On an alleged misunderstanding of Kripke's Wittgenstein: A Reply to Wilson

I. Introduction
In "Semantic Realism and Kripke's Wittgenstein", George Wilson claims that "the fundamental structure of the sceptical argument in Kripke's [Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language] has been "seriously misunderstood" by Kripke commentators."¹ For Wilson, this misunderstanding is evident in the nearly unanimous objection of commentators that Kripke does not offer "a fully coherent reading of PI #201 . . . ." (Wilson, p. 99). In particular, Wilson claims that because John McDowell (who serves simply as a paradigmatic Kripke critic for Wilson) misunderstands Kripke's use and understanding of 'paradox', McDowell mistakenly believes that Kripke has not or cannot provide a coherent reading of §201.² I will show that Wilson's case against McDowell (and Kripke's critics generally) is flawed by two misunderstandings of his own. First, because Wilson misunderstands Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox', he not only offers an illegitimate version of Kripke's Wittgenstein (hereafter, KW) but also a KW who uses 'paradox' differently from Wittgenstein. Second, because Wilson misunderstands McDowell's objection against Kripke, his reply to the objection ignores its key feature, viz., its interpretation of Wittgenstein's §201.

My paper will proceed as follows. In section II, I will lay out and assess some of the key features of Wilson's reading of Kripke. I show that Wilson's account of Kripke, where correct, is echoed by Kripke's critics and that the key element of Wilson's defense of Kripke, i.e., his account of Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox' (or, 'paradox'), is incompatible with Kripke's text. In section III, I set out Wilson's answer to the objection he finds in McDowell and find more evidence against Wilson's understanding of Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox'. It turns out that Wilson's KW uses 'paradox' in a way that is at odds with Wittgenstein's use. In section IV, I show that even ignoring Wilson's misreading of Kripke's use of 'paradox', his reply to McDowell is unsuccessful because it is based on a misunderstanding of McDowell's objection.

Examining McDowell's own words, I show that his objection presupposes a reading of Kripke which is in crucial respects identical to Wilson's reading (at least that part of Wilson's reading of Kripke that is accurate). The upshot is that McDowell is not, contra Wilson, guilty of misunderstanding Kripke. Ultimately, and not surprisingly (it would be something of a scandal if all of the commentators cited by Wilson really were guilty of the same misunderstanding of Kripke), it turns out that McDowell and Kripke (and Wilson's Kripke too) read §201 differently. In order to drive the stake through the idea that KW is compatible with §201, I close with some remarks in defense of McDowell's understanding of Wittgenstein's §201 and against that of Wilson's Kripke. I conclude, hopefully once and for all, that KW is hopelessly at odds with LW's remarks at §201.

II. Wilson's Kripke
In order to understand Wilson's case against McDowell, it is necessary to get acquainted with some of the key elements of what Wilson calls "the general architecture of Kripke's reconstruction of Wittgenstein" (Wilson, p. 101). This is set out by Wilson in a long and extensive section 1 of his paper. For my purposes (and for Wilson's as well), the key feature of Wilson's account of Kripke is that he finds Kripke making a distinction between a "basic skeptical conclusion" (BSC, for short) and a "radical skeptical conclusion" (RSC, for short). For Wilson, BSC is the claim that:

There are no facts about S that fix any set of properties as the standard of

correctness for S's use of [some term] 'T',

while RSC is the claim that:

No one ever means anything by any term. (Wilson, pp. 107-8).³

According to Wilson, it is crucial to a correct reading of Kripke that one appreciate not only that KW accepts BSC and rejects RSC but also that Kripke is fairly fussy about terminology: "[I]t is RSC) that Kripke refers to as "the skeptical paradox;" BSC) may strike one as surprising and wrongheaded, but this conclusion of the skeptic does not represent his paradox. . . . Kripke's skeptic is plainly committed to RSC), but Kripke's Wittgenstein is not a skeptic of this stripe." (Wilson, p. 108).⁴ Further on we are told:

. . . Kripke's Wittgenstein naturally enough, sees RSC) as "incredible

and self-defeating" and takes the 'contrapositive' argument as a

reductio of classical realism about meaning, i.e., he endorses the

soundness of the inference from -RSC), G), and BSC) to the

conclusion -CR). When Kripke says, as he does several times,

that Wittgenstein accepts 'the skeptical argument' and endorses

'the skeptical conclusion' he means, on the reading I am suggesting,

that his Wittgenstein follows along with his skeptic in his reasoning

to BSC). (Wilson, p. 109).⁵

We will see below why and how Wilson uses the distinction between BSC and RSC to claim that Kripke's critics have misunderstood him, and how the distinction allegedly allows Kripke to answer his critics. Unfortunately for Wilson however, the whole of his story is pretty much undone by the fact that his Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' differently from Kripke himself. Not only does Wilson fail to provide any textual support for his contention that "it is RSC) that Kripke refers to as "the skeptical paradox"" (Wilson, p. 108), there is no such evidence. On the contrary, I'll show below, by appeal to Kripke's text, that Wilson's claim that Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC is seriously off base. But first I want to provide a brief analysis and assessment of Wilson's account of "the general architecture" of Kripke's account of Wittgenstein.

