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Commentary on passages from Wittgenstein on Rules and
Private Language, pp. 92-113
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- Of course if we were reduced to a babble of disagreement . . .
there would be little point to the practice just described. In fact, our
actual community is (roughly) uniform in its practices with respect to
addition. Any individual who
claims to have mastered the concept of addition will be judged by the
community to have done so if his particular responses agree with those of
the community in enough cases, especially the simple ones . . . . (K,
pp. 91-2).
COMMENTARY: Once again, KW seems to be blissfully ignorant of the fact
that mere agreement is not enough to warrant claims about someone being an
adder, or not being an adder, as the case may be. If the community
responses are themselves bizarre (by our lights, of course; are there
others?!) then the community may very well fail
to count as an addition community, i.e., a community of adders. Clearly,
we must assume something about the nature of the responses beyond mere
agreement in order to be satisfied that the community contains adders, or
itself makes use of addition.
This passage and others like it point out the limitation of KW's so-called
sceptical solution. Despite its self-professed task of looking at our
actual practices to see what we find there, it fails, miserably, to do
justice to our rule following practices. As far as KW is concerned,
agreement is the bottom line in rule following. Since agreement requires
more than one individual, ICI's can't be rule followers, only community
members can be. But the fact is that agreement is not the bottom line. As
many have noted, if I wake up tomorrow and everyone in my community tells
me that addition requires us to say, "68 +57 = 5", this does not
make it so.
Clearly, what we need from KW here is an explanation for the agreement.
Why is our practice uniform? Why are we able to both spot and reject those
who aren't adding (as opposed to, as on the KW account, to spot and reject
those who aren't in agreement with us)? I think the answer is not terribly
complicated, viz., addition is a pretty simple rule and its use in
so-called new cases is pretty obvious. We are also taught the rule in ways
that make the getting of certain answers part and parcel of following the
rule.
Although Kripke later seems to express recognition of the fact that
agreement is not the bottom line, the fact is he is damned if he does and damned
if he doesn't. That is, if Kripke sees Wittgenstein as taking agreement to
be the bottom line then KW is offering an inadequate account of our
practice. But if KW admits that agreement is not the bottom line in our
rule following, KW's case against private language is seriously
compromised.
- We say of someone else that he follows a certain rule when
his responses agree with our own and deny it when they do not; but what is the utility of this practice? The utility is obvious and can be
brought out by considering again a man who buys something at the grocer's.
[See K, pp. 75-6]. The
customer, when he deals with the grocer and asks for five apples, expects
the grocer to count as he does, not according to some bizarre non-standard
rule; and so, if his dealing with the grocer involve a computation, such
as '68 + 57', he expects the grocer's responses to agree with his own.
. . . When we pronounce that a child has mastered
the rule of addition, we mean that we can entrust him to react as we do in
interactions such as that just mentioned between the grocer and the
customer. Our entire lives
depend on countless such interactions, and on the 'game' of attributing to
others the mastery of certain concepts or rules, thereby showing that we
expect them to behave as we do. (K, pp. 92-3).
COMMENTARY: Once again, KW makes the silly claim that bare agreement or
disagreement is sufficient for us to say whether someone does or does not
follow a particular rule. As for the remainder of this passage, I have
long thought that KW is guilty of confusing the utility of counting with
the utility of meaning attributions. I don't think I have once in my life
had an expectation about a shopkeeper's "counting as I do".
More importantly, perhaps, I doubt any shopkeepers had expectations about
my counting but I am pretty certain that if they thought about it at all
they couldn't care less how I was inclined to count, for their particular
way of counting was going to hold sway! If nothing else, it's pretty clear
that all that matters in transactions between buyers and sellers is that
both possess the ability to assess each others "countings" and
to arrive at agreement about
what is right and what is wrong in particular cases.
But this ability to arrive at agreement gives the lie to KW's idea that
there is nothing more to correct rule following than mere agreement (or
disagreement) in responses. The truth is that expectations about others
behaving the same as we do, even if we do have them, are by the way. (For
all I know you may be quussing and I plussing, but if the case at hand is
not one where plus and quus differ, the difference is of no account at
all). What keeps our use of rules running smoothly is our ability to
assess our answers for agreement or disagreement with our rules and our
ability to communicate disagreements about particular answers. All of this
implies much more than mere agreement can give us. And without these
abilities we would have a breakdown of the practice.
- We can [state] this in terms of a device that has been common
in philosophy, inversion of a
conditional. For example, it
is important to our concept of causation that we accept some such
conditional as: "If
events of type A cause events of
type B, and if an event e of type A occurs, then an event e'
of type B must follow. . . . [H]ow do
[Humeans] read the conditional? Essentially they concentrate on the
assertability conditions of a contrapositive form of the conditional. It
is not that any antecedent conditions necessitate that some event e' must take place; rather the
conditional commits us, whenever we know that an event e of type A occurs and is not followed by an event of type B, to deny that there is a causal
connection between the two event types. If we did make such a claim, we must now withdraw it. Although a conditional is
equivalent to its contrapositive, concentration on the contrapositive
reverses our priorities. (K,
p. 94).
