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Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition
In this book Saul Kripke brings his powerful philosophic intelligence to bear on Wittgenstein's analysis of the notion of following a rule.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Saul A. Kripke
10 books207 followersSaul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician, now emeritus from Princeton. He teaches as distinguished professor of philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. Since the 1960s Kripke has been a central figure in a number of fields related to logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory. Much of his work remains unpublished or exists only as tape-recordings and privately circulated manuscripts.
Kripke was the recipient of the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, Omaha (1977), Johns Hopkins University (1997), University of Haifa, Israel (1998), and the University of Pennsylvania (2005). He is a member of the American Philosophical Society. Kripke is also an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In a recent poll conducted by philosophers Kripke was among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years.
Kripke was the recipient of the 2001 Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska, Omaha (1977), Johns Hopkins University (1997), University of Haifa, Israel (1998), and the University of Pennsylvania (2005). He is a member of the American Philosophical Society. Kripke is also an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In a recent poll conducted by philosophers Kripke was among the top ten most important philosophers of the past 200 years.
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October 13, 2024
John Searle once complained, on an episode of The Great Philosophers, that there was “so much trash” written about Wittgenstein’s so-called “private language argument.” It is a sad fact that, from the 1960s onward, Wittgenstein studies has all but been overrun scholars who saw him much more as some kind of messianic figure than as a serious logician. The result has been to cause his work largely to fall into disrepute among professional philosophers. It has gotten so bad that, at several points in my academic trajectory, I have been advised not to work on Wittgenstein because “nobody hires Wittgensteinians anymore.”
Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982) stands out as one of the rare pieces of scholarship to break this pattern. Kripke’s central contention is that the private language argument is a particular instance of a broader skeptical paradox that runs through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953). The paradox runs as follows. Suppose any rule, e.g., the rule governing addition, and then suppose a new application of that same rule to a new case. Wittgenstein’s puzzle is that there appears to be no fact—be it a fact about our psychology or about our past use of the rule—that can determine how the rule is to be applied to the new case.
On Kripke’s reading, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy consists largely in an attempt to resolve this paradox. His thought seems to be the following. If we take an isolated individual, then neither her mental state nor her past activity gives us any grounds for knowing how a rule is to be extended to new cases. If we situate that individual within her broader context, however, there will be grounds for distinguishing between correct and incorrect applications based on a consensus between the other members of a linguistic community Hence Wittgenstein’s emphasis, from the 1930s onward, on “forms of life” and the “language games” that they play.
Bertrand Russell used to object to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy on the grounds that it made truth a matter of mere agreement. If Kripke’s reading is correct, then it is difficult to escape this conclusion. And like Kripke, I am profoundly uncomfortable with it. If the only criterion of correctness resides in the shared inclinations of a linguistic community, then there would seem to be no shared standard by which to resolve disagreements. Whenever two culturally distinct groups differ, we are left to conclude that they are playing different language games governed by different norms. Nothing further can be said.
Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982) stands out as one of the rare pieces of scholarship to break this pattern. Kripke’s central contention is that the private language argument is a particular instance of a broader skeptical paradox that runs through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953). The paradox runs as follows. Suppose any rule, e.g., the rule governing addition, and then suppose a new application of that same rule to a new case. Wittgenstein’s puzzle is that there appears to be no fact—be it a fact about our psychology or about our past use of the rule—that can determine how the rule is to be applied to the new case.
On Kripke’s reading, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy consists largely in an attempt to resolve this paradox. His thought seems to be the following. If we take an isolated individual, then neither her mental state nor her past activity gives us any grounds for knowing how a rule is to be extended to new cases. If we situate that individual within her broader context, however, there will be grounds for distinguishing between correct and incorrect applications based on a consensus between the other members of a linguistic community Hence Wittgenstein’s emphasis, from the 1930s onward, on “forms of life” and the “language games” that they play.
Bertrand Russell used to object to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy on the grounds that it made truth a matter of mere agreement. If Kripke’s reading is correct, then it is difficult to escape this conclusion. And like Kripke, I am profoundly uncomfortable with it. If the only criterion of correctness resides in the shared inclinations of a linguistic community, then there would seem to be no shared standard by which to resolve disagreements. Whenever two culturally distinct groups differ, we are left to conclude that they are playing different language games governed by different norms. Nothing further can be said.
August 24, 2010
Kripke is brilliant, and I only regret that it took me until now to read and to appreciate him. He gives an amazing exegesis of Wittgenstein, who was also brilliant, but obfuscated the fact by making his case with rhetorical questions. Kripke has figured out the answers to the rhetorical questions, and has tied up the loose ends.
Kripke argues that Wittgenstein’s gift to philosophy is a skeptical paradox, as well as a skeptical solution to the skeptical paradox, very much parallel to the skeptical paradox and solution given by Hume with regard to cause-and-effect. Hume argued that there can be no necessary connection in cause-and-effect, only a constant conjunction that becomes habitual to expect. Wittgenstein’s argument, according to Kripke, is that words cannot mean anything, that we cannot be sure that what we mean by a word one day is the same as what we mean by the same word another day.
This idea has its clearest application with regard to mental phenomena. Wittgenstein famously argues against the possibility of a “private language” in which a person names and talks about things in his own personal experience which cannot be confirmed or validated by anyone else. For example, there is no way of knowing if my experience of red is the same as your experience of red. Of course we can both react to the same object by saying that it is red (this gets to the skeptical solution), but it may be that you see coral and I see fuchsia (even to state it this way is a mistake, because it still suggests that we have a way to compare the experiences).
Wittgenstein, according to Kripke, goes even farther to say that what I called red yesterday may not be what I call red today. (Who knows? I am partially colorblind.) How would we know it? Wittgenstein rejects the idea of setting some rule for ourselves (such as to match a color sample), because rules can be interpreted by other rules, and this can go on in an infinite regress. So I can never be sure that what I mean by “red” remains the same.
This skepticism is radical. It extends to mathematics. Kripke develops the example of using the plus sign “+” to mean addition. He articulates a rival meaning of “+” as the “quus sign” which means quaddition, and gives results similar to addition until one gets to some suitably high number, and then gives completely different results. There is no way of knowing that, when you thought “+” meant addition, it didn’t mean quaddition. This sounds like a truly bizarre argument, but once it is worked through, it casts doubt on a word’s meaning anything at all.
An analogy will provide a more common sense feel to the idea that we cannot mean anything by a word. If a man is marooned, alone, on a desert island, it is impossible for him to put a price on the objects that he encounters. Can he say that a coconut has the price of five cents? Five dollars? Five million dollars? It’s all the same and it doesn’t matter.
This skeptical paradox pervades all meaning, but Wittgenstein (like Hume) provides a skeptical solution to the paradox. The skeptical solution does not deny or eliminate the paradox, but is a work-around solution. The skeptical solution, for Wittgenstein, is language games. Language games are a sort of commerce that gives some validation to the meanings we assign to words. As long as we can use the words successfully in our language games, it doesn’t matter if we don’t know precisely what the words mean. As long as we can play our language games, life goes on over the yawning chasm of meaninglessness.
Kripke argues that Wittgenstein’s gift to philosophy is a skeptical paradox, as well as a skeptical solution to the skeptical paradox, very much parallel to the skeptical paradox and solution given by Hume with regard to cause-and-effect. Hume argued that there can be no necessary connection in cause-and-effect, only a constant conjunction that becomes habitual to expect. Wittgenstein’s argument, according to Kripke, is that words cannot mean anything, that we cannot be sure that what we mean by a word one day is the same as what we mean by the same word another day.
This idea has its clearest application with regard to mental phenomena. Wittgenstein famously argues against the possibility of a “private language” in which a person names and talks about things in his own personal experience which cannot be confirmed or validated by anyone else. For example, there is no way of knowing if my experience of red is the same as your experience of red. Of course we can both react to the same object by saying that it is red (this gets to the skeptical solution), but it may be that you see coral and I see fuchsia (even to state it this way is a mistake, because it still suggests that we have a way to compare the experiences).
Wittgenstein, according to Kripke, goes even farther to say that what I called red yesterday may not be what I call red today. (Who knows? I am partially colorblind.) How would we know it? Wittgenstein rejects the idea of setting some rule for ourselves (such as to match a color sample), because rules can be interpreted by other rules, and this can go on in an infinite regress. So I can never be sure that what I mean by “red” remains the same.
This skepticism is radical. It extends to mathematics. Kripke develops the example of using the plus sign “+” to mean addition. He articulates a rival meaning of “+” as the “quus sign” which means quaddition, and gives results similar to addition until one gets to some suitably high number, and then gives completely different results. There is no way of knowing that, when you thought “+” meant addition, it didn’t mean quaddition. This sounds like a truly bizarre argument, but once it is worked through, it casts doubt on a word’s meaning anything at all.
An analogy will provide a more common sense feel to the idea that we cannot mean anything by a word. If a man is marooned, alone, on a desert island, it is impossible for him to put a price on the objects that he encounters. Can he say that a coconut has the price of five cents? Five dollars? Five million dollars? It’s all the same and it doesn’t matter.
This skeptical paradox pervades all meaning, but Wittgenstein (like Hume) provides a skeptical solution to the paradox. The skeptical solution does not deny or eliminate the paradox, but is a work-around solution. The skeptical solution, for Wittgenstein, is language games. Language games are a sort of commerce that gives some validation to the meanings we assign to words. As long as we can use the words successfully in our language games, it doesn’t matter if we don’t know precisely what the words mean. As long as we can play our language games, life goes on over the yawning chasm of meaninglessness.
