|
|
|
Commentary
on passages from Wittgenstein
on Rules and Private Language, pp. 15-37 |
- Many readers, I should suppose,
have long been impatient to protest that our problem arises only because
of a ridiculous model of the instruction I gave myself regarding
'addition'. Surely I did not merely give myself some finite number of
examples, from which I am supposed to extrapolate the whole table
("Let '+' be the function instantiated by the following examples: . .
. "). No doubt
infinitely many functions are compatible with that.
. . . Rather, I learned -- and internalized instructions for -- a rule
which determines how addition is to be continued . . . . This set of [instructions], I may
suppose, I explicitly gave myself at some earlier time. It is engraved on
my mind as on a slate. It is incompatible with the hypothesis that I meant
quus.
. . . Despite the initial plausibility of this objection, the sceptic's response is all too obvious. True, if 'count', as I used the word in the past, referred to the act of counting (and my other past words are correctly interpreted in the standard way), then 'plus' must have stood for addition. But I applied 'count', like 'plus', to finitely many past cases. Thus the sceptic can question my present interpretation of my past usage of 'count' as he did with 'plus'. . . . [T]he point is perfectly general: if 'plus' is explained in terms of 'counting', a nonstandard interpretation of the latter will yield a nonstandard interpretation of the former. (K, pp. 15-16).
COMMENTARY: Depending on one's reaction to
this passage, the sceptical problem is going to seem
either absurd or profound. For
this passage reveals that the sceptic, in order to
hang onto the idea that someone might, for all anyone can tell, have a bent use
of 'plus', (to use Blackburn's phrase), has to suppose that many other terms
are also being used in a bent way. But surely it is one thing to allow the
possibility that someone has a bent use of 'plus' but quite another to suppose
that someone who gives the usual explanation for what s/he meant by 'plus'
nonetheless has a bent use of 'plus' because it's possible that the terms of
the explanation are being used "bently",
and so on! By my lights, this is simply to multiply the number of absurdities
one must believe in order to accept the sceptic's
original claim about our use of 'plus'. In short, that the sceptic
is forced to reinterpret the whole of our lingo in order to save his original
hypothesis that we meant quus rather than plus is a
sign of desperation, revealing the absurdity of his original hypothesis.
Nor is the sceptic's ploy here to be identified with
"Wittgenstein's well-known remarks about "a rule for interpreting a
rule"." (As Kripke suggests on p. 17). This can be seen most clearly by
appreciating how different Wittgenstein's own remarks are from Kripke's sceptic. A careful reading of, e.g., PI §§185-187,
reveals that Wittgenstein sees no problem at all in our saying that we meant a
rule to be carried on one way rather than another at the time that we gave
expression to it. In particular,
Wittgenstein allows that if I order someone to "Add 2", it's perfectly
legitimate to say that I mean him/her to write 1002 after 1000 and 1004 after
1002, etc., and that I know that this is how my order ought to be followed.
Of course, it's also part of Wittgenstein's story that how I meant the order to
be followed, and my knowledge of how the order ought to be followed, is not to
be identified with the "correct" way to follow the order. Nor are we to suppose that my meaning
that someone ought to write 1002 after 1000 is the same as my thinking of
this step, along with all the others, when I gave the order. (As Wittgenstein says at §693, the
grammar of "to mean" is different from that of "to think").
The fact that signs admit of multiple or continual
interpretation is not enough to show that we never really know what we're
saying or meaning. This can be
seen by considering an analogous argument from Plato's Republic (Book V), where Socrates
contends (or can be read as contending), that the flux of the everyday world
renders it unknowable, in a rather fussy sense of knowledge. But the proper reply to Socrates is to
say that knowing, e.g., that Helen is beautiful, is quite compatible with
admitting the possibility that she becomes ugly sometime in the future, or that
she may in some other sense, e.g., personality, be ugly.
Similarly, knowing what I mean by 'plus' or 'count' is compatible with
acknowledging the possibility of alternative interpretations. I hold that we understand perfectly
well what we mean by 'addition' and 'counting', etc., and so claim, not that
'counting' doesn't admit of nonstandard interpretations (which interpretations
must be grasped by me!), but rather that any such interpretation can be
recognized as either at odds with or in line with my grasp of the rule. Indeed, to say that the rule is
"engraved on my mind like a slate" is to say that I am quite capable
of recognizing when it has been followed, when interpretations agree or conflict
with it, etc., and when not. Insofar
as the sceptic allows that the rule for 'plus' is
engraved on my mind, there is simply no room left for any doubts about my
understanding of the rule, nor, of course, any doubts about whether the sceptic's suggested interpretation agrees or disagrees with
my grasp of the rule.
My point here is similar to that made by Wittgenstein at PI §201, viz., the
fact that we are able to understand the competing interpretations given by the sceptic shows that we are not the slaves of
reinterpretations (i.e., the substitution of one sign for another) of signs or
rules; for we have our grasp of them to go on. It is our grasp that allows us to recognize that the quus interpretation of 'plus' differs radically from the
plus interpretation of 'plus'. Once
we see this, we can appreciate that "there is a misunderstanding" in
the sceptical challenge. (Cf. PI §201).
- How can I justify my present application
of . . . a rule, when a sceptic could easily
interpret it so as to yield any of an indefinite number of other
results? It seems that my
application of it is an unjustified stab in the dark. I apply the rule blindly. (K, p. 17).
COMMENTARY: I like this passage because it reveals, quite clearly, that KW’s sceptical challenge is based on a mistake, namely, the mistake of thinking that if I cannot identify, to uniqueness, the rule I am using to “guide” my use of ‘+’, then my present use of ‘+’ is utterly unguided, arbitrary, unjustified. To be blunt about it, this is nonsense. It is clear that as far as my past behavior is concerned, plus and quus can both be said to have been guiding me, along with an endless number of other functions that I have no desire to think up. Now that I have reached a computation that gives rise to divergence between the rules plus and quus, it should be obvious that whether I say ‘5’ or ‘125’, I’m justified. If I say, ‘5’, it’s justified by quus; if I say ‘125’, it’s justified by plus. As such, the very idea that there’s no justifying my present application of a rule is a nonsense, unless one supposes that justifying my present application requires knowing, to uniqueness, the rule I have been following. But this supposition is even more nonsensical than the supposition that saying, “68 + 57 = 5” can’t be justified by the rule, quus (or any number of other rules undreamed of by any sane creature).
It seems clear that Kripke (or KW) is overly
impressed with the idea that justifying my present application of a rule
requires that there be but one rule that I am following. If we cannot find ONE AND ONLY ONE rule
that I have been following then we can’t say that I am compelled or forced to
say one thing rather than another.
If there is no telling that I meant plus rather than quus
(and there isn’t), I can’t be compelled to say ‘125’ rather than ‘5’. But how does this warrant saying I
can’t justify saying ‘125’ by saying I am plussing? I don’t get it and neither should
anyone else.
Contra KW’s sceptic, there is nothing blind about plussing, or quussing. What may be described as blind is our
choosing to add rather than quuadd -- after all, we
don’t even see quus but even after we have seen it,
we can and do close our eyes to it!
But that is not at all the same thing as saying that saying ‘125’ is
unjustified, or arbitrary, or “an unjustified stab in the dark”. For Kripke
(or KW), faced with task of “answering” a computation problem (say, 68 + 57),
the process of throwing a dart at a dartboard filled with slips of papers with
numbers on them, and then giving as my response the number on the paper slip
hit by the dart (assuming I hit one, of course!), is just as legitimate means
of getting a response to the computation problem as my trying to figure out
what the rule for ‘plus’ would demand from me in this case. But there is no warrant for
seeing these methods as equally legitimate. Of course, if one decided to threw darts to decide which of
plus or quus to use in any particular case, that
would yield a kind of “unjustified stab in the dark” – but given that both plus
and quus are determinate functions, once one or the
other of these functions had been chosen, literally, by a stab in the dark, the
actual answer one gives to the computation, would be anything but an
“unjustified leap in the dark”.
To be sure, if KW is correct, it is the end of meaning, as we know it. But try as he may to get us to appreciate
that he has successfully established the utter arbitrariness of our responses,
he fails. The fact that for any
particular response I give to a computation problem, we can think of a rule
that requires that very response, does not mean that
we’re unjustifiably leaping in the dark.
On the contrary, the opposite seems to be more accurate: Try as we may, we cannot leap blindly
in the dark, that is, we cannot avoid having our
responses forced upon us by some rule or other. Thus, we could claim that far from being impossible – rules,
and all that go along with them (i.e., being governed by them)
inescapable. For the record, and
as is usually the case in philosophy, the truth about us and our
rule-followings falls somewhere between these two extremes, (1) rules/rule-following
is impossible, and (2) rules/rule-following cannot be avoided.
- Given . . . that everything
in my mental history is compatible both with the conclusion that I meant
plus and with the conclusion that I meant quus,
it is clear that the sceptical challenge is not
really an epistemological one.
It purports to show that nothing in my mental history of past
behavior -- not even what an omniscient God would know -- could establish
whether I meant plus or quus. But then it
appears to follow that there was no fact about me that constituted my having
meant plus rather than quus. (K, p. 21).
COMMENTARY: This is the infamous, "the sceptical problem is ontological rather than epistemological" passage. Crispin Wright buys this claim and makes much of it in criticizing McGinn's treatment of Kripke's book. The key term in the passage is "purports". For the sceptical problem can be said to be ontological or metaphysical rather than epistemological, only given the success of the sceptic's argument. More particularly, that everything in one's mental history is compatible with both the plus and quus hypotheses, needs to be established, in order for the sceptical problem to be seen as ontological rather than epistemological. But doubters of the sceptic's argument can see the problem as epistemological.
The bottom line then is that to claim that the sceptical problem is ontological rather than epistemological is of a piece with accepting that the sceptic has succeeded in showing what he purports to show. To claim that it is epistemological is of a piece with being dubious that the sceptic has successfully established what he purports to establish.
- If there was no such thing
as my meaning plus rather than quus in the past,
neither can there be any such thing in the present. When we initially presented the
paradox, we perforce used language, taking present meanings for
granted. Now we see, as we
expected, that this provisional concession was indeed fictive. There can be no fact as to what I
mean by 'plus', or any other word at any time. The ladder must finally be kicked away. (K, p.21).
COMMENTARY: The expectation spoken of here harks back to the passage from pages 11-12 commented on above. Once again, however, this is simply Kripke overstating things or perhaps purposely misleading readers. It should be noted here that the first sentence of the passage, if true, says only that “the present” doesn’t, or can’t, give us anything that will change the fact that “there was no such thing as my meaning plus rather than quus in the past.” This is true enough (after all, if I presently say, 68 + 57 = 5, that does nothing to show that I meant quus rather than plus in the past; after all, I could be going on contrary to my past meaning) but its import escapes me, or better, I don’t see how this fact can be used to draw the conclusion Kripke (or KW, or KW’s sceptic) draws above, namely, that “there can be no fact as to what I mean by ‘plus’ or any other word at any time.
To be blunt, this is as “non-following” as a non sequitur can be. A present fact, let’s say, my saying that 68 + 57 = 5, while it can’t change the past, can be cited as very strong evidence that I mean quus rather than plus by ‘+’ presently. For my response accords with my meaning quus and does not accord with my meaning plus, by ‘+’. Ex hypothesi, such a case never occurred before, that is, none of my uses of ‘+’ in the past ever resulted in a response that was compatible with one of plus or quus but not the other. That’s why “there was no such thing as my meaning plus rather than quus in the past”. But there can be such a thing as my meaning plus rather than quus in a world where I can, and do, give answers to computation problems that accord with one of plus or quus but conflict with the other. And that’s what is going on in “the present case”.
Kripke's claim, "there can be no fact as to what I mean by 'plus', or any other word at any time", is either false or a misleading way of stating the sceptic's conclusion that there can be no fact showing that I mean plus rather than quus by 'plus' (until, of course, there are such facts – recall Putnam’s point). I've already shown that there are lots of facts about what I mean by 'plus'. Most obviously, all of my answers to computation problems involving 'plus' (both spoken aloud or uttered internally to myself) are facts about what I mean by 'plus'. And even granting that these facts are unable to rule out my meaning something other than plus by 'plus', they do permit us to say that I don't mean minus by 'plus', or times, etc.
