Mental
events and states were traditionally deemed to be private. Public
language, on the other hand, is intersubjective.
Yet we use a public language to communicate purportedly private
mental events, items or states. If mental events, items or states
were genuinely private, then how would we know that other people were
referring to the same things we refer to? To us (if not them), other
people’s private mental items, states and events would be like
possible “beetles
in a box”.
That's partly why Ludwig
Wittgenstein
concluded that our language for sensations isn't only public: it must
also refer to public items. (This is all part of Wittgenstein's
Private
Language argument.)
For
example, when someone says, “I'm in pain”, he's not describing a
private pain-state. The utterance
is (as
it were) the pain state. Our behaviour (including linguistic
behaviour) is literally
everything.
If someone were to refer to something only they had seen, then we
wouldn’t get the whole import of their reference. Thus when we use
a language for pain, we must be referring to essentially public
items. We can't therefore believe that pain-words refer to private
pain-things. This is the case with other names or words too. They
refer to entities which are essentially publicly accessible.
Pain-words
must refer to things which are publicly accessible: not private. Thus
pain can't be a beetle in a permanently-closed box. If pain is in any
kind of box, then it's in an open and publicly-accessible one. The
named object, if private, must “drop
out of consideration as irrelevant”.
Other people can't and don't see private mental states or events.
Public items are needed for a public language. Language is a shared
phenomenon primarily because there are shared words and the shared
objects of these words. Without the shared objects of our names and
words, there'd be no shared language. The shared objects largely
determine the shared language.
If
a language isn't public (or shared), then it's not, in fact, a
language. If we were just communicating with ourselves, then perhaps
we wouldn’t need a descriptive language at all. We would simply
know that we are in pain and, therefore, pain-descriptions wouldn't
be necessary.
It
follows that if there are private mental states, events or items in
S's
mind, and S
were to name these items, then he'd have to introduce his own names
or words rather than use names or words he'd acquired from other
people. After all, how could public names refer to truly private
items? There couldn’t be a public (or intersubjective) ostensive
definition
of S’s
private mental items, states or events. Indeed it was Wittgenstein’s
argument that there couldn’t even be a private ostensive definition
of one’s own private mental items, states or events. How would S
know that he was describing (or defining) a mental item, state or
event correctly or incorrectly? The correctness or otherwise of an
ostensibly private ostensive definition would depend on a third party
determining whether or not such an attribution is correct or
incorrect. As Wittgenstein put it (to paraphrase):
If
S
doesn’t know if he’s going right, then how would he know that
he’s going wrong (in his self-attributions)?
“Yes,
but what about pain itself?”
Despite
all the above, there must still be a sense that certain mental items,
states or events are indeed private - such as pain. This seems to be
self-evident.
For
example, if I don't communicate my pain with either linguistic or
physical behaviour, then no one else would know that I'm in pain. But
I am
in pain. Only I know that I'm in pain. Therefore my pain is private.
It's
true that if I were to express my pain (either in a language or even
by physical behaviour), then, yes, I would be using a public
language. And even if I use such words to
talk to myself
about my own pain, then I'd still be using public words and public
expressions. Thus we could say that the epistemic status of the
belief (how it's known or the way it's known) depends on the external
world and public language.
However,
there's more to a pain than our knowledge of it. It has both an
ontological and an experiential status. We can also accept the fact
that any ontological and experiential status the pain does have will
itself be coloured by public language. (For one, those parts of
public language which have given us the tools and concepts to think
about a pain’s ontological and experiential status!) Though, yet
again, there's still something
about
pain that's above and beyond its epistemic position and its
ontological and experiential status. There's a state - a pain -
that's the subject of all these public expressions. These public
expressions are about something other than themselves. They're about
pain.
Even
though the very concept PAIN is a public concept, what the concept
itself is about is more than a concept: it's about something which
falls under the concept PAIN (or under the word “pain”). Thus
even if it's the case that everything we say (or even think) about a
pain is somehow polluted by public language, there'd still be
something
about the pain that has nothing to do with public discourse. More to
the point, there's something about a pain that's indeed private.
The
problem is that (as Wittgenstein himself argued) as soon as we say
anything about this private something, it becomes (for other persons
and even for oneself) a public something. What's said about this
something (its experiential nature, etc.) is public. Though what all
this public talk is about is something private. We can’t, however,
get to this private something without polluting it with public
language. And even when we get to it ourselves, it's still thus
polluted. The private pain, then, is like a Kantian
“thing-in-itself”. Its true reality or status can never be known
if such a status is deemed to be how the pain is regardless of public
language.
Of
course many philosophers will deem the very idea of a pain-in-itself
suspect. Does that idea even make sense? Does it serve any purpose?
Reference
Wittgenstein,
Ludwig. (1945 to 1949) Philosophical
Investigations.
