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On Following a Rule

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Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 245))

Abstract

The question of what it is to follow a rule, much debated in the current literature on Wittgenstein, is more complicated than most of its discussants seem to have realized. In general, their writings exhibit a tendency to overlook or blur important distinctions, lapses that make it difficult or even impossible to determine exactly what is at issue. Baker and Hacker are certainly right when they say that unless it is understood what rules are “confusions about rules ramify into muddles about following rules”.1

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Notes

  1. G. P. Baker & P. M. S. Hacker, An Analytical Commentary on the‘Philosophical Investigations’, vol. 2, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar, and Necessity,B. Blackwell, Oxford 1985, p. xi.

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  2. Philosophical Investigations. Philosophische Untersuchungen (PI), ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe & R. Rhees. Trans. by G. E. M. Anscombe, B. Blackwell, Oxford 1953.

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  3. Quoted in The Philosophy and Language,ed. by A. P. Martinich, Oxford University Press, New York, p.478.

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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Stroll, A. (1995). On Following a Rule. In: Egidi, R. (eds) Wittgenstein: Mind and Language. Synthese Library, vol 245. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3691-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3691-6_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4475-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3691-6

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