What is the Sceptical Solution?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v8i2.4060Abstract
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 has not been well-understood. The main aim of this paper is to advance our understanding of the nature of the non-factualism about meaning proposed in the sceptical solution. It attempts to outline some desiderata that should be respected by interpretations of the sceptical solution and considers two objections raised against it in Barry Stroud’s paper “Wittgenstein on Meaning, Understanding and Community". It attempts to correct misconstruals of the sceptical solution that have been promulgated by Davidson and some of his followers and suggests that the sceptical solution developed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein is best viewed as a form of quasi-realism about meaning. It ends by outlining what it takes to be the most pressing challenges facing the sceptical solution.
References
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———, 2013a. “Deflationism, Pluralism, Expressivism, Pragmatism.” In Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, edited by Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen and Cory D. Wright, pp. 263–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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———, 1986. “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.” Reprinted in Davidson (2005), pp. 89–107.
———, 1990. “Meaning, Truth, and Evidence.” Reprinted in Davidson (2005), pp. 47–62.
———, 1991. “Three Varieties of Knowledge.” In Davidson (2001), pp. 205–37.
———, 1992. “The Second Person.” In Davidson (2001), pp. 107–22.
———, 2001. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 2005. Truth, Language, and History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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———, 1978. Truth and Other Enigmas. London: Duckworth.
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———, 2003. Thinking How to Live. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
———, 2012. Meaning and Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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McDowell, John, 1987. “Projectivism and Truth in Ethics.” In McDowell (1998), pp. 151–66.
———, 1998. Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
McGinn, Colin, 1984. Wittgenstein on Meaning. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
McNaughton, David, 1988. Moral Vision. Oxford: Blackwell.
Miller, Alexander, 2009. “Kripke’s Wittgenstein, Factualism and Meaning.” In The Later Wittgenstein on Language, edited by Daniel Whiting, pp. 167–90. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
———, 2013. Contemporary Metaethics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
———, 2017. “Postscript: Radical Interpretation.” In Hale, Wright and Miller (2017), pp. 317–23.
Miller, Alexander and Crispin Wright, eds., 2002. Rule-Following and Meaning. Chesham: Acumen.
Moore, G. E., 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Price, Huw, 2015. “From Quasi-Realism to Global Expressivism —and Back Again?” In Passions and Projections: Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn, edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith, pp. 134–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quine, W. V., 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Railton, Peter, 1986. “Moral Realism.” Philosophical Review 95: 163–207.
Stevenson, Charles Leslie, 1937. “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms.” Mind 16: 14–31.
Stroud, Barry, 1990. “Meaning, Understanding, and Community.” Reprinted in Meaning, Understanding and Practice, pp. 80–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Sultanescu, Olivia and Claudine Verheggen, 2019. “Davidson’s Answer to Kripke’s Sceptic.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 7(2): 7–28.
Verheggen, Claudine, 2016. “Language, Thought and Knowledge.” In Claudine Verheggen and Robert H. Myers. Donald Davidson’s Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry, pp. 9–115. New York: Routledge.
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<a href="https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/6204" target=_new>https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/6204</a>.
Wilson, George M., 1994. “Kripke’s Normativity Argument.” Reprinted in Miller and Wright (2002), pp. 234–59.
Wright, Crispin, 1984. “Kripke’s Account of the Argument against Private Language.” Reprinted in Wright (2001), pp. 91–115.
Wright, Crispin, 1989a. “Wittgenstein’s Rule-Following Considerations and the Central Project of Theoretical Linguistics.” Reprinted in Wright (2001), pp. 170–213.
———, 1989b. “Excerpts from a Critical Study of Colin McGinn’s Wittgenstein on Meaning.” In Wright (2001), pp. 143–69.
———, 1992. Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
———, 2001. Rails to Infinity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Ayer, A. J., 1946. Language, Truth and Logic, second edition. London: Victor Gollantz.
Blackburn, Simon, 1984a. Spreading the Word. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———, 1984b. “The Individual Strikes Back.” Reprinted in Miller and Wright (2002), pp. 28–44.
———, 1988. “Attitudes and Contents.” Reprinted in Blackburn (1993b), pp. 182–97.
———, 1993a. “Realism, Quasi, or Queasy?” In Reality, Representation, and Projection, edited by John Haldane and Crispin Wright, pp. 365–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 1993b. Essays in Quasi-Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 1998. Ruling Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 2011. “Pragmatism in Philosophy: The Hidden Alternative.” Philosophic Exchange 41: 1–14.
———, 2013a. “Deflationism, Pluralism, Expressivism, Pragmatism.” In Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, edited by Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen and Cory D. Wright, pp. 263–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 2013b. “Pragmatism, All or Some?” In Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism, edited by Huw Price, pp. 67–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boghossian, Paul, 1989. “The Rule-Following Considerations.” In Miller and Wright (2002), pp. 141–87.
Boyd, Daniel, 2017. “Semantic Non-Factualism in Kripke’s Wittgenstein.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5(9): 1–12.
Brink, David Owen, 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Butler, Finn, 2019. The Tenability of Meaning Irrealism. M. A. dissertation, University of Otago.
