***************************************************************** * * Titel: HUEN'S RESPONSE*1*: Autor: Kenny Siu Sing Huen, Hong Kong Dateiname: 12-2-96.TXT Dateilänge: 41 KB Erschienen in: Wittgenstein Studies 2/96, Datei: 12-2-96.TXT; hrsg. von K.-O. Apel, N. Garver, B. McGuinness, P. Hacker, R. Haller, W. Lütterfelds, G. Meggle, C. Nyíri, K. Puhl, R. Raatzsch, T. Rentsch, J.G.F. Rothhaupt, J. Schulte, U. Steinvorth, P. Stekeler-Weithofer, W. 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Those articles and excerpts from * * articles which the subscriber wishes to use for his own * * private academic purposes are excluded from this * * restrictions. * * * ***************************************************************** 1. The main line of Barbiero's argument The aim of Barbiero's paper is to show the incoherence and inadequacy of the sceptical solution to the sceptical problem about the possibility of following a rule -- more precisely, the inadequacy of taking the behavioral regularities or "agreement in judgments" as the explanatory basis of normativity. In his reading of Kripke's Wittgenstein, the agreement in judgment consists in certain actual cases where particular responses conform to the behavioral pattern of a community. These facts, collective in nature, are "brute facts" in the sense that they purport to be "explanatory primitive", "irreducible as explanatory devices" and where any "explanatory chain terminates". All internal facts about the individual are of no explanatory significance. They cannot be the ultimate foundation of normativity; attempts to base on them have been shown to be leading to an infinite regress. But mere collective facts, Barbiero contends, also fail to do the explanatory job. For without reference to some "replicable basis" of the individual, we cannot explain how future agreements can be maintained. "In order to fulfill their normative function, agreements in judgment must be applicable beyond any given instance of agreement. They must, in other words, transcend any given instance in which they are enacted." (Barbiero, Section 3) This is, in Barbiero's term, the "transcendence condition". The normative information that an agreement of judgments reveals has implication not restricted to a single exemplary case, but open to all other cases in different yet relevant situations. Thus "normative content" and "embodiment" must be separable, otherwise what can be found are nothing but a finite number of collective facts, embodying certain norms contingently, without any force over applications in other circumstances. Further analysis of the possibility of rule-following behavior brings to light that the "transcendence condition" is accompanied with the "reproduction condition". A sufficiently illuminating answer to the normativity problem, on Barbiero's view, must explain how people can judge or respond in the same way as the other members of the community do, and reproduce the same responses in other similar situations in the future. It is not possible to give such an account only on the basis of publicly accessible behavioral regularities of a community. We must refer to the underlying nature of the agreement in judgments, viz., the internalized "normative content" in the individual's mind/brain which constrains a unique pattern of exercising a rule. So Barbiero's main point is that if the sceptical solution claims itself to be an answer to the problem of normativity, it must fulfill both the transcendence and reproduction conditions, but these two conditions are incompatible with its "strong methodological collectivism" that takes the agreement in judgments as brute facts, as purely collective. Furthermore, the transcendence condition is actually implicit in the notion of agreement of judgments. Consequently the sceptical solution fails because, firstly, it is an incoherent one and secondly, incapable of fulfilling the reproduction condition, it is inadequate as an explanation of normativity. 2. "Strong Methodological Collectivism"? Having shown that there is no meaning-constituting fact, Kripke's Wittgenstein develops the view that it is a certain 'collective fact', namely agreement of judgments, which explains or provides the possible condition of meaning. This seems to suggest that there is a persisting task in Kripke's Wittgenstein to seek for some fact or explanation and that finally such a fact or explanation is found. I think this is a misleading picture of Kripke's Wittgenstein. It should be noted that with the candidate facts of the individual being rejected, the notions of 'fact' and 'explanation' (or perhaps better 'justification') adhered to the "private model" (Kripke's term) had been undermined. What the sceptical solution highlights is not simply another kind of explanation based on another kind of fact from the same philosophical assumptions as those giving rise the sceptical paradox, but rather an entirely different approach. Above all, first, it no longer holds (the 'interpretational conception') that grasping a rule amounts to getting at the right interpretation of the rule in the mind which in some sense determines all the correct applications