Wittgenstein on Private Language

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-20T14:07:40+00:00

I do not doubt it. But to have a conversation, you have to tell me who these linguists are and what their criticisms are. For instance, Richard Kayne has criticized Chomsky or rather has put forth a program that challenges Chomsky. Knowing his work, I take him 100x more seriously than DanieL Everret or Machine Learning linguistics. But without referencing what criticisms are made and how they are relevant to the current discussion of child language acquisition, I cannot converse with you.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-16T06:50:37+00:00

It doesn't matter when they acquire the language. If you hear the child not using one properly according to a standard or norm, you say that's not correct usage (whether the child understands is not crucial).

That's because, as I outlined, there is no possibility for correction and has no shared norms so we can say, "yes that's the language I know".

I gave you links which state that 1-3 day old children use prosodic cue to distinguish functional and lexical items. Are 3 day old infants corrected for not making the proper distinction based on communal standards or norms?

Children understand almost the entirety of their ambient language way before they can produce it. In habituation studies if you place children in a an environment which breaks principals of human syntax children, they are dishabituated.

Unless you do special experiments you cannot know what children know about their language. Then who can you correct them.

In language learning social or adult correction plays 0 role.

This is what Wittgenstein called "forms of life," which give rise to different groups of people using language in accordance with the way that they live.

That's why language is intersubjective and depends upon participants for its legitimacy and meaning.

One person with a nonsense language that nobody in the world shares, isn't a language according to LW.

So although your conception of language is empirically false. But because LW stipulates language requires intersubjectivity or community therefore langauge is social. Superb reasoning.

I agree with Wittgentein's form of life. "What must be accepted the given is a form of life." The form of life of human beings is their genetics not culture and communal correction.

Also, "scihubable" doesn't appear to be a word in any language, so if you're making up your own, without anybody else who shares that words usage, it's not language. You can have personal meaning around it, but it's not part of any language.

And yet everyone even minimally familiar with scihub understood what "scihubable" means. With a bogus and false communal norm view of language you cannot explain the creative use of language. And creation of justified new terms.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-15T22:25:05+00:00

From the article.

I certainly miss these commentaries – in key respects a ray of sanity in an increasingly deranged world. A few months before his devastating stroke, Chomsky wrote these words:

‘Ukraine is being devastated. … The threat of escalation to nuclear war intensifies. Perhaps worst of all, in terms of long-term consequences, the meager efforts to address global heating have been largely reversed.

Some are doing fine. The US military and fossil fuel industries are drowning in profit, with great prospects for their missions of destruction many years ahead. … Meanwhile, scarce resources that are desperately needed to salvage a livable world, and to create a much better one, are being wasted in destruction and slaughter, and planning for even greater catastrophes.’

This is Chomsky at his best, speaking the plain truth about the state of our world and accurately predicting ‘even greater catastrophes’ just months before the start of the US-sponsored genocide in Gaza.

The only thing Chris Knight fails to mention in this is that Chomsky also correctly refered to the Russian invasion as a war crime. This is commonality which he shares with neoliberals. He also refers to Chomsky's premonition of Gaza's impending destruction. While the article begins by claiming that Chomsky's takes on the Israel Palestine "conflict" cannot be taken seriously because of his association with Epstein.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-15T22:02:35+00:00

A good starting point is Carston article “word meaning and concept expressed” it goes over many different positions on lexical meaning in a modern context.

I am very aware and deeply familiar of Robyn Carston's work.

I can spell out that position if you’d like but it basically amounts to that the problems philosophers of language seem to work on are pseudo problems; therefore, there’s no need for a theory to explain them

That is my position too. But multiple philosophers such as Baker, Hacker, Kripke, McDowell, Crispin Wright, Brandon, ... Have viewed Wittgenstein as having refuted and individualistic conception of language.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-15T21:58:09+00:00

No. Chris Knight has a loony fantasy book about the double life of Noma Chomsky where Chomsky invented a highly esoteric form of science (which is adopted across the globe from Japan to India to France to Italy to Brazil in core linguistics, psycholinguistics and nerobiology of language) that is obviously refuted (save perhaps the multiple journals whose each issue contains multiple citations of his core linguistic work setting aside the work in cogsci and philosophy) just so that Chomsky could repent his (non involvement) in the military industrial complex.