April 21, 2021
کریپکی این کتاب را برای شرح و توضیح بخشهایی از پژوهشهای فلسفی ویتگنشتاین که به بحث پیروی از قاعده و زبان خصوصی میپردازد نوشته است. با انتشار این کتاب مسئلهٔ پیروی از قاعده به یکی از مهمترین بحثهای فلسفهٔ تحلیلی معاصر تبدیل شده است و بسیاری از فیلسوفان در باب همدلانه بودن یا نبودن تفسیر کریپکی نوشته یا نظراتی درباب چالش شکاکانهٔ وی ــ صرف نظر از اینکه بتوان آن را به ویتگنشتاین نسبت داد یا نه ــ ارائه کردهاند۰
غیراز مقدمه، کتاب دو فصل اصلی دارد و یک پینوشت. یک فصل چالش شکاکانهٔ چگونگی پیروی از قاعده در موارد جدید و ناموفق بودن پاسخهای رائج (مثل تفسیر قاعده با کمک قواعد دیگر، تحلیل گرایشی، سادگی، دروننگری و واقعگرایی افلاطونی) را نشان میدهد و فصل دیگر راهحلی را که کریپکی در بیان ویتگنشتاین یافته است، یعنی هماهنگی و مطابقت با دیگران در موارد کافی، و ارتباط آن را با ناممکن بودن زبان خصوصی شرح میدهد. پینوشت مسئلهای مربوط را درباب دیدگاه ویتگنشتاین در مسئلهٔ اذهان دیگر مطرح میکند۰
دو فصل اصلی بسیار مفصلاند، مطمئناً میشد با آوردن زیرعنوانی برای جدا کردن موضوعات خواندن کتاب را سادهتر کرد. خود متن نیز آنقدرها شفاف و روشن نیست؛ چنان که ابهامات متن برخی از اهل فلسفه را به سوء فهم دچار کرده و برخی دیگر را به نوشتن شرح و تفسیر واداشته است. کتاب از این جهت به دیگر کتاب کریپکی، نامگذاری و ضرورت، شبیه است؛ هرچند آن یکی مجموعهٔ چند سخنرانی بوده و این یکی کتابی که سر فرصت نوشته شده است و از اینرو انتظار میرفته با نظم بیشتری تدوین شود۰
در سال ۹۶ دو ترجمهٔ فارسی از این کتاب منتشر شد: یکی از آقای دکتر کاوه لاجوردی در نشر مرکز؛ و دیگری از آقای حمید محمدی در نشر نی۰
غیراز مقدمه، کتاب دو فصل اصلی دارد و یک پینوشت. یک فصل چالش شکاکانهٔ چگونگی پیروی از قاعده در موارد جدید و ناموفق بودن پاسخهای رائج (مثل تفسیر قاعده با کمک قواعد دیگر، تحلیل گرایشی، سادگی، دروننگری و واقعگرایی افلاطونی) را نشان میدهد و فصل دیگر راهحلی را که کریپکی در بیان ویتگنشتاین یافته است، یعنی هماهنگی و مطابقت با دیگران در موارد کافی، و ارتباط آن را با ناممکن بودن زبان خصوصی شرح میدهد. پینوشت مسئلهای مربوط را درباب دیدگاه ویتگنشتاین در مسئلهٔ اذهان دیگر مطرح میکند۰
دو فصل اصلی بسیار مفصلاند، مطمئناً میشد با آوردن زیرعنوانی برای جدا کردن موضوعات خواندن کتاب را سادهتر کرد. خود متن نیز آنقدرها شفاف و روشن نیست؛ چنان که ابهامات متن برخی از اهل فلسفه را به سوء فهم دچار کرده و برخی دیگر را به نوشتن شرح و تفسیر واداشته است. کتاب از این جهت به دیگر کتاب کریپکی، نامگذاری و ضرورت، شبیه است؛ هرچند آن یکی مجموعهٔ چند سخنرانی بوده و این یکی کتابی که سر فرصت نوشته شده است و از اینرو انتظار میرفته با نظم بیشتری تدوین شود۰
در سال ۹۶ دو ترجمهٔ فارسی از این کتاب منتشر شد: یکی از آقای دکتر کاوه لاجوردی در نشر مرکز؛ و دیگری از آقای حمید محمدی در نشر نی۰
February 1, 2023
Kripke’s book addresses a topic in Wittgenstein’s thinking that is central to all of his thinking, difficult to ferret out from the text, and maybe even more difficult to analyze, evaluate, and potentially accept as valid.
There are several critical pieces to Kripke’s interpretation. I’m going to concentrate on one of them, which we could call Wittgenstein’s re-understanding of what it is to “mean” something, such as when we “mean” the standard rule of addition when adding two numbers. The re-understanding is a turn from a representationalist or “picture” view of meaning and truth (as in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus) to a much more pragmatic view in the Investigations.
But before getting to that, Kripke makes some other important claims about the interpretation of the Investigations. In particular, he claims that Wittgenstein’s treatments of sensations and of mathematics in the Investigations (and elsewhere) are something like instances of a more general argument, one about rule-following. In fact, Kripke focuses his discussion on remarks that precede what is normally regarded as “the private language argument.” Kripke thinks that, once we understand Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following, what he has to say about private language will be much more readily understood.
Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule following discloses a paradox, by Kripke’s reading. Kripke describes the paradox using addition as the subject rule. If I am asked to add 68 + 57, I presumably employ a rule for the “plus” operation, and I respond with the correct answer, 125. Let’s assume that that particular addition is one I just happen never to have made before (if for some reason I know that I have, Kripke could, on Wittgenstein’s behalf, just use a different example — since I haven’t performed every addition of two numbers, there would be one I haven’t performed before).
Now Kripke imagines a skeptic enters the conversation. The imagined skeptic says, “No, the correct answer is 5.”
How do I know the answer isn’t 5? Seems simple — I appeal to the rule for “plus” (e.g., a rule that involves counting out a set of marks equal to each number to be added, and then counting out the total marks of the two sets). But the skeptic can say that in fact, the proper rule at work is different, that, while what I’ve cited is fine for other additions, in the particular case of 68 + 57, the answer is 5. Thus he appeals to a rule that Kripke calls “quus,” one in which we proceed as we normally do and expect, but in the particular case of 68 + 57, we should respond with 5.
I might respond to the skeptic that that is not the rule I have always followed, that whenever I’ve added numbers in the past, I’ve followed the “plus” rule, not the “quus” rule. But of course our past behavior in adding numbers is just as consistent with the quus rule as the plus rule, since we’ve never added 68 + 57 before. Both give the same result for all but this one instance.
I then respond that, no, in this case as in past cases, i had in mind, when I added the two numbers, the plus rule, not the quus rule. It was the plus rule that I “meant” to employ.
What is my evidence for that?
This is an appeal to Wittgenstein’s repeated question, what is it to mean something when you say it or think it? Is “meaning something” an additional action of some sort, a behavioral or mental action?
And of course I can’t actually supply any evidence of such an action of “meaning” the plus rule. Introspection doesn’t reveal any mental act of meaning the rule, and nothing in my behavior accompanied my reporting my result that indicated what rule I was following. For all we can tell from the evidence, for all I can tell, I was just as likely employing the quus rule.
So my claim to know the correct answer to be 125 rather than 5 seems undermined. Yet I know it is the correct answer, just without apparent justification. Without justification, and without any evidence of following any rule at all, how did I arrive at what we think of as the correct answer? Hence the apparent paradox.
Among the responses Wittgenstein considers, and Kripke recounts, is that there is a special felt mental state or sensation of “meaning” the plus rule or any other rule, and that we experience that state or feeling when we employ the rule. Of course, much of the skeptical argument already laid out will address that supposition — how would we know that feeling to be the feeling of meaning plus as opposed to meaning quus?
The importance of that “special feeling” response to the paradox isn’t so much that it is a strong response as that, as so often in Wittgenstein’s thought, it’s the philosophically intuitive one. Of course meaning something is an action, and associated with it is some mental experience of the action. And Wittgenstein, Kripke rightly stresses, is not a behaviorist — he doesn’t deny the existence of mental experiences. But he asks the critical question — how do I know that whatever I experience in my mind is one of meaning plus (as opposed to meaning quus)?
That sets the problem. Kripke presents it as formally analogous to Hume’s skeptical argument regarding causality, that we never actually perceive a causal relation between two events, despite that we commonly (and correctly) regard claims of causal connections between events as valid.
So how does Kripke think Wittgenstein resolves the paradox? The response Kripke ascribes to Wittgenstein is also Humean in form — a “skeptical response.”
Kripke’s account leans significantly on his understanding of Wittgenstein’s change in views on language from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations. In the Tractatus, sentences were pictures (or representations) of states of affairs — facts. And they derived their meaning from their “truth conditions,” the facts that must be the case in order for the sentence to be true. Such a sentence as, “I meant the plus function when I added the numbers” is then a sentence that, to be true and meaningful, must picture some fact. The paradox however reveals that there just is no such fact.
By contrast to the Tractatus view, according to Kripke’s reading of the Investigations, Wittgenstein has staked out a new account of language and meaning, displacing the Tractatus account. Here is Kripke’s statement of this new account:
“Wittgenstein replaces the question, ‘What must be the case for this sentence to be true?’ by two others: first, ‘Under what conditions may this form of words be appropriately asserted (or denied)?’; second, given an answer to the first question, ‘What is the role, and the utility, in our lives of our practice of asserting (or denying) the form of words under these conditions?’"
I don’t think the two questions are independent of one another. The first is meant to place a sentence in a social context — sentences are things said by people to other people (and sometimes to oneself, of course), and the question is, when is it appropriate (or as Kripke says in other formulations, when is it justified) to do that?
Outside the social context, we could just say it is appropriate when it is “true,” meaning when it accurately pictures the facts. Kripke means instead to call for a justification in social terms, when is it appropriate to speak the sentence to others?
We could call Wittgenstein’s argument, under Kripke’s reconstruction of it, an argument for re-understanding what it is to mean something, or what it means to follow a rule at all. The re-understanding displaces the idea of there being a mental fact referred to and puts in its place a pragmatic, community context and a process of community agreement and correction.
If I’m learning arithmetic, and I keep giving incorrect responses, by community-accepted standards, I’ll get corrected. And I’ll go on practicing until I give consistently correct responses, at which point my teacher, as a member of the community can say that I understand, am following, and mean the addition rule when I add numbers.
As an aside, notice how Vygotskyian this view of what it is to learn arithmetic or other sorts of things is. Despite the apparent abstract character of mathematics, according to this account, learning arithmetic is very explicitly a matter of learning to become a member of a community.
There’s a lot we could say about that pragmatic re-understanding. Does it apply to all cases of “meaning” something? Does it actually displace the "fact" conception of truth, or does it only layer in something else in its place, leaving the factually true and the pragmatic as separate concerns? Is Kripke's reading consistent with Wittgenstein's admonishment that "human agreement" does not "decide what is true and false" (§241 in the Investigations)?
I will say I’m attracted to the social, community aspects of Kripke’s interpretation. I think Wittgenstein's views on meaning, truth, and knowledge are critically social, embedded in community contexts. And I do think that the “private language argument” exhibits that thinking, although I sometimes feel the draw of a more abstractly logical account as well.
Rather than try to go into all of those questions and controversies, I want to go back to Kripke’s central discussion, the addition example relating to following a rule. That will help get at the pragmatic strategy he attributes to Wittgenstein and how helpful it may or may not be.
(I know this is a long review, so if you’re tired of it, you’re excused! I'm done with exposition -- the rest is some thoughts of my own.)
Kripke’s interpretation depends on replacing truth conditions with pragmatic justification. Is there a difference between being justified in saying of someone (or even of oneself?) that they are following a rule and the fact whether or not they are following the rule?
Go back to the plus/quus example. Suppose, as with Kripke, someone agrees with me and others in the community on additions until one day he doesn’t. Do we then say that he is no longer following the rule or do we say that we’ve just discovered that he never was following it? And why would we say one rather than the other? Is there a fact at issue?
Take a different example. Suppose I’m talking with a friend about movies we like and don’t like. We agree on our judgements of 20 movies, a pretty remarkable consistency that makes us think that we are following the same criteria, whatever they may be (and of course we may not be able to spell them out explicitly). Then, on the 21st movie, we disagree radically. Would we say that one of us is now following different criteria, or would we say that we actually had different criteria all along?
We might say, in the same spirit of saying that “meaning plus” doesn’t refer to a fact that in these cases of subsequent disagreement there is no fact by which to answer my question of whether we were both following the same rule, or the same criteria, and one of us has now changed, or that we weren’t really following the same rule, or the same criteria, all along. Giving up that supposed fact would then just be part of our re-understanding what it is to follow a rule (or follow criteria).
It would be odd to do so, but I’m not saying it wouldn’t be right to do so. I don’t know.
I’m also a little puzzled, under the re-understanding, what to make of my predilection to answer differently in the two scenarios. In the case where someone’s responses to addition problems deviates, I’m tempted to say he has changed the rule he is following. In the case where my friend’s judgements of movies deviates from mine, I’m tempted to say we’ve discovered a difference that was there all along.
Maybe the two cases are relevantly disanalogous. The addition is rule-governed, while the judgements of movies are not -- they are individual acts of aesthetic judgement. Rules are deterministic -- there's no wiggle room in addition. Movie judgements are looser, less determined by criteria or standards. But that goes to the heart of the matter. What is it that determines the addition, and how is it different from what more loosely guides the judgement? Wittgenstein's questioning leaves us at a loss to say what the difference is.
We might say that, again in the spirit of the re-understanding, that there is no fact distinguishing the two, but instead some consideration of how we go forward from a disagreement, or something similarly pragmatic and maybe community-oriented. Then it’s just pragmatics all the way down. If so, there are going to be more consequences (after all, Rorty wrote a book called Consequences of Pragmatism).
This is the draw of pragmatism, but there is a conflicting draw toward the idea that there must be a fact of the matter. An easy way to characterize the difference between Kripke’s addition example and my movie example would be to give in to the temptation to say that there is a fact to the matter, and to say that we are judging the two cases differently because the facts are different. Surely the differing judgements in the two cases relate to different facts?
I don’t know the answer. But I guess I’m happy that I have the question.
There are several critical pieces to Kripke’s interpretation. I’m going to concentrate on one of them, which we could call Wittgenstein’s re-understanding of what it is to “mean” something, such as when we “mean” the standard rule of addition when adding two numbers. The re-understanding is a turn from a representationalist or “picture” view of meaning and truth (as in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus) to a much more pragmatic view in the Investigations.
But before getting to that, Kripke makes some other important claims about the interpretation of the Investigations. In particular, he claims that Wittgenstein’s treatments of sensations and of mathematics in the Investigations (and elsewhere) are something like instances of a more general argument, one about rule-following. In fact, Kripke focuses his discussion on remarks that precede what is normally regarded as “the private language argument.” Kripke thinks that, once we understand Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following, what he has to say about private language will be much more readily understood.
Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule following discloses a paradox, by Kripke’s reading. Kripke describes the paradox using addition as the subject rule. If I am asked to add 68 + 57, I presumably employ a rule for the “plus” operation, and I respond with the correct answer, 125. Let’s assume that that particular addition is one I just happen never to have made before (if for some reason I know that I have, Kripke could, on Wittgenstein’s behalf, just use a different example — since I haven’t performed every addition of two numbers, there would be one I haven’t performed before).
Now Kripke imagines a skeptic enters the conversation. The imagined skeptic says, “No, the correct answer is 5.”
How do I know the answer isn’t 5? Seems simple — I appeal to the rule for “plus” (e.g., a rule that involves counting out a set of marks equal to each number to be added, and then counting out the total marks of the two sets). But the skeptic can say that in fact, the proper rule at work is different, that, while what I’ve cited is fine for other additions, in the particular case of 68 + 57, the answer is 5. Thus he appeals to a rule that Kripke calls “quus,” one in which we proceed as we normally do and expect, but in the particular case of 68 + 57, we should respond with 5.
I might respond to the skeptic that that is not the rule I have always followed, that whenever I’ve added numbers in the past, I’ve followed the “plus” rule, not the “quus” rule. But of course our past behavior in adding numbers is just as consistent with the quus rule as the plus rule, since we’ve never added 68 + 57 before. Both give the same result for all but this one instance.
I then respond that, no, in this case as in past cases, i had in mind, when I added the two numbers, the plus rule, not the quus rule. It was the plus rule that I “meant” to employ.
What is my evidence for that?
This is an appeal to Wittgenstein’s repeated question, what is it to mean something when you say it or think it? Is “meaning something” an additional action of some sort, a behavioral or mental action?
And of course I can’t actually supply any evidence of such an action of “meaning” the plus rule. Introspection doesn’t reveal any mental act of meaning the rule, and nothing in my behavior accompanied my reporting my result that indicated what rule I was following. For all we can tell from the evidence, for all I can tell, I was just as likely employing the quus rule.
So my claim to know the correct answer to be 125 rather than 5 seems undermined. Yet I know it is the correct answer, just without apparent justification. Without justification, and without any evidence of following any rule at all, how did I arrive at what we think of as the correct answer? Hence the apparent paradox.
Among the responses Wittgenstein considers, and Kripke recounts, is that there is a special felt mental state or sensation of “meaning” the plus rule or any other rule, and that we experience that state or feeling when we employ the rule. Of course, much of the skeptical argument already laid out will address that supposition — how would we know that feeling to be the feeling of meaning plus as opposed to meaning quus?
The importance of that “special feeling” response to the paradox isn’t so much that it is a strong response as that, as so often in Wittgenstein’s thought, it’s the philosophically intuitive one. Of course meaning something is an action, and associated with it is some mental experience of the action. And Wittgenstein, Kripke rightly stresses, is not a behaviorist — he doesn’t deny the existence of mental experiences. But he asks the critical question — how do I know that whatever I experience in my mind is one of meaning plus (as opposed to meaning quus)?
That sets the problem. Kripke presents it as formally analogous to Hume’s skeptical argument regarding causality, that we never actually perceive a causal relation between two events, despite that we commonly (and correctly) regard claims of causal connections between events as valid.
So how does Kripke think Wittgenstein resolves the paradox? The response Kripke ascribes to Wittgenstein is also Humean in form — a “skeptical response.”
Kripke’s account leans significantly on his understanding of Wittgenstein’s change in views on language from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations. In the Tractatus, sentences were pictures (or representations) of states of affairs — facts. And they derived their meaning from their “truth conditions,” the facts that must be the case in order for the sentence to be true. Such a sentence as, “I meant the plus function when I added the numbers” is then a sentence that, to be true and meaningful, must picture some fact. The paradox however reveals that there just is no such fact.
By contrast to the Tractatus view, according to Kripke’s reading of the Investigations, Wittgenstein has staked out a new account of language and meaning, displacing the Tractatus account. Here is Kripke’s statement of this new account:
“Wittgenstein replaces the question, ‘What must be the case for this sentence to be true?’ by two others: first, ‘Under what conditions may this form of words be appropriately asserted (or denied)?’; second, given an answer to the first question, ‘What is the role, and the utility, in our lives of our practice of asserting (or denying) the form of words under these conditions?’"
I don’t think the two questions are independent of one another. The first is meant to place a sentence in a social context — sentences are things said by people to other people (and sometimes to oneself, of course), and the question is, when is it appropriate (or as Kripke says in other formulations, when is it justified) to do that?
Outside the social context, we could just say it is appropriate when it is “true,” meaning when it accurately pictures the facts. Kripke means instead to call for a justification in social terms, when is it appropriate to speak the sentence to others?
We could call Wittgenstein’s argument, under Kripke’s reconstruction of it, an argument for re-understanding what it is to mean something, or what it means to follow a rule at all. The re-understanding displaces the idea of there being a mental fact referred to and puts in its place a pragmatic, community context and a process of community agreement and correction.
If I’m learning arithmetic, and I keep giving incorrect responses, by community-accepted standards, I’ll get corrected. And I’ll go on practicing until I give consistently correct responses, at which point my teacher, as a member of the community can say that I understand, am following, and mean the addition rule when I add numbers.
As an aside, notice how Vygotskyian this view of what it is to learn arithmetic or other sorts of things is. Despite the apparent abstract character of mathematics, according to this account, learning arithmetic is very explicitly a matter of learning to become a member of a community.
There’s a lot we could say about that pragmatic re-understanding. Does it apply to all cases of “meaning” something? Does it actually displace the "fact" conception of truth, or does it only layer in something else in its place, leaving the factually true and the pragmatic as separate concerns? Is Kripke's reading consistent with Wittgenstein's admonishment that "human agreement" does not "decide what is true and false" (§241 in the Investigations)?
I will say I’m attracted to the social, community aspects of Kripke’s interpretation. I think Wittgenstein's views on meaning, truth, and knowledge are critically social, embedded in community contexts. And I do think that the “private language argument” exhibits that thinking, although I sometimes feel the draw of a more abstractly logical account as well.
Rather than try to go into all of those questions and controversies, I want to go back to Kripke’s central discussion, the addition example relating to following a rule. That will help get at the pragmatic strategy he attributes to Wittgenstein and how helpful it may or may not be.
(I know this is a long review, so if you’re tired of it, you’re excused! I'm done with exposition -- the rest is some thoughts of my own.)
Kripke’s interpretation depends on replacing truth conditions with pragmatic justification. Is there a difference between being justified in saying of someone (or even of oneself?) that they are following a rule and the fact whether or not they are following the rule?
Go back to the plus/quus example. Suppose, as with Kripke, someone agrees with me and others in the community on additions until one day he doesn’t. Do we then say that he is no longer following the rule or do we say that we’ve just discovered that he never was following it? And why would we say one rather than the other? Is there a fact at issue?
Take a different example. Suppose I’m talking with a friend about movies we like and don’t like. We agree on our judgements of 20 movies, a pretty remarkable consistency that makes us think that we are following the same criteria, whatever they may be (and of course we may not be able to spell them out explicitly). Then, on the 21st movie, we disagree radically. Would we say that one of us is now following different criteria, or would we say that we actually had different criteria all along?
We might say, in the same spirit of saying that “meaning plus” doesn’t refer to a fact that in these cases of subsequent disagreement there is no fact by which to answer my question of whether we were both following the same rule, or the same criteria, and one of us has now changed, or that we weren’t really following the same rule, or the same criteria, all along. Giving up that supposed fact would then just be part of our re-understanding what it is to follow a rule (or follow criteria).
It would be odd to do so, but I’m not saying it wouldn’t be right to do so. I don’t know.
I’m also a little puzzled, under the re-understanding, what to make of my predilection to answer differently in the two scenarios. In the case where someone’s responses to addition problems deviates, I’m tempted to say he has changed the rule he is following. In the case where my friend’s judgements of movies deviates from mine, I’m tempted to say we’ve discovered a difference that was there all along.
Maybe the two cases are relevantly disanalogous. The addition is rule-governed, while the judgements of movies are not -- they are individual acts of aesthetic judgement. Rules are deterministic -- there's no wiggle room in addition. Movie judgements are looser, less determined by criteria or standards. But that goes to the heart of the matter. What is it that determines the addition, and how is it different from what more loosely guides the judgement? Wittgenstein's questioning leaves us at a loss to say what the difference is.
We might say that, again in the spirit of the re-understanding, that there is no fact distinguishing the two, but instead some consideration of how we go forward from a disagreement, or something similarly pragmatic and maybe community-oriented. Then it’s just pragmatics all the way down. If so, there are going to be more consequences (after all, Rorty wrote a book called Consequences of Pragmatism).
This is the draw of pragmatism, but there is a conflicting draw toward the idea that there must be a fact of the matter. An easy way to characterize the difference between Kripke’s addition example and my movie example would be to give in to the temptation to say that there is a fact to the matter, and to say that we are judging the two cases differently because the facts are different. Surely the differing judgements in the two cases relate to different facts?
I don’t know the answer. But I guess I’m happy that I have the question.
September 3, 2013
Can only be described as going down to hell and meeting the devil, who ends up being you. Shocked and amazed. True and honest.
February 4, 2022
"Wittgenstein has invented a new form of scepticism. Personally I am inclined to regard it as the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date, one that only a highly unusual cast of mind could have produced. Of course he does not wish to leave us with his problem, but to solve it: the sceptical conclusion is insane and intolerable It is his solution, I will argue, that contains the argument against 'private language'; for allegedly, the solution will not admit such a language." — Kripke, pag 60
"[A]ny interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning." (Wittgenstein, PI, §198)
In this essay, Kripke presents his view of the skeptical problem and the rule-following paradox, and in his words, he submit the Wittgenstein version of the problem as it occurred to him, so it's neither an exegesis nor a solution to the Wittgenstein's problem/paradox, it's more like a Kripke's version of the problem/paradox, hence, from now on I'll call it Kripkenstein's (or KW) problem and Kripkenstein's solution to the paradox. This little book brought to life an important discussion about rule-following and skepticism with the notion of meaning in focus, formulated in a detailed and objective way. We'll briefly see the overall form of the KW's problem and the KW's solution to it, along with some briefs comments on rule-following and private language.
1. The Skeptical Problem / Paradox
Kripkenstein's skepticism is challenging us to answer questions of the form: how can you say that you're justified in answering 125 to the query "What is 68 +57"? Thus, he proposes that we cannot answer this question allowing us unlimited epistemic access to some area (of philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, psychology) and so he invites us to give a strong meaning-constitutive fact to answer this question. In order to make a meaningful answer, he then suggests two areas that we must consider when trying to answer, (a) our previous behavior, linguistic and nonlinguistic; and (b) the entire contents of our previous mental histories.
KW's skeptic raises a doubt about what function we are really using when trying to answer "68 + 57", for we could say that we are following the rule for addition that we learned in elementary school, but, how can we be sure that the other part is using the same rule? To make this discourse stronger the KW's skeptic then proposes a function with the definition:
Let's denote an operation called quaddation, symbolized ⊕. It is defined by:
x ⊕ y = x + y, if x, y < 57, otherwise
= 5
So, when someone answered the question, the skeptic could talk back, "How could you know that you're using addition instead of quaddation? How you can you know that you're using plus instead of quus?".
We cannot really be sure, for x, y < 57, what function people are using. Explaining the problem Kripke then suggests that we must investigate (a) to make sure that our behavior, i.e, our use in the past is consistent with our use in the present and (b) to check if, mentally, we're being consistent. With this temporal suggestion (and, obviously, another commentaries omitted here) of meaning and consistence, Kripke ends his account of the problem.
The skeptic could rerun the same argument against anyone (how do you know that you mean X and not Y?) and thus the notion of meaning "vanish in the air". KW's solution comes to elaborate a notion of meaning that can overcome this skeptic challenge.
2. Skeptical Solution
Initially, the Kipkenstein solution admits that the sort of fact questioned by the skeptic is in fact non-existent. And, secondly, he says that our use don't need the type of justification that the skeptic demands, i.e, an account of the truth-condition and facts that would render them true or false. Rather, we can ascribe meaning of our use of words in other ways.
Kripkenstein's solution then admits that sentences ascribing meaning do not have truth-conditions (at least, not some strong epistemological / logical scheme), that there are no facts nor state of affairs in virtue of which such sentences have truth or falsity presents in them. So, rather than look for 'entities' or 'facts' to ascribe meaning to words and sentences, we must look at the circumstances under which such ascription are made and what utility do they have in the present context. If these conditions can be met and the utility can be specified adequately, then we provided a solution to the problem/paradox raised by the skeptical argument. This is a lot reminiscent of Wittgenstein's meaning as use, "Don't think, but look!" (Wittgenstein, PI, §66), but it has somewhat different theory of meaning behind it, KW's theory.