once and for all; and second, it is no longer pursuing analysis of necessary and sufficient conditions. Barbiero, however, attributes the interpretational conception to the sceptical solution. He suggests that the sceptical solution includes two explicit claims. The first one of them is: "(1) the correct interpretation of a rule (or more generally, possession of a concept or meaning) depends on conformity to the appropriate behavioral regularities (or "agreements in judgment") characteristic of a given community." (Barbiero, Section 2) The expression "depends on" does not have a clear sense here. It might mean, against the sceptical solution, that "conformity to the appropriate behavioral regularities" is the necessary and sufficient condition of following or defining a rule. Kripke has warned his readers not to take the sceptical solution as "a social, or community-wide, version of the dispositional theory". (Kripke, 111) He writes, "One must bear firmly in mind that Wittgenstein has no theory of truth conditions -- necessary and sufficient conditions -- for the correctness of one response rather than another to a new addition problem. Rather he simply points out that each of us automatically calculates new addition problems (without feeling the need to check with the community whether our procedure is proper); that the community feels entitled to correct a deviant calculation; that in practice such deviation is rare, and so on. Wittgenstein thinks that these observations about sufficient conditions for justified assertion are enough to illuminate the role and utility in our lives of assertion about meaning and determination of new answers. What follows from these assertability condition is not that the answer everyone gives to an addition problem is, by definition, the correct one, but rather the platitude that if everyone agrees upon a certain answer, then no one will feel justified in calling the answer wrong. (Ibid., 111-112) (Cf. also note 87) Life has a form, for in life there are shared judgments, expectations and confident inclinations, which are primitive. This pregiven form is not to be understood as admitting complete analysis, that is, capable of being defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Wittgenstein has turned down the idea of sense that grasping it is essentially equivalent to know the truth-condition of proposition. I do not mean that Wittgenstein has got rid of the notion of representation entirely, but that representation is now considered as having to do with merely some language games, not as the grand paradigm of expression. The change is not: from (A) "I understand a sentence s iff I know what is the case if s is true" to (B) "I understand a sentence s iff my community members agree with my interpretation or I share the same disposition to behavior with them." (B) is also a rule formulated by 'iff', which can be subjected to the challenge of the sceptic. Rather, the turn is from (A) to (B') "If I do not react to the sentence in a certain way as the community do, the community will not judge that I understand the sentence correctly." It can be seen that our basic agreement in judgments, etc. constitute the form or constraint of our meaningful activities. What is human is not merely biological but cultural; it is not fixed once and for all.*2* So when Kripke remarks the shared form of life "must be taken as brute fact", the notion of 'brute fact' here is not imbued with the picture of truth-condition theory of meaning. And this brute fact may be said to be an 'explanation' in the sense that by reference to it, the puzzle about the possibility of rule-following is settled. That agreement is by no means the necessary and sufficient condition of normativity. Now the vision is that a rule's definition can never fix its correct applications in every circumstance. Kripke's Wittgenstein advises to note "the sufficient conditions for justified assertion ... about meaning and determination of new answers" in life. (Kripke, 112) One may say that this conception of assertability condition of meaning is somehow a picture and because of this it 'explains' the nature of following a rule. But the positive view of Kripke's Wittgenstein emphasizes that this illumination does not come from an explanation in a theoretical sense. "It is ... in such a description [rather than explanation] of the game of concept attribution that Wittgenstein's sceptical solution consists." (Ibid., 95) The description produces an effect similar to explanations, viz., stopping certain queries on the meaning of a rule. But that effect is achieved by looking at an aspect of our life, where something previously ignored now can be realized. To Wittgenstein, there is nothing hidden in ordinary life. To invite one to acknowledge that life is so going on is not to explain a phenomenon, in a sense to uncover the veiled essence of life, but rather to end the urge for that essence. We show how our language game is played by descriptions, not theoretical explanations. "Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only DESCRIBE it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is." (PI, Section 