Kripke's legerdemain: On our alleged inability to give substance to talk of an isolated individual following rules

I. Introduction
In this paper I pinpoint where Saul Kripke misleads readers (probably unintentionally) in giving the sceptical solution to the sceptical paradox in his book, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.¹ As a result of Kripke's (unintentional) legerdemain, it can appear as though his sceptical solution (or Wittgenstein's sceptical solution "as it struck Kripke") establishes much more than it in fact does. In particular, I will show, contra Kripke, that the so-called "sceptical solution" to Wittgenstein's alleged sceptical paradox about meaning does not establish the impossibility of private language in any significant sense. The fundamental problem with Kripke's Wittgenstein's (hereafter, KW) "sceptical solution" is that it changes the requirements for giving substance to talk of rule following as it moves from the case of an "individual considered in isolation" (hereafter, ICI) to that of a member of a community. Such is Kripke's legerdemain.

As a result of this sleight of hand, KW's "sceptical solution" fails to show that it's because of isolation that an ICI is unable to be a rule-follower and fails to show that it's because of the community that a community member is able to be a rule-follower. Consequently, it's simply not true that KW's sceptical solution leads to the the impossibility of a private language or the necessity of a community for meaningful language. Others have, to be sure, noticed that there is something fishy about Kripke's sceptical solution and his claim that the impossibility of private language emerges as a corollary of it.² But no commentator has, to my knowledge, noticed that Kripke is guilty of changing the issue when he moves from the case of the ICI to that of a community member.

In the most basic terms, Kripke requires, in the case of the ICI, that we find something in his behavior (or his psychological states) that allows us to determine what rule he is following.³ However, in the case of a community member, Kripke requires only that we be able to determine whether a member has acted in accord with (or has failed to act in accord with) some particular rule or other. I will explain in more detail the important differences between these two requirements shortly. But first, a couple of provisos.

One, I allow that the requirement Kripke places on the ICI cannot be met by the ICI and that the requirement he places on a community member can be met by community members. Unfortunately for Kripke, what he requires of an ICI in order to be designated a rule follower is something that cannot be satisfied by community members either. By the same token, an ICI can satisfy Kripke's requirements for a community member being a rule follower. The upshot is that KW fails to provide a viable argument for the impossibility of private language (or fails to provide a viable argument showing that a community is required for giving substantive content to talk of rule following). The alleged differences Kripke sees between ICIs and community members vis-a-vis rule following are due to his holding them before two very different mirrors. Two, it could be thought that none of this threatens Kripke's account insofar as the very existence of particular rules requires a community and this, so the story goes, is the key role played by the community. The problem with this thought is that it cannot be connected with Kripke's text. No where does Kripke contend that a community is necessary for the existence of particular rules with which to judge another's (putative) rule following. Furthermore, I see no basis for supposing that such is the case.⁴
Nor do I think K wants to give such an argument, for it would rob KW's private language argument of any real force or import. This is because it would simply amount to something like the following: In order to say something about an ICI (or anyone else for that matter) we perforce make use of our language, our concepts, our symbols, etc. In particular, we can designate an ICI a rule follower only by judging his/her behavior via our concepts. (How else, after all?). But since we can't talk about an ICI without using our concepts, and since the use of our concepts in talking about an ICI renders him a physically isolated individual (hereafter, PII), it's clear that we can't use our concepts in talking about an ICI. That is, WE can't say anything at all about an ICI, for as soon as we do so, we undermine his/her status as an ICI. A fortiori, we cannot designate an ICI a rule follower. The problem with such an argument is that it proves a bit too powerful, for it not only rules out our calling an ICI a rule follower but it also rules out our saying that an ICI sleeps or eats or breathes, etc. Needless to say, such a notion of an isolated individual is of no interest at all.