2.1 Conditions and Utility of the Skeptical Solution
Let's consider an example where someone lives in a community, he is justified in using the 'correct' meaning of "+" when he has performed satisfactorily enough with "+" to be trusted by other community's members. With this we have a meaning of "+"ascribed by the community under certain conditions and a specified utility that is useful in the community. Look that what made the meaning a meaning of something is that we have more than one person agreeing with the rules, conditions and utility of the use. (What if the person was isolated on an island with no humans?)
2.2 The Private Language Argument
Let's imagine a person isolated on an island, and then he says "+ means addition, the rules are yada-yada", in this case, there's no community to approve or disapproves his meaning. Therefore, the skeptical solution fails. Due to this, there's no distinction in the person believing or intending to mean something by a word in his 'private language', he would be correct in every possible way, and this just means that it makes no sense to talk about "correct" as Wittgenstein says.
"That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it. |82|" (Wittgenstein, PI, §202)
"Let’s imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign “S” and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. —– I first want to observe that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. But all the same, I can give one to myself as a kind of ostensive definition! How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation a and so, as it were, point to it inwardly. But what is this ceremony for? For that is all it seems to be! A definition serves to lay down the meaning of a sign, doesn’t it? Well, that is done precisely by concentrating my attention; for in this way I commit to memory the connection between the sign and the sensation. But “I commit it to memory” can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connection correctly in the future. But in the present case, I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem correct to me is correct. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘correct’. (Wittgenstein, PI, §259) "
259. Are the rules of the private language impressions of rules? The balance on which impressions are weighed is not the impression of a balance. (Wittgenstein, PI, §259)
So, for Kripke there's nothing like a "private language", as §202 points out, it's just not possible to follow a rule privately (consciously), for if you're following a rule made by you, you cannot really think about following it, you just follow and that's it. The conditions (made by you and followed by you) and utility for such a rule are not really specified (and there's no need to, for you must not convince anyone). So, in the present meaning-framework, it makes nonsense to talk about a private language.
3. Conclusion
To summarize, the skeptical solution asserts that to ascribe meaning is not to assert a fact about something but is in reality an investigation of the conditions that justifies a statement to be acceptable or not in a certain community and the useful that this statement plays in our life. And, as the community is necessary for ascribing meaning (remember 202, 258, 259 on following rules), KW's solution then claims that's as a demonstration for the impossibility of a solitary language.
Questions for me and someone to think about:
What is, actually, a community? How can it be defined?
In the case of formal languages (first order logic for example), this notion of meaning is useful?
What type of reference would be adequate for this theory (that is, if it is at all necessary...)?
Maybe the answers for these questions are present in the text itself and I'll notice it when I read it again, if not, I feel that they will be present in another works of Saul Krikpe.
"[A]ny interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning." (Wittgenstein, PI, §198)
In this essay, Kripke presents his view of the skeptical problem and the rule-following paradox, and in his words, he submit the Wittgenstein version of the problem as it occurred to him, so it's neither an exegesis nor a solution to the Wittgenstein's problem/paradox, it's more like a Kripke's version of the problem/paradox, hence, from now on I'll call it Kripkenstein's (or KW) problem and Kripkenstein's solution to the paradox. This little book brought to life an important discussion about rule-following and skepticism with the notion of meaning in focus, formulated in a detailed and objective way. We'll briefly see the overall form of the KW's problem and the KW's solution to it, along with some briefs comments on rule-following and private language.
1. The Skeptical Problem / Paradox
Kripkenstein's skepticism is challenging us to answer questions of the form: how can you say that you're justified in answering 125 to the query "What is 68 +57"? Thus, he proposes that we cannot answer this question allowing us unlimited epistemic access to some area (of philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, psychology) and so he invites us to give a strong meaning-constitutive fact to answer this question. In order to make a meaningful answer, he then suggests two areas that we must consider when trying to answer, (a) our previous behavior, linguistic and nonlinguistic; and (b) the entire contents of our previous mental histories.
KW's skeptic raises a doubt about what function we are really using when trying to answer "68 + 57", for we could say that we are following the rule for addition that we learned in elementary school, but, how can we be sure that the other part is using the same rule? To make this discourse stronger the KW's skeptic then proposes a function with the definition:
Let's denote an operation called quaddation, symbolized ⊕. It is defined by:
x ⊕ y = x + y, if x, y < 57, otherwise
= 5
So, when someone answered the question, the skeptic could talk back, "How could you know that you're using addition instead of quaddation? How you can you know that you're using plus instead of quus?".
We cannot really be sure, for x, y < 57, what function people are using. Explaining the problem Kripke then suggests that we must investigate (a) to make sure that our behavior, i.e, our use in the past is consistent with our use in the present and (b) to check if, mentally, we're being consistent. With this temporal suggestion (and, obviously, another commentaries omitted here) of meaning and consistence, Kripke ends his account of the problem.
The skeptic could rerun the same argument against anyone (how do you know that you mean X and not Y?) and thus the notion of meaning "vanish in the air". KW's solution comes to elaborate a notion of meaning that can overcome this skeptic challenge.
2. Skeptical Solution
Initially, the Kipkenstein solution admits that the sort of fact questioned by the skeptic is in fact non-existent. And, secondly, he says that our use don't need the type of justification that the skeptic demands, i.e, an account of the truth-condition and facts that would render them true or false. Rather, we can ascribe meaning of our use of words in other ways.
Kripkenstein's solution then admits that sentences ascribing meaning do not have truth-conditions (at least, not some strong epistemological / logical scheme), that there are no facts nor state of affairs in virtue of which such sentences have truth or falsity presents in them. So, rather than look for 'entities' or 'facts' to ascribe meaning to words and sentences, we must look at the circumstances under which such ascription are made and what utility do they have in the present context. If these conditions can be met and the utility can be specified adequately, then we provided a solution to the problem/paradox raised by the skeptical argument. This is a lot reminiscent of Wittgenstein's meaning as use, "Don't think, but look!" (Wittgenstein, PI, §66), but it has somewhat different theory of meaning behind it, KW's theory.
2.1 Conditions and Utility of the Skeptical Solution
Let's consider an example where someone lives in a community, he is justified in using the 'correct' meaning of "+" when he has performed satisfactorily enough with "+" to be trusted by other community's members. With this we have a meaning of "+"ascribed by the community under certain conditions and a specified utility that is useful in the community. Look that what made the meaning a meaning of something is that we have more than one person agreeing with the rules, conditions and utility of the use. (What if the person was isolated on an island with no humans?)
2.2 The Private Language Argument
Let's imagine a person isolated on an island, and then he says "+ means addition, the rules are yada-yada", in this case, there's no community to approve or disapproves his meaning. Therefore, the skeptical solution fails. Due to this, there's no distinction in the person believing or intending to mean something by a word in his 'private language', he would be correct in every possible way, and this just means that it makes no sense to talk about "correct" as Wittgenstein says.
"That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it. |82|" (Wittgenstein, PI, §202)
"Let’s imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign “S” and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. —– I first want to observe that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. But all the same, I can give one to myself as a kind of ostensive definition! How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation a and so, as it were, point to it inwardly. But what is this ceremony for? For that is all it seems to be! A definition serves to lay down the meaning of a sign, doesn’t it? Well, that is done precisely by concentrating my attention; for in this way I commit to memory the connection between the sign and the sensation. But “I commit it to memory” can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connection correctly in the future. But in the present case, I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem correct to me is correct. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘correct’. (Wittgenstein, PI, §259) "
259. Are the rules of the private language impressions of rules? The balance on which impressions are weighed is not the impression of a balance. (Wittgenstein, PI, §259)
So, for Kripke there's nothing like a "private language", as §202 points out, it's just not possible to follow a rule privately (consciously), for if you're following a rule made by you, you cannot really think about following it, you just follow and that's it. The conditions (made by you and followed by you) and utility for such a rule are not really specified (and there's no need to, for you must not convince anyone). So, in the present meaning-framework, it makes nonsense to talk about a private language.
3. Conclusion
To summarize, the skeptical solution asserts that to ascribe meaning is not to assert a fact about something but is in reality an investigation of the conditions that justifies a statement to be acceptable or not in a certain community and the useful that this statement plays in our life. And, as the community is necessary for ascribing meaning (remember 202, 258, 259 on following rules), KW's solution then claims that's as a demonstration for the impossibility of a solitary language.
Questions for me and someone to think about:
What is, actually, a community? How can it be defined?
In the case of formal languages (first order logic for example), this notion of meaning is useful?
What type of reference would be adequate for this theory (that is, if it is at all necessary...)?
Maybe the answers for these questions are present in the text itself and I'll notice it when I read it again, if not, I feel that they will be present in another works of Saul Krikpe.
March 24, 2013
As a piece of Wittgenstein scholarship, this is deeply flawed, and this can be established by spending a relatively short time with the Investigations itself. However, Kripke's paradox itself is a major contribution to the philosophy of language, and I find myself struggling with it to this day.
March 5, 2011
A book so brilliant, it makes you feel brilliant too.
January 28, 2019
Kripke focuses on explicating Wittgenstein's paradox of rule-following, which he takes to be the central problem in the Philosophical Investigations, and the springboard for Wittgenstein's famous argument against private language. Kripke argues that Wittgenstein discovers a new kind of philosophical skepticism, which radically breaks from all previous forms of skepticism. While philosophers such as Decartes and Hume raise skeptical concerns about the validity of our knowledge, Wittgenstein raises concern about whether there is any ultimate meaning or truth conditions of knowledge, in the first place. This is a difference between asking "is my belief true?" and "is there any possible truth behind my belief at all?".
