Philosophical Invesfigarionr 9:3 July 1986 ISSN 0190-0536 $2.50

Reply to Mr. Mounce

G.P. Baker & P.M.S. Hacker, St John’s College, Oxford

The editor kindly invited us to reply to Mr. Mounce’s criticism of Scepticism, Rules and Language. Since Mounce, in distorting and misrepresenting our argument, has also misunderstood Wittgen- stein, we welcomed the opportunity to make this clear. More extensive argument is to be found in our book.

Mounce examines two issues. The first is whether §§ 243f. is continuous with the preceding remarks in the Investigations. According to Mounce we say ‘that there is nothing in the discussion prior to § 243 to render dubious the idea of a private language, so the discussion deals with a fresh topic’ (p. 189). On page 23 of our book (henceforth SRL) we stated ‘The private language argument is indeed built on the previous discussions, not only of rule-following but also of ostensive definitions, samples, meaning, understanding and explanation’. Nowhere did we argue for discontinuity, or suggest that $§ 243ff. form ‘a self-contained section’. What we argued, against Kripke, was that it is false that the ‘real private language argument’, as he puts it, occurs in §§ 143-242. The private language argument is indeed a fresh topic, but it is built on and presupposes the conclusions of the preceding sections.

Mounce sides with Kripke in the belief that $ 202 concludes an argument which already shows that a ‘private language’ is impossible. He refers to ‘certain details of scholarship’ in our examination of the MS sources of § 202, claiming that in pointing out these ‘details’ we ‘wish to suggest, presumably, that its present position is fortuitous and may therefore be dscounted’ (p. 190-1). We suggested no such thing. Indeed, we emphasized that ‘we claim not that this information is decisive but suggestive’ not of the fortuitous location of § 202 in the final draft of the Investigations, but of the fact that $§ 201-3 do not constitute the core of the book (which is what Kripke claims they are). Why it is thus suggestive was made clear in five points (SRL pp. 15f.) which Mounce carefully omits. We here summarize them. (1) The history of

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§§ 201-3 makes it implausible to allocate them a pivotal role in the book. (2) In the original MS context (in the vicinity of what is now §§ 377-81) they explicitly presupposed the senselessness of private ostensive definition as established by the antecedent private language argument. (3) Their original purpose was not, as Kripke suggests it is in the final version, to propound a new paradox, viz. that there can be no such thing as following a rule. (4) In the MS context these remarks have nothing to do with scepticism. (5) In that context the remark that following a rule is a practice has nothing directly to do with social practices, but with the contrast between a bogus Schein-Praxis and a genuine practice, a genuine technique of rule-application. Mounce disproves none of these points. Nor does he show that they do not suggest what we claimed they do.

He asserts that on our account the position of 5 202 is entirely incongruous ‘as indeed they admit’ (p. 191). But, he continues, it is not easy to believe that Wittgenstein was indifferent to the incongruity or failed to notice it. However Mounce studiedly avoids mentioning what incongruity we admit, namely not the position of § 202, but its final sentence in this position. And the reason for its incongruity is, we argued (SRL p. 21), that Wittgenstein has not yet even mentioned, let alone explained what following a rule ‘privately’ means. Contrary to what Mounce asserts, it does not mean following a rule in private. in isolation from a social context, not even in the privacy of desert islands. (Hence Wittgenstein’s use of scare-quotes, repeated again in § 256 (cf. § 653).) It means following a rule that is essentially, not contingently, private, a rule that is (and the formulation of which is) in principle inaccessible to anyone else, so that no one else could (logically) understand it. The paradigm of such an essentially private rule, as we explained (SRL p. 25 n.), is, for Wittgenstein, a putative ‘private’ ostensive definition of an expression by reference to a sensation or experience conceived as a ‘private’ sample. We shall revert to this point below.