II. A Brief Review and Overview of the Paradox and the Solution
In a number of places in WRPL, Kripke claims that the impossibility of private language emerges as a corollary of the sceptical solution to the paradox. Very briefly, his official argument looks something like this. A sceptical paradox about meaning, viz., that there are no "meaning-facts", does not admit of a straight solution but only a sceptical one. That is, the sceptic's case against the existence of meaning -facts (characterized in terms of truth-conditions) is airtight and unobjectionable. The way around the sceptic's case is to give up on the hopeless idea of cashing out meaning in terms of truth conditions (hereafter, TCs) and appeal to assertion conditions (hereafter, ACs) instead, roughly, conditions that legitimate our statements. (K, pp. 77-8). This is, officially, the "sceptical solution", viz., the shift from TCs to ACs. Now, according to Kripke, the shift from TCs to ACs, also leads to the impossibility of giving substance to talk of "isolated individuals" following rules or speaking meaningful language. In other words, a corollary of adopting an ACs approach to language is the impossibility of private language. Now how, exactly, does one get from a shift from TCs to ACs to the impossibility of private language? KW's answer to this question is to be found on pp. 87-89. I will show, via a critical analysis of his answer, that KW fails to establish the impossibility of private language in any significant sense.

III. Kripke's case against our making sense of an ICI following rules
KW's discussion of the sceptical solution and the subsequent case for the impossibility of private language begins in earnest on p. 87, where Kripke writes:

First, consider what is true of one person considered in isolation. The most obvious fact is that . . . [a]lmost all of us unhesitatingly produce the answer '125' when asked for the sum of 68 +57, without any thought to the theoretical possibility that a quus-like rule might have been appropriate! And we do so without justification. Of course, if asked why we said '125', most of us will say that we added 8 and 7 to get 15, that we put down 5 and carried 1 and so on. But then, what will we say if asked why we 'carried' as we do? Might out past intention not have been that 'carry' meant quarry;where to 'quarry' is . . . ? The entire point of the sceptical argument is that ultimately we reach a level where we act without any reason in terms of which we can justify our action. We act unhesitatingly but blindly.

One puzzling aspect of this passage is that its opening sentence suggests that KW is setting out what is true of an ICI and yet it seems clear that what he says here applies just as easily to non-ICIs as well, courtesy of the sceptical paradox. Indeed, the penultimate line explicitly invokes the sceptical argument. Now, are we to suppose that the sceptical paradox is a problem that arises only for ICIs? If so, not only does there seem to be no need for a sceptical solution (after all, we aren't ICIs and so our meaning-talk would not be threatened by the paradox) but, since KW contends that the sceptical solution rules out meaning for ICIs, the sceptical solution would be redundant. After all, if the sceptical paradox shows simply that meaning is impossible for ICIs then a sceptical solution that yields the same result is unnecessary. The upshot here seems to be that KW is being a bit sloppy, for it's clear that for both ICI and non-ICIs, the paradox shows that "ultimately we reach a level where we act without any reason in terms of which we can justify our action". In short, the sceptical paradox is an equal opportunity paradox.

Back to Kripke's text:

It is part of our language game of speaking of rules that a speaker may, without ultimately giving any justification, follow his own confident inclination that this way (say, responding '125') is the right way to respond, rather than another way (e.g., responding '5'). That is, the 'assertability conditions' that license an individual to say that, on a given occasion, he ought to follow his rule this way rather than that, are, ultimately, that he does what he is inclined to do. (K, pp. 87-8)

Many commentators feel the need to challenge this claim. On the other hand, fans of Kripke's account (and yes, there are more than a few; Norman Malcolm, to some extent and Crispin Wright as well, not to mention a number of philosophers I have encountered at various conferences over the years) are inclined to see this claim (and its brethren) as a significant and important truth. The fact is that, at best, this claim is true but trivial. (Or significant but false but that's a long story). To see this requires noting Kripke's use of "his rule" (and the equally nebulous "the rule", which he uses further down the page) rather than a name for some particular rule or other (e.g., 'plus' or 'quus'). This makes it clear that Kripke has, at best, noted that so long as we are in no position to know which rule someone has been following (intends to follow, is trying to follow, is following, etc.) we are in no position to challenge (or make normative claims about) his responses to his rule.

Anticipating things a bit, it ought to be obvious that nothing in this passage tells against our challenging or criticizing someone's responses to his putative rule by, e.g., noting that this person's responses are not in accord with some familiar rule or other. For example, nothing in this passage rules out our saying that a particular response is incorrect (or correct, as the case may be) if the responder is attempting to add rather than quadd (or vice versa).

Now, can we ever be in a position to know which particular rule someone is following? Notoriously, Kripke's sceptical paradox purports to show that we can never be in such a position (not only with respect to other people but even in our own case as well. See K, pp. 7-21). As Kripke puts it, even if we allow ourselves complete access to an individual's past history (i.e., all of his external behavior as well as his psychological states/intentions) we will never find anything that will establish that s/he meant/means plus rather than some alternative function that is compatible with the individual's past history. And the reason for this is simple, viz., there is simply nothing there to find, or so Kripke alleges. This leaves us, allegedly, unable to justify claims like: "You ought to have said X rather than Y here", which in turn leads (again, allegedly),to our being unable to give any substantive content to our talk of rule following and ascriptions of meaning to others.

Once again, many commentators feel obliged to challenge the paradox, while some believe, with Kripke, that the paradox reveals a profound and disturbing truth about our language-game of rule following and meaning. But as before, what we get is really just a trivial truth. It's true enough that we are never in a position to rule out all competing hypotheses about what someone means by her words.⁵ But this is trivial since it in no way threatens our meaning-talk. It doesn't do so precisely because it doesn't prevent us from making conditional statements about meaning, i.e., statements like: "If someone means plus by '+' then s/he ought (indeed, is compelled) to say that 68 + 57 is 125 rather than 5". (This claim is not controversial since Kripke makes it himself on p. 11). Nor does it prevent us from making statements of the form: "Given that Jones said that 68 + 57 is 5, it is clear that he does not mean plus by '+'" (Again, this is not controversial since Kripke makes the same claim on p. 95).

Now, back to the main issue, viz., Kripke's claim that there is a significant difference between the case of an ICI and that of a community member vis-a-vis rule following. I shall return to Kripke's text at the point that we left it above:

The important thing about this case is that, if we confine ourselves to looking at one person alone, his psychological states and his external behavior, this is as far as we can go. . . . There are no circumstances under which we can say that, even if he [viz., an ICI] inclines to say '125', he should have said '5', or vice versa. By definition, he is licensed to give, without further justification, the answer that strikes him as natural and inevitable. . . . 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.

To begin with, whether there are in fact no circumstances of the sort mentioned above (viz., circumstances under which we could say that the ICI should have said '5' or vice versa), the key question is whether Kripke believes that he has here set out something that is true for ICI's but not true of members of a community. He certainly seems to believe this. (See K, pp. 88-9; I discuss this passage below). However, a bit of reflection suggests that there is no good reason for Kripke's optimism.

It seems clear that about the only way for us to be able to say something about how an ICI should or should not follow his rule is to discover the unique rule that he is following. However, I suggest that much the same is true for community members as well, i.e., about the only way for us to be able to say something about how a member of a community should or should not follow his/her rule is to discover the unique rule that she is following. But, don't forget that the sceptical paradox is an equal opportunity paradox, that is, it applies to everyone, ICI and community members alike. According to the paradox, discovering the unique rule that someone is following is quite simply impossible. Furthermore, it is clear that neither interactions with others nor access to information about someone's interactions with others will help solve the paradox.⁶ All of us, ICI and community members alike, must learn to live with the fact that the meanings of our words are underdetermined by the facts in such a way as to make it impossible to answer the sceptic's challenge. As such, it should be clear that it is not our being "confined" to one person and his behavior that keeps us from saying anything more about him than "he's licensed to apply his rule in the way it strikes him". Rather, it is our inability to determine what he means that puts us in this position. And since we are in precisely the same position with respect to our fellow community members, it seems that we can no more say how a community member ought to follow "his rule" than we can say this of an ICI. For in both cases, there are always competing accounts of what someone means and so competing accounts of what the person is required to do in order to act in accord with his meaning.

