1

Wittgenstein on Private Ostensive Definition: Two

Different Arguments

[Draft]

MICHAEL MORRIS

1. Introduction

In Philosophical Grammar, Wittgenstein considers a curious „machine‟:

The following design for the construction of a steam roller was shown to me

and seems to be of philosophical interest. The inventor‟s mistake is akin to a

philosophical mistake. The invention consists of a motor inside a hollow

roller. The crank-shaft runs through the middle of the roller and is connected

at both ends by spokes with the wall of the roller. The cylinder of the petrol-

engine is fixed onto the inside of the roller. At first glance this construction

looks like a machine. But it is a rigid system and the piston cannot move to

and fro in the cylinder. Unwittingly we have deprived it of all possibility of

movement.1

He comments further on this in the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology:

The example of the motor roller with the motor in the cylinder is actually far

better and deeper than I have explained. For when someone shewed me the

construction I saw at once that it could not function, since one could roll the

cylinder from outside even when the „motor‟ was not running; but this I did

not see, that it was a rigid construction and not a machine at all. And here

there is a close analogy with the private ostensive definition. For here too

there is, so to speak, a direct and an indirect way of gaining insight into the

impossibility.2

I take this passage to be an invitation to find two different arguments for the

impossibility of „private ostensive definition‟ within the most famous text which

considers these issues, the Philosophical Investigations—in particular, the sections

following §243. My aim here is to find two such arguments, and present them as

clearly as possible. The hope is that by separating the two kinds of argument, we will

be able to avoid fusing together issues which are really quite different.

The connection between the motor-roller design and the issue of „private

ostensive definition‟ has been noted quite frequently, but never, I think with enough

care.3 The tendency—both among those sympathetic to Wittgenstein, and among

those unsympathetic to him—continues to be to rush through the key steps of the

arguments in the Philosophical Investigations, rather than to dwell on them. I aim to

use the separation of different kinds of argument, which is suggested by

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Wittgenstein‟s comment in the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, as a device

for bringing the crucial stages of argument into focus.

I will also aim to meet the following two desiderata, in presenting the two

kinds of argument against the impossibility of private ostensive definition:

(A) The arguments for the supposed impossibility must depend essentially

on the fact that the attempted definition is „private‟;

(B) The arguments for the supposed impossibility must not depend simply

on an obviously contentious form of verificationism.

Some comments on these desiderata will be in order.

First, desideratum (A) rules out of consideration here arguments which just

depend on difficulties with supposing that language could begin, as it were from

scratch, with ostensive definitions. These difficulties are naturally thought to be

rehearsed in the early sections of the Philosophical Investigations. We should expect

there to be connections between those sections and the later sections which consider

„privacy‟, but we should also expect there to be something new in the later sections—

something which depends on „privacy‟.

But what would it be for an ostensive definition to be „private‟. Wittgenstein

famously introduces the notion of a „private‟ language in the following sentence:

The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known

to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations.4

This definition is ambiguous, between what may be elaborated in the two following

ways:

(P1) A language or definition is private if it can only be understood by one

person;

(P2) A language or definition is private if it can only be understood by one

person because it refers to that person’s immediate private sensations.

How should we understand „private‟ in desideratum (A)? Somewhat arbitrarily, I

shall understand it in sense (P2): I will take it to be crucial to the notion of „privacy‟

as it features in the two arguments I hope to present that it concerns the sensations of

the speaker. This is somewhat arbitrary, but not entirely so. Insofar as there are

considerations to do with privacy in sense (P1) which do not involve the speaker‟s

sensations, we may expect them to have been dealt with in the discussion of rule-

following. If we are to find new arguments in the sections following §243, we should

expect them to depend on considerations to do with sensations.

Why should we be constrained by desideratum (B)? There are two reasons,

one philosophical, and one interpretative. The philosophical reason is this: a simply

verificationist argument against the possibility of private ostensive definition would

not be very interesting philosophically. It is obvious that someone who insists on

public verifiability will not be impressed by an attempt to define a word which is

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private, even just in the sense of (P1). And even if we don‟t insist on public

verifiability, there are such general objections to verificationism as a philosophical

view that the market, so to speak, for any kind of verificationist argument is likely to

be very small. But there is a second, interpretative reason for insisting on (B): it

doesn‟t seem true to the spirit of Wittgenstein‟s central concerns about private

ostensive definition to see them as arising from any form of verificationism. The

example of the bogus roller represents those concerns quite clearly: the objection is

that a private ostensive definition would not do anything; it would be completely

useless. The problem is not that no one can tell whether the machine works or not:

it‟s not, as it were, a secret machine. It is just not really a machine at all, according to

Wittgenstein.

Nevertheless, desideratum (B), is rather cautious in two respects. First, it only

requires that a good interpretation show the argument not to depend on an obviously

contentious form of verificationism. I think that a form of verificationism is only

obviously contentious if it denies that there are unverifiable truths. There are other

kinds of epistemic condition on genuine truths which seem to belong with a form of

realism, rather than with familiar kinds of verificationism. One example might be the

thought that real facts (to which real truths correspond) cannot be perspective-

dependent. This view allows that there might be unknowable truths: what it denies is

that, where knowledge is possible, it is only available from a particular perspective.

The second respect in which desideratum (B) is cautious is that it only demands that

we avoid being too simply verificationist. It may be argued that a position which does

not seem verificationist is really verificationist in inspiration. Naturally, I cannot

prejudge all such arguments here.

It is a general failing of treatments of Wittgenstein‟s remarks about private

language that they do not meet both desideratum (A) and desideratum (B), as I have

here elaborated them. Those who have understood his arguments to depend on

something specific to the supposed privacy of sensations have tended to offer

verificationist interpretations. And those who have avoided verificationism have

tended to see the remarks about private language as no more than an application to the

special case of sensations of quite general considerations about language.5 It seems to

me clear that if the desiderata are worth meeting, they are worth meeting together. I

will therefore aim to find in Wittgenstein‟s text versions of both arguments which

meet both desiderata.

A word of caution, though: what Wittgenstein says in the Remarks on the

Philosophy of Psychology invites us to think about the impossibility of private

ostensive definition, not private language. The importance of this distinction is

obvious: someone might attempt to give a private definition of words in a public

language. We will see in a moment that many of the remarks which are taken to be,

in some vague way, part of something called „the Private Language Argument‟, are in

fact concerned just with the impossibility of private ostensive definition.

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2. The Quick Argument

Wittgenstein distinguishes between a „direct‟ and an „indirect‟ way of seeing the

impossibility of private ostensive definition. Unfortunately, it is not clear which of

the two ways, so described, corresponds to which of the two ways of seeing the

uselessness of the bogus roller. I shall begin with the argument about private

ostensive definition which corresponds to what Wittgenstein says he saw first about

the bogus roller, which I will call the quick way of seeing what‟s wrong with private

ostensive definition, or the quick argument.

The business of a roller is to roll something flat (dough, pastry, tarmac, grass).

This requires, at the very least, that the roller move across what it rolls flat. The quick

way of seeing what is wrong with the bogus roller is to see that whether or not the

roller moves is quite independent of anything done by the „motor‟ inside. The case

Wittgenstein considers is of moving the roller while the „motor‟ is stopped. To get a

comparable case for private ostensive definition, we need an example of a word which

does something—just as even the bogus roller can roll something flat, provided it‟s

pushed—but whose ability to do that is quite independent of what is done by a private

ostensive definition.

