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Kripkenstein on Meaning
Edited by Indrek Reiland (University of Vienna)
About this topic
| Summary | Kripkenstein or Kripke's Wittgenstein is a fictional character customarily taken to be the person committed to the views of meaning, content, and rule-following presented in Saul Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982). Kripkenstein first presents us with the skeptical challenge to explain what it is for expressions to have a particular meaning in a speaker's idiolect. Consider a word like '+' which is intuitively for applying the addition function or 'table' which is for talking about tables. Kripkenstein asks what makes it the case that in one's idiolect these words are indeed for doing these things. After all, we can assume that our history of past uses is entirely compatible with '+' being for applying the quaddition function (x quus y = x plus y, if x, y < 57, = 5 otherwise) or for talking about tabairs (a tabair = anything that is a table not found at the base of the Eiffel tower or a chair found there). He then presents a skeptical argument by considering a series of potential answers and showing that they don't work. For starters, he argues that the relevant fact can't consist in a speaker's having given herself instructions how to use the expression because instructions would have to be stated in language and that would merely push back the problem. Second, he argues that it can't consist in her being disposed to use the expression in certain ways (e. g. when using ‘+’ one is disposed to give the sum, or when using ‘table’ one is disposed to do so only in the presence of tables) because, most fundamentally, this fails to make sense of the fact that using it in those ways is correct (see also the section on Normativity of Meaning and Content). Finally, he argues that we can't invoke simplicity considerations to rule out quaddition-like candidates, nor by claiming that the relevant state has a distinctive phenomenology or is primitive. Having drawn the skeptical conclusion that nothing makes It the case that expressions have particular meanings in our idiolects, Kripkenstein presents a skeptical solution which is standardly interpreted as claiming that we should construe attributions of meaning, content etc. in non-factualist terms by taking them to be justifiable or permissible when the person to whom we attribute meaning, content etc. behaves like we do. |
| Key works | Kripkenstein's discussion is presented in Kripke 1982. Important early commentaries include Forbes 1984, Blackburn 1984, and Goldfarb 1985 which defend the dispositionalist answer, Lewis 1983 which discusses invoking simplicity considerations, and McDowell 1984 and McGinn 1984 which discuss taking the state to be primitive and the relation between Wittgenstein's and Kripkenstein's views. Important later commentaries include Boghossian 1989, Pettit 1990, Wilson 1994, and several essays in Stroud 2000. Many of these papers are collected in Miller & Wright 2002. Recent discussions include Hattiangadi 2007, Ginsborg 2011, and Miller 2019. |
| Introductions | For an overview see Reiland 2024 Reiland 2024 and Miller & Sultanescu 2022 |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Meaning Holism (267)
- Speaker Meaning and Linguistic Meaning (137)
- Normativity of Meaning and Content (301)
- Aspects of Meaning, Misc (181)
See also
- Rule-Following (334)
- Normativity of Meaning and Content (301)
Contents
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- Kripke on private language.Paul Gregory - manuscript
- With factualist friends, Kripke's Wittgenstein needs no enemies: On Byrne's case for Kripke's Wittgenstein being a factualist about meaning attributions.John Humphrey - manuscript_Private Language_ is that it almost universally sees KW as offering, in his sceptical solution, an account of meaning attributions (i.e., statements of the form, "X means such-and-so by 's'"; hereafter, MAs) which takes their legitimate attribution to be a function of something other than facts or truth conditions. KW is almost universally read as having rejected any account of meaning attributions which takes them to be stating facts or corresponding to facts. In a word, KW is understood as offering (...)Remove from this listExport citation
Bookmark - Blackburn’s Wittgenstein: The Quasi-Realist.Ali Hossein Khani - forthcoming - In Ali Hossein Khani & Gary Kemp, Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: His Influence on Historical and Contemporary Analytic Philosophers (Volume I). Routledge.
- Kripke's Wittgenstein: The Meaning Sceptic.Ali Hossein Khani - forthcoming - In Ali Hossein Khani & Gary Kemp, Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: His Influence on Historical and Contemporary Analytic Philosophers (Volume I). Routledge.
