Against a broad consensus within contemporary analytic philosophy, Hattiangadi (Mind and Language 21(2):220–240, 2006 , 2007 ) has recently argued that linguistic meaning is not normative, at least not in the sense of being prescriptive. She maintains, more specifically, that standard claims to the effect that meaning is normative are usually ambiguous between two readings: one, which she calls Prescriptivity , and another, which she calls Correctness . According to Hattiangadi, though meaning is normative in the uncontroversial sense specified in (...) the principle Correctness , it is not normative in the sense specified by Prescriptivity . In this paper, I instead show that meaning is normative in the sense of being prescriptive. My argument for this claim takes the form of a classical disjunctive syllogism. I argue that either Correctness implies (because it presupposes) Prescriptivity , or linguistically meaningful items are ‘intrinsically intentional.’ But linguistically meaningful items are not intrinsically intentional, and thus Correctness implies (because it presupposes) Prescriptivity. (shrink)

The issue of what distinguishes systems which have original intentionalityfrom those which do not has been brought into sharp focus by Saul Kripke inhis discussion of the sceptical paradox he attributes to Wittgenstein.In this paper I defend a sophisticated version of the dispositionalistaccount of meaning against the principal objection raised by Kripke in hisattack on dispositional views. I argue that the objection put by the sceptic,to the effect that the dispositionalist cannot give a satisfactory account ofnormativity and mistake, in fact (...) comprises a number of distinct lines ofargument, all of which can be satisfactorily answered by the dispositionalist. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to look at the problem of rule-following—notably discussed by Kripke (Wittgenstein on rules and private language, 1982) and Wittgenstein (Philosophical investigations, 1953)—from the perspective of the study of generics. Generics are sentences that express generalizations that tolerate exceptions. I first suggest that meaning ascriptions be viewed as habitual sentences, which are a sub-set of generics. I then seek a proper semantic analysis for habitually construed meaning sentences. The quantificational approach is rejected, due to its (...) persistent difficulties. Instead, a cognitive approach is adopted, where psychological considerations of meaning attributors play a crucial role. This account is then compared with the picture of meaning offered by Kripke and Wittgenstein, respectively. I show how this fresh way of conceiving of meaning sentences respects some of their insights while avoiding some of the drawbacks, and serves to improve the framework in which the current debate and inquiry about rule-following are conducted. (shrink)

Mathematics achievement in different education systems around the world is assessed periodically in the Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA is deemed to yield robust...

In this paper I argue that the most prominent and familiar features of Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations generate a powerful argument for the thesis that most of our concepts are innate, an argument that echoes a Chomskyan poverty of the stimulus argument. This argument has a significance over and above what it tells us about Wittgenstein’s implicit commitments. For, it puts considerable pressure on widely held contemporary views of concept learning, such as the view that we learn concepts by constructing (...) prototypes. This should lead us to abandon our general default hostility to concept nativism and be much more sceptical of claims made on behalf of learning theories. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous considérons un paradoxe sceptique que Saul Kripke a attribué à Wittgenstein. Nous critiquons la solution directe proposée par Colin McGinn , qui a recours à la théorie causale de la référence, et nous montrons pourquoi cette solution n'est pas satisfaisante. La solution sceptique que Kripke prête à Wittgenstein est ensuite discutée à la lumière de nos considérations sur la théorie causale, ce qui nous amène à constater qu'elle est aussi insuffisante. Nous concluons en montrant que nous (...) ne sommes pas d'emblée contraints d'accepter le paradoxe.We consider a sceptical paradox which Saul Kripke has attributed to Wittgenstein. We criticize the direct solution proposed by Colin McGinn, which resorts to the causal theory of reference, and we show why this solution in not satisfying. The sceptical solution which Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein is then discussed in the light of our considerations on the causal theory ; this leads us to ascertain that it is also insufficient. We conclude by showing that we don't really need to accept the paradox as it is first presented. (shrink)