The following passage seems to present an argument of this kind:

Let us now imagine a use for the entry of the sign “S” in my diary. I discover

that whenever I have a particular sensation a manometer shews that my blood-

pressure rises. So I shall be able to say that my blood-pressure is rising

without using any apparatus. This is a useful result. And now it seems quite

indifferent whether I have recognized the sensation right or not. Let us

suppose I regularly identify it wrong, it does not matter in the least. And that

alone shews that the hypothesis that I make a mistake is mere show. (We as it

were turned a knob which looked as if it could be used to turn on some part of

the machine; but it was a mere ornament, not connected with the mechanism at

all.)6

The reference to the sign „S‟ is, of course, a reference back to §258, to which I will

return later. In the present section, it is claimed that „S‟ does some work: it can be

used to record rises of blood-pressure. This is the analogue to the movement of the

bogus roller. But it was supposed that „S‟ is defined by private ostensive definition: I

am supposed to point out a particular sensation to myself, and say, as it were, „“S”

means that‟. This private ostensive definition is supposed to function like the „motor‟

in the bogus roller: the private definition is supposed to be what makes the sign do its

work; it is supposed to be because „S‟ refers to a certain sensation that it can be used

to record a rise in blood-pressure, just as the bogus roller is supposed to move because

of the running of the „motor‟. But, just as the „motor‟ is not what makes the bogus

roller work—or as the knob he mentions here is a mere ornament—so, Wittgenstein

claims, the private definition is not what gets „S‟ to be able to do its useful work of

recording rises in blood-pressure.7

It is not quite clear how Wittgenstein‟s argument here works. I think there is

some unclarity about what exactly is meant by a sign‟s having a use. Suppose that we

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begin just with what Wittgenstein explicitly supposes—that there is a certain

correlation, which we might express like this:

(SBP) Whenever I have S, my blood-pressure is rising.

This correlation is supposed to be strong enough to support claims to knowledge.

That is to say, I am supposed to be able to know that my blood-pressure is rising,

without using a manometer. Intuitively, that means that the correlation must be law-

like, at least. In that case, it will support counterfactuals, such as this one:

(SBP*) If my blood-pressure were not rising, I would not have S.

But counterfactuals, like laws, are not necessary conditionals: they do not say

what is the case at all possible worlds—only those which are relevantly similar to the

present one, given certain background assumptions which determine what is relevant.

So if we vary our background assumptions, we can make sense of the truth of

different counterfactuals. Now let us ask what we would say in the following

imagined situation:

(1) My blood-pressure is not rising, but I have S (as I think).

There are two possibilities:

(1a) Correlation (SBP) does not obtain in this situation;

(1b) I am wrong to think I have S.

The difference between these two is this. If (1a) is the right thing to say, then there is

simply a law-like empirical correlation between S and rises of blood-pressure. If (1b)

is the right thing to say, there is an a priori basis for the correlation. As we might put

it: on this interpretation, (1) expresses a (partial) criterion for being S; it places a

condition on how something has to be in order to count as being S. (I will return to

this use of the notion of a criterion later, in section 4).

Now what does Wittgenstein mean when he imagines a situation in which „S‟

has a use? Does he mean that there is a mere empirical correlation between the

(introspective) use of „S‟ and rises of blood-pressure, or does he want us to suppose

that there is what we may call a criterial dependence of the correct use of „S‟ upon

rises of blood-pressure?

If there is only an empirical correlation here, it is hard to see any reason to

believe Wittgenstein‟s claim that the private use of „S‟ to refer to a sensation is

irrelevant to its performing the more obviously useful service of identifying blood-

pressure. It looks as if I have identified a certain raw feel which, as a matter of

empirical fact, is a useful guide to the state of my blood-pressure. In that case, it

seems that it is precisely because it is defined to refer to a particular kind of sensation

that I can use it to record rises of blood-pressure.

If this is right, it seems that Wittgenstein must suppose that we have a case in

which it is a condition on something‟s counting as a correct use of „S‟ that the

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sensation referred to by „S‟ is present only when there is a rise in blood-pressure.

What role, then, are we now giving to the identification of sensations by introspection

(or whatever private method is imagined)? It seems that we have to run the empirical

correlation in reverse. We have a sensation which is—by definition, in effect—the

sensation of a rise of blood-pressure. And we then discover that the sensation which

is defined like this (by criteria whose obtaining can be recognized by someone else)

presents a certain introspective appearance.

Given this description of the situation, it seems that Wittgenstein‟s conclusion

follows immediately. We can express the point with brutal simplicity if we use a

certain notion of the public: let us say that something is public if it can, in principle,

be known or understood by more than one person (insofar as it can be known or

understood at all). Then Wittgenstein‟s claim seems to be this. If the identity-

conditions of a type of sensation are defined publicly, then they cannot be defined

privately. The claimed irrelevance of the correct or incorrect identification of the

sensation by introspection seems to amount to no more than this: the conditions of

identity of the sensation are not fixed introspectively.

This might seem a disappointingly slight result. Its true signifance appears, I

think, when we consider the claims which need to be made to make sense of this. The

first non-trivial claim which underlies Wittgenstein‟s argument at §270 is this:

(IC) The identity-conditions for a type of sensation can be public.

This seems initially to offend a certain conception of the nature of sensations, which

might reasonably be supposed to be Wittgenstein‟s target. According to the

apparently offended conception, sensations are characterized by their

phenomenological character—by what it is like to have them. The fundamental

differences between sensations, on this view, are differences in phenomenology: pain,

for example, is different from joy because what it is like to feel pain is quite different

from what it is like to feel joy. On this view, pains count as pains, and feelings of joy

count as feelings of joy, because they form natural groupings in virtue of their

phenomenology. The identity-conditions of these fundamental sensation-types are

determined by the way they feel. But no one else can know what it is like for me to

feel pain or joy, so it seems that the identity-conditions for these sensation-types are

private: no one else can know what makes my pains count as pain.

In fact, this conception of the nature of sensations need not deny (IC). But that

is because it can accept that there may be any number of ways of classifying

sensations into types. We can classify sensations by public identity-conditions if we

want to, although—according to this conception of sensations—that will inevitably be

a superficial classification, which does not reflect their intrinsic nature.

Wittgenstein‟s reason for holding (IC) is not this trivializing one, though. If

we begin with the blood-pressure example, there seems something odd and arbitrary

about the claim that a word‟s having a use is a matter of there being public criteria

which determine what counts as using it correctly. Why not allow that the sign „S‟

could be genuinely useful in virtue of there being a mere empirical correlation

between the occurrence of the sensation, independently identified, and rises of blood-

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pressure? The reason is surely that the blood-pressure example is of interest as a

representative of a different range of examples. As the surrounding context shows,

what Wittgenstein is really concerned with are sensation terms in public languages—

words like the ordinary English „pain‟ and „joy‟, and phrases like „sensation of red‟.

That concern gives him a different reason for holding (IC), which we might formulate

like this:

(Q1) The conditions for the correct use of words in a public language must

themselves be public.

If (Q1) is correct, then it seems that the identity conditions for the familiar

types of sensation which correspond to familiar words like „pain‟ and „joy‟ must be

public. That is to say, what makes a feeling count as a pain—and not a feeling of joy,

say—will have to be a matter of whether or not it meets certain conditions which can,

in principle, be known to obtain by more than one person. (Q1) certainly does

contradict the conception of the nature of sensations which imagines that at the most

fundamental level sensations like pain and joy are defined by their phenomenology.