Kripke takes us into this paradox by presenting an example of arithmetic. Take the addition sign (+). How can we know that in a particular case in which "+" appears that we should add the numbers at hand? It turns out relying on past experience in which "+" indicates that we should add numbers is always fallible. All past experiences amount to a finite count, and a new case of "+" might always have unique features that actually require us to apply some function other than addition. Moreover, we could have been wrong in our use of the addition function in all our past experiences. Kripke evaluates a number of attempted solutions to this skepticism: a dispositional analysis (we have reliable dispositions that cause us to perform addition when we see "+"), an argument from simplicity (we ought to perform addition when seeing "+" because it is the simple behavior out of alternative possibilities), and an argument from qualia (there are non-reductive mental states that instantiate the sense that we ought to perform addition).
Kripke shows that these solutions all fail to explain why "+" indicates that we ought to perform addition. There is ultimately no fact of the presentation of the addition-sign that indicates that the absolute, objective meaning of this sign is the addition function. To generalize, any amount of particular instances of rule-following (e.g., performing addition when seeing "+") cannot justify the use of that rule, or that using this rule is valid, while using any alternative rule would be erroneous.
Such skepticism about meaning leads Wittgenstein to construct "language-game" theory of meaning. Wittgenstein breaks from his project in the Tractatus of identifying truth-conditions, or the ultimate, objective meanings, of linguistic items. This paradox of rule-following shows that it is impossible to have ultimate, objective meaning for any sign. Instead, we can look for assertability conditions, or the circumstances under which some verbal or behavioral performance is appropriate. "Truth" is replaced by appropriateness, which is always relative under some social context. Wittgenstein's argument against private language is, more fundamentally, an argument against the possibility of an individual's having rules independently of a community; the possibility of a rule depends on a community in which members monitor and correct each other. The rule depends on this intersubjective agreement, and the agreement depends on the rule.
Kripke concludes the book with a "postscript" about Wittgenstein's view on "the problem of other minds," or the question of whether we can infer from knowledge about our own mental states to the mental states of others. Wittgenstein argues that mental states have unique properties that prevent this generalizing inference. While we can generalize from observations of any everyday object in the world (e.g., paintbrushes, toothbrushes) to the possibility of this object existing in other circumstances, we cannot do the same with observations of our own mental states, like pain. Pain uniquely necessarily presupposes a subject who experiences the pain, while everyday objects do not. Whenever we talk about "a pain," we actually use such descriptions as shorthand for "a pain I had". So, it seems paradoxical to think other people could have pains; the only intelligible way of understanding that is thinking other people have my pain, which, although logically possible, is clearly practically implausible.
This paradox about other minds mirrors the paradox about rule-following. Wittgenstein's solution here is similar: there is no ultimate matter of fact about what "my pain" even means. We learn to say "my pain," for example, from others telling us that we are experiencing pain given our behavioral cues, since we were small children. It is legitimate to say that other people are pain given the appropriate circumstances. To generalize, talk of other people's mental states is legitimized by our language games. (I might not have fully understood Kripke's explanation of Wittgenstein's solution here; I found this section confusing).
Overall, this book was very clearly and straightforwardly written. It is also quite short, just 150 pages. But Kripke does not focus on any other topics Wittgenstein's work, other than the paradox of rule-following, language games, and the paradox of other minds. Kripke barely mentions the concept of family resemblances, or the idea of "forms of life," for example. One must look to other secondary sources for explanations of these other topics. I would highly recommend Kripke's book to anyone interested in furthering their understanding of Wittgenstein.
Kripke takes us into this paradox by presenting an example of arithmetic. Take the addition sign (+). How can we know that in a particular case in which "+" appears that we should add the numbers at hand? It turns out relying on past experience in which "+" indicates that we should add numbers is always fallible. All past experiences amount to a finite count, and a new case of "+" might always have unique features that actually require us to apply some function other than addition. Moreover, we could have been wrong in our use of the addition function in all our past experiences. Kripke evaluates a number of attempted solutions to this skepticism: a dispositional analysis (we have reliable dispositions that cause us to perform addition when we see "+"), an argument from simplicity (we ought to perform addition when seeing "+" because it is the simple behavior out of alternative possibilities), and an argument from qualia (there are non-reductive mental states that instantiate the sense that we ought to perform addition).
Kripke shows that these solutions all fail to explain why "+" indicates that we ought to perform addition. There is ultimately no fact of the presentation of the addition-sign that indicates that the absolute, objective meaning of this sign is the addition function. To generalize, any amount of particular instances of rule-following (e.g., performing addition when seeing "+") cannot justify the use of that rule, or that using this rule is valid, while using any alternative rule would be erroneous.
Such skepticism about meaning leads Wittgenstein to construct "language-game" theory of meaning. Wittgenstein breaks from his project in the Tractatus of identifying truth-conditions, or the ultimate, objective meanings, of linguistic items. This paradox of rule-following shows that it is impossible to have ultimate, objective meaning for any sign. Instead, we can look for assertability conditions, or the circumstances under which some verbal or behavioral performance is appropriate. "Truth" is replaced by appropriateness, which is always relative under some social context. Wittgenstein's argument against private language is, more fundamentally, an argument against the possibility of an individual's having rules independently of a community; the possibility of a rule depends on a community in which members monitor and correct each other. The rule depends on this intersubjective agreement, and the agreement depends on the rule.
Kripke concludes the book with a "postscript" about Wittgenstein's view on "the problem of other minds," or the question of whether we can infer from knowledge about our own mental states to the mental states of others. Wittgenstein argues that mental states have unique properties that prevent this generalizing inference. While we can generalize from observations of any everyday object in the world (e.g., paintbrushes, toothbrushes) to the possibility of this object existing in other circumstances, we cannot do the same with observations of our own mental states, like pain. Pain uniquely necessarily presupposes a subject who experiences the pain, while everyday objects do not. Whenever we talk about "a pain," we actually use such descriptions as shorthand for "a pain I had". So, it seems paradoxical to think other people could have pains; the only intelligible way of understanding that is thinking other people have my pain, which, although logically possible, is clearly practically implausible.
This paradox about other minds mirrors the paradox about rule-following. Wittgenstein's solution here is similar: there is no ultimate matter of fact about what "my pain" even means. We learn to say "my pain," for example, from others telling us that we are experiencing pain given our behavioral cues, since we were small children. It is legitimate to say that other people are pain given the appropriate circumstances. To generalize, talk of other people's mental states is legitimized by our language games. (I might not have fully understood Kripke's explanation of Wittgenstein's solution here; I found this section confusing).
Overall, this book was very clearly and straightforwardly written. It is also quite short, just 150 pages. But Kripke does not focus on any other topics Wittgenstein's work, other than the paradox of rule-following, language games, and the paradox of other minds. Kripke barely mentions the concept of family resemblances, or the idea of "forms of life," for example. One must look to other secondary sources for explanations of these other topics. I would highly recommend Kripke's book to anyone interested in furthering their understanding of Wittgenstein.
February 24, 2024
Interesante y novedosa la lectura de Kripke (sobre el seguimiento de reglas, el significado y el lenguaje privado) sin embargo, Kripke se aleja mucho de la posición de Wittgenstein en cuestiones centrales (el lugar de la comunidades lingüística, la normatividad del lenguaje, sobre el significado y sobre la imposibilidad de un lenguaje privado).
January 30, 2023
Creo que es un muy buen libro para introducirse en el debate del seguimiento de reglas. Eso sí, lo de las notas al pie de dos o tres páginas es un abuso.
May 18, 2023
I love how I can be totally neurotic when I talk about this book
November 8, 2024
De mi tfg.
January 5, 2025
Skaityti kaip Kripkės projektuojamas Wittgenstein'iškas skeptikas įvairiais būdais sako „68+57=/=125“ ir „ar tikrai [+] reiškia sudėtis?“ 6tą ryto buvo patirtis (didžiausia klaida mano gyvenime).
June 3, 2022
Aunque mis sensaciones iniciales me hacían pensar que el libro apuntaba mayoritariamente a temas de filosofía de la mente, lo cierto es que los breves pasajes sobre filosofía de las matemáticas son de una riqueza considerable, no atendiendo únicamente al contenido (a veces pasado por alto en la filosofía de Wittgenstein) sino también a la sistematicidad de la exposición y su conexión con diversas cuestiones. En conjunto, las preguntas que plantea Kripke a lo largo del texto suponen, por sí mismas, un motivo suficiente para leerlo detenidamente.
May 2, 2017
You don't have to agree with a word of this book to enjoy it (and to be forced to think about the nature of natural languages). Kripke's style is always to make sure he leaves no one behind and so one finds oneself thinking 'with him'. This partly explains just how much literature this book prompted!
Kripke's argument is really an exposition of Wittgenstein's 'private language argument'. Whether he gets LW right is beside the point. Kripke argues that LW proposes a paradox: just because I am inclined to accord speech to rules of speech, it doesn't follow that there is any fact about me or the world in virtue of which I can be justified in believing that the rule I am about to follow is the right rule (or the rule that I have been following up to this point). So, what can justify my assumption that I can mean anything by what I say. According to Kripke's Wittgenstein, the answer is that we know we obey the rules by the judgment of the linguistic community in which we speak.