As such, it's a fact that I don't mean minus by 'plus'; it's a fact that I mean something compatible with plus; it's a fact that I mean something compatible with quus, etc. We should also keep in mind that the sceptic has done nothing to threaten our understanding of what is required of someone who means plus, or means quus, or even what is required of someone who means plus rather than quus. Indeed, the sceptic intends no such conclusion, let alone establishes such a conclusion. At most, he establishes that any facts about what someone means by 'plus', (e.g., the facts of my use of 'plus', including, of course, my answers to computation problems using 'plus') are insufficient to warrant ascribing a single meaning to him/her. But the sceptic has not, and I would contend, cannot, establish that any and all claims about what I mean by 'plus' are on an equal footing, so far as the facts of the case are concerned. In other words, the semantic nihilism alleged by KW’s sceptic, simply does not follow from the fact that one’s use of ‘+’ is compatible with a multitude of meanings (or compatible with meaning a multitude of rules).
- This, then, is the sceptical paradox. When I respond in one way
rather than another to such a problem as '68 + 57', I can have no
justification for one response rather than another. Since the sceptic
who supposes that I meant quus cannot be answered, there is no fact about me that
distinguishes between my meaning plus and my meaning quus.
Indeed, there is no fact about me that distinguishes between my meaning a
definite function by 'plus' (which determines my responses in new cases)
and my meaning nothing at all. (K, p. 21).
COMMENTARY: This is a nice succinct statement of the entire sceptical enterprise of WRPL. I have already, in my comments above, expressed disagreement with just about every part of this passage. To begin with, it is simply false that, "I can have no justification for one response rather than another" [to the problem, '68 + 57']. The truth is that I can justify saying, “125”, by saying that I mean plus by ‘plus’. And I can justify saying “5” by saying that I mean quus by ‘plus’. I can even justify saying that both answers accord with what I meant in the past, for the facts warrant saying that I meant both functions in the past.
It is also a gross error to see any difficulty in our being unable to answer “the sceptic who supposes that I meant quus”. The fact is that I did mean quus, in the past, malgre moi. Rather than trying to “answer” the sceptic here, that is, rather than trying to show that I didn’t mean quus, it should be appreciated that I meant both plus and quus in the past and as such, am justified to go on in accord with either function in cases where they diverge. Alleged problem dissolved.
As for the final sentence, it is one more falsehood. It is clear that someone who uses ‘plus’ as KW supposes, can be said to mean a great number of functions, indeed, one can be rightfully said to mean any function that is compatible with plus on all of the sums performed or thought of prior to a “new case”. If one is being perverse, it could be alleged that this shows that we can’t be said to mean just one function “in the past”.
Kripke seems to confuse, (1) definitely meaning one function (which, of course, we don’t do), and (2) meaning a definite function by ‘plus’ (in fact, we mean a great number of definite functions by ‘plus’ – we mean quus and plus for starters, along with endless numbers more – all of them definite functions! And it is only the inability to do (2), only the inability to mean a definite function, that would give rise to meaning nihilism. But there simply is no such inability, KW and his sceptic notwithstanding.
- Sometimes when I have
contemplated the situation, I have had something of an eerie feeling. Even now as I write, I feel
confident that there is something in my mind -- the meaning I attach to
the 'plus' sign -- that instructs me what I ought to do in all future cases . . . . But when I concentrate on what is now in my mind,
what instructions can be found there? How can I be said to be acting on the basis of these
instructions when I act in the future? The infinitely many cases of the
table are not in my mind for my future self to consult. To say that there
is a general rule in my mind that tells me how to add in the future is
only to throw the problem back on to other rules that also seem to be
given only in terms of finitely many cases. What can there be in my mind
that I make use of when I act in the future? It seems that the entire idea
of meaning vanishes into thin air.
(K, pp. 21-2).
COMMENTARY: Kripke's notorious imitation of Descartes' musings in the Meditations. Kripke seems to suggest, wrongly, that the sceptical problem arises because of the nonexistence of (or the impossibility of there being) infinite tables in our heads. But even if we had, per impossibile (by our lights, of course), infinite tables in our heads, the sceptic could still wonder what justifies our use of one table rather than another. It would seem then that our "problem" is not the lack of infinite tables in our heads.
