|
Crusoes vs.
Communities: On the Failures of KW's Sceptical Solution |
In
my paper, "Kripke's legerdemain .
. . ", I claimed that Kripke, (better, Kripke's Wittgenstein, hereafter
KW) gave us the appearance, rather than the reality, of a cogent case against
private language. A careful
examination of Kripke's text revealed, I showed, that Kripke altered the requirements
for "substantive meaning" as he moved from the case of the person
"considered in isolation" (hereafter, ICI) to the "widened
gaze" of someone considering individuals as members of communities. Simply put, I showed that whereas Kripke
required that we be able to say what rule an ICI was following, in order to
call him a rule-follower, he required only that we we be able to say of a
community member that his/her answers to various computation problems accord
with some particular rule or other (usually the rule is plus, or addition), in
order to call him a rule follower.
I also showed that absolutely nothing at all prevented us from saying of an ICI
whether his/her answers were or were not in accord with plus or addition. (For the fussy among us, I assumed it
was clear that nothing in Kripke's book argues that an ICI is prevented from
giving answers in accord with plus. Indeed, such a view is simply incompatible with Kripke's
contention that nothing rules out a physically isolated individual, PII, from
being declared a rule follower). As such, I declared that KW was guilty of, at best, legerdemain, when he claimed to have
shown that community members can be substantive rule
followers whereas ICIs cannot be.
Time has
convinced me that "Kripke's legerdemain
. . ." is, in large part, on the money and so destructive of KW's case
against private language. That is,
KW fails to establish that ICIs cannot be said to be rule followers whereas
community can be, in any substantive sense. (As I noted in "Kripke's legerdemain . . .", it may be that
KW's case against an ICI being said to be a rule follower comes down to OUR
being unable to consider an ICI without thereby undermining his/her status as
an ICI!! But this is surely too
trivial an argument to be worth buying, besides there
being nothing to suggest such an argument in Kripke's book.
If we buy it, we should appreciate that not only could WE not say that an ICI
is a rule follower but WE also could not say ANYTHING AT ALL about an ICI. That is, we couldn't say an ICI sleeps,
walks, eats, etc. But then who
really cares about such a notion of an ICI?!). The purpose of this paper is to extend
and embellish some of my earlier thoughts on KW's legerdemain. In particular, I wish to examine two points further: First, in what sense, if any, is KW
correct in his claim that, "All we can say, if we consider a person in
isolation, is that our ordinary practice licenses him to apply the rule in the
way it strikes him." (K, p. 88). Second,
in what sense can KW's case for community members being substantive rule
followers be said to constitute a "solution" to the sceptical problem
of chapter 2?
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Last
modified October 3, 2011
JAH, Professor
Dept. of Philosophy