And if we have (Q1) in mind, there is nothing particularly arbitrary about saying that a

word only counts as having a use if there are public criteria for its correct use. For

that conception of having a use will be the central one in the case of words of a public

language, if (Q1) is right.

But (Q1) itself is not trivial. We can imagine a conception of public languages

which denies it: this conception may indeed seem quite natural. Let us call this

conception the ideolectical conception. The ideolectical conception will accept that

the words of a public language must be public, which is to say that they must be

capable of being understood by several people. But it will insist that each person may

understand a given public word in virtue of associating it with something which only

she knows about. It might be objected that we only really count as understanding the

same public word if we associate the same thing with it, but this objection can be met.

The ideolectical conception can respond that we only need to associate the same type

of thing with the word. So it may be that we all associate the same type of thing with

the same word, although none of us is ever in a position to compare all the different

tokens in order to see that they are indeed tokens of the same type.

This kind of picture is likely to provoke two kinds of response from someone

of a broadly Wittgensteinian—or even Fregean—cast of mind.8 First, it will be said

that if our understanding of our own words depends on associating our words with

something which other people cannot know about, then we cannot properly be said to

understand each other. This may in the end be a powerful objection, but the

ideolectical conception still has something to say in response to this. The response is

to offer an alternative conception of what it is to understand each other—insofar as we

really can be said to understand each other at all. On this alternative view, one

person‟s understanding another is a matter of her being stimulated by what the other

says to make her own associations. Communication, on this view, will not be a matter

of sharing something common, but a matter of provoking each other in ways that turn

out to be successful for carrying on everyday life.

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This leads directly on to the second response of the Fregean or Wittgensteinian

to the ideolectical conception of language. The response is to say that if it does not

matter for the successful carrying on of everyday life whether or not we know that

other people make the same associations as we do, then it is hard to see that it matters

for everyday concerns whether other people in fact make the same associations as we

do. And then we might claim that nothing matters about the meaning of words which

makes no difference to everyday life, from which it follows that what private

associations we may make with the words of a public language are strictly irrelevant

to their meaning. Again, this kind of consideration may turn out to be compelling in

the end, but the ideolectical conception can offer some resistance to it. It is not

obvious that the only differences which matter are those we can know about: that is

precisely why radical scepticism is so disturbing. And it is not obvious that all that

matters about public languages is what is relevant to the carrying on of everyday life.

We can now summarize the position of what I have called the „quick‟

argument for the impossibility of private definition. It seems clearly to be present in

§270 and its immediate context. Given that, we can see that it appears in a number of

other places too: in the famous „beetle in the box‟ passage (§293), for example, and in

this passage in Philosophical Investigations, Part II:

Always get rid of the idea of the private object in this way: assume that it

constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your

memory constantly deceives you. 9

We have a version of the quick argument whenever it is supposed (even if only

temporarily) that there are purely introspectible conditions of identity for sensations,

and it is then claimed that these introspectible identity conditions are irrelevant to the

use of the corresponding sensation terms.

What makes the argument quick is the acceptance of (Q1). The logic of the

main part of the argument can then be presented with brutal simplicity like this:

(Q1) The conditions for the correct use of words in a public language must

themselves be public (can be known to obtain by more than one

person);

(Q2) To define a word privately is to establish conditions for its correct use

which are private (can be known to obtain only by one person); so

(Q3) Words in a public language cannot be defined privately.

It is important to note the modesty of the conclusion here. (Q3) does not claim that no

word can be defined privately: it does not rule out the possibility of words in a private

language. In the same way, the considerations about types of sensation which are

associated with this argument do not show that there can be no private conditions of

identity: it is claimed merely that certain familiar types of sensation (pain, joy, the

sensation of red, etc.) do not have private identity conditions. It is the modesty in this

respect of (Q3) and these related considerations which shows that we are dealing with

the quick argument. As we will see, the other kind of argument for the impossibility

of private ostensive definition is not so modest.

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In this presentation we can see that the argument is indeed extremely quick.

The only place it can be questioned is at (Q1), but we have seen that there is an

initially intelligible position which does deny (Q1)—what I have called the

„ideolectical‟ conception. I have claimed that the ideolectical conception is

fundamentally non-Fregean and non-Wittgensteinian, but the Fregean or

Wittgensteinian resistance to it does not seem simply verificationist. It is true that, as

I have represented it, the Fregean or Wittgensteinian view depends on the idea that if

it doesn‟t matter for our concerns whether we can know that something is the case,

then it doesn‟t matter for those concerns whether it is in fact the case. But that does

not involve any simple commitment to an obviously contentious verificationism, as I

explained that notion in the last section, because it does not involve denying that there

are facts of which we can have no knowledge. The quick argument obviously

depends on the notion of privacy, as I introduced it in section 1, which means that we

have met my original desideratum (A). Since there is no simple involvement of

verificationism, we have met desideratum (B) as well.

3. The Not-so-Quick Argument: A Verificationist Reading

What about the other kind of argument, the kind which is meant to be analogous to

seeing that the bogus roller is not really a machine at all? If the quick argument

accepts that a private definition might do something, and claims merely that it cannot

determine the correct use of a word in a public language, presumably the other kind of

argument—the not-so-quick argument—must deny that a private definition could do

anything.

There is, indeed, a passage in the Philosophical Investigations which seems to

do just that—the famous §258. It is in this passage that the idea of using the sign „S‟

to record in a diary the recurrence of a certain sensation is first introduced. The idea is

that „S‟ is defined ostensively to mean a certain type of sensation—the type, as we

might put it, which feels like that. The ostensive definition is supposed to be carried

out by impressing on myself a connection between the sign and the sensation. The

section then concludes with the following argument which seems to show that this

supposed definition cannot really have achieved anything:

But “I impress it on myself” can only mean: this process brings it about that I

remember the connexion right in the future. But in the present case I have no

criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem

right to me is right. And that only means that here we can‟t talk about „right‟.

This passage has seemed to invite a verificationist reading, whether

unwittingly or not. Here is a version of such a reading:10

(V1) I have no criterion of correctness for the use of „S‟;

(V2) If I have no criterion of correctness for the use of „S‟, I will be unable

to remember how to use „S‟ correctly;

(V3) If it is impossible to remember how to use „S‟ correctly, there is no

such thing as the correct use of „S‟; so

(V4) There is no such thing as the correct use of „S‟.

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This reading of the argument takes there to be a specific problem with memory in the

case of a privately defined word. The argument is taken to assume that memory

depends on having something which ensures that I remember things right. This

something, according to this reading, is here called a „criterion of correctness‟. If

there is no criterion of correctness, there is nothing to ensure that my apparent

memory will really be correct. This interpretation reads the words „whatever is going

to seem right to me is right‟ as saying that there will be nothing to correct me if my

apparent memory is mistaken. The last sentence of the section is then taken to say

that there can be no genuine correctness if there is no possibility of correcting

apparent memories.

One objection to this interpretation is precisely that it is verificationist. Why

should we believe premise (V3)? It might be claimed that the relevant kind of

verificationism is less objectionable in the case of speaking a language: it seems

important for our general use of language that we should know what our words

mean.11

But this does not really address the problem here. It may be that much of

what we want to be able to do in language cannot be done if we do not know what our

words mean, but might it not be the case that our words mean something even if we

do not know it? In this case in particular, might we not have established a rule for the

correct use of the sign „S‟, even if we cannot tell whether we are using it correctly?

The argument seems to claim that there is no such thing as correct use of „S‟ here, and

that is just what seems not to have been convincingly established.

