in wittgensteins private language argument......?

Question

he proves that it is impossible to create a private language and that language is impossible without other minds right? and is the private language argument valid? so far i have heard of no contradictions to his philosophy

Answer 1

Sort of... you cannot create a private language, as you can only creating with meanings; for understanding meaning, you cannot be alone (this would be quite close to being crazy... LOL) - you need at least another person so that a language is a language. That's the basis of semantics and pragmatics.

However, some languages are considered to be private, because of the reason why they were created. For example, if you hold top secrets, you might actually create a completely new language so that only two people (or as many as you want), understand those secrets.

If you need to deepen into this and compare it with Wittgenstein, you might like to check Doctors Meullemans and Elias's work on Endolinguistics; they are investigators in the University of Barcelona. By the way, they are two of the few who participated in the creation of Esperanto...

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

There are some arguments here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument