Social Studies of Science

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Institutions and Rule-Scepticism: A Reply to Martin Kusch

David Bloor
Social Studies of Science 2004; 34; 593
DOI: 10.1177/0306312704044910

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Institutions and Rule-Scepticism:
A Reply to Martin Kusch
David Bloor

In the original exchange with Michael Lynch two things were at stake: first,
we disagreed on the best way to analyse science as a social activity, and
second, we disagreed on how to exploit the legacy of Wittgenstein’s work in
the course of such an analysis (see Pickering, 1992). Lynch opts for an
ethnomethodological approach, which is descriptive but not explanatory in
any causal way; I opt for a form of the sociology of knowledge in which the
aspiration to provide causal explanations plays a central role. Lynch sees
Wittgenstein’s work as constituting a challenge to the sociologist, while I
see it as a resource that can be used to deepen and further the sociological
enterprise. Although we have a running disagreement about the inter-
pretation of particular arguments in the Philosophical Investigations we
agree, in general terms, that Wittgenstein’s work is capable of being read in
either way. The question is: which is the most fruitful? Predictably, we
define fruitfulness differently. The result is that Lynch sees Wittgenstein as
an embryonic ethnomethodologist; I see him as a proto-sociologist.
I readily concede that the big battalions are on Lynch’s side. Most
philosophers selectively emphasize the points in Wittgenstein that Lynch
deems decisive and share his lack of concern for the points I find most
interesting. Wittgenstein was, after all, the patron saint of the ‘ordinary
language philosophy’ or ‘linguistic analysis’ that dominated Oxford philo-
sophy in the 1950s and 60s. These philosophers said they were doing
neither metaphysics nor empirical science, but merely studying the ‘logical
geography’ of concepts. Neither constructive theory building nor causal
explanation was seen as necessary – just ‘analysis’ and ‘clarification’.
Though fashions change quickly in philosophy, something of this spirit
lives on in current Oxford readings of Wittgenstein (for example, those of
Baker & Hacker, 1984). It is intriguing to find these readings enthusiastic-
ally absorbed into ethnomethodology. It has to be admitted that the two fit
together very well. But for those of us who cut our philosophical teeth on
Oxford-style linguistic analysis, and decisively rejected it, it is sad to see its
narrow and self-imposed limitations reproduced and relabelled as a form
of radicalism. This is why, in the original exchange, I spoke of a Right-wing

Social Studies of Science 34/4(August 2004) 593–601

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594 Social Studies of Science 34/4

and a Left-wing reading of Wittgenstein (the Right-wing variety being the

Oxford style). Lynch responded with some nice, partisan labelling of his
own. Invoking the shade of Nietzsche, he criticized the ‘will to theory’ that
he (rightly) detected in my reading. After an adequate descriptive analysis,
he punned, what is there left to do? Which is just what the Oxford
philosophers always said.
If it is one sort of Wittgenstein who comes into view when set against
the background of Oxford philosophy, a quite different figure emerges
when he is read alongside, say, Emile Durkheim or the great Scottish
sociologist David Hume. He can then be seen as belonging to the tradition
of sociological thinkers who want to demystify our culture by system-
atically grounding the abstract in the concrete. He belongs, in a word, to a
reductivist tradition. He wanted to demystify rule following, meaning and
intentionality and he did this by a reductive analysis. This was the Wittgen-
stein I was defending, but I cannot escape the fact that as a sociological
thinker he has only left incomplete fragments. For example, he told us in
the Investigations that to follow a rule was an institution, but he did not
spell out what he took an institution to be (see Wittgenstein, 1967: 199).
Here we have a profound and suggestive insight but one that was not
properly worked out. In order to pursue this theme in detail, I published a
book called Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions in which I used the account
of institutions given by my Edinburgh colleague Barry Barnes to make
good the gap in Wittgenstein’s argument (Bloor, 1997). This account,
which might be called the self-reference theory of institutions, was shown
to fit with Wittgenstein’s text, except, of course, those passages that could
be read as saying that we were not to build theories. Since Wittgenstein
himself didn’t take too much notice of these, when it suited his purpose,
this did not seem too heinous an exercise of the sinister ‘will to theory’.
I now come to Martin Kusch’s paper. Kusch (2004) has analysed the
original debate between Lynch and myself and has reached the conclusion
that there were mistakes on both sides. He takes my side over the question
of whether, in principle, there can be a causal sociology of knowledge but
he sees grave, logical defects in my pursuit of a reductive, sociological
theory of rules and meanings. Given that almost all of those who have
referred to the debate take Lynch’s side, I am grateful for his support
where he feels able to give it. I fully agree with his perceptive comments
about the errors of Baker and Hacker and their misuse of the idea of
‘internal’ relations. Nevertheless, I believe there are serious shortcomings
in his criticisms of my position.
Let me describe what is at stake. Consider the following question:
when I use a word, and mean something by it, what is it about me that
constitutes my meaning one thing or another? Or: what fact is it about me
in virtue of which I can mean or intend some specific thing? A particular
case of meaning is to mean to follow one rule rather than another rule. So
meanings and rule following are closely connected. Given that many
sociologists define their field in terms of categories such as ‘meaningful
action’, then these questions take us to the heart of such enquiries.

