Rule-Following, Explanation-Transcendence, and Private Language

Mind ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 117 (466) ◽  
pp. 303-328
Author(s):  
Cyrus Panjvani
Keyword(s):  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following

How Private Must an Objectionably Private Language Be?

1998 ◽  
pp. 62-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Lillegard
Keyword(s):  
Community Correction ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Private Practices ◽  
Simon Blackburn ◽  
Mental Events

Some philosophers, taking their cue from Philosophical Investigations (PI) 243-315, suppose that a private language is objectionable only when its terms refer to Cartesian mental events. Others (notably Kripke) have focused on PI 201 and the surrounding remarks about rule following, and have explicated the notion of an objectionable private language as (roughly) that of a language used by just one isolated individual unsupported at any time by any source of external or community correction and approval. I attempt to defend Kripke's account against some objections proffered by Simon Blackburn. Blackburn supposes that individuals are no worse off than communities with respect to the difficulties raised by Kripke, and argues that the "paradox" of PI 201 can be avoided by a proper understanding of extended dispositions, and by grasping the possibility of private practices. But Blackburn misconstrues what it is to go on in the "same" way in following a rule, and ignores the place of constitutive rules in practices.

Kripkenstein and Mathematics as the Language of Nature

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 130-140
Author(s):  
Nour Khairi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Private Language ◽  
Mathematical Operation ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Skeptical Paradox ◽  
The Way

This paper addresses the skeptical paradox highlighted in Saul Kripke’s work Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. The skeptical paradox stands in the way of many attempts to fix meaning in the rule-following of a language. This paper closely assesses the ‘straight solutions’ to this problem with regards to another type of language; mathematics. A conclusion is made that if we cannot sufficiently locate where the meaning lies in a mathematical operation; if we cannot describe how it is that we follow a rule in mathematics, we ought to tread lightly in characterising it as the language of nature.

Language and the Society of Others

Philosophy ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 67 (261) ◽  
pp. 329-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Critical Fields ◽  
Private Language Argument ◽  
Language User

The solitary language user is again stalking the critical fields of Europe (and America, one should add). This pre-social individual, abstracted from all social and historical context, has been seemingly revived after what many of us saw as a death-blow dealt by Wittgenstein in his analysis of the notion of following a rule, and his related discussions bringing out the impossibilities of a ‘private’ language—what has come to be known as Wittgenstein's ‘private language argument’. Just what a ‘private language’ is has become the issue. Did Wittgenstein show that language-use and rule-following essentially and necessarily involved others, and were therefore necessarily social in character (thus showing that to be human and to be rational was necessarily to be social—as Aristotle had it)? Or did his arguments bear only against the notion of a language which was essentially and necessarily private, one which could not in principle be taught to another?

Meaning and rule-following

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Foundations Of Mathematics ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Competent Speaker ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Sceptical Conclusion

Wittgenstein’s discussion of rules and rule-following, and the recent responses to it, have been widely regarded as providing the deepest and most challenging issues surrounding the notions of meaning, understanding and intention – central notions in the philosophy of language and mind. The fundamental issue is what it is for words to have meaning, and for speakers to use words in accordance with their meanings. In Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein explores the idea that what could give a word its meaning is a rule for its use, and that to be a competent speaker is to use words in accordance with these rules. His discussion of the nature of rules and rule-following has been highly influential, although there is no general agreement about his conclusions and final position. The view that there is no objectivity to an individual’s attempt to follow a rule in isolation provides one strand of Wittgenstein’s argument against the possibility of a private language. To some commentators, Wittgenstein’s discussion only leads to the sceptical conclusion that there are no rules to be followed and so no facts about what words mean. Others have seen him as showing why certain models of what it takes for an individual to follow a rule are inadequate and must be replaced by an appeal to a communal linguistic practice.

Wittgenstein and the Transmission of Traditions

1990 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Anthony O'Hear
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Saul Kripke ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Considerable Discussion

In this country, we tend to look at Wittgenstein in a rather ahistorical way. We see his concerns as fundamentally logico-linguistic, following on first from the work of Frege and Russell, and then referring back indirectly to the concerns of the British empiricists, to those of Locke and Hume, say, on such matters as the reference of our talk about sensations and scepticism about the external world. Recently there has been considerable discussion of the extent to which Wittgenstein's own analysis of the private language and of rule-following might not itself be a new version of a fundamentally Humean scepticism: according to Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein's arguments amount to a demonstration that there is no more reason for speakers of a language to follow the rules governing the concepts of that language in the same way than on the Humean account there is any reason for an effect to follow its causes (Kripke, 1981).

Wittgenstein's Influence: Meaning, Mind and Method

1990 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 61-78
Author(s):  
A. C. Grayling
Keyword(s):  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
General Influence

In the first and shorter part of this essay I comment on Wittgenstein's general influence on the practice of philosophy since his time. In the second and much longer part I discuss aspects of his work which have had a more particular influence, chiefly on debates about meaning and mind. The aspects in question are Wittgenstein's views about rule-following and private language. This second part is more technical than the first.

scholarly journals Exposition of two forms of semantic skepticism: Wittgenstein’s paradox of rule following and Kripke’s semantic paradox

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-143
Author(s):  
Ken Shigeta
Keyword(s):  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Semantic Paradox ◽  
Semantic Paradoxes ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

Despite persistent attempts to defend Kripke?s argument (Kripke 1982), analyses of this argument seem to be reaching a consensus that it is characterized by fatal flaws in both its interpretation of Wittgenstein and its argument of meaning independent of interpretation. Most scholars who do not agree with Kripke?s view have directly contrasted his understanding of Wittgenstein (KW) with Wittgenstein?s own perspective (LW) in or after Philosophical Investigations (PI). However, I believe that those who have closely read both PI and Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language without any preconceptions have a different impression from the one that is generally accepted: that KW does not directly oppose LW. Indeed, KW seems to present one aspect of LW with precision, although the impression that KW deviates from LW in some respects remains unavoidable. In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate the underpinnings of this impression by formulating the paradoxes presented by Wittgenstein and Kripke and revealing the complicated relation between the two forms of semantic paradoxes. I will then not only propose a new interpretation of the argument about meaning contained in PI but also suggest a schema or condition for semantics that I think holds by itself, independent from exegetical matters.

scholarly journals Kripkenstein and Mathematics as the Language of Nature

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-141
Author(s):  
Nour Khairi
Keyword(s):  
Private Language ◽  
Mathematical Operation ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Skeptical Paradox ◽  
The Way

This paper addresses the skeptical paradox highlighted in Saul Kripke’s work Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. The skeptical paradox stands in the way of many attempts to fix meaning in the rule-following of a language. This paper closely assesses the ‘straight solutions’ to this problem with regards to another type of language; mathematics. A conclusion is made that if we cannot sufficiently locate where the meaning lies in a mathematical operation; if we cannot describe how it is that we follow a rule in mathematics, we ought to tread lightly in characterising it as the language of nature.

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