The trouble with reading this book is that one will begin extensive purchases of the various responses. I now begin with Baker and Hacker and then on to Crispin Wright. In other words, Kripgenstein can cause addictive behavior.
Kripke's argument is really an exposition of Wittgenstein's 'private language argument'. Whether he gets LW right is beside the point. Kripke argues that LW proposes a paradox: just because I am inclined to accord speech to rules of speech, it doesn't follow that there is any fact about me or the world in virtue of which I can be justified in believing that the rule I am about to follow is the right rule (or the rule that I have been following up to this point). So, what can justify my assumption that I can mean anything by what I say. According to Kripke's Wittgenstein, the answer is that we know we obey the rules by the judgment of the linguistic community in which we speak.
The trouble with reading this book is that one will begin extensive purchases of the various responses. I now begin with Baker and Hacker and then on to Crispin Wright. In other words, Kripgenstein can cause addictive behavior.
March 10, 2022
A mad man comes to me as I was attempting for the first time 68+57, which also includes a number larger than 56, something I've never done before; it's five, he claims. He says that I have mistaken the rule of addition to some rule called 'quss', and so really, the rule is x+y=x+y, if x, y<57. otherwise =5. I thought about it a little, and it turns out he has a point; what justifies me following this rule? Because if it is false, my past usages should've indicated so. As such, this mad men hypothesis is not apriori impossible. He objected to whether there's any fact that I mean the normal plus and whether it's justified. It is as I follow the rule blindly, I thought.
Above is a brief outline of the nature of the Wittgensteinian paradox. This, in essence, can be presented to me as a question about myself: was there some past fact about me - what I 'meant by plus - that mandates what I do now. If expanded, it means any new application of any sort of rules (be it linguistical or mathematical) is a leap in the dark. There can be no such thing as meaning by any word.... ( staying faithful to the book)
Kripke, in the book, shows what he interprets as Wittgenstein's solution to this sceptical problem.
Above is a brief outline of the nature of the Wittgensteinian paradox. This, in essence, can be presented to me as a question about myself: was there some past fact about me - what I 'meant by plus - that mandates what I do now. If expanded, it means any new application of any sort of rules (be it linguistical or mathematical) is a leap in the dark. There can be no such thing as meaning by any word.... ( staying faithful to the book)
Kripke, in the book, shows what he interprets as Wittgenstein's solution to this sceptical problem.
September 23, 2013
A great book on philosophy. Put very baldly, it posits that no word in our language can ever have a consistent meaning which can predict future use, and thus the only way we can define language is as something accepted by a group; basically (although Kripke doesn't use the phrase) a social construct, a "language-game" without any meaning outside of the group dynamic. This, a major reversal of the Tractatus, is from the the pragmatist late-Wittgenstein work Philosophical Investigations - although it is more accurately the basis of the independent beast known as 'Kripkenstein'.
I do not handle philosophical jargon well. This book, happily, is clear, lively and enjoyable (the footnotes can occasionally get a bit gnarly, though).
I do not handle philosophical jargon well. This book, happily, is clear, lively and enjoyable (the footnotes can occasionally get a bit gnarly, though).
June 9, 2022
I bought this book at least 25 years ago. I got half-way through at the time. I do not know why I stopped. Perhaps, it was because it was too hard for me then. I doubt that. I had read the Investigations in graduate school. I knew what I was getting into. Perhaps it was that I disagreed with Kripke. Or perhaps I got bored. I think it was disagreement. That has not changed.
I think that the skeptic’s position on quus and plus infects all discourse, including the very words he used to formulate the challenge. I think Kripke’s/ Wittgenstein’s ‘skeptical’ solution about community agreement is wrong. How would I know if I agreed with others? Skepticism infects every word at that level.
I think that the skeptic’s position on quus and plus infects all discourse, including the very words he used to formulate the challenge. I think Kripke’s/ Wittgenstein’s ‘skeptical’ solution about community agreement is wrong. How would I know if I agreed with others? Skepticism infects every word at that level.
February 17, 2021
Kripke undertakes to analyze the sceptical paradox found in Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations." The analysis focuses on the question concerning following a rule. The paradox,as I understand it, concerns that the past adherence to a rule does not determine future adherence. Kripke uses a simple arithmetic problem to illustrate this problem. The postscript of the book focuses on Wittgenstein's solipsism in the context of ascribing pain to others. Ideally, this would be read with or after reading the "Philosophical Investigations," but the book's contribution to these problems have independent worth.
December 13, 2019
Kripke has written a remarkable work of philosophy.
The book is divided in three sections: the rule-following paradox, the paradox's solution, and further considerations on other minds. Each section is as clear as it is mindbending and philosophically enlightening.
As a work of scholarship, I was surprisingly persuaded that Kripke is (for the most part) presenting Wittgenstein's actual views. I am curious to see what other Wittgenstein scholars think of it.
The book is divided in three sections: the rule-following paradox, the paradox's solution, and further considerations on other minds. Each section is as clear as it is mindbending and philosophically enlightening.
As a work of scholarship, I was surprisingly persuaded that Kripke is (for the most part) presenting Wittgenstein's actual views. I am curious to see what other Wittgenstein scholars think of it.
October 6, 2020
It's a perfect work of philosophy. Concise. Clear. And well argued.
Before reading this, the Philosophical Investigations seemed like a a series of related remarks about meaning. After, I saw that the remarks were building up to something. This unified the Philosophical Investigations for me and made it much easier to understand.
Before reading this, the Philosophical Investigations seemed like a a series of related remarks about meaning. After, I saw that the remarks were building up to something. This unified the Philosophical Investigations for me and made it much easier to understand.
July 19, 2007
If you read _Philosophical Investigations_, read this afterwards. It does wonderful job of explicating Wittgenstein's arguments.
March 10, 2011
This is a pretty good primer on the private language argument. I think it's pretty digestible too.
May 3, 2020
It took me a while to get past the odd reading of Wittgenstein but by the postscript I was fully onboard the analysis.
November 20, 2020
El tipo de libro que nunca me espere entender pero aquí estamos
November 19, 2021
Kripke’s a fantastically clear and creative thinker
October 19, 2024
THE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT WITTGENSTEIN’S IDEAS
Saul Aaron Kripke (born 1940) is an American philosopher and logician, who is Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Princeton University, and teaches Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1982 book, “The main part of this work has been delivered at various places as lectures, series of lectures, or seminars. It constitutes, as I say, ‘an elementary exposition’ of what I take to be the central thread of Wittgenstein’s later work on the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mathematics, including my interpretation of the ‘private language argument,’ which on my view is principally to be explicated in terms of the problem of ‘following a rule.’ A postscript presents another problem Wittgenstein saw in the conception of private language, which leads to a discussion of some aspects of his views on the problem of other minds… I had hoped to add a second postscript on the philosophy of mathematics. Time has not permitted this…”
He points out in the Introduction, “It should be borne in mind that ‘Philosophical Investigations’ is not a systematic philosophical work where conclusions, once definitely established, need not be reargued. Rather the ‘Investigations’ is written as a perpetual dialectic, where persisting worries, expressed by the voice of the imaginary interlocutor, are never definitively silenced. Since the work is not presented in the form of a deductive argument with definitive theses as conclusions, the same ground is covered repeatedly, from the point of view of various special cases and from different angles, with the hope that the entire process will help the reader see the problems rightly.” (Pg. 3)
He explains, “I suspect… that to attempt to present Wittgenstein’s argument precisely is to some extent to falsify it. Probably many of my formulations and recastings of the argument are done in a way Wittgenstein would not himself approve. So the present paper should be thought of as expounding neither ‘Wittgenstein’s’ argument nor ‘Kripke’s’: rather Wittgenstein’s argument as it struck Kripke, as it presented a problem for him.” (Pg. 5)
He observes, “when I concentrate on what is now in my mind, what instructions can be found there? How can I be said to be acting on the basis of these instructions when I act in the future? The infinitely many cases of the table are not in my mind for my future self to consult. To say that there is a general rule in my mind that tells me how to add in the future is only to throw the problem back on to other rules that also seem to be given only in terms of finitely many cases. What can there be in my mind that I make use of when I act in the future? It seems that the entire idea of meaning vanishes into thin air.” (Pg. 22)
He notes, “By ‘reading’ Wittgenstein means reading out loud what is written or printed and similar activities: he is not concerned with understanding what is written. I myself, like many of my coreligionists, first learned to ‘read’ Hebrew in this sense before I could understand more than a few words of the language. Reading in this sense is a simple case of ‘following a rule.’” (Pg. 45)
He suggests, “Wittgenstein has invented a new form of skepticism. Personally I am inclined to regard it as the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date, one that only a highly unusual cast of mind could have produced. Of course he does not wish to leave us with his problem, but to solve it: the skeptical conclusion is insane and intolerable. It is his solution, I will argue, that contains the argument against ‘private language.’” (Pg. 60)
He states, “The main problem is not, ‘How can we show private language---or some other special form of language---to be IMPOSSIBLE?’; rather it is, ‘How can we show ANY LANGUAGE at all (public, private, or what-have-you) to be POSSIBLE?’ Is it not that calling a sensation ‘pain’ is easy, and Wittgenstein must invent a difficulty. One the contrary, Wittgenstein’s main problem is that it appears that he has shown ALL language, ALL concept formation, to be impossible, indeed unintelligible.” (Pg. 62)
He suggests, “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 component. 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. As long as we regard him as following a rule ‘privately,’ so that we pay attention to HIS justification conditions alone, all we can say is that he is licensed to follow the rule as it strikes him.” (Pg. 89)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying Kripke, or analytic philosophy in general.
