Paul Boghossian at the Normativity Workshop

Paul gave a paper entitled 'Rules and Norms'. He began by reminding us of how central rule-following is to our understanding of what it is to be in the business of rational belief. He then went on to detail some differences between what he called rules in the guise of imperatival contents ('If C, do A') and normative propositions such as those that grant permission to do something on occasion of some state of affairs obtaining. He argued we have no clear understanding of which of these logical forms governs the rule-following constitutive of rational belief.

But whatever we decide about that, we accept that rule-following involves essentially the following four factors:

1) (Acceptance) If S is following rule R, then S has somehow accepted R.
2) (Correctness) If S is following rule R by doing A, then S's acceptance of R determines whether S's doing A is correct relative to his acceptance of R.
3) (Explanation) If S is following rule R by doing A, then, S's acceptance of R explains S's doing A.
4) (Rationalisation) If S is following R by doing A, then, S's acceptance of R rationalises S's doing A.

A popluar and natural way to incorporate these factors into a response to the rule-following sceptic is to take the 'Intention View' - the view that when we accept a rule we form an intention to correctly apply it over a potentially infinite amount of cases and that such acceptance both explains (sets causal conditions for right responses) and rationalises our rule-following behaviour.

Paul raised problems for the Intention View and by extension any view that invokes intentional content in its response to rule-following scepticism. He pointed out that problems remain even if we reject Kripke's 'meaning assumption' (the assumption that the contents of thoughts are understood on account of following rules so that if we respond to the sceptic who doubts our grasp of the meaning of 'plus' in terms of words like 'count', she can just bring into doubt our grasp of such words, and so on to infinity). Rather, the central problem for the Intention View remains even if we allow that there can be meaningful mental content that is not understood in terms of rule-following. That problem is that grasping any rule at the personal level relies on grasping a general conditional content governed by a deductive inference rule such as Modus Ponens. But then, how are we to explain grasp of that rule? Thus an infinite regress is generated in the manner of Lewis Carroll's famous argument in 'What the Tortoise said to Achilles'. Except the regress applies not only to the justification of applying a rule, but to rationalising such application as well: in other words, the regress rears up even in cases of unjustified rule-following, such as where we apply a bad rule.

This regress leaves us with the unpalatable rejection of the idea that accepting a rule consists in an intentional state with a conditional content. Paul argued this in fact was Wittgenstein's view: that if rule-following is to be possible at all then some of it must be blind. This puts in danger our intuitive generalist understanding of Rational Belief as governed by epistemic rules.

Paul finished by arguing that a dispositionalist response will not work here because something cannot rationalise or explain itself, so that a disposition must be explained and rationalised by the following of a rule. This leaves us with the idea that not only must we take mental content to be primitive (as we did when we rejected the meaning assumption), but also 'a general conditional content that acts as a reason to believe something'. Paul confessed, although he didn't say why, to not understanding how there could be such a primitive contentful state.

Objections and questions were many during a very stimulating discussion period, but I shall mention the few that my meagre memory cells can adequately recall.

Several people wondered whether an imperatival account of rules and norms wasn't perhaps still a live option.

In response to the infinite regress Paul generated it was suggested that we take the classic line of response to the Lewis Carroll dilemma: we argue that a subject S is operating in accordance with a rule of inference such as Modus Ponens without explicitly accepting it via propositional understanding. To this Paul resonded that Modus Ponens is a general rule that is defined over infinite applications and so one cannot be in accord with it on account of some kind of particularistic grasp of its application.

It was suggested that perhaps the minimal case of following a rule (which involves for PB the four factors outlined above) was too rich. Perhaps some less thick notion of rule-following might suffice that obviated the appeal to a rule of inference that governs a general conditional content? But, it was responded, it is hard to see how something can be a rule without at least (1) and (2) (see above) being satisfied.