Wilson is absolutely correct that "it is natural to read Kripke as saying that the chief objective of the skeptical solution is to explain how BSC) can be accepted by Wittgenstein while RSC . . . is not". Indeed, it's so natural a reading that I know of no reputable Kripke commentator who doesn't read Kripke is this way. Wilson also notes on p. 109, that the fact that KW "follows along with his skeptic in his reasoning to BSC" will seem to many to be "already a sufficiently 'radical' position." Again, this is absolutely correct. For it is KW's acceptance of BSC that leads McDowell and others to claim that KW's story yields a position too radical to be Wittgenstein's.

Furthermore, it is also uncontroversial, if not a truism among Kripke commentators, that it is KW's rejection of CR (the premise which lays out a central precept of a classical realist conception of meaning; see fn. 5) which he thinks allows him to reject RSC while accepting BSC. That Wilson feels the need to justify all of this via appeal to Kripke's text suggests that he sees himself offering a new or controversial reading of Kripke. This is not the case. What is controversial, indeed, untenable, is Wilson's claim that Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC but not BSC. To be blunt, this claim is at odds with Kripke's text.

Wilson's only appeal to Kripke's text to support his reading of Kripke as a whole appears on pp. 108-9. And though it is unclear whether Wilson takes himself there to be offering textual support for reading Kripke's 'skeptical paradox' to refer to RSC but not BSC or is simply confident enough about the truth of this claim to believe that no textual support is needed, the fact is that nothing in the Kripke passages cited by Wilson serves to support his claim that Kripke uses 'skeptical paradox' to refer to RSC alone. Rather, the Kripke passages cited by Wilson show two things: One, KW accepts BSC but rejects RSC, and two, KW's acceptance of BSC and rejection of RSC is made possible by the rejection of CR. However, since Kripke's critics uniformly accept both of these claims (as I show below), Wilson is providing textual support for something that is not at issue.

Relatedly, McDowell and others would also not find anything seriously wrong with Wilson's characterization of the argument he finds KW's sceptic offering for RSC. Ditto, perhaps, for Wilson's claim that KW offers a contrapositive argument as a reductio of CR, as well as the form of the argument itself.⁶ However, McDowell and company would, and should, balk at Wilson's claim that Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC but not BSC. As noted above, not only does Wilson not provide textual evidence that Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC alone, there is textual evidence that Kripke does not use 'sceptical paradox' in this way.⁷ Simply put, Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to cover the whole of the sceptic's argument for RSC, including especially the argument for BSC. Thus, contra Wilson, not only are BSC and its argument included in Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox', they are the key ingredient of KW's sceptical paradox, as the following passage from Kripke makes clear:

This, then, is the sceptical paradox. When I respond in one way

rather than another to such a problem as '68 + 57', I can have no

justification for one response rather than another. Since the sceptic

who supposes that I meant quus cannot be answered, there is no

fact about me that distinguishes between my meaning plus and

my meaning quus. Indeed, there is no fact about me that

distinguishes between my meaning a definite function by 'plus'

(which determines my responses in new cases) and my meaning

nothing at all.⁸

Lest one get the wrong impression, I am not claiming that Kripke uses 'paradox' or 'sceptical paradox' to refer to BSC alone. Nor am I claiming that Kripke never uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to something that at least includes RSC. Contra Wilson, though, I do not think Kripke's terminology, especially his use of 'sceptical paradox', is so fussy or precise as to provide the key for saving him from his critics. As the passage quoted above suggests, Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox' covers the whole of what Kripke purports to find in Wittgenstein and so is interchangeable with expressions like 'sceptical argument', 'problem', and 'challenge'. To repeat, Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to cover not only the sceptic's argument for RSC, viz., CR, BSC and G, therefore, RSC, but also the sceptic's argument for BSC. Thus Wilson's KW, since he uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC alone, is not a legitimate version of KW. This can be confirmed further by considering Wilson's reply to the objection he finds in McDowell, a task to which I now turn.⁹

