BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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for the rules governing our practices, he argues that they exist in and
through these practices.
Let us start by examining the last point. Wittgenstein discusses the
relation between rules and practices in §§143-242 of his Philosophical
investigations. According to Baker’s summary of this discussion,
Wittgenstein’s aim is to help us free ourselves from a false mythology of
normativity that has prevailed for a long time in philosophy. 93 In order to
illustrate Wittgenstein’s criticism, we may take as an example a
mathematical calculation. Assume that an agent is asked to calculate the
outcome of the following formula when x is replaced by the series of
natural numbers.
1 + x =
Such a calculation, according to Wittgenstein, may well be carried out
silently, or as we say, ’in the head’. And referring to such an event, the
agent may well tell us that she has a feeling of being inwardly guided by
some rule directing the calculation. Such an observation may easily lend
support to the idea that calculating is essentially a mental activity, and
that the guidance taking place in such a case is basically carried out on a
mental level.
In our culture, Baker argues, this way of thinking is typically
embedded in our propensity to draw a distinction between the mind,
understood as something inner mental, and overt behavior. We consider
what is inner as inaccessible and hidden from all but its owner, whose
access to it, through introspection, is direct and infallible. From this we
infer that only I can know whether I am doing a particular calculation or
following a given rule, or whether what I am doing only looks like it.
Others, it seems, can only speculate on what I am doing based on
observation of my behavior. 94 A proponent of this view may argue that
calculating a term in a series does not consist in merely writing down a
number after contemplating an algebraic formula. For a person to
calculate, she must produce a particular number because of the formula
generating the number series. This launches a search for some special
connecting experience or mental mechanism that will serve to distinguish
coincidental conformity with a calculation-rule from genuine calculation.
93
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE
See Baker (1981) for an extended and illuminating interpretation of the
relevant paragraphs of Philosophical investigations.
94 Cf. Baker (1981), 51.