Ginsborg’s Reading of Wittgenstein on Rules and Normativity

Abstract

AbstractHannah Ginsborg argues that according to Wittgenstein, a normal human subject can recognise that a new step is correct without grasping any rule with which the step accords. I argue, on the contrary, that according to Wittgenstein, a normal human subject’s understanding of a series and her capacity to take new steps to be correct continuations of the series are, as Wittgenstein says of “rule” and “accord” (PI §224), “related to one another.” Neither is more fundamental than the other.