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Kripke's Case against Meaning as Dispositions |
On
p. 22 of WRPL, after several versions of the sceptical
challenge/problem/paradox have been set out and defended against possible
complaints, criticisms and misunderstandings, Kripke says:
Can we escape these incredible conclusions? Let me first discuss a response that I have heard more than once in conversation on this topic. According to this response, the fallacy in the argument that no fact about me constitutes my meaning plus lies in the assumption that such a fact must consist in an occurrent mental state. Indeed the sceptical argument shows that my entire occurrent past mental history might have been the same whether I meant plus or quus, but all this shows is that the fact that I meant plus (rather than quus) is to be analyzed dispositionally, rather than in terms of occurrent mental states. Since Ryle's The Concept of Mind, dispositional analyses have been influential; Wittgenstein's own later work is of course one of the inspirations for such analyses, and some may think that he himself wishes to suggest a dispositional solution to his paradox.
The dispositional analyses I have heard proposed is simple. To mean addition by '+' is to be disposed, when asked for any sum 'x + y' to give the sum of x and y as the answer (in particular, to say '125' when queried about '68 + 57'); to mean quus is to be disposed when queried about any arguments, to respond with their quum (in particular to answer '5' when queried about '68 + 57'). True, my actual thoughts and responses in the past do not differentiate between the plus and the quus hypotheses; but, even in the past, there were dispositional facts about me that did make such a differentiation. To say that in fact I meant plus in the past is to say -- as surely was the case! -- that had I been queried about '68 + 57', I would have answered '125'. By hypothesis I was not in fact asked, but the disposition was present none the less.
I take the
above passage as setting out the "dispositional complaint against the
sceptical paradox". Having set out what he understands the dispositional
complaint against the sceptical paradox to be, Kripke proceeds to respond to
the complaint. Although there are
a variety of worries (as I will show below) that he raises against the appeal
to dispositions, ultimately, he says, the main problem with such an appeal is
really quite basic:
To a good extent [the dispositional complaint] ought to appear to be misdirected, off target. For the sceptic created an air of puzzlement as to my justification for responding '125' rather than '5' to the addition problem as queried. He thinks my response is no better than a stab in the dark. Does the suggested reply really advance matters? How does it justify my choice of '125'? What it says is: "'125' is the response you are disposed to give, and (perhaps the reply adds) it would also have been your response in the past." Well and good, I know that '125' is the response I am disposed to give ( I am actually giving it!), and maybe it is helpful to be told -- as a matter of brute fact -- that I would have given the same response in the past. How does any of this indicate that -- now or in the past --'125' was an answer justified in terms of instructions I gave myself, rather than a mere jack-in-the-box unjustified and arbitrary response? (K, p. 23).
At this
point in the proceedings at least, it is clear that Kripke's reply to the
dispositional complaint is itself misdirected and off-target. As I have noted in several other spots
on this site, this particular reply to the dispositionalist rests on a
misconception of the dispositionalist complaint. So much is obvious from the fact that Kripke's reply here
does not respond to (nor answer, of course), the dispositionalist's key claim,
viz., that dispositions are what allow us to determine
that someone means plus rather than quus. In order for Kripke's reply here to be relevant to the
dispositionalist complaint, we must suppose that dispositionalists are claiming
that being disposed to say X is enough to justify saying X. But this is not at all what
dispositionalists are claiming.
Rather, dispositionalists appeal to dispositions in order to determine what
someone means. Dispositionalists
claim then that a person's dispositions to respond in particular cases reveal
what s/he meant/means, which in turn answers and dissolves the sceptical query
from p. 9 of Kripke's text, viz., "Who is to say that [quus] is not the
function I previously meant by '+'?" And of course, once we establish, via appeal to dispositions,
that someone meant plus rather than quus in the past, we can then reject the
sceptic's bizarre hypothesis that I meant quus rather than plus, which in turn
allows us to reject the sceptic's suggestion/hypothesis that I should have said
"5" rather than "125" (and so reject the sceptic's claim
that I have no justification for saying "125" rather than
"5"). This is because
people who mean plus rather than quus ought to say 125 rather than 5. Baldly stated, the appeal to
dispositions serves to justify claims about what someone meant, and is that
meaning, in turn, that provides justification for answering one way rather than
another in particular cases.