- (1 other version)A Critical Review of the Mainstream Reading of Kripke’s Wittgenstein: On Misunderstanding Kripke’s Wittgenstein (In Persian).Ali Hossein Khani - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophical Investigations at University of Tabriz.In this paper, I will argue against certain criticisms of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument and sceptical solution, made especially by Baker and Hacker, McGinn, and McDowell. I will show that their interpretation of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view is misplaced. According to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument, there is no fact as to what someone means by her words. For Kripke, this conclusion, combined with Classical Realist view of meaning, leads to the Wittgensteinian paradox, according to which there is no such thing as (...)
- Kripke’s Wittgenstein and Ginsborg’s Reductive Dispositionalism (In Persian).Ali Hossein Khani - forthcoming - Metaphysics (University of Isfahan).Kripke in his famous book on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy argues, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that there can be no fact of the matter as to what a speaker means by her words, that is, no fact that can meet the Constitution Demand and the Normativity Demand. He particularly argues against the dispositional view, according to which meaning facts are constituted by facts about the speaker's dispositions to respond in a certain way on certain occasions. He argues that facts about dispositions (...)
- (1 other version)What does the 'bedrock' of rules consist of?: Mcdowell on Kripke's and Wright's interpretation of Wittgenstein.Sládeček Michal - forthcoming - Theoria 55 (4):5-20.
- Problems for ‘standard’ dispositionalist accounts of semantic content.Ásgeir Berg - 2025 - Synthese 205 (2):1-14.A popular view in metasemantics is the view that a speaker’s dispositions regarding the use of a symbol determine the meaning of that symbol for the speaker. Kripke (Wittgenstein on rules and private language, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1982) arguments against simple versions of semantic dispositionalism have inspired ever new versions. A recent account in the literature, due to Warren (Noûs 54(2):257–289, 2020) offers a sophisticated version of semantic dispositionalism whereby certain conditions are imposed on speaker’s dispositions to count as (...)
- Scepticism about Meaning in the German Enlightenment.Vladimir Lazurca - 2025 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 15 (1):1-31.Exegetical scepticism is a strand of scepticism about meaning running through the German Enlightenment. This paper provides the first modern account of its tenets, critics, and proponents, and argues that it shares essential features with modern varieties of meaning-scepticism that have been a preoccupation among philosophers of language since the middle of the twentieth century. I argue that exegetical scepticism is a type of epistemological scepticism first introduced as a philosophical position in a theological debate between August Pfeiffer (1640–1698) and (...)
- Engaging Kripke with Wittgenstein: the standard metre, contingent apriori, and beyond.Martin Gustafsson, Oskari Kuusela & Jakub Mácha (eds.) - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge.This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between Kripke's (...)
- Kripke’s Evil Demon, Cartesian Semantics and Epistemic Supervenience.Andrei V. Nekhaev - 2024 - Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 61 (2):60-70.In his article Evgeny Borisov offers an original solution to Kripke’s sceptical problem of meaning. Its conceptual core is the point of view of the participant of speech acts. He believes that first-person statements of speech act participants like “I know for certain that the expression ‘e’ is used by me in the meaning of m” cannot carry any epistemic fallacies. As a criticism, I propose to point out that non-factual Cartesian semantics have serious epistemic flaws that make it vulnerable (...)
- Rule-Following II: Recent Work and New Puzzles.Indrek Reiland - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (5):e12976.‘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 was devoted to the basic issues from Wittgenstein to Kripke. Part II is about (...)
- Rule-Following I: The Basic Issues.Indrek Reiland - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (1):e12900.‘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 (...)
- Making Meaning: A study in foundational semantics.Jaakko Reinikainen - 2024 - Dissertation, Tampere UniversityThis is a work in the philosophy of language and metasemantics. Its purpose is to help answer the question about how words acquire their meanings. The work is divided into two parts. The purpose of Part One is to defend the claim that, despite numerous attempts, the so-called Kripkenstein’s sceptical challenge, and especially the problem of finitude, has not been offered a successful straight solution. The purpose of Part Two is to critically examine Robert Brandom’s philosophy, which can be treated (...)
- How Not to Brush Questions under the Rug.Olivia Sultanescu - 2024 - In Claudine Verheggen, Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40. New York,: Cambridge University Press. pp. 163 - 180.In his treatment of the Wittgensteinian paradox about rule-following, Saul Kripke represents the non-reductionist approach, according to which meaning something by an expression is a sui generis state that cannot be elucidated in more basic terms, as brushing philosophical questions under the rug. This representation of non-reductionism captures the way in which some of its proponents conceive of it. Meaning is viewed by these philosophers as an explanatory primitive that provides the basic materials for philosophical inquiry, but whose nature cannot (...)
