Kripke’s Wittgenstein and Semantic Factualism

Philosophical Investigations, 2005

Erkenntnis, 2021

The paradox of rule-following that Saul Kripke finds in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations purports to show that words and thoughts have no content—that there is no intentionality. This paper refutes the paradox with a dilemma. Intentional states are posited in rational explanations, which use propositional attitudes to explain actions and thoughts. Depending on which of the two plausible views of rational explanation is right, either: the paradox is mistaken about the a priori requirements for content; or, a fatal flaw in content ascription alleged by the paradox is not a flaw at all, but a necessary component of the proper method of propositional-attitude ascription. On either lemma, rational explanation defuses the paradox.

2019

The Kripke-Wittgenstein (KW) sceptical argument, presented in Chapter 2 of Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), concludes that there are no meaning facts. While realism has been denied for a great many subject matters, the meaning irrealism motivated by KW’s argument has particularly farreaching consequences. This thesis is an investigation into some of these consequences, in an effort to determine what is at stake in accepting the argument as sound. In Chapter 2, I summarise the argument, assume that it is sound, and consider the consequences for one particular body of talk: discourse about meaning itself. Three models for characterising that discourse are canvassed: error-theory, non-factualism, and mere minimalism. The latter characterisation is made available by adopting the framework for realism debates proposed by Crispin Wright in Truth and Objectivity (1992), of which I give an exposition in Chapter 1. I find in Chapter 2 that the three models of meani...

2017

This thesis is an attempt to investigate the relation between the views of Wittgenstein as presented by Kripke (Kripke's Wittgenstein) and Donald Davidson on meaning and linguistic understanding. Kripke's Wittgenstein, via his sceptical argument, argues that there is no fact about which rule a speaker is following in using a linguistic expression. Now, if one urges that meaning something by a word is essentially a matter of following one rule rather than another, the sceptical argument leads to the radical sceptical conclusion that there is no such thing as meaning anything by any word. According to First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my primary supervisor, Prof. Alex Miller, for the continuous support of my Ph.D study, for his encouragement, patience, and motivation throughout my research project. Without his precious guidance and counsel, this thesis would not have been possible. I would also like to thank my secondary supervisor Assoc. Prof. Greg Dawes for his advice and helpful comments on the drafts of the thesis. I am grateful to Prof. Penelope Mackie for her insightful feedback on the thesis. For their helpful discussions, I would also like to thank Dr. Kirk Michaelian, Prof. Rod Girle, and Prof. Max Cresswell. I wish to express my appreciation to my friends who have contributed and supported me by their stimulating discussions, especially Daniel Wee, Takahiro Yamada, and Ali Kalantari. I owe a special thank you to my family, to my mother, for her constant patience, love, and care, and to my brothers and sister for supporting me in whatever way they could during my study. I especially thank my brother, Hassan, for always being there to support me in every difficult decision I have made. Most importantly, I would like to express my appreciation to my wife and best friend, Saeedeh Shahmir, who has always been a constant source of strength and inspiration for me. Without her continuous encouragement and support, I would not have been able to complete this thesis at all. I am also grateful to the University of Otago for financially supporting this thesis by granting me a University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship. vi vii 1.5.5. The Role and Utility of Our Linguistic Practices .

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M. Gustafsson, O. Kuusela & J. Mácha (eds.), Engaging Kripke with Wittgenstein. Routledge. , 2023

This article aims to show that the alleged incompatibility of the views of Wittgenstein and Kripke is sometimes more specious than real. It is suggested that there are, underneath the surface, interesting points of contact between these two philosophers. Kripke’s views on names and reference are arguably not vulnerable to Wittgenstein’s critique of “the Augustinian Picture of Language” and of ostensive definitions. The attitudes of these two philosophers towards theories in philosophy are not as dissimilar as many have quickly judged either. Certain “Wittgensteinian” critiques of Kripke and popular interpretations of Kripke which exaggerate his commitment to extreme natural kind essentialism are critically assessed. The nature of Kripke’s disputed idea on necessary a posteriori is clarified. It is suggested that perhaps Wittgenstein was not as unequivocally a semantic internalist as some of his ardent followers have insisted.