It is obvious, I think, that our ability to distinguish one collection or set
of dispositions from another, and so our ability to use dispositions to
determine what someone means by his or her words, depends on the respective
size of the sets in question. To
take the obvious case, if I know only how someone is disposed to respond to
computation problems like, X + Y, for X, Y < 57, I will be unable to
determine that this person means plus rather than quus. (Assuming, of course, this
his/her dispositions are the usual ones). To make such a determination however, I need only enlarge the
first set of dispositions to include a fair number of dispositions to respond
to problems involving numbers beyond 56. Once I have these dispositions, the task of determining
whether the person in question means plus or quus is rather trivial. As trivial, it's worth noting, as appreciating
that plus and quus differ as functions.
It's a
truism, I think, that anyone who is satisfied that Jones' being disposed to say
68 + 57 = 125, and 68 + 58 = 126, and 70 + 60 = 130, etc., justifies saying
that Jones means plus rather than quus, should have no doubts at all about
Jones being justified to say 68 + 57 = 125 rather than 5. It's is a truism for dispositionalists,
of course, that Jones' being disposed to say 68 + 57 = 125, and 68 + 58 = 126,
and 70 + 60 = 130, etc., justifies saying that Jones means plus rather than
quus. It is clear, then that
Kripke, since he does, in the name of Wittgenstein or Wittgenstein's sceptic,
express doubts about Jones being justified to say 68 + 57 = 125, must have
doubts about Jones' dispositions justifying the claim that Jones means plus
rather than quus. However, to this
point in the proceedings, Kripke's only reason for denying that Jones is
justified to say 68 + 57 = 125 is that the disposition to say 68 + 57 = 125 is
insufficient justification for saying 68 + 57 = 125.
Clearly, however, the dispositionalist can accept this argument while
maintaining that Jones is justified to say 68 + 57 = 125. For the dispositionalist claims, not
that being disposed to say 125 justifies saying 125, but rather that
dispositions permit us to discern someone's meaning and that it is one's
meaning which ultimately justifies one's response in particular cases. As such, Kripke's case against
dispositionalism to this point is nothing more than a red herring.
Given the
claims above, it should be clear that the only legitimate complaints against
the dispositionalist would be either, (i) to deny that, e.g., Jones' being
disposed to respond as a plusser, but not a quusser, justifies saying that
Jones means plus rather than quus, or (ii) to cast doubt on, or somehow
challenge, our right to say that Jones is disposed to respond as a plusser but
not a quusser, would respond. The
passages from Kripke quoted above however, do not finding him doing either (i)
or (ii). Furthermore, I have
serious doubts about the possibility of success in doing (ii). Nor do I think that Kripke intends to
cast doubt or otherwise challenge our right to say that Jones is disposed to
respond as a plusser but not a quusser. Which is not to say that Kripke does not try to cast doubt on
our ability to determine that Jones is disposed to respond as a plusser, full
stop.
As for the
possibility of successfully doing (i), of successfully denying that we can
justifiably say that Jones means plus rather than quus if he is disposed to
respond as a plusser, but not a quusser, would respond, it will be helpful to
remind ourselves about Wittgenstein's claims at §§692-3 of Philosophical Investigations. At §692, Wittgenstein says:
Is it correct for someone to say: "When I gave you this rule, I meant you to . . . . . in this case"? Even if he did not think of this case at all as he gave the rule? Of course it is correct. For "to mean it" did not mean: to think of it. But now the problem is: how are we to judge whether someone meant such-and-such? -- The fact that he has, for example, mastered a particular technique in arithmetic and algebra, and that he taught someone else the expansion of a series in the usual way, is such a criterion.
At §693,
Wittgenstein says:
"When I teach someone the formation of the series . . . . I surely mean him to write . . . . at the hundredth place." -- Quite right; you mean it. And evidently without necessarily even thinking of it. This shews you how different the grammar of the verb "to mean" is from that of "to think".
Although
these passages do not speak of dispositions per
se, they pretty clearly show that Wittgenstein not only finds nothing
particularly difficult about determining whether someone meant such-and-such,
but that he also works within the confines of one of Kripke's starting-points,
viz., that ex hypothesi, the cases
under consideration are cases which are "new", i,e,.
they have not been explicitly thought of yet.
Last
modified October 4, 2011
JAH, Professor
Dept. of Philosophy