And the verificationist reading‟s concentration on memory is problematic too.

It is hard to see why there should be a special difficulty with remembering one‟s own

sensations, and if the argument turns on a general scepticism about memory, this is

likely to affect public definitions too. Any argument which relies on scepticism about

memory seems likely to violate desideratum (A) as well as desideratum (B).

There might seem to be some confirmation of the verificationist reading in the

fact that there seems to be some worry about memory in a passage which occurs a

little later:

[T]his process has got to produce a memory which is actually correct. If the

mental image of the time-table could not itself be tested for correctness, how

could it confirm the correctness of the first memory?12

This appeal to the need for a test seems to be precisely an appeal to the need for a

criterion, on the verificationist understanding of the notion of a criterion.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the verificationist reading makes poor sense

of §258. The main point of the whole section seems to be to claim that nothing is

actually done in the purported definition. The crucial remark is this one from the

middle of the section:

But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be!

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The remainder of the section is an argument for the claim that there really is nothing

but a ceremony here: no actual definition is made. And that conforms to what

Wittgenstein understood to be wrong with the idea of private ostensive definition in

the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology: it is like something which looks like a

machine, but is in fact a rigid construction. The point here seems not to be that a

private definition would be useless: that is the point of the „quick‟ argument we

considered earlier.

Moreover, the verificationist reading cannot explain a number of features of

the last four sentences of §258—the very sentences on which it is based. It cannot

explain the emphasis being on „right‟ rather than on „remember‟ in the first of these

sentences. (We might note a similar emphasis on „correct‟ in §265.) It forces us to

adopt a rather unnatural interpretation of the word „criterion‟: a criterion is not usually

taken to be a decisive test, as this reading has to understand it. The verificationist

reading cannot explain why Wittgenstein writes „One would like to say‟, and uses „is

going to seem‟ rather than „seems‟, in the penultimate sentence. And it seems to have

to take the word „that‟ as referring to the second of these last four sentences, whereas

it is naturally understood to be referring to the third.

These are all reasons for being reluctant to rest content with a verificationist

reading of §258. I want now to suggest an interpretation which makes the passage do

what the not-so-quick argument for the impossibility of private ostensive definition

should be doing: showing that nothing at all is achieved by a private ostensive

definition.

4. A Non-Verificationist Reading of the Not-so-Quick Argument

I think the clue to a non-verificationist reading of §258 lies in the word „criterion‟. I

suggest that rather than thinking of a criterion as a decisive test, we understand the

notion just as I understood it in section 2, as that of an a-priori-based condition.13

Such conditions might be necessary conditions or sufficient conditions, so we might

speak of necessary criteria and sufficient criteria. We might then define the relevant

notions as follows:

(NC) A necessary criterion for being F is a condition which something has

to meet in order to count as being F;

(SC) A sufficient criterion for being F is a condition the meeting of which is

sufficent for something to count as being F.

These are the notions which are in play in the familiar concept of a criterion of

identity. A criterion of identity—for persons, say—is a condition which an object a

and an object b have to meet in order to count as being the same person, or a condition

the meeting of which is sufficient for objects a and b to count as being the same

person. And this concept of a criterion of identity seems certainly to be in play in the

neighbourhood of our passage, in §253. Criteria of identity will naturally be

associated with sortal nouns: words like „person‟, „horse‟, or „table‟ at one level;

words like „animal‟, „artefact‟, „living thing‟ at a higher level of abstraction. Terms

like „pain‟ and „joy‟ are naturally understood as sortal terms at one level, with the

12

word „sensation‟ being a higher-level „sortal‟. It is natural to think that the concept of

a sortal is precisely the concept of a suitable criterion of identity.

I do not want to claim that every use of the word „criterion‟ in Wittgenstein‟s

later philosophy is an instance of the notion defined by (NC) and (SC), although I

think it would be interesting to see how far that interpretation can be taken. All I want

to suggest is that we understand the uses of the word which are relevant to §258 in

line with (NC) and (SC). Taken like that, the ante-penultimate sentence of that

section says something like this:

But in the present case I can point to no condition which something has to

meet in order to count as being correctly called „S‟.

In effect, the claim is that I can point to no identity condition for being an S-type

sensation.

This certainly looks like what Wittgenstein ought to be saying, if he is really

giving a version of the not-so-quick argument which is parallel to the deeper way of

seeing what is wrong with the bogus roller. Whereas the quick way of seeing the

problem with private ostensive definition accepts that there can be private identity

conditions for sensations, which it then claims do no work in a public language, the

not-so-quick way ought to involve denying that there can be private identity

conditions at all. But even if this is what Wittgenstein ought to be saying, why does

he say it?

At this point it is natural to turn to two passages a little later in the

Philosophical Investigations, in which use is made of the notion of a criterion:

The expression of doubt has no place in the language-game; but if we cut out

human behaviour, which is the expression of sensation, it looks as if I might

legitimately begin to doubt afresh. My temptation to say that one might take a

sensation for something other than what it is arises from this: if I assume the

abrogation of the normal language-game with the expression of a sensation, I

need a criterion of identity for the sensation; and then the possibility of error

also exists.14

What I do is not, of course, to identify my sensation by criteria: but to use the

same expression again.15

The opening sentence here refers back to one of the early remarks which Wittgenstein

makes about privacy in the Philosophical Investigations:

The truth is: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I

am in pain; but not to say it about myself.***

And the talk of „cutting out human behaviour‟ or „the abrogation of the normal

language-game with the expression of a sensation‟ is a reference to the situation which

is set up in §256, to be the background of the introduction of the sign „S‟ in §258:

13

But suppose I didn‟t have any natural expression for the sensation, but only

had the sensation? And now I simply associate names with sensations and use

these names in descriptions.

I want to suggest that §§288 and 290 show us a conception of the relation of

criteria to the use of sensation terms which can provide us with a non-verificationist

reading of §258: this will present that passage as offering a version of the not-so-quick

argument for the impossibility of private ostensive definition.

I suggest that we can find the following general picture in these remarks.. For

a word to be meaningful, there have to be criteria for its correct use: that is, conditions

which have to be met, or whose being met is sufficient, for the word to count as being

used correctly. These conditions have to be, in a certain sense, independent of the

word: it has to be possible to make sense of them independently of understanding that

word. Otherwise, the conditions would provide no rationale for the correct use of the

word. In the case of a sortal term, the criteria for correct use will define the identity

conditions for a type of thing which may be said to correspond to the sortal. So, for

example, the criteria for the correct use of the word „person‟ will define the conditions

of personal identity, and the criteria for the correct use of a sensation term will define

the conditions under which sensations count as being sensations of the same type, the

type which corresponds to that term. To take a particular case, the criteria for the

correct use of the word „pain‟ will define the conditions under which sensations count

as being pains. They will also determine the conditions under which pain a and pain b

count as being the same pain.

Let us now imagine a very simple case in which we have a conception of the

necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a sensation-term „P‟. And

let us, for convenience of representation, express this conception as „C‟. We can put

the point like this:

(PC1) A sensation is correctly called „P‟ if and only if it is C.

A familiar equivalence enables us to connect the correct use of sensation term with the

conditions for being a certain kind of sensation:

(TP) A sensation is correctly called „P‟ if and only if it is a P.

And we can then state the identity conditions of the relevant sensation type:

(PC2) A sensation is a P if and only if it is C.

This will allow us to rationalize claims that particular sensations are Ps.