III. Wilson's McDowell and Wilson's answer to McDowell's objection
In section 2 of his paper, Wilson attempts to answer McDowell's version of the standard objection that KW is incompatible with §201. Wilson's account of McDowell's objection, as well as Wilson's response to it, is contained in the following passage:

A great deal turns here upon distinguishing firmly between BSC) and RSC) and keeping track of the places at which they figure in the overall argument. Both McDowell and Colin McGinn seem to me to be seriously confused on just this point. When Wittgenstein says, "This was our paradox," and goes on to state its import, they believe that Kripke holds that he is formulating 'the sceptical conclusion,' i.e., the conclusion that Kripke thinks that both Wittgenstein and the skeptic accept [viz., BSC)]. And then, of course, Kripke has no plausible way of explaining why Wittgenstein goes on to say that this conclusion is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding. However, this all turns on the conflation indicated above. On Kripke's reading, as I have set it out, the paradox at the beginning of #201 involves a statement of RSC), and Kripke nowhere suggests that Wittgenstein accepts that thesis. It derives from the deep misunderstanding upon which classical realism is based. None of this shows that the reading of #201 that I have just described renders Wittgenstein's thought accurately. I haven't even argued that it is superior to the reading that McDowell himself prefers. But, I hope that I have said enough to scotch the charge that Kripke does not offer any internally coherent interpretation of [#201]. (Wilson, p. 113).

According to Wilson then, McDowell et. al., take Kripke to read Wittgenstein's 'paradox' at §201 to refer to BSC. Wilson appears to allow that if McDowell is correct about this then McDowell's alleged objection, viz., that Kripke gives no account of Wittgenstein's "misunderstanding" remark and so does not have an "internally coherent interpretation" of §201, holds good. Wilson, however, accuses McDowell of being "seriously confused" about how Kripke understands Wittgenstein's use of 'paradox' at §201. According to Wilson, once it is appreciated that Kripke takes Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to RSC rather than BSC, we can see that Wittgenstein's "misunderstanding" remark poses no difficulty for KW, since KW rejects RSC as due to a misunderstanding.

Before confronting Wilson's story with McDowell's own words and showing that Wilson's account of McDowell's objection is off the mark, I want to bring out another problem with Wilson's understanding of Kripke's use of 'paradox'. The problem reveals itself in Wilson's "sketch of . . . a Kripkean reading of #201." In laying out this sketch, Wilson allows, as he must, that the opening paragraph of §201 finds Wittgenstein talking about, indeed, affirming BSC. However, what Wilson doesn't say is that in the opening sentence of the opening paragraph of §201 (where, according to Wilson's Kripke, Wittgenstein speaks of and affirms BSC), Wittgenstein speaks of "our paradox". But a look at the passage suggests that Wittgenstein uses 'our paradox' to refer to BSC and its argument. Furthermore, the passage as a whole suggests that Wittgenstein does not pledge his allegiance to BSC, which is contrary to what Wilson's Kripke contends. In other words, Wilson's KW makes claims at odds with what is to be found, prima facie at least, at §201.

Another problem for Wilson's account is that the opening sentence of §201 finds Wittgenstein using 'paradox' to refer to an argument of the form, "p because q". Since Wilson's KW uses 'paradox' to refer to a single claim, viz., RSC, the use of 'paradox' offered by Wilson's KW is at odds with Wittgenstein's own use at the beginning of §201. (On my reading of KW, he uses 'sceptical paradox' to cover the whole of the sceptic's case for RSC and so avoids this charge). Furthermore, what Wilson's Kripke calls RSC appears, if it appears at all, as part of what Wittgenstein himself calls "the answer" to the paradox. If we suppose, as we should, that KW, in order to be a reasonable facsimile of Wittgenstein, ought to use terms similarly to the way Wittgenstein uses them, we have a problem here. For Wittgenstein does not seem to use 'paradox' to cover RSC at all, let alone exclusively. Rather, Wittgenstein seems to offer something like RSC as part of an "answer" (albeit an inadequate or untenable one, as the remainder of §201 shows) to the "paradox". The upshot, of course, is that Wilson's attempt to save Kripke from his critics ascribes to him a reading of Wittgenstein's use of 'paradox' incompatible with Wittgenstein's own use of 'paradox'.¹⁰

Now even if we squint a bit and allow RSC to be part of what Wittgenstein means by 'paradox', there is no way to avoid including BSC as at least part of what Wittgenstein means by 'paradox'. What then of Wilson's claim that KW uses 'paradox' to refer to RSC but not BSC, and that McDowell, who allegedly takes KW's "paradox" to be BSC, is guilty of misunderstanding Kripke? Perhaps charity demands that we ask whether there is somewhere in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language that Kripke, although allowing that Wittgenstein does use 'paradox' to at least include BSC, can be seen to claim that Wittgenstein somewhere or somehow delimits 'paradox' to refer to RSC alone. The asking is all in vain, however, for not only does Wilson not offer any such passage, there is no such passage.

