A middle position between meaning finitism and meaning Platonism

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 35-51

  Haukioja, Jussi ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TURKU   (Finland)

Author keywords

Crispin Wright; David Bloor; Meaning; Meaning finitism; Response dependence; Rule following

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846081802     PISSN: 09672559     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0967255042000324326     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. David Bloor, Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions (London: Routledge, 1997).
2. David Bloor, Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions, Ibid., pp. 3-4.
3. This reasoning resembles Simon Blackburn's argumentation against what he calls dog-legged theories of meaning in Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
4. The term is due to Mary Hesse: The Structure of Scientific Inference (London: Macmillan, 1974);
5. cf. B. Barnes, 'On the Extensions of Concepts and the Growth of Knowledge', Sociological Review, 30(1) (February 1982), pp. 23-44;
6. Martin Kusch, Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Episte-mology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
7. Martin Kusch, Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Episte-mology, Ibid., p. 24.
8. Cf. Crispin Wright's reply to McDowell's charge that finitism commits one to ideahsm (Wright, 'Rule-Following, Meaning and Constructivism', in C. Travis (ed.) Meaning and Interpretation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 273. One cannot deny that there is a clear overall anti-realist (even idealist) tone in the finitist position, but I am willing to grant that there is no straightforward entailment.
9. Bloor, Rule-Following, Meaning and Constructivism', Meaning and Interpretation, 1986, p. 273. op. cit., p. 19.
10. 'Wittgenstein on Following a Rule', Synthese, 58(3) (March 1984).
11. Wright, Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 21.
12. It should be noted that Wright has changed his mind since the early work referred to here. In more recent writings, he clearly distinguishes the objectivity of meaning and Platonism (for example, Wright, 'Wittgenstein's Rule-Following Considerations and the Central Project of Theoretical Linguistics', in A. George (ed.) Reflections on Chomsky (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 257)
13. and admits that the identification of correctness and consensus was 'a definite error' (Wright, Rails to Infinity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 6-7).
14. Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics, pp. 216-20.
15. McDowell, 'Wittgenstein on Following a Rule', p. 328.
16. see also McDowell, 'Intentionality and Interiority in Wittgenstein', in K. Puhl (ed.) Meaning Scepticism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991);
17. McDowell, 'Meaning and Intentionality in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy', in P. A. French, T. E. J. Uehling, and H. K. Wettstein (eds) Midwest Studies in Philosophy 17: The Wittgenstein Legacy (1992);
18. Alexander Miller, 'Rule-Following, Response-Dependence, and McDowell's Debate with Anti-Realism', in R. Casati and C. Tappolet (eds) European Review of Philosophy 3: Response-Dependence (1998).
19. In his more recent writings, Wright has expressed some sympathy for the idea of such a middle position (Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 205-7). In fact, his 'judgement-dependent' conception of ascriptions of intention (in 'Wittgenstein's Rule-Following Considerations and the Central Project of Theoretical Linguistics') can be seen as a step in this direction. I will briefly comment on the differences and similarities between this view and my own view below.
20. Ebbs, Rule-Following and Realism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 81.
21. Pettit, 'Realism and Response-Dependence', Mind, 100(4) (October 1991), pp. 587-626;
22. Pettit, 'Noumenalism and Response-Dependence', The Monist, 81(1) (January 1998), pp. 112-32;
23. F. Jackson and P. Pettit, 'Response-Dependence without Tears', Philosophical Issues, 12 (2002), pp. 97-117.
24. This in some ways reminiscent of Wright's more recent judgement-dependent treatment of intention and meaning, but there are some important differences. Put very briefly, Wright's analysis would say something hke this: it is a priori that in (best-opinion-determining) conditions C, P iff S believes that P, where P is the proposition that concept K correctly applies to x. A detailed treatment of the issue would take us too far afield, but I want to point out two crucial differences. First of all, in Wright's framework these so-called provisional equations are meant to reflect the application conditions of concept K, whereas (RD), which can be formulated for concepts as well as linguistic terms, reflects the possession conditions of K. Accordingly, Wright's analysis is meant to be an exhaustive account of what it is for x to be in the extension of K, while (RD) is only a claim about what it is to possess K. This brings us to the second crucial difference: because Wright's provisional equation is put forward as stating the application conditions of K, he needs to require (roughly) that the C-conditions be statable without mention of K itself, in order to avoid circularity. It is here that Wright's account runs into problems (A. Miller, 'An Objection to Wright's Treatment of Intention', Analysis, 49(4) (October 1989), pp. 169-73;
25. P. Boghossian, 'The Rule-Following Considerations', Mind, 98(392) (October 1989), pp. 544-7). The response-dependent account, as I am stating it here, is free of these problems because the 'favourable' conditions in (RD) are, as explained below, not even intended to be statable independently of how T is applied by competent users. There are no worries about circularity here, because (RD) is not put forward as a reductive analysis of 'T-ness', but as a claim about how our dispositions to apply T and to respond to other applications of T (made by us or by others) give rise to correctness conditions for the use of T. As an anonymous referee for the journal pointed out, one can read off the extension of T from the response-dependent account of the possession conditions of T. But because circularities are not ruled out from the specification of favourable conditions, the account of the extension of T which we get will be wholly uninformative and trivial. At the same time, (RD) can illuminate the possession conditions of our basic concepts, despite the circularity.
26. Boghossian, 'The Rule-Following Considerations', Mind, 98(392) 1989, pp. 544-7
27. Mind, op. cit., p. 540.
28. But see also A. Miller, 'Objectivity of Content', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 77 (2003), pp. 73-90.
29. 'The Reality of Rule-Following', Mind, 99(393) (January 1990), pp. 1-21;
30. 'A Theory of Normal and Ideal Conditions', Philosophical Studies, 96(1) (October 1999), pp. 21-44.
31. Frank Hindriks raises difficulties for Pettit's view in 'A Modest Solution to the Problem of Rule-Following', Philosophical Studies, 121(1) (October 2004), pp. 65-97;
32. see my 'Hindriks on Rule-Following', Philosophical Studies (forthcoming) for an extension of Pettit's view which avoids Hindriks' objections.
33. These two sources of indeterminacy correspond to what Mark Wilson calls expected and unexpected vagueness, respectively: 'Predicate Meets Property', Philosophical Review, 91(4) (October 1982), pp. 551-2n4.
34. See, e.g., Barnes, 'Predicate Meets Property', Philosophical Review, 91(4) (1982), pp. 551-2n4, op. cit.
35. To accommodate the second kind of indeterminacy pointed to above, we do need to acknowledge that our terms may not have determinate extensions outside their normal range of application. Nonetheless, we can think of them as having partial denotations or partial extensions in the manner described by Wilson (op. cit.), following H. Field, 'Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference', Journal of Philosophy, 70(14) (August 1973), pp. 462-81.
36. See my 'Is Solitary Rule-Following Possible?', Philosophia, 32 (2004).
37. Bloor, 'Is Solitary Rule-Following Possible?', Philosophia, 32 (2004), op. cit., pp. 19-20.
38. Kripke, 'Is Solitary Rule-Following Possible?', Philosophia, 32 (2004), op. cit.
39. 'Kripke on Wittgenstein and Normativity', in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, and H. K. Wettstein (eds) Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19: Philosophical Naturalism (1994), pp. 366-90;
40. 'Semantic Realism and Kripke's Wittgenstein', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 58(1) (March 1998), pp. 99-122.