According to a widespread interpretation, in the Investigations Wittgenstein adopted a deflationary or redundancy theory of truth. On this view, Wittgenstein’s pronouncements about truth should be understood in the light of his invocation of the equivalences ‘p’ is true = p and ‘p’ is false = not p. This paper shows that this interpretation does not do justice to Wittgenstein’s thoughts. I will be claiming that, in fact, in his second book Wittgenstein is returning to the pre-Tractarian notion of bipolarity, (...) and that his new development of this notion in the Investigations excludes the redundancy-deflationary reading. Wittgenstein’s thoughts about truth are instead compatible with another interpretative option: Wittgenstein remains faithful to his methodological pronouncements, and he merely presents us with platitudes about the notions of “true” and “false”. (shrink)

Later Wittgenstein is famous for having related meaning and use. Nonetheless, thanks to Dummett and Kripke, and the debates they provoked, a conventional wisdom is nowadays available: Wittgenstein, so the story goes, adopted a theory of meaning in terms of assertability conditions. This paper claims that it is wrong to attribute such a theory to the Investigations. For such a thesis to go through, one of the following two scenarios should be confirmed. It should either be true that Wittgenstein reduces (...) all meaning-engendering uses and conditions of use to assertion and assertability conditions, or that he invokes assertability conditions to show that meaning is always use. But, I will be claiming, the first scenario is excluded by Wittgenstein’s thoughts about the role of assertion and his thoughts about the sense-force distinction, while the second scenario is excluded by Wittgenstein’s thoughts about truth. (shrink)

A central theme in Wittgenstein’s post-Tractatus remarks on the limits of language is that we ‘cannot use language to get outside language’. One illustration of that idea is his comment that, once we have described the procedure of teaching and learning a rule, we have ‘said everything that can be said about acting correctly according to the rule’; ‘we can go no further’. That, it is argued, is an expression of anti-reductionism about meaning and rules. A framework is presented for (...) assessing the debate between reductionist and anti-reductionist readings of Wittgenstein’s views about meaning and use. It is argued that that debate cannot be settled merely by reference to Wittgenstein’s general opposition to reductionism. An important argument for anti-reductionism about rules and meaning, from Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, is discussed. Putative evidence of reductionism about meaning in the Brown Book is considered; an alternative reading is proposed. The nature of Wittgenstein’s anti-reductionism is examined. It is argued, first, that Wittgenstein accepts that semantic and normative facts supervene on non-semantic, non-normative facts and, second, that at many points his treatment of meaning and rules goes beyond the kind of pleonastic claim that is often taken to define non-reductionist, quietist, positions in philosophy. (shrink)

This paper makes three points. First, empathy cannot be considered an epistemic basis for qualitative research and evaluation. Second, it is, however, a valuable method for understanding the private meanings of words and deeds. Third, this method is not completely reliable for purposes of what Popper called refutation, but is useful in what he dubbed scientific conjecture or the generation of theory. Basic researchers will need to take the necessary steps to subject empathetic hunches to critical examination. However, owing to (...) the exigencies of action settings and decision-making, disciplined conjectures are sometimes the most that evaluators can hope to record. (shrink)

My paper examines the popular idea, defended by Kripke, that meaning is an essentially normative notion. I consider four common versions of this idea and suggest that none of them can be supported, either because the alleged normativity has nothing to do with normativity or because it cannot plausibly be said that meaning is normative in the sense suggested. I argue that contrary to received opinion, we don’t need normativity to secure the possibility of meaning. I conclude by considering the (...) repercussions of rejecting semantic normativity on three central issues: justification, communication, and naturalism. (shrink)