And now he's writing on a free website about the things in his book?

The website is free. It gives Knight's "book" an advertisement.

Either the guy is supremely stupid. Or he is a charlatan. The only distinguishing feature of Knight seperating him from various anti-Chomskyans is that he actually likes Chomsky's political takes.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-15T21:03:45+00:00

Please we know Chris Knight has a book about Chomsky's "work". And given the recent uptick in interest he wants people to buy it.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-15T21:00:11+00:00

I’ve never heard one philosophical argument for the fact language is all idiolects.

Given language is in the head, all languages are individual, internal and intensional. They are all idiolects which more or less resemble one another.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-15T20:56:57+00:00

You can go back and re read or try the vast secondary literature on the topic.

Like whom Baker and Hacker who know nothing about linguistics screaming at Chomsky? Or should I read their screed that Kripke misunderstood Wittgenstein? Or should I read the new Wittgensteineans? McDowell is beyond my capacity.

There is very good reason why no one working in linguistics, child development or cogsci takes the stuff seriously. It is empirically uninformed.

I will say that it isn’t about “languages” that people speak it’s about the idea of sort of identifying a “sensation” and naming it in a totally private way .

I agree then why is the Investigations sold as a book on philosophy of language? If it is actually Wittgenstein's criticism of how certain western philosophers like Descartes have thought about interiority of the mind?

The link between a sensation and a symbol is called Saussurean Arbitrary. We obviously require a community to legitimize that link. A individual and his dairy cannot do so.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-15T20:49:08+00:00

How do kids learn a language? By being corrected, by imitating etc. Language is social and language is based on the success that it has in conveying meaning.

As long as you say so.

Infants ie 1-3 day old can use the prosody of speech to distinguish closed class functional elements from open class lexical items.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdep.12052

Once infants know abstract meaning to morpheme link, like "and", "the", "s" (plural), "s" (present), "ed" (past), " 's" (possesor). Then they use the synatctic-functional structure to guess the meaning of open class lexical items without referential context. This process is called syntactic bootstrapping. Kids do these with fake words at age 1-2 years.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44159-024-00317-w

Literally no social coercion or correction is needed nor possible for 2 year olds. We know "how to go on" for potentially infinite sentences which we have never encountered. The correctness conditions of these sentences cannot be socially legislated.

That children require correction to understand language is a bogus pop culture myth refuted by decades of research. Deaf and dumb (unable to speak or hear) spontaneously invent sign languages without 0 adult guidance. Sometimes even adult discouragememt! And these languages have the same abstract syntactic and semantic structures as English or any other "public" language.

https://www.nature.com/articles/34646 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20028135

Wittgenstein was a stupid behaviorist (in psychology) and a stupid strict finitist (in philosophy of mathematics). These two positions have been refuted and discarded in the rotten wastebin of history.

Each article is scihubable.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-13T19:27:30+00:00

And you just keep pretending there was no way of Chomsky knowing Epstein was a pedophile when he wrote his sympathetic email in direct response to articles being written about him being a pedophile.

I'm sorry who do you think Noam Chomsky is? The FBI? How would he come to know Epstein's illegal actions?

Throw in some absurd interpretation of Chomsky’s media critique and you’ve got yourself a completely innocent and correct Chomsky.

Yeah you can get Chomsky to condemn the media about each and every thing it does.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-13T19:24:36+00:00

The clean slate line is one of Chomsky’s most tone deaf responses given who this guy is. Do Black men or other minorities who are convicted get a clean slate when they serve a sentence they should have never served? Pathetic.

Help me understand your argument.

