The following consists of two main parts: the first part being a specific response to Daniel Barbiero's paper "Chomsky vs Kripke, Round Two: Methodological Collectivism and Explanatory Adequacy"; the second part, an elaboration of the available several sketchy statements of Kripke on Wittgenstein's notion of form of life. Both parts can be seen as a clarification of the view of Kripke's Wittgenstein, in particular, his sceptical solution, through reviewing Barbiero's criticism and a further reply to a crucial point in Chomsky's counter-critique, namely, the equivocation of Wittgenstein's term "form of life". (See my earlier paper "Chomsky's Criticism of Kripke's Wittgenstein" where I critically considered Chomsky's attacks on Kripke's Wittgenstein, basically along the direction of thought of the latter.)
The aim of Barbiero's paper is to show the incoherence and inadequacy of the sceptical solution to the sceptical problem about the possibility of following a rule -- more precisely, the inadequacy of taking the behavioral regularities or "agreement in judgments" as the explanatory basis of normativity.
In his reading of Kripke's Wittgenstein, the agreement in judgment consists in certain actual cases where particular responses conform to the behavioral pattern of a community. These facts, collective in nature, are "explanatory chain terminates". All internal facts about the individual are of no explanatory significance. They cannot be the ultimate foundation of normativity; attempts to base on them have been shown to be leading to an infinite regress. But mere collective facts, Barbiero contends, also fail to do the explanatory job. For without reference to some "replicable basis" of the individual, we cannot explain how future agreements can be maintained.
"In order to fulfill their normative function, agreements in judgment must be applicable beyond any given instance of agreement. They must, in other words, transcend any given instance in which they are enacted." (Barbiero's paper, Section 3) This is, in Barbiero's term, the "transcendence condition". The normative information that an agreemment of judgments reveals has implication not restricted to a single exemplary case, but open to all other cases in different yet relevant situations. Thus "normative content" and "embodiment" must be separable, otherwise what can be found are nothing but a finite number of collective facts, embodying certain norms contingently, without any force over applications in other circumstances.
Further analysis of the possibility of rule-following behavior brings to light that the"transcendence condition" is accompanied with the "reproduction condition". A sufficiently illuminating answer to the normativity problem, on Barbiero's view, must explain how people can judge or respond in the same way as the other members of the community do, and reproduce the same responses in other similar situations in the future. It is not possible to give such an account only on the basis of publicly accessible behavioral regularities of a community. We must refer to the underlying nature of the agreement in judgments, viz., the internalized "normative content" in the individual's mind/brain which constrains a unique pattern of exercising a rule.
So Barbiero's main point is that if the sceptical solution claims itself to be an answer to the problem of normativity, it must fulfill both the transcendence and reproduction conditions, but these two conditions are incompatible with its "strong methodological collectivism" that takes the agreement in judgments as brute facts, as purely collective. Furthermore, the transcendence condition is actually implicit in the notion of agreement of judgments. Consequently the sceptical solution fails because, firstly, it is an incoherent one and secondly, incapable of fulfilling the reproduction condition, it is inadequate as an explanation of normativity.
Having shown that there is no meaning-constituting fact, Kripke's Wittgenstein develops the view that it is a certain 'collective fact', namely agreement of judgments, which explains or provides the possible condition of meaning. This seems to suggest that there is a persisting task in Kripke's Wittgenstein to seek for some fact or explanation and that finally such a fact or explanation is found. I think this is a misleading picture of Kripke's Wittgenstein. It should be noted that with the candidate facts of the individual being rejected, the notions of 'fact' and 'explanation' (or perhaps better 'justification') adhered to the "private model" (Kripke's term) had been undermined. What the sceptical solution highlights is not simply another kind of explanation based on another kind of fact from the same philosophical assumptions as those giving rise to the sceptical paradox, but rather an entirely different approach. Above all, first, it no longer holds (the 'interpretational conception') that grasping a rule amounts to getting at the right interpretation of the rule in the mind which in some sense determines all the correct applications once and for all; and second, it is no longer pursuing analysis of necessary and sufficient conditions.
Barbiero, however, attributes the interpretational conception to the sceptical solution. He suggests that the sceptical solution includes two explicit claims. The first one of them is:
(1) the correct interpretation of a rule (or more generally, possession of a concept or meaning) depends on conformity to the appropriate behavioral regularities (or "agreements in judgment") characteristic of a given community. ( Section 2 of Barbiero's paper)The expression "depends on" does not have a clear sense here. It might mean, against the sceptical solution, that "conformity to the appropriate behavioral regularities" is the necessary and sufficient condition of following or defining a rule.
Kripke has warned his readers not to take the sceptical solution as "a social, or community-wide, version of the dispositional theory". ( Kripke, 111) He writes,
One must bear firmly in mind that Wittgenstein has no theory of truth conditions - necessary and sufficient conditions - for the correctness of one response rather than another to a new addition problem. Rather he simply points out that each of us automatically calculates new addition problems (without feeling the need to check with the community whether our procedure is proper); that the community feels entitled to correct a deviant calculation; that in practice such deviation is rare, and so on. Wittgenstein thinks that these observations about sufficient conditions for justified assertion are enough to illuminate the role and utility in our lives of assertion about meaning and determination of new answers. What follows from these assertability condition is not that the answer everyone gives to an addition problem is, by definition, the correct one, but rather the platitude that if everyone agrees upon a certain answer, then no one will feel justified in calling the answer wrong. ( Kripke, 111-112) (Cf. also note 87)Life has a form, for in life there are shared judgments, expectations and confident inclinations, which are primitive. This pregiven form is not to be understood as admitting complete analysis, that is, capable of being defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Wittgenstein has turned down the idea of sense that grasping it is essentially equivalent to know the truth-condition of proposition. I do not mean that Wittgenstein has got rid of the notion of representation entirely, but that representation is now considered as having to do with merely some language games, not as the grand paradigm of expression. The change is not: from (A) "I understand a sentence s iff I know what is the case if s is true" to (B) "I understand a sentence s iff my community members agree with my interpretation or I share the same disposition to behavior with them." (B) is also a rule formulated by 'iff', which can be subjected to the challenge of the sceptic. Rather, the turn is from (A) to (B') "If I do not react to the sentence in a certain way as the community do, the community will not judge that I understand the sentence correctly." It can be seen that our basic agreement in judgments, etc. constitute the form or constraint of our meaningful activities. What is human is not merely biological but cultural; it is not fixed once and for all. (This point will be elaborated in my account of the notion of form of life of Kripke's Wittgenstein following my response to Barbiero's paper.)
