Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument And Its Practical Applications

[Ichneumonwasp]

I was showing that the privacy status of a language has shades of gray, so you can't have a black-and-white argument about it.

I don't believe Witt made a dogmatic argument, but this could just be my reading of him.

You're thinking too high-level.

Two simple units could communicate with a 4-symbol language, where the meaning of each symbol is unique to those two units and was determined by evolution. Or it could be partially or completely learned.

The problem with this whole exercise is the near-infiite number of ways that a brain can be divided into units and information pathways grouped. For example you could consider all pathways together as one, with one very complex language among them all (which I believe is what you're doing). Or divide that in two, etc. To be useful you need to know the actual structure and workings of the brain, but I don't see how a consideration of privacy is much help in getting that.

I only used Chinese as an easy example. The thinking is the same regardless of level. A truly private language is not communicable between nodes because the one could not function off the information contained in the other. You can say that the languages differ but they are not private.

 

[Pulvinar]

I only used Chinese as an easy example. The thinking is the same regardless of level. A truly private language is not communicable between nodes because the one could not function off the information contained in the other. You can say that the languages differ but they are not private.

Our difference is in the definition of "private". You (and I assume W) appear to be defining it as "known only to one agent", whereas I'm using "known only to a restricted set of agents". With the first definition, a secret known only to two people would not be considered private. That sure doesn't sound like normal usage to me-- I think this should be made clear when discussing W's argument.

 

[Patrick1000]

Math and Medicine............

Well, this may not be exactly what you are asking for, but I think it definitely addresses the question in an indirect but very powerful way. The way I'm reading your post is that you are asking for examples of philosophers whose discussions have generated scientifically testable and/or practically useful concepts, processes, etc. There have been many philosophers of science, and I think the one-two punch of Kant and Popper laid some heavy duty foundations for practical processes in the study of science, which in turn have lead to innumerable discoveries with theoretical and practical implications.

Briefly, Kant laid the ground work for Popper with the distinction of a "thing in itself" versus the "object of perception".

Popper then took this and proposed that there were "three worlds" -- physical reality (Kant's "thing in itself"), sensational phenomena (sensory input), and mental constructs (things [concepts] built on sensory perceptions). These three worlds have become the cornerstones for establishing what is known as construct validity within the social sciences (this is my background, I can't speak for other areas, but Popper is/was very influential). That is, the connections between how we describe something, how we measure it, and it's presence in the real world. Construct validity is a methodology by which we attempt, as best we can, to make sure that our concepts of things -- constructs, like the example of pain you use in your follow-on post -- match up with reality, and further that we can measure that construct with a certain amount of accuracy. I'm sort of paraphrasing here, I'll admit, for the sake of explanation. It's a serious endeavor for social scientists, because we study things that are often times not very concrete or easily described. We need to establish that we're talking about a phenomenon that is real and that it is indeed measurable and replicable. At any rate, the process is definitely not perfect, and there are certainly some things that we are able to get a very good handle on describing, measuring and determining the reality of the phenomenon (fairness), and some things we struggle with (pain).

So Popper's "result", that is, the establishment of the concept of what we know as construct validity, is itself a process by which we have generated many, many other "results" in the social sciences, which in turn have very real practical implications.

Really interesting question! I'm looking forward to reading others' responses.

HG

Math and Medicine............

When I was "young", I was particularly interested in learning about what people had to say with regard to the foundations of mathematics, "what was math/arithmetic at root?". I had stumbled across Bertrand Russell's INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY quite by accident. But once I got that accidental whiff, I was off and running.

Being interested in the subject of mathematical philosophy per se, almost always leads, as it did for me, to one's being drawn to and then one's learning a bit about the history of those events transpiring during the heady years at Trinity College in Cambridge featuring philosophical luminaries such as Russell, G.E. Moore, and then of course there was always the in more ways than one, enigmatic, outright over the top fascinating, Wittgenstein. I was interested in math, and though it seemed Wittgenstein was also interested in math primarily at first, I was to learn he sort of drifted away from it as his philosophical focus. As time went on, with regard to my own focus, I too drifted away from math in my comparatively much much much more mundane life. Regardless of however mundane my days and nights might be, math always and forever would be a part of it. That said, its study became less and less essential for me. Strangely enough, I was to become a physician of all things.