I would add here though that I do not see why we need infinite tables to distinguish between plus and quus. If nothing else, we need only suppose that we have the usual plus table up to 68 + 57, and the quus table up to the same point, and then it's clear to all that the tables differ at the 68 + 57 case and then the sceptic would challenge our right to say that we're using (or were using) the former table rather than the latter table to get answers to computations involving '+'. But how could the sceptic challenge this? Surely we can be allowed to tell the difference between the two tables, as well as allowed to know which one we're using or were using. It seems then that our problem in answering the sceptic, whatever it's supposed to be, cannot be one that is based on our inability to tell the plus table from quus table, or our inability to know which one we've been using, since there is no such inability.
The bottom line here is that even granting our inability to tell which rule we've been following, we ought not take this inability as preventing us from knowing that plus and quus are not identical functions, or preventing us from knowing what a plusser must say in the case of 68 + 57, or what a quusser must say, and that the two must say different things, etc. It is a colossal illusion of Kripke's book that the sceptical challenge, if successful, threatens our ability to add or to do basic arithmetic. I know how to add and the sceptic, even if correct, has not threatened this. I also know how to quuadd and the sceptic has not threatened this.
What I allegedly do not know is whether I meant plus by '+', rather than quus. As such, I don't know whether '125' accords with my use of 'plus'. But the very understanding of the sceptic's challenge requires me to recognize that my use of 'plus' may not pick out plus. But this clearly requires me to understand what function plus is. Ditto for my understanding of 'quus'. (I think this is the heart of Wittgenstein's own response to his own "paradox" at PI §201). We need to wonder, however, just how threatening the sceptical challenge really is, if it serves to cast doubt on our ability to know whether we mean plus rather than quus but doesn't threaten our ability to know what each function is, or know what each function requires for its correct answer in each case.
- The dispositional analysis 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 answer '5' when queried about '68
+57') . . . . To a good extent this reply 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 . . . .
Does the suggested reply advance matters? How does it justify my choice of '125'? How
does any of this [i.e., the dispositional response] 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, pp. 22-3).
COMMENTARY: To begin with, Kripke can be properly accused of oversimplifying the dispositional response to the sceptical challenge. I don't simply have dispositions to give sums or quums, as the case may be. I am also disposed to distinguish the two functions themselves, indeed, I am disposed to say that in cases involving numbers greater than 57, quums require no calculation at all, whereas the same cannot be said for addition. I am also disposed to utilize various techniques of calculation to determine the sum of a pair of numbers but need no such techniques for quums, when numbers are greater than 57. However, if the dispositional response is taken, as Kripke takes it, viz., I am disposed simply to answer one way rather than another to '68 + 57', then no wonder Kripke has difficulty distinguishing any answer I give from a "mere-jack-in-the-box response".
Second, Kripke can be seen here as asking us, not so much to justify saying that we are disposed to say '125' rather than '5', and so to justify saying that our dispositions show that we mean plus rather than quus. Rather, Kripke aks us to tell the sceptic how it is that the answer we're disposed to give can be justified. But this gets into quite different territory, it seems to me, from the original sceptical challenge. For the sceptic, on this analysis, is asking us to say how our dispositions serve to justify the answer we give. But this seems a question which either has a trivial answer, viz., what justifies the answer we give is our meaning of '+', and it is our dispositions that justify the claim that we mean such-and-so by '+', or else asks for too much, i.e., it's asking us to justify regarding plus as a function such that whomever is following or meaning it must say that 68 + 57 is 125. It's quite unclear how one would go about justifying that, except to say that this is what plus means. If the sceptic isn't satisfied with that, then he simply asks too much.
- So it does seem that a
dispositional account misconceives the sceptic's
problem -- to find a past fact that justifies my present response. As a
candidate for a 'fact' that determines what I mean, it fails to satisfy
the basic condition on such a candidate, stressed above on p. 11, that it
should tell
me what I ought to do in each new instance. Ultimately, almost all
objections to the dispositional account boil down to this one. (K, p. 24).
