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

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.

Semantic Realism, Actually

Michael Dummett offered a semantic characterisation of a variety of realism-antirealism debates. This approach has fallen out of fashion. This has been to the detriment of metaphysics. This paper offers an accurate characterisation of Dummett’s view, often lacking in the literature, and then defends it against a range of attacks (from Devitt, Miller and Williamson). This understanding of realism debates is resilient, and if we take it seriously the philosophical terrain looks importantly different. In particular, the philosophy of language has a foundational role with respect to metaphysics.

Truth, Objectivity, and Realism

This chapter is concerned with a semantic (as opposed to ontological) approach to metaphysics, developed by Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright, that takes truth as fundamental, and explicates debates about realisms in terms of truth. On this approach realism is fundamentally concerned with the objectivity of truth, where objectivity does not consist in the existence of entities. The chapter shows that Dummett worked with three separable criteria for the objectivity of truth, which support a subtle and flexible framework for characterizing various degrees of realism. It argues that Dummett’s so-called “manifestation” arguments against semantic realism can handle many objections that have been brought against them. It discusses Wright’s minimalism about truth, his four semantic criteria of realism, their inter-relations, and their connections to Dummett’s criteria. It concludes with reflections on the meta-philosophical status of the semantic approach: the reasons in favor of pursuing it and its adequacy to metaphysical reflection.

Realism and Antirealism

This article questions whether, once the conception of metaphysics as grounded in the philosophy of language has been jettisoned, Dummett's arguments against semantic realism can retain any relevance to the realist/antirealist debate. By focussing on realism about the external world as an example, it reaches the conclusion that even without Dummett's conception of philosophy as grounded in the theory of meaning, his arguments against semantic realism do retain a limited but nevertheless genuine significance for the metaphysical debate. It emerges, though, that a certain key assumption, connecting the notions of linguistic understanding and knowledge, and necessary if Dummett's arguments are to have even this limited significance, is both underexplained and underdefended. The article concludes with some brief remarks on the cogency of the manifestation argument against semantic realism.