According to the received view the later Wittgenstein subscribed to the thesis that speaking a language requires being guided by rules (thesis RG). In this paper we question the received view. On its most intuitive reading, we argue, (RG) is very much at odds with central tenets of the later Wittgenstein. Giving up on this reading, however, threatens to deprive the notion of rule-following of any real substance. Consequently, the rule-following considerations cannot charitably be read as a deep and subtle (...) defense of (RG) against the threat of paradox, as proponents of the received view are wont to do. Instead, we argue, the rule-following considerations provide Wittgenstein's deep and subtle reasons for rejecting the very idea that speaking a language involves rule-guidance. Although Wittgenstein subscribed to (RG) during his middle period writings, his later remarks on rules, far from being a clarification and elaboration of his earlier views, are directed against the claim of the middle period that speaking a language is an essentially rule-guided activity. (shrink)

What is the relation between meaning and use? This chapter first defends a non-reductionist understanding of Wittgenstein’s suggestion that ‘the meaning of a word is its use in the language’; facts about meaning cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, facts about use, characterized non-semantically. Nonetheless, it is contended, facts about meaning do supervene on non-semantic facts about use. That supervenience thesis is suggested by comments of Wittgenstein’s and is consistent with his view of meaning and rule-following. Semantic (...) supervenience is then defended against two criticisms: first, John McDowell’s suggestion that the supervenience thesis falsifies the epistemology of meaning and fails to accommodate common-sense truths about meaning; second, a series of counter-examples proposed by Stephen Kearns and Ofra Magidor, who argue that worlds may differ semantically without differing non-semantically. It is argued that neither criticism is convincing: we should accept the thesis that semantic facts supervene on non-semantic facts. (shrink)

In this book, I present the results of an investigation which began with an extended stay at Oxford's Balliol College during the first half of 1995. My visit to Oxford was made possible by a grant from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia. My sincere thanks go to Joseph Raz who served as my supervisor in Oxford. For several points of the present study, conversations with Timothy Endicott in Oxford were also of great help. The book is part of (...) a larger project of investigation, directed by Albert Calsami glia, which is a joint effort of a group of legal philosophers from the Universitat Pom peu Fabra and the Universitat de Girona, and which also receives financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educaci6n y Ciencia. An earlier version of the manuscript was presented in June 1996 to the selection committee for a tenured professorship in Legal Philosophy at the Universitat de Girona. The members of the committee were Francisco Laporta, Albert Calsamiglia, Gregorio Peces-Barba, Camilo J. Cela Conde, and Francesca Puigpelat. I am grateful to all of them for their comments, which have been extremely useful in preparing the final ver sion of this book. (shrink)

There has been much debate over whether to accept the claim that meaning is normative. One obstacle to making progress in that debate is that it is not always clear what the claim amounts to. In this paper, I try to resolve a dispute between those who advance the claim concerning how it should be understood. More specifically, I critically examine two competing conceptions of the normativity of meaning, rejecting one and defending the other. Though the paper aims to settle (...) a dispute among proponents of the claim that meaning is normative, it should be of interest to those who challenge it. After all, before one takes aim, one’s target needs to be in clear view. (shrink)

Contra an expanding number of deflationary commentators onWittgenstein, I argue that philosophical questions about meaningare meaningful and that Wittgenstein gave us ample reason tobelieve so. Deflationists are right in claiming that Wittgensteinrejected the sceptical problem about meaning allegedly to befound in his later writings and also right in stressing Wittgenstein''s anti-reductionism. But they are wrong in taking these dismissals to entail the end of all constructive philosophizing about meaning. Rather, I argue, the rejection of the sceptical problem requires that we (...) abandon the questions that philosophers have traditionally addressed and that we replace them with more appropriate ones, to which constructive answers are forthcoming. However, though quietism is not the only alternative to reductionism, the rejection of reductionism does oblige us seriously to revise our sense of what constructive philosophy can achieve. (shrink)