124abc, emphasis added.) Kripke's Wittgenstein proposes to take a look at the language games in which we use language and judge whether our language is used correctly. In this way, we are invited to observe the regularities of our linguistic behavior. Barbiero interprets this position as a kind of "strong methodological collectivism": "For the sceptical solution demands not only that we factor in collective phenomena (agreements in judgment) to account for apparent rule-following behavior, but that we factor out any explanatory reference to internal phenomena whatsoever. The result is indeed the "hostility to the inner" that Kripke promised, and this hostility is nothing if not emblematic of strong methodological collectivism." (Barbiero, Section 2.2) What is undermined in Kripke's exposition is actually the incoherent notion of individualistic fact supposed to be the transcendent ground of meaning. It is a distorted view that Kripke's Wittgenstein turns down the internal facts and upholds the public, collective, facts as the "explanatory primitive" (Barbiero's term). For this seems to suggest that any inner facts, whether or not they are conceived under the picture of truth-condition theory of meaning, are eliminated in the explanation of normativity and that what remain are collective facts which admit no further explanation. But we must be aware that in the descriptions of language games, no selection or reduction is involved. What is more, the sceptical solution does not presuppose the metaphysical distinction between the inner and the outer; nor is the inner eliminated while the outer being adopted as the base of explanation. The publicly accessible behavioral regularities are not transcendent collective facts, opposed to some hidden or inner transcendent facts. The opposition and turn indicated in the line of sceptical argument is rather, I must reiterate, two entirely different approaches to rule-following behavior. The proposed approach is from the standpoint of ordinary life, which is free of the "misunderstanding" of the truth-condition theory of meaning. And the turn involves two different notions of facts. The contrast is not simply between the individual and the community, but between a misconception and a plain view of the way we grasp a rule, "which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call 'obeying the rule' and going against it' in actual cases". (PI, Section 201) 3. The "reproduction condition" Barbiero stressed the following points: "... with the acceptance of agreements in judgment (or behavioral regularities) as explanatory, brute primitives, we fall into a skeptical paradox similar to the one Kripke claims to find in explanations based on facts about states within individuals. The paradox is brought into sharp relief by the reproduction problem. In effect, without somehow accounting for the reproduction of agreement in any appropriate case, we cannot account for how a present agreement, embodied in a present performance, can determine that a future performance will embody the appropriate agreement." (Barbiero, Section 6) Kripke introduces the sceptical paradox like this: "Although I myself have computed only finitely many sums in the past, the rule determines my answer for indefinitely many new sums that I have never previously considered." (Kripke, 7) People tempt to think that there must be some fact constituting my grasp of the rule, which functions as a nexus between past (present) and future applications. Kripke's Wittgenstein has undermined the idea that the right interpretation in the mind 'determines' -- in a way pictured as a rail leading to the infinite -- the applications in new circumstances. But Barbiero seems to argue that as my disposition and inner experience cannot link the present and future applications of a rule, so neither can the shared judgments of a community. For the actual cases of agreement cannot relate to each other under the same rule unless there is some underlying causal factor of each performance responsible for the continuation of a norm. The sceptical solution, on Barbiero's view, is rested on certain behavioral regularities which determine whether an application is correct or not. Decided in shared judgments, meaning becomes contingent, as each of these agreements (note: Barbiero chooses to use the plural form of the word) is contingent and not glued to one another. How can a rule be accounted as merely a set of unforeseen agreements which do not contain the next agreement, i.e., guarantee no unique application of the rule in the future? The account of normativity cannot but require reference to some internal fact of the individual rule-follower. (Cf. in particular, Barbiero, Sections 4 and 4.1) Firstly, Barbiero seems to turn back on the "misunderstanding", requiring that the past (present)-future or finite-infinite nexus as causal and based on certain "normative contents", which is embodied in examples and internalized in the individual's mind. "Normative content" is taken as the identity of a rule which determines the correctness of every application. It can be grasped by an individual and transmitted, in teaching and learning, from