“The Meaning of ‘Meaning is Normative’ ”

Problems of Normativity, Rules, and Rule-Following, 2015

In the three decades since the publication of Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language the claim that the meaning of linguistic expressions should be explained in normative terms has been one of the most debated issues in the analytic philosophy of language. A line of arguing against this claim that has gained prominence in the recent years starts off with the assumption that the norms that are involved in linguistic meanings must be either constitutive or prescriptive.

Mind, 2009

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

"You must bear in mind that the language game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean: it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable). It is there-like our life."-On Certainty §559 In the now longstanding debate over positivism, Wittgenstein has appeared to many social and political theorists as offering an alternative to the impossible choice between objectivism and subjectivism. Wittgenstein's account of rules and rule-following, it is said, offers a third way that takes into account the (subjectivist) notion of the unique or meaningful nature of human thought and action, without relinquishing the (objectivist) idea that normativity necessarily transcends individuals, their actual practices of speaking and acting. Accordingly, Wittgenstein is seen as replacing the positivist's law-governed (nomothetic) view of human speech and action with a rule-governed account that does not reduce meaning to individual subjective states. This course interrogates this view of Wittgenstein and his legacy by taking up the "therapeutic reading" of his work pioneered by Stanley Cavell. Rather than advance an alternative theory of the conditions of possibility of linguistic meaning, Wittgenstein elucidates our captivation by a "picture" of the normative structures that must underwrite everything that humans can meaningfully do or say.

2007

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (3):376-395., 2015

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic problem. Thus, we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false.

Philosophical Topics , 2022

Platitudes about meaning -Using the word 'approximate' to say of a town that it is nearby, or using the word 'chordate' to refer to string musical instruments, is wrong: that is not what such words mean, hence, it is not how they ought to be used. Though there are many more, and quite different, ways of going wrong in using a natural language, it is probably platitudes like these that originate the idea of semantic normativity. The idea is that statements of meaning ("w means such and such") 1 are normative statements, or, perhaps, entail such statements. E.g. when we say that 'profligate' means completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness (Merriam-Webster's 1997), we assert (or imply) that a speaker may use 'profligate' only to describe people that are completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness (or perhaps, that the speaker believes to be such -more on this later). 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).

‘Elusive Normativity’ deals with the nature of normativity in general and the normativity and the nature of law in particular. The first part of the paper contains a review of Stefano Bertea’s book The Normative Claim of Law. In this book Bertea aims to do two things. First he defends the view that the law makes a normative claim on us. And second he aims to found this normative claim. The main conclusion about this book is that Bertea either made it too hard on himself by arguing what would be obvious given one interpretation of his starting point, or made it too easy by devoting little attention to arguing one of his assumptions given another interpretation of his starting point. One of the main assumptions of Bertea’s book is that the normativity which the law according to Bertea claims to have cannot be reduced to matters of fact, such as the psychology of the law users. The second part of this paper is mainly devoted to a scrutiny of this assumption. Whether, and in what manner, such a ‘reduction’ is possible are the questions which guide this second part. The conclusion is that such a reduction is possible if one takes a constructivist approach to normative justification.

As supporters of 'constructivist' approaches to ontology, we do not believe that the line between ontology and methodology is anything other than arbitrary. 4 Deleuze and Guallari 1984: 151 [italics in original]

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2010

This paper sketches a particular line of criticism targeted at Scanlon's account of a normative reason, which is purported to kill two birds with one stone: to raise doubts about the plausibility of Scanlon's account of a normative reason and, next, to dismiss Scanlon's conception of what a normative reason is in the role of an argument for semantic normativism. Following Whiting I take semantic normativism to be the view, according to which linguistic meaning is intrinsi-cally normative. The key argument for semantic normativism is that a word or expression has conditions for its correct use which count, or speak in favour of using it in certain ways and not in others. Specifically, it has immediate implications for how a subject should or may (not) employ that expression. I shall argue that if the favouring format of the analysis of a normative reason is not a particularly happy proposal in itself, then it supplies a superficial support for semantic normativism.

In this paper, we will unpack a core strand in the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein as understood by John McDowell. Wittgenstein defends the picture of concept-application, the practice of acting in accord with the meaning of a concept, as such an enterprise is ordinarily understood by its practitioners. Such ordinary intuitions regard language, contextually meaningful behavior, and thought, as objectively constrained activities. That is, the practice of applying concepts to particular circumstances is normative- subject to standards of right and wrong which are independent of the practitioners’ conceptions of those standards. Wittgenstein rejects the premise that for any such picture to obtain requires that concept-application be answerable (capable of being judged as right or wrong from the perspective of) to a description of reality which does not presuppose categories of meaning and understanding available through learning concepts. Such a picture of reality as logically independent from the concept of normativity is problematic on its own terms, and is unnecessary for concept-application to be subject to standards of right and wrong which transcend practitioners’ conceptions. In its place, we present McDowell’s understanding of standards as internal to the practices we learn when we learn to cognitively engage the world. Central to this understanding is the idea that there is a logical relationship between classifications for accord being unreflectively available to a practitioner and the concept of rule following. At the basis of following a rule is a ‘blind obedience’ to what is given to the practitioners as in accord with the rule (‘knowing which direction a street sign points’). Such blind obedience does not stand in need of justification because part of the concept of what it is for there to be meaningful engagement with the world is for there to be a ground outside the spheres of justifications. We then revisit the notion of normativity, to understand how classifications for accord which are internal to our practices can meet the stringent requirements described in the opening section.

2010

Survey of some recent literature on normativity, including nonreductionist, neo-Aristotelian, neo-Humean, expressivist, and constructivist views.

Theoria-revista De Teoria Historia Y Fundamentos De La Ciencia, 2004

Physical laws are irresistible. Logical rules are not. That is why logic is said to be normative. Given a system of logic we have a Norma, a standard of correctness. The problem is that we need another Norma to establish when the standard of correctness is to be applied. Subsequently we start by clarifying the senses in which the term 'logic' and the term 'normativity' are being used. Then we explore two different epistemologies for logic to see the sort of defence of the normativity of logic they allow for; if any. The analysis concentrates on the case of classical logic. In particular the issue will be appraised from the perspective put forward by the epistemology based on the methodology of wide reflective equilibrium and the scientific one underlying the view of logic as model.

Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, 2008

Minds and Machines, 1999

In a recent paper, Paul Coates defends a sophisticated dispositional account which allegedly resolves the sceptical paradox developed by Kripke in his monograph on Wittgenstein's treatment of following a rule (Kripke, 1982). Coates' account appeals to a ...