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This is Simply What I Do

journal contribution
posted on 2003-01-01, 00:00 authored by Cathy LeggCathy Legg
Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following is widely regarded to have identified what Kripke called “the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date”. But does it? This paper examines the problem in the light of Charles Peirce's distinctive scientific hierarchy. Peirce identifies a phenomenological inquiry which is prior to both logic and metaphysics, whose role is to identify the most fundamental philosophical categories. His third category, particularly salient in this context. pertains to general predication. Rule-following scepticism, the paper suggests, results from running together two questions: “How is it that I can project rules?”, and, “What is it for a given usage of a rule to be right?”. In Peircean terms the former question, concerning the irreducibility of general predication (to singular reference), must be answered in phenomenology, while the latter, concerning the difference between true and false predication, is answered in logic. A failure to appreciate this distinction, it is argued, has led philosophers to focus exclusively on Wittgenstein's famous public account of rule-following rightness, thus overlooking a private, phenomenological dimension to Wittgenstein's remarks on following a rule which gives the lie to Kripke's reading of him as a sceptic.

History

Journal

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Volume

46

Pagination

58-80

Location

Hoboken, N.J.

ISSN

0031-8205

Language

eng

Publication classification

CN.1 Other journal article

Copyright notice

2003, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing

Issue

1

Publisher

Wiley

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