one individual to another. This is indeed the very picture Wittgenstein attempts to undermine in the celebrated discussion about rule-following in the PI. Remember Wittgenstein's illustration in Section 185 of the book about a child who has been given a number of examples and practices in continuing a numeral series (+2) but strangely when he reaches 1000, he goes on with 1004, 1008, 1012 ... . We judge that the child has applied wrongly, but he cannot understand why; he supposes that what he does is in accord with all the examples shown to him. Indeed these examples are compatible with his non-standard interpretation of the rule. The lesson of the sceptical paradox is that construing the meaning of a rule as a certain interpretation is problematic, since any interpretation can be substituted by another interpretation. As it were, Barbiero's concept of "normative content" is fixed, and transcendent from any particular instance of agreement. But how is it possible? Is it not an interpretation? What is it then? Second, claiming that the "normative contents" must be reproducible through some complicated mechanism in the individual's mind, Barbiero seems to think that the relation between a rule and its applications is not internal and that there is a gap to be bridged. Kripke's Wittgenstein has shown that such a 'bridge' cannot but require a further rule to justify itself and produce an infinite regress. Probably Barbiero supposes that the sceptical solution is meant to bridge such a gap by consensus. As mentioned above, he interprets shared judgments as being identical with the correct interpretation of a rule. Third, in Kripke's critique of the dispositionalist theory, he includes the following two arguments. (1) The dispositionalists confuse causal determination from normative determination. Given that I am disposed to giving a certain response, I will do so, but if I follow a rule, I should, rather than will, respond in a definite way. (2) What should be done, i.e., the infinitely many actions prescribed by a norm, cannot rest on my disposition, which is fallible and finite. The reasoning will be circular if my disposition is idealized. Can Barbiero's proposal be defended against (1)? The underlying mechanism of the "agreements of judgment" he proposes purports to generate actions of normative significance. I have a device to receive normative information, a device to process and store this information and a device to reproduce it. The "normative contents" are embodied in my performances. But this amounts to say "I will do what I should do". And I will be asked what constitutes this "what I should do". How would Barbiero reply to (2)? The "normative contents" are supposed to be constraining infinitely many instances of uses of the rule. How can I, being a finite being, capture them? Fourth, Barbiero tends to understand the rule-following phenomena as manifestation of the "sameness" of a rule captured in the mind, by virtue of which its applications are determined. The reproduction condition that he stresses presupposes a certain entity of pre-fixed nature, which is transmitted from generation to generation. That transcendent 'object', as it were, can be fully represented as information. This is again the picture subject to the critique of the sceptical paradox: "The understanding itself is a state which is the source of the correct use." (PI, Section 146b) How can that normative information have a determinate sense? It is all right to say that a rule determines its applications. But in what way? If a rule is thought to be a certain interpretation, it will not fix its extension, for every interpretation can be re-interpreted. It is always possible to imagine a conflicting interpretation (e.g., quus), which can fit all the available facts supporting the alleged one (i.e., plus). So Barbiero's proposal of reproduction condition has to face the problem concerning how we can determine what is reproduced now is the same as the one in the past. To Kripke's Wittgenstein, it is we who determine (i.e., judge) whether someone is following the (same) rule. That is why rule-following- or meaning-attribution activities are highlighted in Kripke's exposition of Wittgenstein. Fifth, the sceptical solution can be said to be a vision that meaning is determined in human practice and that this determination is primitive. It is a mistake to split life in two levels and suppose that the activities level is rested on the hidden cognitive level. Attempts to explain the complicated human form of life as a whole by appeal to some transcendent ground must be circular. For they would not make sense if they have not already been 'moves' in a certain language game in life. "Then can whatever I do be brought into accord with the rule?" -- Let me ask this: what has the expression of a rule -- say a sign-post -- got to do with my action? What sort of connexion is there here? -- Well, perhaps this one: I have been trained to react to this sign in a particular way, and now I do so react to it. But that is only to give a causal connexion: to tell how it has come about that we now go by the sign-post; not what this going-by-the-sign