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Bloor: Institutions and Rule-Scepticism 595

In the current literature on Wittgenstein, the sort of question that I

have just posed about meaning is called a ‘sceptical challenge’. The
‘sceptic’ challenges us to say what ‘fact of the matter’ constitutes meaning.
Nothing hinges on mere labels, but it is worth noting that there is nothing
particularly ‘sceptical’ or esoteric about these questions. They may not be
everyday preoccupations, but they can be construed as straightforward
requests for information. They are reasonable questions that deserve a
straight answer. I believe that Wittgenstein gave such an answer.
The answer was that the capacity to mean something, to use concepts
in the full sense, involves being a member of a social institution. The fact
about us that constitutes our meaning something is thus a social fact. This
was why Wittgenstein said rule-following was an institution. The crucial
feature of the answer is the insight that not any response, and not any
orientation towards an object or person, constitutes ‘meaning’. A necessary
condition of meaning in the full sense is that one possesses a concept of the
thing and having a concept involves performances that can be deemed
right or wrong applications of the concept. There must be an element of
normativity in the account. Institutions are patterns of norm-sustaining
activity though, of course, they depend on pre-existing forms of interaction
of a kind that does not and cannot itself embody normativity. Institutions
themselves have to be built up out of something.
Kusch argues that this answer is defective and that the ‘sceptical
challenge’ to identify the fact of meaning has not been met. To those who
are not close to the literature, his argument may seem complex, but its
essentials are simple. His claim is that to identify the fact of meaning with
a social fact is to argue in a circle or beg the question. To say that rule-
following is an institution may be true but, as an answer to the request to
provide the factual basis of meaning, it gets us nowhere – because insti-
tutions themselves presuppose meaning and intentional action. That
institutions themselves presuppose meaning seems evident from the ac-
count of institutions to which I appealed, namely, Barnes’s self-reference
model. My position might be summed up by saying that reference (that is,
acts of referring to something) require the capacity to mean things by our
words, but meaning requires normativity and normativity requires institu-
tions. But if institutions themselves are based on patterns of self-referring
discourse, then I have explained reference by appeal to a process of
reference. I have explained meaning by appeal to meaning, which makes
the explanation circular. No wonder Kusch finds my position incoherent
and asks:
How could Bloor have missed this obvious point? Perhaps he thought that
wherever we have an intentional social fact we also must have a non-
intentional social fact – dispositions for example – to which the internal
social fact can be reduced. But to make this assumption is of course to beg
the decisive question of the rule-following considerations. (Kusch, 2004:
580)
The answer is that I did not miss this obvious point, but had it well and
truly in my sights throughout. I do, indeed, think that intentional social

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596 Social Studies of Science 34/4

facts rest on an underpinning of non-intentional dispositions but I did not

simply assume this in a question-begging way. Rather, I followed the
techniques adopted by Wittgenstein and others in order to demonstrate its
plausibility and to build it into the analysis from the very outset.
Kusch has reached this faulty conclusion by leaving out of account half
of the theory that I put forward in Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions. He has
provided an able exposition of one half of it but has given no account at all
of the second half. The missing half, that is, the half missing from Kusch’s
exposition, concerns the grounding of intentional processes in non-
intentional ones. When proper account is taken of this half of the argument
it is clear that an institution is, indeed, analysed in terms of self-reference,
but acts of self-reference (that is, reactions made within the institution) are
themselves grounded in more basic (non-intentional) processes. The idea
of an ‘institution’, in its totality, then encompasses both the intentional
elements highlighted in the analysis and also the non-intentional processes
on which these are based. Thus, when the sceptical challenge, or the
common sense enquiry, is given the straight answer ‘meaning is a social
fact’ the social fact is meant to be analysed right down to its non-
intentional components – and was so analysed throughout the argument of
Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions. The answer therefore does not have the
defective logical structure that it appears to have on Kusch’s truncated
exposition.
Just for the record I want to quote two brief passages from the book. In
the chapter on ‘Meaning Finitism’ the case under discussion is that of
following a rule in a step-by-step fashion. The argument is summarized in
the following words:

