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：
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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