Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Rule following and intercultural perspective
Michał Sala, Warsaw University, Poland
This paper appears in the context of last year's Christoph
Durt's paper discussing Wittgenstein's intercultural
approach to philosophy (Durt, 2005). Ending the
discussion of it, he expressed a belief, that there is a
possibility of creating a “bridging” perspective between two
cultures (two forms of life). This suggestion encouraged
me to investigate, how such a belief is grounded in
Wittgenstein's framework.
The direction my investigation is bound is towards a
well known problem of translation. Wittgenstein's account
of language brings into focus the fact, that a language is a
part of social practice. As he puts it, a sentence of our
language is a move in our language game. (PI, par. 22).
Apart from our utterances, our language involves
behaviour, our form of life. Thus, understanding a
language, understanding it's sentences involves
participating in a form of life this language is a part of.
A brief sketch like that, suggests that if we do not
participate in a given form of life, we are unable to achieve
understanding of a language with is involved in it. Thus,
speakers of English cannot understand the meanings of,
say, Swahili speakers unless they are able to participate in
their form of life.
The point of Durt's paper was to say, that we can,
according to Wittgenstein, bridge the distance between
cultures, between different forms of life, and moreover, we
should treat is as our methodology in philosophy. What he
calls ethnological approach allows us to find connecting
links (Zwieschenglieder), and establish an understanding
of other culture from an outsider point of view. Of course,
we are not an outsider any more – we now share other
culture's form of life while not losing a hold on our own.
Our perspective is not that of our original culture, though,
and not that of an researched one. Nevertheless, if we are
to comprehend other cultures, this is the only perspective
we can achieve – stepping outside of our own tight shoes
towards something we can have in common with our
subject of inquiry.
Language, rules and forms of life
The point of this paper, however, is not to pursue the
direction showed by Durt's reading of Remarks on Fraser's
“Golden Bough”. My intention is to shed some light on how
these connecting links are possible at all.
Numerous remarks in Philosophical Investigations
and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics explore
sceptical intuitions about “following a rule”. Following a rule
is essential to any type of social practice that Wittgenstein
wrote about (and probably to any kind of practice), be it
mathematics, language games or plain games (like chess).
The only way we could make sense of our participation in
social practice is if we cast our doubts about following a
rule away, at least on practical grounds. Following a rule is
knowing a rule, and achieving a result this rule is meant to
achieve.
Suppose we want to teach someone a game we
know. There are different types of games, and different
types of rules they are guided by. There may be formal
rules (like types of valid moves in chess) or informal rules
(like tactics). Teaching a game involves either explaining
its rules (using a language) or showing the practice of our
game. Neither the former nor the latter guarantees our
student will 'grasp' what we intend, though. Even if he
behaves properly in all the situations we have shown (or
described) him, we cannot be sure, that he fails to do so in
any new situation that is a part of our game (and implicite
governed by our rules).
The ability to grasp and act accordingly to rules
must be assumed if we want any type of social practice to
be possible. Specifically, we need that kind of ability to be
able to teach someone (even belonging to our own culture,
sharing our form of life) to use a language. In a vast
number of cases, we cannot do anything better than to
count on their 'grasping' our intention. But given that it is
possible that they can (at least in practice) do that, allows
us to teach them games, including language games. As
Wittgenstein's remarks on mathematics show, the result of
student's practice is a proof of him understanding the rule,
although not impossible revise.
If we are able to teach people sharing our form of
life a language we know, then we do have the ability to
'grasp' rules.
Given that, we should consider learning a different
form of life.
Forms of life
What are forms of life? As Durt suggests, we should think
about them as cultures, as our language (probably, but
that generates problems with considerations from the
previous section), our beliefs and social practices we, as a
culture, share. So, assuming that we can teach someone a
language, the question about teaching a form of life is a
question whether we can teach someone our beliefs and
practices.
If we assume that we can teach someone a
language, then teaching them our beliefs should be trivial.
Teaching them our practice involves the same type of
'grasping' our intentions as teaching a language does. Our
problem, though, seems trivial only when we've forgotten
about assumption, that we already share a form of life, that
we've taken in the previous paragraph.
Consider forms of life, then. We can think about
animals or aliens having other forms of life than us. Let us
assume that we consider only human forms of life. If we
have a language, it has to be possible to think of. If we
have certain beliefs, they have to make sense in our
language. If we share some social practices, they must be
possible to be grasped by another member of our society –
and another human. If we wish to say, that essentially all
humans share the same kind of ability to grasp rules, then
it follows, that in theory, any given human should be able
to grasp any kind of a rule. Since our learning rules of the
games bases on 'grasping' them, then nothing holds us
from saying, that we can learn any social practice
whatever it be, since it bases on the same notion of rules
as games do.
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