the language is the same, the difference lies in each individual use of the one language. — Janus

The why not say it is a similar language. There are thousands of languages in the world. They all began somewhere, and it obviously wasn’t instantaneous. Instead , it was incremental. Every user of a language is already contributing in their own unique way to the shifting of the basis of that language. Every time you use English you are helping to transform it into a new language.

But it will never be understood in exactly the same way by each user of the language, so it is in fact not the ‘same’ language. — Joshs

This doesn't matter at all, and moreover, it is not clear what it even means to speak of people 'understanding in exactly the same way' or not - as if there was some transcendent index of 'understanding'. The publicity of a language is not measured by the degree to which people 'understand it in the exact same way'; rather, it has to do with the way in which it helps coordinate the actions and words of users among concrete circumstances engaged in concrete tasks. We don't 'understand language' so much as understand what a language does. Language does not exist in serene isolation from which we dip our toes in and out of willy nilly. It is always-already public otherwise it is not a language at all. To put it in overblown Heidggerese: all language with language-with.

The why not say it is a similar language. — Joshs

It is the same language inasmuch as it has the same total lexicon.

I can pick one to keep you from having a coronary ( talking with you is always so relaxing ) . Or I can make a vain attempt to open you up to the possibility that each of us construes individual meanings in relation to our own larger superordinate background of differential personal constructs. But that would mean you would have to be willing to abandon your attempt to force me to conform your pre-conceived notion about the nature of discursive meaning.
So to simplify things, I will choose ‘interpersonal communication is secondary and derived'.

By the way, I’m not a fan of bullies, and your treatment of commenters on this site often comes close to that.

So to simplify things, I will choose ‘interpersonal communication is secondary and derived'. — Joshs

In which case you fall back into the initial objection of imagining an 'intimacy' so intimate that it is indistinguishable from a solipsism. As for problems of 'observing the subjective state of another' - we can't even observe the subjective state of ourselves, let alone others. We are as inaccessible to ourselves as others are to us and vice versa. In this sense I take the primacy of relationality more seriously than you can possibly imagine (in terms you might be familiar with: this is what it means to reject the "metaphysics of "presence"). That's what it means to recognize the public in the private - not to shut-up the private so tightly as though a black box that can only be peered into through a glass darkly.

Interesting. I wonder how much of a modification of language that , as you say, is to used as a memory aid , is required in order to design it for communication. Referring back to my solitary philosopher example, it may be that they are not writing solely for their own benefit but also with the aim of communicating the ideas. But would the style of the writing necessarily be that different from one aim to the other? Can writing ever just function as a memory aid, a mere supplementary tool for thought ? Or does language always instead open up a new horizon, or as Merleau-Ponty says, incarnate a manner of behavior? As such , it seems to me that communication to self and communication with others are of the same
species.

“ just as a man’s body and “soul” are but two aspects of his way of being in the world, so the word and the thought it indicates should not be considered two externally related terms: the word bears its meaning in the same way that the body incarnates a manner of behaviour.” Merleau-Ponty — Joshs

269. Let us remember that there are certain criteria in a man’s behaviour for his not understanding a word: that it means nothing to him, that he can do nothing with it. And criteria for his ‘thinking he understands’, attaching some meaning to the word, but not the right one. And lastly, criteria for his understanding the word correctly. In the second case, one might speak of a subjective understanding. And sounds which no one else understands but which I ‘appear to understand’ might be called a “private language”. — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

@Joshs - your OP seems to be more about one's "subjective understanding" of a public language, rather than about a private language, as per Wittgenstein's distinction here.

One's understanding of a public language does not itself constitute a language. That is, you don't interpret a public language via the "language" of one's subjective understanding (because one's subjective understanding is not a language).

We are as inaccessible to ourselves as others are to us and vice versa. — StreetlightX

‘We’ are our ways of construing the world. Those dimensions of sense are implicitly available to us at some level of awareness, because they ARE us. They are the constantly adjusted relations of similarity and difference through which we organize our anticipations of events, and the most complex events are other people.
We may understand ourselves very well at an explicit level. But this ‘we’ that is being understood may be a mess, that is, what we understand ourselves to be is a functionally integral process of interaction with a world, and the process that is ‘ self’ may be doing a piss poor job of making sense of events.
The self is nothing other than this interactive sense making. It couldnt shut itself off from the world even if it wanted to, except in the extreme case of suicide , where one attempts to construct one’s world down to nothing so as to avoid the chaos of an incomprehensible reality.

