Source: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6500&cn=394
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 00:03:06+00:00

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Review by Kenny Siu Sing Huen, Ph.D.
In an attempt to fully respect Wittgenstein's texts and his notion of philosophizing ('Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything' [Philosophical Investigations (PI), §126]), Fogelin selects several central themes of the later Wittgenstein for a renewed treatment, namely, rule-following, private language and topics in philosophy of mathematics.
A new term 'defactoism' is used in this work to refer to Wittgenstein's overall position (see pp. 28-29). Declining to give this position a definition, Fogelin traces out a line of thinking from Wittgenstein's remarks. To begin with, it is against the so-called 'interpretational account' of rule-following. What is it to learn a rule? Fogelin refers to the scenario in PI §183. A student seems to have mastered the right way to continue a numerical series 2, 4, 6, 8 ..., but after 1000, he goes on with 1004, 1008 and so on. Thus it is realized that he grasps the rule '+2' incorrectly. The interesting thing is that even though now the student can continue with 1002, 1004, 1006 ... after the correction by his teacher, he still makes mistakes when progressing to a larger number. Such behavior can hardly occur, in fact. However, Wittgenstein helps us to imagine that if it is supposed that a student learns a rule by grasping the 'right interpretation', or whatever it is that mediates between the rule '+2' and the numerical-continuation behaviour, the bizarre behaviour would come up. The reason is that if all the examples, explanations and corrections that the teacher has given to the student are taken to contribute to some interpretation of the rule '+2', even though the interpretation that the student has acquired seems to square with that of the teacher, there is no guarantee that the student's interpretation will not project differently – unless the student and the teacher also share a higher rule that governs the right projection of the interpretation. Yet if grasping this higher rule is taken as consisting in some interpretation, then some still higher rule will be required. If the content of such a rule is supposed to be fixed by some interpretation, then a further rule (further interpretation) will be needed. An infinite regress will arise.
The lesson is that between a rule and its applications, there is no intermediary or the 'third' thing that informs or determines whether the latter is correct. For no interpretation can fix itself; any interpretation can be reinterpreted. What is more, under the interpretational conception, rule-following is perplexing (see pp. 15-24): 'no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule' [PI, §201] (this being, in Fogelin's words, 'paradox of interpretation').
1. Our natural responses are shaped through various forms of conditioning, in particular, training (see p. 35).
2. Training is embedded in a community life – a consensus of actions (see p. 30).
3. Such agreement is a part of natural history (see pp. 28, 92, 100 and 102).
4. It is not a communal agreement in the sense of sharing the same interpretation (see p. 26).
5. The consensus of actions reflects the purposes of our practices governed and guided by different yet interrelated rules (see p. 31).
6. These purposes also reveal the fact that some rules are more indispensable than others (see ibid.).
7. Various practices that constitute our lives are related in a family-resemblance way (see p. 38) ('we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing' [PI, §66]; see also ibid. §67).
Fogelin confesses that he himself did not consider Wittgenstein's defactoism seriously enough. Previously, he took Wittgenstein's remark 'It is not possible to obey a rule "privately"' (PI, §202) and those in its surroundings as presenting a straight answer to the question whether there are private rules. Now keeping in mind Wittgenstein's advice on philosophizing, Fogelin realizes that Wittgenstein merely gives notes on the linguistic function and use of the expression 'to obey a rule "privately"' (see pp. 59-61). Likewise in philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein recommends 'not to interfere with the mathematicians' (Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, p. 13; quoted in p. 116). As demonstrated in Wittgenstein's ideas on Cantorian infinities, the goal is to remove misconceptions and confusions. For instance, he agrees with Turing (his student) in saying that 'one has learned to write down ℵ0 numerals'. Such an expression is alright, to be distinguished from the expression 'one has written down ℵ0 numerals', which is nonsense.
Fogelin's updated reading of Wittgenstein is admirably coherent, accurate and clearly expressed. However, notwithstanding the fact that Fogelin has captured a major part of the core of Wittgenstein's mature thinking, its scope is still too narrow to render the main trust of Wittgenstein's ideas. Wittgenstein (Culture and Value, p. 73e) reminds: 'Life's infinite variations are essential to our life. And so too even to the habitual character of life.' Fogelin's account of Wittgenstein, as many other commentators do, highlights the 'stabilities and continuities' (p. 170) dimension of practices and yet has not given the 'variations' and other dynamic features of human life their deserved place. Admittedly, in this book, Fogelin discusses the indefinite character of certain rules [as mentioned in no. 9 above], and touches briefly on gradual as well as bizarre changes of meanings and concepts, in the context of introducing Wittgenstein's view on philosophical perplexities of personal identity (see pp. 53-55). Wittgenstein indeed pays attention to the changing aspect of human practices: '[A] language-game [i.e. a practice] does change with time' (On Certainty, §256). 'Certain events would put me into a position in which I could not go on with the old language-game any further. In which I was torn away from the sureness of the game' (ibid., §617; see also ibid., §65). The (a) dynamic nature of language-games (practices) is deeply related to the active roles played by (b) human agency. Without concerning (a) sufficiently, Fogelin's reading offers no exciting illumination on (b). Merely based on the set of considerations called 'defactoism', Fogelin can hardly share any insight on Wittgenstein's remarks such as 'Following a rule is a human activity. I give the rule an extension' (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, VI-29), '[The rule] makes it possible for me to hold by it and [to] let it compel me' (ibid., VII-66), 'We decide spontaneously ... on a new language-game' (ibid., IV-23), and so on.

References: §126
 §183
 §201
 §66
 §67
 §202
 §256
 §617
 §65