• Wittgenstein
    442
    The paradox ( formulated by Wittgenstein) :

    "This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule".

    The first solution :

    A language-user's following a rule correctly is not justified by any fact that obtains about the relationship between his candidate application of a rule in a particular case and the putative rule itself (as for Hume the causal link between two events a and b is not determined by any particular fact obtaining between them taken in isolation); rather, the assertion that the rule that is being followed is justified by the fact that the behaviors surrounding the candidate instance of rule-following (by the candidate rule-follower) meet other language users' expectations.

    Short rebuttal:

    This does not explain the observation that people can keep playing a language game despite not following the rules properly ( w.r.t each others expectations ). Equating an understanding of rule following with expectation of users reduces the complexity of rule following in a language game. This solution isn't satisfactory.

    The second solution :

    McDowell argues that Wittgenstein does present the paradox (as Kripke argues), but he argues further that Wittgenstein rejects the paradox on the grounds that it assimilates understanding and interpretation. In order to understand something, we must have an interpretation. That is, to understand what is meant by "plus," we must first have an interpretation of what "plus" means. This leads one to either skepticism—how do you know your interpretation is the correct interpretation?—or relativity, whereby our understandings, and thus interpretations, are only so determined insofar as we have used them.

    Short rebuttal:

    This solution also suffers from a similar problem. People easily switch between one language game to another, in which case interpretation and understanding are assimilated. Furthermore, I don't see how we don't interpret and understand rule following simultaneously in a language game, especially when the "moves" are complicated.
  • Luke
    2.6k
    The paradox ( formulated by Wittgenstein) :

    "This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule".
    Wittgenstein

    I think the solution to the "paradox" can be found by simply reading on a little further:

    201. This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule. The answer was: if every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule, then it can also be brought into conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here.
    That there is a misunderstanding here is shown by the mere fact that in this chain of reasoning we place one interpretation behind another, as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another lying behind it. For what we thereby show is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”.
    That’s why there is an inclination to say: every action according to a rule is an interpretation. But one should speak of interpretation only when one expression of a rule is substituted for another.

    202. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it.
    — LW

    This seems consistent with your first solution. Your rebuttal to it looks like an example of not following the rule (or, perhaps, of following a different rule).
  • sime
    1.1k
    In my understanding, he was pointing out that our inferences can neither be understood nor be given justification on a definitional basis on pain of infinite regress, a point first raised by Lewis Carroll , whom Wittgenstein was evidently inspired by and indebted to.

    The impossibility of infinite analysis, coupled with the problem of theory under-determination, means that the inter-translation of rules and phenomena and even rules and rules is under-determined in both directions. Hence Tractatarian approaches to philosophy are profoundly misguided.
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