One's understanding of a public language does not itself constitute a language. That is, you don't interpret a public language via the "language" of one's subjective understanding (because one's subjective understanding is not a language). — Luke

But isn’t this merely a truism? We begin by pre-supposing that there is such a thing as a single language that we each subjectively interpret. So the premise is :single language, multiple subjective interpretations of it.
But what if we don’t begin by assuming there is a single language, since the only way to verify its existence is through the multitude of subjective interpretations of it. There is no standard or template to transcend the interpretations. If there are three of us in a room, one is speaking English, one French and the other German, we obviously don’t say that the three speakers are
are offering three interpretations of one language , because in this case the language is synonymous with the speaker.

This is all well and good, but at stake here is how this bears upon language. You want to leverage this confusion - which I agree exists - to argue that as a result, language must be private in some sense. But as others have pointed out, the mess of the self is almost entirely irrelevant when it comes to the functioning of language, of which the index of understanding is, as it were, felicity and not 'interpretation': what does a language allow you to do? And can you do it successfully? If anything, it is precisely the notion that language must be 'interpreted' is that indeed, secondary and derivative. Understanding is exhibited (with all the public resonance 'exhibition' has), and not introspected or introcepted (except in a derivative way).

Hence: "There is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call 'obeying the rule' and 'going against it' in actual cases" (PI§201). Or again in Heideggerese: language is ready-to-hand long before it is present-to-hand.

It is the same language inasmuch as it has the same total lexicon. — Janus

And someone has to interpret that lexicon. Each of us. Differently. What secures and justifies the use of the word ‘same’ rather than ‘similar’ here? Objectivity is an idealization resulting from interpersonal correlations. It’s a shared faith that turns ‘similar’ into ‘same’. But the same is the same differently from person to person.

That’s good to know, thanks. In light of that I think most uses of “the public language argument” that I’ve seen have been in error, since they usually seem to be attacks on language “usage” that’s idiosyncratic to one person, but could in principle be more widely adopted.

Yeah. It's kind of unfortunately named and that confusion is a really common one.

There is no standard or template to transcend the interpretations — Joshs

There are English teachers.

If there are three of us in a room, one is speaking English, one French and the other German, we obviously don’t say that the three speakers are
are offering three interpretations of one language , because in this case the language is synonymous with the speaker. — Joshs

Your position must be that there is no such thing as an English, French or German language/speaker because each individual in the world speaks their own unique language.

You could always try the same argument about a game with equally established rules, such as chess - that everyone interprets/understands it differently, that everyone plays it by their own rules, that there is no standard or template to transcend the interpretations, that there is no singular game that we call "chess". It would be equally false.

Understanding is exhibited (with all the public resonance 'exhibition' has), and not introspected. — StreetlightX

I do agree. The issue for me is that I reject the whole
concept of introspection when it comes
to what takes place when a person experiences the world (whether in what is conventionally called dreaming, imagination, sensation, social interaction, etc) moment to moment.
There is no psychic interior , no ‘intro’ to ‘spect’.
If you begin with that assumption, then you need other bodies , a public world, to get you out of your navel.
But the notion of an inner , self-affecting , self-reflexive self is one that I reject. There no such thing as a self that subsists in itself.
The self is a movement of transition, a tie between past and the world which changes it. This tie doesn’t survive past the moment of its instantiation in a moment of time.
The tie become a new tie , the self becomes a new self, every new moment. Reflection on one’s past is a new construction. The past is always a new past.
The ‘continuity’ of self that I refer to comes about because each change in self ( every moment) borrows from the past that it changes. So the ‘self’ continues to be the same differently. I look at others and empathize with them , which only means that I recognize that they too are a process of being the same differently.

But my going along with their behavior recognizes that they are other to me , that they are a variant of my changing movement of intention and motive
that isn’t ‘hidden’ from me, just other.

Objectivity is an idealization resulting from interpersonal correlations. It’s a shared faith that turns ‘similar’ into ‘same’. But the same is the same differently from person to person. — Joshs

I have to admit that this is utterly bewildering to me coming from someone who claims Derrida to be an inspiration. Can you not see that you're trying to turn this idealization precisely into a 'supplement' that Derrida argued was everywhere originary? That the exclusion of this 'idealization' is precisely nothing other than the metaphysics of presence? Idealization is inherent to meaning as such, it is what makes meaning 'iterable'.The structure of the sign is what enables meaning at all - is what enables us to speak of 'the same' - or the different - at all:

"To the extent that the unity of the word— what makes it recognizable as a word, as the same word, the unity of a phonic complex and a sense— cannot be merged with the multiplicity of the sensible events of its employment nor does it depend on them, the sameness o f the word is ideal. It is the ideal possibility of repetition and it loses nothing with the reduction of any, and therefore of every empirical event marked by its appearance." (Voice and Phenomenon).

As for the post above this - what doe any of this have to do with language?