Saul Aaron Kripke (born 1940) is an American philosopher and logician, who is Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Princeton University, and teaches Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1982 book, “The main part of this work has been delivered at various places as lectures, series of lectures, or seminars. It constitutes, as I say, ‘an elementary exposition’ of what I take to be the central thread of Wittgenstein’s later work on the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mathematics, including my interpretation of the ‘private language argument,’ which on my view is principally to be explicated in terms of the problem of ‘following a rule.’ A postscript presents another problem Wittgenstein saw in the conception of private language, which leads to a discussion of some aspects of his views on the problem of other minds… I had hoped to add a second postscript on the philosophy of mathematics. Time has not permitted this…”
He points out in the Introduction, “It should be borne in mind that ‘Philosophical Investigations’ is not a systematic philosophical work where conclusions, once definitely established, need not be reargued. Rather the ‘Investigations’ is written as a perpetual dialectic, where persisting worries, expressed by the voice of the imaginary interlocutor, are never definitively silenced. Since the work is not presented in the form of a deductive argument with definitive theses as conclusions, the same ground is covered repeatedly, from the point of view of various special cases and from different angles, with the hope that the entire process will help the reader see the problems rightly.” (Pg. 3)
He explains, “I suspect… that to attempt to present Wittgenstein’s argument precisely is to some extent to falsify it. Probably many of my formulations and recastings of the argument are done in a way Wittgenstein would not himself approve. So the present paper should be thought of as expounding neither ‘Wittgenstein’s’ argument nor ‘Kripke’s’: rather Wittgenstein’s argument as it struck Kripke, as it presented a problem for him.” (Pg. 5)
He observes, “when I concentrate on what is now in my mind, what instructions can be found there? How can I be said to be acting on the basis of these instructions when I act in the future? The infinitely many cases of the table are not in my mind for my future self to consult. To say that there is a general rule in my mind that tells me how to add in the future is only to throw the problem back on to other rules that also seem to be given only in terms of finitely many cases. What can there be in my mind that I make use of when I act in the future? It seems that the entire idea of meaning vanishes into thin air.” (Pg. 22)
He notes, “By ‘reading’ Wittgenstein means reading out loud what is written or printed and similar activities: he is not concerned with understanding what is written. I myself, like many of my coreligionists, first learned to ‘read’ Hebrew in this sense before I could understand more than a few words of the language. Reading in this sense is a simple case of ‘following a rule.’” (Pg. 45)
He suggests, “Wittgenstein has invented a new form of skepticism. Personally I am inclined to regard it as the most radical and original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date, one that only a highly unusual cast of mind could have produced. Of course he does not wish to leave us with his problem, but to solve it: the skeptical conclusion is insane and intolerable. It is his solution, I will argue, that contains the argument against ‘private language.’” (Pg. 60)
He states, “The main problem is not, ‘How can we show private language---or some other special form of language---to be IMPOSSIBLE?’; rather it is, ‘How can we show ANY LANGUAGE at all (public, private, or what-have-you) to be POSSIBLE?’ Is it not that calling a sensation ‘pain’ is easy, and Wittgenstein must invent a difficulty. One the contrary, Wittgenstein’s main problem is that it appears that he has shown ALL language, ALL concept formation, to be impossible, indeed unintelligible.” (Pg. 62)
He suggests, “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 component. 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. As long as we regard him as following a rule ‘privately,’ so that we pay attention to HIS justification conditions alone, all we can say is that he is licensed to follow the rule as it strikes him.” (Pg. 89)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying Kripke, or analytic philosophy in general.
September 1, 2018
خوانش کریپکی از پژوهشهای فلسفی ویتگنشتاین و به طور خاص پارادوکس پیروی از قاعده و استدلال زبان خصوصی، به یکی از چالشبرانگیزترین مباحث در ادبیات فلسفی معاصر تبدیل شده است. هرچند به استناد آراء مفسرین ویتگنشتاین، تفسیر کریپکی– که به «کریپکنشتاین» معروف شده است– مطابقت درستی با اندیشههای ویتگنشتاین ندارد–کما اینکه خود کریپکی هم ادعایی در این خصوص ندارد– اما استدلالهای مطرح شده در کتاب کریپکی بسیار قدرتمند است.
کتاب از دو فصل و یک پیوست تشکیل شده است. در فصل اول کریپکی مفهوم پیروی از قاعده را برای عمل «جمعکردن» به کار میگیرد و با طرح ادعایی شکاکانه نتیجه میگیرد که هیچ امر واقعای که با استناد به آن بفهمیم که چه قاعدهای را مراد کردهایم وجود ندارد.
در بخش دوم پس از پذیرش نتایج شکاکانهی استدلال فصل اول، با بهرهگیری از ردیهی ویتگنشتاین بر زبانِ خصوصی، راهِ حلی شکاکانه برای این مسئله ارائه میکند: با هنجارین در نظر گرفتنِ معیارِ پیروی از قاعده، مشکلِ نبود امر واقع برطرف خواهد شد. بیانِ هنجارین قاعدهی جمع چنین است: ما از آن رو که قاعدهی جمع را اینگونه «بهکارمیبریم» آن را جمع مینامیم؛ چنین نیست که قاعدهی مشخصی مانند جمع وجود داشته باشد و ما از آن «پیرویکنیم».
در پیوست، پرسش محوری این است که ما چگونه میفهمیم دیگران موجوداتی دارای ذهناند. آیا از تجربهی شخصی خودمان–فرضاً درد– میتوانیم نتیجه بگیریم که دیگران هم همین تجربه را دارند؟ کریپکی با استناد به بخشهایی از تراکتاتوس، اینگونه تفسیر میکند که ویتگنشتاین همانند هیوم و لیختنبرگ قائل به «نفس» یا «سوژه»ای که از نظر هستیشناختی «موجود» باشند نیست. نتیجتاً ارتباط بین حالاتِ حسیِ درونی و نفس به عنوان امری واقع بیمعناست؛ پس نسبت دادن حالات حسی به نفوس دیگر نیز بیمعناست. کریپکی ضمن پذیرش این دیدگاهِ خودتنهاانگارانه، راه حل را مجدداً در بهکارگیری مفهوم هنجارینبودن مییابد. این که ما مایل به کمککردن انسانی دردمند استیم، نه به این خاطر است که او را صاحب نفس میدانیم و دردی که خود پیشتر تجربه کردهایم را به او نسبت میدهیم؛ بلکه برعکس، از آن رو که با انسان دردمند همدردی میکنیم، او را صاحب نفس و ذهن میپنداریم.
ترجمهی آقای لاجوردی هرچند غیر قابل خواندن نیست، اما آنچنان هم روان و بیاشکال نیست. از این رو توصیه میکنم متن اصلی را بخوانید.
کتاب از دو فصل و یک پیوست تشکیل شده است. در فصل اول کریپکی مفهوم پیروی از قاعده را برای عمل «جمعکردن» به کار میگیرد و با طرح ادعایی شکاکانه نتیجه میگیرد که هیچ امر واقعای که با استناد به آن بفهمیم که چه قاعدهای را مراد کردهایم وجود ندارد.
در بخش دوم پس از پذیرش نتایج شکاکانهی استدلال فصل اول، با بهرهگیری از ردیهی ویتگنشتاین بر زبانِ خصوصی، راهِ حلی شکاکانه برای این مسئله ارائه میکند: با هنجارین در نظر گرفتنِ معیارِ پیروی از قاعده، مشکلِ نبود امر واقع برطرف خواهد شد. بیانِ هنجارین قاعدهی جمع چنین است: ما از آن رو که قاعدهی جمع را اینگونه «بهکارمیبریم» آن را جمع مینامیم؛ چنین نیست که قاعدهی مشخصی مانند جمع وجود داشته باشد و ما از آن «پیرویکنیم».
در پیوست، پرسش محوری این است که ما چگونه میفهمیم دیگران موجوداتی دارای ذهناند. آیا از تجربهی شخصی خودمان–فرضاً درد– میتوانیم نتیجه بگیریم که دیگران هم همین تجربه را دارند؟ کریپکی با استناد به بخشهایی از تراکتاتوس، اینگونه تفسیر میکند که ویتگنشتاین همانند هیوم و لیختنبرگ قائل به «نفس» یا «سوژه»ای که از نظر هستیشناختی «موجود» باشند نیست. نتیجتاً ارتباط بین حالاتِ حسیِ درونی و نفس به عنوان امری واقع بیمعناست؛ پس نسبت دادن حالات حسی به نفوس دیگر نیز بیمعناست. کریپکی ضمن پذیرش این دیدگاهِ خودتنهاانگارانه، راه حل را مجدداً در بهکارگیری مفهوم هنجارینبودن مییابد. این که ما مایل به کمککردن انسانی دردمند استیم، نه به این خاطر است که او را صاحب نفس میدانیم و دردی که خود پیشتر تجربه کردهایم را به او نسبت میدهیم؛ بلکه برعکس، از آن رو که با انسان دردمند همدردی میکنیم، او را صاحب نفس و ذهن میپنداریم.
ترجمهی آقای لاجوردی هرچند غیر قابل خواندن نیست، اما آنچنان هم روان و بیاشکال نیست. از این رو توصیه میکنم متن اصلی را بخوانید.
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