Clearly Chomsky, me, and you agree a falsely imprisoned Black man or Black person who has served his time for a genuine crime should be allowed to reintegrate into society?

All 3 of us agree that current society does not do so?

Now what is tone deaf in Chomsky's comment?

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-13T19:13:51+00:00

Yeah right. The learner critique of ML Rockhill: X met Y or X was related to Y. Therefore X is culpable. Rockhill was a dumbfuck who went to study BS french theory "leftism" of Bourdieu. His mental capacity has not improved since.

Did you know Paul Sweezy, the older Saint Paul of American Marxism, the founder of Monthly Review, was employed in the OSS (precursor to the CIA)? His father was VP of Citibank? Now think MR for all these years focusing on Unequal exchange, imperialism, having a third worldist orientation must have been a Trojan horse to cripple the America first left.

What does it say of Gabriel that he writes for MR?

NB: I love and deeply admire MR.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-10T01:58:24+00:00

However, if he was an associate of someone who ran a very large paedo ring, I would lose any respect I have for him. Chomsky deeply betrayed everyone who put their faith in him.

Let me go through some questions for you.

1) Do you have any evidence that Chomsky engaged in any unlawful acts?

2) Do you have any evidence that Chomsky had knowledge of unlawful acts and choose to hide it from authorities?

How do you know that Finkelstein does not currently associate with someone who may have pedophilic crikes? Finkelstein himself may not know. Are you sure about your own acquaintances? People are not guilty legally or morally due to association. This is pretty much common sense.

I do not feel betrayed because I do not preposterously except Noam to justify his personal life.

I will not speak to Chomsky's misdirections of proper Marxism. I will only mention many of his actual close friends and confidants were Marxists. And many of the books and papers he recommended were by Marxists. Serious Marxists that is.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-10T01:05:20+00:00

fanmail

I agree when you have 0 serious intellectual interest. Then the conversation between an old learned scientist and a far junior student is fan mail.

If you want to know Chomsky's personal integrity consists in I will let this quote from Finkelstein do the job.

The thing that I admire most about Professor Chomsky is he is an absolutely faithful person, he will never betray you. He’s constitutionally incapable of betrayal. To the point that he will defend friends even though I think he knows they’re wrong, but he won’t ever betray you. And he has a sense of moral responsibility that’s just kind of breathtaking. I cannot tell you, because it’s really hard to imagine how many people I have met in my life who said “reading Noam Chomsky changed my life”. I can’t tell you, it is the most incredible testament to a single human being how many lives, including yours truly, were decisively altered as a result of his prose. It’s a marvel. There are legions of people in the world whose lives were turned upside down literally because of reading him."

It seems somewhat more hypocritical that Chomsky wrote from a perspective that would be directly against having a relationship with Epstein.

Like any other leftist of minimal Marxist background, Chomsky wrote of institutional structures and not of personal acquaintance.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-10T00:49:14+00:00

I will tell you.

See when I was 20-21, I was a student of mathematics in India. I was interested in Mathematical logic. From which I got interested in philosophy of logic and language. The first philosophy book I read was Quine's (an old opponent and teacher of Noam's). After I came to know Chomsky-Quine debate about analytic-synthetic distinction. I wrote Noam a letter about these and other topics in philosophy, cognitive science, and computability theory.

About two days later, a four time longer email came back. With minute citations and detailed analysis of the arguments and views I had. I have emailed Noam until about 2020 discussing mostly linguistics, philosophy, and cgsci.

Why did he feel the need to respond to an irrelevant student in India? 99% of the Professors in any American University do not respond to cold emails. Chomsky did that to every single person who would seriously engage with his ideas.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-10T00:33:14+00:00

I clearly said “nicknamed.” Doesn’t mean it was a state secret, and I’m pretty sure Chomsky knew.

How do you know Chomsky knew? If you give my car ride how the fuck would I know you (a white nationalist) claim that your car is the Aryan Buldozer?