Similar problems afflict the case of teaching another a function. Given the sceptical paradox, how can it ever be established that someone is teaching another person to plus rather than quus (or some other function that is, like quus, a "meaning-competitor" with plus)? Also, Kripke's paradox suggests that the student is not compelled to take the training in one way rather than another. In particular, there seems to be nothing to prevent a trainee to see himself as being trained, simultaneously, in the functions plus and quus. In such a case, the best we can say is that he ought to respond in accord with both functions! But then in a case where plus and quus differ the student seems capable of deciding which of the two he "ought" to mean. (Cf. PI §186). It seems then that there is no way for us to give force to the claim that someone ought to say '5' rather than '125'.

Thus, Kripke's suggestions notwithstanding, there are no circumstances under which we can say of anyone at all, ICI or community member, that s/he ought to have said '125' rather than '5' (or vice versa ).

A couple of more comments on the passage quoted above. First, I'm puzzled by Kripke's use of "by definition" in talking about what an ICI is licensed to do. I see nothing in the "definition" of an ICI that tells us anything at all about what s/he is licensed or not licensed to say. Second, note Kripke's use of "the rule" in the last line of the quoted passage. My comments about Kripke's use of "his rule" earlier are applicable here. We should also note that Kripke's nowhere tells us what "the rule" refers to. Of course, this is because there is nothing to tell, courtesy of the sceptical paradox. But we've also seen that this is not unique to the ICI; it holds for community members as well. However, though the ICI can apply "the rule" as he pleases there is nothing to prevent us from assessing his applications as being in step with or out of step with particular functions (e.g., plus or quus). In short, don't confuse our licensing someone to apply the rule as it strikes her with being unable to license her applications as cases of plus or quus as the case may be. These cases are, as we'll see in more detail below, quite distinct.

IV. Kripke's case for community members as the only rule followers
The following passage picks up Kripke's text from the last sentence of the previously quoted passage:

But of course this is not our usual concept of following a rule. It is by no means the case that, just because someone thinks he is following a rule, there is no room for a judgement that he is not really doing so. Someone -- a child, an individual muddled by a drug -- may think he is following a rule though he is actually acting at random, in accordance with no rule at all. Alternatively, he may, under the influence of a drug, suddenly act in accordance with a quus-like rule changing from his first intentions. If there could be no justification for anyone to say of a person of the first type that his confidence that he is following some rule is misplaced, or of a person of the second type that he is no longer in accord with the rule that he previously followed, there would be little content to our idea that a rule, or past intention, binds future choices.

This passage is long and extremely problematic chiefly because it seems to conflict with so much that came before it in Kripke's book. For example, it suggests that the sceptical paradox is a problem unique to the ICI. Kripke here seems to suggest that our inability to discover which function someone is following, along with the attendant difficulty of saying how someone ought to respond to future cases, is true only in the case of an ICI. This claim is not only at odds with practically the whole of Kripke's chapter 2 but also with Kripke's repeated claims that the paradox admits only of a sceptical solution and that the impossibility of an ICI following rules is a corollary of the sceptical solution.

It seems clear from the positioning and content of the quoted passages that Kripke takes himself to have shown that there are limitations on what we can say about an ICI vis-a-vis rule following and that these limitations, if they hold for non-ICIs too, threaten our ability to give content to our rule following talk. In other words, Kripke seems to regard the sceptical paradox as showing only that ICI's cannot be rule followers, that this result is in fact inescapable, but that we may have nothing to worry about so long as we can somehow avoid having the problem extend to non-ICIs.⁷

That this is an accurate reading of these passages is bolstered by the passages that follow it:

