Aysegul Cakal

This paper investigates the philosophical significance of Wittgenstein’s repudiation of private language, focusing on its implications for the semantic relation between language and reality. By tracing the development of Wittgenstein’s thought from the representational theory of meaning articulated in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the use-based conception advanced in the Philosophical Investigations, the paper demonstrates that the private language argument signals a decisive break from Cartesian dualism. In rejecting the possibility of a language whose expressions are intrinsically private and grounded solely in inner experience, Wittgenstein undermines the assumption that meaning can be founded on subjective mental states. Instead, he foregrounds the constitutive role of public criteria, communal practices, and rule-governed language games in establishing meaning. The paper contends that Wittgenstein’s argument is not merely a critique of the internal aspect of semantics but a fundamental reconfiguration of the mind–world relation, one that dissolves the inner/outer dichotomy, neutralizes the threat of skepticism, and reconceives linguistic meaning as inherently social and external. This shift, it is argued, lies at the heart of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and challenges foundational assumptions in traditional representationalist accounts of meaning.