Philosophical Theorizing and Particularism: Michael Dummett on Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy of Language

Abstract

Michael Dummett makes a strong claim for a theory of meaning which will identify and give a systematic account of the principles implicitly grasped by anyone who understands a language. He claims that unless and until the philosophy of language reaches a point at which we know with reasonable certainty what form such a theory will take, the correctness of any piece of analysis carried out in another part of philosophy cannot be completely determined. There are two kinds of philosopher who would resist this claim: those who do not accept linguistic analysis as the right philosophical method, and those who accept it but practice it in a piecemeal way. Dummett calls the most extreme examples of the latter type ‘Particularists’ and his defence of his own position (and Frege’s) includes a critique of the best case yet made for pushing the philosophy of language towards the Particularist extreme, the case made by Wittgenstein in his later writings.