does wittgensteins "private language argument" a good thoery at disproving.......?

Question

solipsism?

the reason it cant be refuted is because you can only experience yourself. but other than that it is basicaly wrong and a very flawed and self contradicting thoery right?

Answer 1

No. And I'll tell you why.

Wittgenstein's argument is basically there's no such thing as a language that is both meaningful and understandable by one person but with is impossible for any other person to understand. I'll add the qualification that you need to have an large enough sample size, too... nothing is coherent if you have a small enough sample.

You can see from that restatement that it has nothing to do with solipsism. If every human was one was dead, English would not be a 'private language', because we know that many people are CAPABLE of understanding it. Likewise with solipsism: if we assume there's only one human in the universe, no languages are private unless no theoretical second person can comprehend it. You don't actually NEED a second person... just theory.

Solipsism cannot be logically refuted for the same reason Pyrrhonism and other extreme skeptical positions can't be disproved: none of those skeptics will agree with just about anything you say in any way. If you can't agree that logic works, or you can't agree that there are people to argue with, there is simply no way you can have a reasonable discussion with another person.

Not being disprovable is not a sign that these philosophies are STRONG, they're a sign that they have nothing at all to say. All good theories invite tests and succeed at them. A runner who always wins is a winner. A runner who never attends a race is nothing.

Answer 2

sure, I agree. Even in Canada we are saying that human beings do no longer talk the comparable language. all of us have distinctive meanings for issues. yet another occasion is the french spoken in Paris is amazingly distinctive from that spoken in Quebec, Canada. i think of all of us make a version of English. I nonetheless have faith that the British talk real English! ?D