COMMENTARY: Kripke once again betrays a misunderstanding of Hume's
sceptical worries about causation. Anyone who understands Hume's
discussion in the Enquiry, where
he talks of sceptical doubts, a sceptical solution to them, as well as
providing several definitions of 'cause', knows that Hume REJECTS the
conditional above (and so cannot be said to accept its contrapositive or
to "concentrate" on the assertability conditions of such a
contrapositive). For Hume rejects the idea that there is any basis for
saying that one event must
follow another. For Humeans the conditional above (and so too its
contrapositive) gives expression to a faulty conception of causation.
What "Humeans" accept is something like the following: A cause
is "an object followed by
another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by
objects similar to the second." (Or: "An object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys
the thought to that other."). Neither definition requires any
need to take the "inversion of the conditional", nor requires us
to "reverse our priorities". For neither definition commits us
to "belief in a nexus" which "necessitates" one event
following another.
While it is true enough that we can deny that something is a cause if we
see the alleged cause occur but it is not followed by its usual effect,
clearly there are other possibilities to consider here. Kripke's
"contrapositive" case above is particularly unHumean. For Hume,
causal claims arise after a period of habituation or accustoming. We say
that events like a cause events
like b after a long process of
conditioning. Given this process, our mind is led to expect a b- type event whenever we see an a - type
event. Now, what are we to say when the expectation is not fulfilled? That
is, what are we to say if there has been a constant conjunction between
events in the past but it fails in some new case?
Clearly, we need not say that a-
type events don't cause b- type
events. We could instead say that, despite appearances, what we took to be
an a- type event really wasn't
one. (E.g., if we see someone fall over dead after eating a piece of
bread, we don't conclude that bread doesn't cause nourishment. Rather, we
look to see how the stuff eaten differs from bread, e.g., it may contain
poison. Of course, if we can't find anything about the poisoning stuff
different from the stuff that had nourished in the past, and if we
continue to experience bread eaters dropping dead, we would say that the
causal relation between bread and nourishment, which existed in the past,
had lapsed. Bread would in this case still be a cause,
it would simply be a cause of poisoning rather than nourishment).
The upshot is that one alleged "violation" of constant
conjunction is not enough to warrant rejecting a claim about event types
being causally related. Nor two cases, nor three or four. For we must
first ensure that the alleged failures are in fact failures. That is, we
must ensure that we really had an a-
type event occur in the first place. But if did convince ourselves of
this, it would still be sometime before we would entertain the idea that
bread doesn't cause nourishment. So, just as a single case doesn't warrant
making a causal claim, a single case cannot warrant rejecting a causal
claim. This suggests, rightly, that the alleged reversal of priorities is
a chimera. We don't really get something from the contrapositive of the
conditional that we can't get from the conditional itself.
A moment's reflection ought to make any logician suspicious of Kripke's
attempt to reverse priorities by appeal to contrapositives of
conditionals. One must be even more concerned with the particular examples
Kripke gives of reversal of priorities. (See footnote 76, pp. 93-4). All
of them are reversals of "because" statements. None are
contrapositives of conditionals. Needless to say, it is bizarre to say the
least, that Kripke should suppose that we can use
contrapositives of conditionals (rather than "because"
statements") to reverse priorities.
- A similar inversion is used in the present instance. It is essential to our concept of a
rule that we maintain some such conditional as "If Jones means
addition by '+', then if he is asked for '68+ 57', he will reply
'125'." . . . As in the causal case, the conditional as stated
makes it appear that some mental state obtains in
Jones that guarantees his performance of particular additions such as '68
+ 57' -- just what the sceptical argument denies. Wittgenstein's picture
of the true situation concentrates on the contrapositive, and on the
justification conditions. If
Jones does not come out with
'125' when asked about '68 + 57', we cannot assert that he means addition
by '+'. (K, pp. 94-5).
COMMENTARY: The tendentious character of Kripke's exposition here is, or
ought to be, fairly obvious. First, notice that the conditional alleged to
be essential to our concept of a rule, is stated
in the indicative mood. It is not, in particular, normative in character.
