The Rei(g)n of ‘Rule’

139 Pages·2010·1.228 MB·English

by  Dana Riesenfeld

To Jonathan
Dana Riesenfeld
The Rei(g)n of ‘Rule’
APORIA
Apori/a

HRSG. VON / EDITED BY
Jesús Padilla Gálvez
(University of Castilla-La Mancha)
Alejandro Tomasini Bassols
(National Autonomous University of Mexico)

ADVISORY BOARD
Pavo Barišić (University of Split)
Michel Le Du (Université de Strasbourg)
Guillermo Hurtado (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
Lorenzo Peña (Spanish National Research Council)
Nuno Venturinha (New University of Lisbon)
Nicanor Ursua Lezaun (University of the Basque Country)
Pablo Quintanilla (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru)

Aporia is a new series devoted to studies in the field of philosophy. Aporia (Aπορία)
means philosophical puzzle and the aim of the series is to present contributions by
authors who systematically investigate current problems. Aporia (Aπορία) puts special
emphasis on the publication of concise arguments on the topics studied. The
publication has to contribute to the explanation of current philosophical problem, using
a systematic or a historic approach. Contributions should concern relevant
philosophical topics and should reflect the ongoing progress of scientific development.

Band 2 / Volume 2
Dana Riesenfeld

The Rei(g)n of ‘Rule’
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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

I. Rules, norms, conventions and necessity

1 Why norms are not conventions and conventions are not norms
1.1 The tension of normativity 11
1.2 Two concepts of arbitrariness: Saussure and Lewis 13
1.3 Can conventions become norms? 22
1.4 Rules 25
2 Cavell on normative necessity
2.1 “I am less interested now in the ‘mean’ than I am in the ‘must’” 29
2.2 “Here the pantomime of caution concludes” 31
2.3 “the hopelessness of speaking, in a general way, 33
about the ‘normativeness’”

II. Rules as conventions vs. rules as norms in the rule-following debates

3 What is a rule and what ought it to be
3.1 The reduction of rules to conventions 39
vs. the reduction of rules to norms
3.2 Kripke: The reduction of rules to conventions 40
3.3 Baker & Hacker: The reduction of rules to norms 52
3.4 Meredith Williams: On normative necessity 63
3.5 Cora Diamond: Rules and their right place 75

III. Twisted Language

4 Davidson on rules, conventions and norms
4.1. Normativity without conventionality 83
4.2 Communication without rules or conventions 83
4.3 “The second person” vs. the community view 90
4.4 Two kinds of normativity 93
4.5 The unpacking of ‘ought’ 99
4.6 Normativity without norms 102
5 Searle on rules
5.1 The shortcut argument against rule 109
5.2 Is language a rule governed form of behavior or is it not? 110
5.3 (No) Rules of conversation 111
5.4 Background brought to the foreground 116

Conclusion 119

The Rei(g)n of ‘Rule’

“We seem to be dealing with an especially messy cluster concept”
(Lewis (1969: 105), on ‘rule’)

