Abstract
This chapter begins the analysis of the rule-following problem by the use of disposition-languages, languages with terms that apply exactly the way subjects are disposed to apply them. It’s shown that if empirical circumstances (and the dispositions of the subjects) are felicitous enough, isolated subjects can engage in successful rule-following. That is, they can successfully evaluate the languages they speak as better and worse, and they can use these languages to successfully navigate their worlds. Two examples of rule-following isolated individuals are given, Crusoe 1 and Crusoe 2. Their dispositions are somewhat artificial. Later examples, in later chapters, of isolated rule-following individuals will be much more natural, that is, they will be much more like us.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I thank Douglas Patterson (9/24/09 email) for alerting me to problems in an earlier discussion of this.
- 2.
I’m assuming Crusoe 1 can invent words, and that he can even invent words for complex notions that he acquires—such as cardinalities of collections of objects—on the combined basis of his (innate) dispositions and his experiences. It’s doubtful isolated humans can do this, even if some sort of rich innateness hypothesis about human dispositions is nevertheless true. Regardless, the acceptable empirical assumptions (about this) aren’t in dispute now. If Kripke’s way of deriving objections to the private model of language from the rule-following paradox is right —I’m focusing especially on his second and third requirements for a solution to the rule-following paradox—it doesn’t matter how sophisticated we allow a Crusoe’s dispositions to be: the rule-following paradox arises in any case.
- 3.
What’s required, that is, is that there is a 1-1 correspondence (between the numerals he applies to collections of coconuts and the collections of coconuts themselves) that preserves the ordering relation of the numerals as he uses them and the ordering relation of “larger than” of collections of coconuts.
- 4.
I’ve been describing Crusoe 1 and his world from the perspective of our own language. Phrases like, “judging Crusoe 1’s terms on their adequacy,” involve evaluations made in our terms. What’s involved in doing this is something that’s explored further in later sections, especially in Sect. 3.3 and in Chaps. 4 and 7. Let’s meanwhile treat this as a preliminary way of speaking of the isolated Crusoe 1 and the issues he raises—a preliminary way of speaking that will later be reevaluated and perhaps corrected.
- 5.
Because his numbers are finite, I won’t claim he has our numerical concepts. On the other hand, it’s not obvious I should deny this either—at least of the numerical concepts he evidently does have: e.g., the ones of collections he has the dispositions to count, and to order in magnitude. I discuss a different aspect of this issue further, momentarily.
- 6.
Wittgenstein is widely taken to have challenged such concepts in various respects. But his challenges seem to rise directly from rule-following considerations, and so it would be question-begging to press them in this context. (Here I seem in accord with Kripke (1982, 3), when he writes: “The ‘private language argument’ as applied to sensations is only a special case of much more general considerations about language previously argued …” Also, see his footnote 47, 60–61, and the surrounding text footnote 47 is appended to.) I table for future work the other ways that philosophers have thought to undermine this apparent datum about (first person) uses of “pain” and similar words. I discuss these words in Sect. 3.5, and describe how they operate in disposition-meaning languages.
- 7.
Complications arise if we try to sharpen this distinction because that requires distinguishing Crusoe 1’s dispositions to apply a word from other dispositions he may have that conflict with doing so. It doesn’t matter for the form my argument eventually takes whether this distinction is tenable or not, and so I forego any further discussion of it.
- 8.
An alternative approach individuates dispositional languages differently so that Crusoe 2 speaks one dispositional language. Nothing turns on this; I would just have to put the forthcoming points in a different way.
- 9.
- 10.
Maybe the example has to be spelled out a little. Some coconut trees are infected by a parasitical vine that grows in and on the coconut tree, and has its own nuts. Crusoe 2, when rested, can distinguish the two kinds of nuts. We recognize that the yuckonut plant isn’t even a tree, although Crusoe 2 doesn’t know that.
- 11.
Many philosophers over the years have claimed—against the correspondence theory of truth, for example—that one’s words can’t be compared to reality. It’s not always obvious what such philosophers mean when they say this. One thing some of them might have meant is this.
- 12.
It looks like God can say this only if He doesn’t “translate” (homophonically correlate) Crusoe 2’s terms to his own. This is for the same reason that a rested Crusoe 2 can’t say of himself that when he was tired he thought he was carrying a rcoconutr and why we can’t say that Crusoe 2 thought he had a coconut when he had a yuckonut. God can say that Crusoe 2’s tired dispositional language makes him treat coconuts as yuckonuts, or distinct cardinalities as the same cardinalities, without describing what Crusoe 2 is thinking when this happens. God can also say that Crusoe 2’s words aren’t picking out real differences and similarities among objects—differences and similarities that bear on his (Crusoe 2’s) well-being—and that’s why he’ll do badly. This issue recurs in Sects. 3.5 and 6.4.
- 13.
Again there is the issue of footnote 12. Friday can say this by “translating” the terms of Crusoe 2’s tired dispositional language to his own; but that’s to misdescribe Crusoe 2’s thinking.
- 14.
My thanks to Mitch Green (oral communication—August 8, 2009) for raising this issue, and prompting the paragraphs to follow.
- 15.
“Partially,” because there are complications. We sometimes allow our evaluation of someone’s success to include an evaluation of their values. Thus, we may deem someone a failure because (although given their values, they have succeeded) we regard the successful satisfaction of those values a failure. These complications don’t directly bear on the role of “success” as it’s used here.
- 16.
I don’t mean to suggest, by “unhealthy,” that such Crusoes have values that we should ignore or rule out. Nor do I want to claim that such Crusoes couldn’t engage in cogent private rule-following despite their “unhealthy” values. Many clearly could. Rather, I’m pursuing straightforward cases of Crusoes (with, that is, fairly straightforward dispositions) to simplify discussion. I aim to demonstrate private rule following is possible under a wide range of circumstances, so this restriction is acceptable.
- 17.
I owe my attention to this concern to Stephen Schiffer (oral communication—August 8, 2009).
- 18.
Descartes (1993, 58) speaks about “dropsy” in this respect.
- 19.
See Baddeley et al. (2015), for a textbook discussion of much of this literature.
- 20.
Moore (1962, 210–211).
References
Azzouni, Jody. 2000. Knowledge and reference in empirical science. London: Routledge.
———. 2010b. Talking about nothing: Numbers, hallucinations and fictions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baddeley, Alan, Michael W. Eysenck, and Michael C. Anderson. 2015. Memory. 2nd ed. London/New York: Psychology Press.
Descartes, René. 1993. Meditations on first philosophy. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
Kripke, Saul. 1982. Wittgenstein on rules and private language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Moore, G.E. 1962. Four forms of scepticism. In Philosophical papers, 193–222. New York: Collier Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Azzouni, J. (2017). Two Versions of Robinson Crusoe. In: The Rule-Following Paradox and its Implications for Metaphysics. Synthese Library, vol 382. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49061-8_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49061-8_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49060-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49061-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)