 To follow a rule privately means to assume that thinking that one is following a rule is the same as following it (Philosophical Investigations, art. 202). But this assumption is based on a subjective internal notion of justification, dependent on intrinsic individual consciousness. And this is incorrect. For according to Wittgenstein ‘justification consists in appealing to something independent’ (ibid., art. 265). The independence is provided by a notion of language use and rule following with reference, actual or potential, to membership in a wider external community and to intersubjective, that is, public and social, interaction.