However, even if Kripke did somewhere claim that Wittgenstein delimits 'paradox' to refer to RSC alone, vindicating Wilson's understanding of Kripke's use of 'paradox', Wilson would still face the task of showing where Wittgenstein can be seen to change his use of 'paradox' from referring to an argument ("p because q") to referring to RSC alone. However, I see nothing in Wittgenstein to suggest any change or delimitation of his use of 'paradox'. As such, there is no reason to think that Wilson's Kripke has or can provide a "fully coherent reading of #201".

None of this shows that Wilson's McDowell, who sees Kripke using 'paradox' to refer to BSC, has Kripke right. Nor does it show that Wilson's McDowell is right to claim that KW is incompatible with §201. It is to say that Wilson's answer to McDowell, and Kripke's critics generally, rests on a mistaken reading of Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox' and that Wilson's Kripke requires Wittgenstein to use 'paradox' in a way that is incompatible with Wittgenstein's text. However, Wilson's misreading of Kripke and subsequent distortion of Wittgenstein, is not his only sin. Even if Wilson's misreading of Kripke, and his Kripke's misreading of Wittgenstein, are ignored, Wilson's story about KW can not be said to have truly answered McDowell's objection.¹¹ This is because Wilson is himself guilty of seriously misunderstanding McDowell's objection.

IV. McDowell's Real Objection to Kripke's Wittgenstein
To begin with, as we saw above, Wilson believes that McDowell's objection rests on the mistake of reading Kripke as reading Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to BSC. As Wilson puts it:

When Wittgenstein says, "This was our paradox," and goes on

to state its import, [McDowell and Colin McGinn] believe that

Kripke holds that he is formulating 'the sceptical conclusion,'

i.e., the conclusion that Kripke thinks that both Wittgenstein

and the skeptic accept [viz., BSC]. And then, of course, Kripke

has no plausible way of explaining why Wittgenstein goes on to

say that this conclusion is based upon a fundamental

misunderstanding. (Wilson, p. 113).

Of course, Wilson goes on to say both that Kripke takes Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to RSC, not BSC, and that this allows Kripke to provide a "fully coherent reading of Wittgenstein's #201." Although the "creativity" of Wilson's reading of Kripke undermines his account of Kripke's understanding of Wittgenstein, Wilson is guilty of a similar "creativity" in his reading of McDowell.

To begin with, just as Wilson's claim about Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox' was offered without textual support, so too is his claim that McDowell takes Kripke to read Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to BSC.¹² Second, just as Wilson's claim about Kripke's use of 'sceptical paradox' was seen to be incompatible with Kripke's text, Wilson's claim that McDowell believes that Kripke takes Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to BSC, is incompatible with McDowell's text. Not only is there no passage in McDowell's papers where he expresses the belief attributed to him by Wilson, McDowell's objection neither assumes nor needs to assume that Kripke takes Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to BSC.

Turning to McDowell's own words, his objection against Kripke's account of Wittgenstein is as follows:

[PI §201] looks like a proposal, not for a 'skeptical solution' to a

'skeptical paradox', locked into place by an irrefutable argument,

as in Kripke's reading, but for a 'straight solution': that is, one

that works by finding fault with the reasoning that leads to the

paradox. The paradox that Wittgenstein mentions at the beginning

of this passage . . . (is) something we can expose as based on 'a

misunderstanding'. (McDowell, p. 43. Also quoted by Wilson on

pp. 99-100).

This passage finds McDowell raising the following objection against Kripke's account of Wittgenstein: (1) Kripke sees Wittgenstein, at §201, offering a sceptical solution to his paradox; (2) Wittgenstein, however, offers a straight solution to his paradox; thus, KW cannot be LW. It is significant that no where in Wilson's characterization of McDowell's reading of Kripke is it noted that McDowell claims that KW offers a "sceptical solution" to his paradox. But now that it is noted, a difficulty for Wilson presents itself. The just quoted passage reveals that McDowell's objection to Kripke's account of Wittgenstein leans on only one assumption about Kripke's account, viz., that it finds Wittgenstein offering a sceptical solution to his paradox. But surely no sane reader of Kripke's book wishes to deny that KW offers a sceptical solution to his paradox.¹³ How then can McDowell's objection rest on a misunderstanding of Kripke, if the only assumption he makes about Kripke's account, viz., that KW offers a sceptical solution to his paradox, is absolutely unobjectionable?

