A common complaint against Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that whereas the aim of “the real” Wittgenstein’s private language argument is to establish the impossibility of a necessarily private language, the communitarian account of meaning proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein (KW), if successful, would establish the impossibility of a contingently private language. I show that this common complaint is based on a failure of Kripke’s critics (a failure that is justified, in part, by Kripke’s text) to recognize and (...) understand his distinction between a “physically isolated” individual (PII) and an individual “considered in isolation” (ICl) . It is only an ICI for whom rule following and language are rendered impossible by KW. l then show that an lel speaks a necessarily private language. Thus, KW’s private language argument gives us, at best, the same story about the impossibility of private language as pre-Kripke accounts of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (shrink)

A common complaint against Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that whereas the aim of “the real” Wittgenstein’s private language argument is to establish the impossibility of a necessarily private language, the communitarian account of meaning proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein , if successful, would establish the impossibility of a contingently private language. I show that this common complaint is based on a failure of Kripke’s critics to recognize and understand his distinction between a “physically isolated” individual and an (...) individual “considered in isolation” . It is only an ICI for whom rule following and language are rendered impossible by KW. l then show that an lel speaks a necessarily private language. Thus, KW’s private language argument gives us, at best, the same story about the impossibility of private language as pre-Kripke accounts of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (shrink)

A common complaint against Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is that whereas the aim of “the real” Wittgenstein’s private language argument is to establish the impossibility of a necessarily private language, the communitarian account of meaning proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein (KW), if successful, would establish the impossibility of a contingently private language. I show that this common complaint is based on a failure of Kripke’s critics (a failure that is justified, in part, by Kripke’s text) to recognize and (...) understand his distinction between a “physically isolated” individual (PII) and an individual “considered in isolation” (ICl). It is only an ICI for whom rule following and language are rendered impossible by KW. l then show that an lel speaks a necessarily private language. Thus, KW’s private language argument gives us, at best, the same story about the impossibility of private language as pre-Kripke accounts of Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (shrink)

This paper is a critical analysis of Putnam’s “consistency objection,” an objection made against a particular reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics (“up-to-us-ism”). I show that Putnam’s objection presupposes a rather unlikely version of Wittgenstein’s “up-to-us-ism” and is unable to undermine a more likely anti-Platonist version. I also show that a companion argument, (the “something more” argument) is unable to overturn this more sophisticated anti-Platonist version of Wittgenstein’s up-to-us-ism. Along the way I try to clarify Wittgenstein’s anti-Plalonist account of mathematics, (...) so that others do not repeat Putnam’s mistake. (shrink)

This paper is a critical analysis of Putnam’s “consistency objection,” an objection made against a particular reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics (“up-to-us-ism”). I show that Putnam’s objection presupposes a rather unlikely version of Wittgenstein’s “up-to-us-ism” and is unable to undermine a more likely anti-Platonist version. I also show that a companion argument, (the “something more” argument) is unable to overturn this more sophisticated anti-Platonist version of Wittgenstein’s up-to-us-ism. Along the way I try to clarify Wittgenstein’s anti-Plalonist account of mathematics, (...) so that others do not repeat Putnam’s mistake. (shrink)