Minds and Machines, 2003

A central part of Kripke's influential interpretation of Wittgenstein's sceptical argument about meaning is the rejection of dispositional analyses of what it is for a word to mean what it does . In this paper I show that Kripke's arguments prove too much: if they were right, they would preclude not only the idea that dispositional properties can make statements about the meanings of words true, but also the idea that dispositional properties can make true statements about paradigmatic dispositional properties such as a cup's fragility or a person's bravery. However, since dispositional properties can make such statements true, Kripke-Wittgenstein's arguments against dispositionalism about meaning are mistaken.

European Journal of Philosophy, 2017

This paper argues that Wittgenstein opposed theories of meaning, and did so for good reasons. Theories of meaning, in the sense discussed here, are attempts to explain what makes it the case that certain sounds, shapes, or movements are meaningful linguistic expressions. It is widely believed that Wittgenstein made fundamental contributions to this explanatory project. I argue, by contrast, that in both his early and later work, Wittgenstein endorsed a disjunctivist conception of language which rejects the assumption underlying the question that such theories seek to answer—namely, the assumption that the notion of a meaningful linguistic expression admits of non-circular analysis. Moreover, I give two arguments in favor of the view I ascribe to Wittgenstein: one based on later Wittgenstein's discussion of meaning skepticism, and one based on considerations concerning the identity of linguistic expressions.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Although Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally more known for his works on logic and on the nature of language, but throughout his philosophical journey he reflected extensively also on epistemic notions such as knowledge, belief, doubt, and certainty. This interest is more evident in his final notebook, published posthumously as On Certainty (1969, henceforth OC), where he offers a sustained and, at least apparently, fragmentary treatment of epistemological issues. Given the ambiguity and obscurity of this work, written under the direct influence of G. E. Moore’s A Defense of Commonsense (1925, henceforth DCS) and Proof of an External World (1939, henceforth PEW), in the recent literature on the subject, we can find a number of competing interpretations of OC; at first, this article presents the uncontentious aspects of Wittgenstein’s views on skepticism, that is, his criticisms against Moore’s use of the expression “to know” and his reflections on the artificial nature of the skeptical challenge. Then it introduces the elusive concept of “hinges,” central to Wittgenstein’s epistemology and his views on skepticism; and it offers an overview of the dominant “Wittgenstein-inspired” anti-skeptical strategies along with the main objections raised against these proposals. Finally, it briefly sketches the recent applications of Wittgenstein’s epistemology in the contemporary debate on skepticism.

Australasian Philosophical Review, 2018

My topic is Wittgenstein's eventual abandonment of his Tractatus idea that a sentence is true if and only if it depicts a possible fact that obtains, and his coming (in the Investigations) to replace this with a deflationary view of truth. Three objections to the initial idea that will be discussed here are: (i) that its theory of 'depiction' relies on an unexplicated concept of word-object reference; (ii) that its notion of a possible fact obtaining (or existing, or being actual, or agreeing with reality) is also left mysterious; and (iii) that Wittgenstein's conception of possible atomic facts makes it difficult to see how any of them could fail to be actual. These problems are resolved by deflationism. But that perspective could not have been incorporated into the Tractatus. For the view of 'meaning qua use', on which deflationism depends, was the key insight enabling Wittgenstein to appreciate the untenability of his other central Tractarian doctrines. I'll conclude the paper with an examination of José Zalabardo's quite different reading of the book, and indicate where and why I'm not persuaded by it.

Acta Analytica, 2023

The skeptical solution is based on two assumptions-the rejection of semantic facts and the denial of semantic nihilism. On the basis of the non-factualist interpretation of this solution, these two assumptions are reconciled by stating that meaning ascriptions possess non-descriptive function. Nonetheless, Alexander Miller argues that this position is self-refuting since, as despite its non-descriptivism, by rejecting any kind of semantic facts, it inevitably leads to semantic nihilism. In this text, I demonstrate that Miller's argument is not sound. I argue that a coherent non-factualist way of formulating the conditions of correct use of meaning ascriptions may be performed by rejecting the closure principle of assertibility of meaning ascriptions. On this basis, I demonstrate that argument formulated against non-factualist interpretation by Miller may be refuted. What is more, I argue that rejection of the closure principle should be regarded as the central aspect of Kripke's skeptical solution.