And yet, chapter 2's case against the dispositional account of meaning
rested on the alleged normative character of meaning. Something is very,
very wrong here indeed. If we buy the essentialness of this conditional,
whither the normative character of meaning? I suggest that Kripke is wrong
and the conditional that is essential to our concept of meaning or rule following, is not simply that people who mean addition
will say 68 + 57 = 125. Rather, we contend that people who mean addition ought to say that 68 + 57 = 125,
all other things being equal. Though one would expect Kripke to say this,
the reason he doesn't say it is because the "ought" version does
not "make it appear that some state of Jones guarantees" some particular answer in this case. Clearly,
a normative claim in this case suggests that there is no guarantee that
someone who means addition will say one thing rather than another. It
simply says something about what an adder ought to say. But then the need
for the inversion of the conditional lapses. Trouble indeed. Furthermore,
a normative claim is also going to do justice to what we do in actual
cases whereas Kripke's inverted conditional does not. For it is patently
not the case that someone's coming out with something other than '125' is
enough to lead us to claim that s/he does not mean such-and-such. The
normative claim, and only the normative claim, expresses a recognition that adders need not always say what they
ought and yet still count as adders.
These problems are, believe it or not, by the way, since Kripke's claim
fails to distinguish between the ICI and community members. For it is
clear that we can say of an ICI, no less than any community member, that
s/he does not mean addition by '+'. There is nothing to prevent us from
recognizing the ICI's failure to say '125' and nothing to prevent us from
using the conditional (or the contrapositive and its justification
conditions) to deny his/her status as an adder.
It is now possible to say something general about KW's so-called sceptical
solution. The key to the solution is not, as Kripke suggests, the shift
from truth conditions to assertion conditions. The key to the solution is
KW's shifting the task from one of justifying the claim that someone means
such-and-such to that of justifying the claim that someone doesn't mean
such-and-such. KW no where shows how to justify
saying of anyone, ICI or community member, that s/he means such-and-such.
Rather, his sceptical solution shows us how to rule out someone meaning
such-and-such. However, KW's conjuring trick is to claim that ICI's can't
be said to be rule followers and then claiming that the community changes
everything. But instead of showing us how to make sense of community
members meaning such-and-such, KW shows us how to say of a community
member that s/he does not mean such-and-such. And the truth is that
nothing prevents us from saying the same of an ICI. So much for the idea
that the community changes everything, or is necessary to give substance
to rule following talk.
- On Wittgenstein's conception, a certain type of traditional
-- and overwhelmingly natural -- explanation of our shared form of life is
excluded. We cannot say that
we all respond as we do to '68 + 57' because
we all grasp the concept of addition in the same way, that we share common
responses to particular addition problems because we share a common concept of addition. . . . For
Wittgenstein, an 'explanation' of this kind
ignores his treatment of the sceptical paradox and its solution. There is
no objective fact -- that we all mean addition by '+', or even that a
given individual does -- that explains our agreement in particular cases.
Rather our license to say of each other that we mean addition by '+' is
part of a 'language game' that sustains itself only because of the brute
fact that we generally agree. (K, p. 97).
COMMENTARY: There are many problems here. First and foremost, KW has not
yet told us how or why we are justified to say of each other that we mean
addition by '+'. Rather, his whole discussion of the sceptical solution up
to this point has focused on showing how or why we are justified in ruling
out someone as an adder (or quadder, presumably). But he has not shown us
what licenses us to say of each other that we mean one thing rather than
another. The sad truth is that the sceptical solution is smoke and
mirrors. KW no where explains why or how we are
justified in saying that someone, whether community member or no, means one
thing rather than another. As such, the sceptic's challenge is not solved,
even sceptically.
Rather, what we get from KW's celebrated sceptical solution is an
explanation, and not a very convincing one at that, of why we are able to
deny that someone means such-and-such. But surely we could have told the
sceptic way back in chapter 2 that particular answers (e.g., saying 68 +
57 = 5) at least allow us to rule out someone as an adder. This leads me
to offer my own "impossibility argument": It's impossible to see
KW's sceptical solution as in any way solving the sceptical problems laid
out in chapter 2.
My earlier remarks should suffice to cast doubt on the adequacy of KW's
claim that our agreement on particular cases is a brute fact. That is,
upon reflection, one of the most absurd claims made in recent philosophy.
For this reason, I think it is obvious that KW is not LW.
- On Wittgenstein's sceptical solution to his problem depends
on agreement, and on checkability -- on one person's ability to test whether
another uses a terms as he does. In our own form of life, how does this agreement come
about? In the case of a term
like 'table', the situation, at least in elementary cases, is simple. A
child who says "table" or "That's a table" when adults
see a table in the area (and does not do so otherwise) is said to have
mastered the term 'table': he says "That's a table", based on
his observation, in agreement with the usage of adults, based on their
observation. That is, they
say, "That's a table" under like circumstances, and confirm the
correctness of the child's utterances. (K, P. 99).