- Semantic normativity, properly so called.Daniel Whiting - 2024 - In Claudine Verheggen, Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40. New York,: Cambridge University Press.Kripke finds in Wittgenstein an argument for the view that there is no such thing as meaning. A key premise in that argument is that there are semantic norms—norms governing the uses of expressions that hold in virtue of what those expressions mean. Standardly, those norms are understood to be norms of truth—roughly, they permit truly applying expressions and prohibit falsely applying them. An increasing number of philosophers reject the standard interpretation. In this paper, I explore alternative construals due to (...)
- Non-Factualist Interpretation of the Skeptical Solution and the Self-Refutation Argument.Michał Wieczorkowski - 2024 - Acta Analytica 39 (2):295-311.The skeptical solution is based on two assumptions — the rejection of semantic facts and the denial of semantic nihilism. On the basis of the non-factualist interpretation of this solution, these two assumptions are reconciled by stating that meaning ascriptions possess non-descriptive function. Nonetheless, Alexander Miller argues that this position is self-refuting since, as despite its non-descriptivism, by rejecting any kind of semantic facts, it inevitably leads to semantic nihilism. In this text, I demonstrate that Miller’s argument is not sound. (...)
- Explaining Away Kripke’s Wittgenstein.Derek Green - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (3):991-1011.The paradox of rule-following that Saul Kripke finds in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations purports to show that words and thoughts have no content—that there is no intentionality. This paper refutes the paradox with a dilemma. Intentional states are posited in rational explanations, which use propositional attitudes to explain actions and thoughts. Depending on which of the two plausible views of rational explanation is right, either: the paradox is mistaken about the a priori requirements for content; or, a fatal flaw in content (...)
- A dilemma for dispositional answers to Kripkenstein’s challenge.Andrea Guardo - 2023 - Minds and Machines 33 (1):135-152.Kripkenstein’s challenge is usually described as being essentially about the use of a word in new kinds of cases ‒ the old kinds of cases being commonly considered as non-problematic. I show that this way of conceiving the challenge is neither true to Kripke’s intentions nor philosophically defensible: the Kripkean skeptic can question my answering “125” to the question “What is 68 plus 57?” even if that problem is one I have already encountered and answered. I then argue that once (...)
- The Gruesome Truth About Semantic Dispositionalism.Adam C. Podlaskowski - 2023 - Acta Analytica 38 (2):299-309.The resemblance is plain to see between Kripke’s Wittgenstein introducing bizarre rules such as quaddition (in illustrating the sceptical paradox against theories of meaning) and Goodman’s introducing the equally bizarre grue (in generating the new riddle of induction). But the two sorts of bizarre cases also differ in interesting respects. For those familiar with Goodman’s case, this similarity sparks a strong temptation to enlist to the meaning sceptic’s cause key elements of Goodman’s new riddle, which are missing from Kripke’s case. (...)
- Linguistic Mistakes.Indrek Reiland - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (5):2191-2206.Ever since the publication of Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, there’s been a raging debate in philosophy of language over whether meaning and thought are, in some sense, normative. Most participants in the normativity wars seem to agree that some uses of meaningful expressions are semantically correct while disagreeing over whether this entails anything normative. But what is it to say that a use of an expression is semantically correct? On the so-called orthodox construal, it is to say (...)
- A Note to "Meaning in Time".Jaakko Reinikainen - 2023 - In Jani Sinokki, Colloquium Volume - The Philosophical Society of Finland's Annual Colloquium 2022 in Oulu. Philosophical Society of Finland. pp. 167-183.As the title suggests, this paper is something of a leftover – or perhaps a new branch – to my "Meaning in Time: on temporal externalism and Kripkenstein’s skeptical challenge". In that work I essayed to portray my understanding of the sceptical challenge uncovered by Saul Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein’s later works in a nutshell as to its nature and resolution. Here, my task is to dig a little deeper into the key phrase of the earlier paper, namely the claim (...)