One answer, of course, is as follows: If McDowell's use of 'paradox' is different from Kripke's use, then McDowell's claim that KW offers a sceptical solution may very well be false. That is, whether McDowell's claim that KW offers a sceptical solution to the paradox is unobjectionable is a function of McDowell's use of 'paradox'. In particular, if McDowell uses 'paradox' to mean BSC, then McDowell is saying that KW offers a sceptical solution to BSC and by Wilson's lights, McDowell's claim would be false. On the other hand, if McDowell uses 'paradox' to mean RSC, then Wilson could not object to McDowell's claim, since Wilson clearly believes that KW provides a sceptical solution to RSC.

Since Wilson ignores McDowell's claim that KW offers a sceptical solution, he fails to address this question of the legitimacy of McDowell's claim. I will show however that Wilson's assumption that McDowell takes Kripke to read Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to BSC rather than RSC is, for several reasons, incompatible with McDowell's explicit statement that KW offers a sceptical solution to his paradox. I conclude that Wilson is guilty of misunderstanding and distorting McDowell's objection.

One difficulty is as follows. If we accept Wilson's assumption then McDowell's claim about KW becomes: KW offers a sceptical solution to his paradox, i.e., a sceptical solution to BSC. But to say that KW offers a sceptical solution to BSC is to say that KW somehow avoids accepting BSC while yet acknowledging the legitimacy, indeed, unanswerability, of various parts of the sceptic's argument for BSC. (In contrast, a straight solution to the paradox, although it also involves nonacceptance of the paradox, regards the sceptical argument to be flawed, to be a non sequitur). One obvious problem with this is that one of McDowell's complaints against KW is that KW accepts the nonexistence of meaning facts, i.e., accepts BSC. Indeed, one of of Wilson's complaints against McDowell et. al., (viz., that they take KW to be a nonfactualist about meaning attributions) presupposes that McDowell reads KW as accepting BSC. As such, Wilson is trying to have it both ways. In trying to show that McDowell is wrong to see KW as incompatible with §201, Wilson is forced to see McDowell's KW as rejecting BSC (because Wilson is forced to read McDowell as claiming that KW provides a sceptical solution to BSC). On the other hand, Wilson's complaint that McDowell misinterprets KW as a nonfactualist seems to require that McDowell take KW to accept BSC.
In a nutshell, the difficulty is that Wilson has ignored the fact that McDowell claims that KW offers a sceptical solution to his "paradox". Given this fact, if we follow Wilson and take McDowell's KW as using 'paradox' to refer to BSC, we cannot have McDowell's KW accepting BSC. Since McDowell's own words commit him to having KW accepting BSC, the only conclusion is that McDowell does not take KW to use 'paradox' to refer to BSC.

This conclusion can be bolstered by appreciating that McDowell's objection does not require him to read Kripke in the manner suggested by Wilson. Indeed, McDowell can, and I claim does, agree with significant portions of Wilson's account of Kripke's reading of §201, viz., those portions where Wilson gets Kripke right. In particular, it is difficult to believe that any competent reader of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language could disagree with Wilson's claim that Kripke takes Wittgenstein to reject RSC, the impossibility of meaning, by rejecting CR but accepting BSC. (As noted above, it is precisely because commentators universally take KW to accept BSC that they universally regard KW to be a nonfactualist. As such, commentators, including McDowell of course, must be seen as agreeing with Wilson that KW accepts BSC.). As such, the issue exorcising McDowell et. al., is whether Kripke is correct to read Wittgenstein as accepting BSC. For McDowell, there is no way to reconcile KW and LW because KW accepts BSC while LW does not. More particularly, contra Wilson's Kripke, McDowell finds Wittgenstein "finding fault with the reasoning that leads to the paradox" (McDowell, p, 43, my emphasis). On my reading of McDowell, this means that McDowell sees Wittgenstein finding fault with the reasoning that leads to BSC, for it is BSC which, if accepted, leads to the paradox of the impossibility of accord and discord.