Working as a doc, people would and still do come in telling me about their "headaches", "muscle pains", "shortness of breath", "anxiety". Growing up and living in culturally diverse San Francisco, I realized it MEANT SOMETHING ENTIRELY!!! DIFFERENT IF A 40 YEAR OLD FILIPINA WOMAN CAME IN AND TOLD ME SHE WAS "DIZZY" VS A 60 YEAR OLD GARDEN VARIETY "WHITE LADY", though both might be fairly good historians.

As time went on, and it did not take me long, I was perhaps 30 years old, I began to wonder and would think, "WOW!, I am in the perfect situation to study, in an objective sense, Wittgenstein's "Private Language Argument". All these people are telling me about their sensations, what they experience personally, and they are of course telling me with WORDS!!! WHAT DO THE WORDS MEAN!!!!! Is a private language a reality? Is it possible?"

In addition to doing the straight thing, sometimes when I was/am involved with the teaching of interns and residents, I would bring up private language, in a genuine philosophical/Wittgensteinian sense. By that I mean, I would ask them if they thought Wittgenstein was right. Were these patients doing something other than describing private objects? I would even have them read an essay by the philosopher Roger Scrutton from his book on Modern Philosophy to expose them in a formal sense to the subject.

It has been interesting to say the least. For me, Wittgenstein seems correct, very much right on target when I think about the problem formally. But by way of my alter ego, blue collar, practicing medicine view, it is hard NOT TO THINK OF PRIVATE LANGUAGE SIMPLY AS A COMMON SENSICAL REALITY, AS SOMETHING VERY MUCH TRUE. I mean, for God's sake, what else are these people/patients talking about?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Our difference is in the definition of "private". You (and I assume W) appear to be defining it as "known only to one agent", whereas I'm using "known only to a restricted set of agents". With the first definition, a secret known only to two people would not be considered private. That sure doesn't sound like normal usage to me-- I think this should be made clear when discussing W's argument.

OK, that issue I think I can clear up. Witt only meant by 'private' a secret known to a single agent. IIRC he was aware of restricted actual languages known to only two people -- there are well known cases of twins who speak 'private languages' known only to the twins. In my current state (which I won't reveal because of forum rules) I can't recall if W actually discussed this issues in Philosophical Investigations or if it was discussed in the class in which I learned the material or if I simply learned it later, but such cases are known. But that is not a violation of his basic premise. Generally, what he was trying to say, at least from my perspective, was that communication/language was always between two individuals (however defined). So, a private language doesn't make sense. I will have to look at the book when I get back home from Chicago to see what he actually said about this.

Did I mention that I love Chicago? No, I didn't. Well, I love New York more. But I love Chicago too.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Math and Medicine............

When I was "young", I was particularly interested in learning about what people had to say with regard to the foundations of mathematics, "what was math/arithmetic at root?". I had stumbled across Bertrand Russell's INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY quite by accident. But once I got that accidental whiff, I was off and running.

Being interested in the subject of mathematical philosophy per se, almost always leads, as it did for me, to one's being drawn to and then one's learning a bit about the history of those events transpiring during the heady years at Trinity College in Cambridge featuring philosophical luminaries such as Russell, G.E. Moore, and then of course there was always the in more ways than one, enigmatic, outright over the top fascinating, Wittgenstein. I was interested in math, and though it seemed Wittgenstein was also interested in math primarily at first, I was to learn he sort of drifted away from it as his philosophical focus. As time went on, with regard to my own focus, I too drifted away from math in my comparatively much much much more mundane life. Regardless of however mundane my days and nights might be, math always and forever would be a part of it. That said, its study became less and less essential for me. Strangely enough, I was to become a physician of all things.

Working as a doc, people would and still do come in telling me about their "headaches", "muscle pains", "shortness of breath", "anxiety". Growing up and living in culturally diverse San Francisco, I realized it MEANT SOMETHING ENTIRELY!!! DIFFERENT IF A 40 YEAR OLD FILIPINA WOMAN CAME IN AND TOLD ME SHE WAS "DIZZY" VS A 60 YEAR OLD GARDEN VARIETY "WHITE LADY", though both might be fairly good historians.

As time went on, and it did not take me long, I was perhaps 30 years old, I began to wonder and would think, "WOW!, I am in the perfect situation to study, in an objective sense, Wittgenstein's "Private Language Argument". All these people are telling me about their sensations, what they experience personally, and they are of course telling me with WORDS!!! WHAT DO THE WORDS MEAN!!!!! Is a private language a reality? Is it possible?"

