Kripke's Wittgenstein's Sceptical Solution and Donald Davidson's Philosophy of Language Ali ...

291 Pages·2017·1.49 MB·English

Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s Sceptical Solution
and Donald Davidson’s Philosophy of Language

Ali Hossein Khani

a thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
at the University of Otago, Dunedin,
New Zealand.

October 2016
To Saeedeh

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Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to investigate the relation between the views of Wittgenstein as
presented by Kripke (Kripke’s Wittgenstein) and Donald Davidson on meaning and
linguistic understanding. Kripke’s Wittgenstein, via his sceptical argument, argues that
there is no fact about which rule a speaker is following in using a linguistic expression.
Now, if one urges that meaning something by a word is essentially a matter of following
one rule rather than another, the sceptical argument leads to the radical sceptical
conclusion that there is no such thing as meaning anything by any word. According to
the solution Kripke’s Wittgenstein proposes, we must instead concentrate on the
ordinary practice of meaning-attribution, that is, on the conditions under which we can
justifiably ascribe meaning to each other and the utility such a practice has in our life.
Davidson has also argued that following rules is neither necessary nor sufficient for
explaining success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. According to
his alternative view of meaning, a speaker’s success in this practice is fundamentally a
matter of his utterance being successfully interpreted by an interpreter in the way the
speaker intended. On the basis of these remarks, Davidson raises objections to Kripke’s
Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument and solution.
In this thesis, I will argue that Davidson has failed to fully grasp the essentially
sceptical nature of the argument and solution proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein. I will
argue that as a result of this Davidson’s objections and his alternative solution to
Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument are mistaken. These criticisms are pursued
via an investigation of Davidson’s problematic reading of Quine’s sceptical arguments
for the thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. Having criticized Davidson’s actual
response to Kripke’s Wittgenstein, I will claim that Davidson’s best option for resisting
the sceptical problem is to adopt a form of non-reductionism about meaning. Claudine
Verheggen’s recent claim that Davidson’s use of the notion of triangulation will help to
establish non-reductionism will be argued to be a failure. I will urge that the main
obstacle in defending a non-reductionist view is the problem of accounting for the
nature of self-knowledge of meaning and understanding. After discussing Davidson’s
account of self-knowledge and Crispin Wright’s objection to this account, I will argue
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that, although Wright’s objection is ultimately unsuccessful, Davidson’s account fails
for other reasons. Finally, I tentatively suggest that the resources for an alternative
response to the sceptical problem can possibly be extracted from Davidson’s account of
intending, which has some features suggestive of a judgement-dependent account of
meaning and intention.

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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my primary
supervisor, Prof. Alex Miller, for the continuous support of my Ph.D study, for his
encouragement, patience, and motivation throughout my research project. Without his
precious guidance and counsel, this thesis would not have been possible. I would also
like to thank my secondary supervisor Assoc. Prof. Greg Dawes for his advice and
helpful comments on the drafts of the thesis.
I am grateful to Prof. Penelope Mackie for her insightful feedback on the thesis. For
their helpful discussions, I would also like to thank Dr. Kirk Michaelian, Prof. Rod
Girle, and Prof. Max Cresswell. I wish to express my appreciation to my friends who
have contributed and supported me by their stimulating discussions, especially Daniel
Wee, Takahiro Yamada, and Ali Kalantari.
I owe a special thank you to my family, to my mother, for her constant patience, love,
and care, and to my brothers and sister for supporting me in whatever way they could
during my study. I especially thank my brother, Hassan, for always being there to
support me in every difficult decision I have made.
Most importantly, I would like to express my appreciation to my wife and best friend,
Saeedeh Shahmir, who has always been a constant source of strength and inspiration for
me. Without her continuous encouragement and support, I would not have been able to
complete this thesis at all.
I am also grateful to the University of Otago for financially supporting this thesis by
granting me a University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship.