Now consider a first-person present-tense report of the presence of a P

sensation:

(R) I have a P.

We might imagine that this report is the conclusion of a certain piece of reasoning:

14

(Ra) I have a sensation which is C;

(Rb) If I have a sensation which is C, I have a P; so

(R) I have a P.

How might this piece of reasoning be understood? (Ra) is naturally understood as a

report of observation: I find that I have a sensation which meets a condition which I

can make understand independently of understanding the word „P‟ itself. This

independence is integral to the notion of a criterion, as I have characterized it. It is

also necessary if there is to be any genuine argument runninig from (Ra) to (R). (Rb)

is an instance of (one half of) the criterion of identity for the P type of sensation,

(PC2). And (R) follows unproblematically from these.

I think it is clear that Wittgenstein holds that no such argument can really be

involved in first-person present-tense reports of sensations, such as (R). For this

argument involves precisely what Wittgenstein says is not involved in such reports:

identifying my sensation by criteria. What is the problem? It seems to be this: if I

identify my sensation by criteria, it makes sense to doubt whether I really have that

sensation. But Wittgenstein holds that, in first-person present-tense reports of

sensations, such doubt does not make sense. That means that first-person present-

tense reports of sensations cannot be the conclusions of arguments like that from (Ra)

to (R).

Let us examine this in more detail. Wittgenstein seems to be committed to

something like the following claim:

(CD) If I identify a sensation by criteria, it must make sense for me to doubt

whether I have identified the sensation correctly.

We can give the following rationale for (CD), if we take the schematic argument from

(Ra) to (R) to be representative of identifying a sensation by criteria in general. Each

of the premises, (Ra) and (Rb), offers a potential location for the possibility of doubt

to arise. What we need to consider is how we might remove the possibility of doubt

from each. How could we make doubt about (Rb) senseless? The only obvious way

is by taking (Rb) to be part of a definition of the sensation term „P‟: we imagine „P‟

being introduced explicitly on the basis of (PC1). How could we make doubt about

(Ra) senseless? The only obvious way is by taking „C‟ to be a sensation term, so that

(Ra) is another first-person present-tense report of sensation.

Now it seems that we can only remove the possibility of doubt from the whole

argument by supposing that the sensation term „P‟ is explicitly defined, by (PC1), in

terms of another sensation term „C‟, in its first-person use. But now let us ask: does

any of these terms have a use which is not a first-person present-tense use? If they do

not, then, according to Wittgenstein, it never makes sense for the user to doubt any

uses of these terms. And in that case, it is hard to see how anything at all can be said

using them. So if sensation terms are to be meaningful at all, it seems they must have

some uses other than first-person present-tense uses. It must be possible, for example,

for me to wonder whether you have a P, or a sensation which is C. What might I be

wondering if I wonder this? It seems that if I am to be wondering anything at all, I

15

have to be wondering whether you meet some condition which is not merely an

uttering of a first-person present-tense use of a sensation term. Even if the only way I

can express my question is to wonder whether you have the sensation which you call

„P‟, I have to suppose that your having the sensation is not just your saying „I have a

P‟.

What this means is that, in the end, sensation terms have to be rooted in

criteria which are independent of sensation terms. That is to say, if we suppose that

the report of a sensation is based on an argument of the form of the (Ra) to (R)

argument, we have to trace the argument back to a premise of the form of (Ra) in

which „C‟ is not itself a sensation term. That is to say, if we are to give the true

rationale for an explicitly justified report of a sensation, we have to begin with a

premise like (Ra) which it makes sense for the subject to doubt. That makes (CD)

compelling, and gives us reason to think that first-person present-tense reports of

sensations cannot involve identifying sensations by criteria.

If this is right, Wittgenstein is here making a point about first-person sensation

reports which is closely analogous to one which other people have made about the use

of the first-person. If I say, „I am the shopper whose bag is leaking‟, I do not identify

myself by some description. There is a difference between saying, for example, „I am

the shopper whose bag is leaking‟ and „The man on the TV screen is the shopper

whose bag is leaking‟. The difference is that, insofar as I understand the word „I‟,

there is no room for misidentifying myself in my use of the word. The crucial thing

about the concept of the first person, it is often maintained, is that it is immune to

error through misidentification.16

If in first-person present-tense uses of sensation terms we do not identify

sensations by criteria, it seems clear that there can be no such thing as first-person

present-tense criteria for the application of sensation terms. And that is naturally

taken to explain why Wittgenstein says in §258, „But in the present case I have no

criterion of correctness‟. Wittgenstein is imagining the attempt to define the proper

use of the sign „S‟ to refer to a sensation, from the first-person present-tense point of

view. The sensation is supposed to be identified by how it feels at the time. But if the

term is to be a genuine sensation term, according to Wittgenstein it has to be immune

from doubt in the first person of the present tense, and that will mean that there is no

criterion for its application from that point of view. That in turn will mean that no

rule for the use of „S‟ can be given from the first-person present-tense point of view.

But has Wittgenstein done enough to show that there can be no private

definition of a sensation term at all? Might we not be able to make sense of a

criterion for the use of „S‟ which was private without being a first-person present-

tense criterion? Such a criterion would have to be first-personal—so that no other

person could have access to it—but not present-tensed. How can this be ruled out?

Wittgenstein does not consider the possibilities here systematically, but it is

plausible to think that he has done enough to cover them. The two possibilities are:

criteria for sensations available in anticipation of having them, and criteria available

in remembering having had them. What might these criteria be? They cannot be

either criteria which we become aware of through a prospective imagining of having a

16

sensation, or criteria which we become aware of through a retrospective imagining of

having the sensation, since these methods presuppose that there are criteria to be

imagined. This is because such imagining will simply put us—whether prospectively

or retrospectively—in the position of actually having the sensation. So the criteria

available through such imagination are just whatever criteria are available unimagined

when we actually have the sensation. And these will be whatever criteria which are

available from the first-person present-tense point of view—and Wittgenstein‟s claim

is that there can be no such criteria.

If this avenue is closed off, what is left? It seems that the only criteria

available to us are the criteria for two other sensations: the sensation of being about to

have the first sensation, and the sensation of having just had the first sensation. But

what are the conditions of identity for these two new sensations? The same problems

seem to arise for these supposed sensations as arose in the first place for the original

one, the one we supposed was named by „S‟. So it seems that if we accept that there

can be no first-person present-tense criteria for sensation terms, we have to accept that

there can be no private criteria for such terms at all.

This makes sense of another remark which Wittgenstein makes about criteria:

An „inner‟ process stands in need of outward criteria.17

We might say that a process counts as „inner‟ if the term for it has the kind of first-

person present-tense use which is characteristic of sensation terms: in these uses doubt

makes no sense, according to Wittgenstein. In that case, an „inner‟ process cannot

have „inner‟ criteria; so its criteria need to be „outward‟—available in principle to

another person. That is to say, an „inner‟ process‟s being a process of a certain kind is

a matter of its meeting certain „outward‟—for example, behavioural—conditions.

This ties in with another feature of Wittgenstein‟s view. Let us ask: if there

are no first-person present-tense criteria for sensation terms, how can we learn to use

such terms in the first person and the present tense. His answer seems to be that we

„use the same expression‟.18

The idea seems to be that we have to be trained to use

sensation terms unreflectively in the first person. Why should we have to be trained?

For two reasons, I suggest: first, speaking a particular language is never a merely

natural development, so something needs to be done to get us to use a word; and

secondly, we cannot introduce a sensation term on purpose for ourselves, for our own

use in first-person present-tense reports, since this would require us to introduce it on

the basis of criteria.