It is clear that McDowell's Wittgenstein does not, a la KW, believe that the only problem with the sceptical argument is the assumption of CR. Rather, McDowell's Wittgenstein believes that there has been a reasoning error in the argument leading to the paradoxical conclusion that "there would be neither accord nor conflict here", (this is, by my lights, to be equated with what Wilson calls RSC). And so I see McDowell as claiming that Wittgenstein rejects RSC by rejecting the argument for BSC, and so BSC itself. For McDowell, the argument for BSC is shown to be a non sequitur by Wittgenstein's remarks following his "misunderstanding" line at §201, not before it. The question then is not whether Wittgenstein rejects RSC, for McDowell and Kripke agree he does so. Nor is the question whether KW accepts or rejects BSC, for Wilson and McDowell agree that KW accepts BSC. The question between McDowell and Kripke is whether Wittgenstein rejects RSC by rejecting BSC. McDowell says yes while Kripke says no, as does Wilson's Kripke.

At this point, there is still the question of who has Wittgenstein right, Wilson's Kripke, who sees Wittgenstein rejecting RSC by rejecting CR but accepting BSC, or McDowell, who sees Wittgenstein rejecting RSC by rejecting BSC. Although we know that if Wittgenstein does reject BSC at §201 then Wilson's KW cannot be LW, the question remains: Does Wittgenstein reject BSC at §201? Kripke says no and McDowell says yes. Unfortunately, because Wilson misunderstands McDowell's objection, he explicitly eschews the task of defending his Kripke's reading of §201. (See Wilson, p. 113).

On the matter of whose reading of §201 to prefer, my sympathies are with McDowell, for two reasons. First, as suggested above in section III, key portions of Wilson's Kripke's account of §201 are implausible. Contra Wilson's Kripke, it is illegitimate to see Wittgenstein's 'paradox' at §201 as being anything more than a short version of the argument for BSC (not just BSC itself). Furthermore, it is difficult to accept Wilson's Kripke's claim that Wittgenstein is offering a contrapositive argument as a reductio of CR at §201. More simply, I find it difficult, to put it mildly, to believe that Wittgenstein has somehow recommended the rejection of CR at §201. There is simply no textual warrant for this, which explains, of course, why Wilson provides none. This leads to my second reason for agreeing with McDowell, viz., there is no difficulty in seeing Wittgenstein as rejecting something like BSC at §201.

Wittgenstein's Deutung/Auffassung (interpretation/grasping) distinction at §201 seems to nip Wittgenstein's "paradox" in the bud by showing that it is false that "every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule". That is, although Wittgenstein allows that we can think up "interpretations" of rules one after another, the fact that we have to think up another interpretation in order to remove our "contentment" with a previous interpretation, "shews" that interpretations are not all we have to go on in determining what actions do, or do not, accord with the rule. For we succeed in understanding the various interpretations via graspings. The argument for "there being neither accord nor conflict here" then is flawed, claims Wittgenstein, because it assumes, wrongly, that interpretations are all we have in trying to determine meanings. KW, in contrast, seems to overlook this solution to the problem and so accepts that, short of exchanging classical realism for assertion conditions, there is nothing we can do in the face of "every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule", save agree that "there would be neither accord nor conflict here".

In sum then, I have shown that McDowell et. al. are not guilty of misunderstanding Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein in general, nor Kripke's reading of §201 in particular. Rather, McDowell's charge that KW is incompatible with §201 is based on a reading of Kripke which is largely in line with the accurate parts of Wilson's reading of Kripke. Wilson fails to see this because he has misunderstood Kripke and also McDowell's objection. In particular, both McDowell and Wilson agree that KW pledges allegiance to BSC and rejects RSC by rejecting CR. For McDowell, this leaves KW incompatible with §201 because Wittgenstein himself rejects RSC by rejecting BSC.

Although I do not claim to have demonstrated that McDowell's reading of §201 is correct, the fact that Wilson's KW takes Wittgenstein's 'paradox' to refer to RSC, and finds a contrapositive argument against CR at §201, is pretty strong evidence against Wilson's KW being KW or LW. For Kripke himself makes no claims about how he sees Wittgenstein using 'paradox' at §201, and seems to use 'sceptical paradox' to refer to an argument which includes BSC and its argument. It is also not clear that KW offers a contrapositive argument against CR. Furthermore, Wittgenstein clearly uses 'paradox' to refer to the argument for BSC. Because of this, Wilson's defense of Kripke reads like the work of someone trying to maintain a paradox.

 

ENDNOTES

1 George Wilson, "Semantic Realism and Kripke's Wittgenstein", in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LVIII, No. 1, March, 1998, p. 99. (Hereafter referred to as "Wilson"). Saul Kripke's book, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982) will be hereafter referred to as "K". This paper presupposes some familiarity with the main points of Kripke's book and of the extensive commentary on it. Among the major commentators thought by Wilson to be guilty of misunderstanding Kripke's sceptical argument are John McDowell (see note 2 below), G.E.M. Anscombe, Colin McGinn, G. Baker and P. Hacker, Arthur Collins, Edward Minar, Peter Winch, and Crispin Wright.