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Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1
1. Chapter 1: Kripke’s Wittgenstein .......................................................................... 9
Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 9
1.1. The Negative Part: Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s Sceptic’s Sceptical Argument ... 10
1.1.1. The Sceptical Challenge ........................................................................... 12
1.1.2. The Sceptical Challenge and Traditional Realism ................................... 14
1.2. The Candidate Facts ......................................................................................... 16
1.2.1. Previous Behaviour .................................................................................. 16
1.2.2. Internalized Instructions ........................................................................... 17
1.2.3. Mathematical Laws .................................................................................. 18
1.2.4. Mental Images .......................................................................................... 18
1.2.5. Dispositions .............................................................................................. 20
1.2.6. Machines Embodying Intentions .............................................................. 23
1.2.7. Simplicity ................................................................................................. 24
1.2.8. Meaning as a Unique, Irreducible Qualitative Experience ....................... 27
1.2.9. Meaning Something as a Primitive Fact ................................................... 28
1.2.10. Fregean Senses ......................................................................................... 30
1.3. The Sceptical Conclusions ............................................................................... 31
1.4. KW’s Sceptic’s Sceptical Argument ............................................................... 32
1.4.1. The First Strand of the Sceptical Argument ............................................. 33
1.4.2. The Second Strand of the Sceptical Argument ......................................... 34
1.5. The Positive Part: Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s Sceptical Solution ....................... 36
1.5.1. Straight Solution vs. Sceptical Solution ................................................... 36
1.5.2. The Sceptical Solution .............................................................................. 39
1.5.3. Assertability Conditions ........................................................................... 40
1.5.4. The Role of Agreement and the Private Language ................................... 42
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1.5.5. The Role and Utility of Our Linguistic Practices ..................................... 46
1.6. Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 48
2. Chapter 2: The Later Davidson ........................................................................... 50
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 50
2.1. The Negative Part ............................................................................................ 51
2.1.1. The Common View .................................................................................. 52
2.1.2. Davidson’s Argument against the Common View ................................... 53
(a) Criticizing the First Version of the Common View ..................................... 54
(b) Criticizing the Second Version of the Common View ............................. 56
(c) Criticizing the Third Version of the Common View.................................... 58
2.1.3. The Argument from Malapropism ............................................................ 59
(a) First Meaning vs. Conventional Meaning .................................................... 60
(b) The Common View Re-Characterized ..................................................... 61
(c) The Phenomenon of Malapropism ............................................................... 63
2.1.4. Prior and Passing Theories ....................................................................... 66
2.1.5. Passing Theories as Systematic Theories ................................................. 71
2.1.6. “There Is No Language” Claim ................................................................ 75
2.1.7. Linguistic Error ........................................................................................ 78
2.1.8. Davidson’s General Argument against the Common View ..................... 79
2.2. The Positive Part: Davidson’s Alternative View ............................................. 80
2.2.1. Davidson’s Alternative View of Meaning ................................................ 80
(a) Intention and Mutual Interpretation .......................................................... 82
(b) First, Conventional, and Speaker Meaning, and Ulterior Purposes.......... 82
(c) Davidson’s Interpersonal View ................................................................ 84
2.2.2. Davidson’s Responses to Objections ........................................................ 87
(a) Being Obliged to Semantic Norms ........................................................... 87
(b) Practical Possibility of Communication without Convention .................. 89
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(c) The Wittgensteinian Seems Right/Is Right Distinction ............................ 89
2.2.3. Davidson’s Criterion for Success in Communication .............................. 91
(a) An Initial Problem .................................................................................... 93
2.2.4. Rational Animals: The Interdependence of Language and Thought ........ 97
(a) The Argument from Surprise .................................................................. 100
2.2.5. Triangulation, Objectivity, and Cause-Determination ........................... 103
(a) Primitive Triangulation .......................................................................... 106
(b) Linguistic Triangulation ......................................................................... 111
2.2.6. Conclusion ............................................................................................. 115
3. Chapter 3: Davidson on Quine’s Indeterminacy of Translation Thesis ........ 117
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 117
3.1. Quine’s Arguments for the Indeterminacy of Translation ............................. 118
3.1.1. Quine’s Physicalism ............................................................................... 118
3.1.2. The Argument from Below..................................................................... 119
3.1.3. The Argument from Above .................................................................... 122
3.2. Davidson on Quine’s Indeterminacy Arguments ........................................... 127
3.2.1. The Measurement Scales Analogy ......................................................... 129
3.2.2. The Puzzle .............................................................................................. 131
3.3. Conclusion: A Dilemma for Davidson........................................................ 134
4. Chapter 4: Davidson on Kripke’s Wittgenstein ............................................... 138
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 138
4.1. Davidson on KW’s Sceptical Argument and Sceptical Solution ................... 138
4.1.1. The First Place: The Rule-Following Picture of Meaning ..................... 140
(a) Problems ................................................................................................. 142
4.1.2. The Second Place: “The”-Language-Determination .............................. 144
(a) Problems ................................................................................................. 146
4.1.3. The Third Place: The “Cause”-Determination ....................................... 149
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(a) Problems ................................................................................................. 153
4.2. Mark Joseph on Davidson’s Alternative Solution ......................................... 157
4.3. Conclusion .................................................................................................... 160
5. Chapter 5: Davidson’s Non-Reductionism ....................................................... 162
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 162
5.1. Verheggen on Davidson’s Non-Reductionism .............................................. 163
5.1.1. On Verheggen’s View of Davidson’s Non-Reductionism ..................... 171
5.2. Davidson on First-Person Authority .............................................................. 177
5.3. Wright’s Objection to Davidson’s Account of Self-Knowledge ................... 182
5.4. Evaluating Wright’s Objection ...................................................................... 186
5.4.1. Davidson’s Explanation of the Asymmetry............................................ 187
5.4.2. Wright’s Objection Revisited ................................................................. 192
5.4.3. Is Wright’s Objection Plausible? ............................................................ 196
5.5. Objections to Davidson’s Account of Self-Knowledge ................................. 197
5.6. Wright’s Response to KW’s Sceptic.............................................................. 202
5.7. Wright’s Judgement-Dependent Account of Intention/Meaning ................... 209
5.8. Davidson’s Judgement-Dependent Account of Intention/Meaning ............... 215
5.8.1. Verheggen’s Reading of Davidson’s Non-Reductionism Revisited ...... 216
5.9. Davidson’s Judgement-Dependent Account of Intending ............................. 217
5.9.1. Intentional Actions ................................................................................. 218
5.9.2. Prima-Facie Judgements vs. All-Out Judgements .................................. 222
5.9.3. Intending as Judgement-Dependent........................................................ 224
5.10. Conclusion ................................................................................................. 226
6. Chapter 6: Summary and Conclusions ............................................................. 229
Appendix: The Early Davidson ................................................................................. 235
References ................................................................................................................... 270

