I cannot seriously suppose that I am at this moment dreaming. Someone who, dreaming says: “I am dreaming,” even if he speaks audibly in doing so, is no more right than if he said in his dream “it is raining,” while it was in fact raining. — On Certainty 676
I cannot seriously suppose that I am at this moment dreaming. Someone who, dreaming says: “I am dreaming,” even if he speaks audibly in doing so, is no more right than if he said in his dream “it is raining,” while it was in fact raining. — On Certainty 676
Secondly, even if we suppose in your scenario that you can "talk to people in both worlds in different languages" then you must be talking to someone else in a public language that you and the people you are conversing with share (albeit in your dreams). Otherwise, you are not really talking to anyone else at all. — Luke
The point is that a private language is impossible. Therefore, as you say, "nobody in existence could call any language private". — Luke
Meh, I've realized I was dreaming before and recall even saying so "out loud" to a a dream person. — Marchesk
Solipsism or not, if we suppose that you are talking-in-a-dream to other people in a language that is understood by your dream participants, then it is not a private language. — Luke
As for BIVs, do you know any? — Luke
I'm rather surprised by this statement. So talking to people I'm imagining in a language that can not be taught to anyone real would not be considered a private language by you?Solipsism or not, if we suppose that you are talking-in-a-dream to other people in a language that is understood by your dream participants, then it is not a private language.
Now this person can talk to people in both worlds in different languages and I believe it makes sense to say that from their perspective all of these languages are public. — SomeName
For a person from one of these worlds, that can only experience one of them and not travel between them, the languages from the other world are completely unintelligible and they would simply not call it a language. — SomeName
But as we can at any point be only one person and have only one point of view we are unable to transcend into some meta view where we could call a language private relative to somebody else. — SomeName
That part doesn't follow from anything prior to it, and if you're trying to argue that language isn't private, you can't just jump to the conclusion you're shooting for in the middle of the argument. — Terrapin Station
I don't think this part works, either. For one, we don't say that someone is speaking a language or not based on whether we understand what they're saying. We say that someone is speaking (or writing) a language if it seems to function as a language to them--it's used to communicate, to record information, etc. As it is, there are a handful of ancient languages that we haven't been able to crack yet, and maybe we'll never crack them. We don't say that they're not languages because of this. — Terrapin Station
The point of my set up was to exemplify the relative nature of language.That part I'm not sure I understand. Could you explain it in other words? — Terrapin Station
My understanding of the "Private Language Argument" is that it would be impossible for a lone individual to create a language if they did not already speak a public language, and that if they did create a language they would need to translate their new words for things, actions, qualities and so on into their native language equivalents in order to be able to specify to themselves what they mean by them. But this would mean that their language is not genuinely private, because it is understandable only in terms of an existing public language. — Janus
they experience while being awake. These two worlds this person lives in do not share anything, neither sensations nor rules. Now this person can talk to people in both worlds in different languages and I believe it makes sense to say that from their perspective all of these languages are public. — SomeName
Two worlds A,B and people a,x,b. a lives n A, b lives in B, x lives in both.
In A and B different languages are spoken, also A and B do not share anything but x.
The meta view is exactly this formalization of the two worlds. In this meta view we understand that from the point of view of a, x does speak weird gibberish, but we also know that this gibberish is indeed an actual language. One could say the language spoken in B is a private language in A used only by x.
However as we can choose only the viewpoint of a,b or x in real life, there are only these possibilities:
If we choose a: x is talking gibberish, it's not a language.
If we choose x: I know all languages, they all are public, as I talk to a and b.
If we choose b: same as a.
So there is no private language here, even with the more permissive use of the term above. — SomeName
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