A woman is listening to Sinatra before work. As she later describes it, ‘suddenly from nowhere I could hear my mother singing along to it … I was there again home again, hearing my mother … God knows why I should choose to remember that … then, to actually hear her and I had this image in my head … of being at home … with her singing away … like being transported back you know I got one of those (...) … like shivery feelings really suddenly’ (Anderson 2004, 9-10). An older couple, discussing their honeymoon forty years ago, each say that they can’t remember the show they saw, until through iterative, puzzled cross-cuing they finally get there – ‘Desert Song, that’s it’ (Harris et al 2011, 292). An elderly English veteran of a prisoner of war camp in Japan, finishing up morning tea with a young Japanese social scientist interested in reconciliation, suddenly calls out loudly - in Japanese - ‘stand to attention’. He stands to attention in front of her: like many of the men she interviews, he physically re-enacts fragments of that long-past world of the camp, bringing that absent past into this new present context with a visceral shock (Murakami 2001, 2012; Middleton & Brown 2005, 133-136). (shrink)

While Wittgenstein wrote unconventionally and denied that he was advancing philosophical theses, most of his interpreters have attributed conventional philosophical theses to him. But the best recent interpretations have taken the form of his writing and his distinctive way of doing philosophy seriously. The 1980s have also seen the emergence of a body of work on Wittgenstein that makes extensive use of the unpublished Wittgenstein papers. This work on Wittgenstein's method and his way of writing are the main themes of (...) this literature review.Section 1 surveys Wittgenstein's conception of philosophical method and its reception. Section 2 is a review of recent work on rule-following and the methodological issues it raises. Section 3 concerns research on the WittgensteinNachlass and its implications for the interpretation of his philosophy. (shrink)

Kripke (1982, Wittgenstein on rules and private language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) presents a rule-following paradox in terms of what we meant by our past use of “plus”, but the same paradox can be applied to any other term in natural language. Many responses to the paradox concentrate on fixing determinate meaning for “plus”, or for a small class of other natural language terms. This raises a problem: how can these particular responses be generalised to the whole of natural language? (...) In this paper, I propose a solution. I argue that if natural language is computable in a sense defined below, and the Church–Turing thesis is accepted, then this auxiliary problem can be solved. (shrink)

Certainly, we sometimes use language creatively and think really new thoughts. However, can we think and speak regardless of the manner in which we have spoken and thought in the past? This seems to be highly improbable. Consequently, nobody would assert something like this. But that being a given, what are the exact reasons that prevent us from radically detaching ourselves from our past practices of thinking and speaking? What roles do past facts play in determining what we are able (...) to think and speak today? This essay looks at the motivation for examining and determining the impact of ‘our history’ on semantics. If possible, these ideas should appeal independently of special or contentious theoretical presuppositions. (shrink)

‘Rule-following’ is a name for a cluster of phenomena where we seem both guided and “normatively” constrained by something general in performing particular actions. Understanding the phenomenon is important because of its connection to meaning, representation, and content. This article gives an overview of the philosophical discussion of rule-following with emphasis on Kripke’s skeptical paradox and recent work on possible solutions. Part I of this two-part contribution is devoted to the basic issues from Wittgenstein to Kripke. Part II will be (...) about recent answers to the skeptical paradox and Boghossian’s and Wright’s new puzzles. (shrink)

I examine what I take to be an important consideration for the later Wittgenstein: the understanding of a rule does not exceed or transcend an understanding of explanations or instructions in the rule. I contend that this consideration plays a central role in the later Wittgenstein's views on rule-following. I first show that it serves as a key premiss in a sceptical argument concerning our ability to follow rules. I then argue that this consideration is vital to Wittgenstein's case against (...) what I describe as a realist view of rules. This realist view requires that our understanding of a rule extend beyond what can be understood from any set of instructions or explanation. For Wittgenstein, because this is to transcend publicly available means of conveying understanding, this realist's understanding is a private understanding. He calls this private source of understanding an ‘intuition’ and the main line of argument against intuition in our understanding of a rule draws, appropriately, on what is called his ‘private language argument’. In this paper, I defend a non-verificationist reading of this argument and its use against the realist so-construed. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Abstract This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit . I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both (...) its development and motivations. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9768-4 Authors Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Two of Quine's most familiar doctrines are: that there is a distinction between underdetermination and indeterminacy; and that there is no distinction between analytic and synthetic truths. An argument is given that these two doctrines are incompatible. In terms wholly acceptable to Quine and based on the underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction, an exhaustive and exclusive distinction is drawn between two kinds of true sentences, which, it is argued, corresponds to the traditional analytic/synthetic distinction. An appendix is used to develop one aspect of (...) the underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction, as construed here, and to discuss, in passing, some of Quine’s more general views on truth. (shrink)

