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Single Idea 6093

[filed under theme 19. Language / F. Communication / 4. Private Language ]

Full Idea

A logically perfect language, if it could be constructed, would be, as regards its vocabulary, very largely private to one speaker; that is, all the names in it would be private to that speaker and could not enter into the language of another speaker.

Gist of Idea

The names in a logically perfect language would be private, and could not be shared

Source

Bertrand Russell (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism [1918], §II)

Book Ref

Russell,Bertrand: 'Russell's Logical Atomism', ed/tr. Pears,David [Fontana 1972], p.53

A Reaction

Wittgenstein obviously thought there was something not quite right about this… See Idea 4147, for example. I presume Russell's thought is that you would have no means of explaining the 'meanings' of the names in the language.

Related Idea

Idea 4147 If we only named pain by our own case, it would be like naming beetles by looking in a private box [Wittgenstein]

The 32 ideas from 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism'

18348 Not only atomic truths, but also general and negative truths, have truth-makers [Russell, by Rami]
21708 Russell's new logical atomist was of particulars, universals and facts (not platonic propositions) [Russell, by Linsky,B]
19051 Russell's atomic facts are actually compounds, and his true logical atoms are sense data [Russell, by Quine]
7744 Treat description using quantifiers, and treat proper names as descriptions [Russell, by McCullogh]
5465 Modern trope theory tries, like logical atomism, to reduce things to elementary states [Russell, by Ellis]
18376 Russell asserts atomic, existential, negative and general facts [Russell, by Armstrong]
6060 'Existence' means that a propositional function is sometimes true [Russell]
21702 In 1918 still believes in nonlinguistic analogues of sentences, but he now calls them 'facts' [Russell, by Quine]
9022 Russell uses 'propositional function' to refer to both predicates and to attributes [Quine on Russell]
6091 Propositions don't name facts, because each fact corresponds to a proposition and its negation [Russell]
6090 Facts make propositions true or false, and are expressed by whole sentences [Russell]
6089 Logical atomism aims at logical atoms as the last residue of analysis [Russell]
6092 In a logically perfect language, there will be just one word for every simple object [Russell]
6093 The names in a logically perfect language would be private, and could not be shared [Russell]
6094 An inventory of the world does not need to include propositions [Russell]
6095 The business of metaphysics is to describe the world [Russell]
6096 I no longer believe in propositions, especially concerning falsehoods [Russell]
6097 The theory of error seems to need the existence of the non-existent [Russell]
6098 Perception goes straight to the fact, and not through the proposition [Russell]
6099 Modal terms are properties of propositional functions, not of propositions [Russell]
6100 Once you have enumerated all the atomic facts, there is a further fact that those are all the facts [Russell]
6101 Romulus does not occur in the proposition 'Romulus did not exist' [Russell]
6102 You can understand 'author of Waverley', but to understand 'Scott' you must know who it applies to [Russell]
6119 You can discuss 'God exists', so 'God' is a description, not a name [Russell]
6103 Normally a class with only one member is a problem, because the class and the member are identical [Russell]
6106 Reducing entities and premisses makes error less likely [Russell]
6105 Logical atoms aims to get down to ultimate simples, with their own unique reality [Russell]
6104 Numbers are classes of classes, and hence fictions of fictions [Russell]
10423 There are a set of criteria for pinning down a logically proper name [Russell, by Sainsbury]
10426 A name has got to name something or it is not a name [Russell]
21712 I know longer believe in shadowy things like 'that today is Wednesday' when it is actually Tuesday [Russell]
21709 You can't name all the facts, so they are not real, but are what propositions assert [Russell]