Certainty in Following a Rule Refutes Scepticism

Abstract

I discuss Wittgenstein’s comprehension of rule-following in this paper, as it is presented in Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein avoids scepticism in rule-following as well as idealistic apriorism. According to Wittgenstein, a rule doesn’t exist if it is not accesible to the public. I critically analyse Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s solution of the paradox of rule-following. I don’t accept Kripke’s sceptic formulation of the paradox and the proposed sceptical solution, which immitates Hume’s solution of the causality-problem. I demonstrate that the original Wittgenstein’s paradox is at most a paradox of certainty, that is of unfounded doubt-evasion in rule-following. Wittgenstein offers only two possibilities for a change in such a basic rule as the rule of addition: unnoticed change of the rule together with an apparent change in the form of life of the participants or an apparent change of the rule by preserving the form of life. In neither case there is any reason for a radical scepsis of a rule, which we follow. I also point at principal distinctions between causality and rule-following due to which one cannot state a strict analogy between the assumption of causality and assumption of rule-following as Kripke assumes. It is not reasonable in a causal connection to talk of a “wrong following” of a rule, though it is possible in any case of rule-following.