- Meaning, Rationality, and Guidance.Olivia Sultanescu - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1):227-247.In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke articulates a form of scepticism about meaning. Even though there is considerable disagreement among critics about the reasoning in which the sceptic engages, there is little doubt that he seeks to offer constraints for an adequate account of the facts that constitute the meaningfulness of expressions. Many of the sceptic's remarks concern the nature of the guidance involved in a speaker's meaningful uses of expressions. I propose that we understand those remarks (...)
- Review of James R. Shaw's Wittgenstein on Rules: Justification, Grammar, and Agreement. [REVIEW]Olivia Sultanescu - 2023 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
- (1 other version)The Threat of Solipsism: Wittgenstein and Cavell on Meaning, Skepticism, and Finitude Jonadas Techio, De Gruyter 2021. [REVIEW]Guido Tana - 2023 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 26 (1):160-169.
- (1 other version)The Threat of Solipsism: Wittgenstein and Cavell on Meaning, Skepticism, and Finitude, written by Techio, J.Guido Tana - 2023 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 26 (1):160-169.
- Going on as one ought: Kripke and Wittgenstein on the normativity of meaning.Hannah Ginsborg - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (5):876-892.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 (...)
- (1 other version)Yet another victim of Kripkenstein’s monster: dispositions, meaning, and privilege.Andrea Guardo - 2022 - Ergo 8 (55):857-882.In metasemantics, semantic dispositionalism is the view that what makes it the case that, given the value of the relevant parameters, a certain linguistic expression refers to what it does are the speakers’ dispositions. In the literature, there is something like a consensus that the fate of dispositionalism hinges on the status of three arguments, first put forward by Saul Kripke ‒ or at least usually ascribed to him. This paper discusses a different, and strangely neglected, anti-dispositionalist argument, which develops (...)
- Teleo-Inferentialism.Ulf Hlobil - 2022 - Philosophiocal Topics 50 (1):185-211.The paper presents teleo-inferentialism, which is a novel meta-semantic theory that combines advantages of teleosemantics and normative inferentialism. Like normative inferentialism, teleo-inferentialism holds that contents are individuated by the norms that govern inferences in which they occur. This allows teleo-inferentialism to account for sophisticated concepts. Like teleosemantics, teleo-inferentialism explains conceptual norms in a naturalistically acceptable way by appeal to the broadly biological well-functioning of our innate capacities. As a test-case for teleo-inferentialism, I discuss how the view handles Kripkenstein-style meaning skepticism.
- Is semantic correctness descriptive?Aleksi Honkasalo - 2022 - Theoria 88 (5):899-907.According to the normativists, dispositionalist theories of meaning fail because meaning is normative, not descriptive. One way to understand this notion of normativity is in terms of semantic correctness conditions. Anti-normativists typically accept that meaning implies semantic correctness but deny that this in turn implies that meaning is normative. Jeffrey Kaplan has recently argued that while semantic correctness may not imply full-blown normativity, semantic correctness is not descriptive either. I contend that Kaplan's argument has two main problems. First, his focus (...)
- Kripke’s Wittgenstein.Ali Hossein Khani - 2022 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP).Saul Kripke, in his celebrated book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), offers a novel reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s main remarks in his later works, especially in Philosophical Investigations (1953) and, to some extent, in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). Kripke presents Wittgenstein as proposing a skeptical argument against a certain conception of meaning and linguistic understanding, as well as a skeptical solution to such a problem. Many philosophers have called this interpretation of Wittgenstein Kripke’s Wittgenstein or (...)
- Rules as constitutive practices defined by correlated equilibria.Ásgeir Berg Matthíasson - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65.In this paper, I present a game-theoretic solution to the rule-following paradox in terms of what I will call basic constitutive practices. The structure of such a practice P constitutes what it is to take part in P by defining the correctness conditions of our most basic concepts as those actions that lie on the correlated equilibrium of P itself. Accordingly, an agent S meant addition by his use of the term ‘+’ because S is taking part in a basic (...)
- Rule-Following and Intentionality.Alexander Miller & Olivia Sultanescu - 2022 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Rule-Following, Private Language, and (Self-)Correction Practice: A Case of Local Quaddition Function.A. Nekhaev - 2022 - Tomsk State University Journal of Philosophy, Sociology, and Political Science 16 (69):32–43.The article contains a critical analysis of the skeptical solution to the rule- following problem. The skeptical solution denies the existence of “superlative” R-facts that would make statements of the form “P means R by ‘+’ ” true. The role of the sources for the meaning of ‘+’ here is played by the patterns of solidarity behavior of members of some community to which P belongs. The correct use of ‘+’ would be one that is approved by the competent majority (...)
