From Norms to Rules

If what I’ve said so far is on the right track, it seems to be both possi- ble and necessary to give an account of language as an activity de- ned (and policed) by rules for use that do carry categorical nor- mative force._{. In the next section, my concern will be with what} grounds their authority. In this section, I want to brie y revisit the much-discussed issue of the Wittgenstenian RFC.

As we saw in chapter , PoC commits the semanticist to the claim that the compositional rules and the lexicon willmandatea verdict by which we have to abide (meaning rationalismisthe contractual view of meaning).

Now, PoC in effect makes exactly the sort of claim that the RFC are supposed to have shown to be incoherent, namely, that we can rationallyproject from a nite basis to an open-ended totality of yet- to-unfold use. e RFC-lesson, allegedly, is that there could be no rules able to effect the transition from a semantics for the basis to one for the complex (and indeed viceversa)—or, equivalently, that if there couldbe rules of that sort, we could have no epistemic access to them. In other words, if the RFC are correct then the EP has no solution.

Moreover,ExpNorm, as I have stated it, is (partly) about intentions: attaching a certain meaning toeentails forming a certain expectation- intention. As such, it is immediately vulnerable to the RFC, which fa- mously attack the ability of any norm to establish aninternalrelation between intention and future use.

But we neededExpNormin place to defend the NT, which in turn seems to be required to make our linguistic practice a matter gov- erned by rules-as-norms and not by habit (something that I am com- mitted to). And so the conundrum is that if we want to defend a view of language as a rational activity (one where our beliefs about meanings are accountable to clear standards of rationality) we need to appeal to something like ExpNorm, which in turn opens up the

different worry altogether.

_{A note of warning: I am not siding withprescriptivistsabout grammar here. In fact, my conclu-}

sion will be quite the opposite of a prescriptivist view. All I am saying is that for language to occur there have to besomenorms concerning meaning-expectations. It is consistent with that position to maintain that the privileged status of those norms is provisional. One might object that Exp- Norm does not really give norms ofoutwarduse and is thus no better off than traditional accounts (in fact, it completely by-passes the problem). Short reply: unlike use-dispositional accounts, Exp- Norm puts very precise constraints on an explanation of ful lmentfailure.

_{To adapt a vivid image from McDowell (1993: 274), the compositional machinery isalready}

waiting for us at the end of the meaning-computation ready to pass judgement on our performance as we process complex meanings.

When Authority Gives Out |  ank to the RFC.

e additional problem is that even if we managed to secure the internal connection between intention and future use, there is good evidence (or at least, evidence that suffices to give pause) that the kind of rules that could attach to expressions (including the connectives!) cannot make provisions forallcases.

I’m here merely highlighting the difficulties for the thesis I’m de- fending. I’ll try to provide an answer to the RFC in section .. First, I need to discuss a further problem we face in this area.

6.3. e Paradox of Authority

Let me take stock brie y. We started off by noting that a proper account of what is distinctive about our practices seems to require norms and rules to be in place, rather than just habit-induced propen- sities. I tried to stabilise a view of linguistic norms that would allow language to qualify as a fully rational activity, governed by meaning- determining rules. I then raised the question of the impact of the RFC on all of this.

I now want to consider the question of the authority of language in a little more depth.

Language poses a special problem about the grounding of its norms. _{If the sources of those norms are themselves norm-laden} entities, then the origin of those sources cannot, or so it seems, refer back to either the norm themselves or the practitioners involved. A naturalistic reduction of those norms—the obvious non-Platonistic strategy, one would think—would however face the familiar problem of justifying a transition from a biological ‘is’ to a mental/linguistic ‘ought’,_{and that’s precisely why we needed the NT in place.}

And so we have (at least) two paradoxes in this area, the second one generated by the attempt to escape the rst (that is, the RFC one). e shape of the second paradox is well brought out by Dummett in his William James Lectures:

_{at’sZettel§440 again.}

_{e problem, in fact, is perfectly analogous to that facing the foundations of ethics. at’s}

why I agree with Gibbard’s judgement that the theory of meaning falls largely under the scope of meta-ethical re ection (see also Russell 1940: 238).

_{Dretske (1998: 245-46). One might of course be perfectly untroubled by this and suggest that}

there are such things as biological normsà laMillikan (2005). Or that there are Platonistic accounts that are non-reductive but epistemologically ‘sensible’, where re ection on facts about essences and conceptual structure provides the required grounding, as with Wedgwood’s (2007) notion of nor- mative dispositions.

 | Chapter 

e paradoxical character of language lies in the fact that while its practice must be subject to standards of correctness, there is no ultimate authority to impose those standards from without. e only ultimate determinant of what the standards of correct- ness are is the general practice of those recognised as primary speakers of the language.

We are forced into this paradox (just as into the RFC one) by the ob- servation that the requirement that norms be in place is a precondi- tion on meaningfulness:

if there cease to be right and wrong uses of a word, the word loses its meaning.

So, it looks as if a) we need rule-based normativity to be in place for expressions to be meaningful; but b) rule-based accounts give rise to paradoxes about i) the grounding of the rules and ii) our ability to follow them.

e rule-requirement, then, appears to generate near-intractable paradoxes, and meaning skepticism (if not outright nihilism) seems the only likely outcome. But the problem about language is not just special: it isurgent, for without a solution to it, we lack a clear account of how we can even thinkunder rational constraints, and if so it is unclear howanythingwe do can ever be considered rational.

It thus seems as if we have no option but to confront the RFC issue head-on, since making sense of the possibility of rule-governed be- haviour is arguablythetask that we have to confront as self-re ective beings.

I need to discuss one more issue before I can move on to sketching my own position.