<a href="https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/9482" target=_new>https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/9482</a>.
Byrne, Alex, 1996. “On Misinterpreting Kripke’s Wittgenstein.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61: 339–43.
Darwall, Stephen, Allan Gibbard and Peter Railton, 1992. “Toward Fin de siècle Ethics: Some Trends.” Philosophical Review 101: 115–89.
Davidson, Donald, 1984. Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 1986. “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.” Reprinted in Davidson (2005), pp. 89–107.
———, 1990. “Meaning, Truth, and Evidence.” Reprinted in Davidson (2005), pp. 47–62.
———, 1991. “Three Varieties of Knowledge.” In Davidson (2001), pp. 205–37.
———, 1992. “The Second Person.” In Davidson (2001), pp. 107–22.
———, 2001. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, 2005. Truth, Language, and History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Davies, David, 1998. “How Sceptical is Kripke’s ‘Sceptical Solution’ ?” Philosophia 26: 119–40.
Dummett, Michael, 1959. “Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics.” Philosophical Review 68: 324–48.
———, 1978. Truth and Other Enigmas. London: Duckworth.
Fodor, Jerry, 1990. A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Gibbard, Allan, 1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
———, 2003. Thinking How to Live. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
———, 2012. Meaning and Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glüer, Kathrin, 2011. Donald Davidson: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glüer, Kathrin and Åsa Wikforss, 2018. “The Normativity of Meaning and Content.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2018 Edition, edited by Edward N. Zalta.
<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/meaning-normativity/" target=new>https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/meaning-normativity/</a>.
Hale, Bob, Crispin Wright and Alexander Miller, eds., 2017. A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, second edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hattiangadi, Anandi, 2017. “The Normativity of Meaning.” In Hale, Wright and Miller (2017), pp. 649–69.
Horwich, Paul, 1984. “Critical Notice of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.” Philosophy of Science 51: 163–71.
Kripke, Saul, 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Kusch, Martin, 2006. A Sceptical Guide to Meaning and Rules: Defending Kripke’s Wittgenstein. Chesham: Acumen.
Lepore, Ernest and Kirk Ludwig, 2005. Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Loar, Brian, 1985. “Review of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Saul Kripke.” Noûs 19: 273–80.
Mackie, J. L., 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
McArthur, David and Huw Price, 2007. “Pragmatism, Quasi-Realism, and the Global Challenge.” In New Pragmatists, edited by Cheryl Misak, pp. 91–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McDowell, John, 1987. “Projectivism and Truth in Ethics.” In McDowell (1998), pp. 151–66.
———, 1998. Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
McGinn, Colin, 1984. Wittgenstein on Meaning. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
McNaughton, David, 1988. Moral Vision. Oxford: Blackwell.
Miller, Alexander, 2009. “Kripke’s Wittgenstein, Factualism and Meaning.” In The Later Wittgenstein on Language, edited by Daniel Whiting, pp. 167–90. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
———, 2013. Contemporary Metaethics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.
———, 2017. “Postscript: Radical Interpretation.” In Hale, Wright and Miller (2017), pp. 317–23.
Miller, Alexander and Crispin Wright, eds., 2002. Rule-Following and Meaning. Chesham: Acumen.
Moore, G. E., 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Price, Huw, 2015. “From Quasi-Realism to Global Expressivism —and Back Again?” In Passions and Projections: Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn, edited by Robert N. Johnson and Michael Smith, pp. 134–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quine, W. V., 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Railton, Peter, 1986. “Moral Realism.” Philosophical Review 95: 163–207.
Stevenson, Charles Leslie, 1937. “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms.” Mind 16: 14–31.
Stroud, Barry, 1990. “Meaning, Understanding, and Community.” Reprinted in Meaning, Understanding and Practice, pp. 80–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Sultanescu, Olivia and Claudine Verheggen, 2019. “Davidson’s Answer to Kripke’s Sceptic.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 7(2): 7–28.
Verheggen, Claudine, 2016. “Language, Thought and Knowledge.” In Claudine Verheggen and Robert H. Myers. Donald Davidson’s Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry, pp. 9–115. New York: Routledge.
Wee Ming Kho, Daniel, 2015. Wittgenstein, Objectivity and Rule-Following: Towards Resolving the Communitarian vs. Individualist Debate. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Otago.
<a href="https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/6204" target=_new>https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/6204</a>.
Wilson, George M., 1994. “Kripke’s Normativity Argument.” Reprinted in Miller and Wright (2002), pp. 234–59.
Wright, Crispin, 1984. “Kripke’s Account of the Argument against Private Language.” Reprinted in Wright (2001), pp. 91–115.
Wright, Crispin, 1989a. “Wittgenstein’s Rule-Following Considerations and the Central Project of Theoretical Linguistics.” Reprinted in Wright (2001), pp. 170–213.
———, 1989b. “Excerpts from a Critical Study of Colin McGinn’s Wittgenstein on Meaning.” In Wright (2001), pp. 143–69.
———, 1992. Truth and Objectivity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
———, 2001. Rails to Infinity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
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