We are inclined to accept conditionals of such a rough type as, "If someone means addition by '+' then, if he remembers his past intention and wishes to conform to it, when he is queried about '68 + 57', he will answer '125'." The question is what substantive content such conditionals can have. If our considerations so far are correct, the answer is that, if one person is considered in isolation, the notion of a rule as guiding the person who adopts it can have no substantive content. There are, we have seen, no truth conditions or facts in virtue of which it can be the case that he accords with his past intentions or not . . . . The situation is very different if we widen our gaze from the rule follower alone and allow ourselves to consider him as interacting with a wider community. Others will then have justification conditions for attributing correct or incorrect rule following to the subject, and these will not be simply that the subject's own authority is unconditionally to be accepted. (K, p. 89).

Anyone who has followed Kripke's argument from page 1 up to this passage ought to feel a bit confused, as well as a bit cheated. The just quoted passage clearly says that since there are no truth conditions or facts in virtue of which an ICI can be said to accord (or not accord) with his past intentions, there's some sort of difficulty with giving substantive content to talk of an ICI following rules (presumably, the "rough conditionals" don't have substantive content for ICIs). But our inability to find truth conditions/facts/intentions etc., for the ICI is merely a particular case of the sceptical paradox. I'll say it again: The sceptical paradox holds for ICIs but not because we have confined our attention to a single person alone -- it holds because there are no truth conditions or facts of the sort required by the sceptic. As such, it is not only the ICI for whom there are no truth conditions or facts about whether s/he accords with past intentions. THIS is true of everyone, ICI and non-ICI alike. And if, as Kripke suggests here, it is the nonexistence of certain kinds of truth conditions and facts that prevents us from giving substantive content to the "rough conditionals", then such conditionals cannot be given substantive content for anyone, whether ICI or community members. And yet Kripke suggests that this isn't so, since, he claims, "the situation is very different if we widen our gaze from the rule follower alone and allow ourselves to consider him as interacting with a wider community."

Obviously, it is our ability to state and understand conditionals like, (C) "If someone means addition by '+' then, if he remembers his past intention and wishes to conform to it, when he is queried about '68 + 57', he will answer '125'", that lends order and substance to our talk of rule following and meaning. Indeed, such conditionals lend our rule following talk all the order and substance it needs. But I find nothing in Kripke's text here to show that such conditionals cannot be used in the case of ICIs. Or, at least, I find nothing that shows they can't be used on ICIs which is not capable of ruling out their use in the case of community members as well. I trust that it's clear that there is no reason that we cannot say of an ICI that if s/he means addition that s/he will say '125' when he queries himself about '68 + 57'.

Notice, however, that the conditional (C) appeals to the rule of addition rather than simply talking about "the rule" or "his rule". In particular, our ability to give substance to our rule-following conditionals does not mean that we are any better situated vis-a-vis the problem of saying how someone should go on with "his rule" or "the rule". This problem remains. At best, we are able to criticize or challenge someone's response to a particular computation only by saying that s/he is out of step with some particular rule or other. But again, there seems to be no reason that our ability to do this is in any way compromised in the case of an ICI. If an ICI responds with '5' when he queries himself about '68 + 57', then we say he doesn't mean plus, just as we would for any other person. (See K, p. 95).

Consider another passage from Kripke:

Consider the example of a small child learning addition. It is obvious that his teacher will not accept just any response from the child. On the contrary, the child must fulfill various conditions if the teacher is to ascribe to him the mastery of the concept of addition.

