Thoughts on thoughts ...

The 'phenomenology' of thinking is, possibly, one of the things we feel most familiar with - thus Descartes' infamous computation.

But we only know what each other thinks because either (a) we have drawn conclusions from behaviour or (b) we have been told by the thinker.

(a) is always corrigible (Kripke), and (b) depends on the presumption that we understand what we are saying to each other.

Actually, behaviour interpretation isn't just 'freely' corrigible - these theories, themselves, need to be intelligible to those who discuss them.

Of course we have unarticulated thoughts. And we have thoughts which could not easily (or ever) be discovered from our behaviour. But thoughts which are forever private are also forever outside the scope of public theory - and so are outside the scope of its tests of intelligibility. Private thoughts are private.

Philosophical theorising is a public business, carried on through participation in a 'language game'. In so far as unarticulated thoughts appear in philosophical theories, they appear as intelligible - articulated - interpretations of behaviour. No private thoughts appear here in any substance (perhaps all we can say is that we may have private thoughts ...).

This isn't behaviourism: I don't deny private phenomenologies. But it does seem clear that it is only when they are articulated that they engage with theory. (Articulating them is an important and creative business, of course - but we don't always do it).

Suppose we said of all these unarticulated thoughts - whether they are disengaged from public theory, or precursors to it - that they are just the private phenomenology of language users? That we only think we share the unarticulated part because we share the articulated part through our participation in the language?

This would shed a different light on the motivation to talk of 'languages of thought'. Actually, what we have is 'thoughts of language'. And, of course, these thoughts appear to have a grammar ...

The rest remain private.