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Some Oddities in
Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and
Private Language |
Oddity One: Kripke
claims that Wittgenstein has invented "a new form of scepticism", one
which inclines Kripke "to regard it as the most radical and original
sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date, one that only a highly
unusual cast of mind could have produced" (K, p. 60). However, Kripke also claims that there
are analogies (and sometimes the analogies look very much like identities)
between Wittgenstein's sceptical argument and the work of at least three and
maybe four other philosophers, viz., Quine, Goodman, Hume and Berkeley. Very strange stuff,
methinks.
The originality of Wittgenstein's work is especially difficult to see after
Kripke claims that Wittgenstein presents a problem concerning the nexus between
past . . . 'meanings' and present practice" (K, p. 62), and says that Hume
is said to have questioned "the causal nexus whereby a past event
necessitates a future one, and the inductive inferential nexus from the past to
the future." (K, p. 62). Wither the originality? And the connection with Goodman's work
with 'grue' is even closer than that between Kripke's Wittgenstein and
Hume. Given that Kripke had read
Goodman before "discovering" the rule-following paradox in
Wittgenstein, one ought to be sceptical of Kripke's claim that Wittgenstein has
invented a new form of scepticism.
It would be much more accurate to say that Kripke has strapped
Wittgenstein with a hybrid scepticism drawn from Hume and Goodman.
Oddity
Two: Kripke claims that
Wittgenstein's private language argument is not focused on showing how or that
private language is impossible. As Kripke sees things, Wittgenstein's main
problem is NOT, "How can we show private language -- or some other special
form of language -- to be impossible?". (K, p. 62). Rather, says
Kripke, Wittgenstein's private language argument falls out of the attempt to
answer the question, "How can we show any
language at all (public, private, or what-have-you) to be possible?" (K, p.
62). According to Kripke, "Wittgenstein's main problem is that it
appears that he has shown all
language, all concept formation, to
be impossible, indeed unintelligible." (K, p. 62).
Kripke lays out the details of his Wittgenstein's modus operandi as follows:
Of course I am suggesting that Wittgenstein's argument against private language has a structure similar to Hume's argument against private causation. Wittgenstein also states a sceptical paradox. Like Hume, he accepts his own sceptical argument and offers a 'sceptical solution' to overcome the appearance of paradox. His solution involves a sceptical interpretation of what is involved in such ordinary assertions as "Jones means addition by '+'." The impossibility of private language emerges as a corollary of his sceptical solution of his own paradox, as does the impossibility of 'private causation' in Hume. It turns out that the sceptical solution does not allow us to speak of a single individual, considered in isolation, as ever meaning anything. (K, p. 68).
Ignoring for now any worries about the
accuracy of Kripke's understanding of Hume's sceptical anlace, (of which I have
many), this passage finds Kripke insisting that Wittgenstein will offer a
"sceptical interpretation" of our meaning assertions (presumably,
this means an interpretation that respects key elements of the sceptical attack
on meaning but nonetheless somehow permits us to avoid the intolerable
conclusion that such assertions make no sense), which interpretation will
restore substance to our ordinary meaning attributions but which will be seen
to be inapplicable in the case of solitary individuals, individuals considered
in isolation.
However, an examination of the appropriate
sections of Kripke's book (roughly, pp. 87 ff.) reveals something quite
different from what Kripke advertised on p. 68. On p. 88, Kripke gives an argument the conclusion of which
is: "All we can say, if we consider a single person in isolation, is that
our ordinary practice licenses him to apply the rule in the way it strikes
him." Although there are
well-known problems, exegetical and otherwise, with KW's notion of a person
"considered in isolation" (ICI), it is at least clear that the ICI is
the subject of KW's case against the possibility of private language. Thus the passage from p. 88 shows that
for KW, the alleged private linguist is licensed to apply rules as it strikes
him to apply them.
