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Letters

Letters to the Editor

Private Meanings • Bah! Humbug! • Christian Marriage • God’s Mind

Private Meanings

Dear Sir,

In his amusing piece on Alice in Wonderland and language games (Issue 13) Peter Williams objects to the concept that the meaning in language games “can be wholly private”. This would appear to be the reverse of Wittgenstein’s claim. Although, for him, meaning ultimately lay outside of language, the way words are used are not private to the individual, but lie in the world. For Wittgenstein, a private language is an impossibility as it could not be constructed from scratch.

Williams also insists that “words do not mean certain things because of the way in which they are used, but are used because they mean certain things”.

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