Specter of Reason

I want to clarify and expand on a point I recently raised against Ryle. A friend has suggested that I moved a little too quickly through the points, especially concerning the relevance of Wittgenstein, so I'll try to make it a bit more cogent. I'll draw some connections to Dennett, Millikan and Kripke in the process. It begins with Ryle's distinction between museum-possession and workshop-possession of factual knowledge (see Ryle, "Knowing How and Knowing That," 1946). Let MUSEUM(p) = museum-possession of knowledge that p. Let WORKSHOP(p) = workshop-possession of knowledge that p. Ryle claims that MUSEUM(p) is impoverished with respect to knowing-how, where "knowing how" is a general term for intelligence associated with the application or expression of knowledge. In order to intelligently exploit one's propositional knowledge that p, one needs WORKSHOP(p). Ryle is also clear that, in order to know that p, one must establish or derive the f...

I've written another pa per for another graduate "course," entitled "Theories of Linguistic Communication." It's not as strong or thorough as I'd like it to be, and it's a bit disorganized, but I don't have more time to work on it. I'm not sure how committed I am to the views I'm expressing here, either. How's that for a disclaimer? In a nutshell, my arguments and views are still in development, but hopefully this short essay will be of some interest. Rules, Acts and Interpretation: A Wittgensteinian View of Linguistic Communication I According to the standard view of linguistic communication, to know a language is to know a set of rules which allows one to deduce the truth-conditions of any well-formed sentence in that language (Recanati 2002, p. 105). These rules are semantic, which means they relate sentences to the propositions they express. Such rules may be context-sensitive: some linguistic entities may even “wear t...

I wasn't able to convince my professor that KW accepts the picture of 'grasping a rule' which sustains the skeptical argument. She claims that the skeptical argument is (or is similar to) a reductio ad absurdum-- the argument and its intolerable conclusion lead to rejection of one or more of the premises. Thus, she argues, when KW says he accepts the skeptic's argument and conclusion, he only means that he accepts that, given the original picture of 'grasping a rule', there can be no facts about intended meaning. The skeptical solution supposedly replaces that picture, which relies on the history of the individual, with a different picture which focuses on the social construction of rules. I grant that some of what KW says supports such a reading, but it cannot be correct. First, it is hard for me to understand why KW would accept that there are no facts about intended meaning if he rejected the original picture of 'grasping a rule'. Even when we acc...

I've already turned in my paper on meaning skepticism , but I want to get a few more thoughts organized on KW's skeptical solution. As I've already argued, KW does not present meaning skepticism as a logically coherent possibility. Since I don't see a problem to be solved, I see no need to explore possible solutions. Still, it is worth looking at KW's skeptical solution for curiosity's sake, if nothing else. I've already expressed dissatisfaction with KW's picture of what it means to follow a rule. In response to my paper, my professor disagreed with me about KW's attitude towards that picture. She thinks KW rejects the picture, perhaps as part of KW's skeptical solution to the paradox. I don't think that's right. KW's skeptical solution is called "skeptical" because it does not challenge the skeptic's argument or conclusion. It accepts the stipulation that there are no facts about intended meaning: "There i...

I'm writing a paper for a graduate "course" on skepticism, my first paper for a philosophy class in over a decade. (I say "course," because it is independent study: I have not been to any classes, and I have only met with the professor once, at which time we agreed on the topic of the paper without discussing anything of philosophical substance.) The assigned topic is "meaning skepticism." Here's a work-in-progress draft (sans references). Comments, criticism and questions are welcome, as always. I will probably add a bit at the end about Kripkenstein's "skeptical solution." Two Problems with Kripkenstein's Argument for Meaning Skepticism According to Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein produced “a new form of philosophical skepticism,” which I shall call meaning skepticism . Kripke does not give it this or any other name, though some commentators refer to it as rule skepticism . This may be justified by the fact that Wittgenstein ...

Introduction In his introduction to Creativity, Cognition, and Knowledge: An Interaction ( 2002 ), the late Terry Dartnall challenges his fellow cognitive scientists to pay attention to Wittgenstein in order to understand the central role of creativity in human intelligence. I want to explain why I think he is right, and why I think just as much attention should be paid to Gilbert Ryle. The main issue is the relationship between rules and behavior, an issue which may seem simple, but which implicates our very conception of what it means to be a person. It is sometimes said that, whereas people are creative, computers can only do what they are programmed to do. The idea is that creativity cannot be wholly rule-based. Our intelligence cannot simply be a matter of following rules. However, the truth may be more complicated.  Contemporary wisdom has it that the right kinds of programs can lead to creative behavior. Take genetic algorithms. They involve controlled processes of r...