Kripke then claims, rightly I think, that this result effectively makes the
private linguist someone for whom the notion of rule following can be given
"no substantive content". (K, p. 89). As Kripke notes, unless we are able to
judge the legitimacy of someone's claim to be following a rule, or someone's
claim to have provided an answer in accord with the rule s/he previously
followed, our rule following talk is without substantive content. Since KW claims that we can do neither
in the case of the ICI, it is clear to him that substantive rule following is
impossible in the private case, i.e., the case of the ICI. In short, it is not
possible to obey a rule "privately". What's as significant as it is obvious here is that KW has
argued for the impossibility of private rule following and so private language prior to arguing for the possibility of
some language or other.
For immediately after arguing that the ICI is
someone who cannot be a substantive rule follower because "all we can say
is that he is licensed to follow . . . rule[s] as it strikes him", Kripke
claims:
The situation is very different if we widen our gaze from consideration of the rule follower alone and allow ourselves to consider him as interacting with a wider community. (K, p. 89).
Clearly then KW is not first showing us how some language or other is possible and then as a corollary discovering that this possible language has features which for some reason cannot be applied in the case of the private linguist. In fact, KW's reasoning runs in the opposite direction. That is, KW first argues for the impossibility of rule following and language in the private case ("all we can say, if we consider one person in isolation . . . "), which argument is then alleged to lose its force in the "non-private" case. In particular, KW claims that once other people are allowed in the picture, it is no longer the case that "all we can say of someone is that s/he is licensed to follow rules as it strikes him/her".
Contrary to Kripke's advertisements then, it is clear that his Wittgenstein's
case against private language is no mere corollary to his sceptical solution. Indeed, KW's case against private
language is the foil for his argument to show that some language or other (in
this case a public one) is indeed possible, despite the best efforts of his
sceptic. And because of this, I
think we end up with much more than an oddity. We end up with a substantive difficulty that threatens the
force and legitimacy of KW's entire discussion.
The difficulty is made clear by cashing out
KW's sceptical solution’s modus operandi. KW begins his solution by insisting on a shift from a
truth-conditional account of meaning to an account of meaning based on
assertion conditions (or justification conditions). The rationale for this maneuver is that it allegedly renders
the sceptic's case against meaning facts irrelevant. As Kripke says:
Now if we suppose that facts, or truth conditions, are of the essence of meaningful assertion, it will follow from the sceptical conclusion that assertions that anyone ever means anything are meaningless. On the other hand, if we apply to these assertions the tests suggested in Philosophical Investigations [i.e., the tests associated with an assertion conditions conception of meaning], no such conclusion follows. All that is needed to legitimize assertions that someone means something is that there be roughly specifiable circumstances under which they are legitimately assertable, and that the game of asserting them under such conditions has a role in our lives. K, pp. 77-8).
I won't here pause to critique the picture
contained in this passage. I cite
it as evidence that KW believes that the shift in meaning conceptions is the
key to solving, albeit sceptically, the sceptical problem of the meaningless of
our meaning talk. This passage
makes clear why KW believes he can grant the sceptic's negative assertions
(i.e., no fact shows Jones ought to say '125' rather than '5'; no fact shows
that Jones meant plus rather than quus) and yet avoid the meaningless of our
meaning talk, viz., facts are irrelevant to the legitimatization of our meaning
attributions.
After advocating a shift in meaning conceptions, KW then appears to claim that even given the shift in meaning conceptions, it is impossible to give substance to talk of an ICI following rules, meaning anything by his/her words, or speaking a language. (Of course, it goes without saying that on a fact-based conception of meaning, private language is impossible for anyone who accepts the sceptic's negative assertions, as KW does. After all, on a fact-based conception of meaning, all language is impossible, if one accepts the sceptic's negative assertions. For these reasons, we must read KW's case against private rule following as presupposing an assertion conditions conception of meaning). KW then, of course, suggests that "widening our gaze" to a community permits us to give substance to our rule following talk. However, while this conclusion establishes that substantive talk of rule following is possible (thereby answering the sceptic's claim that all language is impossible), it should be clear that KW has not provided us with a viable case against private language. He has at best shown that, on an assertions conditions conception of meaning, talk of private rule following cannot be rendered substantive, cannot be said to be possible. But clearly this result does not warrant saying that private rule following is impossible under any and all possible conceptions of meaning talk.
