--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote: >
>
> I'm kinda surprised nobody's brought up Wittgenstein here. His later
> stuff is (for me) a slam-dunk refutation of ken's common-sense "I have
> privileged access to my own experiences" spiel.
>
> Miles
>
I don't think so; or not the way I learned it. Wittgenstein's private language argument (which is what I think you are referring to here; otherwise sorry) certainly seems to mean curtains for any hope of *referring* to a private object; but all that might mean is that Quine was wrong to say that "to be is to be the value of a variable"; there is no obvious reason why our metaphysics might not contain other ways for things to have content for us than through references to them.
And in any case all that "I have privileged access to my own experiences" really means is a combination of the logical truth that my pains are _mine_ (in the same way that my haircut is a cut of my hair) plus the, probably neurological contingent fact that my pains hurt for me but not for you, which gives me a source of information about my pain which (contingently) you do not have.
It's all really rather underwhelming if you don't think too deeply about it.
dd
===== ... in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. -- Bertrand Russell
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