If we are trained, we can only be trained by someone who is in a position to

judge whether we are using the words correctly. The trainer then needs to use some

independent criterion: there needs to be something which is available, in principle,

from a third-person point of view which can stand as the condition which something

has to meet to count as a sensation of the appropriate type. To be a pain, for example,

a sensation has to be naturally expressed in a certain type of behaviour. So again: an

„inner‟ process stands in need of outward criteria. Notice, though, that this appeal to

training is not essential to the claim that there can be no private criteria: that claim is

17

derived more directly from Wittgenstein‟s view that it makes no sense for us to doubt

whether we have a certain sensation, at the time when we seem to have it.19

Now let us turn back to §258. In the case of „S‟, there is no outward criterion

of correctness: that follows from the assumption that no one else could possibly

understand the word. All that one can do is to attempt to establish its meaning by

means of an „inner‟ criterion—a first-person present-tense criterion. It is natural to

understand the penultimate sentence of §258 as being an expression of such an

attempt:

One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right.

That is: what we want is a criterion which will capture the immunity from doubt of

sensation terms from the first-person present-tense point of view. But the problem is

obvious: „And that only means that here we can‟t talk about “right”‟. That is to say,

this is no genuine criterion: it establishes no rule for the use of „S‟.

If we adopt this interpretation, we can explain the features of these final

sentences which seemed puzzling on the verificationist reading. We can understand

why Wittgenstein says „One would like to say‟: this is an attempt to do the best that

can be done on behalf of the private definition. We can see why Wittgenstein uses the

future tense („is going to seem‟ rather than „seems‟): what we are attempting to

specify is a rule for the future use of „S‟. And we can see why the final sentence of

the section should relate specifically to the penultimate one, rather than principally to

the claim that the person offering the private definition has no criterion of correctness.

The problem raised in the final sentence is a problem with the attempt of the previous

sentence to formulate a rule for „S‟. In effect, the last two sentences are the argument

for the claim that if I attempt to introduce „S‟ in the way imagined, I have no criterion

of correctness.

Now we can work back to the sentence which set the verificationist reading

going in the first place:

But “I impress it on myself” can only mean: this process brings it about that I

remember the connexion right in the future.

If there is no independent criterion for the use of „S‟, there will indeed be no such

thing as remembering the sensation right, but not because there is any difficulty about

memory: the problem is just that there is no such thing as rightness. The reason that

there is no such thing as rightness is that no boundary has been set between those

sensations which are properly called „S‟ and others, because there is no criterion of

correctness for the term. Nor is there really a problem about memory considered in

that other passage in which the issue is raised:

[T]his process has got to produce a memory which is actually correct. If the

mental image of the time-table could not itself be tested for correctness, how

could it confirm the correctness of the first memory?20

18

In fact, memory is only brought in here because it is suggested, on behalf of the

person attempting to give a private definition of a sign, that memory might supply us

with just the kind of independent criterion of identity for the sensation which we

need.21

The suggestion Wittgenstein is considering is that „S‟ is used correctly

whenever we have that kind of sensation—and here we point, as it were, to a

remembered sensation. If my general account of Wittgenstein‟s problem with private

ostensive definition is correct, what is wrong with this suggestion is that it does

nothing more than take us back to some occasion when we might have used „S‟ in the

past. We have not been supplied with any substantial conception of a kind of

sensation: nothing has been done to tell us what kinds of similarity there need to be

between the present sensation and the past one for the present to count as being of the

same kind. All that has happened is that we have engaged in what I earlier described

as a retrospective imagining of a sensation. That means that we have simply taken

ourselves back to a situation in which, according to Wittgenstein, we have no criterion

of correctness. I suggest, then, that when Wittgenstein in §265 objects to the idea of

appealing to something which cannot be tested for correctness, his objection is not to

the absence of a guarantee of correctness, but to the absence of anything substantial

which might be being tested for. The appeal to memory does not really take us to

anything independent which might supply that substance.

For all that, it does seem possible to introduce a sensation term for oneself. In

§288 Wittgenstein offers an explanation of this appearance of possibility. It all

depends on what he calls „the abrogation of the normal language-game with the

expression of a sensation‟. His view seems clearly to be that the identity conditions of

sensations are supplied principally by the behaviour which is their normal expression.

It is only in virtue of their having these „outward‟ behavioural criteria that our

ordinary sensation terms are meaningful and are capable of being used in the way

which is distinctive of them in the first person and present tense. But sensation terms

with criteria like this would be capable in principle of being understood by other

people, as Wittgenstein notes in §256. So if we are really dealing with a private

sensation language—one which no one else could possibly understand—we have to

cut away these criterial connections with behaviour. If we now pretend (as

Wittgenstein would see it) that we are still dealing with real words, we have to

suppose that we have criteria available to us even in the first person and present tense,

and that we identify sensations by these criteria even in these uses. And now it seems

as if we could use these criteria as the basis for definitions of our own sensation terms.

If the suggested account of Wittgenstein‟s reasoning is right, his objection is then that

these cannot really be sensation terms, since they cannot have the immunity from

doubt in first-person present-tense uses which is distinctive of sensation terms.

We have here an account of §258 which presents it as offering a version of the

not-so-quick argument of the kind we were looking for: one which is genuinely

parallel to the observation that the bogus roller is a rigid construction, and not really a

machine at all. Does this reconstruction meet our two initial desiderata? They were

these:

(A) The arguments for the supposed impossibility must depend essentially

on the fact that the attempted definition is „private‟;

19

(B) The arguments for the supposed impossibility must not depend simply

on an obviously contentious form of verificationism.

We have clearly met desideratum (A): the considerations appealed to have been

largely independent of general problems about ostensive definition and the arguments

about rule-following. Moreover, the reconstruction depends essentially on the fact

that the supposed private language is a language of sensation terms: the argument

depends on a particular account of the distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry

of sensation terms.

I think we have also met desideratum (B). This argument does not depend very

simply on any contentious form of verificationism. It is true that there is a claim that

the use of words depends upon criteria of correctness, and criteria of correctness have

to meet a certain kind of epistemic condition. They have to be intelligible

independently of actually using the word for which they are offered as criteria. It turns

out, moreover, that the criteria for sensation terms have to be conditions which can in

principle be observed to obtain by people other than the person feeling the

sensations—at least, if they can be recognized at all. But these two epistemic

conditions are not evidence of any contentious verificationism. The idea that words

need criteria of correctness which are intelligible independently of the words

themselves depends on a view which relates specifically to language: the core thought

is that it must be possible to give a rationale for the use of words. This core thought

depends on such things as that languages are learned or acquired, rather than innate,

and that we use words intentionally. The other epistemic condition—that the criteria

for sensation terms have to be capable in principle of being observed to obtain by

other people (when they can be recognized at all)—is specific to sensation terms, and

is required by what I have suggested is Wittgenstein‟s account of the special first-

person/third-person asymmetry which sensation terms have. No contentious

verificationism is involved in any of this, since a contentious verificationism denies or

doubts the possibility of unverifiable truths, and no such denial or doubt is involved

here. All that the argument requires is that the conditions for the correct use of

sensation terms must be of a kind which can, in principle, be observed to obtain by

other people, if they can be recognized at all. It does not follow that the relevant

conditions must be capable of being observed to obtain whenever they do obtain. So

the argument requires no general denial of the possibility of verification-transcendent

truth.

