ABSTRACT
Men make themselves radically different pictures of reality. A "vision of reality," a style of thought, a culture, is in fact an ongoing process, one that contains internal options, alternatives, and disagreements. A culture must give some reasons, however dogmatic, for selecting that which it does select and for excluding that which it excludes, and thus in a way it concedes that things could be otherwise. Perhaps radically different visions are occasionally carried by single individuals, or even by temporary or partial moods of single individuals. Rather fashionable argument was one purporting to show that a "private language," a system of notions in the exclusive possession of a single individual, was impossible. The underlying argument or image is something as follows: the world abounds with rival and incompatible visions, each with its own internal standards of validation, and all of them endorse and fortify their carriers and damn and castigate their rivals.
