Alexander B. Miller

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on rule-following—principally, sections 138–242 of Philosophical Investigations and section VI of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics—raise a series of provoking questions and puzzles about the nature of language and thought. The literature on this topic is vast. We’ll structure our discussion around Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), the most widely discussed commentary on Wittgenstein on rule-following. In this book, Kripke’s Wittgenstein famously develops a “sceptical challenge” to the idea that that there are facts about the meanings of linguistic expressions and contents of thoughts, and goes on to propose a “sceptical solution” to the challenge, which attempts to preserve the propriety of talk of meaning and content while conceding to the sceptic the non-existence of the kind of semantic or intentional facts on which she casts doubt. After some preliminary comments about rules, meaning, and content (§1), we’ll outline the sceptical argument (§2), and we’ll offer an overview of some of the main responses to it. First, we’ll discuss sceptical responses of the sort proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein himself (§3). Then, we’ll consider straight responses, which advance candidate meaning-constituting facts. We’ll examine in detail the two forms of straight solution that are most widely discussed in the secondary literature, reductive dispositionalism (§4) and non-reductionism (§5).

“Providing up-to-date, in-depth coverage of the central question, and written and edited by some of the foremost practitioners in the field, this timely new edition will no doubt be a go-to reference for anyone with a serious interest in the philosophy of language.” _Kathrin Glüer-Pagin, Stockholm University_ Now published in two volumes, the second edition of the best-selling _Companion to the Philosophy of Language_ provides a complete survey of contemporary philosophy of language. The Companion has been greatly extended and now includes a monumental 17 new essays – with topics chosen by the editors, who curated suggestions from current contributors – and almost all of the 25 original chapters have been updated to take account of recent developments in the field. In addition to providing a synoptic view of the key issues, figures, concepts, and debates, each essay introduces new and original contributions to ongoing debates, as well as addressing a number of new areas of interest, including two-dimensional semantics, modality and epistemic modals, and semantic relationism. The extended “state-of-the-art” chapter format allows the authors, all of whom are internationally eminent scholars in the field, to incorporate original research to a far greater degree than competitor volumes. Unrivaled in scope, this volume represents the best contemporary critical thinking relating to the philosophy of language.

Paul Boghossian has argued, on grounds concerning the holistic nature of belief fixation, that there are principled reasons for thinking that 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism about content cannot hope to satisfy a condition of extensional accuracy. I discern three separable strands of argument in Boghossian's work—the circularity objection, the open-endedness objection, and the certification objection—and argue that each of these objections fails. My conclusion is that for all that Boghossian has shown, 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

This introduction provides a highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth-century and contemporary metaethics. It traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent arguments between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and non-cognitivism. A highly readable critical overview of the main arguments and themes in twentieth century and contemporary metaethics. Asks: Are there moral facts? Is there such a thing as moral truth? Is moral knowledge possible? Traces the development of contemporary debates in metaethics from their beginnings in the work of G. E. Moore up to the most recent debates between naturalism and non-naturalism, cognitivism and noncognitivism. Provides for the first time a critical survey of famous figures in twentieth century metaethics such as Moore, Ayer and Mackie together with in-depth discussions of contemporary philosophers such as Blackburn, Gibbard, Wright, Harman, Railton, Sturgeon, McDowell and Wiggins.

The rule-following debate, in its concern with the metaphysics and epistemology of linguistic meaning and mental content, goes to the heart of the most fundamental questions of contemporary philosophy of mind and language. This volume gathers together the most important contributions to the topic, including papers by Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Graeme Forbes, Warren Goldfarb, Paul Horwich, John McDowell, Colin McGinn, Ruth Millikan, Philip Pettit, George Wilson, and José Zalabardo. This debate has centred on Saul Kripke's reading of the rule-following sections in Wittgenstein and his consequent posing of a "sceptical paradox" that threatens our every day notions of linguistic meaning and mental content. These essays are attempts to respond to this challenge and represent some of the most important work in contemporary theory of meaning. They examine the notion of meaning; whether it is possible to find a suitable meaning-constituting fact from our previous behaviour or mental histories; objections to, and defenses of, dispositional accounts of meaning; the plausibility of non-factualism about meaning; our attempts to develop non-reductionist accounts of meaning; and the sources of the normativity which attaches to meaning, such as the linguistic practice of the community or the dispositions of the individual. With an introductory essay and a comprehensive guide to further reading the book is an excellent resource for courses in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, Wittgenstein, and metaphysics, as well as for all philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists with interests in these areas. Contributors include Simon Blackburn (University of Cambridge), Paul Boghossian (New York University), Graeme Forbes (Tulane University), Warren Goldfarb (Harvard University), Paul Horwich (City University of New York), John McDowell (University of Pittsburgh), Colin McGinn (Rutgers University), Alexander Miller, Ruth Garrett Millikan (University of Connecticut), Philip Pettit (Princeton University), George. M. Wilson (University of California, Davis), Crispin Wright, and José L. Zalabardo (University College London).

This paper explores the prospects for using the notion of a primitive normative attitude in responding to the sceptical argument about meaning developed in chapter 2 of Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. It takes as its stalking-horse the response to Kripke’s Wittgenstein developed in a recent series of important works by Hannah Ginsborg. The paper concludes that Ginsborg’s attempted solution fails for a number of reasons: it depends on an inadequate response to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s ‘finitude’ objection to reductive dispositionalism; it erroneously rejects the idea that a speaker’s understanding of an expression guides her use; it threatens to collapse into either full-blown non-reductionism or reductive dispositionalism; and there is no motive for accepting it over forms of non-reductionism such as those developed by Barry Stroud and John McDowell.