Seventeenth British Wittgenstein Society Lecture

Rule-Following and Reflective Judgement

Dr Hanne Appelqvist

May 22nd, 2017

@ 6:15 pm - 8:00 pm

Bloomsbury, 50 Bedford Square

London WC1B 3DP

About the Speaker
Speaker Bibliography
Abstract
Video
Report
About the Reporter

About the Speaker

Hanne Appelqvist is Docent of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki and a Fellow of the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies. She received her PhD degree from Columbia University in 2007. In her dissertation Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication (Acta Philosophical Fennica 85, 2008) she defended a formalist interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks on music. Since then, she has worked on Wittgenstein’s ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of language from the viewpoint of the Kantian interpretation of Wittgenstein philosophy. Her work has appeared in journals such as the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, the British Journal of Aesthetics, and Metaphilosophy. Appelqvist is currently preparing a book manuscript on the relevance of aesthetic judgment for Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.   

SELECTED Bibliography

Abstract

According to Wittgenstein, the understanding of language is a normative phenomenon. It is not yet enough that my application of words and sentences conforms to the rules that are constitutive of their uses in our language. If I understand, then my behavior ought to be internally related to the rule so that I can appeal to the rule in justifying my application thereof. However, as Wittgenstein states repeatedly, such justifications given by explicit rule-formulations come to an end. This talk will address the moment of reaching the bedrock that marks the boundary where justifications come to an end, where my grasp of the rules takes a form other than interpretation, where I follow the rule but do so ‘blindly’. It will do this by discussing Wittgenstein’s way of connecting the moment of ‘blind rule-following’ with the understanding of a musical theme. The talk argues that the understanding of music is evoked as an example of a judgment that is normative in spite of resisting conceptual justifications. In this respect, Wittgenstein’s appeal to musical understanding may be seen as relevantly similar to Kant’s appeal to reflective judgment, epitomized by a judgment of beauty, as one that ends the regress of conceptual justifications for the application of conceptual rules to sensible particulars.

Video

Report

by Fionn O’Donovan

The lecture began with a consideration of Wittgenstein’s paradox about rule-following. For Wittgenstein, Appelqvist suggested, it is not sufficient for an action to (properly speaking) accord with a rule for it to "fit" with the rule. That might happen as a result of sheer luck. To count as understanding, the agent’s behaviour and the rule must be internally related: for instance, the agent will be able to appeal to the rule in explaining their behaviour. There is, however, an apparent problem here: does the agent not need to be able to interpret the appealed-to rule to count as understanding that? And would the further rule appealed to in the second-order interpretation not also need further interpretation? How then do we avoid an infinite regress?

Appelqvist highlighted Wittgenstein's claim, in response, that "there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation" (PhilosophicaI Investigations, 201). How is it that we grasp a rule without interpreting it? She answered these questions via a detour to Kant’s First Critique, suggesting that there Kant also recognises the insufficiency of mere appeals to rules in judgment. He claims that what we need to be able to apply a general conceptual rule to a particular case is a "power of judgment", which is in Kant's sense an intuitive (as opposed to a conceptual) power. Crucially, this power shows itself not in an agent articulating or formulating some rule, but in action. Appelqvist suggested that, when utilising the power of judgment, agents exhibit a rule which cannot be conceptually formulated. Kant’s position, for Appelqvist, is a bipartite analysis of what is involved with understanding: on one side, we have the formulated conceptual rules which the agent can appeal to, and on the other the non-conceptual rules grasped by the power of judgment, exhibited in action.

Appelqvist argued these Kantian ingredients are essential to Wittgenstein’s own solution to the problem about rule-following. Her idea is that Kant’s “power of judgment” is the way of grasping a rule that is not an interpretation Wittgenstein mentions. It is this idea that Wittgenstein purportedly uses to stop the regress of interpretations. She supported this claim by examining Wittgenstein’s remarks on the understanding of a musical tune.

In Philosophical Investigations 184, Wittgenstein considers the case of suddenly recalling how to play a musical tune. The suggestion is that the criteria for the tune really being “there” in one’s mind is that one can then actually play it, either in one’s head or aloud. However certain we may feel that we know it, or however competently we can explain the relevant rules, it may turn out that we are after all unable to complete the tune upon attempt. In such cases, while the conceptual, rule-based part of understanding is present, the part based on the power of judgment is lacking. Thus, Appelqvist argued, for Wittgenstein, too, both these parts are necessary for understanding.

Appelqvist explored many of Wittgenstein’s other examples and remarks pertaining to the relationship between music, rules and understanding to support this reading. She also explored the relationship between the views of Kant and Wittgenstein on this subject and their views on aesthetics. One question raised in the discussion concerned whether, when we apply the power of judgment, we do so qua individuals or qua members of a common linguistic community with common standards. Appelqvist replied that the conceptual rule-based component of her account implies that there will always be a part of aesthetic judgment that involves reference to communal standards, but that the more subjective, power-of-judgment side leaves room for freedom to make one’s own judgment.

Fionn O’Donovan

BWS Member and PhD Philosophy Student, University of Southampton

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