COMMENTARY: On several occasions while writing these commentary pages
I've come across passages from Kripke which seem so off the mark or just
plain USELESS (vis-à-vis the issues in the text) that I fear that some
readers will wonder whether I am quoting Kripke faithfully. Such is the
case with the passage above. Surely THE key element in our agreeing with
each other is the fact that children are taught to utter words in certain
circumstances. Far from being a brute fact, agreement is insured by the
teaching process. This is Quine 101. But teaching a child presupposes a
teacher who understands the terms being taught. It is this understanding
which makes possible the teaching of the child. For it allows the teacher
to assess, criticize or accept the responses of the child as betraying
misunderstanding, being mistaken or being correct respectively. If there
is a brute fact here it is this understanding, not agreement.
Once again, it is worth noting that the notion of agreement here means
only agreement on responses. But as we know from chapter 2, agreement in
responses can mask disagreement on meanings. So agreement on responses
cannot serve to justify meaning attributions. By the same token,
"checkability" is also just checking of responses, not checking
on meaning. At best then we have the ability to justify claims that
someone doesn't mean such and such but that is all.
Finally, let us also appreciate that if I am able to determine that your
responses are at odds with those I am inclined to give then I can also
tell if and when I give a response contrary to my understanding of some
rule or other. I am not, as many seem to think, forced to accept that
anything that comes out of my mouth or pen is ipso facto the right way to
follow the rule. If I was, I could never be corrected by another nor
bother correcting another. Instead, I'd say: You don't add like me but
everything you say is correct rule following.
- In the text we argued that for each particular rule, if conditionals of the form: If Jones follows the rule, in this
instance he will . . . , are to have any point,
they must be contraposed. If
the community finds that in this instance Jones is not doing . . . , he is not following the rule. Only in this
'inverted' way does the notion of my behavior as 'guided' by the rule make
sense. Thus for each rule
there must be an 'external check' on whether I am
following it in a given instance. (K, p. 103, fn. 83).
COMMENTARY: Since Kripke repeats his contraposition claim, I'll repeat my
claim that if all we needed to answer the sceptic was to show that,
whatever the status of his complaints, he cannot deny our ability to reject someone as following a
particular rule (not, however to reject them as a rule follower at all)
then the sceptical problem and its so-called sceptical solution turn out
to be little more than a curious joke.
Also, Kripke's "thus" in the last line here is befuddling. To
begin with, what does it follow from here? Second, it suggests that the
contrapositive move is unneeded. For if I am not not following the rule in
a given instance, then the community will count me as following the rule.
But then whither the import of contraposition? Last, but not least, this
passage gives us a view precisely of the sort allegedly ruled out by the
sceptic, and accepted as such by KW. For in the end, we take someone's
responses in particular cases as our only "check" on whether
s/he is or is not following the rule. But isn't that exactly what the sceptic said we couldn't
do in chapter 2, viz., say that someone was following plus simply because
s/he gave "plus responses" in particular cases?!
- . . . [Consider] Wittgenstein's
remark that "Finitism and behaviorism are quite similar trends. Both
say, but surely, all we have here is . . . . Both deny the existence of
something, both with a view to escaping from a confusion." (Remarks on the Foundations of
Mathematics, p. 63 [II, §61]) How are the two trends 'quite similar'? The finitist realizes that although
mathematical statements and concepts may be about the infinite (e.g., to
grasp the '+' function is to grasp an infinite table), the criteria for
attributing such functions to others must be 'finite', indeed 'surveyable'
. . . . Similarly, though sensation
language may be about 'inner' states, the behaviorist correctly affirms
that attribution to others of sensation concepts rests on publicly
observable (and thus on behavioral) criteria . . . .
Mathematical finitists and
psychological behaviorists, however, make parallel unnecessary moves when
they deny the legitimacy of talk of infinite mathematical objects or inner
states . . . . Such opinions are misguided: they are attempts to
repudiate our ordinary language game. (K, pp. 106-7).
COMMENTARY: This passage seems to offer us a position at odds with what
appears to be KW's official pronouncements concerning meaning. In
particular, Kripke here suggests that although our statements can be and
are "about the infinite", when we attribute a grasp of infinite
functions to ourselves or others, the criteria for such attributions
"must be finite" or "surveyable". By my lights, this
entails that there is no problem with us attributing to each other access
to, or understanding of, or grasps of, infinite tables. But this seems to
be at odds with Kripke's claims in chapter 2, e.g., claims that deny the
existence of infinite tables in our heads. (Cf. p. 22).
I also do not understand the 'must' in Kripke's claim that the criteria for
attributing to someone a grasp of an infinite function "must" be
finite or surveyable. It seems to me Kripke is guilty of transforming an
"is" into a "must".