really consists in. On the contrary, I have further indicated that a person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom." (PI, Section 198 bc) The problem of meaning is prior to the problem of causality (or "transmission" or "reproduction"). It is true that without training there would not be shared judgments and consequently according to Kripke's Wittgenstein we would not be able to determine whether a use is correct or not. But it is wrong to suppose that now we have found something more basic than agreement of judgments in explaining normativities. The concept of training itself presupposes the concept of norm which, as shown in Kripke's Wittgenstein, depends on a custom, a form of life. Moreover, agreement of judgments is not, as Barbiero understands, a single instance of conforming to the behavioral regularities of a community. 4. "Agreement of judgments" A serious flaw in Barbiero's reading of Kripke's Wittgenstein lies in his taking the agreement of judgments as individual cases and disregarding the whole network setting of the inter-related language games or practices. The rule-following discussion comes to the most critical point in the PI, Section 242, where Wittgenstein remarks: "If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions, but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments." Here Wittgenstein is concerned with the framework condition of linguistic practice, which requires the participants to share a basic set of judgments about the world. (Cf. also ibid., Section 240) Note that 'judgment' is contrasted with 'definition'. This indicates that Wittgenstein has turned from the calculus notion of rule to the notions of practice, language game and form of life, which highlight shared inclinations and regular activities. These inclinations and activities should not be viewed as isolated, but as playing some role in a form of life. Kripke recognizes the foregoing point, so he writes, "if there was no general agreement in the community responses, the game of attributing concepts to individuals ... could not exist." (Kripke, 96) But he puts very much weight -- correctly, I think -- on the living character of such an agreement that he interprets Wittgenstein's notion of form of life in a dynamic way. "(Only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning.)" (ZETTEL, Section 173) Kripke describes the way in which an agreement of judgment is operated. The normative activities in everyday life are of two kinds: (1) we follow some rules consciously or unconsciously to achieve some ends in life (for instance, language is used for "giving orders", "describing the appearance of an object", "reporting an event" and so on.) and (2) we apply certain criteria of correctness or norms, not necessarily explicitly articulated, to rule-following activities when we attribute rule-following to people. First, both (1) and (2) are necessary in a form of life: activities (1) are realizations of rules, while activities (2) ensure that the rule-following activities of (1) be in accord with the rules of rule-following attribution. Second, in effect, without correcting activities, the meaning of rules cannot be maintained and so there will be no telling whether activities (1) are genuine rule-following activities. In this view, normative activities cannot be private; activities (1) presume the presence of rules which require activities (2) to sustain them. In Kripke's exposition of Wittgenstein, activities (2) are highlighted. We judge whether by '+' Jones really meant PLUS rather than QUUS, not on account of whether the meaning-constituting fact of Jones's meaning PLUS obtains, (that is to say, being not concerned with the question "what must be the case if the sentence 'Jones means PLUS' is true?") but on account of whether the normal circumstances when we assert that Jones means PLUS are available. Our attributing to Jones the linguistic intention of addition involves two issues: (i) whether he in fact meant something and (ii) whether this something is the mathematical rule of addition. Regarding (i), we consider Jones's past and present behavior by the usual standard of intending, to see if he is not pretending. Regarding (ii), we consider whether Jones's response "125" to "57+68" is in accord with what we incline to take the rule of addition to prescribe, besides whether he has mastered the mathematical rule by the criteria based on his past performances in calculating. Kripke suggests that Wittgenstein's later conception of rule-following attribution is based on 'assertability or justification conditions' (in place of 'truth-condition') and that the fundamental question is: "under what circumstances are we allowed to make a given assertion?" (Kripke, 74)*3* Now let us consider further the notion of social license in Kripke's Wittgenstein. According to this notion, the legitimacy of a linguistic use has its source in the community's practice of rule-attribution activities, rather than in a rule itself. The sceptical paradox shows that every formulation of a rule could be re-formulated differently and that insisting on taking a rule as the basic norm will result in a