In chapter 3 of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Kripke’s Wittgenstein offers a “sceptical solution" to the sceptical paradox about meaning developed in chapter 2 (according to which there are no facts in virtue of which ascriptions of meaning such as “Jones means addition by ‘+’” can be true). Although many commentators have taken the sceptical solution to be broadly analogous to non-factualist theories in other domains, such as non-cognitivism or expressivism in metaethics, the nature of the sceptical solution (...) has not been well-understood. The main aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the nature of the non-factualism about meaning proposed in the sceptical solution. It attempts to outline some desiderata that should be respected by interpretations of the sceptical solution and considers two objections raised against it in Barry Stroud’s paper “Wittgenstein on Meaning, Understanding and Community". It attempts to correct misconstruals of the sceptical solution that have been promulgated by Davidson and some of his followers and suggests that the sceptical solution developed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein is best viewed as a form of quasi-realism about meaning. It ends by outlining what it takes to be the most pressing challenges facing the sceptical solution. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects for using the notion of a primitive normative attitude in responding to the sceptical argument about meaning developed in chapter 2 of Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. It takes as its stalking-horse the response to Kripke’s Wittgenstein developed in a recent series of important works by Hannah Ginsborg. The paper concludes that Ginsborg’s attempted solution fails for a number of reasons: it depends on an inadequate response to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s ‘finitude’ objection to (...) reductive dispositionalism; it erroneously rejects the idea that a speaker’s understanding of an expression guides her use; it threatens to collapse into either full-blown non-reductionism or reductive dispositionalism; and there is no motive for accepting it over forms of non-reductionism such as those developed by Barry Stroud and John McDowell. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for three main claims. First, that there are two broad sorts of error theory about a particular region of thought and talk, eliminativist error theories and non-eliminativist error theories. Second, that an error theory about rule following can only be an eliminativist view of rule following, and therefore an eliminativist view of meaning and content on a par with Paul Churchland’s prima facie implausible eliminativism about the propositional attitudes. Third, that despite some superficial appearances to (...) the contrary, non-eliminativist error theory does not provide a plausible vehicle for understanding the ‘sceptical solution’ to the sceptical paradox about rule - following developed in Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. (shrink)

It has recently been claimed that there is a “new hard problem” for physicalism. The new hard problem, according to Goff, is based on “semantic phenomenology”, the view that conscious perceptual experience represents linguistic expressions as having determinate meanings. Goff argues that Kripke’s rule-following argument demonstrates that it is particularly difficult for a physicalist to account for semantic phenomenology. In this paper, we argue that Goff’s discussion of semantic phenomenology fails to uncover a “new” hard problem for physicalism and there (...) is a hard problem—which Goff misses—facing philosophers who accept the reality of semantic phenomenology, but that this is as much a problem for non-reductionists about meaning as it is for physicalists. All we have been given is a familiar hard problem about rule-following, not a new hard problem about consciousness. (shrink)

John McDowell has suggested recently that there is a route from his favoured solution to Kripke's Wittgenstein's “sceptical paradox” about rule‐following to a particular form of cognitive externalism. In this paper, 1 argue that this is not the case: even granting McDowell his solution to the rule‐following paradox, his preferred version of cognitive externalism does not follow.

It is widely thought that, in §201 of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein reveals himself to oppose a definite view or theory of rule-following. I argue that, due to the self-undermining character of that section, no such interpretation should be accepted. Then I sketch a reading of Wittgenstein’s method that accounts for the paradoxical nature of §201, and I show how this methodology is realized in his remarks on following a rule.