Oddity
Three: The third oddity
arises in connection with KW's contention that "widening our gaze"
from the ICI to a community enables us to give substance to our rule following
talk, or why KW believes that he has offered us a solution to this problem that
does not apply in the case of the ICI. As noted above, KW's so-called sceptical solution is not a
solution of the problem of the impossibility of language but rather offers a
"solution" to the alleged problem of the impossibility of private
rule following. The solution's key
move is the claim that in a community setting, there will be a host of
"justification conditions for attributing correct or incorrect rule following
to . . . subject[s] . . . and these will not
be simply that the subject's own authority is unconditionally to be
accepted." (K,
p. 89). [Q: What is it that we do not have to allow
the subject to be unconditionally authoritative about? That the subject is
following the rule for plus? That the subject's answer to a computation problem is
correct? That
the subject means plus by '+'?]. But how or why does the mere existence of competing
justification conditions yield substantive rule following or solve the problems
that allegedly rendered the ICI incapable of substantive rule following? KW's answer is obvious but hardly
enlightening: it prevents "the subject's own authority" from being
"unconditionally accepted".
But how does this allow us to determine
whether someone means plus and not quus prior to his/her giving an answer to
'68 + 57'? The answer, I believe, is that it does no such thing. It only allows us to say of an
individual's answer that it is at odds with our own. And while this is, in one sense at least, more than we're
permitted to say of an individual considered in isolation, (as I note
elsewhere, we seem unable to say ANYTHING at all about an ICI without thereby
undermining his/her status as an ICI; however, if we are allowed to say
anything at all about people considered people in isolation, we can say that
such a person is, or is not following a particular rule, and we will make such
a claim based on whether s/he has given answers in accord with the rule in
question) it obviously does not enable us to claim that the individual ought to
say 125 rather than 5, or vice versa. KW, in short, seems to confuse being able to say something
more of a putative rule follower than "s/he is licensed to apply the rule
in the way it strikes him/her" (K, P. 88), with having given substance to
rule following talk. At best, KW
has offered us a flimsy notion of substantive rule following or an individual
considered in isolation. At worst,
he has failed to appreciate that we can say of an ICI exactly what we can say
of individual community members, viz., that s/he is (or is not) following
particular rules.
Oddity
Four: Actually, this is an
oddity and a half, but who's counting?
On p. 90, Kripke offers us "rough assertability conditions for such
a sentence as "Jones means addition by 'plus'." Never mind that
Kripke first floated the notion of Wittgenstein's alternative construal of such
sentences on p. 66!). However, he
starts by laying out the assertability conditions for Jones making such an
attribution. Again, never mind that the conditions offered here are of no use. (First and foremost, is there anything
in these acs which would permit them to be distinguished from say, the acs for
Jones to say of himself that he means quus, or that he means minus, or times,
etc., by 'plus'. Why anyone would regard these as viable and legitimate acs is a complete mystery to me.). According to KW, all that allegedly
prevents Jones from being allowed to rely on nothing more than his feelings of
confidence about the correctness of his understanding and his "new
responses", is that Jones's claim that he means addition by 'plus' is
"subject to the correction of others", as are his claims about the
correctness of his "new responses". Absurdity one here is that Jones
appeals only to feelings of confidence, or his inclinations in declaring his
meaning or in calling his new responses correct. Surely the answers themselves are what Jones looks to, as
well as their working in whatever circumstances Jones may find himself adding. His inclination and confidence are at
best byproducts of correctness, not the source and certainly not their
justification or legitimization.
