Rule-Following and Intransitive Understanding

Abstract

In logic and philosophy as well as in linguistics, cognitive psychology and computer science there is a particular conception of the nature of language where the concept of rule has a heavy burden. Three kinds of rule, of syntax, inference and semantics, are considered to be necessary in this logico-positivistic model. The chapter considers the flaws and shortcomings of this view of the nature of language and argues for an alternative approach derived from the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein started out with a rationalist view of this matter but became increasingly aware of the importance of the application of rules. That made him develop a pragmatic conception insisting that the use of language constitutes its nature as the rules cannot dictate their own application. It is only by acting in certain ways, applying words in certains ways, that we are able to make sense. “If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also in judgment”, is Wittgenstein’s way of putting it. There must, accordingly, be a non-interpretative way of grasping a rule. On the basic level, rules are simply followed. That is the point of saying that practices, the established ways of behaving, give words their meaning. Hence rules get their identity from the practices in which they are embedded. To understand a rule is to master the corresponding practices in which it is “inscribed”. The established practices are not isolated monads; they are essentially interrelated. To understand a sentence means to understand a language. Language in turn relates to a form of life.