2013年1月3日 星期四

英美期末: Normativity lies in rule-following



Normativity lies in rule-following
哲學三 游定璇

    易則易知,簡則易從。 易知則有親,易從則有功。 有親則可久,有功則可大。 可久則賢人之德,可大則賢人之業。《易經‧系辭傳》

Abstract
    In this paper, I shall try to argue that, if we treat our moral practice a part of forms of life, then the aspect of moral practice, must expressed by language and grasps its meaning through language, which are moral rules written and uttered by words. Though Wittgenstein presented the famous paradox of rule-following that tell us the correct rule determined actions cannot be facts in matter.

    This seemed to implied that the part that expressed by words in moral practice is correspondingly skeptical. But I think even though the rule itself is not accessible, through the property of language, we can still find the power of constrain, which I understand and use as “normativity” in this paper. The property is what Saussure called “collective inertia” (Saussure: 1983, p.149). Collective inertia is a property of language, especially language used by public. Because it is widely used every day, it is hard to change the language evolutionary. Since there is some part of moral practice must expressed by language and grasped its meaning through it, the part that writes our moral life down is therefore successes the property.

    Through this fact, we can understand the constrained that put on written and uttered moral rule, we thus must constitute our moral rule in some kind of way, to answer to the property it has. And the kind of way, I supposed, is what “Yi Ching” had expressed in the following way:”Because it is simple, it is simple to know; and because it is easy, it is easy to follow. Because it is simple to know, it is close to us; because it is easy to follow, it has the power to make greatness. Because it is close to us, it is sustainable; because it has the power to make greatness; it is able to apply to all people. The ability to sustain shows the virtue of wise men; the ability to apply to all people shows the contribution of wise men.” The ability to sustain and the ability to apply to people is exactly what collective inertia constrain us to choice our moral rule. The collective inertia is eventually conventional. Dealing with the public with diversity, and the possible new people join to the practice the original community is participating, this to standards stated by the writer of “Yi Ching” is therefore profound. I think this could be the start point of the normativity of choosing moral rules. And further, if possible, this could have been the beginning of construction of the bridge between “is” and “ought to”.

Form of life and language
    Wittgenstein once said: ”to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life (Wiittgenstein:1953;§19.)”. And he also said: “Here the term "language-game" is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life (Wiittgenstein:1953;§23.)”, clearly, language and form of life is bonded closely. Since the form of life is a general term refer to all our practice in life, the use of language is produced in our form of life. Thus, “It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life (Wiittgenstein:1953;§243.)”

    In Wittgenstein’s view, language is derived from form of life, so the consistency of language, is actually the consistency of form of life. In other words, if we can understand somebody, then it shows that we do have the consistent form of life.

    Wittgenstein just specified one direction relation with language and form of life, but the question is: if language can change our form of life? To answer the question, we shall move to the specific aspect of moral practice.

Order and Rule
    To make the point that moral practice has depend a great part on language, especially written and uttered moral rules, and answer the question above, I shall first introduce the distinction between order and rule.

    What is order? What is rule? What the different between this two? Let us consider a case: there’s a family is dining, out of natural compassion to its children, mothers always feed her babies first before they starts eating. For all years, a mother in this family (let us supposed that this is a traditional Taiwan family) have doing this without commend or request. Until one day, a new bride take her baby to this family and starts eating without feed her children first. The old grandma steps out and says: “in this family, a mother should always feed his baby before she eats. This is the rule.”

    Before old grandma said that every mother in the family must feed her children first, everyone under the situation perfectly complete the expectation in order. It is well regular until the new bride comes in. And before that, there’s no such rule as “a mother should always feed his baby before she eats”. There is not until it is written or uttered. The distinction should be evident. Dogs have their leader through fight, ants line up better than man when they carry their meal home, these are orders, but not rules. A rule is itself uttered and written, in other words, through language. And all moral rules, such as “you shall not kill”,”you shall not lie” are all expressed and constrain by language. Besides the power of transform our unconscious inclination into specific rules, words help us making up agreement in that we form our life in the power of language into other people’s form of life.

     Even though we might agree or disagree the rule, being a derivation of our moral practice, moral rules shows up in words and this turn around to change our form of life. In the case above, the bride is constrained in an institution context with rule speak out clearly. And even the old mothers of the family thus have different action and reaction facing the ordinary situation, which is having a baby with you around the dining room.

