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The Factualist/Nonfactualist Debate among Kripke Commentators |
Perhaps
the liveliest debate engendered by Kripke's book is that concerned with whether
KW's sceptical solution ends up committing him to some sort of nonfactualist
(noncognitive) account of meaning attributions, i.e., statements of the form,
"Jones means plus by '+'". The early consensus among commentators was
that KW was so committed. Interestingly, the view that KW was a nonfactualist
about MAs was not, for the most part, seen as a weak spot in KW's sceptical
solution, (as long as we take KW to be espousing an independent thesis rather
than trying to echo Wittgenstein). That is, commentators, in particular, Baker
and Hacker and Colin McGinn, took it for granted that KW's shift from truth
conditions to assertion conditions just was a shift from a factualist account
of MAs to some sort of nonfactualist account but did not see this as a
liability in KW's sceptical solution, except insofar as KW was trying to be a
reasonable facsimile of LW.
For example, McGinn says: "I would not think it proper to object to
Kripke's sceptical solution on the quite general ground that it can never be correct to replace a
fact-stating model of a specific region of discourse with some kind of
'non-cognitivist' model." (McGinn, Wittgenstein on Meaning, p. 180). McGinn's main complaint
against KW's sceptical solution is that there is no need for a shift from a
fact-stating account of MAs to a nonfactualist account: "[W]e have been given no cogent reason to revise our naive
belief that ascriptions of meaning and rule-following are made true by
individualistic facts." (McGinn, p. 180).
Visitors to this site are no doubt aware however, that a couple of recent
papers by Alex Byrne and George Wilson respectively, challenge the claim that
KW espouses a nonfactualist account of MAs. At this point, I am struck by the
question: Given that most commentators do not criticize KW for espousing
nonfactualism, one wonders what, beyond simply getting Kripke right, depends on
KW being or not being a nonfactualist. One really gets no good answer from Byrne.
He plows ahead with his case for a "prevalent misunderstanding" on
this matter but says almost nothing about why or how the misunderstanding
caused Kripke's critics to be wildly off target in their criticisms of KW or
how getting KW right can be used to save him from his critics. And frankly, one
gets no better answer from Wilson.
Although Wilson claims that taking KW to be a nonfactualist is somehow
connected with a common, but by Wilson's lights, bogus, charge that KW's view
is incompatible with claims made by Wittgenstein at Philosophical Investigations §201, he fails to convince me that
commentators are wrong to hold that KW is incompatible with §201. Thus, even if
I allow that reading KW as a nonfactualist is the source of the charge that KW
is incompatible with §201 (which I don't), that Wilson seems to be wrong about
the compatibility of KW and §201, suggests that the issue of whether KW is or
is not a nonfactualist is not a significant one.
By my lights, the dispute about KW's nonfactualism is misplaced for the simple
reason that Kripke clearly admits that in some sense of 'fact', whatever it may
be, there are no facts for meaning attributions to describe, state, be made
true by, etc. As I note in my reply to Wilson, Kripke explicitly allows that
his Wittgenstein's solution has the consequence that meaning attributions
"are neither to be regarded as stating facts, nor to be thought of as explaining our behavior . . . ." (K, p. 31, fn. 22). So in
some sense of 'fact', KW is a nonfactualist.
My own view is that Kripke begins by trying to make his Wittgenstein a
nonfactualist (i.e., for some reason K thinks it's important for Wittgenstein
to agree with his sceptic that there are no facts that show that someone means
plus rather than quus, and all that that entails, viz., that meaning
attributions don't state facts), begins with the goal of making some sort of
significant distinction between facts and truth conditions on the one hand and
"roughly specifiable circumstances" and assertability conditions on
the other, but then can't, in the end, pull it all off. That is, KW does not
succeed in giving us a viable or plausible account of meaning, (more precisely,
does not give us a viable or plausible account of the assertability conditions
for meaning attributions) that makes no appeal to what he and the sceptic
allegedly both deny exists, viz., something which shows "how I am
justified in giving the answer '125' (rather than, e.g., '5') to '68 +
57'."
As such, it's not hard to make a case for KW being a factualist of some sort,
since it is clear that his sceptical solution account of the justification of
meaning attributions does appeal to facts, viz., the usual ones, facts about
what someone has said and when, and how, etc. But what Kripke's apologists fail
to appreciate is that KW's appeal to such facts is incompatible with KW's
agreeing with his sceptic that there are no such facts available to properly
justify meaning attributions. Either such facts were sufficient to answer the
sceptic initially, in which case the sceptic is wrong about there being no
facts that justify meaning attributions or else such facts are insufficient to
justify our meaning attributions. The alleged "out" here, of course,
is to claim, as Kripke attempts to claim, that the sort of justification sought
by the sceptic is somehow illegitimate or based on a "philosophical
misconstrual" of our meaning talk. The main problem with this manuever is
rather straightforward: the only reason Kripke offers us for saying that the
sceptic is guilty of a misconstrual of our ordinary meaning talk is because if
he isn't regarded as guilty of this, we couldn't justify our meaning
attributions!
As a result,
KW ends up as a factualist but only because Kripke's attempt
to make him a nonfactualist and have him provide a viable or plausible
account of meaning attributions, was a hopeless cause. Thus, KW is a
factualist, malgre Kripke (not lui). However, as such, KW cannot be
said to have offered a SCEPTICAL solution to his sceptical paradox. And herein
lies the rub. In simple form, here is the dilemma facing Kripke apologists.
Either they respect KW's professed acceptance of his sceptic's denial of
meaning facts, which then forces them to conclude that KW's attempt to properly
justify meaning attributions fails miserably (because of KW's denial of meaning
facts; ), or they must claim that KW's sceptical
solution account of meaning attributions leans on facts, since the account
cannot be both viable and nonfactual. Unfortunately, the factualist account
makes KW's solution straight, not sceptical.
Last
modified October 3, 2011
JAH, Professor
Dept. of Philosophy