BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

120
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE
Something must make this difference, and so we postulate an
intermediate explanatory link. 95
Against this Wittgenstein reminds us that the criteria we actually use
in order to decide whether a person follows a rule or not are not found
by looking into the inner, mental world of this person, which is of course
impossible, but at her overt acts, including her citing of rules as a
justification for what she has done. Also, rather than ascribe to our inner,
mental powers the capacity to direct our calculations, Wittgenstein asks
us to view them as inner experiences accompanying these overt acts. 96
What is it then that guides us in the calculation? Rather than pointing at
inner, mental mechanisms, Wittgenstein refers to socialization and
practice.
Wittgenstein, according to Baker, also critically examines another
myth of rationality, a myth based on the metaphorical distinction
between the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘rule of man’, where the first is held up
as an ideal of impartiality. Wittgenstein’s point is that we are easily
seduced by this metaphor into canceling out mankind altogether. The
idea of the ‘rule of law’ seems to be grounded in the belief that rules, if
properly drafted, determine their own applications quite independently
of how we apply them, as if verdicts in particular cases were already
foreshadowed in the rules. In the resulting mythology, rules are viewed as
absolutely rigid bodies, and systems of rules as peculiarly adamantine
machines. In the context of this mythology, performing a calculation is
like constructing and activating a machine which inexorably grinds out
the correct answers without any further intervention from us. 97
As an alternative to this metaphor, Wittgenstein suggests the
metaphor of the signpost. 98
A signpost may serve to guide a walker along
a footpath, but not by dragging him along an invisible set of tracks. Its
power to guide is parasitic on the existence of a practice, he argues.
Erecting a signpost would be pointless unless there were in the
community at large a general disposition to respond to its presence in a
particular way. 99 By this metaphor he suggests that the application of
rules presupposes a practice. For a person to be able to correctly follow a
95
Ibid., 51.
96
Philosophical investigations, § 152, cf. Baker (1981), 51-52.
97
Philosophical investigations, §§ 189-194, cf. Baker (1981), 52.
98
Philosophical investigations, § 85.
99
Ibid., § 87.