A Sceptical Guide to Meaning and Rules

Defending Kripke's Wittgenstein

Martin Kusch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315478838
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Analytic Philosophy

No other recent book in Anglophone philosophy has attracted as much criticism and has found so few friends as Saul Kripke's "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language". Amongst its critics, one finds the very top of the philosophical profession. Yet, it is rightly counted amongst the books that students of philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American world, have to read at some point in their education. Enormously influential, it has given rise to debates that strike at the very heart of contemporary philosophy of mind and language. In this major new interpretation, Martin Kusch defends Kripke's account against the numerous weighty objections that have been put forward over the past twenty years and argues that none of them is decisive. He shows that many critiques are based on misunderstandings of Kripke's reasoning; that many attacks can be blocked by refining and developing Kripke's position; and that many alternative proposals turn out either to be unworkable or to be disguised variants of the view they are meant to replace. Kusch argues that the apparent simplicity of Kripke's text is deceptive and that a fresh reading gives Kripke's overall argument a new strength.

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Introduction

Introduction

This study is an interpretation and defence of Saul Kripke’s essay Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (WRPL). Kripke’s essay is, in turn, an interpretation and defence of one central theme in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s principal work Philosophical Investigations (PI). Kripke insists that, in advocating Wittgenstein’s views, he is not speaking for himself: “Primarily I can be read, except in a few obvious asides, as almost like an attorney presenting a major philosophical argument as it struck me” (WRPL: ix). Kripke is trying to make Wittgenstein’s ideas as strong and convincing as possible, without however committing himself to their truth. This book is bolder – or more foolhardy: it seeks to show that the position Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein is the right one.

In this chapter I put forward my interpretation of WRPL. The categories I develop in the process will also be central for classifying different critical responses to Kripke’s book. Not everything I develop here will be defended at length in later chapters. For instance, only in this chapter shall I comment on Kripke’s suggestion concerning important resemblances between Berkeley, Hume and Wittgenstein, and only here shall I summarize and endorse Kripke’s criticism of the “qualia theory” or the “use theory”. I shall not deal further with the former topic since its more detailed discussion would take us too far afield. And I shall say no more on the latter, since at least this part of Kripke’s book has not proved controversial. Finally, I shall confine my summary and interpretation to Chapters 2 and 3 of WRPL. The “Postscript: Wittgenstein and Other Minds” lies outside the focus of this study.

Ordinary talk of meaning and rules

In everyday life we occasionally say of other people and ourselves that they, or we, follow a rule, grasp a concept, or mean something by a given word or sign. Here are some examples of such talk taken from WRPL, several in their original formulation, others adapted so as to render them freestanding:

(a) Jones means addition by “+” (WRPL: 68).

(b) It is a fact that Jones means (or meant) addition by “+” (WRPL: 69).

(c) Jones’s present use of the word “plus” does not accord with what he meant by “plus” in the past (WRPL: 79).

(d) Jones has grasped the concept of addition (WRPL: 107).

(e) Jones follows the rule for addition (WRPL: 69).

(f) Little Jones thinks she is following the rule for addition but she is just calling out numbers at random (WRPL: 88).

(g) Under the influence of LSD, Jones thinks he is following the rule for addition, when in fact he is calling out numbers at random (WRPL: 89).

(h) If Jones means addition by “+” then, if he remembers his past intention and wishes to conform to it, when he is asked “68 + 57 = ?”, he will (or: must, ought to, should) answer “125” (WRPL: 89).

(i) When Jones follows the rule or formula “add 2” continuously, starting with “2, 4, 6, 8, …” then all the subsequent steps of his counting are determined by the rule or formula. In a way, the future steps are, as it were, already present (WRPL: 70).

Examples (a), (b), (c) and (h) talk of Jones meaning something by a sign, (d) speaks of him possessing a concept, and (e), (f), (g) and (i) refer to him following a rule. There are obviously important differences between meanings, rules and concepts. As far as WRPL is concerned, however, these differences are less important than the commonalities: WRPL focuses on the question of what gives attributions (of meanings, rules and concepts) their significance. And it proceeds on the assumption that any solution that would emerge for one of the three cases would also solve the remaining two. I take this to be reason enough to simplify my terminology. I shall call all of (a) to (i) – and other sentences like them – “meaning sentences” (even when the attribution is of a rule or a concept). Some meaning sentences are “meaning attributions” (such as (a)) others are “meaning conditionals” (such as (h)). The cited meaning sentences concern a third person, speaking, as they do, about someone else’s meaning or rule-following. This feature of (a) to (i) is not essential, however. For each given third-person meaning attribution and conditional, we can also formulate a first- or second-person equivalent; for instance, “I mean addition by ‘+’”, or “You follow the rule for addition”, or “If I mean addition by ‘+’, then, when asked ‘68 + 57 = ?’, I should (will, ought to) answer ‘125’”. Not all of the meaning sentences (a) to (i) are equally natural or colloquial; for instance, meaning conditionals do not appear frequently in our everyday parlance. Nevertheless, they do surface occasionally, are easily understood, and they do not come across as overly technical or esoteric.

Common-sense philosophy: low-brow meaning determinism

WRPL is a critical study of philosophical analyses of meaning sentences. What is involved in such philosophical analyses? There is no generally agreed on answer to this question among all of the proposals considered in WRPL, except for the vague idea that a philosophical analysis should explain the significance of, make sense of or illuminate our meaning talk. But while there is no general agreement, there is at least a near consensus: all but one of the philosophical analyses under scrutiny in WRPL share the following view of what a philosophical analysis of meaning talk can and should do. A philosophical analysis of meaning talk should identify what makes meaning sentences true; it should identify the truth-conditions of meaning sentences, that is, it should identify the (types of) propositions that such sentences express. This is a highly plausible understanding of philosophical analysis of meaning talk; after all, to find the truth-conditions for different types of sentences or propositions – counterfactuals, moral claims, and so on – is an established and recognized method for clarifying the content of these sentences. The method is supported by the natural thought that “meaningful declarative sentences must purport to correspond to facts” (WRPL: 78–9).

Note finally that this type of analysis is usually seen as playing a justificatory role. Philosophical analysis is important because it is involved in separating meaningful utterances from mere gibberish. For the subject matter of meaning sentences this amounts to the notion that we are entitled to use these sentences if, and only if, we can show that they have determinate meanings. And we show that they have determinate meanings by identifying the propositions they express. This focus on propositions gives the justification an ontological or metaphysical flavour.

If this is what all but one of the proposals for philosophical analysis discussed in WRPL agree on, what then is the exception to the rule? This is best explained after I have given more details on the argument of WRPL as a whole. For present purposes it is sufficient to say this much: the exception denies that we can analyse the meaning of meaning sentences by identifying their truth-conditions; and it denies that the justification of types of sentences is a metaphysical endeavour. What gives meaning sentences their significance are not their truth-conditions, but rough and ready conditions concerning their proper use.

There is more to be said about philosophical analyses that focus on truth-conditions for explaining the significance of meaning sentences. Most of the analyses that fall into this group are based on the same intuitive picture of meanings and rules. I am not calling this picture “intuitive” because it is frequently produced by native speakers. It takes some philosophical training to come up with this picture and to find it compelling. But its pervasiveness is not due to the influence of a powerful authority; it is not, say, something we have all learnt from Plato, Descartes or Kant. Rather, the p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Normativity
• 3. Dispositions and extensions
• 4. Other responses
• 5. Factualism and non-factualism
• 6. Intersubjectivity and assertability conditions
• 7. Semantic primitivism
• 8. Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index