Finally, I have a difficult time understanding why or how Kripke's last
two lines here, (where he tries to explain what is wrong with finitism or
behaviorism by Wittgenstein's lights), do not
serve to indict his own account of Wittgenstein. After all, KW pretty
clearly challenges the legitimacy of talk of infinite mathematical objects
or inner states. Indeed, he certainly denies that we can appeal to either
one to help us justify our meaning attributions. At the very least, we can
say that KW's sceptic has offered us a "misguided attempt to
repudiate our ordinary language game". If this is right, KW ought not agree with his sceptic at
all. Rather, he should reject the sceptic's case against meaning facts as
a misguided attempt to reject our ordinary language game (instead of
agreeing with his sceptic but then ignoring the sceptic's claims by switching
from TCs to ACs).
- Let me, then, summarize the 'private language argument' as it
is presented in this essay. (I)
We all suppose that our language expresses concepts -- 'pain', 'plus',
'red' -- in such a way that, once I 'grasp' the concept, all future
applications of it are determined (in the sense of being uniquely justified by the concept grasped). In fact, it seems that no matter
what is in my mind at a given time, I am free in the future to interpret
it in different ways -- for example, I could follow the sceptic and
interpret 'plus' as 'quus'. (K,
p. 107).
COMMENTARY: I will deal with Kripke's summary in two parts. The question
raised by this passage is: Who denies that we are free to interpret our
concepts in different ways? Yes I can interpret 'plus' as 'quus' (or,
better, interpret 'plus' to refer to the function quus). But we can also
recognize the difference between the interpretations, provided we're
considering a case where the two functions require different answers. Most
importantly, the fact that we are free to interpret whatever is in our
mind, "in different ways", does nothing to show that there is a
problem with being able to justify applications of the concept in future
cases. As I have urged on many occasions here, simply because a quusser
can justify saying 2 + 2 = 4 by citing the function quus, does nothing to
show that a plusser is not justified to give the same response.
The key word in Kripke's claim above is not "justified" but
rather "uniquely". That is the term that should have been
italicized. However, that we are unable to provide a unique justification of our responses to computation problems,
i.e., unable to show that all and only those who say that 2 + 2 = 4 are
plussers, does nothing to show that we have not grasped the concept plus
nor that we have no idea what concept of '+' we are using. Contra KW's
sceptic, the sceptical problem does nothing here to threaten our language
games of function talk or meaning attributions respectively, precisely
because it does not and cannot remove our ability to detect differences
among different interpretations of the terms of our language.
Finally, we should balk at the suggestion here, which is not to be found
in KW's arguments in chapter 2, that we are to identify, (i) "future
applications are determined by the concept" with (ii) "future
applications are uniquely justified by the concept". Throughout chapter 2, KW (or his
sceptic) suggests that it is justification for particular responses
simpliciter that is impossible. Here, for the first time, Kripke
acknowledges that KW's complaint is that we are unable to provide unique justifications for our
responses. And this would be
a problem just in case any and all interpretations were indistinguishable.
(E.g., we know that someone who says 2 + 2 = 4 does not mean minus or
times by '+'). This is not,
however, the case. The
alleged sceptical problem then is at best a case of Quinean style
indeterminacy of translation, and nothing more. At worst, it's nothing
more than a curious joke.
- (2) The paradox can be resolved only by a 'sceptical solution
of these doubts', in Hume's classic sense. This means that we must give up the attempt to find any
fact about me in virtue of which I mean 'plus' rather than 'quus', and
must then go on in a certain way. Instead we must consider how we actually use: (i) the
categorical assertion that an individual is following a given rule (that
he means addition by 'plus'); (ii) the conditional assertion that "if
an individual follows such-and-such a rule, he must do so-and-so on a
given occasion" (e.g., "if he means addition by '+', his answer
to '68 + 57' should by '125'").
. . . (3) As long as we consider a single
individual in isolation, . . . [t]he
justificatory element of our use of conditionals such as (ii) is
unexplained. (4) If we take
into account the fact that the individual is in a community, the picture
changes and the role of (i) and (ii) above becomes apparent. When the community accepts a
particular conditional (ii), it accepts its contraposed form: the failure of an individual to come up with
the particular responses the community regards as right leads the
community to suppose that he is not following the rule. On the other hand,
if an individual passes enough tests, the community (endorsing assertions
of the form (i)) accepts him as a rule follower . . . .
Note that this solution
explains how the assertions in (i) and (ii) are introduced into language;
it does not give conditions for
these statements to be true . . . . In particular, for the conditionals
of type (ii) to make sense, the community must be able to judge whether an
individual is indeed following a given rule in particular applications,
i.e., whether his responses agree with their own. (K, pp. 108-9).
