言語の超越論的条件としての独我論表明

Abstract

When I say “I have a toothache”, the word “I” does not mean my body. The reason is that I cannot mistake another person's toothache for mine although I often mistake someone's arm for mine. It is impossible that I mix up my pain with others' pain. Why can I not misjudge that I have a pain? Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that the fact that I cannot make a wrong decision about my pain comes from grammatical rules. In other words, the infallibility of my pain is reduced to the usage of the word “I.” On the contrary, Hitoshi Nagai argues that this infallibility derives from the solipsistic fact that there is only my pain. Nagai says that there is a person who is totally different from other people. This person sees the scenery really, hears sounds really, feels pain really, and so on. Nagai calls the person〈I〉.The fact that〈I〉 exist does not affect the content of the world at all. For some reason, Irizumi is 〈I〉. This is a simple fact and it makes my pain infallible. In this paper, I dismiss both opinions. According to my idea, the infallibility of my pain consists of the transcendental condition of language that we can express the solipsistic facts. In other words, we need to talk about solipsism if we use language. This implies that language is essentially monologue, and our language urges each of us to confess such solipsistic expressions that “I am the one who is dreaming this dream.” The argument of the transcendentalism of language explains the infallibility of my pain, including the first two. In addition, this argument is superior to Nagai's theory of 〈I〉 in the explanation of others' language use. For, the theory of〈I〉 must allow others to say, “My pain does not really exist.”