Book contents
- Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40
- Cambridge Philosophical Anniversaries
- Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s Skepticism about Rules and Meaning
- 2 Putting Wittgenstein Back into Kripkenstein:
- 3 Answering Kripke’s Skeptic
- 4 Wittgensteinean Notions of Uniformity and Kripkensteinean Skepticism
- 5 Wittgenstein’s Naturalism and the Skeptical Paradox
- 6 Kripke and Wittgenstein on Rules and Meaning
- 7 Semantic Normativity, Properly So Called
- 8 What Is the Skeptical Problem? Wittgenstein’s Response to Kripke
- 9 How Not to Brush Questions under the Rug
- 10 Quadders and Zombies
- 11 Communitarianism, Interpersonalism, and Individualism in Kripke’s “Skeptical Solution”
- 12 “Considered in Isolation”
- 13 The Meaning of Meaning Ascriptions
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Putting Wittgenstein Back into Kripkenstein:
Meaning Skepticism and Knowing How to Go On
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 February 2024
- Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40
- Cambridge Philosophical Anniversaries
- Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s Skepticism about Rules and Meaning
- 2 Putting Wittgenstein Back into Kripkenstein:
- 3 Answering Kripke’s Skeptic
- 4 Wittgensteinean Notions of Uniformity and Kripkensteinean Skepticism
- 5 Wittgenstein’s Naturalism and the Skeptical Paradox
- 6 Kripke and Wittgenstein on Rules and Meaning
- 7 Semantic Normativity, Properly So Called
- 8 What Is the Skeptical Problem? Wittgenstein’s Response to Kripke
- 9 How Not to Brush Questions under the Rug
- 10 Quadders and Zombies
- 11 Communitarianism, Interpersonalism, and Individualism in Kripke’s “Skeptical Solution”
- 12 “Considered in Isolation”
- 13 The Meaning of Meaning Ascriptions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Most readings of the meaning skepticism Kripke ascribes to Wittgenstein understand it as metaphysical. The threat to meaning is supposed to follow immediately from the impossibility of citing facts in which meaning consists. I offer an alternative, epistemological, reading that is closer to Wittgenstein. What threatens meaning is the worry that, when I use an expression on any given occasion, I cannot know that my use conforms to previous uses of the expression; instead, in Wittgenstein’s terms, I go on “blindly,” without the understanding which is necessary for meaningful use. This reading makes for a stronger skeptical argument, in that it blocks the non-reductionist response of taking meaning facts to be primitive. But the argument, on this reading, can still be answered: not by citing meaning facts but by showing that I can know how to go on with an expression without needing to appeal to what the expression means.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024