COMMENTARY: A careful examination of this passage is nearly enough to
reveal what is wrong with the main ideas of Kripke's book. For starters,
is it not the case that we actually use meaning attributions to state
facts about someone? And if we do, doesn't that spell trouble both for the
claim that there is no fact about me in virtue of which . . . . , as well as the claim
that an appeal to actual use is the way to a "sceptical solution" of the paradox. Second, as I have
noted throughout this commentary, KW is guilty, in his sceptical solution,
of ignoring the question of how it is that we are able to say of someone
that s/he means plus rather than quus.
This is made clear here, where he explicitly says we must consider how we
actually use the claim that someone means addition by 'plus'. But surely
the sceptic either did nothing to cast doubt on our ability to say of
someone that s/he means addition by 'plus', in which case the sceptical
problem is of no account, or else he does cast doubt on our ability to
ascribe "meaning addition" to someone by questioning our ability
to justify saying that someone meant plus rather than quus. If the latter is the case then KW's
sceptical solution never addresses the main problem, viz., how can we
justify saying that someone means plus rather
than quus. And if the response to this is that we give up the need to
do this once we shift from truth conditions to assertion conditions, (a
response, by the way, which Kripke himself never makes), we need an
explanation for why this shift allows us to ignore the possibility that
someone who has given answers in accord with both plus and quus, means
quus rather than plus.
For the assertion conditions for meaning quus are surely identical to the
assertions conditions for meaning plus up to the very case which the sceptic
considers, viz., a case where the numbers in the computation are greater
than 56. The claims following (3) and (4) above are both false. Or at
least, if the claim following (3) is true, it is no less true for
community members. As such, it is unclear how or why the community makes
any difference at all in the ability to introduce or assert or use claims
like (i) and (ii). Indeed, Kripke argues that for the ICI, any
dispositions to respond, as well as any feelings of confidence s/he may
have about his/her responses, "could be present, . . . even if he
were not really following a rule at all, or even if he were doing the
'wrong' thing." What's flabbergasting about this argument is that
Kripke is unaware that it applies just as well to any "community
member"!
It's also clear here that the sceptical problem, viz., what justifies
saying that someone means plus rather than quus, has been ignored. Kripke
here speaks of our "endorsing assertions of the form (i)", when
we find that an "individual passes enough tests", i.e., that an
individual has answered in accord with plus or with the community's notion
of plus in enough cases. But surely this is where the sceptic could step
in and ask us how we know the individual's responses have been plus
responses rather than quus responses. Clearly, we know nothing of the
kind.
Also, Kripke's claim that the solution "explains how the assertions
in (i) and (ii) are introduced into language; it does not give conditions for these statement to be true", is a
red herring. Surely KW owes us, and regards himself as providing, more
than a story about the introduction of
claims like (i) and (ii). Surely he purported to be providing
justification conditions for these claims, i.e., showing us why or how we
could be justified to say that someone means plus in the absence of
meaning facts. (N.B. The conditionals (assertions
of kind (ii)) are themselves used, according to KW, to justify saying of
someone that s/he doesn't mean such-and-so in cases where the consequents
are violated. As such, the question of their truth or of their
justification is never really discussed by KW. Instead he appeals to them
as a way of justifying assertions that someone does not means
such-and-such. KW never does tell us then how such conditionals come to be
introduced in our language games).
- . . . [F]ollowing
[Philosophical Investigations] §243,
a 'private language' is usually defined as a language that is logically
impossible for anyone else to understand. The private language argument is taken to argue against the
possibility of a private language in this sense. This conception is not in error,
but it seems to me that the emphasis is somewhat misplaced. What is really denied is what might
be called the 'private model' of rule following, that the notion of a person
following a given rule is to be analyzed simply in terms of facts about
the rule follower and the rule follower alone, without reference to his
membership in a wider community. (K, p. 109).
COMMENTARY: While it's nice to see Kripke claiming that standard ideas
about Wittgenstein's private language argument (hereafter, PLA) are
"not in error", it's difficult to accept his claim that the
standard account of the PLA is guilty only of a misplacing of emphasis.
Surely the differences between Kripke's understanding of the PLA and that
of the standard view come to more than a difference of emphasis! Surely a language that is logically
impossible for anyone else to understand is not all that KW is denying.
Indeed, Kripke explicitly says on the very next page that it's quite
possible for us to consider an isolated and solitary individual as a rule
follower, as doing and saying what we do and say. Clearly then, the
"language" of an ICI, whatever else it is, is not going to be
logically impossible for anyone else to understand. Apparently, all it takes to
understand the "language" of an ICI is a community, an appeal to
which of course undermines the status of an ICI as an ICI. As such, KW's PLA differs
considerably from the standard version of the PLA, for the ICI does not
speak a language that is logically impossible for anyone else to
understand. At best, an ICI
is such that another cannot understand him/her, because to speak of
another person understanding an ICI is, ipso facto ,
to longer speak of an ICI. Again, it's clear that this is not part of the
standard conception of Wittgenstein's PLA.
