“We Can Go No Further”: Meaning, Use, and the Limits of Language

Abstract

Is it possible to give a substantive, non-circular account of meaning and rule-following: an account that explains what it is for someone to use a word with a particular meaning, or to follow a particular rule, in terms that do not employ the concept of meaning or the concept of following a rule? Naturalists and reductionists about meaning and rules think it is possible to give such an account. Anti-reductionists, by contrast, hold that facts about meaning and rules are basic and sui generis; they cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, non-semantic, non-rule-involving facts. Where does Wittgenstein stand in this debate? And is he right? I shall argue that Wittgenstein is an antireductionist about meaning and rule-following, and that anti-reductionism is the correct view to take. Section 1 shows how the issue of reductionism and anti-reductionism about meaning and rules relates to the idea of the limits of language as it figures in Wittgenstein’s post-Tractatus writings. Section 2 presents a framework for assessing the interpretative debate between reductionist and anti-reductionist readings of Wittgenstein. Section 3 argues that we cannot settle that debate on the basis of Wittgenstein’s general, methodological opposition to reductionism. Section 4 presents an important argument for anti-reductionism from Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Section 5 considers some putative evidence of reductionism about meaning in the Brown Book and offers an alternative, anti-reductionist interpretation. Section 6 explores the nature of Wittgenstein’s anti-reductionism. It argues, first, that Wittgenstein accepts that semantic and normative facts supervene on non-semantic, non-normative facts and, second, that at many points his treatment of meaning and rules is not confined to the kind of pleonastic claims that are often taken to define non-reductionist, or quietist, positions.