In addition to doing the straight thing, sometimes when I was/am involved with the teaching of interns and residents, I would bring up private language, in a genuine philosophical/Wittgensteinian sense. By that I mean, I would ask them if they thought Wittgenstein was right. Were these patients doing something other than describing private objects? I would even have them read an essay by the philosopher Roger Scrutton from his book on Modern Philosophy to expose them in a formal sense to the subject.

It has been interesting to say the least. For me, Wittgenstein seems correct, very much right on target when I think about the problem formally. But by way of my alter ego, blue collar, practicing medicine view, it is hard NOT TO THINK OF PRIVATE LANGUAGE SIMPLY AS A COMMON SENSICAL REALITY, AS SOMETHING VERY MUCH TRUE. I mean, for God's sake, what else are these people/patients talking about?

deleted

 

[Patrick1000]

Another important point Popper made.....

Well, this may not be exactly what you are asking for, but I think it definitely addresses the question in an indirect but very powerful way. The way I'm reading your post is that you are asking for examples of philosophers whose discussions have generated scientifically testable and/or practically useful concepts, processes, etc. There have been many philosophers of science, and I think the one-two punch of Kant and Popper laid some heavy duty foundations for practical processes in the study of science, which in turn have lead to innumerable discoveries with theoretical and practical implications.

Briefly, Kant laid the ground work for Popper with the distinction of a "thing in itself" versus the "object of perception".

Popper then took this and proposed that there were "three worlds" -- physical reality (Kant's "thing in itself"), sensational phenomena (sensory input), and mental constructs (things [concepts] built on sensory perceptions). These three worlds have become the cornerstones for establishing what is known as construct validity within the social sciences (this is my background, I can't speak for other areas, but Popper is/was very influential). That is, the connections between how we describe something, how we measure it, and it's presence in the real world. Construct validity is a methodology by which we attempt, as best we can, to make sure that our concepts of things -- constructs, like the example of pain you use in your follow-on post -- match up with reality, and further that we can measure that construct with a certain amount of accuracy. I'm sort of paraphrasing here, I'll admit, for the sake of explanation. It's a serious endeavor for social scientists, because we study things that are often times not very concrete or easily described. We need to establish that we're talking about a phenomenon that is real and that it is indeed measurable and replicable. At any rate, the process is definitely not perfect, and there are certainly some things that we are able to get a very good handle on describing, measuring and determining the reality of the phenomenon (fairness), and some things we struggle with (pain).

So Popper's "result", that is, the establishment of the concept of what we know as construct validity, is itself a process by which we have generated many, many other "results" in the social sciences, which in turn have very real practical implications.

Really interesting question! I'm looking forward to reading others' responses.

HG

Another important PRACTICAL, real-world applicable invaluable lesson taught us by Popper HikakaGirl was his pointing out that a scientific hypothesis, notion, belief, construct should be, perhaps must be, genuinely TESTABLE, in the sense that it's vulnerable to being FALSIFIED by that testing. If it is not falsifiable, then it is not science.

 

[Patrick1000]

Not to discourage you in any sense from thinking "scientifically"....

I see a problem with this.

We have to allow communication between parts of a single brain to be a language, or else we're just begging the question here. Given that, think about split-brain subjects, where the two halves may operate independently as though they're two persons. Then consider what we should call the communication that goes through a normal intact corpus callosum between the two halves. Why isn't that a language of sorts? It's certainly private.

If the brain can be divided left-right, it seems that any subdivision could be made and the communication across that interface be taken as a private language, even down to the communication between any single neuron and the rest of the brain.