- Does this mean that Robinson Crusoe, isolated on an island,
cannot be said to follow any rules, no matter what he does? I do not see that this follows. What does follow is that if we think of Crusoe as following
rules, we are taking him into our community and applying our criteria for
rule following to him. The
falsity of the private model need not mean that a physically isolated individual, cannot be said to follow rules;
rather that an individual, considered
in isolation (whether or not he is physically isolated), cannot be
said to do so . . . . Our community can assert of any individual that he
follows a rule if he passes the tests for rule following applied to any member
of the community. (K, p.
110).
COMMENTARY: This distinction between those who are
merely "physically isolated" and those who are "considered
in isolation", threatens to make KW's claims and arguments trivial or
false. For starters, the distinction itself is by no means clear. In
normal parlance, if someone asks you to "consider a single person in
isolation", more likely than not you imagine something like a Crusoe
figure, alone on an island, isolated from any other human beings. Kripke's
passage suggests, however, that the idea of a Crusoe figure alone and
isolated from all other persons, is not exactly what a person considered
in isolation comes to. A Crusoe figure is alleged to be merely physically
isolated but not necessarily to be a person considered in isolation. What
more then is needed to turn a Crusoe figure from being merely physically
isolated to being a "single person considered in isolation"?
There seem to be at least two answers. First, Jones is a single person
considered in isolation just in case our assessments of Jones' (alleged)
rule following behavior are based on nothing more than Jones' own
justification conditions (whatever that means; cf. Kripke, p. 89. At the
least, Kripke seems to allow us access to Jones' behavior as well as his
"psychological states"; as a Quinean, I have my doubts if access
to psychological states is going to add anything here). A clearer answer
(perhaps!) is drawn from the passage above and it suggests that Jones is a
single person considered in isolation just in case our assessments of
Jones' (alleged) rule following behavior avoid "applying our criteria
for rule following" to Jones. For according to the passage above,
once we apply our rule following criteria to Crusoe he ceases to be a
person "considered in isolation" and is merely a
"physically isolated individual".
Utilizing this latter criterion it seems trivial to say that we can say
nothing more about an ICI than that s/he is licensed to apply the/his rule
in the way it strikes him/her (i.e., we can't say s/he is a rule
follower). For if we are to say anything substantive about anyone's
(alleged) rule following behavior, we must make use of our standard
criteria for such talk. Otherwise, we can say nothing at all. But
according to Kripke, once we apply our standard criteria to someone, s/he
ceases to be an ICI and becomes merely "physically isolated". It
should be obvious from this that KW's case against "private
language" is based on nothing more than a semantic quibble. I say this
because it is clear that KW is not claiming that it is only by direct
confrontation and interaction with others that one can become a rule
follower. Clearly the community is allowed to act at a distance in making
Crusoe a rule follower. Furthermore, since we must make use of our rule
following in order to assess anyone as a rule follower, it's clear that
KW's ICI fails to be a rule follower, by definition, and so without any
need for argumentation. Not exactly a stirring or profound result.
This is not to say that some have not found KW's result to be profound, or
at least important. They seem to think that it is a deep result to be told
that in order to say anything about
someone we perforce make use of our criteria for making such claims and
that without being able to make use of such criteria,
we can't say anything at all. My main complaint with those who take this
reading of KW as yielding important insights is that such a reading of KW
is sympathetic to say the least. In short, the problem with this account
of KW is that it seems at odds with Kripke's text. Surely Kripke's text
suggests throughout that Wittgenstein is going to show us that confined to
a solitary individual's behavior and mental states, WE are not going to be
able to say anything more about this individual's (alleged) rule following
behavior than that s/he can apply the/his rule "in the way it strikes
him/her".
But if this "WE" is to have any significance here, and
consequently if the claim is to have any import at all, it must refer to
beings with a language, and all that that implies, who are being denied
the ability to say anything substantive about the solitary individual's
rule following. Instead, KW gives us the notion of an individual
"considered in isolation", a notion which
has the interesting property of robbing anyone who is going to talk about
such an individual of his/her language. As such, it's not really WE who
are unable to say anything substantive about an ICI. Rather, it's beings
without a language who cannot do so. For my
money, it's not terribly interesting to be told that beings who are unable to make use of their usual language
cannot say anything of substance about someone. Indeed, it's trivial.
(For the record, there are many who think, or thought, that KW is arguing,
and arguing successfully, that no physically isolated individual can be
said to follow rules. I do not think they should be faulted for reading KW
in this way, for as I have suggested here, Kripke certainly gives the
impression that this is what Wittgenstein is claiming. Couple this with
the fact that such a result, viz., showing that no physically isolated
individual could be a rule follower, or designated as one by us, would be
a significant result, and one can appreciate why many have taken KW to
make such a claim. This passage from p. 110 however, shows that KW not
only has not shown that no PII can be a rule follower or speaker, but that
KW is not even trying to establish such a result).
