[Wittrs] Re: On Ownership and Privacy
- From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:47:38 +0100
Thanks Anna, and permit me to congratulate you on your command of English!
Apologies for the tardy reply but I don't get a lot of time for this.
The impression I get from LW is that language and "inner states" don't connect,
but I think there's a sense in which they do connect. Although language is an
aspect of overt behavior, certain modes of behavior are usually accompanied by
specific "inner states" (e.g. pain behavior with the experience of pain). This
correlation is evident from what I might refer to as the "first-person
perspective" (for want of a better term of reference), and so when I see
somebody else exhibit pain behavior I assume that there is a correlated
experience of pain from their "first-person perspective". So I agree with you
that we can legitimately speak of private states, and in the "first-person
case" we attribute these states to the "first-person" implicated in that mode
of thought (i.e. in common speech, regardless of the fact that, as LW points
out, they have no "owner").
Anna wrote:
> Hello, Cayuse. I will try to express my point of view about this, which I
> consider one of the most interesting and obscure points in LW's philosophy.
>
> I think the key point is this (about pain, in your quotation of 304):
> It is not a something, but not a nothing either!
>
> As you said, he's not denying the existence of private states, but he's
> affirming that there's something wrong in considering a private state as a
> "something".
> If your interpretation is correct (and I agree with it too), this means that
> only when we deal with public affairs, can we use the grammar for the
> "somethings",
> for "things". Language "thingalizes" its objects, it makes things of them,
> speaking of them objectively; and private state are not (some)things.
>
> What this all makes me think is, we can legitimately speak of private states,
> i.e. USE them, but in different games.
> When we for example say "I have an headache", we are not saying we possess it
> ("I have a sister" does not mean we possess her as Stuart put it),
> we mean "I don't feel like doing that, I need your help" etc., which are
> actions in a chain of interactions with others.
> Remember that the verbal expression of pain is only a sofistication of
> groaning.
> So, the verbal expression of private states are sofistications of actions.
>
> About the final quote, "My having consciousness...": It's not so easy to
> interpret it according to the previous remarks.
> But if this idea is correct, saying "I have consciusness" is a means to
> differentiate me from the tree or the stone,
> and this may occurr in a conversation with someone who doubts my
> intelligence; in this sense it is an action, too, the sofistication of an
> action.
>
> What is mostly intriguing, for me, is that since we are used at seeing
> language only in its declarative aspect, everytime we use language to
> describe, analyse,
> point at phenomenon that are not things, we make things of them. But the
> question that arises is, then: is there a legitimate way of speaking of
> private states
> - not of speaking WITH them, using them to groan or to act, but speaking
> ABOUT them? When we talk to a doctor or a psychologist, we do.
>
> Probably the private language argument can help us to answer this question.
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