Abstract
Many philosophers working today on the normativity of language have concluded that linguistic activity is not a matter of rule following. These conversations have been framed by a conception of linguistic normativity with roots in Wittgenstein and Kripke. In this paper I use conceptual resources developed by the classical American pragmatists and their descendants to argue that punctate linguistic acts are governed by rules in a sense that has been neglected in the recent literature on the normativity of language. In the course of arguing for this conclusion I defend a Kantian conception of rationality as rule-obeying activity, and I argue that this conception is compatible with a naturalistic understanding of ourselves as rational beings governed by rules of thought and action.
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Notes
In this literature a distinction is sometimes drawn between meaning or content determining normativity and meaning and content engendering normativity (eg. Glüer and Wikforss 2009 and 2015). This distinction is used to support one or another metaphysical dependency claim: in the case of meaning determining normativity, the norms of language are metaphysically prior to the meanings of the expressions they govern; in the case of meaning engendering normativity, linguistic meaning is metaphysically prior to the norms that are engendered by that meaning. In this essay I adopt a position that is officially neutral on this question of metaphysical priority (this possibility is raised in Sect. 1.1 of Glüer and Wikforss 2015). In point of fact I suspect that the norms of language and the meanings they govern are both 1) reciprocally sense-dependent, meaning that to understand either you have to understand both, and 2) reciprocally reference-dependent, meaning that neither exists without the other (the language of reciprocal sense- and reference-dependence is owed to Brandom 2019, e.g. chapter 7). But nothing I say here is meant to presuppose any particular resolution of these issues of conceptual and metaphysical priority. My thanks to a reviewer for recommending this clarification.
While Hattiangadi (2006) and Glüer and Wikforss (2009) specify correctness in terms of application rather than use, Buleandra (2008) gives a plausible argument that it is conditions of correct use that are relevant for the normativity of language (pp.178ff; cf. Millar 2002 p.58-60). For one can use a term like ‘red’ in asking a question or giving a command, in which case one is not applying the term in making a claim about anything.
To allow for cases of implicit knowledge, as in grasp of the grammar of one’s natural language, we need to allow that grasp of a rule may be as crude as reliably discriminating behaviors according to whether they are correct or incorrect without necessarily having the ability to specify that in virtue of which the behaviors count as correct and incorrect. To put the point in terms of an early-modern philosophical distinction, this is the difference between having a clear and confused and a clear and distinct idea of the rule.
Reflection on the tripartite structure of the nervous system (noted in Sellars’ reference to perceptual takings, inferences, and volitions) suggests that, in addition to thoughts and feelings, the non-agentive calling-to-mind of plans one has committed oneself to can also factor as input into the operation of our rational faculties (at footnote 6 of their essay Arpaly and Schroeder seem to allow some such role for planning mental states).
Sellars was one of the first analytic philosophers to investigate collective intentionality, and his views developed over the course of his career. The core essays include (1951), (1963), the closing chapter of (1968), (1976) and (1980). I discuss Sellars’ views on collective intentionality, deontic reasoning, and practical rationality in (Forthcoming).
From Rakoczy and Schmidt (2013) p.20:
Future research will need to explore the phylogeny of these capacities (e.g., which building blocks or precursors of these capacities might exist in other animals, and which evolved more recently), the cognitive mechanisms underlying the normative stance (e.g., how normative reasoning is related to inductive reasoning in other domains), and their protracted developmental course.
This obligation may be very weak and easily trumped by other concerns, of course. If one visits Russia just once, and tries to pick up some of the language, one ought to see to it that one is disposed to use the language appropriately. But that obligation may not be long in force, and it will be enough for one’s trip if one simply follows a rule of action at each point by, e.g., reading from a travel guide.
Cf. (Peirce 1906) p. 278:
The habit-change often consists in raising or lowering the strength of a habit….There are, of course, other means than repetition of intensifying habit-changes. In particular, there is a peculiar kind of effort, which may be likened to an imperative command addressed to the future self.
Sellars defends a similar point encapsulated in what Jim O’Shea calls Sellars’ “norm/nature meta-principle” that “espousal of principles is reflected in uniformities of performance” (Sellars 1962 p.48, O’Shea 2007 p.400; and cf. the discussion of that principle in chapters 3-5 of O’Shea 2007). Though I will not try to establish it here, I believe this role for dispositions is minimal enough to allow for a range of broadly dispositionalist treatments of the normativity of meaning, including Ginsborg’s ‘primitive normativity’ (2011 and 2012), Jones’ appeal to subpersonal rules (2015), and Haddock’s ‘naïve view’ (2012).
In Hegel’s telling, the judge’s duty to bind herself to the norm is reflected in a duty to forgive the confessor, followed by a corresponding confession on the judge’s part for where she (may have) misjudged the case. Once the confessor in turn forgives the judge the two stand in reciprocal recognition of each other as both being bound by and holding one another accountable to the rules of the community, while collectively confessing and forgiving one another their errors of judgment and action. This additional permutation is due to features of Hegel’s theory of agency and social identity that are not essential to my point here.
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Work on this chapter was supported by the joint Lead-Agency research grant between the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) and the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), Inferentialism and Collective Intentionality, GF17-33808L.
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Stovall, P. Rationality, autonomy, and obedience to linguistic norms. Synthese 198, 8955–8980 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02609-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02609-z