This passage makes clear that Kripke's "sceptical solution" gives substance to rule following talk by changing the issue from one of trying to determine which (unique) rule someone is following (or finding a justification for claiming that someone is no longer in accord with a rule he was following previously) to that of "ascribing mastery of concepts" to others. Anyone who is to be accorded mastery of a particular concept (or function) must, it is true, respond in particular ways to specific problems (see K, p. 13). But let's recognize that this constraint on one's responses, viz., "I will consider you an adder just in case you say '68 + 57 = 125'", does not allow us to say unconditionally how you ought to respond to 68 + 57, nor that you mean plus by '+' (uniquely). What Kripke is telling us is that all we can say of a community member is that if she is to be considered a plusser she must respond to particular cases as a plusser must/should/would respond.⁸

But, as was the case for conditionals like (C), all of this can be applied to ICIs. We can say of an ICI that if s/he means plus (or wishes to mean plus) then s/he ought/must say "68 + 57 = 125". We can also say of an ICI that if he does not say '125' when asked about '68 + 57' then we can no longer assert that he means addition by '+'.⁹ But for both ICIs and community members, if we put ourselves in the position of trying to guess which rule s/he is following then we are at that person's mercy in the sense that the next response is "up to him/her". We can never say, unconditionally what someone ought to say next in order to be in accord with "his rule". However, if we shift our position and ask whether this person is, e.g., adding, then we are no longer at the rule follower's mercy. For we can say how our rule follower ought or should respond in order to count as an adder.¹⁰ Unfortunately for Kripke, nothing prevents us from occupying this position with respect to an ICI. As such, it is clear that we are able to make as much sense of, and give as much substance to, talk of an ICI following rules as we do members of our community.

Endnotes

¹ Kripke, Saul, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Hereafter referred to by K. Return to paper.

² For example, in his recent book, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (Oxford University Press, 1995), David Stern gives expression to this long-standing complaint against Saul Kripke's "interpretation" of Wittgenstein's private language argument. Contra Kripke, who contends that meaningful language is necessarily confined to communities, Stern says: "[Kripke's claims] depend on selectively raising sceptical questions about an individual's use of words that could just as well be applied to the community" (Stern, p. 181). In a footnote on the same page, Stern continues: "The chief difficulty for defenders of the "community view" lies in justifying the claim that it is in principle impossible for a person who is not part of a community to speak a language." Stern is, by my lights, absolutely correct. He is also echoing a legion of commentators, myself included. However, no commentator has of yet noticed how Kripke alters the criteria to be satisfied by an ICI and a community member respectively. Return to paper.

³ It is odd that commentators have failed to note that Kripke's sceptical challenge, in offering us access to any information we like about the psychological states and external behavior of others, has probably offered us much less than it seems. Being a Quinean by temperament and training, I regard Kripke's offer of access to another's psychological states in trying to determine what s/he meant as, in one sense, on a par with being offered all of the land north of the North Pole. I make this point in a recent paper (Journal of Philosophical Research, Jan 96) but it doesn't hurt to repeat it. Having access to another's external behavior (or dispositions to such behavior, as Quine likes to say) is all we need to make assessments about what s/he means. I will make no use of someone's "psychological states" in determining her meanings throughout the rest of the paper. Return to paper.

⁴ I support my doubts on this score in the paper mentioned in the previous note. Return to paper.