Not to discourage you in any sense from thinking "scientifically" Pulvinar, but you are assuming a great deal with your split brain thinking point. I do not mean to necessarily argue that you are "incorrect", there is no incorrect nor correct here. BUT! Wittgenstein would stop you from doing this, and try to get you to look at things "more simply". He would say;

"Pulvinar, when a little girl falls down and scrapes her knee and begins to cry, her mother will run up to her and say, "oh sweetie, are you in pain", and the little girl will keep crying. Is the mommy able to "point" to the little girl's pain, point out to the little girl that she has something called "pain", and that this something, this pain, is a private object? "How could she possible do that?", Wittgenstein would say, "it makes less sense than no sense at all". Of course the little girl's mother is not doing that. She's only asking the little girl whether or not she has pain. On the other hand, if we can UNDERSTAND IN WHAT WAY THE LITTLE GIRL LEARNS HOW IT IS THAT ONE, INCLUDING SHE HERSELF, THIS LITTLE GIRL OF THIS VERY EXAMPLE, COMES TO EFFECTIVELY USE THE WORD "PAIN", THEN WE WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT PAIN IS, WHAT THE WORD "PAIN" MEANS, AND CLEARLY IT IS NOT A REFERENCE TO A PRIVATE OBJECT BECAUSE THE MOTHER CANNOT TEACH THE LITTLE GIRL TO USE THE WORD BY WAY OF SUCH A METHOD, A WAY, A METHOD, IN WHICH A PRIVATE OBJECT IS PERCEIVED AND SOMEHOW DESIGNATED WITH A WORD, INWARDLY POINTED TO, WITH THAT CORRESPONDING WORD. THAT MAKES NO SENSE. THE WORD "PAIN" IS SIMPLY NOT LEARNED THAT WAY. TAKE A LOOK FOR YOURSELF"

I am no Wittgenstein, but that would be his type of approach Pulvinar. He "wouldn't allow you" to go split brain on him. Now again, I am not saying that you are incorrect, only that this is how a Wittgenstein type would come at you with the respose you gave. He would exclude your position as a possibile explanation because it assumes way too many things. He'd make you, or try and make you, look at the USE!!! of the word "pain", how people LEARN!!! it, and so forth, and then he would go on to importantly, at least in his mind, make the claim, "THAT! Pulvinar is what "pain" means. You can find its true meaning by way of understanding how its use was/is learned in your own case and in the case of every child". And in so doing, he would get you to admit, get you to point out to yourself, for yourself, that the learning and therefore use of this word "pain", has absolutely nothing to do with the naming of private objects.

 

[Pulvinar]

Not to discourage you in any sense from thinking "scientifically" Pulvinar, but you are assuming a great deal with your split brain thinking point. I do not mean to necessarily argue that you are "incorrect", there is no incorrect nor correct here. BUT! Wittgenstein would stop you from doing this, and try to get you to look at things "more simply". He would say;

"Pulvinar, when a little girl falls down and scrapes her knee and begins to cry, her mother will run up to her and say, "oh sweetie, are you in pain", and the little girl will keep crying. Is the mommy able to "point" to the little girl's pain, point out to the little girl that she has something called "pain", and that this something, this pain, is a private object? "How could she possible do that?", Wittgenstein would say, "it makes less sense than no sense at all". Of course the little girl's mother is not doing that. She's only asking the little girl whether or not she has pain. On the other hand, if we can UNDERSTAND IN WHAT WAY THE LITTLE GIRL LEARNS HOW IT IS THAT ONE, INCLUDING SHE HERSELF, THIS LITTLE GIRL OF THIS VERY EXAMPLE, COMES TO EFFECTIVELY USE THE WORD "PAIN", THEN WE WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT PAIN IS, WHAT THE WORD "PAIN" MEANS, AND CLEARLY IT IS NOT A REFERENCE TO A PRIVATE OBJECT BECAUSE THE MOTHER CANNOT TEACH THE LITTLE GIRL TO USE THE WORD BY WAY OF SUCH A METHOD, A WAY, A METHOD, IN WHICH A PRIVATE OBJECT IS PERCEIVED AND SOMEHOW DESIGNATED WITH A WORD, INWARDLY POINTED TO, WITH THAT CORRESPONDING WORD. THAT MAKES NO SENSE. THE WORD "PAIN" IS SIMPLY NOT LEARNED THAT WAY. TAKE A LOOK FOR YOURSELF"

I am no Wittgenstein, but that would be his type of approach Pulvinar. He "wouldn't allow you" to go split brain on him. Now again, I am not saying that you are incorrect, only that this is how a Wittgenstein type would come at you with the respose you gave. He would exclude your position as a possibile explanation because it assumes way too many things. He'd make you, or try and make you, look at the USE!!! of the word "pain", how people LEARN!!! it, and so forth, and then he would go on to importantly, at least in his mind, make the claim, "THAT! Pulvinar is what "pain" means. You can find its true meaning by way of understanding how its use was/is learned in your own case and in the case of every child". And in so doing, he would get you to admit, get you to point out to yourself, for yourself, that the learning and therefore use of this word "pain", has absolutely nothing to do with the naming of private objects.

