An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1953
The Private Language Argument
A language only you could understand is not a language at all.
Wittgenstein's argument against the picture of meaning as inner ostension. If I name a private sensation, what makes my using the name "correctly" tomorrow different from merely seeming correct? Nothing — and so there is no fact of the matter about meaning. Meaning, he concludes, requires public criteria. A devastating result for any picture of mind as inner theater.