The Etiology of the Obvious Wittgenstein and the Elimination of Indeterminacy

Abstract

Abstract Much of the discussion of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy focuses on one or another of three arguments drawn from the Philosophical Investigations: the critique of denotational theories of meaning, the “paradox of interpretation’’ with respect to rule-following, and the private language argument. My aim in this paper is to identify a deep underlying issue that is common to all three ( though I will consider only the first two). That is what I will call “the problem of normative similarity.” This concerns the normative role played by our basic judgments of sameness or identity with respect to categorization and rule-following. The arguments Wittgenstein develops against ostensive definition and rules, as the primitive or basic devices for fixing the normative standards of language use, show that both are indeterminate in their application and so cannot account for the normativity of language. Successful ostension and rule-following presuppose a background of what is obviously the same to the participants. And, according to Wittgenstein, that background consists in the mastery of techniques of application that are acquired in the process of learning.