Against Content Normativity
Åsa Wikforss2009, Mind
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Abstract
normativity of belief ultimately fail. CD normativism, in turn, falls prey to the 'dilemma of regress and idleness': the appeal to rules either leads to some form of regress of rules, or the notion of rule following is reduced to an idle label. We conclude by suggesting that our arguments do not support naturalism: It is a mistake to assume that normativism and naturalism are our only options. Not long ago, 'meaning is normative' was the battle cry of the day. This was largely the result of the enthusiastic reception of Saul Kripke's book on Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations. There, Kripke argued that meaning is normative in the sense that it essentially involves certain 'oughts'. A candidate for what constitutes the state of my meaning something by a sign, Kripke argued, has to be such that "whatever in fact I (am disposed to) do, there is a unique thing that I should do." 1 This claim struck many people not only as true but also as teaching us something profoundly important about the nature of linguistic meaning. It was suggested that theories of meaning that do not allow for any genuine
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Views like this have been endorsed by many philosophers. 2 In recent decades, the normativity claim has been often identified with Saul Kripke's particular version of it (Kripke 1982), which, however, concerns speaker's meaning ("S means such-and-such by word w") rather than linguistic meaning ("w means such-and-such (in language L)"). In recent decades, the normativity claim has been challenged by philosophers such as Anandi Hattiangadi, Kathrin Glüer, Åsa Wikforss, and Paul Boghossian. Though I disagree with these authors, and side in many respects with critics such as Jaroslav Peregrin (2012) and Daniel Whiting (2009Whiting ( , 2016)), in this paper I will only occasionally discuss their views. Instead, I will focus on what I take to be a more powerful objection against the inherent normativity of meaning, stemming from the identification of meaning with use. I will propose an abstract model of the connection of social practices and social norms (partly inspired by Lewis 1975), and suggest reasons why such a model applies to natural languages. Finally, I will propose a new relational structure for meaning, normativity, and regular use. The thesis that meaning is a normative notion has been traditionally attributed to the later Wittgenstein. 3 However, as so often, it is not easy to find a clear, fully explicit statement of the thesis in Wittgenstein's later writings. No doubt, since the early Thirties Wittgenstein insisted that meaning (e.g. of a word) is "constituted" by "grammatical rules" (Moore 1993: 51). As a pawn in chess may be identified with the rules by which it is moved, 4 similarly "in language the rules of syntax define the logical element in a word" (Wittgenstein 1967a: 134); a word has no meaning previous to, or independent of such rules (Wittgenstein 2009, p.155, note(b)). Later, Wittgenstein admitted that a game need not be "everywhere bounded by rules" (2009, §68), which, however, does not entail that such a game would be "unregulated" ("No more are there any rules for how high one may throw the ball in tennis, or how hard, yet tennis is a game for all that, and has rules too", ib.). That meanings are constituted by rules (or even are rules) can be interpreted in two different ways. The claim may be that meanings can be identified by compact descriptions of regularities of use (of sounds and scripts); 5 or it may be that meanings should be identified with norms governing the use of such sounds and scripts. Wittgenstein appears to have inclined to the latter view: "Rules are -in a sense-statements: they say: you may do such and such, whereas that you may not do" (1967a: 119-20); "If a rule of the game prescribes that the kings are to be used for drawing lots before a game of chess, then that is an essential part of the game" (Wittgenstein 2009, §567, it. added). Of course, even if rules are understood as norms, they are not categorical norms: as there is no categorical obligation to play chess, neither is there a categorical obligation to speak some language L, hence to follow the rules that characterize L (cf. Wittgenstein 1969Wittgenstein , §133 [= 1967b, §320] 6 and 2009, §81). Norms of language are conditional upon the intention of speaking a language L and counting as speaking L. For contrast, consider a different view that has also been mentioned in connection with semantic normativity (e.g. Peregrin 2012, Glüer, Wikforss 2018), namely Wilfrid Sellars's (1974). Sellars sees the use of a language as pattern governed behavior that is induced by training: "The trainer knows the rules which govern the correct functioning of the language. The language learner begins by conforming to these rules without grasping them himself" (1974: 422, my italics). The linguistic abilities that are acquired (if the training is successful, as it normally is) engender behavior that is not just acquired as, but remains pattern governed behavior: it is correct or incorrect "not as actions are correct or incorrect, but as events that are not actions are correct or incorrect" (p.423). Sellars's example is "the correctness of feeling sorrow for someone who is bereaved". 4 "I cannot say, "This is a pawn and such-and-such rules hold for this piece". Rather, it is only the rules of the game that define this piece. A pawn is the sume of the rules according to which it moves". 5 E.g. by what Horwich calls 'acceptance properties', see below. 6 "You cook badly if you are guided in cooking by rules other than the right ones; but...if you follow grammatical rules other than such-and-such ones, that doesn't mean you say something wrong, no, you are speaking of something else". Such a firm (re-)statement of the essential connection between meaning such-and-such and following such-and-such rules comes from a typescript dictated in 1945 or 1946. This appears to contradict Glüer's and Wikforss's contention that the latest Wittgenstein came to believe that "the analogy between meaning and rule...spells disaster when taken literally" (2010: 164).
Meaning Normativism: Against the Simple Argument
Organon F, 2015
The paper examines a central argument in support of the thesis that mean- ing is essentially normative. The argument tries to derive meaning normativism from the fact that meaningful expressions necessarily have conditions of correct application: Since correctness is a normative notion, it is argued, statements of correctness condi- tions for an expression have direct normative consequences for the use of that expres- sion. We have labeled this the 'simple argument', and have argued that it fails. In this paper we elaborate on our objections to the argument in response to Daniel Whiting's recent attempt to rescue it. We argue, first, that statements of correctness conditions simply allow us to categorize the applications of an expression into two basic kinds (for instance, the true and the false) without this having any normative implications; and, second, that the normativist has not provided any reasons to think that some further, normative notion of semantic correctne...
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