Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on a single, central issue in the task of exploring the nature of language: it traces and explicates the determining factors in the debate over the possibility of a private language. It focuses on what went on in the bustling philosophical environment of Vienna in the late 1920s – home, during that period, to both the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book discusses the discussion of the private language argument from the early 1970s until today. It focuses on the protocol sentence debate of the early 1930s involving Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath. The book discusses the private language argument in the context of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations. It also discusses the important steps in the debate in the early 1970s, a time in which interest in private language had begun to cool as a result of external factors.