Wittgenstein-Studien, Internationales Jahrbuch für Wittgenstein-Forschung, Nueva York-Kassel, Walter de Gruyter, 2010

In order to consider whether Wittgenstein's strategy in relation to scepticism succeeds or fails, I examine his approach to certainty. As part of this general objective, I establish a comparison between the different uses of language that Wittgenstein mentions in On Certainty, and his distinction between what has sense (is meaningful), what lacks it (is senseless), and what is absurd (is nonsense) in the Tractatus. In my opinion, this comparison has three advantages: first, it allows the role of the so-called special propositions in On Certainty to be clarified; second, it illuminates the relationship between some features that belong to special propositions in On Certainty and the characteristics that define what is senseless in the Tractatus; and, last, it shows the status of what some interpreters, like Peter Hacker, have denominated ‘insightful nonsense’ in the Tractatus. On the nature of nonsense, I believe in an intermediate position between on the one hand the traditional or standard interpretations of the Tractatus in this regard of, for example, Peter Hacker (1986, 2000), Elisabeth Anscombe (1971), Robert Fogelin (1976), David Pears (1986), and Brian McGuinness (2002a, 2002b and 1993), and on the other, the so-called new, resolute or austere interpretations of it of Cora Diamond (1991, 2000 and 2004), James Conant (1993, 2000 and 2004), and Alice Crary (2000a), among others. In general, the results of this comparison support the thesis that Wittgenstein’s work, beyond its distinction in different periods, has a conceptual continuity.

Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40, 2024

The final version is published in Claudine Verheggen, ed., Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language at 40 (Cambridge University Press 2024), pp. 107-123 Kripke's requirement on being warranted in asserting a sentence Recall Kripke's central example, in which we calculate for the first time the sum 68 + 57 and arrive at the answer 125. He writes, Ordinarily, I suppose that, in computing '68 + 57' as I do, I do not simply make an unjustified leap in the dark. I follow directions I previously gave myself that uniquely determine that in this new instance I should say '125'. (WRPL: 10) Kripke, in his role as meaning skeptic, then poses a skeptical challenge: could it not be that in the past, and perhaps even only a brief moment ago, just before I started calculating, I meant quus by '+', where quus is a function that yields the same values as the addition function for arguments less than 68 but yields the value 5 otherwise? If this is logically possible, as Kripke's meaning skeptic supposes, then if it is false there must be a fact that determines that it is false. Kripke challenges us to specify the fact, if any, that rules out that I meant quus by '+'. He then states the conditions that any adequate answer to the skeptical challenge must satisfy: An answer to the skeptic must satisfy two conditions. First, it must give an account of what fact it is (about my mental state) that constitutes my meaning plus, not quus. But further, … any putative candidate for such a fact must … in some sense, show how I am justified in giving the answer '125' to '68+57'. The 'directions' mentioned [in the above quotation] … that determine what I should do in each instance, must somehow be 'contained' in any candidate for the fact as to what I meant. Otherwise, the skeptic has not been answered when he holds that my present response is arbitrary.

Dialectica, 2005

I argue that Wittgenstein's rejection of scepticism in On Certainty rests on the view that epistemic concepts such as 'doubt,' 'knowledge,' 'justification,' and so on, cannot be intelligibly applied to the common sense propositions that traditional sceptical arguments appear to undermine. I detect two strands in On Certainty in support of this view. I attempt to show tha t neither of these strands adequately establishes the thesis, and that they point to a tension in Wittgenstein's treatment of scepticism. I argue that the first strand is dogmatic, but accords with the constraints of Wittgenstein's method, while the second strand avoids the dogmatism of the first at the cost of violating these constraints.

Kriterion-Journal of Philosophy

In this paper, I present and criticize a number of influential anti-skeptical strategies inspired by Wittgenstein's remarks on 'hinges'. Furthermore, I argue that, following Wittgenstein's analogy between 'hinges' and 'rules of grammar', we should be able to get rid of Cartesian skeptical scenarios as nonsensical, even if apparently intelligible, combinations of signs.