§ 202, Mounce insists, seems to tell in Kripke’s favour, since Wittgenstein dismisses the idea of a private rule on the ground that obeying a rule is a practice, ‘i.e. something which has general significance’ (p. 191). He refers to § 199 (‘To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess are customs (uses, institutions)’). ‘In other words’, he concludes, ‘Wittgenstein here (and indeed quite generally) is using “a practice” as interchangeable

G.P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker 20 1

with “a custom”, “a general use”, “an institution”.’ Unfortunately he fails to muster any evidence for his general claim, not even from the Investigations (cf. § 51 ‘in the technique of using language certain elements correspond to the signs’ (‘in der Praxis der Sprache entsprachen den Zeichen gewisse Elemente’) and § 197 ‘in the day to day practice of playing’ (‘in der taglichen Praxis des Spielens’) where Wittgenstein’s concern is not with the social practice, but with the fact that it is something done, an activity engaged in in practice, hence an exemplification of a technique (cf. also S 21.) Nor does Mounce examine other published works (e.g. Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics (henceforth RFM) p. 335 ‘In order to describe the phenomenon of language, one must describe a practice, not something that happens once, no matter of what kind’ and p. 432 where a new employment of a concept is called a new ‘Praxis’). And, to be sure, he does not examine the numerous uses of ‘Praxis’ in the Nachlass. In particular he does not mention MS 180(a), p. 76, which contains a draft of (J 202. The private linguist, Wittgenstein there argues (as we explained (SRL pp. 14f.)), purports to make the transition from seeing that something is red to saying that it is red (cf. Investigations §§ 377ff.) by means of recognition of a ‘private object’. But, Wittgenstein argues, this is an absurdity. Such a transition would be a ‘private’ one. Hence to follow a rule designates a practice, which cannot be replaced by the appearance of a practice. But now, the private linguist’s ‘transitions’ in his mind from a putative private sample to the use of a word do not even appear to be a social practice! But they do give the (intellectual) appearance of a technique of application in practice, and that is why it is so deceptive. As we emphasized in our discussion of ‘certain details of scholarship’ (SRL pp. llff. esp. 20), ‘Praxis’ is used by Wittgenstein as in the common phrase ‘in theory and in practice’ to signify a normative regularity exemplifying a technique; ‘social practice’ (which he never uses) is not a pleonasm.

Far from dismissing the idea of following a rule privately as unintelligible on the grounds that following a rule requires ‘a social background’ (p. 191). Wittgenstein had no objection to following a rule privately, but only to following one ‘privately’. In MSS 165, pp. 74, 103ff., 108ff.; MS 166 pp. 4, 7; MS 124, p. 221; MS C5 p. 25, Wittgenstein discusses Robinson Crusoe, solitary cavemen and other such isolated people following rules. The upshot of his remarks is that there is precious little to discuss. There is no problem about following rules in isolation, as long as one’s behaviour displays a complexity appropriate to rule-following, in a

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context of a persistent normative technique or practice, as long as the rules are, in principle, shareable, capable of being followed by others (with the appropriate capacities). The technique of following rules, he argues (MS 166, p. 7), can indeed be private in the same sense in which I can have a private sewing machine (that is, no one but I knows about it). But, of course, to be a private sewing machine, it must be a sewing machine, i.e. must resemble a sewing machine, public or private! So too a rule must be a rule, i.e. (as Mounce felicitously but uncomprehendingly quotes) it must be ‘analogous to what is called a “rule” in human dealings’ (RFM

Mounce’s second general issue is whether an individual can be ‘seen as following a rule which is wholly determined by his own thoughts and movements’ (p. 190). According to us, he claims ‘there is no difficulty in supposing someone to follow a rule even when he is considered in isolation, i.e. even when we consider only his own thoughts and movements as relevant in determining the correctness of what he does.’ It is true that we argued that there is no difficulty in supposing someone to follow a rule even when he is considered in isolation. So did Wittgenstein. But nowhere did we suggest that this means that in the case of a solitary rule-follower ‘only his thoughts and movements [are] relevant in determining the correct- ness of what he does’. O n the contrary, this is precisely what we denied. It is a recurrent theme of our book that it is the rule he follows and nothing but the rule that determines whether what he does is correct or incorrect (SRL pp. 71ff., 88ff. and passim).

Mounce accuses us of persistently failing ‘to distinguish follow- ing a rule from any type of regular action which someone (else) could formulate as a rule’ (p. 196-7). T h s is puzzhg, since we went to some length to clarify this very confusion, which we identified as one of the roots of rule-scepticism (SRL, Preface pp. ixf., pp. 91ff.). We can find no place where we sinned against this simple principle. Mounce refers to one passage in which we allegedly ask the reader ‘to imagine one who decorates his wall with a pattern of 3 dashes and 3 dots simply repeated. If the pattern varies he becomes discomforted and adds a dot or a dash . . .’ (p. 197). This, Mounce says correctly, is no more than ‘a response to a regularity’. The example, however, is Mounce’s, not ours. Our argument was that ‘there is no reason why Crusoe should notfollow a pattern or paradigm, making occasional mistakes perhaps . . . That

is, following a rule will show itself in the manner in which he uses the formulation of the rule as a canon or norm of correctness - Hence to take

p. 344).