So when Kripke remarks the shared form of life "must be taken as brute fact", the notion of 'brute fact' here is not imbued with the picture of truth-condition theory of meaning. And this brute fact may be said to be an 'explanation' in the sense that by reference to it, the puzzle about the possibility of rule-following is settled. That agreement is by no means the necessary and sufficient condition of normativity. Now the vision is that a rule's definition can never fix its correct applications in every circumstance. Kripke's Wittgenstein advises to note "the sufficient conditions for justified assertion ... about meaning and determination of new answers" in life. One may say that this conception of assertability condition of meaning is somehow a picture and because of this it 'explains' the nature of following a rule. But the positive view of Kripke's Wittgenstein emphasizes that this illumination does not come from an explanation in a theoretical sense. "It is ... in such a description [rather than explanation] of the game of concept attribution that Wittgenstein's sceptical solution consists." (Kripke, 95) The description produces an effect similar to explanations, viz., stopping certain queries on the meaning of a rule. But that effect is achieved by looking at an aspect of our life, where something previously ignored now can be realized. To Wittgenstein, there is nothing hidden in ordinary life. To invite one to acknowledge that life is so going on is not to explain a phenomenon, in a sense to uncover the veiled essence of life, but rather to end the urge for that essence. We show how our language game is played by descriptions, not theoretical explanations.
Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. ( PI, Section 124abc, emphasis added.)Kripke's Wittgenstein proposes to take a look at the language games in which we use language and judge whether our language is used correctly. In this way, we are invited to observe the regularities of our linguistic behavior. Barbiero interprets this position as a kind of "strong methodological collectivism":
For the sceptical solution demands not only that we factor in collective phenomena (agreements in judgment) to account for apparent rule-following behavior, but that we factor out any explanatory reference to internal phenomena whatsoever. The result is indeed the "hostility to the inner" that Kripke promised, and this hostility is nothing if not emblematic of strong methodological collectivism. (Section 2.2 of Barbiero's paper)What is undermined in Kripke's exposition is actually the incoherent notion of individualistic fact supposed to be the transcendent ground of meaning. (See my last paper.) It is a distorted view that Kripke's Wittgenstein turns down the internal facts and upholds the public, collective, facts as the "explanatory primitive" (Barbiero's term). For this seems to suggest that any inner facts, whether or not they are conceived under the picture of truth-condition theory of meaning, are eliminated in the explanation of normativity and that what remain are collective facts which admit no further explanation. But we must be aware that in the descriptions of language games, no selection or reduction is involved. What is more, the sceptical solution does not presuppose the metaphysical distinction between the inner and the outer; nor is the inner eliminated while the outer being adopted as the base of explanation. The publicly accessible behavioral regularities are not transcendent collective facts, opposed to some hidden or inner transcendent facts. The opposition and turn indicated in the line of sceptical argument is rather, I must reiterate, two entirely different approaches to rule-following behavior. The proposed approach is from the standpoint of ordinary life, which is free of the "misunderstanding" of the truth-condition theory of meaning. And the turn involves two different notions of facts. The contrast is not simply between the individual and the community, but between a misconception and a plain view of the way we grasp a rule, "which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call 'obeying the rule' and going against it' in actual cases". (PI, Section 201)
... with the acceptance of agreements in judgment (or behavioral regularities) as explanatory, brute primitives, we fall into a skeptical paradox similar to the one Kripke claims to find in explanations based on facts about states within individuals.The paradox is brought into sharp relief by the reproduction problem. In effect, without somehow accounting for the reproduction of agreement in any appropriate case, we cannot account for how a present agreement, embodied in a present performance, can determine that a future performance will embody the appropriate agreement. (Section 6 of Barbiero's paper)Kripke introduces the sceptical paradox like this: "Although I myself have computed only finitely many sums in the past, the rule determines my answer for indefinitely many new sums that I have never previously considered." (Kripke, 7) People tend to think that there must be some fact constituting my grasp of the rule, which functions as a nexus between past (present) and future applications. Kripke's Wittgenstein has undermined the idea that the right interpretation in the mind 'determines' -- in a way pictured as a rail leading to the infinite -- the applications in new circumstances. But Barbiero seems to argue that as my disposition and inner experience cannot link the present and future applications of a rule, so neither can the shared judgments of a community. For the actual cases of agreement cannot relate to each other under the same rule unless there is some underlying causal factor of each performance responsible for the continuation of a norm. The sceptical solution, on Barbiero's view, is rested on certain behavioral regularities which determine whether an application is correct or not. Decided in shared judgments, meaning becomes contingent, as each of these agreements (note: Barbiero chooses to use the plural form of the word) is contingent and not glued to one another. How can a rule be accounted as merely a set of unforeseen agreements which do not contain the next agreement, i.e., guarantee no unique application of the rule in the future? The account of normativity cannot but require reference to some internal fact of the individual rule- follower. (Cf. in particular, Barbiero's paper, Sections 4 and 4.1)
Firstly, Barbiero seems to turn back on the "misunderstanding", requiring that the past (present)- future or finite-infinite nexus as causal and based on certain "normative contents", which is embodied in examples and internalized in the individual's mind. "Normative content" is taken as the identity of a rule which determines the correctness of every application. It can be grasped by an individual and transmitted, in teaching and learning, from one individual to another. This is indeed the very picture Wittgenstein attempts to undermine in the celebrated discussion about rule-following in the PI. Remember Wittgenstein's illustration in Section 185 of the book about a child who has been given a number of examples and practices in continuing a numeral series (+2) but strangely when he reaches 1000, he goes on with 1004, 1008, 1012 ... . We judge that the child has applied wrongly, but he cannot understand why; he supposes that what he does is in accord with all the examples shown to him. Indeed these examples are compatible with his non- standard interpretation of the rule. The lesson of the sceptical paradox is that construing the meaning of a rule as a certain interpretation is problematic, since any interpretation can be substituted by another interpretation. As it were, Barbiero's concept of "normative content" is fixed, and transcendent from any particular instance of agreement. But how is it possible? Is it not an interpretation? What is it then?
Second, claiming that the "normative contents" must be reproducible through some complicated mechanism in the individual's mind, Barbiero seems to think that the relation between a rule and its applications is not internal and that there is a gap to be bridged. Kripke's Wittgenstein has shown that such a 'bridge' cannot but require a further rule to justify itself and produce an infinite regress. Probably Barbiero supposes that the sceptical solution is meant to bridge such a gap by consensus. As mentioned above, he interprets shared judgments as being identical with the correct interpretation of a rule.
Third, in Kripke's critique of the dispositionalist theory, he includes the following two arguments. (1) The dispositionalists confuse causal determination from normative determination. Given that I am disposed to giving a certain response, I will do so, but if I follow a rule, I should, rather than will, respond in a definite way. (2) What should be done, i.e., the infinitely many actions prescribed by a norm, cannot rest on my disposition, which is fallible and finite. The reasoning will be circular if my disposition is idealized. Can Barbiero's proposal be defended against (1)? The underlying mechanism of the "agreements of judgment" he proposes purports to generate actions of normative significance. I have a device to receive normative information, a device to process and store this information and a device to reproduce it. The "normative contents" are embodied in my performances. But this amounts to say "I will do what I should do". And I will be asked what constitutes this "what I should do". How would Barbiero reply to (2)? The "normative contents" are supposed to be constraining infinitely many instances of uses of the rule. How can I, being a finite being, capture them?
Fourth, Barbiero tends to understand the rule-following phenomena as manifestation of the "sameness" of a rule captured in the mind, by virtue of which its applications are determined. The reproduction condition that he stresses presupposes a certain entity of pre-fixed nature, which is transmitted from generation to generation. That transcendent 'object', as it were, can be fully represented as information. This is again the picture subject to the critique of the sceptical paradox: "The understanding itself is a state which is the source of the correct use." (PI, Section 146b) How can that normative information have a determinate sense? It is all right to say that a rule determines its applications. But in what way? If a rule is thought to be a certain interpretation, it will not fix its extension, for every interpretation can be re-interpreted. It is always possible to imagine a conflicting interpretation (e.g., quus), which can fit all the available facts supporting the alleged one (i.e., plus). So Barbiero's proposal of reproduction condition has to face the problem concerning how we can determine what is reproduced now is the same as the one in the past. To Kripke's Wittgenstein, it is we who determine (i.e., judge) whether someone is following the (same) rule. That is why rule-following- or meaning- attribution activities are highlighted in Kripke's exposition of Wittgenstein.
Fifth, the sceptical solution can be said to be a vision that meaning is determined in human practice and that this determination is primitive. It is a mistake to split life in two levels and suppose that the activities level is rested on the hidden cognitive level. Attempts to explain the complicated human form of life as a whole by appeal to some transcendent ground must be circular. For they would not make sense if they have not already been 'moves' in a certain language game in life.
"Then can whatever I do be brought into accord with the rule?" -- Let me ask this: what has the expression of a rule -- say a sign-post -- got to do with my action? What sort of connexion is there here? -- Well, perhaps this one: I have been trained to react to this sign in a particular way, and now I do so react to it.But that is only to give a causal connexion: to tell how it has come about that we now go by the sign-post; not what this going-by-the-sign really consists in. On the contrary, I have further indicated that a person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom. (PI, Section 198 bc)
The problem of meaning is prior to the problem of causality (or "transmission" or "reproduction"). It is true that without training there would not be shared judgments and consequently according to Kripke's Wittgenstein we would not be able to determine whether a use is correct or not. But it is wrong to suppose that now we have found something more basic than agreement of judgments in explaining normativities. The concept of training itself presupposes the concept of norm which, as shown in Kripke's Wittgenstein, depends on a custom, a form of life. Moreover, agreement of judgments is not, as Barbiero understands, a single instance of conforming to the behavioral regularities of a community.
Kripke recognizes the foregoing point, so he writes, "if there was no general agreement in the community responses, the game of attributing concepts to individuals ... could not exist." (Kripke, 96) But he puts very much weight -- correctly, I think -- on the living character of such an agreement that he interprets Wittgenstein's notion of form of life in a dynamic way. (Note: "(Only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning.)" Zettel, Section 173) Kripke describes the way in which an agreement of judgment is operated. The normative activities in everyday life are of two kinds: (1) we follow some rules consciously or unconsciously to achieve some ends in life (for instance, language is used for "giving orders", "describing the appearance of an object", "reporting an event" and so on.) and (2) we apply certain criteria of correctness or norms, not necessarily explicitly articulated, to rule-following activities when we attribute rule-following to people. First, both (1) and (2) are necessary in a form of life: activities (1) are realizations of rules, while activities (2) ensure that the rule- following activities of (1) be in accord with the rules of rule- following attribution. Second, in effect, without correcting activities, the meaning of rules cannot be maintained and so there will be no telling whether activities (1) are genuine rule-following activities.
In this view, normative activities cannot be private; activities (1) presume the presence of rules which require activities (2) to sustain them. In Kripke's exposition of Wittgenstein, activities (2) are highlighted. We judge whether by '+' Jones really meant plus rather than quus, not on account of whether the meaning-constituting fact of Jones's meaning plus obtains, (that is to say, being not concerned with the question "what must be the case if the sentence 'Jones means plus' is true?") but on account of whether the normal circumstances when we assert that Jones means plus are available. Our attributing to Jones the linguistic intention of addition involves two issues: (i) whether he in fact meant something and (ii) whether this something is the mathematical rule of addition. Regarding (i), we consider Jones's past and present behavior by the usual standard of intending, to see if he is not pretending. Regarding (ii), we consider whether Jones's response "125" to "57+68" is in accord with what we incline to take the rule of addition to prescribe, besides whether he has mastered the mathematical rule by the criteria based on his past performances in calculating. Kripke suggests that Wittgenstein's later conception of rule-following attribution is based on 'assertability or justification conditions' (in place of 'truth-condition') and that the fundamental question is: "under what circumstances are we allowed to make a given assertion?" (Kripke, 74) [Note 1]
Now let us consider further the notion of social license in Kripke's Wittgenstein. According to this notion, the legitimacy of a linguistic use has its source in the community's practice of rule-attribution activities, rather than in a rule itself. The sceptical paradox shows that every formulation of a rule could be re-formulated differently and that insisting on taking a rule as the basic norm will result in a regress, for if the justification of a rule is another rule, the sceptic can go on questioning that further rule. (Remember that Jones's attempt to justify his grasping and intending the plus rule by appeal to the algorithm and the articulated procedures in terms of counting that he learnt would not satisfy the sceptic.) This is Wittgenstein's teaching: "Explanations come to an end somewhere." (Kripke, 95)
Wittgenstein's justification-condition (in contraposed form) account of meaning highlights the fact that an individual's linguistic intention is socially constrained by the community's expectation. One should find in any community a uniform way of behaving in achieving some common good; more importantly, its members should be committed to this pattern of behavior and expect that others ought to conform to it. Suppose that someone deviates from this norm in a number of times; he, whose behavior becomes unintelligible, will be excluded from the community and treated as abnormal, odd or queer.
So this is the picture of language Wittgenstein provides us: following a rule is determined by its justification condition and thus essentially social, involving a shared set of responses and expectations of a community. What is more, they are non-incidental: these responses and expectations show the uniform inclinations of a community and the members' commitment to lead a certain social life, respectively. Further, the social constraining and licensing, as shown in the game of rule-ascriptions, are for the sake of some vital goals in a community's life, for instance, communicating, making transactions and so on.
We no longer take a rule to be fixed semantically or under a certain interpretation. A rule's extension is shown in a social practice of following a rule and ascertained, again, in a social practice of ascribing rules. Without general agreement in responses to the applications of (for instance, mathematical) rules, there will be no way to achieve any justification. Being the brute facts of life, this set of shared responses are not to be put into doubt; they are the "bedrock" where any pursuit of ground should stop. "What has to be accepted, the given, is--so one could say-- forms of life." (Knowledge of Language, 232-235)
Chomsky attempts to turn Wittgenstein's notion of form of life, the central part of the 'sceptical solution', which excludes the possibility of private language, into one not only allowing private language (i.e., for Chomsky, 'a unique rule-system' ) but also suggesting 'a very different analysis of the "practice" of attributing concepts and rule-governed behavior' (Knowledge of Language) from that of Wittgenstein. According to Chomsky, we can attribute rule-following to Crusoe, whose responses might entirely differ from ours. The sufficient condition of language attribution, in Chomsky's view, is: a patterned use of signs. A private language is thus possible, inasmuch as it is, like ordinary language, a particular system of rules. Crusoe acquires a unique language and behaves differently from us in expressing himself and understanding of the world. But as a human, he basically has thoughts, feelings and volitions--i.e., the characteristics of a person--like us, even though the 'set of responses' which exhibit what he has in his mind are not similar to ours. And the fact that Crusoe is a person is not based on any norm of community. Here no reference to community is necessary. No social role or function is involved in personhood attribution. As Wittgenstein's sceptical argument is supposed to lead us to the view that linguistic rules are determined in social life, Chomsky seems to have gained an insight that the patterns of a community's life, i.e., the 'practice', are somehow based on biological constraints, which are bestowed to the species--not socially granted- -and that the basis of language should be individualistic facts, in particular, about the mind/brain of a person.
Chomsky's suspicion of Wittgenstein's conception is prima facie justified. Neither in Kripke's exposition nor in Wittgenstein's texts could we find sufficient elaboration of it. And it is true that in the view of Kripke's Wittgenstein, the agreement that the term connotes involves, as Chomsky notes, both social practice and human nature. But the point is whether Wittgenstein's ideas of 'social practice' and 'highly species-specific constraints' are to be understood in the way Chomsky takes them, i.e., under the individualistic framework. Anyway, Chomsky at least has the merit of highlighting for discussion this extremely important--but unclear- -concept in Wittgenstein.
The remark of Chomsky on the veiled ambiguity of Wittgenstein's notion threatens the 'sceptical solution' of the rule paradox. In order to answer Chomsky, Wittgenstein has to show that the notion of form of life embraces both social practice and "highly species-specific constraints"--and that these 'natural' constraints of us are not 'individualistic facts' in Chomsky's realistic sense of the term. Let us attempt to do this job for Wittgenstein, and assume that Wittgenstein's concept of form of life is a coherent one and that it is introduced via the sceptical argument on following a rule which turns down the 'private model' of language. Our investigation of Wittgenstein's fundamental notion of form of life will not ignore the core problem in Wittgenstein's philosophy that Kripke emphasizes, viz., the 'sceptical paradox'.
The term 'form of life' does not appear in Wittgenstein's writing frequently and the rich contents that the term represents have not been given sufficient elaboration both by the thinker himself and his commentators. However, the readers of Wittgenstein should feel its paramount importance in Wittgenstein's philosophy, especially in his considerations of the rule-following issues. "... to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life (PI, Section 23b) ..." And in the final paragraphs of the core part of the Philosophical Investigations, i.e., on following a rule, Wittgenstein writes,
"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false"-- It is what human beings say that is true and false; they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. (The set of responses in which we agree, and the way they interweave with our activities, is our form of life. (Kripke, 96)No a priori paradigm of the way concepts ought to be applied governs all forms of life, or even our own form of life. (Kripke, 105) ... some aspects of Chomsky's views are very congenial to Wittgenstein's conception. In particular, according to Chomsky, highly species-specific constraints--a 'form of life'--lead a child to project, on the basis of exposure to a limited corpus of sentences, a variety of new sentences for new situations. There is no a priori inevitability in the child's going on in the way he does, other than that this is what the species does. (Kripke, 97n) Can we imagine forms of life other than our own, that is, can we imagine creatures who follow rules in bizarre quus-like ways? It seems to me that there may be a certain tension in Wittgenstein's philosophy here. On the one hand, it would seem that Wittgenstein's paradox argues that there is no a priori reason why a creature could not follow a quus-like rule, and thus in this sense we ought to regard such creatures as conceivable. On the other hand, it is supposed to be part of our very form of life that we find it natural and, indeed, inevitable that we follow the rule for addition in the particular way we do. ... But then it seems that we should be unable to understand 'from the inside' (cf. the notion of 'Verstehen' in various German writers) how any creature could follow a quus-like rule. We could describe such behavior extensionally and behavioristically, but we would be unable to find it intelligible how the creature finds it natural to behave in this way. ... What it seems may be unintelligible to us is how an intelligent creature could get the very training we have for the addition function, and yet grasp the appropriate function in a quus-like way. If such a possibility were really completely intelligible to us, would we find it so inevitable to apply the plus function as we do? Yet this inevitability is an essential part of Wittgenstein's own solution to his problem. (Kripke, 98n. "quus" and "plus" here are put in italics.) ... for Wittgenstein ([Investigations] p. 226): "What has to be accepted, the given, is ... forms of life." (Kripke, 98. "[Investigations]" is added) 3.4 An elaboration of the notion of form of life in Kripke's Wittgenstein