The extensions of Goodman’s ‘grue’ predicate and Kripke’s ‘quus’ are constructed from the extensions of more familiar terms via a reinterpretation that permutes assignments of reference. Since this manoeuvre is at the heart of Putnam’s model-theoretic and permutation arguments against metaphysical realism (‘Putnam’s Paradox’), both Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction and the paradox about meaning that Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein are instances of Putnam’s. Evidence cannot selectively confirm the green-hypothesis and disconfirm the grue-hypothesis, because the theory of which the green-hypothesis (...) is a part has an unintended model in which the grue-hypothesis is equally confirmed; and there are no meaning-facts that determine reference, because the objects referred to by the referring terms of any language or set of intentional mental states are permutable in a way that is consistent with the truth-values of all other sentences in that language or beliefs in that set. The upshot is that the three paradoxes need to be solved in a unified way. (shrink)

The thesis that meaning is normative has come under much scrutiny of late. However, there are aspects of the view that have received comparatively little critical attention which centre on meaning’s capacity to guide and justify linguistic action. Call such a view ‘justification normativity’. I outline Zalabardo’s account of JN and his corresponding argument against reductive-naturalistic meaning-factualism and argue that the argument presents a genuine challenge to account for the guiding role of meaning in linguistic action. I then present a (...) proposal regarding how this challenge may be met. This proposal is then compared to recent work by Ginsborg, who has outlined an alternative view of the normativity of meaning that explicitly rejects the idea that meanings guide and justify linguistic use. I outline how Ginsborg utilises this notion of normativity in order to provide a positive account of what it is to mean something by an expression which is intended to serve as a r.. (shrink)

The demand for 'criteria of correctness' to identify recurring particulars in Wittgenstein's private language argument favors an idealist interpretation of quantum phenomena.The indeterminacy principle in quantum physics and the logic of the private language argument share a common concern with the limitations by which microphysical or sensation particulars can be reidentified. Wittgenstein's criteria for reidentifying particular recurrent private sensations are so general as to apply with equal force to quantum particulars, and to support the idealist thesis that quantum phenomena are (...) themselves essentially mental or dependent on mental occurrences. (shrink)

Many people claim that semantic content is normative, and that therefore naturalistic theories of content face a potentially insuperable difficulty. The normativity of content allegedly undermines naturalism by introducing a gap between semantic 'ought's and the explanatory resources of naturalism. I argue here that this problem is not ultimately pressing for naturalists. The normativity thesis, I maintain, is ambiguous; it could mean either that the content of a term prescribes a pattern of use, or that it merely determines which pattern (...) of use can be described as 'correct'. For the antinaturalist argument to go forward, content must be prescriptive. I argue, however, that it is not. Moreover, the thesis that content supplies standards for correct use is insufficient to supply a similar, a priori objection to naturalism. (shrink)

As most of its readers are aware, the Critique of Pure Reason is primarily concerned not with empirical, but with a priori knowledge. For the most part, the Kant of the first Critique tends to assume that experience, and the knowledge that is based on it, is unproblematic. The problem with which he is concerned is that of how we can be capable of substantive knowledge independently of experience. At the same time, however, the notion of experience plays a crucial (...) role in the central arguments of the Critique. For, again as most readers of the Critique know, Kant aims to show how we can have synthetic a priori knowledge by showing that the categories, or pure concepts of the understanding, are conditions of the possibility of experience. This means that, whether or not Kant is concerned with the notion of experience for its own sake, his account of a priori knowledge carries with it at least some commitments regarding the character of experience. If the account of a priori knowledge is to be successful, then experience has to be the kind of thing for which the categories can, in principle, serve as conditions of possibility. More specifically, experience must involve not only the senses, but also thought or understanding, for otherwise the claim that it presupposes a certain specific set of concepts is simply unintelligible. And indeed at least some parts of the Critique, in particular the so-called subjective deduction in the first edition, and the briefer passages which correspond to it in the second edition, seem to be intended to show how this requirement is met. That is, they are concerned not so much with showing that experience is governed by the categories, as with elaborating a view of experience as involving conceptual activity überhaupt. (shrink)