G.P. Baker and P . M . S . Hacker 203

a simple example, he might use the pattern --- ... --- . . . as a rule or pattern to follow in decorating the walls of his house; when he notices four dots in a sequence he manifests annoyance with himself. He goes back and rubs out, and perhaps checks carefully adjacent marks, comparing them with his “master pattern”’ (SRL p. 39, emphases added). Mounce’s example is indeed of a mere regularity, and the pattern of dashes and dots is there no more then ‘the natural expression of a uniformity’ (RFM p. 348). Acting according to a rule, following a rule, as in our case above, ‘presupposes the recognition of a uniformity’ (ibid.) and its employment as a canon of correctness. Hence too Mounce’s quotation from the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics VI - 41 (p. 344), which he introduces as ‘ulmost identical with Baker’s and Hacker’s’, and, having quoted it, contends that ‘the example is the same but the conclusion is entirely different’ (our emphases), is beside the point. For the example is neither the same nor almost identical. Wittgenstein’s example is of a natural regularity, ours is of a normative regularity, manifesting a technique of rule-application and presupposing recognition of a uniformity. (Of course, one might further expand our story in such a way that the criteria for rule-following are defeated by additional evidence or an aberrant context; but that is true of analogous stories of piima face social practices too (cf. RFM p. 336; Investigations § 200).) To be sure, ‘what in a complicated surrounding we call “following a rule” we should certainly not call that if it stood in isolation’ (RFM p. 335). But what cannot ‘stand in isolation’ is a solitary act of following a rule, not an isolated person’s following rule. And the ‘complicated surroundings’ of his rule-following practices are his way of living (compare a Crusoe and a solitary chimpanzee).

What Mounce is guilty of is persistently confusing the question of what it means to say that someone is following a rule with the distinct question of how one might find out whether or not he is. We briefly discussed the latter issue on pp. 39f. Wittgenstein discussed it in MS 165. If a solitary cave dweller used a simple picture-language, we could fairly easily come to understand it, he argued. But if Crusoe gives orders to himself, it would be much more difficult to understand him (if he speaks an alien tongue) by mere detached observation. So too we argued, ‘if one must, ex hypothesi, remain unseen [but why should one?], it will be very difficult to understand [Crusoe]. If the rules are simple [as in the decorating example we gave], we might guess aright. If they are complex, we might not. Reflect that if we observed the self-

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addressed speech of a shipwrecked monolingual Tibetan, our chances of coming to understand him are remote.’ Perhaps Mounce thinks that the language of the last Mohican died with Uncas, while Chingachgook still lived and only apparently spoke Mohican to himself!

Mounce contends that we invoke Investigations § 243 as proof of our interpretation. He must have read a different book from the one we wrote. We did not discuss § 243 at all, but a MS draft of it (MS 124, p. 213) which is connected with one of Wittgenstein’s discussions of Crusoe (MS 124, p. 221, which refers back to p. 213). It is the latter issue and its implications which we wrote about (SRL pp. 41f.).

Mounce concludes his article by remarking that the thesis we attribute to Wittgenstein, viz. that rules are ‘necessarily public’ (his phrasing!) is wholly obscure. We fail, he claims, to explain ‘why a rule must be capable of being grasped by more than one person’. A merit of the social conception of rules, he contends, is that it removes this mystery. Here it is evident that Mounce has failed altogether to understand what Wirigenstein meant by a ‘private language’, hence has failed to grasp what a ‘private rule’ is meant to be, and obviously also what ‘following a rule “privately”’ is meant to signify. Equally clearly he has failed to understand, since he does not even mention, the central theme of our book, namely that rules and acts that constitute following those rules are internally related. The business of solitary rule-followers is altogether peripheral to our (and Wittgenstein’s) concern. And the answer to Mounce’s question of why rules must be capable of being grasped by more than one person is adumbrated in detail in the course of our various discussions in the book of the internal relations between rules and acts of following them. Since Mounce seems not to have read these sections of the book, we may perhaps be excused from repeating ourselves further. ‘Reviewers are forever telling authors they can’t understand them. The authors might often reply: Is that my fault?’ Mounce’s flagrant distortions, oversights and omissions being what they are, we are inclined to think that this is one case where this retort is fully justified.

StJohn’s College, O x f o r d ) OX1 3]R