Wittgenstein by Child William;

Author:Child, William;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

In the most basic cases of following a rule, Wittgenstein thinks, I do not consult anything that tells me how to apply the rule. I simply do what comes naturally, given my training: ‘I obey the rule blindly’ (PI §219), ‘as a matter of course’ (PI §238), ‘without reasons’ (PI §211). When I apply a familiar rule, Wittgenstein thinks, there is no intellectual procedure involved at the point of application; I simply act in the appropriate way. I know what the rule requires; but there is no way in which I know it.

Wittgenstein’s anti-intellectualism about rule-following seems right. When I follow a familiar rule, I do act blindly and without reasons. But now we face a new question. For in such a case, what makes my action an instance of following a rule: why does something that I do blindly and without reasons count as a correct or incorrect application of a rule, rather than being a mere reaction – something I find it natural to do, but which cannot be assessed as correct or incorrect? Wittgenstein asks: ‘When a thrush always repeats the same phrase several times in its song, do we say that perhaps it gives itself a rule each time, and then follows the rule?’ (RFM: 345). There is a regularity in the thrush’s behaviour: it sings a phrase and repeats it. But it is obviously not giving itself a rule and then following it. It is simply acting in a regular way. So what is the difference between what I do when I follow a rule and what the thrush does when it sings its song? What makes it the case that, when I write down the series of numbers ‘2, 4, 6, 8 …’, acting blindly and as a matter of course, I am following the rule ‘+ 2’, rather than, like the thrush, merely acting in a regular way?

Wittgenstein’s answer to that question makes essential appeal to the context of my action. ‘What, in a complicated surrounding, we call “following a rule” ’, he writes, ‘we should certainly not call that if it stood in isolation’ (RFM: 335). But what sort of ‘complicated surrounding’ is necessary in order for something to count as a case of following a rule? He considers an example:

Let us consider very simple rules. Let the expression be a figure, say this one:

|– –|

And one follows the rule by drawing a straight sequence of such figures (perhaps as an ornament).

|– –||– –||– –||– –||– –|

Under what circumstances should we say: someone gives a rule by writing down such a figure? Under what circumstances: someone is following this rule when he draws that sequence? It is difficult to describe this.

If one of a pair of chimpanzees once scratched the figure |– –| in the earth and thereupon the other the series |– –||– –| etc., the first would not have given a rule nor would the other be following it, whatever else went on at the same time in the minds of the two of them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.