MIS and the "rule following" consideration
Monday, April 18, 2005
The publication of Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Languages has been the triggering event of a sustained and very prolific debate about "rule-following" during most of the 1980s and early 1990s. It remains a lively subject to this day and is closely connected to other current subjects of interest through, for example, its relationship with computational arguments in the philosophy of mind.
Whether anything that has been published in the past 25 years on this subject has conclusively settled the issue is open to question. Many competing positions have been expressed but none can be said to have triumphed over the others. There is the "sceptical solution" current, the "quietist" position, different variants of the "community view", and so on. The objective of this part of the site is to put these positions to the test of insights and examples drawn from MIS practice. It is hoped that some clarity on the basic question of what it means to follow a rule can be gained in the process.
Examples, like Kripke's Quus function or Wittgenstein own "+n" example (PI §185), play a central role in the rule following debate. Likewise, the material presented here revolves around the story of a fictive MIS project, which we will refer to as "the order-processing example".
This part of the site is organized into the following sub-sections:
- The Order-Processing example : the raw material about the example which we use throughout the site.
- The grammar of "in accord with the rules" : an interpretation of the rule-following paradox based on the order-processing example.
- Order processing vs. Quus : a comparison between the order-processing example and Kripke's famous function.
- The objectivity of meaning: some remarks on "meaning is use" and the objective aspect of meaning.