    And that’s the different between rule and order. Order is a matter of fact, while rule speaks out through language. Eventually, rules written and uttered become a great part of our ordinary moral practice. The reason is moral practice is public. Most of it is about how to interact with people rightly, and it has some kind of university in the community, whether it is occurred in a family or a group of people. Since moral practice contains at least two people, and between two people the communication must through language. It is even safe to say that moral rules, and the part that can be expressed by words of moral practice, mainly constitute moral practice.

    By the discussion above, I shall make clear the importance of language in moral practice, and the part of it is actually uttered of written moral rules. Next, we should discuss the paradox of rule-following; see what it going to affect the moral aspect.

The Paradox of rule-following
    Probably one of the problems that most associated with late Wittgenstein is the paradox of rule-following. Wittgenstein started by introducing an example:” … we get [a] pupil to continue a series (say + 2) beyond 1000—and he writes 1000, 1004, 1008, 1012 (Wittgenstein: 1953; §185.)” Could we say to the student that you’re not following rule? The question of whether we could assign to the action the rule thus rose. This leads us to the famous paradox in Philosophical Investigation 201, where Wittgenstein said: “This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. The answer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict.” What does the paradox tell us? It seemed that Wittgenstein had argued that there is no fact in matter determined the rule. Since we have made the point that moral practice lays a great part in language, which is moral rules, the action of our moral practice seemed to lose the chance of finding the correct rule. We seemed to forced to take a skeptical stance if we embraced the paradox Wittgenstein raised. More specifically, every action (in moral practice) could be determined by any rule. Even the most brutal one is following some rule.

    Is it true that the normativity could not obtain if we accept the paradox? I think not. Since the moral practice lays on moral rules, the question thus become: “how do we choose rules?” And there do have some constrain about choosing these rules. The constrain lies in the form of moral rule: language.

Collective inertia
    In Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics he introduced a term: collective inertia. Collective inertia is a property that owned by language, which is an inclination to stay rest and resist any form of innovation. The reason is that language is use by large people. Almost every man uses language day and day off. Unlike signal in small group, the wide popularity makes it hard to change. I think the property shows us a way to obtain normativity in choosing moral rules. Since the language itself is ultimately conventional and hard to change, moral rules, presented in form of words, success the property. Thus, in choosing moral rules, the property constrains us to some regularity.

    What then these regularities are? As the translation before: “Because it is simple, it is simple to know; and because it is easy, it is easy to follow.” See the description of standards of choosing moral rules do not involved any specific content,  but only comes form in its own constrain, which is collective inertia toward innovation of language. This makes the normativity possible even we embraced the paradox of rule-following, which is intelligible and convincing.

    The regularity is not empirical, although it seemed to rely on the property that language possesses. The regularity comes from the connection between moral rules and its form: language. And if it works, it might be a start point helps us obtain normativity.

Conclusion
    In this article, I mainly targeted to the paradox of rule-following and its skeptical inclination, particular in moral aspect. If my argument is successful, there should have some constrains too even we accept that every action has its rule, and constrains is merely come from the form of moral rules. I start and borrow most idea in Wittgenstein’s PI, using Saussure as the key to normativity, and finally, “Yi Ching” as concrete content of conclusion I incline to make. By this, I wish the problem of skeptical implication, mainly moral aspect, is solved in some level. Besides this, there are two main things still worth mention; the first is that the approach is actually inspirited by ancient Daoists. Most of Daoist have profoundly considered the human language and corresponding moral implication, in a stance against to Confucianists, they dis-construct moral role and its corresponding responsibility by describing the process of forming a language, and how these process effect our real life. In the time, it has its political motivation, but the approach is still refreshing to me in modern ethic debates. The other is that, if possible, I hope the approach of this kind, by proper development, could attribute to the long standing forks of Hume, which is the gap between “is” and “ought to”. If we use another way to understand normativity, which is what Daoists understand it, as constrains of its own form, the problem may have another interesting solution.

Reference

中文部分:
1.      《易經》
2.      《道德經》

英文部分:
1.      Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations. Blackwell Publishing.
2.      Kripke, Saul,  Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.. Harvard University Press.
3.      Harris, R. Reading Saussure. London: Duckworth.
4.      Ferdinand de Saussure ; translated by Wade Baskin ; edited by Perry Meisel and Haun Saussy, Course in general linguistics. New York : Columbia University Press.

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