5. How Good is This Not-so Quick Argument?

The core of the argument which I have suggested lies behind §258 can be summarized

like this:

(NQ1) I can only define a term by establishing criteria of correctness for it;

(NQ2) If (NQ1) is true, then I can only define a private sensation term by

establishing private criteria of correctness for it;

(NQ3) There can only be private criteria of correctness for a sensation term if

there are criteria available from the first-person present-tense point of

view;

20

(NQ4) There can be no criteria of correctness for a sensation term which are

available from the first-person present-tense point of view; so

(NQ5) I cannot define a private sensation term.

The contentious steps of this argument are (NQ1) and (NQ4). I will not attempt to

provide any very thorough defence of these two premises. I will simply show that

they are not as quickly vulnerable to the obvious objections as they might seem to be.

In the case of (NQ1), I will consider just the objections which might occur to a

certain kind of Wittgensteinian. (That means that what I am taking to be an objection

to (NQ1) might be taken by a certain kind of Wittgensteinian to be an objection to my

interpretation of §258.) What (NQ1) imagines is that for every meaningful term, there

must be conditions for its correct application of a kind which could provide a

justification for using it. These conditions might be necessary conditions, or sufficient

conditions; in a certain kind of ideal case, they will be necessary and sufficient

conditions. This might seem to fall foul of two things which Wittgenstein says

elsewhere in the Philosophical Investigations.

The first objection arises from the impression that may have been given that

this appeal to criteria is implicitly reductionist. If we think that every term has

necessary and sufficient conditions for its correct application which can be used in

justifications of its application, we must suppose that some equivalence to each term

can be given in terms which are intelligible independently of it. And this just looks

like a demand for reduction. Such a reductionism seems flatly contradicted by the

remarks which Wittgenstein makes about family resemblance in §67.

In fact, the issue is more complicated. In §67 Wittgenstein seems to imagine

that we have a term—we might call it „G‟—which has a range of applications of

which we can say: it is not arbitrary that they are all called „G‟. What he denies is that

there need be a unifying set of necessary and sufficient conditions which hold for the

full range of these applications. Note, first, that this is already in opposition to a

simple anti-reductionism. A simple anti-reductionism holds that there is a single

unifying set of necessary and sufficient conditions which holds for the full range of

things which can properly be called „G‟: the condition is being G. Wittgenstein would

clearly regard this as a cop-out. Looking at the different things involved in the

different ways of being G—the ways which are related to each other as members of a

family resemble each other—is already looking at things which are intelligible

independently of the term „G‟ itself.

Instead of advocating a simple anti-reductionism, Wittgenstein seems to

suppose that we have a range of related, but not simply unified applications. For each

type of application, Wittgenstein seems to imagine a non-trivial sufficient condition:

for a thing to be properly called „G‟ in this kind of application it is sufficient that it is

C. Here it is clear that the concept of being C is in some way illuminating about what

is involved in a thing‟s being G: it has the kind of independent intelligibility which

might allow a thing‟s being C to be a justification for calling it „G‟. There is no

obvious reason why there should not also be a non-trivial necessary condition for each

application: such a necessary condition might provide us with an argument for saying

that something is not properly called „G‟ in that use of „G‟. All Wittenstein seems to

21

be claiming is that the different types of application of the term „G‟—with their

different sufficient and necessary conditions—need not be unified by a single set of

necessary and sufficient conditions which would give a general explanation of what it

is for something to be G. And the point of this seems to be to undermine the idea that

words correspond to natural unities: to shapes which the world has quite

independently of any language. The long-term goal of this argument seems to be to

show that the world as it is in itself does not justify any particular range of concepts,

rather than to claim that the use of words cannot be justified at all.

This means that there is no radical opposition between what Wittgenstein says

about family resemblance and what (NQ1) requires. It is true that I considered a

simple case in which we could formulate necessary and sufficient conditions for the

application of a sensation term: but that was a simplification made in order to

illustrate a point. No harm is done to the main argument if we imagine the use of a

term to have as much variegation as Wittgenstein himself imagines.

But someone might think that there was a more direct contradiction between

the use of the notion of a criterion in the not-so-quick argument and some of the

things which Wittgenstein says in his discussion of the nature of rule-following. For

example, Wittgenstein seems to claim, in §201, that following a rule cannot be a

matter of offering an interpretation, where „interpretation‟ means „the substitution of

one expression of the rule for another‟. And in §219 he says:

When I obey a rule, I do not choose.

I obey the rule blindly.

And this might be thought to fit well with a passage close to one we have considered

already:

To use a word without a justification does not mean to use it without right.22

None of these remarks, however, undermines the demand of (NQ1) that a

word can only be meaningful if there is a kind of condition whose recognition would

provide a justification for using it. In §201, all Wittgenstein claims is that there must

be a way of grasping a rule which is not a matter of interpretation: it does not follow

that interpretation is never involved in obeying a rule. And §219 can be understood to

be referring to this basic case, rather than ruling reflection out of rule-following

altogether. And, in any case, to say that a rule is followed without interpretation or

reflection, when we use a word, is not the same as to say that there is no interpretation

available, or that there is nothing to reflect upon, or that no justification can be given

for a use of a word. After all, the general picture of word-use which underlies the not-

so-quick argument supposes that when we use sensation words in the first person and

the present tense we do so without justification; but this does not mean that there is no

justification available—it is just that it cannot be a first-person present-tense

justification. And, of course, it is just this first-person present-tense use without

justification which Wittgenstein insists is not a wrong use (a use without right).

So the obvious Wittgensteinian objections to (NQ1) are not very powerful.

What, then, about the objections that might be raised to (NQ4)? (NQ4) is supported

22

by a general picture of sensation terms which has the following two commitments at

its heart:

(SD) It makes no sense to doubt whether we are using sensation terms

correctly in first-person present-tense uses—unless we are doubting

whether we really understand the terms;

(SB) The criteria of correctness for sensation terms are behavioural.

(SD) and (SB) are what anti-Wittgensteinians hate most about Wittgenstein‟s

philosophy of mind. There are two interlinked reasons for objecting to (SD). The

first is that, with its concomitant rejection of first-person present-tense criteria for

sensation terms, (SD) seems to deny that there is anything which it is like to have a

sensation. But it seems to many the most important thing about sensations that there

is something which it is like to have them. The second objection to (SD) depends

upon a certain kind of appeal to commonsense: surely we can, in fact, reflect on our

current sensations in a way which (SD) would make unintelligible. The standard

objection to (SB) is that it commits Wittgenstein to an objectionable form of

behaviourism—one which, for example, would deny that there is anything which it is

like to have a sensation, and that one could have a sensation without being inclined to

express it in behaviour.

These objections are more complicated and harder to undermine than those

against (NQ1). Nevertheless, there is something that can be said against them, and in

defence of what I take to be Wittgenstein‟s view. Consider, first, the first objection to

(SD): that it denies that there is anything which it is like to have a sensation. What is

this idea of what it is like to have a sensation? We might think it is quite an everyday

idea (and this is what makes the objection initially compelling). A doctor might ask

you what a certain pain is like: is it a sharp pain, or a throbbing pain, or an ache? In

answer to questions like this, we seem to reflect directly on the nature of the pain we

feel. We seem to do something which (SD) would seem to make impossible: at this

point we have moved over to the second objection to (SD).

