Meaning, Dispositions and Normativity

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1992

RIFL, 2018

This paper focuses on Wittgenstein's use of the notion of disposition. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein characterizes understanding as a mastery of a technique. This is a dispositional notion and many scholars have rightly presented dispositional readings of Wittgenstein's later philosophy in virtue of his remarks on meaning and understanding. Wittgenstein seems to suggest that understanding the meaning of a word is best characterized as having the disposition to correctly use that word, that is, as knowing how to employ the word. However, scholars think that the notion of disposition as an ability-even if it is correctly 'applicable' -is not endorsed by Wittgenstein, because they think that he had in mind a narrow and materialistic conception of disposition as a state of a physical apparatus. This paper argues that Wittgenstein does not endorse a materialistic and narrow conception of disposition. By contrast, Wittgenstein criticizes one particular misleading use of the concept and he actively employs a de-naturalised notion of disposition as acquired ability, or embodied practice.

2014

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.

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 expressions 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.

GAP.6: Selected Papers Contributed to the Sections of the Sixth International Congress of the German Society for Analytic Philosophy

Sophisticated dispositionalism proposes a naturalist reduction of mental content by claiming that the semantic content of a mental symbol is determined by the causes of the occurrence of this symbol under ideal conditions, i.e., conditions under which only the referent of a symbol can cause its tokening. However, Paul Boghossian developed the open-endedness objection in order to show that it is not possible to specify these ideal conditions in non-semantic terms, entailing that the naturalist reduction of mental content proposed by sophisticated dispositionalism is not viable. My goal in this paper is to argue that the open-endedness objection is flawed.

Philosophical Investigations, 2005

Filozofija i drustvo, 2014

Despite persistent attempts to defend Kripke's argument (Kripke 1982), analyses of this argument seem to be reaching a consensus that it is characterized by fatal flaws in both its interpretation of Wittgenstein and its argument of meaning independent of interpretation. Most scholars who do not agree with Kripke's view have directly contrasted his understanding of Wittgenstein (KW) with Wittgenstein's own perspective (LW) in or after Philosophical Investigations (PI). However, I believe that those who have closely read both PI and Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language with out any preconceptions have a different impression from the one that is gen erally accepted: that KW does not directly oppose LW. Indeed, KW seems to present one aspect of LW with precision, although the impression that KW deviates from LW in some respects remains unavoidable.

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).

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2019

being in an intentional state, such as having a belief or an intention, includes having a kind of normative status. For it involves committing oneself as to how things are or are to be. In believing or intending one essentially makes oneself liable to normative assessments of the correctness of the belief or the success of the intention. And Wittgenstein is interested in a certain kind of puzzlement we might have about the nature of that normative significance. Someone says to me: "Show the children a game." I teach them gambling with dice, and the other says "I didn't mean that sort of game." Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when he gave me the order? (Wittgenstein 1953, §70)

Mind & language, 2000

Paul Boghossian has pointed out a 'circularity problem' for dispositionalist theories of meaning: as a result of the holistic character of belief fixation, one cannot identify someone's meaning such and such with facts of the form S is disposed to utter P under conditions C, without C involving the semantic and intentional notions that such a theory was to explain. Alex Miller has recently suggested an 'ultra-sophisticated dispositionalism' (modelled on David Lewis's well-known version of functionalism) and has argued that this version of dispositionalism escapes Boghossian's 'circularity problem'. Miller argues, nonetheless, that another of Boghossian's criticisms of dispositionalism, 'the infinity problem', still applies to this 'ultra-sophisticated dispositionalism': C will still draw upon a potential infinity of mediating background clusters of belief. The present paper argues that the feature that 'the infinity problem' presents as problematic is a feature of a host of familiar explanations. Our fundamental difficulty in this area is not our inability to understand how a more general model can be applied to a particular domain (the intentional understood as dispositional) but our failure to understand that general model itself (dispositional explanation).

2008

In the rule-following considerations Kripke’s Wittgenstein raises the objection that dispositions cannot be the appropriate base for a reduction of meaning properties since they are finite, while meanings have an infinitary character. The objection charges any dispositionalist theory of meaning with indeterminacy. Paul Horwich (1995) has attempted a defence of dispositionalism pointing out that the argument for indeterminacy presupposes an inflationary conception of truth-theoretic notions. In his view a deflationary approach to truth-theoretic notions helps elude the sceptical conclusion. Alexander Miller (2000) has reacted to Horwich’s attempt and maintained that the distinction between inflationism and deflationism does not play any substantial role in the anti-dispositionalism argument. I agree with Miller on this point, nevertheless I argue that Miller’s criticism of Horwich’s defence of dispositionalism is question begging against the conception of meaning that Horwich espouses.

Journal of the American Philosophical Association

ABSTRACTDispositionalists maintain that the essence of a property is determined by the powers it confers upon its bearers and, as a result, that there is a necessary connection between properties and their powers. Contingentists, in contrast, maintain that the connection is contingent. The ability to conceive of a property as failing to confer some of its powers is often cited as an objection against dispositionalism. The standard dispositionalist response to this objection is to redescribe the imagined scenario so that it no longer serves as a threat. Using the literature on phenomenal concepts as inspiration, I develop a new defense of dispositionalism that echoes Brian Loar's (1990) response to conceivability arguments against physicalism. Not only can Loar's general strategy be usefully applied to this new context, there is a sense in which that strategy works better here than it does in the original context in which Loar deployed it.