Gesualdo La Porta

Private Information Problem (PIP) focuses on the impossibility of translating into propositional language some of our mental states: those who have a non-conceptual format. So, PIP is an issue arising from private “information”, not private “linguistic expression”, as happens in the renowned Wittgensteinian private language argument. Despite the most widespread philosophical thesis—which often relies on Searle’s Principle of Expressibility (1969)—claims that human language can convey all our subjective intrinsic experiences, I propose that it solves only some problems linked to “linguistic poverty”, not the problem concerning the absence of specific semantic formats for non-conceptual information. Through an investigation on some aspects of biocommunication, I prove that PIP is a consequence of specific biological structures’ functioning involved in human language faculty, which has the only choice of producing “semantic information”, as recently claimed by Dennett (2017). This biological constraint is demonstrated by the functioning of some evolutionary adaptations that lead to mental state “occultation”. These evolutionary constraints are common to all living beings and can be plausibly linked to the idea of “Lethality of Transparency”: “Shannonian” information, codes, and other vital data such as emotions, “qualia”, and intrinsic aspects of experience must be hidden, because their “public visibility” could lead to the organic system’s impairment, or even death.