Wittgenstein on conlanging [was Re: relative weirdness]

Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg.rhiemeier@...>:
>
> Well, I have no children to tell me that I waste time with
> conlangs, but my (elder) brother does the job.  When I recently
> made the mistake mentioning the Conlang Translation Relay in
> a conversation about translation problems, he thrusted
> Wittgenstein's infamous argumentation against "private
> languages" at me, stating that the translations were inevitably
> meaningless and thus the whole thing a waste of time.
Not only was that unfair of him, I think he rather missed
Wittgenstein's point.  Wittgenstein conceived of rules as
kinds of signposts that have merely made official the
tendencies and customs of past usages, rather than rules
being abstract laws (he analogizes these flaws to that of
a railroad).  As such, language is a matter of putting your
uses into the context of what everyone else before you has
done.  This would seem to rule out conlangs by their very
nature, but the question is not one of private versus public,
so much as logically private versus empirically private.
I'll quote A. C. Grayling's comments on the subject at length,
since he puts it so much better than I can:

  "Wittgenstein gives the private language question an
  extended treatment for an additional reason. This is that
  in the tradition of philosophy beginning with Descartes,
  it is held that the starting point for all knowledge and
  explanation lies in our direct acquaintance with our own
  experience and states of mind. Thus Descartes's starting-
  point is the "I-think" recognition of which guarantees
  "I exist"; for the empiricists, it is sensory experience
  and our reflection upon it which provides the basis for
  our beliefs about external things and other minds. On these
  views a private language is imminently possible, for they
  permit the thought (in some cases, they *start* from the
  thought) of a Robinson-Crusoe-from-birth who constructs a
  language by means of private, inner ostensive definitions
  linking words with experiences.  In a related way, the idea
  of a private language is implicated in our standard conception
  of how we come to have language expressions referring to
  our own pains, moods, feelings, and the rest, given that
  these are private to us:  no one else can have access to
  such states unless their possessors give expression to
  them in language or behavior; no one else can experience
  my moods, or pains, or even detect their existence if I do
  not wish it. Since this is so we come to think that we
  'name' our sensations by means of an inner ostension, as
  though when we have a stomach-ache, we 'point inwards'
  and say 'this is a stomach-ache'. And this suggests that
  an individual could construct a language for speaking to
  himself about his sensations and inner life which is _in
  principle_ closed to everyone else -- the "in principle"
  means that such a language is not merely a secret code
  which no one else as a matter of fact understands, like
  the Enigma code or Pepys' _Diary_, but which *cannot* be
  understood by anyone other than its speaker:  a language,
  in short, which is logically private to its speaker."
  (_Wittgenstein_, p. 85-86)

Wittgenstein's point, then, is that the kinds of things we do
here in this group are perfectly possible, because all the
languages that we create here are *in principle* capable of
being learnt by all the other members of the group; in fact,
many of us *do* learn the others' languages.  If they were
not, that would beg the question of how *any* language could
exist at all, much less constructed ones.

(You should tell your brother about this.)

> My parents, however, know nothing about my conlanging.
> I have learned not to tell anything about my bizarre
> worldbuilding and related projects quite early, when all
> I got was utter indifference from my father and sharp
> disapproval from my mother.
My father only learned that I conlang when he read my website
a while back, on which I admitted taking part in the "secret
Vice".  He asked me about it, and seemed to keep an open mind,
but did take a great interest.  Like you, I tend to keep my
conlanging to myself and to those few whom I trust not to
belittle it in a serious way. (I've gotten plenty of *false*
belittling, but that's all in good fun, and I know how it's
meant to be taken.)

> Well, I know that I am somewhat weird -
All human beings have oddities about them, and none are
based on that fact alone warrant for persecution.

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier>

             "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers