Having Meanings in View: Towards a New Account of Rule-following

Ever since the publication of Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, the phenomenon of rule-following has been at the centre of intense debates within analytic philosophy. Some of these debates have been in part exegetical, but most -- if not all -- have also involved some reflections as to what it is to follow a rule (i.e. to understand the meaning of a sign and act on that understanding). It is this constitutive question which is the focus of this book.

Over the past forty years, a great many accounts of the phenomenon have been put forward. Some, fully reductionist, attempt to ground meaning and understanding on features of the world which are not themselves intentional. Others, non-reductionist, instead maintain that meaning and understanding cannot be explained away and so must be recognised as bedrock, when it comes to our engagement with signs. However, accounts on both sides end up facing serious difficulties. Against this backdrop, Having Meanings in View lays the groundwork for a novel account of rule-following which, in being partially reductive, avoids the difficulties that have plagued previous attempts. It proposes to reconstruct the phenomenon of rule-following out of materials that do not presuppose linguistic meanings or conceptual contents, though without depriving itself altogether of properly intentional resources.