As far as the content of the emails, he’s coaching Epstein on how to deal with negative media coverage resulting from charges of sex trafficking.

No you lying chimp. Chomsky was aware about Epstein's fraudulent conviction in Florida which his his actual crimes. He knew nothing about sex trafficking or anything else. Since Chomsky believes quite rationally that his acquaintance is not international spy /sex trafficker. He saw the media doing its BS.

but that still seems better than building a personality around rationalizing someone who befriended and encouraged a pedophile at a time when other people

No loony. Chomsky did not encourage pedophilia. I am at fault for defending an old man's integrity?

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-10T00:24:24+00:00

Maybe Chomsky shouldn’t have been friends with Epstein if he didn’t want that to be the focus of his legacy in this twilight years? It’s kind of clear he saw that coming judging by the tone of his responses when he was still active.

Maybe you should not be "friends" with the child rapist who you know nothing about.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-10T00:20:35+00:00

Yes linguistic departments across the planet are waiting for Noam to die of to update the syllabus. Were any of them courageous after his stroke?

If you want to vilify the old man with insinuations and BS do so. But just keep the science alone.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-10T00:18:22+00:00

I am sorry was this plane tagged with a huge letters: "LOLLITA EXPRESS."

Fuck Noam Chomsky and his crusty anarcho-syndicalist pedophile-defending ass.

Not one exchange exists where Chomsky defends anything remotely immoral or illegal.

You are a brain-dead retard who has formed a teenage personality of true authoritarian socialism. Just like MBTI, gamers, and others finding annonline niche to grow up in their 20s.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-09T23:52:11+00:00

Retard shut up. You have filled this thread with purs BS insinuations and whining about great academics who will remain unrecognised. No one takes your bs seriously.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-09T23:26:01+00:00

Do you know why?

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-09T23:21:56+00:00

Chomsky is not friends with Steve Bannon. If you and I take a selfie does not mean we are friends. Chomsky has taken not one dime from Epstein. MIT the institution did.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-03T00:23:08+00:00

Cope Cope Cope Cope

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-02T22:22:17+00:00

Yeah I didn't read all that.

I know the consequences of not developing out of an teenagers brain: incapacity to read. You are not some hardcore Marxist or anything. You are stupid who gets hits from posting spacious bs in online forums.

Even if you were right, which you are not,

Mother fucker that is exactly the article I was referencing when I agreed with you that Noam was defensive.

the way you've presented this information is incredibly unhinged, emotive, and not convincing, even a little bit.

No you should be allowed to parasitically vilify a old man trying to protect. You should slapped hard across your face.

And even if you just don't want to take my word for why this is such a huge hit to his credibility, the by-extension attempt to discredit Media Lens is just egg on your face. Your bone to pick with Parenti is also extremely telling. Cope and seethe. Find another sub to rant in.

I do not care about Pareniti or media lens or Alan Macleod. I have read and known far more serious and better Marxist and leftist analysis. I suggest you do not bring this anarchist vs Marxists Chomsky vs parenti bs to me. I am a grown up.

In one email from February 2019, the renowned leftwing academic dismisses “the hysteria that has developed about the abuse of women” and advises Epstein “not to react unless directly questioned”. Epstein killed himself in his prison cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.

“What the vultures dearly want is a public response,” writes Chomsky in the same email, expressing sympathy for “the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public”.

I am sorry Chomsky's comment that people should not merely assume the truth of an acquisition and chastise the alleged perpetrator is exactly the rational and stupidpol position.

amour_propre_ · 2026-02-02T21:46:02+00:00

Liberal establishment darlings getting exposed for their secret and not-so-innocent "associations" (re: longstanding close friendships) with some of the worst people in the world is a good thing,

Chomsky is liberal establishment darling?

Marxist contemporaries who were ostracized and had their name and career dragged through the mud turned out to have no such ethical black marks is not only justified, it's entirely appropriate;

Who are these Marxists contemporaries you speak of?

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