regress, for if the justification of a rule is another rule, the sceptic can go on questioning that further rule. (Remember that Jones's attempt to justify his grasping and intending the PLUS rule by appeal to the algorithm and the articulated procedures in terms of counting that he learnt would not satisfy the sceptic.) This is Wittgenstein's teaching: "Explanations come to an end somewhere." (PI, Section 1d) But where? In Kripke's exposition, our rational search for the foundation of rule-following cannot go beyond the custom of licensing a rule-following activity. A rule of addition, for instance, which determines the correctness of a computation, is not to be conceived as isolated from its applications and our attributing such a rule to certain computing activities. Those rule-following or meaning ascriptions rest in the end upon our judgments, not formulations of rules. Sharing more or less the same kind of training and thus acquiring similar techniques, we judge that Jones's answer "125" is a correct one. Moreover, we think that if Jones means addition by '+', he should respond to the newly encountered problem '57+68' (presumably '57' and '68' are two huge numbers we did not come across until now) like us. Our techniques, not only enable us to repeat what we have learnt or experienced, but also to apply rules to new cases. The rule of addition does not specify (for instance in a table) the sum of every possible pair of integers. It is the agreement of our judgments in practice which brings our rules to earth. So in Kripke's Wittgenstein, agreement of judgments has two basic implications: first, the framework condition of language games in general and second, the explicit or implicit judgments of the community in licensing meaning or rule-following. And we should also note the following points: (i) A language game is played according to some rules. Every move in the game should follow a certain pattern. (ii) What is more, without the tacit (or in some language games, explicit) consent to the rules and the required mastery of certain techniques, it is impossible to carry out any game. (iii) It is necessary to have some language games, the participants in which use criteria in determining the correctness of some rule-following activities. Otherwise, following a rule is no more than regular, mechanical, behavior. The 'ought' of rule- following is due to the functioning of the pre-requisite criteria of correctness. (iv) The criteria have their real contents in the agreement of judgments in the practice of them. However, it does not mean that one's meaning or following a rule is established only after certain criteria have been applied or equivalent to so-called 'social disposition'. (v) There should be some basic inclinations, commitments and judgments that a community share, exhibited, above all, in rule-following attribution activities. But they are not to be considered as the necessary and sufficient condition of normative activities. 5. Shared constraints In fact, correcting deviant behavior in a society can be said to be very unusual. Meaningful activities are meaningful and they do not await meaning-attributions to become valid. Kripke notes that Wittgenstein's idea of social license should be understood in terms of the "contraposed form" of the following condition: if an individual follows a certain rule, he should behave in the similar way as we do; that is, if he does not behave in the similar way as we do, we would not admit that he follows the rule. The inversion of the condition gives priority to (and actually leads us to recognize) the shared behavior or inclination in determining a case of following a rule, rather than to an individual's grasping of a rule. Further, the contrapositive also shows that a community is in effect constraining, more than validating, rule-following activities. "The fact remains that if we ascribe to Jones the conventional concept of addition, we do not expect him to exhibit a pattern of bizarre, quus-like behavior. By such a conditional we do not mean, on the Wittgensteinian view, that any state of Jones guarantees his correct behavior. Rather by asserting such a conditional we commit ourselves, if in the future Jones behaves bizarrely enough (and on enough occasions), no longer to persist in our assertion that he is following the conventional rule of addition. The rough conditional thus expresses a restriction on the community's game of attributing to one of its members the grasping of a certain concept: if the individual in question no longer conforms to what the community would do in these circumstances, the community can no longer attribute the concept to him." (Kripke, 95) Wittgenstein's justification-condition (in contraposed form) account of meaning highlights the fact that an individual's linguistic intention is socially constrained by the community's expectation. One should find in any community a uniform way of behaving in achieving some common good; more importantly, its members should be committed to this pattern of behavior and expect that others ought to conform to it. Suppose that someone deviates from this norm in a number of times; he, whose behavior