The second absurdity is talk of
"correction by others" here. It sounds nice but it is illegitimate. We can see this by asking how one go
would about correcting Jones's claim that he means addition by 'plus'. Does one
claim that Jones is lying or mistaken about his "feeling of
confidence"? If so, how is
the charge of lying or mistake to be legitimated? That's quite mysterious
indeed. Obviously, Kripke is
supposing that we check the legitimacy of Jones's meaning attribution (to
himself) and the legitimacy of his claims of correct answers by comparing
Jones's answers to our own. But
what can checking mean here? Do we check of our respective inclinations with those of
others?
Ultimately, however, these problems with talk
of "correcting" Jones's claims are overridden by the lack of any
account of what justifies someone other than Jones to say of Jones that, e.g.,
he is adding. Kripke's discussion
of assertion conditions offers us an account of how the community is able to
"correct" Jones's "mistaken" claims about his meaning and
his answers but it never offers us an account of the assertion conditions for
ascribing a particular meaning to Jones. In particular, Kripke tells us the assertability conditions
for the community to say of Jones that s/he doesn't mean plus by '+' (roughly,
when Jones gives answers different from those his community gives for plus) but
he never explains how the community is justified to say of Jones that he does mean
plus).
Oddity four and a half then is that Kripke offers us neither ACs for others to
ascribe meanings to Jones nor does he appreciate that he offers us nothing that
explains how we are to rule out alternative meanings for Jones's use of '+'. In particular, as far as we can tell,
the conditions under which a community would be legitimated to say that Jones
means plus by '+' would also permit that community to say that Jones means quus
by '+' as well. As such, the
celebrated AC conception of meaning is unable to solve the problem of showing
how someone is justified to say 125 rather than 5.
Also, why do we need an ac conception of
meaning in order to avoid having "a subject's own authority from being
unconditionally accepted"? The
correct answer to this is that we do not. For a fact based conception of meaning is also able to avoid
having a subject's own authority about what s/he is doing from being
unconditionally accepted. If this
is all the ac conception can offer us, it is not offering us anything that a
fact based conception of meaning cannot offer. The bottom line here is that KW avoids having the ac
conception solve the original sceptical problem by having it solve the problem
of showing how to avoid having a subject's own authority from being
unconditionally accepted. Allegedly, solving this problem allows us to have substantive
rule following.
However, it is obvious that solving the private language/rule problem is
something a fact based conception can do. (Indeed, by my lights, the alleged ac
conception of KW is knee deep in facts; the truth is that the nonexistence of
facts sought by the sceptic are not a sufficient basis for rejecting a fact
based conception of meaning and so it's no surprise that facts make their way
into KW's alleged ac conception of meaning). And so a fact based conception also permits us to have
substantive rule following. The only thing it couldn't do is show how we can
justify saying '125' rather than '5', to '68 + 57', assuming that the problem
'68 + 57' is "new" to us. And the reason it could not do this is because there is no
fact that shows we mean plus rather than quus. And the reason there's no fact is because the existence of
such a fact is tied to showing how to justify saying '125' rather than '5'. (Sounds
circular, doesn't it?). However,
KW's ac conception also cannot show how to justify saying '125' rather than '5'
to 68 = 57.
The argument in KW's favor may go something
like this: If I say '125' and this answer is agreed to by everyone else in my community
then it's justified and answering '5' is not justified because it would be
rejected by my community. The
problem with this answer is that it fails to appreciate that answering '5' is
justified if I mean quus. And my community's inclination to mean plus by '+'
does not, cannot, prevent me from meaning quus by '+'. Consider: If it does, then what sense
is there in the community's declaring that I don't mean plus by '+'? Obviously, I do not have to mean by '+' what
the community means by '+'. In order
for my community to play a role in the justification of my claim that 68 + 57 =
125, the community must somehow make it possible to determine whether I mean
plus or quus prior to my giving my answer. If it cannot aid in making this determination, and it cannot,
for the determination is impossible, then I am not justified to say 125 rather
than 5.