The real sources of constraint . . . as we move from case to case are the
local circumstances impinging upon us: our instincts, our biological
nature, our sense experience, our interactions with other people, our
immediate purposes, our training, our anticipation of and response to
sanctions, and so on through the whole gamut of causes, starting with the
psychological and ending with the sociological. This is the message of
Wittgenstein’s meaning finitism. (Bloor, 1997: 20)

It should be explained that the reference to psychological processes here

refers to basic and instinctive processes that do not themselves amount to
the possession of full concepts. At the beginning of the next chapter,
entitled ‘Rules as Institutions’, the reader will find the following warning:

The three dimensions of Wittgenstein’s theory of rule following have now

been identified. They are (1) its biological or psychological aspects,
dealing with our instinctive and automatic responses, (2) its sociological
or collective aspect which concerns the shaping and sanctioning of our
innate tendencies and their organisation into customs, conventions and
institutions, and (3) the background of meaning finitism against which the
entire process is set. All three must be kept in mind when we respond to
Wittgenstein’s slogan: ‘A game, a language, a rule is an institution’.
(Bloor, 1997: 27)

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Bloor: Institutions and Rule-Scepticism 597

I think it is fair comment to say that, while my analysis went forward on all
three levels, my critic has not kept all three in mind when framing his
objection.
While I can claim to have made due provision in my argument for the
reductive analysis (and thereby avoided logical defects like outright ques-
tion begging or circularity), it is another thing to carry through the analysis
in a satisfactory way. Here, predictably, there is much scope for judgement
and hence for divergent judgements. How exactly was the intentional
grounded in the non-intentional in the course of my argument? To provide
an indication of this, I want to look generally at how the question was
handled by Wittgenstein himself and then, more specifically, at how it
arises in connection with Barnes’s model of institutions.
One gets a sense of Wittgenstein’s reductive approach to meaning in
the very first, deceptively simple, paragraph of the Philosophical Investiga-
tions. The discussion contains, in embryo, the main elements of Wittgen-
stein’s overall position and prefigures his account of language-games and
rule-following. We are to imagine someone sent shopping. They are given a
piece of paper with the words ‘Five red apples’ written on it. This is handed
to the shopkeeper who then opens the drawer marked ‘Apples’. The
shopkeeper then consults a chart on which the word ‘red’ appears next to a
colour sample. The shopkeeper then chants the numbers ‘one’, ‘two’,
‘three’, and so on, each time taking out an apple of a colour matching the
chart.
Why is the description so stilted and strange? It invites the hypothesis
that Wittgenstein was some sort of behaviourist. He wasn’t, but this is not
a wholly inappropriate reaction. The words ‘apple’, ‘red’ and ‘five’ certainly
have meaning but, as the passage brings out, their meaningful use depends
on a set of underlying behaviour patterns and routines. We are to assume,
said Wittgenstein, that certain things have simply been learned by heart,
that is, until they happen automatically. We are to assume that people
simply behave in certain ways. There is an insistent counterpoint between
‘know’ and ‘act’ and between ‘meaning’ and ‘use’. In trying to get his
readers to accept a re-description of the transaction without resorting too
readily to appeals to meaning and knowledge Wittgenstein had a purpose.
He was trying to get his readers to focus their minds on what underlies and
sustains meaning.
I know the passage can be glossed differently, but it can act as a
reminder of a general trend in Wittgenstein’s work. Very close to the surface
we always encounter the dependence of semantic content on a more basic,
non-semantic level. It is everywhere: in the appeal to habit and custom, in
the fact that reasons run out, and in the necessity to acknowledge, finally,
that ‘this is just what we do’. It is present in the dependence of teaching on
normal responses to training, on how we react, and in the fact that
ultimately we follow rules blindly. Of course, one can hunt around and
find, or claim to find, intentional elements here too, but the effect is
cumulative and once it has been noticed one can see that this would be to
fight against the entire thrust of the analysis. For Wittgenstein, meaning is