 

2 Although Wilson refers to two papers by McDowell, viz., "Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy" (hereafter referred to as "McDowell"), in Midwest Studies in Philosophy XVII (The Wittgenstein Legacy), 1992, pp. 40-52, and "Wittgenstein on Following a Rule", in Synthese 58, (1984), pp. 325-63, the first paper is Wilson's primary focus. It should also be noted that my paper deals with the first of two objections which Wilson finds in McDowell, and elsewhere in the literature, concerning KW and §201. Although McDowell's two objections are, by Wilson's lights at least, connected in the following way: ". . . I suspect that the two objections are interconnected: the assumptions that McDowell makes in putting forward the second criticism blind him to the chain of argumentation in Kripke's book that I have been developing." (Wilson, p. 113), he nonetheless treats them separately. I follow him in this and believe that the considerations below, since they show that McDowell is not only not blind to the argumentation Wilson provides but that McDowell has answers for Wilson as well, render any consideration of the second objection unnecessary. Besides this, I have two other reasons for ignoring Wilson's reply to the second objection. First, because I have dealt elsewhere with the issue in question, viz., whether KW is a nonfactualist about attributions of meaning (roughly, McDowell says KW is some sort of nonfactualist while Wilson says he is not). A paper by Alex Byrne, "On Misinterpreting Kripke's Wittgenstein", in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LVI, No. 2, June 1996, anticipates Wilson's complaints against McDowell and sundry Kripke commentators concerning KW and nonfactualism. However, like Wilson, Byrne's charge of misunderstanding does not hold up under scrutiny. See my "Reply to Byrne", which appears on this webpage. My second, and most succinct reason for ignoring Wilson's attempt to show that KW is not a nonfactualist, is Kripke's footnote 22, p. 31, where Kripke acknowledges that one consequence of his Wittgenstein's sceptical solution is that "statements attributing rule-following [and so statements attributing meaning, as Wilson allows] are neither to be regarded as stating facts, nor to be thought of as explaining our behavior . . . ". Although I have seen the factualist crowd try, unsuccessfully by my lights, to sing and dance around passages in Kripke that suggest a nonfactualist account of meaning attributions, I have yet to see anyone consider this most explicit claim by Kripke that his Wittgenstein ultimately avoids the impossibility of meaning by denying that meaning attributions state facts.

 

3 Later in his paper Wilson suggests a reformulation of BSC (Wilson, pp. 116). The differences between the reformulation and the original are not pertinent for my purposes.

 

4 Do not be misled by Wilson's claim that BSC is a conclusion of the sceptic. It is also a conclusion accepted by KW, as Wilson later tells us.

 

5 For the record, CR is a premise which enunciates a classical realist account of the meaning of general terms, as follows:

CR) If S means something by a term 'T', then there is a set of properties,

P1-- Pn, that have been established by S as the meaning-constituting

standard of correctness for her application of 'T'. (Wilson, p. 106).

Also, the premise G is as follows:

G) If there is a set of properties P1 -- Pn, that have been established by S

as the meaning-constituting standard of correctness for her application

of 'T', then there must be facts about S that fix P1 -- Pn as the standard

S has adopted". (Wilson, p. 107).

 

6 McDowell, et. al. might balk at the idea of providing any kind of argument against CR. The problem is that CR, as Wilson later tells us, is seen by its proponents to be a "trivial conceptual truth". As such, to use the denial of RSC as a premise in an argument for ~CR, would be question-begging. For to deny RSC is to use 'meaning' in a way that is incompatible with its use in CR. As such, McDowell might claim that Kripke is best read as having his Wittgenstein not arguing against CR but rather presenting an alternative conception of meaning to CR (e.g., an assertions-conditions account) that permits us to make sense of our meaning talk. Be all this as it may, McDowell can and does agree with Wilson that KW rejects RSC by rejecting CR. I do not believe that they agree about the how or why or legitimacy of KW's rejection of CR however.