To repeat: a proper justification for giving one answer rather than another to
'68 + 57' requires being able to justify a particular sort of meaning claim (or
so KW claims when he is attacking fact based conceptions of meaning. For
example, in order for us to allow that Jones is justified to say 68 + 57 is 125
rather than 5, we must also somehow be convinced that Jones meant plus rather
than quus in the past (or so KW claims in sceptical argument). But nothing, according to KW, not just no fact but nothing at all, can show that Jones meant plus
rather than quus in the past. As
such, it's a complete mystery as to how KW can claim to have SOLVED the sceptical
problem.
Oddity
Five: Perhaps the most
serious oddity of them all. KW's sceptical solution begins with the
recommendation that we switch from a truth conditional conception (tc
conception) of meaning to a justification or assertion conditions conception of
meaning (ac conception). The
following passages are representative:
If . . . we allow ourselves to adopt an oversimplified terminology . . . we can say that Wittgenstein proposes a picture of language based, not on truth conditions, but on assertability or justification conditions: under what circumstances are we allowed to make a given assertion? (K, p. 74);
Now if we suppose that facts, or truth conditions, are of the essence of meaningful assertion, it will follow from the sceptical conclusion that assertions that anyone ever means anything are meaningless. On the other hand, if we apply to these assertions the tests suggested in Philosophical Investigations, no such conclusion follows. All that is need to legitimize assertions that someone means something is that there be roughly specifiable circumstances under which they are legitimately assertable, and that the game of asserting them under such conditions has a role in our lives. K, pp. 77-8).
Both passages clearly suggest that
assertability conditions or justification conditions are going to somehow
legitimize or justify our meaning claims, in ways which tcs or facts cannot.
However, all that KW offers us is an appeal to what people actually say. That is, KW offers us an appeal to what
people actually say or do as the way to solve the sceptical problem. But how
can an account of what people actually say constitute a justification of what
they actually say? The short
answer is that it cannot. Several Kripke passages are instructive here. First, one from pp. 86-7:
Following Wittgenstein's exhortation not to think but to look, we will not reason a priori about the role [meaning attributions] ought to play; rather we will find out what circumstances actually license such assertions and what role this license actually plays.
Now, this "answer" has some merit
(who, after all, wants to "reason a
priori" about the role meaning attributions ought to play; I don't)
but it is also misleading. First,
the use of 'rather' is odd here. For there is no contrast at all between what
Kripke says we ought not do (viz, reason a
priori about the role meaning attributions ought to play) and what he is
going to do (viz., determine the role which the
licensing of meaning attributions "actually" plays). If he had contrasted reasoning a priori about the role meaning
attributions ought to play with determining the role they actually play, (or
even contrasted the circumstances that ought to license meaning attributions
with those that pass for licensing circumstances among actual language users)
the 'rather' would be legitimate.
But as things stand, it is not.
Another oddity is that it seems trivial to say what role the licensing
of meaning attributions actually plays. Indeed, it seems I can determine this
from my easy chair (and so a priori?!): THE ROLE THAT LICENSING OF MEANING ATTRIBUTIONS
ACTUALLY PLAYS IS THAT OF LICENSING THE ASSERTION OF MEANING ATTRIBUTIONS.
Besides these oddities, the statement above
is ambiguous. On the one hand, the expression, "what circumstances actually license such assertions"
could be taken to refer to the circumstances that genuinely legitimate meaning
assertions, where the genuine legitimating circumstances need not be
circumstances that any actual speaker actually uses. On the other hand, the
expression could be taken to refer to the circumstances that actual speakers in
fact make use of in legitimating meaning attributions, irrespective of whether
the circumstances in question ought to be so taken. In this latter case, it is
quite possible to find that people in fact accept certain circumstances as
legitimating meaning attributions that they ought not. In particular, it's clear that we take
someone using '+' in accord with plus as legitimating the claim that s/he means
plus by '+'.