I understand that that is what Wittgenstein would say, but your question was if it was useful, and there it has (at least) two fatal problems: 1) As Ichneumonwasp pointed out, our perception of pain isn't fundamentally different than any of our other perceptions, including those perceptions of external objects that we can point at. They all rely on shared assumptions. 2) His use of "private" in "private language" isn't the common meaning that allows more than one agent to share private information, and this argument doesn't take into consideration multiple subunits of our brain sharing private information using local private languages.

 

[dafydd]

My answer depends a bit on exactly what you are asking since there are several possibilities, but a few things first............

It isn't always blue. Blue depends on environmental context -- what the ambient surrounding light consists in (same color swatch in white light looks quite different in red light), the available contrast between the color and its surroundings, the amount of light available, etc. It also depends on the 'receiver' since if you are color blind you will see blue differently than someone who is not (thinking receptor based color blindness here), and if I muck about in your inferior occipital lobe you won't see any color, etc.

A short answer that might help, I think is this: our thinking is swayed by language conventions. When we see a car that looks blue we say -- look a blue car. But the 'blue' depends on what happens in our brains. When we see a sharp stick we say -- look a sharp stick. We don't say -- look a pain stick. But if you think about it the same process happens with pain as with other perceptions -- they depend on environmental cues interacting with receptors and being processed in our brains.

Our language convention is to internalize the pain process and to externalize visual phenomena.


ETA:

Though the convention exists probably because we get constant visual information and we don't tend to have sticks poking us except on rare occasions and stick do other things as well -- like poke other people or things -- where we feel nothing at all.

Welsh does not distinguish between blue and green. They are the same colour, glas.

 

[Patrick1000]

Not correct......

I understand that that is what Wittgenstein would say, but your question was if it was useful, and there it has (at least) two fatal problems: 1) As Ichneumonwasp pointed out, our perception of pain isn't fundamentally different than any of our other perceptions, including those perceptions of external objects that we can point at. They all rely on shared assumptions. 2) His use of "private" in "private language" isn't the common meaning that allows more than one agent to share private information, and this argument doesn't take into consideration multiple subunits of our brain sharing private information using local private languages.

Not correct......You, Ichneumonwasp and I will agree on a perception of an apple sitting on a table let's say. But we will NOT agree on a perception of Ichneumonwasp's toothache. The categories are different and not accessible to the 3 of us in the same ways in the two different situations, the one situation as regards the apple common to us all, and the other situation regarding Ichneumonwasp's toothache.

 

[Pulvinar]

Not correct......You, Ichneumonwasp and I will agree on a perception of an apple sitting on a table let's say. But we will NOT agree on a perception of Ichneumonwasp's toothache. The categories are different and not accessible to the 3 of us in the same ways in the two different situations, the situation as regards the apple common to us all, and the situation regarding Ichneumonwasp's toothache.

How do you know our perceptions of the apple agree? A clear counterexample would be one of us being red-green colorblind, looking at a red apple against a green-apples-camouflage background.

 

[HikakaGirl]

Another important PRACTICAL, real-world applicable invaluable lesson taught us by Popper HikakaGirl was his pointing out that a scientific hypothesis, notion, belief, construct should be, perhaps must be, genuinely TESTABLE, in the sense that it's vulnerable to being FALSIFIED by that testing. If it is not falsifiable, then it is not science.

Yes, that's correct. Among other criteria, a theory does need to be testable and also able to be falsified. Popper was all about getting a handle on conducting science in a methodical way that produces reliable results from which we can reasonably draw conclusions. He was pretty much The Man.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

2) His use of "private" in "private language" isn't the common meaning that allows more than one agent to share private information, and this argument doesn't take into consideration multiple subunits of our brain sharing private information using local private languages.

Yes, he used 'private' as in 'private language' to mean something very specific -- language available to a single person. His point was the we don't learn the meaning of so-called private sensations with a 'private language' but only through interactions with others within a larger language game.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Not correct......You, Ichneumonwasp and I will agree on a perception of an apple sitting on a table let's say. But we will NOT agree on a perception of Ichneumonwasp's toothache. The categories are different and not accessible to the 3 of us in the same ways in the two different situations, the one situation as regards the apple common to us all, and the other situation regarding Ichneumonwasp's toothache.