 

7 We'll see below that because Wilson mistakenly believes that Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC, he also believes that Kripke sees Wittgenstein using 'paradox' at §201 to refer to RSC. There are two problems here. One, while it may sound strange to say that although Kripke's Wittgenstein uses 'paradox' to refer to RSC, it need not the case that Kripke reads Wittgenstein's 'paradox' as referring to RSC, it really isn't. As I suggest below, I see no basis for supposing that Kripke is offering us a Wittgenstein whose terms of art match, one to one, those of Wittgenstein himself. Thus, it's not as obvious to me as it is to Wilson that KW's use of 'sceptical paradox' tells us how Kripke understands Wittgenstein's use of 'paradox' at §201. The second problem is more obvious, viz., it's clear from Wittgenstein's text that taking his term, 'paradox' to refer to RSC is not a good fit with §201. In sum then, it's not clear that we can go from, (i) Kripke uses 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC, to (ii) Kripke takes Wittgenstein's 'paradox' at §201 to refer to RSC. Furthermore, even if we could do this, the falsity of (i) threatens the case for (ii). Worst of all, if (ii) were true, it would still leave Kripke out in the cold, for Wittgenstein seems not to use 'paradox' to refer to RSC. By the way, the "real Kripke", i.e., the Kripke who uses 'paradox' to refer to the sceptic's entire argument for RSC, does not have this problem.

 

8 Surprisingly, this passage is one of only two places in Kripke's chapter 2, entitled, "The Wittgensteinian Paradox", where Kripke uses the expression, 'sceptical paradox' at all. (The other is in fn. 25 on p. 39, but it says nothing about what the sceptical paradox is supposed to be). Since the passage clearly finds Kripke using 'sceptical paradox' to cover BSC and its argument, Wilson's reading of Kripke's 'sceptical paradox' is very much in doubt. More doubts will be presented below. Most often, Kripke speaks of the "sceptical problem", sometimes the "sceptical argument" and also the sceptic's "doubts", the sceptic's "challenge", in speaking of what he purports to find in Wittgenstein. I have long suspected that Kripke's reluctance to speak of the sceptical "paradox", or his preference for the "sceptical argument" or "problem", is due to the fact that he is aware that what he claims to find in Wittgenstein goes well beyond what Wittgenstein himself calls "our paradox" at §201. It's also worth noting that the opening sentences of Kripke's chapter 3 suggest trouble for Wilson. There Kripke says:

The sceptical argument, then, remains unanswered. There can

be no such thing as meaning anything by any word. (K, p. 55; my

emphasis).

This passage suggests, contra Wilson, that RSC, not BSC, is the conclusion of what Kripke's calls the "sceptical argument". For answering the "sceptical argument" would be to show, somehow, some way, that there can be such a thing as meaning something by some word, i.e., it would be to show that RSC is false. This appears then to give the lie to Wilson's claim that '[w]hen Kripke says Wittgenstein accepts 'the skeptical argument' . . . he means . . . that his Wittgenstein follows along with his skeptic in his reasoning to BSC . . . ." (Wilson, p. 109). For to accept the sceptical argument amounts to accepting that there can be no such thing as meaning anything by any word. Clearly, no one wants to say that KW accepts that.

 

9 If one wishes more textual evidence that Wilson has offered a Kripke incompatible with Kripke's text, simply go to the opening sentences of Kripke's chapter 2 where he tells us that he is going to "develop the paradox" Wittgenstein speaks of at §201. By my lights, this shows that the whole of what is offered in chapter 2 in the name of KW's sceptic, which includes, of course, BSC and the argument for it, is what Kripke means by "sceptical paradox".

 

10 One oddity about Wilson's understanding of Kripke's reading of §201 is his claim: "Once that assumption [viz., CR] has been illicitly imported [into the argument for RSC] . . .". (Wilson, p. 111). I don't see how CR can be licitly or illicitly imported into the argument. I assume Wilson wants to say, "Once the illicit assumption CR has been imported into the argument for RSC . . . " .

 

11 Without question, the most problematic part of trying to somehow reconcile Wilson's Kripke and Wilson's KW with Kripke and Wittgenstein respectively, is the Wittgenstein part. Even if it be allowed, with a bit of squinting, that it is coherent or plausible to see Kripke using 'sceptical paradox' to refer to RSC, the opening sentence of §201, which contains Wittgenstein's only use of 'paradox', clearly talks about BSC and the argument for it. It's difficult then to find any plausibility in Wilson's Kripke's claim that Wittgenstein uses 'paradox' to refer to RSC alone.

 

12 No doubt the reason Wilson is undeterred by the lack of explicit textual evidence for his reading of McDowell is that he, Wilson, believes that the only way to properly accuse KW of being incompatible with §201 is to read him as using 'paradox' to refer to BSC. We'll see below however that Wilson is mistaken about this.

 

13 It's worth noting that Wilson himself quotes a passage from p. 85 of Kripke's book where Kripke says: "In order for Wittgenstein's sceptical solution of his paradox to be intelligible . . . ". Needless to say, to deny that KW offers a sceptical solution to his paradox is to misread KW.

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