***************************************************************** * * Titel: Concluding Remarks from Barbiero Autor: Daniel Barbiero, Silver Spring - USA Dateiname: 15-2-96.TXT Dateilänge: 6 KB Erschienen in: Wittgenstein Studies 2/96, Datei: 15-2-96.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. Vossenkuhl, (3 1/2'' Diskette) ISSN 0943-5727. * * ***************************************************************** * * * (c) 1996 Deutsche Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft e.V. * * Alle Rechte vorbehalten / All Rights Reserved * * * * Kein Bestandteil dieser Datei darf ganz oder teilweise * * vervielfältigt, in einem Abfragesystem gespeichert, * * gesendet oder in irgendeine Sprache übersetzt werden in * * irgendeiner Form, sei es auf elektronische, mechanische, * * magnetische, optische, handschriftliche oder andere Art * * und Weise, ohne vorhergehende schriftliche Zustimmung * * der DEUTSCHEN LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN GESELLSCHAFT e.V. * * Dateien und Auszüge, die der Benutzer für * * seine privaten wissenschaftlichen Zwecke benutzt, sind * * von dieser Regelung ausgenommen. * * * * No part of this file may be reproduced, stored * * in a retrieval system, transmitted or translated into * * any other language in whole or in part, in any form or * * by any means, whether it be in electronical, mechanical, * * magnetic, optical, manual or otherwise, without prior * * written consent of the DEUTSCHE LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN * * GESELLSCHAFT e.V. Those articles and excerpts from * * articles which the subscriber wishes to use for his own * * private academic purposes are excluded from this * * restrictions. * * * ***************************************************************** [1] Over the course of my previous two contributions to this discussion, I have argued that an adequate explanation of rule- following and concept possession would make reference to facts about individuals, such as their habits, mental mechanisms, and so forth. In contrast to the weak methodological individualism that I have espoused, Huen has argued for the "paramount relevance of COMMUNITY LIFE" in which people "agree to behave in a certain way." [2] I do not disagree that certain behavioral regularities, observed across a given population, function as examples from which an interested observer can abstract and construct a normative requirement that he or she can follow whenever he or she recognizes the appropriate situation. The model of learning my first two papers sketched in fact depended on such a notion. What I find problematic is the explanatory usefulness of the notion of community. "Community" is an idealization hypothesized on the basis of an abstraction of individual -- and individually variable -- cases into an aggregate. (Parenthetically, I would note that in the context of our discussion, "individual cases" would correspond to Huen's suggested meaning (b), with his suggested meaning (c) representing something like an aggregation arising on the basis of (b). It seems to me that (a) represents a variaion on (c).) If this is so, then we find ourselves having to concede that a community is akin to a conceptual fiction -- albeit one that is descriptively useful in certain circumstances -- constituted by the individual behaviors, habits, etc. from which it is idealized and in terms of which it would be explicable. [3] (A related point can be made about the notion of agreement. If it is taken to mean that behaviors across a population may be characterized by a statistical regularity of some sort, then I see little problem. Clearly, we can say that a population behaves as if it has agreed to act in such a way and in saying so, we use an analogy that may make a certain illustrative sense. But if we imply that a given population exhibits a behavioral regularity because its members have agreed to do so -- and yet it is clear that they have entered into no explicit contract on the relevant points -- then I believe the analogy becomes misleading.) [4] Undoubtedly, community has some descriptive value as a way of characterizing the behaviors and beliefs of a given group of people. But even if we claim that a group displays certain regularities in their responses to reasonably similar situations, this doesn't mean that we are committed to accepting these regularities as brute facts. On the contrary, as I have argued, these regularities can best be explained in terms of facts about individuals.