Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences

of meaning lack necessitation, logical or physical (in this
respect they are different from logical rules and physical
laws) in the sense that we can perfectly well imagine that
things might have been otherwise. This is what I call the
conventionality of rules, the fact that rules are arbitrary.
Another merit of Kripke’s solution is that by preserving the
conventionality of rules it also preserves the descriptive
aspect of rules. The way people speak is all the data we
need to consider in order to know whether they are rule
followers. However, by putting emphasis on the
conventionality of rules, Kripke’s solution neglects the
normativity of rules in that it seems to suggest that the way
people talk is all we need to know in order to know how
they ought to talk. Kripke’s community view suggest that
we read off correctness in our following the rules from the
actions of the majority. It is in this sense close to a
naturalistic fallacy: the futile attempt to derive ought from
is. Kripke’s suggests that agreement on what it is to follow
a rule constitutes rule following. I claim that this solution,
like the dispositional account rejected by Kripke, cannot
account for the normativity of rules.
Kripke’s solution reduces rule following to the superrule:
“act/respond as everyone else does”. Generally, he
claims, there is agreement within a society regarding what
it is to follow a certain rule. In this case, no one in the
society will be likely to correct it, and no one outside it has
a right to correct it. This is the strength of this position but
also its weakness; it does not allow for a case wherein the
community agrees upon a certain usage but is at the same
time wrong in so agreeing. In the realm of ethics this
situation is quite plausible; the fact that almost everyone
thinks a war is justified does not make it so. This is an
ethical problem, and of course claiming that justification
depends solely on agreement in actions or opinions would
be wrong. In the realm of language the problem is not
ethical but conceptual. The problem with Kripke’s solution
is that it assumes that there is a way of explaining the
normativity of rules merely by taking into account their
conventional application.
2. Second reduction: The reduction of rules
to norms
The question concerning the (im)possibility of solitary rule
following is an important test case for the community view.
Kripke’s position is that if “…we think of Crusoe as following
rules, we are taking him into our community and applying
our criteria for rule following to him” (1982: 110). Kripke
differentiates between an individual being physically isolated
and his being considered in isolation (1982: 110). So
Robinson Crusoe, in spite of his physical isolation can be
said to be a rule follower as long as he is not considered in
isolation. In my opinion, the distinction is an elegant vent
for what could have posed a problem for the community
view: on the one hand, the community view by definition is
incompatible with solitary rule following, on the other, some
of Crusoe’s actions indeed seem fit to be described as rule
following activities. The distinction between physical and
epistemological isolation explains that the community view
bans the later but not the former.
Baker and Hacker, on the other hand, consider
Kripke’s distinction ‘a muddle’ (1984: 39) that conceals the
real question at hand: had, or had not Crusoe been
following rules? The distinction blurs out the fact that both
the physically isolated person and the one considered in
isolation can manifest a rule-following behavior. The fact
that this is so, they claim, is shown by Crusoe’s regulative
practice; he uses the rule as “a canon or norm of
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Two Reductions of ‘rule’ — Dana Riesenfeld
correctness” (1984: 39) and is able to correct his own
mistakes when and if they occur. Thus rule following for
Baker and Hacker is performing an activity which is regular
and which can be corrected by the rule follower. To them,
then, the question whether anyone else observing or
considering the isolated individual can or cannot detect the
rule following behavior is distinct from the question
whether the individual has in fact been
Baker and Hacker’s critique of Kripke is
encapsulated in their different interpretation of the term
‘private’. While Kripke interprets ‘private’ as the opposite of
‘social’ (hence the distinction between physical solitude
and epistemic solitude and the prima facie impossibility of
solitary rule following), for Baker and Hacker ‘private’
means the opposite of ‘public’. Consequently, rulefollowing
is essentially public in nature but not necessarily
social (see also 1985: 161-165). That is why the question
of whether the outside observer may or may not detect the
rule-following taking place, will find it hard (perhaps even
impossible!) or easy to learn the rules he is observing
becomes secondary. What is crucial is that the practice is
essentially public. Baker and Hacker, then, defend a
position opting for solitary-public rule following. 3 Following
rules, they emphasize, “…is not a matter of collective
dispositions, but of a normative practice, which may be
collective, but need not be” (1984: 74). Kripke, they claim,
is deriving the answer to the normative question ‘how
ought we to follow rules?’ from the empirical question ‘how
do most people follow rules?’ because ‘rule’ is a normative
concept, it cannot be claimed that the following of rules
can be the object of observation. It is impossible to derive
the norms of a given society by looking at the society’s
conduct. Without stipulation of a rule, actions are but
‘empty vehicles’ of what would have been considered a
norm, had we a rule. By considering the rule as distinct
from its application Kripke’s analysis not only ignores the
internal relation between the rule and its application, but
also creates a situation wherein agreement becomes an
internal property of the rule. This is nonsense, Baker and
Hacker claim, for then the test of the rule’s correct
application becomes correspondence with community
agreement, the action of the majority.
However, this position, I argue, is highly problematic
by their own assumptions. The alternative position
presented by Baker and Hacker, I claim, only succeeds in
solving those problems by creating others, no less
resounding, namely that of reducing rules to norms. Such
reduction, i.e., a normative explanation of rule is at the
same time devoid of conventionality, of the capacity to
describe how in fact a linguistic community follows its
rules. Although following rules is a practice, it is wrong,
they say, to think of it as essentially a social practice
(1985:164). Wittgenstein’s conception of practice demands
it to be shareable, not shared. For a practice to be
considered rule following “it must be possible to teach a
technique of applying rules to others, by grasping the
criteria of correctness, to determine whether a given act is
a correct application of the rule” (ibid). Baker and Hacker
characterize the practice of rule following as essentially
possible but not as essentially occurring, a rule following
practice which is possibly learnable, teachable correctable
and regular. None of these conditions are sufficient by
themselves. But a rule following practice is one which,
when meeting these conditions, could possibly occur.
Baker and Hacker characterize a rule following practice as
3 Baker and Hacker claim that this is Wittgenstein’s position in unpublished
manuscripts (see, e.g., 1985: 172).