Kripke’s thesis that meaning is normative is typically interpreted, following Boghossian, as the thesis that meaningful expressions allow of true or warranted use. I argue for an alternative interpretation centered on Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity involved in “knowing how to go on” in one’s use of an expression. Meaning is normative for Kripke because it justifies claims, not to be saying something true, but to be going on as one ought from prevous uses of the expression. I argue that (...) this represents a distortion of Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity of meaning, and that Wittgenstein’s conception is preferable. (shrink)

This paper addresses what I call ‘the constitutive question’ concerning the rules we follow: namely, what determines the standard for a rule's correct application. John McDowell has offered a putative ‘middle position’ between two extreme, unacceptable answers: empirical idealism, which takes the requirements of a rule in any given situation to be constituted by our reaction to the case; and hard platonism, which takes these requirements to be delivered by unvarnished reality as absolutely the simplest or most natural way to (...) carry on. Tellingly, however, McDowell's position is itself unacceptably idealist in his picture of the way in which we are ‘involved’ on the right-hand side of biconditionals such as, ‘“Diamonds are hard” is true if and only if diamonds are hard’.In response to this stultifying state of affairs, I suggest that McDowell has followed the empirical idealist and hard platonist in assuming that the requirements of a rule must be grounded by something else: something external to the rule, which mediates between the rule and the standard for its correct application. This assumption is false. What is more, one application of a metaphor to which Wittgenstein has a somewhat equivocal relation—that of rules as rails invisibly laid to infinity—can help this point to stick. (shrink)

The topic of this thesis is how different phenomena, commonly regarded as "psychological" or "mental", are or can be apprehended in the first person. The aim is to show that a number of influential texts of contemporary philosophy display a particular type of oversight on this topic. The texts in question display, I argue, an insufficient appreciation of the case for holding that "non-qualitative" psychological phenomena are apprehended in an exclusive way in the first person. To make this case, I (...) begin by isolating a limited class of phenomena. The class, which is called the class of 'occurrent psychological doings', includes performances such as searching for a flower and adding two numbers. In chapter 2, I submit a case for holding that it is logically necessary that if an agent is performing an occurrent psychological doing, then he has a certain apprehension of what he is doing. This claim is called The First-Person Thesis'. In chapter 3, I submit a case for holding that the type of apprehension mentioned in The First-Person Thesis is logically exclusive: it is an apprehension which an agent who is doing so-and-so can have of the fact that he is doing so-and-so but which it is logically impossible for someone else to have of this fact. This claim is called 'The Exclusiveness Thesis'. In chapters 4 and 5, the two theses are used in critical discussions of some influential texts of contemporary philosophy. In chapter 4,1 examine two arguments of Wittgenstein's to the effect that one may perform some selected actions without having a particular type of "experience", or "sensation". I try to show that these arguments, while valid, have rather limited implications. I use The First-Person Thesis to illustrate the limited scope of these implications. I then try to show that the limited significance of the arguments has often been obscured by commentators of Wittgenstein. In chapter 5, I examine a position commonly held in contemporary philosophy of mind, and often associated with Nagel. The position is that "qualitative" phenomena such as perceptual experiences and bodily sensations are, because of the appearances they present in the first person, particularly difficult to explain in physical terms. An implication of this view is the claim that other phenomena do not present appearances to subjects in the allegedly problematic way that "qualitative" phenomena do. The First-Person Thesis and The Exclusiveness Thesis are used to argue that this position, as exemplified in the writings of McGinn and Chalmers, involve controversial assumptions for which insufficient justification is provided. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question whether semantic naturalism is undermined by the thought that semantic concepts are normative.