- Kripke against Kripkenstein.Jaakko Reinikainen - 2022 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (4):241-248.What was Saul Kripke’s personal stance on the sceptical challenge that he famously attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein? It will be argued that despite his statements to the contrary, we can, in fact, outline at least a rough sketch of Kripke’s own views on the challenge and its aftermath on the basis of the remarks he left in the text. In summary, Kripke (a) rejected the sceptical solution to the challenge and (b) leaned towards a non-sceptical primitivist solution. If this is (...)No categories
- Meaning in time: on temporal externalism and Kripkenstein’s skeptical challenge.Jaakko Reinikainen - 2022 - Synthese 200 (288):1-27.The main question of metasemantics, or foundational semantics, is why an expression token has the meaning (semantic value) that it in fact has. In his reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work, Saul Kripke presented a skeptical challenge that threatened to make the foundational question unanswerable. My first contention in this paper is that the skeptical challenge indeed poses an insoluble paradox, but only for a certain kind of metasemantic theory, against which the challenge effectively works as a reductio ad absurdum (...)
- The Threat of Solipsism: Wittgenstein and Cavell on Meaning, Skepticism, and Finitude by Jônadas Techio.Richard Eldridge - 2021 - Review of Metaphysics 74 (4):640-642.
- Podobieństwo rodzinne a paradoks reguły.Paweł Grad - 2021 - Przeglad Filozoficzny - Nowa Seria 30 (1):71-88.I argue in the paper that the conception of family resemblance discussed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations is a result of the application of Wittgenstein’s general argument against rule‑following to the pragmatics of all concepts. My argument runs as follows: First, (1) I criticize interpretations of family resemblance as a ‘local’ theory, applicable only to some concepts. Next, (2) I present and criticise a classic argument against the conception of family resemblance. In the following section, (3) I analyse attempts (...)
- Kripkenstein semanttista realismia vastaan.Jaakko Reinikainen - 2021 - Ajatus 78 (11):187-219.Artikkeli käsittelee Saul Kripken Ludwig Wittgensteinin myöhemmistä töistä koostamaa merkityskeptistä haastetta, erityisesti niin kutsuttua äärellisyyden ongelmaa. Pääargumentti on, että skeptisen haasteen pääasiallinen vastaaja, semanttinen dispositionalismi, ei uusimmistakaan yrityksistä huolimatta ole kyennyt ratkaisemaan äärettömyyden ongelmaa. Ratkaistakseen ongelman dispositionalistin tulisi selittää, kuinka on mahdollista, että äärellinen puhuja voisi omata disposition käyttää jotain termiä äärettömässä määrässä tapauksia määrätyllä tavalla. Monet dispositionalistit esittävät, että ratkaisu löytyy niin kutsutuista ceteris paribus -ehdoista, joita vastaan Martin Kusch on argumentoinut. Jatkan Kuschin kritiikkiä ja osoitan ceteris paribus -strategian (...)
- Meaning Scepticism and Primitive Normativity.Olivia Sultanescu - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102 (2):357-376.This paper examines Hannah Ginsborg's attempt to address the challenge raised by Saul Kripke's meaning sceptic. I start by identifying the two constraints that the sceptic claims must be met by a satisfactory answer. Then I try to show that Ginsborg's proposal faces a dilemma. In the first instance, I argue that it is able to meet the second constraint, but not the first. I then amend the proposal in order to make room for the first constraint. I go on (...)
- Semantic dispositionalism without exceptions.Arvid Båve - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (6):1751-1771.Semantic dispositionalism is roughly the view that meaning a certain thing by a word, or possessing a certain concept, consists in being disposed to do something, e.g., infer a certain way. Its main problem is that it seems to have so many and disparate exceptions. People can fail to infer as required due to lack of logical acumen, intoxication, confusion, deviant theories, neural malfunctioning, and so on. I present a theory stating possession conditions of concepts that are counterfactuals, rather than (...)
