Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

Introduction

A short book of 1982, based on material Kripke first presented at a Wittgenstein colloquium in London, Ontario, in 1976. He reads Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as posing a new form of scepticism: nothing in my past behaviour or mental states settles whether by “plus” I meant addition or “quus”, a function that agrees with addition for small numbers but yields 5 for larger ones – so there seems to be no fact of my meaning anything. Kripke’s Wittgenstein offers a “sceptical solution”: meaning rests on agreement within a community, which rules out a private language. Since many Wittgenstein scholars doubt that this is Wittgenstein’s own view, the position is often called “Kripkenstein”.

Connections

Builds on

• Philosophical Investigations1953 · Ludwig Wittgenstein

More works by Saul Kripke

• 1972Naming and Necessity