Finally, it was suggested that the infinite regress PB had highlighted was not Wittgenstein's problem. The latter, it was suggested, consists in finding an answer to the question 'How do I know what I mean?' rather than the problem of how a rule like Modus Ponens can be a premise in an explanation of how I understand some further rule.

I for one would like to know more about why it is mysterious that 'a general conditional content that acts as a reason to believe something' could be taken as generated by a primitive cognitive-semantic capacity. Perhaps the difficulty here is in thinking there can be such a primitive mental content without there also being a subject who thinks. If I am to be able to think the content Fa then presumably I can think the inferential relations between Fa and Ga, between say, 'being red' and 'being coloured' - that, after all, is what it is to 'think' (it is essential to the content Fa that it be inferentially related to the content Ga - without such relations, there is no such content). But this is just a case of operating with the logical form of the conditional that a grasp of Modus Ponens presupposes; 'if a is red, then a is coloured.' So if we are going to take mental content as primitive I don't see what is so strange about taking 'a general conditional content that acts as a reason to believe something' as primitive, once we accept that content is always for a thinking subject. This brings us close to something like endorsing a 'transcendental' subject without which rule-following would not be possible.

Hannah Ginsborg at the Normativity Workshop

In her paper Hannah argued for a solution to Kripke-inspired scepticism about rule-following by appealing to what she called 'primitive normativity'. She located her approach in terms of dispositionalist and anti-reductionist responses to the problem. The most fundamental problem for the former approaches is that they cannot account properly for the normative aspect of rule-following, and the most fundamental for the latter is their inability to account for the 'disoposition-like' nature of rule following. Hannah's approach operates below the level of facts about meaning yet above the level of mere behavioural responses.

Her approach rejects Kripke's way of setting up the shape a possible solution to the problem might take. He notes that there are two points at which the sceptic will apply pressure: what you meant by past uses of a rule, and what funds your present confidence in applying it? And he insists that a justification of the latter confidence can only be funded by a justification of what you meant in the cases of past usage. Hannah challenged this way of framing the problem. She claimed that one can justify one's present confidence in applying a rule without appeal to facts about past meaning. Invoking examples like children applying a mathematical rule such as 'add 2' without properly understanding the meaning of '+', yet still with enough confidence and reliability in relation to past patterns of application to distinguish such activity from blind responses, she claimed one can be justified in one's present confidence by appeal to such 'primitive normativity' - i.e. normativity that flows from a rulish compulsion to 'go on in the right way' that doesn't explicitly or even implicitly rely on the internalisation or acceptacnce of the meaning of the rule. Once we have answered this half of the sceptical challenge we can help ourselves to a suitably formulated version of dispositionalism to answer the other half: one meant the intended rule because one possessed a disposition to apply it, interfering factors notwithstanding.

Here are some objections that came up in discussion. A general point which recurred was that examples of primitive normativity are not central to the rule-following considerations and it is not clear that appeal to them can work for all applications of rules. Or, to put the point another way, to talk of such primitive normativity is to fall below the bar of rule-following proper and thus to perhaps change the subject rather than answer the problem at hand.

Another objection was that perhaps rules about meaning were being sneaked in the backdoor - isn't 'conforming to past patterns of application' to conform to an understanding of what you meant to do in the past, namely, apply a certain pattern?

It was further pointed out that the patterns of application were such small snatches of finite behaviour that it was not clear one could cite them as cases of rule-following at all.

It was also pointed out that appealing to Kant's conception of aesthetic judgement to understand primitive normativity would not do. For such judgement is involuntarily wrung from one in a way that does not involve a surveying of past usage and so is fundamentally disanalogous to the case of a primitive rulish compulsion to conform to past patterns of application.

I myself do not feel the force of rejecting anti-reductionist responses on account of their not accounting for rule-following being 'like' other dispositional responsive mechanisms. Perhaps it is only 'like' such mechansims!

Although I will not detail them here, Hannah presented robust responses to all these objections and convinced me that something could be made of this original response to the problem.