas y lenguaje privado

KARCZMARCZYK, PEDRO

La Plata

Jornada; Sextas Jornadas de Investigación en Filosofía; 2006

Departamento de Filosofía, UNLP

Language and Community. Classical and Kripkean Private Language Arguments This paper deals with classical discussion on private language possibility (understood as a language of sensations grounded on private ostensive definitions) and controversies aroused around its possibility, exemplified in our paper by Malcolm’s and Ayer’s views. We consider first Norman Malcolm’s reconstruction of the argument as a reductio ad absurdum, whose weak point consists in introducing criteria as a non argued premise. Then we consider Alfred Ayer’s criticism to wittgensteinian argument. We interpret this criticism as holding that there is nothing wrong with the idea, -presumably established through a private ostensive definition- of private truth conditions that is not, at the same time, a failure of truth conditions in general, whatever kind are them. As a conclusion we propose to see this classical controversy as motivating Kripke’s proposal in two ways. First, it motivated him to avoid understanding private language argument as a particular argument, that is to say, as an argument against language of sensations understanding it as an argument against (certain conception of) meaning in general. Second, it suggested him to change the classical direction of the argument, so while Malcolmian version is a criticism of Cartesian truth conditions, Kripkean view instead take profit provisionally of Cartesianism in order to criticise in general classical realist truth conditions.