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Wittgenstein and the Transmission of Traditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
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In this country, we tend to look at Wittgenstein in a rather ahistorical way. We see his concerns as fundamentally logico-linguistic, following on first from the work of Frege and Russell, and then referring back indirectly to the concerns of the British empiricists, to those of Locke and Hume, say, on such matters as the reference of our talk about sensations and scepticism about the external world. Recently there has been considerable discussion of the extent to which Wittgenstein's own analysis of the private language and of rule-following might not itself be a new version of a fundamentally Humean scepticism: according to Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein's arguments amount to a demonstration that there is no more reason for speakers of a language to follow the rules governing the concepts of that language in the same way than on the Humean account there is any reason for an effect to follow its causes (Kripke, 1981).
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References
1 These remarks are quoted in his own translation by Malcolm (1989), 22.
2 Part of Wittgenstein's point here and at PI, I, 201 is to emphasize that rule-following is not to interpret a rule, with all the indeterminacy that implies, but to act on it. This is the basic reason why commonality of action must underlie concept-possession.
3 I erroneously argued in a similar way in O'Hear, (1980), 83–84Google Scholar and O'Hear, (1984), 207.Google Scholar
4 Cf. RFM, VI, 45. Wright, Crispin (1980), 32–38Google Scholar argues, correctly in my view, that one of Wittgenstein's prime targets in his analysis of rulefollowing and elsewhere is the idea that the subject has privileged access to the character of his own understanding. Not at all, Wright construes Wittgenstein as saying. All the subject can do is to intend sincerely to follow his initial use of a term. But it is always ‘conceivable that while seeming to myself to be using (a) word in a consistent way, my employment of it might actually be quite chaotic and irregular’ (p. 37). That is, I will take as right whatever seems to me to be right. Wright himself wants to reject this. He argues (pp. 381–384) that there is a crucial difference between the individual attempting in isolation to name his sensation and his attempting to follow rules about publicly observable enduring objects, such as in a game of chess. In the latter type of case, the individual can return to some written representation of his game and reason with himself about some possible failure to follow a rule, just as someone else will do if the individual belongs to a chess playing community, drawing attention to things a deviant rule-follower has overlooked and so on. I agree with Wright that there are important differences between sensations and enduring public objects. But to think these differences by themselves can lead to some account of private rule-following in the enduring object case is to overlook the extent that rule-following is based in blind reaction and not in reasoning, appraisal or reflective judgment. It seems to me that once one concedes to Wittgenstein that reaction comes before reasoning, the troubling conclusions he draws follow. And Wittgenstein surely is right in thinking that reasons in whatever field, including the logical and semantic, must come to an end. All we are left with is shared reaction, or the possibility of shared reaction.
5 OC, 505. On the whole issue of the connection between our normal objective certainty and what would remain true in any imaginable alterations in circumstances, cf. Malcolm, Norman's very perceptive essay ‘Certainty’ (Malcolm, 1986).Google Scholar
6 von Wright, G. H., ‘Wittgenstein in relation to his Times’ (McGuinness, 1982), 112.Google Scholar