1. Rules, Norms and Conventions

Philosophy in general and the linguistic analytic tradition in particular have
been reigned by the concept of ‘rule’. Forefathers of the analytic philoso-
phy of language – Frege and Wittgenstein – considered rules to be funda-
mental in any attempt to understand our language and thought. Writers
such as Carnap and Sellars all agree on the importance and centrality of
‘rules’, but differ on the definition and role assigned to language-related
rules. Contemporary philosophers of language such as Searle and Brandom
follow the analytic tradition both in assigning rules an essential function
and in disagreeing on how this function operates.
Philosophy has not only been reigned by rules, it has also been
reined by them. While ‘rules’ are central in nearly every theory on or per-
spective of language, the concept ‘rule’ is not sufficiently defined – being
used to mean different things and assigned with different tasks by different
philosophers. This situation, though, is not coincidental. It reveals a sig-
nificant feature of the concept of ‘rule’: it is a concept that (at least as re-
lated to language) evades definition. ‘Rule’ cannot be well defined, clearly
and sharply delineated, as perhaps those who use it had hoped. This book
is first and foremost an attempt to argue this, to present the conceptual im-
possibility of clearly defining rules and to proclaim ‘rule’ a philosophically
ill concept. The aim of this study is to diagnose the illness before offering a
remedy.
The concept ‘rule’ is situated at the busiest crossroad of the philoso-
phy of language. Every other significant concept in this field is connected
to rules and most philosophers assume, explicitly or implicitly, that rules
are an essential part of the very definition of language. One of the basic
ideas shared by philosophers of language is that the phenomenon called
language is essentially a system of rules and that therefore an understand-
ing of language essentially involves an understanding of the rules of lan-
guage. Both of these claims – the ontological (‘rules exist’) and the epis-
temic (‘understanding language is the understanding of the rules of lan-
2
guage’) – are closely related via the functional role rules are assigned.
Functionality is supposed to answer the question of how rules operate in
language and how they achieve their task. Yet in addition to an absence of
a clear definition of ‘rule’ in theories of language, there is no clear-cut an-
swer to the functionality of rules. The demands and expectations from rules
are multiple and varying; e.g., philosophers tend to think of rules as a key
concept in understanding understanding, in shedding light on how we
communicate with one another. They appeal to rules in explaining, justify-
ing and guiding our (language-related) actions and in explaining first or
second language acquisition. Meaning itself, some contend, is dependent
on the assumption of the existence of rules. If language has anything to do
with distinguishing between correct vs. incorrect uses of language, it is ar-
gued, then we must treat it as essentially rule-bound.
I claim not only that the expectations and demands from rules are
multifaceted, but more importantly that some of the most fundamental de-
mands contradict each other; in other words, some of the demands of rules
cannot be met by one and the same concept. Philosophers not only require
too much of rule, they also demand that it perform conflicting tasks. This is
the general diagnosis of the philosophical illness of ‘rule’. In this study I
attempt to spell out and illustrate the symptoms of this illness, as they ap-
pear in a number of varieties of the disease.
The basic tension within the concept of rule is that philosophers wish
for it to be on the one hand a normative concept, and on the other, a de-
scriptive one. By ‘normativity’ I am alluding to the basic, rudimentary
definition of normativity; i.e., that normativity distinguishes between the
realm of ought and the domain of is. Unlike within other philosophical ter-
rains, in the philosophy of language, the normative distinction carries with
it no moral implications. Rather, it is the duty of linguistic norms to pry
apart correct and incorrect uses of language. Rules, it is said, tell us how
we ought to talk, how we ought to act linguistically. The normativity of
linguistic rules grants meaning to the idea that we are sometimes wrong
and that we can be corrected by others or ourselves. The normative dimen-
sion of language accounts for our predisposition to appeal to rules as a
canon of correctness and to view rules as guiding our actions.
Along with the aspiration to provide a normative account of rules,
philosophers simultaneously expect rules to be descriptive concepts, i.e., to
portray as accurately as possible our actual use. I call this aspect the con-
ventionality of rules. I chose the term “convention” since it captures the ar-
bitrariness of rules, the fact that rules, unlike natural laws, embody a sense
3
of contingency and option. The conventional dimension of rules ties rules
to actual uses, regular habits, tradition of use and customs, while maintain-
ing the rule’s descriptive nature.
At first, perhaps the tension I’m referring to does not make itself ob-
vious. For why can’t the concept of rule be both normative and descrip-
tive? And indeed, there is no general reason why the two functions cannot
coincide. My argument is slightly different. Although it is not impossible
that normative rules would also be descriptive and that descriptive rules
would also be normative, it is not necessary. In other words if the rules of
language are both normative (set a standard of correctness, tell us how we
ought to speak or to act linguistically) and descriptive (present a relation,
describe, as fully as possible, the way we actually use language) the con-
nection between those two functions is contingent. Philosophers, I have no-
ticed, tend to emphasize either the normative dimension of rules, or their
descriptive dimension. Moreover, emphasis typically leads to a reduction.
So ‘rules’ are in general reduced to either norms or conventions, depending
on the philosopher’s choice of emphasis. Each reduction has its advantages
as well as its disadvantages, which are summarized in the following table:

Rules as norms Rules as conventions
+ Maintain the rule’s con- Maintain the rule’s con-
nection to correctness nection to actual uses
― Waive a necessary connec- Derive ought from is, or
tion to actual uses waive ‘correctness’ as a
concept related to rules

The main advantage of the reduction of rules to norms is the ability
of such reduction to preserve one of the rule’s main intuitive tasks, that of
serving as a guide of correct (vs. incorrect) uses of language. The main dis-
advantage of such reduction is that the concept of rule we get loses a nec-
essary connection with the actual way people use their language. The rea-
son is conceptual; nothing guarantees that the way in which we ought to
act is the way in which we indeed act. This allows for the possibility that
no one follows linguistic rules.
On the other hand, the reduction of rules to conventions guarantees
that the concept of rule is the one employed, by and large, by the linguistic
community. However, the main shortcoming of the reduction to conven-
tions is that since the way people indeed act does not necessarily corre-
spond to the way they ought to, rules seen as conventions either give up on
any notion of correctness or perform a type of naturalistic fallacy by as-