- Meaning under the Threat of Paradox on Two Fronts.Olga Ramirez Calle - 2020 - Analiza I Egzystencja 50:5-17.The paper defends the argument that the Resemblance Paradox (RP), or the problem of the ‘under-determination of meaning’, and the Rule-Following Paradox (RFP) are two sides of the same paradox threatening meaning from opposite extremes. After presenting the case, the paradox is reconsidered anew and the supposition that the threat is a pervasive one is challenged.
- Meaning relativism and subjective idealism.Andrea Guardo - 2020 - Synthese 197 (9):4047-4064.The paper discusses an objection, put forward by - among others - John McDowell, to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s non-factualist and relativist view of semantic discourse. The objection goes roughly as follows: while it is usually possible to be a relativist about a given domain of discourse without being a relativist about anything else, relativism about semantic discourse entails global relativism, which in turn entails subjective idealism, which we can reasonably assume to be false. The paper’s first section sketches Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s ideas (...)
- Two epistemological arguments against two semantic dispositionalisms.Andrea Guardo - 2020 - Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts 1 (1):13-25.Even though he is not very explicit about it, in “Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language” Kripke discusses two different, albeit related, skeptical theses ‒ the first one in the philosophy of mind, the second one in the philosophy of language. Usually, what Kripke says about one thesis can be easily applied to the other one, too; however, things are not always that simple. In this paper, I discuss the case of the so-called “Normativity Argument” against semantic dispositionalism (which I (...)
- The problem with descriptive correctness.Jeffrey Kaplan - 2020 - Ratio 33 (2):79-86.In the 1980s and early 1990s, the normativity of meaning was thought to be more-or-less 'incontestable.' But in the last 25 years, many philosophers of mind and language have contested it in several seemingly different ways. This, however, is somewhat illusory. There is an unappreciated commonality among most anti-normativist arguments, and this commonality, I argue, poses a problem for anti-normativism. The result, however, is not a wholesale rejection of anti-normativism. Rather, an insight from the anti-normativist position can be harnessed to (...)
- Concepts, Normativity, and Self-Knowledge. On Ginsborg's Conception of Primitive Normativity.David Lauer - 2020 - In Christoph Demmerling & Dirk Schroder, Concepts in Thought, Action, and Perception. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 117-138.In a series of intriguing and far-reaching papers, Hannah Ginsborg introduced the notion of “primitive normativity” as the cornerstone of a novel account of the normativity of concepts, thought, and meaning. Her account is supposed to steer a middle course between what she regards as the two horns of a dilemma first laid out by Saul Kripke in his seminal reading of Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following. I propose to investigate Ginsborg’s conception. I begin by establishing the conceptual relations between the (...)
- What is the Sceptical Solution?Alexander Miller - 2020 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 8 (2).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 (...)
- On Complete Information Dispositionalism.Mons Nyquist - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (5):1915-1938.In a trio of recent articles, Johnson and Nado defend a form of metasemantic dispositionalism, arguing for a novel approach to the “error”-problem, based on speakers’ dispositional states under what they call a state of “full information”. In this article, I argue that their brand of dispositionalism fails to solve the “error”-problem, because of what I think of as counterexamples to it. In the final sections, I propose a way to amend the theory to shield it from some of the (...)
- Meaning Still Not Normative: On Assessment and Guidance.Jaakko Reinikainen - 2020 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 28 (4):510-526.ABSTRACT Is meaning essentially normative, and what does claiming that amount to? One popular interpretation is that in virtue of their nature meanings are capable of guiding subjects in their applications of concepts, for meaning is constituted by norms. However, the guidance view has been met with criticism to the effect that if semantic norms constitute facts about meaning, then they cannot simultaneously guide subjects in their applications. In response, some normativist authors have proposed that the key sense of ‘normative’ (...)
- Unfollowed Rules and the Normativity of Content.Eric V. Tracy - 2020 - Analytic Philosophy 61 (4):323-344.Foundational theories of mental content seek to identify the conditions under which a mental representation expresses, in the mind of a particular thinker, a particular content. Normativists endorse the following general sort of foundational theory of mental content: A mental representation r expresses concept C for agent S just in case S ought to use r in conformity with some particular pattern of use associated with C. In response to Normativist theories of content, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Åsa Wikforss propose a (...)
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