COMMENTARY: This passage serves to vindicate my previous commentary. It suggests that Kripke either misunderstands the appeal to dispositions to answer the sceptical challenge or is asking for too much when he seeks a justification of my present response. Dispositionalists are not saying that my disposition to say '125' justifies my saying '125'. Rather, the past facts that determine what I mean are my dispositions to respond in particular ways, rather than other ways, to future cases. Given my dispositions, which dispositions determine what I mean, we can then say that it is my meaning '+' as I do that justifies my answer to '68 + 57.
Insofar as my dispositions show that I mean plus by '+', it is this, viz., my meaning plus by '+', that justifies my response of 125 to 68 + 57. Insofar as the sceptic finds this justification unsatisfactory, i.e., insofar as the sceptic supposes that my meaning plus by '+' is not enough to justify my answer of 125, he could only be asking us to show how or why it is that those who mean plus are justified to say 68 + 57 is 125. Surely this is an illegitimate request.
Relatedly, I find it instructive that Kripke here italicizes 'tell' rather than 'ought'. Later, on p. 37, (see below) he italicizes 'should', stressing the normativity of meaning. The fact that 'tell' rather than 'ought' is italicized suggests that Kripke here sees the sceptical problem as one of how a rule tells us what is in accord with it. But is this really a genuine problem? In some sense, there's really nothing more involved in the "telling" than simply knowing or finding out what the rule is. That is, if it's allowed that '125' is the sum of '68 + 57' then it's clear that plus tells us that we ought to say 68 + 57 is 125. There simply is no further "telling" problem. It makes one wonder if Kripke really knows what the sceptical problem is supposed to be.
- The dispositionalist
theory attempts to avoid the problem of the finiteness of my actual past
performance by appealing to a disposition. But in doing so, it ignores an
obvious fact: not only my actual performance, but also the totality of my
dispositions, is finite. (K,
p. 26).
COMMENTARY: First, why is Kripke so certain that "the totality of my dispositions is finite"? It seems to me that to whatever extent addition or quuaddition can be legitimately called infinite functions then our dispositions concerning the plus or quus functions can be called infinite as well. Be this as it may, it's unclear why the finiteness of my dispositions (assuming Kripke is right about this) is a problem for those who appeal to dispositions to solve the sceptical challenge. For we do not need "infinite dispositions" to scotch the idea that we meant plus rather than quus.
Being disposed to say not only that 68 + 57 is 125, but also being disposed to say that 68 + 58 is 126, and 69 + 57 is 126, etc., is more than enough to show that I didn't mean quus in the past. Of course, Kripke goes on to suggest that absent infinite dispositions, at some point our dispositions peter out and the sceptic can then "redefine" quuaddition so that it is a function indistinguishable from addition on all cases covered by my dispositions and then diverges from addition thereafter. The dispositionalist, Kripke claims, will be unable to refute the sceptic's new hypothesis. (K, pp. 26-7).
Surely Kripke doesn't wish to use this argument against the dispositionalist. For it completely defangs the sceptical argument. The argument suggests that even though the appeal to dispositions serves to answer the original sceptical problem based on the original definition of quus, nonetheless, the sceptic can still hypothesize that I meant quus, by changing the definition of quus so that it is defined as matching plus on all "humanly doable cases" but having it diverge "thereafter".
Now even supposing that WE can make sense of Kripke's "thereafter", it seems that if quus is identical to plus on all cases we are capable of considering or imagining, then quus becomes a non-threat, for we never get to cases where it can be discovered! That I might mean a function that differs from the function I normally take myself to mean only in cases involving numbers so large that I would "die of old age before the questioner completes the question" (K, p. 27), is not much of a sceptical threat. Indeed, it sounds like a Stephen Wright joke. And yet, Kripke does seem to be offering such an argument. It seems to me that too many commentators have failed to appreciate that dispositionalism is perfectly up to the task of answering the original sceptical challenge and failed to appreciate that Kripke in effect admits this by offering his "our dispositions are finite" argument, and have failed to appreciate that this latter argument renders the sceptical challenge comical at best.
