“Rule‐Following I: The Basic Issues”

Abstract

Rule-following' is a name for a cluster of phenomena where we seem both guided and "normatively" constrained by something general in performing particular actions. Understanding the phenomenon is important because of its connection to meaning, representation, and content. This article gives an overview of the philosophical discussion of rule-following. Part I of this two-part contribution is devoted to the basic issues from Wittgenstein to Kripkenstein's skeptical paradox. Part II will be about recent answers to the skeptical paradox and Boghossian's and Wright's new puzzles.

Rule‐Following II: Recent Work and New Puzzles

“…In the first part I argued that the primary form of Kripkenstein's skeptical challenge is to explain what it is for an expression to have a particular meaning in a speaker's idiolect (rather than another) (Kripke, 1982, p. 11;Reiland, 2024a).…”

“…But if dispositions are constitutive of content then there is no basis for taking these to be mistakes rather than constituting a different content. Thus, the dispositionalist can't make sense of the possibility of mistakes (for more see Reiland, 2024a).…”

“…In the first part I argued that the primary form of Kripkenstein's skeptical challenge is to explain what it is for an expression to have a particular meaning in a speaker's idiolect (rather than another) (Kripke, 1982, p. 11; Reiland, 2024a). Having presented the challenge, Kripkenstein goes through and criticizes answers in terms of explicit instructions, dispositions to use, simplicity, experiential states, taking the state to be primitive, and Fregean sense, and concludes that it can't be answered.…”