⁵ This is not to say that we are never in a position to rule out some, indeed, many hypotheses about what someone means. The point I am urging here is similar to one that Quine makes in an attempt to correct misreadings of his notorious thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. Recall that for Quine, it is quite possible in cases of radical translation that there be mutually incompatible manuals of translation that conform to all the same distributions of speech dispositions of speakers (i.e., all the meaning-facts that there are, at least by Quine's lights). Thus, there is no fact of the matter as to which of these competing manuals is correct. Many see Quine as denying the existence of meaning-facts or denying a factual basis for semantic theories generally. As a result, many people see Kripke's sceptic as pretty much echoing Quine's alleged undermining of meaning-facts, including Kripke himself. (See K, p. 14 and especially his chapter 3). But Quine warns against taking his thesis as a general rejection of the factuality of meaning-talk, whether scientific or informal. He insists, quite rightly I think, that while the choice between rival manuals lacks factuality, the conformity of a translation manual to speech dispositions is decidedly a matter of fact. Similarly, whether and when another's responses are in accord with a particular function is decidedly a matter of fact. What lacks a factual basis is the choice to designate one particular function as the function that someone means, since there will always be an infinite number of functions that accord with one's (necessarily finite) responses.
I should also note that Kripke suggests that the hypothesis that someone meant plus and the hypothesis that someone meant quus are not "genuine hypotheses" because (?) either "we do not understand what [the] two hypotheses state" or the two hypotheses are "not assertions of genuine matters of fact". (See K, pp. 38-9). I've long been befuddled by Kripke's remarks here. A careful examination of Kripke's text shows that he moves illegitimately from the trivial truism that there are no facts that differentiate between the plus and quus hypotheses (at least no facts that do so over a particularly hedged portion of their joint domains) to the falsehood that neither the hypothesis that someone means plus, nor the hypothesis that someone means quus, are genuine or distinct hypotheses. I leave the reader to verify for him/herself that such is the case.
What is true is that the hypothesis that someone meant plus rather than quus (over the sceptic's hedged set of cases) is not a genuine hypothesis (does not assert a genuine matter of fact). But then it seems that rather than proving the nonfactualness of meaning, Kripke's sceptical conclusion serves to establish a fact about meaning (albeit a rather obvious and trivial one), viz., 'plus' and 'quus' are synonymous (in a certain hedged set of cases). Return to paper.

⁶ Anyone sceptical of these claims could perhaps be appeased by the following: If Kripke believed that appeal to the community allows us to determine, to uniqueness, what someone meant then we'd have a straight solution to Kripke's sceptical paradox. But Kripke contends that there is no straight solution to the paradox. Return to paper.

⁷ One thing that has long puzzled me about these passages is Kripke's claim that once we're confined to a single person's psychological states and external behavior then "this [viz., licensing him to follow his rule in the way it strikes him] is as far as we can go". It's clear that this metaphor is suspect since it's clear that the sceptic has already driven us to our bedrock position, viz., "this is just what I do" and since this is not good enough for him that there simply is no "further place to go". As Kripke himself says, the sceptic has forced us to "a level where we act without any reason in terms of which we can justify our action." Thus, it's not as if there is some further place to get to but that we can't get to it because of some limitation. We are at our ultimate position! The proper response then is to "back up" ("get back to the rough ground") and see whether the sceptic is asking too much. But we should not try to "go further", after all, if I'm at bedrock I cannot "go further". What we need to do is see if there is some sort of justification that, while not satisfying the sceptic's demands (since these can't be met anyway) can nonetheless provide sufficient justification for our meaning and rule following talk. Return to paper.

⁸ There is still, of course, nothing unique about this ascription, i.e., we could consider such a person a quusser as well. Also, the contrapositive to the conditional holds as well: If X doesn't respond as a plusser then X will not be considered a plusser.
What of Kripke's case of the physically isolated individual (hereafter, PII; see K, p. 110)? Have I shown merely what Kripke admits, viz., that a PII can be a rule follower? Yes and no. A better way of putting this is to say that I've shown the PII/ICI distinction to be bogus. What Kripke may have shown is that we can't say anything about an ICI without presupposing our community based and community built concepts. In short, we can't talk about an ICI without making her a PII. Fine, then Kripke's result that we can't say that an ICI is a rule follower is trivial since in fact we can't anything at all about an ICI. I would contend however that Kripke still owes us an argument showing that it's impossible for a solitary individual to create concepts or rules to cover his behavior. Return to paper.

⁹ We could, of course, contend that he isn't plussing. Return to paper.

¹⁰ For those inclined to worry about how we know that our conception of plus is "the right one", consider the following. I say that Jones must say "68 + 57 = 125" in order to count as a plusser. Jones says that's silly, that in fact, plus/addition requires "68 + 57 = 5". At this point, it's clear that our disagreement can be cleared up by one of us being willing to adopt a new term. If need be, I'll let Jones have 'plus' and I'll use 'quus'. What's important is that we recognize that we're talking about two different functions here and we do this by recognizing that different answers are required in the same case. If we can't recognize such differences then language really would be impossible. Return to paper.

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