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Wittgenstein on Private Language, Sensation and Perception

Expected online publication date:  21 October 2025

Michael Hymers
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia

Summary

Wittgenstein's critique of private language in the Philosophical Investigations does not attempt to refute the possibility of a private sensation-language, let alone in any one argument, as has often been thought. Nor does it aim to establish that language is intrinsically social. Instead, PI §§243–315 presents a series of arguments, suggestions, questions, examples and thought-experiments whose purpose is to undermine the temptation to think of sensations and perceptual experiences as private objects occupying a private phenomenal space. These themes are clear developments of Wittgenstein's earlier critique of sense-datum theories (1929–1936) and his insight that naming is more complex than he had assumed in the Tractatus.

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Online ISBN: 9781108946551
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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Wittgenstein on Private Language, Sensation and Perception
  • Michael Hymers, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
  • Online ISBN: 9781108946551
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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Wittgenstein on Private Language, Sensation and Perception
  • Michael Hymers, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
  • Online ISBN: 9781108946551
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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Wittgenstein on Private Language, Sensation and Perception
  • Michael Hymers, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
  • Online ISBN: 9781108946551
Available formats No formats are currently available for this content.
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