You could always try the same argument about a game with equally established rules, such as chess - that everyone interprets/understands it differently, that everyone plays it by their own rules, that there is no standard or template to transcend the interpretations, that there is no singular game that we call "chess". It would be equally false. — Luke

Or that two physicists in a room play it by their own rules, that there is no singular game called ‘physics’.

As John Shotter wrote:

“ So, although two scientists might not differ at all in doing calculations, making predictions, and in providing explanations when working with scientific formulae, differences could still occur between them in the connections and relations they sense as existing within the phenomena of their inquiries. But these would only show up, notes Hanson (1958) in the different directions their new inquiries would take, “in ‘frontier' thinking – where the direction of new inquiry has regularly to be redetermined” (p.118).”

We don’t have to duplicate each other’s understanding to play chess or do science, we only have to approximate it, and much of our day to day communication together is at such a general level that the interpersonal
differences in interpretation will be completely irrelevant. They come into play when a deeper understanding of the other is required, such as takes place with religious, political or moral topics.
Then our belief in ‘established rules’ of language makes it impossible for us to believe that the other who voted
for that evil politician or supported that dangerous conspiracy theory or rejected basic public health advice interpreted the ‘same’ language in their own way. Instead we are forced to accuse the other of bad faith, lying, succumbing to brainwashing , coercion , ‘fake news’, immoral intent , greed.
Such accusations dominate media on both sides of the aisle mainly for this reason.

To the extent that the unity of the word— what makes it recognizable as a word, as the same word, the unity of a phonic com plex and a sense— cannot be merged with the multiplicity of the sensible events of its employment nor does it depend on them, the sameness o f the word is ideal. It is the ideal possibility of repetition and it loses nothing with the reduction of any, and therefore of every empirical event marked by its appearance." (Voice and Phenomenon). — StreetlightX

I interpret Derrida as saying here that the same (word) is the same differently WITHIN one person from moment to moment. This doesn’t take place accidentally
or specifically as the result of the interventions of
other persons.

In my article ‘What is a Number’ , I wrote :

Specifically, Derrida's groundbreaking reading of `Origin of Geometry' pursues the implications of Husserl's transformation of the Kantian thesis that an ideal object of any kind is an ideality in the extent to which it is identically repeatable again and again. As Derrida puts it,

“Absolute ideality is the correlate of a possibility of indefinite repetition."(Speech and Phenomena,p.52).

Derrida takes up Husserl's interest in this process of idealization, borrowing from Husserl a distinction between bound and free idealities (footnote 2). Derrida deconstructs the Husserlian usage of these terms, transforming them into species of iterability. Spoken and written language, and all other sorts of gestures and markings which intend meaning, exemplify bound idealities.
Even as it is designed to be immortal, repeatable as the same apart from any actual occurrences made at some point, the SENSE of a spoken or inscribed utterance, what it means or desires to say, is always tied to the contingencies of empirical circumstance. Derrida explains:

“Iterability makes possible idealization-and thus, a certain identity in repetition that is independent of the multiplicity of factual events- while at the same time limiting the idealization it makes possible:broaching and breaching it at once...the possibility of its being repeated another time-breaches, divides, expropriates the "ideal" plenitude or self-presence of intention,...of all adequation between meaning and saying. Iterability alters...leaves us no room but to mean (to say) something that is (already, always, also) other than what we mean (to say) (Limited, Inc,p.61)... It is not necessary to imagine the death of the sender or of the receiver, to put the shopping list in one's pocket, or even to raise the pen above the paper in orderto interrupt oneself for a moment. The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition.(p53).

I interpret Derrida as saying here that the same (word) is the same differently WITHIN one person from moment to moment. — Joshs

Then you've misread him to a significant degree. Nothing in Derrida's texts - and certainly nothing in the quote you've provided - 'limits' iterability as function 'within' a person - whatever that could even mean.

Again, it's telling that you continually try to put up borders between 'inside' and 'outside' even as you claim to try and explode them.

I just added to my last post.

It's just the same as with anything else; the world, this particular environment, ocean, mountain and so on. There is only one world, one particular environment, ocean, mountain and so on.

These do not become sets of similar entities on account of the countless different perceptions, interpretations and understandings of, or different dispositions or attunements to, them. The perceptions, interpretations and understandings are of, and the dispositions and attunements are to, them; to those particular entities.To advocate such a prodigiously multitudinous way of metaphysical thinking would be to advocate an egregiously unparsimonious ontology that would render all intersubjective transaction meaningless.

