Witti-Buch2 2001.qxd - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Private Language: A Voiced Secret
David Pérez Chico & Moisés Barroso Ramos
Descartes and his famous formulation of the cogito contributed decisively to the over-
intellectualization in philosophy of the otherwise obvious idea of the individual human
being as standing on a privileged position with respect to her cognitive states. This idea,
in its over-intellectualized version, could be called as the "egocentric conception". This
conception could be described by saying that our privileged and direct access to our
inner states is taken to be equivalent to a picture in which our inner states stand, as it
were, before the mind's eye.
An unwanted consequence of the Cartesian tradition would be the view of a "private
language" which meanings would be only known and understood by the owner: the
primacy of introspection would, independently of all there is in the external world,
legitimate by itself the adscription of meaning to the psychological concepts.
All these could be interpreted, and we are well aware of it, as one of all the different
expressions adopted by the no so well regarded arrogance of the enlightened reason. It
is a reason that once dreamt with a human individual so powerful as to provide herself
with a language of her own. Among other things we will consider in what follows if it
would be possible to keep such a strong notion of reason in the issue that concerns us
here.
With Wittgenstein the egocentric conception found one of its more outstanding and
original opponents. Wittgenstein's argument of the private language, as it is developed
in the Philosophical Investigations1 , has been generally interpreted as the denial of the
apparently innocent idea that a human being can have knowledge about her own private
states, while, in our own view, all Wittgenstein really meant has to do with showing a
more accurate image of the true nature of those states and of our "access" to them.
Thus said, in this communication we will try to show that Wittgenstein's critique of
the egocentric conception does not so much entail a denial of the private language, as
the neglect of certain image or myth of such a language.
In fact, for what reason would anybody feel, without a further thought, that
Wittgenstein's critique implies a refutation of the private language? We will tentatively
anticipate that it is a perfectly natural reaction because our experiences are private by
nature and accordingly if Wittgenstein says, for instance, that I do not know whether I
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