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Introduction
The philosophy of language can be regarded as an attempt to provide systematic
explanations of our most basic linguistic practices, such as the practice of meaning
something by an utterance. Saul Kripke and Donald Davidson are among the most
influential philosophers of language who have been concerned with the main obstacles
for providing such explanations. Kripke’s book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private
Language (1982) demonstrates one such attempt. In this book, he interprets
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as presenting a sceptical argument against a
certain sort of understanding of the practice of meaning something by an utterance,
together with a sceptical solution to this sceptical problem. The view, against which
Kripke’s Wittgenstein (henceforth “KW”) proposes his argument, implies that if a
speaker means something by her words, then there is a rule, or a state of affairs, which
determines the correct application of the words for the speaker. KW’s sceptic – the
figure who presents the sceptical argument in the first two chapters of Kripke’s book –
argues that there is no such thing as meaning anything by any word, since no fact about
the speaker can be found capable of constituting the fact that she means one thing rather
than another by her words or determining which rule she is following. KW’s sceptical
solution replaces such a problematic view with an alternative account of meaning,
according to which all we need to do is to specify the conditions under which the
sentences of the form “John means such-and-such by ‘plus’” can be justifiably asserted
and to illustrate the utility that asserting such sentences under such conditions has in our
lives. According to this view, we are justified in asserting that a speaker means
something by an expression if we can observe, in enough cases, that the speaker uses
that expression in agreement with the way we would use it. Such a practice of
attributing meanings to others has endless benefits in our lives: if such assertions can be
legitimately made about a speaker, she can be accepted as a reliable speaker of our
speech community and receive the benefit of interacting with other members of this
community in a variety of ways.
Davidson (1984b, 1986, 1991b, 1992, 1994) has also argued against a certain sort of
view of our linguistic practices. According to the view which Davidson rejects,
speaking a language is to follow certain rules or conventions, which are fixed in
advance of any particular conversation that two speakers may have. Davidson argues
that the requirement of following such rules is neither necessary nor sufficient for a
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