But KW's sceptic contends, of course, that we are wrong to do so, on the
grounds that someone using '+' in accord with plus is also, at the same time,
someone who can be taken to be using '+' in accord with quus. Now, if one of
the key steps of KW's sceptical solution is to turn his back on questions about
what circumstances REALLY justify meaning attributions in favor of simply
ascertaining which circumstances in fact pass as legitimating circumstances
among (benighted?) laypersons, then it becomes mysterious why a similar
maneuver is unable to save fact-based conceptions of meaning from the sceptic's
attack. After all, if we ask which
facts are actually regarded as licensing the meaning attribution, "Jones
means plus by '+'", the correct answer is we regard the fact that Jones
has answered in accord with plus as licensing this attribution. The fact that the sceptic claims that we
ought to find such a fact to be an inadequate justification or license of
"Jones means plus by '+'" could then be seen for what they are, viz.,
the irrelevant and unsatisfiable demands of a lunatic.
At the very least, it should
be clear that we need to know how Kripke is using the
expression, "what circumstances actually
license such assertions". If
he uses it in the latter sense noted above, it's clear that there is no room
for a challenge to our practice, whether that challenge be sceptical or
not. That is, once we find the
circumstances which people in fact accept as legitimating a particular meaning
attribution, there is no room for a claim like, "Yes, people accept
circumstances x, y and z as legitimating meaning attribution M, but they ought
not, for x, y and z don't really justify M." So long as one is interested only in the question of what
passes for legitimization of meaning attributions in the marketplace, the
sceptic's complaint is out of bounds. Most importantly, however, there is no reason we cannot or
ought not rule the sceptic's demands out of bounds from the very start. If we
do so, there is no reason to reject a fact-based conception of meaning.
I am not, however, recommending that we do
this, i.e., that we rest content with an account that tells us what people in
fact accept as licensing meaning attributions. Simply looking at our meaning attribution practice (whatever
that would be) and seeing what people actually demand or accept as licensing
particular meaning attributions is not good philosophy. For the existence of a
practice is not sufficient to justify it. We should not allow KW to take what people actually demand or
accept as licensing meaning attributions to be an adequate answer to the
question: What licenses our
meaning attributions? For what people accept as justified or properly licensed
may not be. (Isn't this the insight which led Socrates to pursue the role of
gadfly?!). However, this is precisely what KW offers
us.
The following passage, believe it or not, is
a succinct account of KW's "answer" to the question, “What licenses
our meaning attributions?”:
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 . . . . (K, p., 92).
I do not dispute that this is, in part, what we do. But it also fails to note another crucial and important element in our determination of who is or is not following a rule, viz., the nature of the rule itself. We know, e.g., that plus is a function that demands that 68 + 57 = 125 and that quus is a function that demands that 68 + 57 = 5. As such, it's more accurate to say that we say of Jones that he's plussing when he says 68 + 57 = 125 and we deny that he's plussing if he says 68 + 57 = 5. And while it is certainly the case that 125 is "our response" to "68 + 57", this is because we take '+' to mean plus. So it's too simple to say that it's mere agreement in responses that leads us to declare that someone is following a certain rule. For I can declare Jones a quusser, if he says "68 + 57" is 5, despite the fact that his answer to "68 + 57" does not agree with my own. Of course, were I quussing, i.e., using '+' to mean quus, I would also say that "68 + 57 = 5". So there is a sense in which my response agrees with Jones's response. What Jones and I disagree about is whether '+' means plus or quus. And that seems a rather silly disagreement because it is either readily solved (we agree to use '+' to refer to one of the functions and then invent a new symbol to represent the other function) or else it cannot be solved. (For more on the agreement issue, see Chomsky's Knowledge of Language).
Last
modified September 9, 2011
JAH, Professor
Dept. of Philosophy