Another worry here, raised by Simon Blackburn in his "The Individual Strikes Back", is that Kripke has expressed a scepticism about dispositions, not a scepticism about meaning.
- The dispositionalist
labors under yet another, equally potent, difficulty . . . . Most
of us have dispositions to make mistakes . . . . But the dispositionalist
cannot say this. According to
him, the function someone means is to be read off from his dispositions; it
cannot be presupposed in advance which function is meant. (K, pp. 28-30).
COMMENTARY: This is a particularly simple-minded complaint against dispositions. For we not only have dispositions to respond to computation problems but also dispositions to correct such responses as well. The fact that people are disposed to recognize and accept challenges to their computations keeps the dispositionalist from being confined to reading off meaning from "first-order" dispositions. As such, slips of the tongue or pen can be tolerated and accounted for on the dispositionalist picture.
- Suppose I do mean addition
by '+'. What is the relation of this supposition to the question how I
will respond to the problem '68 + 57'? The dispositionalist gives a descriptive
account of this relation: if '+' meant addition, then I will answer
'125'. But this is not the
proper account of the relation, which is normative, not descriptive. The
point is not
that, if I meant addition by '+', I will answer '125', but that, if I intend
to accord with my past meaning of '+', I should answer '125'. (K, p. 37).
COMMENTARY: This is the notorious "meaning is normative, not descriptive" line, which has been made much of by both critics and supporters of Kripke. It has been read in many different ways and there is little room for consensus on its meaning and import. My complaints against the passage are, first, it distorts the dispositionalist position (see next commentary), and second, the point of the passage is overlooked in Kripke's sceptical solution. Kripke either ignores or overlooks the fact that his Wittgenstein's sceptical solution provides us with an account of meaning which fails to satisfy the normativity constraint he here uses to allegedly scotch the dispositionalist account.
- In the beginning of our
discussion of the dispositional analysis, we suggested that it had a
certain air of irrelevance with respect to a significant aspect of the sceptical problem -- that the fact that the sceptic can maintain the hypothesis that I meant quus shows that I had no justification for answering '125'
rather than '5'. How does the dispositional analysis even appear to touch
this problem? . . . Precisely the fact that our answer to the
question of which function I meant is justificatory of my present response is
ignored in the dispositional account and leads to all its
difficulties. (K, p. 37).
COMMENTARY: This passage reveals quite clearly that Kripke misunderstands the dispositionalist response to the sceptical challenge. According to dispositionalists, dispositions prevent the sceptic from maintaining the quus hypothesis. In brief, the fact that we are disposed to say 68 + 57 =125, and disposed to say, 68 + 58 =126, and also disposed to say that 68 + 57 does not equal 5, etc., shows, according to dispositionalists, that the hypothesis that I meant/mean quus is false, nonsensical, etc. For it does not even begin to do justice to the facts about our dispositions. (This is why Kripke is forced to alter the original definition of quus – for without altering the definition, the dispositionalists win. See K, p. 27, where he admits that the sceptic must alter the definition of quus so that it becomes a function which matches plus on all problems for which we have dispositions but which diverges from plus thereafter.)
Furthermore, as noted above, while it may be that the sceptic can hold that there is a function (indeed, infinitely many such functions, assuming, as the sceptic does, that our dispositions are finite) identical to plus on all the cases covered by our dispositions but which differs thereafter and that we could mean that function rather than plus, this is at best a kind of comical skepticism. Since our dispositions show that we don't mean quus, and also show, within reason, that we mean plus, we have all the justification we need to justify saying "125" to 68 + 57. For anyone who means plus by 'plus' should say "68 + 57 is 125".
Of course, if someone's dispositions show that s/he means quus, then s/he should say, "68 + 57 is 5". As such, it's a mystery why Kripke believes that the dispositional account ignores the fact that an answer to the question of what someone means has to justify present responses. Once again, our dispositions justify claims about what we mean (what we mean is to be "read off" from our dispositions) but it is what we mean that serves to justify our present responses. It is our meanings that justify our responses and it is our dispositions that justify claims about what we mean.
For commentary on
passages from p. 38 to p. 77, click here.
Last
modified October 5, 2012
JAH, Professor
Dept. of Philosophy