Category: Epistemology and Method

Q Curt: “Do you believe in private language?” 1. Well, like in many things Wittgenstein was a pre-scientific thinker trying to make a scientific argument. However (a) all language consists of measurements, (b) normative language seeks a standard of weights and measures, (c) science seeks to produce the most precise measures. 2. (d) each of us uses language that is only as precise as our skill with that set of measurements. (e) because in the absence of common experience, common measures, common skill with those measures, we diverge in our individual weights and measures. 3. However, human Sense (sensations), Perception (modeling), Auto-Association, and Prediction (imagination), vary by the weights (values) we attribute to SPAA,Pr. So we speak in different combinations of weights and measures seeking approximations of one another measures. 4. In this sense, “private language” is a term for the Ignorance>Knowledge>Skill spectrum. In other words he’s trying to legitimize a falsehood: Pseudoscience. 5. Conversely, yes we do think, speak, and act using different but not incompatible weights and measures. 😉