And you've stepped right over this without noticing, or at least addressing, it:

Sure you can change the nuanced meanings of words, create novel nuances, associations and so on. But all of those nuances are themselves intelligible, even to their creator, only insofar as they are given in a public language. — Janus

We don’t have to duplicate each other’s understanding to play chess or do science, we only have to approximate it — Joshs

To quote Wittgenstein:

201. [...]That there is a misunderstanding here is shown by the mere fact that in this chain of reasoning we place one interpretation behind another, as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another lying behind it. For what we thereby show is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”.
That’s why there is an inclination to say: every action according to a rule is an interpretation. But one should speak of interpretation only when one expression of a rule is substituted for another.

202. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it.

Nothing is Derrida's texts 'limits' iterability as function 'within' a person - whatever that could even mean. — StreetlightX

.. It is not necessary to imagine the death of the sender or of the receiver, to put the shopping list in one's pocket, or even to raise the pen above the paper in orderto interrupt oneself for a moment. — Joshs

Who is this ‘one’ who puts the shopping list in ‘one’s’ pocket? Who is this ‘oneself’ who is interrupting ‘oneself’ by changing the very sense of the meaning that ‘one’ intends, even before other persons are involved?

To advocate such a prodigiously multitudinous way of metaphysical thinking would be to advocate an egregiously unparsimonious ontology. — Janus

Welcome to the worlds of Derrida, Heidegger and Husserl.

Derrida writes:

“And so, must we not think, and think otherwise (without objecting to it frontally and integrally) , that the said "same world" (if there is some such world, and if it is indeed necessary to account for it, and account for its "effect," as "sense of the world") is not and will never be the "same world"?(On Touching - Jean-Luc Nancy, p.193)”

Who is this ‘one’ who puts the shopping list in ‘one’s’ pocket? Who is this ‘oneself’ who is interrupting ‘oneself’ by changing the very sense of the meaning that ‘one’ intends, even before other persons are involved? — Joshs

Sure, iterabiltiy is a general schema that bears upon a 'one' no less than literally anything else. Nothing in Derrida warrants some kind of 'exclusivity' to an individual. It's an utterly wrongheaded reading.

And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it.

Wittgenstein is making a distinction between thinking as classical reflective cognition and his notion of practice, which is comparable to recent notions of primary intersubjectivity, which conceives the relationship between two or more persons not in terms of "interacting" individuals, but of elements of an inseparable system in which the relationship precedes the individual psychologies.”
So a rule , as a practice, forms the meaning of the word.
By contrast , according to the traditional notion of reflective cognition , one consults an already present inner scheme of understanding to locate a rule that one then follows, which makes it inner and private.

But Wittgenstein did not have available to him other ways of conceiving ‘thinking’.

For Heidegger, Derrida and Gendlin, thinking is not consulting an inner template. It is an act of transformation akin to what Wittgenstein is describing , but one which takes place not as following a rule forged between two or more people, but between ‘me’ and the world , which includes what used to be considered ‘introspection’ not as consulting an inner realm inside one, but as interaction with a world.

Sure you can change the nuanced meanings of words, create novel nuances, associations and so on. But all of those nuances are themselves intelligible, even to their creator, only insofar as they are given in a public language. — Janus

Of course I am not denying that the world is subtly different for each percipient, whether animal or human, but it is the one shared world which appears differently in each case, and to each at different times, not a multitude of different worlds.

So this is also not to deny that the world is not the same from one moment to the next, because it is an ever-changing world; but is to say that it is the one world that is changing, and not a case of a teeming succession of countless different worlds. I suppose the reality "in itself" is neither one nor the other and the question is really concerning which is the better, more parsimonious and coherent way to think of it. To think of it, not of them, in other words, lest we become mired in a pointless, and indeed conceptually fatal, disunity.

Nothing in Derrida warrants some kind of 'exclusivity' to an individual. It's an utterly wrongheaded reading. — StreetlightX

Again, you’re beginning from a presupposition of self and social as distinguishable entities . By unraveling self, Derrida also unraveled the interpersonal social structure that depended on it.

Again, you’re beginning from a presupposition of self and social as distinguishable entities — Joshs

No, this is exactly what I am not doing. Precisely because the self cannot be isolated in some pristine self-enclosed splendour, the idea that iteration only bears upon an 'individual' cannot hold. Your operation simply shunts the social 'into' the self and then shuts out and excludes the social on account of this. Your OP rigidifies a line between the self and the social in a stronger way than any possible metaphysical schema could ever do.

To think of it, not of them, in other words, lest we become mired in a pointless, and indeed conceptually fatal, disunity. — Janus

Unity doesn’t have to depend on holding onto the idea of a single categorical fixity. Isn’t the unity that science looks for a unity within change ? That is , a way of understanding a continuously evolving flow of events such that this multiplicity appears orderable as referentially consistent?