I think that the Wittgensteinian has to say, in answer to this, that we can say

what it is like to have a sensation—and so, a fortiori, there is something which it is

like to have the sensation—but that in doing this we are not reporting the results of a

reflection on the nature of the sensation. What we are doing, the Wittgensteinian has

to say, is simply considering how to describe the sensation. That is to say, we

consider just whether we find ourselves inclined to use the terms „sharp pain‟,

„throbbing pain‟, and „ache‟, unreflectively, from the first-person present-tense point

of view. These terms themselves, on Wittgenstein‟s view, have „outward‟ rather than

„inner‟ criteria. So we can say what the pain is like, but in doing so we are not using

the more precise descriptions on the basis of private criteria; rather we are simply

„using again‟ words which have public criteria.

In this kind of case, at least, it seems that Wittgenstein can say something

which is at least not easily refutable. Might the same kind of response work in a more

radical case, when we are not concerned with the description of our sensations in a

public language? Suppose I am regularly subject to two kinds of headache: migraines,

and a less disabling kind of headache deriving from fatigue. I wake up one morning,

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with a slight headache. It seems that I might be able to tell from the feel of this slight

headache that what I have is the beginning of a migraine, rather than just a fatigue

headache: I have had this kind of slight headache in the past, and it is different in

phenomenal character from the slight headaches which are simply the result of

fatigue. Of course, I do not yet have a word for this early-migraine type of slight

headache, but it seems that I could introduce a word for it, and if I do, I will introduce

it on the basis of the way it feels.

What might Wittgenstein say to this? The obvious thing for him to say is that

the concept of a migraine is the concept of a kind of headache which is describable in

a public language, and so (according to Wittgenstein) must have public criteria. The

concept of this pre-migraine kind of headache is understood in terms of the concept of

a migraine, and so seems also to have public criteria. But this seems an odd thing to

say about the present case. The problem is that, as I have explained the notion, a

criterion is a condition which is involved in something‟s counting as belonging to a

certain kind. And it does not seem to us that whether or not my pre-migraine

headache counts as a feeling of that kind depends on whether or not it foreshadows

the onset of a migraine. It seems that the connection with migraines is a purely

empirical one, and is not constitutive of the basic concept I have of the feeling in

question. It seems that Wittgenstein has to claim that this sense of a merely empirical

connection is misleading: it is in fact criterial, even if it does not seem to be.

In the end, the plausibility of this claim depends on the plausibility of (SD): if

(SD) is right, the criteria for sensations cannot be first-person present-tense criteria. I

take it that (SD) is offered as an account of the special status of first-person present-

tense reports of sensations. It is not obvious that there is a better one: the Cartesian

idea of infallible observation seems almost a contradiction in terms. Nevertheless, it

can seem that (SD) gives too little space for the possibility of reflecting on our

feelings as we have them.

(SD), of course, is only plausible if sensation terms (and other terms with a

similar asymmetry between first-person present-tense uses and others) have „outward‟

criteria. Wittgenstein himself believes that sensation terms have behavioural criteria,

as in (SB). This might seem to make him a crass behaviourist, simply defining

sensations in terms of dispositions to behave in appropriate ways. And in that case, he

is vulnerable to familiar objections. Surely, someone might say, someone could feel a

sensation without being at all disposed to behave in any distinctive way at all?23

There might be people who are terribly brave, and never show pain. And there seem

to be drugs, sometimes used as anaesthetics, whose real function is just to paralyse the

body: surely it makes sense to suppose that the drugged person might continue to feel

the pain, even if she cannot move even a muscle?

It is not clear that Wittgenstein is actually vulnerable to this kind of familiar

objection. The connection between sensations and behaviour which he is concerned

with is a connection between sensations and the behaviour which is their natural

expression. So pain, for example, is naturally expressed in the kind of behaviour

which we think of as pain-behaviour. And the crucial claim about criteria would then

be something like this: pain is (in effect, by definition) that sensation which is

naturally expressed in that kind of behaviour. But it does not follow from this that

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everyone who feels a pain expresses it in the natural way: someone might express it

unnaturally, or not at all. This does not affect the fact, as Wittgenstein takes it to be,

that what makes something a pain is that it has a certain kind of natural expression. If

this is right, the fundamental problem with (SB) is not significantly different from the

problems we have already considered with (SD): the difficulty is that we feel that we

have first-person present-tense criteria for sensations, rather than behavioural criteria.

I do not claim, though, to have defended Wittgenstein from all possible

objections. My concern has simply been to present versions of his arguments against

the possibility of private ostensive definition which meet my original desiderata (A)

and (B), as well as being interpretatively plausible. The fact that the fundamental

worries raised by the arguments, as I have presented them, are the fundamental

worries that are commonly felt about Wittgenstein‟s philosophy of mind serves only

to support the claim that the versions I have presented are plausible as interpretations

of Wittgenstein.

1 Philosophical Grammar, p. 194; see also Zettel, §248.

2 Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, I §397.

3 For example, by M. Budd, Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology (London: Routledge, 1989), p.64,

and P. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 64. Budd, it seems to

me, obviously misunderstands the comparison, by taking the rim of the roller correspond to a person‟s

behaviour and the motor to the private ostensive definition. Hacker gets the analogy right, I think, but

his interpretation does not clearly meet desideratum (B) below. 4 Philosophical Investigations, I §243.

5 Interpretations in the former camp include those of N. Malcolm, „Wittgenstein‟s Philosophical

Investigations‟, in his Knowledge and Certainty: Essays and Lectures (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-

Hall, 1963), pp. 96-129, M. Budd, op cit, Ch 3, P. Hacker, op cit, pp. 61-4, one strand of the

interpretation of R. Fogelin, Wittgenstein, second edition (London: Routledge, 1987), Ch 12, and

(despite his best efforts) C. Wright, „Does Philosophical Investigations I. 258-60 Suggest a Cogent

Argument against Private Language‟, in P. Pettit and J. McDowell, eds., Subject, Thought, and Context

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 209-66. Interpretations in the latter camp include those of S.

Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982) and D. Stern,

Wittgenstein on Mind and Language, 6.3, and the other strand of the interpretation of Fogelin, op cit. 6 Philosophical Investigations, I §270.

7 Note that the same image of a useless bit of a machine recurs in the following section, §271.

8 I say „Fregean‟, because the quick argument, as I understand it, is fundamentally the same as one of

Frege‟s arguments against psychologism: see Frege (1953: vi). 9 Philosophical Investigations, II, p. 177 (p. 207 in earlier editions).

10 The famous interpretation by Malcolm, op cit, seems to take the form of the version presented here.

11 See D. Pears, The False Prison, vol II, p 333.

12 Philosophical Investigations, §265.

13 I think this interpretation is in line with the view of R. Albritton, „On Wittgenstein‟s Use of the Term

“Criterion”‟, in G. Pitcher, ed., Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan,

1966), pp 231-250. 14

Philosophical Investigations, §288. 15

Philosophical Investigations, §290. 16

See, e.g., G. Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 215-

220. 17

Philosophical Investigations, §580. 18

Philosophical Investigations, §290. 19

This is contrary to the suggestions made by, for example, Fogelin and Stern. See Fogelin, op cit, pp

175-179, and Stern, op cit, p 185. 20

Philosophical Investigations, §265. 21

„But justification consists in appealing to something independent.—“But surely I can appeal from one

memory to another ...”‟: Philosophical Investigations, §265. 22

Philosophical Investigations, §289.

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23

This point is made by H. Putnam, „Brains and Behavior‟ in his Mind, Language and Reality

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp 325-341, and by G. Strawson, Mental Reality,

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), pp 215-250.