3.41 Why the notion of form of life?
Wittgenstein's solution relies on two related notions: "language game" and "form of life". Actually from considering the former notion, which reveals the various, interactive, patterned and repetitive nature of linguistic (i.e., rule-following) activities, we are easily led to the latter one, which calls our attention to the point that these activities in question are generally customs, secured in a social life, and constrained by the community's shared commitments, inclinations, expectations and judgments, i.e., the basis of norms. (1) suggests that the notion of form of life embraces the notion of language game. Innumerable, interrelated, language games and other kinds of activities make up a form of life. But that a form of life is what it is, and not simply a total sum of patterned activities, is due to the above-mentioned normative constraints, i.e., "the set of responses in which we agree" which are interwoven with these activities in life. It can be seen that the norms are by no means simply conventional. When we say "Jones meant addition rather than quaddition", we of course apply a criterion of correctness in judging whether by '+', Jones really meant addition, and whether he really followed such a rule. However, what we apply is not a norm 'external' to us, in a sense of being independent of our life, which will be subject to the sceptic's reinterpretation, but 'internal' to us, or better, to our life, so to speak. In judging that Jones's answer is right and the sceptic's bizarre, we do not hesitate. Jones's response is what we expect. We likely consider whether the one who answers the mathematical problem in the quus-like way is really a normal person and exclaim, "How is it possible for someone to respond in the way like what the sceptic suggests?" though conceding that the sceptic's non-standard reconstrual of the function '+' can logically be true of the same facts of and about Jones. Here the word 'possible' indicates a shared psychological constraint, acquired by training and living in a social practice, and is thus concerned with a vital relation between the addition rule and adder. (The meaning of the word "psychological" here is of course not individualistic.) Computations are involved in nearly every aspect of our life. The meaning of '+' is so obvious and uninterpretable and we strongly feel its inevitability. If it is taken in a different way, the life that we lead, which should be familiar to us, will become unfamiliar and even absurd, because it can no longer function as it does. Therefore, the notion of form of life accounts for how a norm has to do with the institutional fact of a social practice and also with the shared, internalized, psychological constraints--as shown in our normative behavior--that relate the rule-following activities with the rule-follower, in virtue of which such an institutional fact is a fact of life.3.42 A dynamic notion of form of life
We judge that Jones's answer is correct, normally not by comparing his sum to a table of mathematical sums and answers. We use the mathematical function '+' in our life without having got an a priori determination of its extension. There are always new situations where we must decide upon how a rule should be applied. Actually the sceptical paradox supposes that Jones faces a novel situation in which the numbers involved in the mathematical problem are so large that he has never come across. ('57' and '68' purport to stand for unexperienced huge numbers in real life.) In this case, the function of our shared "set of responses" in determining the correct answer is clearly seen, for there are no past applications that one can simply imitate. The notion of form of life is a dynamic one. The social constraints of normativity that we are pondering respond to advanced experiences and by no means fix a pattern of life in a static state. This does not mean, of course, that in the case of computing extremely large numbers we come across the first time, we must adapt to this new situation by changing what we hold in regard to the rule of addition. It is a wrong picture-- actually having been undermined to a very great extent by the sceptical paradox--that the extension of a rule is pre-determined in advance in the 'meaning' (i.e., interpretation) of the rule. Abandoning this misconception, we would not conceive ourselves as adapting again and again to newly experienced situations from a certain fixed understanding of a rule we had at some time. The point is that the meaning of our rules is determined by our judgments in practice, in real life. We judge that this application is in accordance with the rule, which means that this application is the same response as the past ones under the same rule. What is the same? What is the extension of a rule? These questions have their answer only in the on-going social practice. That is why Wittgenstein needs the notion of form of life. The term "language game" might give one a false impression that the use of language is mechanical and insensitive to the environmental changes.3.43 The complicated character of a form of life
A form of life is undefined, also owing to the fact that the language games and other non-linguistic practices are not integrated under a pre-determined and homogeneous manner. First, new--and new kinds of--language games and activities are developed in a form of life, while some gradually cease to exist. For example, divination is less prominent than before. Second, as Kripke's statement (2) above suggests, rule-following attribution activities, i.e., the exercising of the shared "set of responses", have a variety of forms. We should note, for instance, the difference between the way we judge whether a person grasps a concept of some middle-sized physical object in ordinary life and the way we judge whether a person grasps a concept of some mental state. In the former situations, normally a physical object, say, a table, is nearby, and a person uses the word 'table' to refer to it. If using such a word, the person does not refer to an object we call 'table', or given that there is a table, he uses a word other than 'table' to point to it, we do not accept that he grasps the concept. But in the latter situations, when judging the applications of mental terms, say, 'pain', we do not see any object called 'pain' and in most cases, do not take the utterance, for instance, "I am in pain", to be functioning as referring to some hidden object in the utterer's mind. We rely on certain "outward criteria", i.e., the circumstances in which the person who says "I am in pain", his facial expression, body movements, and the tone of the spoken sentence, to understand him and judge that he is sincere and really feels pain. We compare his responses with ours in ascribing the concept to him. However, in this case, we do not expect that there is a referent of the mental term for our checking; here, our agreement is not operated under a so-called 'object and designation' model. Any attempt to construct a general theory about the procedure of attributing a concept or rule-following to people or about how we exercise our agreement is not recommended. In reality, rule-attribution activities differ in kind; they seem to resist theoretical assimilation. (Cf. Kripke, 98-105)3.44 The various uses of the term 'form of life'
We have not yet spelled out thoroughly the rich implications of Wittgenstein's notion of form of life. It is difficult to define a form of life, but it does not follow that we cannot recognize a form of life and differentiate between one form of life and another. The ways of living, customs and values of different cultures in the world are not quite the same. Even within a culture, there are sub-cultures which are unique in some way. Each of these cultures and sub- cultures can be said to be a form of life and belong to a community, for they all have their shared, particular "set of responses" in which they agree, interwoven with their activities. However, there are trans-cultural agreements, as shown in the transactions, the establishment of the international (commercial or non-commercial) organizations and conventions over the world. Consider only the worldwide participation in the electronic internet, which is not possible without obtaining some basic techniques and judgments. We anticipate that even primitive people can be trained to utilize the new device and to a certain extent, can communicate with us--the modern industrialized people--insofar as they have the same "set of responses in which we agree", i.e., insofar as they are humans. So the notions 'form of life' and 'community' have different levels. There is a community called 'humans' or 'persons' who, at bottom, share some patterns of activities, which exhibit a set of inclinations, expectations and judgments, that is, a human form of life. (This level is what Wittgenstein is particularly concerned with in investigating the nature of rule-following behavior.) And within the community of humans, we can find different sub- communities and even sub-sub- communities, i.e., nations, (international) organizations, and (international) societies of different scales. Some of these units seem to have unique norms and practice of their own. We may again call each of them a 'form of life'. Thus there are various forms of life on earth. There had been a controversy about whether Wittgenstein's notion should be labeled in the plural or singular, i.e., forms of life or form of life. Based on the above considerations, both can capture some implication of the notion. But in order to highlight the humans' shared basic responses and judgments, it seems that the singular is more appropriate. Surely the singular (i.e., form of life) can better indicate the human dimension of meaning or following a rule, i.e., the biological and rational 'necessities' in virtue of which meaning can be determined and thus rendered possible. Yet if the human form of life consists also of the cultivated element, viz., rationality, we shall expect that the natural history of humans will not be restricted to only one rigid form of life.3.45 A biological and cultural notion of form of life in Kripke's Wittgenstein: "Human constraints"
If through the sceptical paradox, we appreciate how language cannot work without norms --and how these norms exhibit themselves in a form of life, we will not suppose that the terms 'human constraints', 'community' and 'form of life' have pre-determined or a priori reference and sense. Even science is a part of a form of life. Our pursuit of truth and objectivity presupposes some kind of training and is generally an effort involving interaction, cooperation and consensus. The saying that some account is true and reflects the objective world does not make sense if such an account does not employ terms that we can understand and provide standard justification or proof that we accept. Nowadays the scientific community is worldwide. It provides a standard regarding what it is a human biologically. Of course, 'human nature' is not restricted to be a scientific topic; it is also what literature is concerned about. Various cultural activities have their view on the meaning of being a person. However, at least, reasonable people have a general self-understanding, i.e., an agreement upon personhood attribution. We acknowledge that we humans normally behave in a certain way in a certain situation, that in many situations, we use language and follow some other rules, and that some kind of behavior is evident to be linguistic and/or normative. Notwithstanding the fact that there are differences among us, we share some responses, on the basis of which we judge someone to be a person. Robinson Crusoe, who is so remote from us in respect of his extreme loneliness and peculiar living environment, can be regarded, from his patterned behavior, as following rules in a human-like manner. We thus call him a 'person'. At the same time, "we are taking him into our community, and applying our criteria for rule following to him." (Kripke, 110) Along this line of thinking, we may even attribute personhood to someone who lives in a distant planet sharing similar patterns of behavior like ours.Kripke's statement (3) above can now be understood properly. The "highly species- specific constraints" that Chomsky highlights in his theory are indeed relevant to the agreement Wittgenstein has in mind, if the term is used with an understanding that it belongs to the ongoing scientific practice and perspective in general. The picture that in reality there is a species called 'human beings' who share certain innate constraints of cognition and behavior other than the other species's is to be carefully taken. One may hypostatize 'human constraints' and thus metaphysically determine the extension of the notion 'humans'. This seems to be very akin to the misunderstanding which gives rise to the sceptical paradox about rule-following. It supposes that the extension of a rule is fixed a priori by some 'fact' constitutive of an individual's grasping of the rule. The sceptical solution suggests that the determination of a rule belongs to a social practice or form of life. The isolated 'fact' (assumed to correspond to a linguistic intention) itself carries no criterion of correctness. Likewise, the thought that the term 'human constraints' refers to some grounding 'fact' of the human form(s) of life is equally problematic. For this is another instance of the model of thinking Wittgenstein's sceptical paradox purports to turn down. Note how Kripke puts the last sentence of statement (3): "There is no a priori inevitability in the child's going on in the way he does, other than that this is what the species does." (My emphasis) The species's constraints in the child are not taken as something 'behind' the species's behavior as its 'ground' but considered as exhibiting in "what the species does". As discussed above, there is no further level than the level of activities in life, according to Wittgenstein. Interestingly, humans' recognition and understanding of their own behavior, as shown in their uses of the adjective 'human' to talk about themselves, are also practices. These rational, reflective activities should play some role in human life and have justification conditions.
In the foregoing paragraph, we used the term 'human constraints' interchangeably with the term 'highly species-specific constraints'. Actually we want to take 'human constraints' as an ambiguous term, i.e., having a broad as well as narrow sense. In its narrow sense, it is identical with the biologically endowed 'highly species-specific constraints', while in its wider sense, it is also concerned with acquired tendencies. "Any 'reasonable' person behaves like this." (On Certainty, Section 254.) For instance, we respond similarly to an arithmetical problem; and if we do not share some basic inclinations of trusting, doubting, appreciating and condemning, it will be hard to imagine how we can participate in the international world, where we have academic and art awards, international opinions and debates, etc. which require the setting up of trans-cultural standards--and these standards presuppose shared judgments, i.e., acquired tendency.
So far we can say that form of life as the basis of language to Wittgenstein is both biological and cultural, but to Chomsky whose framework is individualistic, form of life is essentially biological. Wittgenstein's subtle notion of humans' natural inclination and constraint is evident in Zettel, where he suggests that "the language-game with colours is characterized by what we can do and what we cannot do." (Zettel, Section 345b. Emphasis added.) What is meant by "can" and "cannot" here? On Wittgenstein's view, these words indicate, not entirely biological (or physical) constraints, but a possibility and impossibility very much like those of mathematics. "'There is no such thing as a reddish green' is akin to the sentences that we use as axioms in mathematics." (Zettel, Section 346) That is to say, the limitation of the sense of the color words are posited in a constructed system. The agreement involved in the operation of this system is not a result of physical necessity. Actually our color-concept system has a contingent nature. Wittgenstein remarks:
"If humans were not in general agreed about the colours of things, if undermined cases were not exceptional, then our concept of colour could not exist." No:--our concept would not exist. (Zettel, Section 351)Do I want to say, then, that certain facts are favourable to the formation of certain concepts; or again unfavourable? And does experience teach us this? It is a fact of experience that human beings alter their concepts, exchange them for others when they learn new facts; when in this way what was formerly important to them becomes unimportant, and vice versa. (Zettel, Section 352)
Our physical constraints do not prevent us from changing our conceptual system. But our innately given conditions of cognitions indeed play a role in our language game with color words. Wittgenstein further notes:
I want to say that there is a geometrical gap, not a physical one, between green and red. (Zettel, Section 354)But doesn't anything physical correspond to it? I do not deny that. (And suppose it were our habituation to these concepts, to these language-games? But I am not saying that it is so.) If we teach a human being such-and-such a technique by means of examples, --that he then proceeds like this and not like that in a particular new case, or that in this case he gets stuck, and thus this and not that is the 'natural' continuation for him: this of itself is an extremely important fact of nature. (Zettel Section 355)
The person we teach has acquired a certain behavioral tendency like ours. He becomes spontaneous in using the learned technique of a language game. Like us, he participates in, say, the practice of color-word applications in an unreflective way. The certainty that he now has is not a matter of knowledge. He does not proceed with definitions of color words or criteria of their use, but with a 'natural' or primitive reaction to judge in new circumstances. Here the primitive reaction is learned, and yet on the biological basis. There are primitive reactions like those of pain, thirst and anger, but there are acquired ones, according to Wittgenstein. "The primitive reaction may have been a glance or a gesture, but it may also have been a word." (PI, Part II, p.218) Other species could not be educated in that manner. It is possible for a human being to learn in various, though not unbounded, ways and acquire different primitive reactions. Wittgenstein provides this thought-experiment:
Let us imagine men who express a colour intermediate between red and yellow, say by means of a fraction in a kind of binary notation like this: R, LLRL and the like, where we have (say) yellow on the right, and red on the left.--These people learn how to describe shades of colour in this way in the kindergarten, how to use such descriptions in picking colours out, in mixing them, etc. They would be related to us roughly as people with absolute pitch are to those who lack it. They can do what we cannot. (Zettel, Section 368)
These people's education differs radically from ours. And they practise their language game very much unlike what is customary to us. In short, they do not share with us the same form of life--the sense of which should be clear now--that determines what we can and cannot do. But the fact that humans could have different forms of life does not preclude the possibility that humans could share one transcultural form of life or human culture. In Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, I, Section 153, Wittgenstein writes:
What does people's agreement about accepting a structure as a proof consists in? in the fact that they use words as language? As what we call "language".Here the cultural element is highlighted, but it is human culture of which Wittgenstein is thinking; it could have different forms, as shown in human history. In regard to economy, when humans were in the primitive stage, we have barter system, and later, our way of doing transactions has relied on money. We can understand without difficulty that people exchange goods, not through the medium of currency. But we find it rather alien that business is done in the absence of common value but depends on whether the individual participants themselves think fit to their wishes or feelings. It will be quite intelligible to us provided that the people doing transactions have akin value judgments on the things they would like to buy or sell. But we cannot understand why a transaction can be practised in such a way that depending simply on subjective feeling, a person successfully buys from the same realty agency a large house with twenty cents and another a small one with one million dollars. The human constraints involved in our unwillingness to admit this strange way of behavior to be human are apparently not restricted to the inevitability in a biological sense. We can appreciate that the way of 'buying' and 'selling' may have its own purpose, which is distinct from ours. Yet having purpose is neither necessary nor sufficient for it to be 'sane' to us, for we cannot entertain such a purpose in a human context (i.e., a fabric of practices in life) that we are familiar. We call that kind of behavior 'insane', but human behavior may also be taken as extremely queer to the beings who have different nature and cultivation. "Is a coronation wrong? To beings different from ourselves it might look extremely odd." (PI, Part II, 227. Cf. also, Section 584.) Wittgenstein invites us to imagine how a coronation may become unintelligible if we consider the event isolated from the surrounding, i.e., the practice in which it is embedded. In fact, when we reflect upon the practice of coronation in some countries, we appreciate its social, if not political, function in the modern life there. I can understand coronation though it has never happened in Hong Kong, since I have learnt the role of tradition, ceremony, dignity and respect in some relevant human practices in my life. My education and actually living in a human (or cultural) way of life enable me to understand coronation, but at the same time, my perception and behavior are so shaped that the strange economic situation Wittgenstein depicts makes no sense to me. The other human beings have inborn and acquired constraints like me because we share similar physical structure and mode of life.Imagine people who used money in transactions; that is to say coins, looking like our coins, which are made of gold and silver and stamped and are also handed over for goods----but each person gives just what he pleases for the goods, and the merchant does not give the customer more or less according to what he pays. In short this money, or what looks like money, has among them a quite different role from among us. We should feel much less akin to these people than to people who are not yet acquainted with money at all and practise a primitive kind of barter.-- "But these people's coins will surely also have some purpose!"-- Then has everything that one does a purpose? Say religious actions--.
It is perfectly possible that we should be inclined to call people who behaved like this insane. And yet we don't call everyone insane who acts similarly within the forms of our culture, who uses words 'without purpose'. (Think of the coronation of a King.) (RFM, I, Section 153. "the forms of our culture", my emphasis. Cf. also PI, Section 584.)
Certainly human cultures are "highly species- specific". Humans have a biological endowment to learn and use languages, that the other species lack.
One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not? ... Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who have mastered the use of a language. That is to say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life. (PI, II, 174, my emphasis.)Say, a one year old baby, does not hope because he has not yet acquired the ability to speak, i.e., the basic condition of hoping. "For hoping is quiet, joyful expectation." ("Last Writings"LWPP, vol. 1., Section 359) "There are no gestures of hope." (LWPP., Section 357) That is why conceptually speaking one who is unable to use language cannot hope. It is not proper to say that a noisy baby is hoping to drink some milk. We had better say that it wants to be fed. It may feel pain, uncomfortable, hungry or thirsty, so far. The other human constraints, i.e., the "set of responses in which we agree" besides the physical features of our behavior, are cultivated in learning and living the human way of life, which is extremely complicated.
We find it natural to follow the mathematical rule '+' in the way that Jones does, the direction of the gesture of pointing from the wrist to the finger-tip, and the money system we live with. This sophisticated naturalness or set of constraints is what our agreement consists in, without which norm--and thus the correctness of following a rule--is not possible. Our behavior is patterned and to a certain extent, inevitable. Now it should be clear that this inevitability is due to the biological fact that we are human beings, and further, due to our involvement in a complex web of practices in actual life.
So he gets angry, when we see no reason for it; what excites us leaves him unmoved. -- Is the essential difference that we can't foresee his reactions? -- Couldn't it be that after some experience we might know them, but still not be able to follow him? (LWPP, Vol. 1, Section, 192.)For we do not share the same "set of responses" with him. What is more, we cannot, in a sense, "take him into our community".
He is incomprehensible to me means that I cannot relate to him as to others. (LWPP, Section 198)Notice that the failure of understanding the unusual lion is due to the absence of a possible relation in human life between it and I. To a certain extent, we understand dogs and cats, etc. as they play a role in our life; we live with them and in this way, relate to them. But we cannot expect that a human way of life in which we live with a lion who can talk can really happen. Understanding in this sense (i.e., in German, 'Verstehen') is akin to the human phenomena like feeling, trusting and appreciating. They all presuppose an internal relation between the subject and object in a possible form of human life, which is non- accidental. (As a contrast, mere looking is an external relation.) And the question whether a human form of life is possible is concerned with the humans' self- understanding, again based on the human agreement we are dealing with.
So our thinking, unlike our understanding (or 'Verstehen'), seems not bound by our particular mode of existence. Our form of life does not prevent us from entertaining the possibility that the creatures following rules in a quus- like way exist, but does restrict our ability to understand them. However, if it is possible to think about the non-human form of life, in what sense can we say that we share a set of human constraints or inevitability in our form of life, without which we will have no norm? Especially puzzling is how having been channeled in a human way of life, we can still to a certain extent, 'accept', the non- human one. This is Kripke's second question. It seems to me that if Kripke's query has any point at all, it draws our attention to the problem as follows: the sceptical paradox which hypothesizes the quus-like form of life has intuitive force on us-- otherwise, we would not be driven to solve the paradox--and yet the sceptical solution relies on the fact that it is human agreement which determines what is right and what is wrong--but then, accordingly, following a rule in a quus-like way could not make sense to us. To Kripke, the "tension in Wittgenstein's philosophy", as it were, is due to the fact that the sceptical paradox and sceptical solution are not only concerned with the inevitability (i.e., non- arbitrary nature) of human thinking, but also our tolerance of unthinking, i.e., thinking in a non-human, quus-like way. For Wittgenstein concedes to the sceptic that there is no meaning- constituting 'fact' and thus does not deny the possibility of a quus-like behavior. But as discussed above, Wittgenstein's sceptical argument does strongly undermine such a possibility and reveal the "misunderstanding" behind the problematic notion of meaning among ordinary people. We are led to have a clear view of language or normativity; we are cured and no longer find the sceptic's hypothesis disturbing. We can conceive the quus-like behavior, as we can think of other 'possible' applications of a rule. But we have learnt that some conceivable ways of responding to a rule is not possible, since based on our shared agreement, we do not find it practicable in a human form of life. Thinkability (or unthinkability) has two senses. It may be either parallel to mere logical possibility, or pertain to an existing human form of life. Realizing this distinction, we can say something like thinking the unthinkable, rather easily. (From this perspective, we can see how different the view of the later Wittgenstein is from that of the Tractatus.)
It can be seen that Chomsky's construal of Wittgenstein's notion of form of life as corresponding to two levels of description, ignores the context where it is embedded, viz., the sceptical argument of rule-following. Furthermore, Chomsky's equating the two-level notion of form of life to his two-level notion of knowledge of language (i.e., the attained state of language which belongs to a particular individual and the initial state which belongs universally to humans) in effect distorts Wittgenstein's idea entirely and suppresses the original reference to patterns of a community's practice. Chomsky's reconstrual of Wittgenstein's notion of form of life is meant to affirm that individuals' grasping linguistic rules is the explanatory ground of social practice. Kripke has made it very clear that Wittgenstein would not allow any explanation of form of life, in virtue of which meaning or rule-following is determined.
On Wittgenstein's conception, a certain type of traditional--and overwhelmingly natural--explanation of our shared form of life is excluded. We cannot say that we all respond as we do to '68+57' because we all grasp the concept of addition in the same way, that we share common responses to particular addition problems because we share a common concept of addition. ... For Wittgenstein, an 'explanation' of this kind ignores his treatment of the sceptical paradox and its solution. There is no objective fact--that we all mean addition by '+', or even that a given individual does--that explains our agreement in particular cases. Rather our license to say of each other that we mean addition by '+' is part of a 'language game' that sustains itself only because of the brute fact that we generally agree. (Nothing about 'grasping concepts' guarantees that it will not break down tomorrow.) (Kripke, 97)The foregoing remark of Kripke and the following remark of Wittgenstein can well be a synopsis of our discussion of the notion of form of life in Kripke's Wittgenstein.
It only makes sense to say "and so on" when "and so on" is understood. I.e., when the other is as capable of going on as I am, i.e., does go on just as I do. (RFM, VI, 45)Kenny Huen