ESSAY SIXTEEN. Facts, Truth Conditions, and the Skeptical Solution to the Rule-Following Paradox

2009 ◽  
pp. 416-456
Keyword(s):  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Rule Following

scholarly journals Realist and antirealist interpretations of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Andrej Jandric
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
Semantic Realism ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Sceptical Paradox

The sceptical paradox which Kripke found in Wittgenstein?s rule-following considerations threatens the very notion of meaning. However, Kripke also offered a sceptical solution to it, according to which semantic sentences have no truth conditions, but their meaning is determined by assertability conditions instead. He presented Wittgenstein?s development as the abandoning of semantic realism of the Tractatus in favour of semantic antirealism, characteristic of Philosophical Investigations. Crispin Wright, although at points critical of Kripke?s interpretation, also understood the rule-following considerations as containing a crucial argument for antirealism. Contrary to Wright, John McDowell maintained that they offer a transcendental argument for realism. In this paper, I will argue that neither the realist nor the antirealist reading is faithfull to Wittgenstein, as his important conceptual distinction between criteria and symptoms is not adequately recoverable in any of them. Hence the upshot of rulefollowing considerations is that the distinction between realism and antirealism should not be articulated in terms of truth/assertability conditions.

Rule‐Following, Meaning, and Normativity

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
George M. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Skeptical Argument

This article starts out by delineating an interpretation of Kripke on Wittgenstein, an interpretation that seems to stand the best chance of fitting at least the basic concerns and insights expressed in the Investigations. In doing so, this article sketches a conception of meaning and truth conditions against which Wittgenstein's remarks are plausibly directed, and it explains how Kripke's reconstruction of Wittgenstein can be read as incorporating a broad attack on that conception. The interpretation with which the article opens offers what the article calls ‘the (merely) dramatic reading of the Skeptical Argument.’

Aboutness

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Yablo
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Library Science ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Major Advance ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Made In

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. However, it has played no real role in philosophical semantics, which is surprising. This is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection—about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. This book maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results—directed content—is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. The book represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.

On Rule-Following

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie McGinn
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Normative Constraint

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein raises difficulties for the idea that what comes before my mind when I hear, or suddenly understand, a word can impose any normative constraint on what I go on to do. The conclusion his reflections seem to force on us gives rise to a paradox: there is no such thing as going on to apply an expression in a way that accords with what is meant by it. The paradox can be seen as one horn of a dilemma, the other horn of which is Platonism about meaning. It is generally agreed that resolving the paradox means finding a middle course between the two horns of the dilemma. This chapter looks at three attempts to find the middle course: communitarianism, naturalized Platonism, and quietism. It then considers whether Charles Travis offers a way out of the dilemma which avoids the problems of the other views discussed.

Mechanisms and Causation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Glennan
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter motivates a theory of causation according to which causal claims are existential claims about mechanisms. The chapter begins with a review of the variety of causal claims, emphasizing the differences between singular and general claims, and between claims about causal production and claims about causal relevance. I then argue for singularism—the view that the truth-makers of general causal claims are facts about collections of singular and intrinsic causal relations, and specifically facts about the existence of particular mechanisms. Applying this account, I explore possible truth conditions for causal generalizations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship between mechanistic and manipulability approaches to causation. I argue that Woodward’s manipulability account provides valuable insights into the meaning of causal claims and the methods we use to assess them, but that the underlying truth-makers for the counterfactuals in that account are in fact mechanisms.

Causal Idealism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relation ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Causal Judgments

This chapter argues that causal idealism, the view that causation is a product of mental activity, is at least as attractive as several contemporary views of causation that incorporate human thought and agency into the causal relation. The chapter discusses three such views: contextualism, which holds that truth conditions for causal judgments are contextual; contrastivism, which holds that the causal relation is a quaternary relation between a cause, an effect, and contextually specified contrast classes for the cause and the effect; and pragmatism, which holds that causal claims are sensitive to pragmatic factors. This chapter suggests that causal idealism has at least as much explanatory strength as these three theories, and is more parsimonious and internally stable.

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