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
13 - The Meaning of Meaning Ascriptions
Assertibility Conditions and Meaning Facts*
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
Kripke finds in Wittgenstein an argument for the conclusion that there are no meaning facts and considers the consequences of this outcome for the meaning of meaning-ascribing sentences. One immediate consequence is that their meaning cannot be given by their truth conditions. Kripke proposes instead that meaning ascriptions obtain their meaning from (i) their assertibility conditions and (ii) the non-representational function that the practice of asserting these sentences in these conditions plays in our lives, accepting that these sentences can’t play the role of representing the world. I present a strategy for avoiding this outcome. Meaning ascriptions obtain their meanings from their assertibility conditions, but they successfully perform the function of representing the world. The states of affairs they represent can be singled out with definitions by abstraction, using the synonymy conditions generated by their assertibility conditions. When meaning facts are construed in this way, the argument that Kripke finds in Wittgenstein does not establish that they don’t exist.
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- Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40 , pp. 238 - 258Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024