***************************************************************** * * Titel: FURTHER REMARKS FROM HUEN: Autor: Kenny Siu Sing Huen, Hong Kong Dateiname: 14-2-96.TXT Dateilänge: 14 KB Erschienen in: Wittgenstein Studies 2/96, Datei: 14-2-96.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. * * * ***************************************************************** I wish to make more explicit here the paramount relevance of COMMUNITY LIFE in the positive view of Kripke's Wittgenstein, though it is usually labeled as some sort of community-based conception of language or rule-following. Normative activities are regular activities taking place in human life. Commentators, like Fogelin, simply understands that the sceptical solution Kripke finds in Wittgenstein is essentially a "public-check argument", neglecting that public checking belongs to a practice or what Wittgenstein calls "language-game". (Fogelin, 241-246) Actually, as Kripke remarks, the point of the PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT goes much beyond what was supposed in the verificationist reading in the early scholarship of Wittgenstein. In Wittgenstein's later thoughts, Kripke reveals a deep insight into a fundamental misconception, which is concerned even with the notion of identification. Apparently Wittgenstein neither takes for granted identification, nor, consequently, public checking, for it is a prerequisite for the person who tests to identify things with his senses. (Cf. Kripke, 60-62, note 47) In Kripke's view, the sceptical solution, which purports to show how meaning is fixed or how normativity is possible, consists in "a description of the game of concept attribution" (Kripke, 95) "It provides both conditions under which we are justified in attributing concepts to others and an account of the utility of this game IN OUR LIVES." (Ibid.) Wittgenstein has pointed out the living character of his notion of language-game. (Cf. PI, 23) In Kripke's account, important resources have been supplemented to the following insight of Wittgenstein: "What this shews is that there is a way of grasping 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) Kripke illustrates, in particular, how our agreement is OPERATED in various language-games of concept attribution, that is, in life. He helps Wittgenstein's readers realize that the determinacy of a rule or meaning is rested on a certain "must" -- biological as well as cultural -- in our agreement. This is precisely what Wittgenstein's notion of FORM OF LIFE is about. (Cf. my paper "Clarifying the Sceptical Solution of Kripke's Wittgenstein" (henceforth, "Clarifying"), Section 3) Now I have to say that the foregoing central points of Kripke's Wittgenstein are at least not given an appropriate emphasis in Barbiero's interpretation. The sceptical solution, according to Barbiero, is based on INDIVIDUAL CASES of agreement, which are the explanatory primitive purporting to replace the explanation of folk psychology in regard to rule-following. "In fact the effect of [Kripke's] discussion is to present agreement as a kind of statistical matter emerging from an aggregation of individual instances." (Barbiero, [18]) "Clearly, even if Kripke rejects facts about individuals as a legitimate basis for explaining their behavior, he does acknowledge the importance of individual cases and particular instances as factors to consider when ascribing concept mastery." (Ibid., [19]) The sense of the term "individual cases" here seems unclear. It might mean (a) the individual cases of general agreement, i.e., the pregiven condition of the language-game of concept attribution or (b) the individual cases of a particular rule-follower's responses in agreement with the community which we take into consideration when attempting to attribute rule-following to the person, or (c) the individual cases of agreement in virtue of which a language-game is established (or perhaps gradually formed) and substantialized. There should not be any point to dispute over whether Kripke's exposition of the sceptical solution has to do with concrete, individual cases. The issue is rather: whether individual cases of agreement are logically prior to and independent of a related practice or language-game. Barbiero seems to suggest that they are and ignore the regularity of a social reality. Consider (a). In mathematics, for instance, "[i]f one person, when asked to compute '68+57' answered '125', another '5', another '13', if there was no general agreement in the community responses, the game of attributing concepts to individuals ... could not exist." (Kripke, 96) The "general agreement" here are actually not isolated, but moves in the language-game of calculation, which is related to other games like shopping and building, etc. Now (b), that Jones' responses agree with ours is determined or judged according to some criteria we agree upon. Also, Jones behaves like us because he has been trained. Many language-games do not require the participants to use a standard, sample or criterion of correctness. In those games, the participants do not judge; they just act and respond in a certain manner. However, especially in training them to acquire those abilities, norms are involved and exhibit in the games of concept and rule-following attributions. It can be seen from these considerations that the agreement in question is not incidental, and should not be cut away from the ongoing regularity in the background. (c) suggests that there should be a large number of agreement cases before any practice could take shape. Certainly. But how can we say that individual cases of agreement in sense (c) constitute or bring about a whole, i.e., the practice of a community, when there is no necessary link between the isolated individuals and the whole? A preliminary uniformity could be rather incidental; for instance, people were just unconsciously imitating. They might also be attempting to realize what they have in their mind. Finally the outcome might be that a practice has not been formed. Retrospection of the formation of an already-existing practice misleads one to think that the practice depends logically on the cases of agreements in sense (c). Indeed if Kripke's account of these language-games is a persuasive one, it must not be remote from reality. However, it does not follow that he is thus responsible for a "burden of proof". The concrete situations that he provides in his descriptions are not evidential, but illustrative in nature. His investigation is basically conceptual; his objective is to reveal, rather than to accumulate facts for a scientific purpose. I wonder whether folk psychology is necessarily of the private model that the sceptical argument turns down. Having got the lesson of the sceptical argument, a person may still explain rule-following phenomena in folk-psychological terms, like grasping a rule, understanding an expression, etc. -- only if he no longer adheres to the wrong picture, supposing following a rule as having its source in the mind, as "applying one's understanding", (PI, Section 146a) in such a way that ALL correct uses of the rule have been obtained mentally in advance, but looks at his explanation as moves in a certain language game, as a component part of a form of life. We should be able to see that rules, justifying an application by appeal to a rule, explaining the meaning of an expression or of a rule, training someone to learn a rule, and even public checking, etc. might all be subject to the bad picture in question. Putting aside the dispute over the content of the sceptical solution, I would like to consider further Barbiero's main criticism of Kripke's Wittgenstein. Barbiero argues that explanation of rule-following activities does not come to an end at the fact that we agree to behave in a certain way. His reason is that the social regularity cannot be maintained if there is no mechanism of reproducing the similar set of responses -- and this mechanism is biological and psychological, i.e., not dependent on any agreement. My reply is as follows. First, as I have mentioned in my paper, (Kripke's) Wittgenstein would not deny making hypotheses. Hypothesis-making is part of human life. There are language-games of this kind of activities. (Cf. PI, Section 23) What is denied is the conception -- i.e., the picture mentioned earlier -- which mistakes a certain mental mechanism or structure, be it a constructivist and adaptive kind, to be sufficiently determining a correct response, since the norm somehow comes from the community and exhibits in a community life. Second, as pointed out in my account of the notion of FORM OF LIFE in Kripke's Wittgenstein (Cf. "Clarifying", Section 3) the highly species-specific and cultural constraints which are implicit in our rule-following and rule-following attribution activities are not to be viewed from nowhere. Talks of these constraints are again moves of a high-level language-game in which we are engaged in rational and self-knowing activities, and thus presuppose a horizon or background that we share. "'We are quite sure of it' does not mean just that every single person is certain of it, but that we belong to a community which is bound together by science and education." (OC, Section 298) WORKS CITED: Barbiero, Daniel. "Barbiero's Reply", WITTGENSTEIN STUDIES 2/96. 1996. Fogelin, Robert J. WITTGENSTEIN. 2nd ed. London: RKP. 1987. Huen, Kenny. "Clarifying the Sceptical Solution in 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. ON CERTAINTY. Ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Harper Torchbooks. 1972.