- One must bear firmly in mind that Wittgenstein has no theory
of truth conditions -- necessary and sufficient conditions -- for the
correctness of one response rather than another to a new addition problem.
Rather he simply points out
that each of us automatically calculates
new addition problems (without the need to check with the community
whether our procedure is proper); that the community feels entitled to
correct a deviant calculation; that in practice such deviation is rare,
and so on. Wittgenstein thinks that these observations about sufficient
conditions for justified assertion are enough to illuminate the role and
utility in our lives of assertion about meaning and determination of new
answers. What follows from
these assertability conditions is not
that the answer everyone gives to an addition problem is, by
definition, the correct one, but rather the platitude that, if everyone
agrees upon a certain answer, then no one will feel justified in calling
the answer wrong. (K, pp.
111-112).
COMMENTARY: This passage illustrates Kripke's failure to keep two very
different issues straight. These two issues are, first, what makes one
response to an addition problem the right response, and the second one is,
what shows that someone means plus rather than some other function similar
to, but ultimately different from, plus. To be sure, Kripke or KW takes
these issues to be intimately related, arguing that the first question
depends on the second, since what's right depends on what is meant. But I
take it that KW claims that there is ultimately no answering the second
question, i.e., ultimately nothing shows that someone means plus by '+'
rather than some other function. Or at least the possibility that someone
means something other than plus can never be completely ruled out. That we
are apparently unable to say that someone means plus rather than some
other function, seems to leave us unable to make any sense of "the
right response" to various computations.
The sceptical solution suggests that we can still make sense of something
being the right response if and only if we have a community. The argument
for this is that without appeal to other responses, anything one says is
"right". And since that can't be right (i.e., if anything one
says is right then we can't here speak of right), we must have other
responses in order to give substance to our talk of the right response. In
particular, the sceptical solution suggests that the right response can
only be determined by comparing one response with other responses. Roughly
speaking, the right response is the response accepted within one's
community.
Now while it is true enough that a community makes it possible to speak of
particular responses being in accord with or out of step with "other
responses", and so to make sense of saying that one response is not
right, it's clear that we do not wish to make the majority response the
right response. But that is basically what KW has done. Most importantly
however, KW allows that our meaning talk is based on hypotheticals, on
conditionals. That is, we can only say that if someone means plus then s/he
ought to say that 68 + 57 = 125, or if someone means quus then s/he ought
to say that 68 + 57 = 5. But it should be obvious that the use of such
conditionals reveals that there is no special problem with determining
what the correct responses are to addition and quaddition problems
respectively.
Rather, the only problem, ultimately unsolvable insofar as one seeks a
unique answer, is determining what someone means by his/her terms (this is
just Quine's thesis of indeterminacy, by the way). Most importantly, there
is no real difference here between the so-called solitary case and the
case of members of a community. KW's appeal to the community does not
allow us to determine someone's meaning to uniqueness. The ability of members of a
community to create hypothetical or conditional statements regarding meaning, can be matched by a solitary individual. Indeed, they must be so matched,
for if no individual can manage the feat of forming conditional statements
of meaning or determining when his/her behavior accords with or violates
such conditionals, it is impossible that such an ability
could arise just in case there are others present. The only difference
between a solitary individual and a community member is that a community
member can be using a particular sign differently from the way others in
his/her community are using it. As such, a community member can be
"corrected" by the community, or VICE-VERSA. Obviously, this cannot happen in
the case of a solitary individual, or an ICI. But this ability of a
community to "correct" (or create uniformity) has nothing to do
with the possibility of substantive rule following or substantive rule
following talk. Just here is KW's mistake.
KW claims, wrongly, that given the sceptical argument, the only way we can
make sense of particular responses being right or wrong is to compare them
with other responses. That is, being wrong amounts to being out of step
and being right amounts to being in accord. Contra KW, the possibility of
substantive rule following rests on the ability to create meaning
conditionals and to assess behavior as according with or violating such
conditionals as the case may be. KW's mistake then comes to the following.
KW rightly sees that it makes no sense to speak of a solitary individual
using a sign differently from the way others use it. For this we need a
community of people.
However, KW fails to appreciate that this fact has nothing to do with
whether a solitary individual is or can be a substantive rule follower.
This question is a matter of whether one is able to create meaning
conditionals and to assess behavior as according with or violating these
conditionals. Nothing in KW's book shows that ICIs are unable to create
and assess meaning conditionals. Rather, KW shows only that it makes no
sense, in the case of an ICI, to say that his/her use of a sign is or is
not out of step with the use of that sign by others.
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modified October 2, 2011
JAH, Professor
Dept. of Philosophy