Wittgenstein On Denial of Privacy

Abstract

Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as a part of his programme of attack upon the philosophical search for foundations is directed as an onslaught against selfknowledge. The sense of a sentence, according to Wittgenstein was given by its criteria. If so, then how is it possible to think of sentences without criteria? The possibility of self-ascription of psychological predicates is the question. The question raises several issues in philosophy, for example: the relation between the sense and the possibility of cognition, the nature of indexical expressions, the distinction between ‘I’, ‘he’ and ‘this’, logical form of ego-centric sentences in general, selfascription of psychological predicates, the other-ascription of psychological predicates etc. These issues are related to Wittgenstein’s non-cognitive theses of self ascription of psychological predicates and to the problem of self-knowledge.