becomes unintelligible, will be excluded from the community and treated as abnormal, odd or queer. So this is the picture of language Wittgenstein provides us: following a rule is determined by its justification condition and thus essentially social, involving a shared set of responses and expectations of a community. What is more, they are non-incidental: these responses and expectations show the uniform inclinations of a community and the members' commitment to lead a certain social life, respectively. Further, the social constraining and licensing, as shown in the game of rule-ascriptions, are for the sake of some vital goals in a community's life, for instance, communicating, making transactions and so on. We no longer take a rule to be fixed semantically or under a certain interpretation. A rule's extension is shown in a social practice of following a rule and ascertained, again, in a social practice of ascribing rules. Without general agreement in responses to the applications of (for instance, mathematical) rules, there will be no way to achieve any justification. Being the brute facts of life, this set of shared responses are not to be put into doubt; they are the "bedrock" where any pursuit of ground should stop. "What has to be accepted, the given, is--so one could say--forms of life." (PI, Part II, 226e) Now viewing rule-following activities from this angle, we are not tempted to seek for the definition or necessary and sufficient condition of the rule which determines them to be correct or not, but consider them as an indispensable part in a community's life where they play a role. *1* This response has been posted in CHOMSKY FOR PHILOSOPHERS, WWW, as the first part of my paper "Clarifying the Sceptical Solution of Kripke's Wittgenstein" . *2* I have elaborated the notion of FORM OF LIFE of Kripke's Wittgenstein in the second Part of the paper mentioned in *1*. *3* Baker & Hacker protest that the assertion-conditions of both first and third person ascription are rather strange. "I mean PLUS" normally does not have grounds or assertability conditions. "... there are no more grounds for my saying 'I mean W by "W"' than there are grounds, assertability conditions, for saying 'I intend to go to London tomorrow' or 'I want a drink'. So too, it is misleading to suggest that there is here a question of my knowing that I mean W by 'W' (viz. if I have a title to assert, then ceteris paribus, I know ...)." (Baker & Hacker, 35. ) "We must imagine the following exchange: we ask Smith, 'Does Jones mean addition by "plus"?' He replies, 'Yes, because whenever he is asked "What are a plus b?" (for any a and b), he always gives the same answer as I give'. This is awry." Ibid., 35-36. But Kripke's point is that the sentences "I mean PLUS" or "Jones means PLUS" are like moves in a language game whose correctness is governed by some rules accepted by the participants, i.e., the community members. Under certain circumstances, I may (or am licensed to) say "I mean PLUS". It does not follow that "I mean PLUS" is necessarily an assertion which requires justification in order to make sense. In the same way, as Kripke notes, Wittgenstein remarks that expressions like "I am in pain" are entitled to use correctly, not because the speaker gives or can give any justification. Normally in that case the speaker is not expected to justify his utterance. As regards the sentence "Jones means PLUS", apparently it is an assertion. Under what circumstances do we judge that Jones means PLUS or that the sentence "Jones means PLUS" is assertable? Kripke's Wittgenstein suggests: if Jones always give answers as we do. The following remark highlighting the significance of meaning explanation -- not in the sense of Barbiero's -- comes from Baker and Hacker. "... it is a conceptual truth that I am entitled to judge someone to mean W by 'W' (to understand 'W') on the grounds of the explanation of 'W' he gives. If he says 'By "bachelor" I mean an unmarried man', is that not enough?" Ibid., 36. Baker and Hacker do not realize that if such an explanation is 'enough', it is not due to the explanation itself, but to the fact that we customarily consider it enough. Moreover, "Any explanation has its foundation in training. (Educators ought to remember this.)" ZETTEL, Section 419. WORKS CITED: Baker, G. P. and Hacker, P. M. S.. SCEPTICISM, RULES & LANGUAGE. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1984. Barbiero, Daniel. "Chomsky Vs Kripke, Round Two: Methodological Collectivism and Explanatory Inadequacy." WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES 2/96. 1996. Huen, Kenny. "Clarifying the Sceptical Solution of Kripke's Wittgenstein". CHOMSKY FOR PHILOSOPHERS. WWW. 1996. Kripke, Saul A.. WITTGENSTEIN ON RULES AND PRIVATE LANGUAGE: AN ELEMENTARY EXPOSITION. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1982. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS. 2nd ed. Ed. G. E. M. Anscombe, R. Rhees and G. H. Von Wright. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1958. ZETTEL. Ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. Von Wright. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1970.