What he said was that our perception of pain is not fundamental different from perception of 'objective' objects and that is correct. That some stimulations are hidden from us is interesting, but it does not create a fundamentally different situation.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I am no Wittgenstein, but that would be his type of approach Pulvinar. He "wouldn't allow you" to go split brain on him. Now again, I am not saying that you are incorrect, only that this is how a Wittgenstein type would come at you with the respose you gave. He would exclude your position as a possibile explanation because it assumes way too many things. He'd make you, or try and make you, look at the USE!!! of the word "pain", how people LEARN!!! it, and so forth, and then he would go on to importantly, at least in his mind, make the claim, "THAT! Pulvinar is what "pain" means. You can find its true meaning by way of understanding how its use was/is learned in your own case and in the case of every child". And in so doing, he would get you to admit, get you to point out to yourself, for yourself, that the learning and therefore use of this word "pain", has absolutely nothing to do with the naming of private objects.

I disagree with you. I don't think he would have any problem with anyone going 'split brain'. You seem to ignore his discussion of rule following that precedes the discussion of private language. If he were alive now and knew about split brain patients I'm sure he would learn the neuroscience and discuss the issue in the appropriate way. Of course it all boils down to use, but we needn't restrict ourselves to use of English words.

 

[Patrick1000]

That is a good point.......

How do you know our perceptions of the apple agree? A clear counterexample would be one of us being red-green colorblind, looking at a red apple against a green-apples-camouflage background.

That is a good point.......

I do not know that they agree myself.

Wittgenstein would say that language only makes sense as a third person activity. So in that sense, they/we must agree. If the three of us all use the word "apple", we understand one another because we are using a public word to reference a public object.

We understand one another, we understand language, because we speak in and ONLY in third person terms.

 

[Patrick1000]

He scores big, Popper does, in this regard in my book....

Yes, that's correct. Among other criteria, a theory does need to be testable and also able to be falsified. Popper was all about getting a handle on conducting science in a methodical way that produces reliable results from which we can reasonably draw conclusions. He was pretty much The Man.

He scores big, Popper does, in this regard in my book....

Amazing stuff really, this Popper stuff with the falsifiability issue. Simple AND elegant AND powerful, all at the same time. But not necessarily obvious.

Like great mathematics, or great science itself......

 

[Patrick1000]

One good Wittgensteinian point about the word "pain" is....

What he said was that our perception of pain is not fundamental different from perception of 'objective' objects and that is correct. That some stimulations are hidden from us is interesting, but it does not create a fundamentally different situation.

One good Wittgensteinian point about the word "pain" is that we use the word "pain", we say we are in pain, in the same sense that a child cries.

Wittgenstein is not a behaviorist. He is drawing an analogy between the two kinds of doing however, crying and saying one is in pain. We do the former when young, and the latter when older. At least most of the time anyway....

 

[Patrick1000]

Good point.........

I disagree with you. I don't think he would have any problem with anyone going 'split brain'. You seem to ignore his discussion of rule following that precedes the discussion of private language. If he were alive now and knew about split brain patients I'm sure he would learn the neuroscience and discuss the issue in the appropriate way. Of course it all boils down to use, but we needn't restrict ourselves to use of English words.

Good point.........

My point however is that Wittgenstein really tried to AVOID physiology. And, in a sense, that is a good principle when dealing with this type of thing, this type of "Philosophical Investigation". We cannot assume anything. Fundamentals are paramount. No theories, just straight forward observation with common sense applied to the "interpretation", which may be even too strong a word.

With Wittgenstein we want to let things be as much as possible.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

One good Wittgensteinian point about the word "pain" is that we use the word "pain", we say we are in pain, in the same sense that a child cries.

Wittgenstein is not a behaviorist. He is drawing an analogy between the two kinds of doing however, crying and saying one is in pain. We do the former when young, and the latter when older. At least most of the time anyway....

Yes, I agree; words don't stand for things, they stand in for things.

The 'he' to whom I referred above was not Witt, though, but Pulvinar. There is still nothing fundamentally different about all forms of sensation. There are clear differences, to be sure, amongst various perceptions and how they operate, what creates the sensation in the first place; but none fundamentally differ.