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A new look at the problem of rule-following: a generic perspective

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to look at the problem of rule-following—notably discussed by Kripke (Wittgenstein on rules and private language, 1982) and Wittgenstein (Philosophical investigations, 1953)—from the perspective of the study of generics. Generics are sentences that express generalizations that tolerate exceptions. I first suggest that meaning ascriptions be viewed as habitual sentences, which are a sub-set of generics. I then seek a proper semantic analysis for habitually construed meaning sentences. The quantificational approach is rejected, due to its persistent difficulties. Instead, a cognitive approach is adopted, where psychological considerations of meaning attributors play a crucial role. This account is then compared with the picture of meaning offered by Kripke and Wittgenstein, respectively. I show how this fresh way of conceiving of meaning sentences respects some of their insights while avoiding some of the drawbacks, and serves to improve the framework in which the current debate and inquiry about rule-following are conducted.

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Notes

  1. Kripke himself is neutral about whether he endorses this reading of Wittgenstein. His main purpose is to illustrate what he thinks Wittgenstein might have had in mind.

  2. See, for example, Blackburn (1984), Boghossian (1989), McDowell (1984, 1992), Wright (1984, 1989), Miller (1998), etc. Kusch (2006) has recently given a compelling defense of the skeptical solution, which will be discussed in Sect. 4.

  3. By quaddition, Kripke means a non-standard quus function: “x quus y” denotes the sum of x and y if x and y are both less than the highest numbers for which the function has actually been computed; if not, it denotes 5. See Kripke (1982, p. 9).

  4. The literature on this topic in the past thirty or so years is huge. Some might say that it has turned into an industry. Take reductive dispositionalism for example. It has received the most attention in Kripkenstein’s consideration and refutation of “straight solutions” to the skeptical challenge of finding a fact which constitutes rule-following. Numerous improved versions of dispositionalism have been put forward in the subsequent literature, but each and every one of them has been subjected to vigorous criticisms from various angles. For instance, strictly reductive dispositional accounts such as Forbes (1984), Coates (1997), Martin and Heil (1998), etc., have been attacked by Boghossian (1989), Toribio (1999), and Handfield and Bird (2008), respectively. Non-strict reductive accounts along the dispositionalist line in which intentional or normative vocabularies are employed include Pettit (1990, 1993), Brandom (1994), etc., and these have been criticized by Hindriks (2004), and Hattiangadi (2003), respectively. For a most extensive survey and helpful critical discussion, see Kusch (2006). It is fair to say that none of the extant attempts to reject Kripke’s skeptical argument and to vindicate the reality of rule-following has been shown to be decisively successful.

  5. Carlson’s own (1980, 1982) view on generics is relevant, and will be discussed shortly.

  6. See Fara (2005) for a competent review and critique of various conditional accounts of dispositions.

  7. Note that the notion of permissible is implicitly dispositional (what would be permitted!), and this may be an internal problem in Fara’s account. For our purpose, we may put this problem aside, and focus on examining how a semantic account of habitually construed meaning sentences based on his approach would fare in face of Kripkenstein’s meaning skepticism below.

  8. Fara (2005, p. 70).

  9. See Fara (2005, p. 45).

  10. Fara (2005, p. 68).

  11. Nickel (2009) has recently proposed a semantic analysis for bare plural generics within a broadly truth-conditional, quantificational framework, which is related to the present discussion and deserves attention. He criticizes majority-based views from within the same camp of truth-condition semantics, and opts for an inquiry-based view. The former focuses on what happens most of the time to objects under consideration, whereas the latter emphasizes what is normal for objects under consideration, and which is responsible for what may happen to those objects most of the time. This is an intriguing and prominent approach to bare plural generics given within a truth-condition tradition. It is not clear how a proponent of Nickel’s inquiry-based account would extend this account to the analysis of habituals. But it seems obvious that such an extension would be similar to Fara’s habitual analysis of disposition ascriptions, in that both regard the notion of intrinsic property as central to their analyses. This would get a habitual analysis of meaning sentences along Nickel’s line into a familiar trouble. Namely, it has to specify what an intrinsic property is in a way in which can meet the demands of Kripke’s skeptic. According to Nickel, the notion of natural kind is central in his inquiry-based view. But before a plausible theory of natural kind is offered and it is shown how it may be applied to respond to the challenge of determining whether a person follows one rule or another, we are far from adequately addressing the problem of rule-following by taking a habitual analysis of meaning sentences along this line.

  12. See Carlson (1980, p. 64).

  13. See, for example, the “normal worlds” account by Asher and Morreau (1995) and Pelletier and Asher (1997), and the “absolute/relative distinction” account based on the probability approach by Cohen (1996, 1999a, b, 2004). For a useful collection on this topic, see The Generic Book, by Carlson and Pelletier, eds. (1995).

  14. See works by Gelman (2003), Gelman et al. (2000), Hollander et al. (2002), Papafragou and Schwarz (2005/2006), Leslie and Gelman (in preparation), and others.

  15. The following discussion of the cognitive and developmental psychology materials is partly based on Cheng (2002). Note, however, in that piece of work, the materials were used to support a metaphysical thesis, i.e., a dispositional account of rule-following, whereas in the current paper, the similar materials were consulted to help establishing a semantic thesis about rule-ascriptions from a generic perspective.

  16. Kripke (1982, pp. 77–78).

  17. Kripke (1982, p. 91).

  18. John Heil (2003; with Martin 1998), for example, would go onto make a substantial claim that meaning sentences have disposition truthmakers. This theoretical move is to be acceptable, and may even be welcomed, by my position. To what extent such an attempt succeeds in giving an adequate metaphysical account of meaning is currently under debate (see, for instance, Handfield and Bird 2008, for a rebuttal of Martin and Heil’s realist dispositional view of rule-following, and Cheng 2010 for a critical response to the rebuttal), but falls outside the scope and main concern of this paper.

  19. For some recent objections to Kusch’s rejection of semantic dispositionalism, see Kowalenko (2009) and Cheng (2009).

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Acknowledgements

I owe a debt of gratitude to Sarah-Jane Leslie, John Heil, Michael Glanzberg, and Bernhard Nickel for invaluable feedback on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Wan-Chuan Fang, Jussi Haukioja, Frank Hindriks, Mark Johnston, Martin Kusch, Cheng-hung Lin, Philip Pettit, Norman Teng, Christian Wenzel, and an anonymous referee for helpful discussions and/or comments. An earlier version was presented at an International Conference on Wittgenstein’s Philosophy held by National Taiwan University, where I received useful feedback from the audience. The paper was expanded and completed during my research visits at Academia Sinica in Taiwan and Princeton University, and sponsored by the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC 96-2411-H-194-009-MY3). I am grateful to these Institutes for the generous support.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, National Chung-Cheng University, Ming-Hsiung, Chiayi, 621, Taiwan

    Kai-Yuan Cheng

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Cheng, KY. A new look at the problem of rule-following: a generic perspective. Philos Stud 155, 1–21 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-010-9561-9

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