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598 Social Studies of Science 34/4

grounded in language games, and language games are ultimately depend-

ent on natural history, on something biological, something animal. As he
said in On Certainty, ‘I want to regard man here as an animal’ (Wittgen-
stein, 1969: 475).
Restoring these considerations to their rightful place in the analysis
means that the complaint of circularity can gain no purchase. At least, not
unless it is assumed that the dispositions that constitute our animal nature
are themselves already endowed with propositional and logical content. I
cannot prove that such a metaphysical standpoint is wrong, but there is no
compulsion to accept it and I do not accept it. Unless Wittgenstein was
allowing his own argument to go in a circle, he did not accept it either.
The self-referential model of institutions was developed by Barnes
(1983) in his seminal paper ‘Social Life as Bootstrapped Induction’.
Anyone familiar with that paper will know that Barnes conveys the struc-
ture of the social interactions that create institutions by means of mechan-
ical models he calls ‘designation devices’. He describes various arrange-
ments of feedback loops between them. This is somewhat unusual in a
paper by a sociologist, but it reflects Barnes’s commitment to a reductive
approach to meaning. The acts of reference that are, on this account,
constitutive of institutions are modelled in non-intentional processes. Of
course the mechanism of feedback loops is only sketched for a range of
simple cases, but the flow diagrams are sufficient to recognize them as
models of a number of familiar social structures (hierarchical, egalitarian,
and so on).
What is the significance of developing the argument in this way and of
the fact that it can be so presented? It shows that the underlying structures
that are central to the account do not depend on intentionality for their
realization. They can exist in a non-intentional form. This means that such
a structure can provide the underpinning and matrix for sustaining inten-
tional processes (which have this same structure) and which derive their
intentionality from it. Such an arrangement thus provides for the possibil-
ity of explaining the normative structures in a non-question-begging way.
As an integral part of the overall account of an institution (indeed as the
basic model of an institution), it thus makes provision in advance for the
existence of the non-intentional level of whose absence Kusch complains.
If I were asked to hazard a guess at why these parts of the analysis were
left out of account by my critic, I should point the finger of blame at the
categories he uses when subjecting my argument to appraisal. Recall that
Kusch’s method is to frame a distinction and then pose ‘key’ questions as
to where I stand with respect to the distinction. Thus he asks (Kusch,
2004: 579), ‘Which position should we ascribe to Bloor then: reductive or
non-reductive dispositionalism?’ The method is to distinguish A from B,
divide the possibilities into A or B, and then see whether my theory falls
into type A or type B. This is fine if A and B are mutually exclusive and
jointly exhaustive but can lead to confusion if they are not.
Consider, in this light, whether my theory is reductive or non-
reductive. Kusch correctly identifies it as reductive, but detects ambiguity

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Bloor: Institutions and Rule-Scepticism 599

and a general lack of clarity: ‘we are not told explicitly whether it is
reductive or non-reductive’ (Kusch, 2004: 279). Given my unequivocal
condemnation of those who postulate irreducible meanings (Kusch quotes
some samples), I was puzzled by this. Where is the ambiguity? The problem
comes from how the question is framed. A non-reductive dispositionalist,
we are told, treats meaning as irreducible, while ‘a reductive dispos-
itionalist seeks to make meaning acceptable to those metaphysicians who
only accept entities posed by physics’ (Kusch, 2004: 279). So the A and B
categories used to interrogate my position involve, on the one side, (A) the
hocus pocus of irreducible meanings and, on the other side, (B) matter and
motion, for example, the sounds coming out of our mouths and the
movements of our limbs.
It is hardly surprising that it was difficult to get an explicit answer from
the text as to which of these two were preferred. The categories are not
jointly exhaustive. They are like the ends of a continuum and do not help
us address any of the middle ground. As a reductivist, I see the point of
counting physics as basic, hence the attractions of Barnes’s mechanical
analogies, but I do not think that the only things that can be called ‘real’
are those listed in physics textbooks. Textbooks in, say, animal behaviour
deal in realities as well, and ones that are more pertinent to the questions at
hand. If we are thinking about what underlies social structures and makes
institutions possible, then we need to be interested in our nature as
biological organisms, our natural psychological proclivities to react and our
instinctive susceptibilities to one another.1 It was in this intermediate realm
that Wittgenstein located most of the underpinning of intentionality and
where most of it was located in my book. I fear that Kusch’s questions are
not well posed. They have a hole in the middle into which my reductive
argument seems to have disappeared.
As Kusch points out (Kusch, 2004: 587), not all problems, all of the
time, have to be seen as an exercise in reduction at the most basic level. In
practice, there is much work to be done where the intentional is explained
in terms of the intentional, as for example when something mysterious and
reified is explained in terms of less mystifying patterns of interaction – and
where that interaction is still understood on the intentional level. But
though this kind of analysis is important, it is open to the regressive
problem that Kusch was himself strongly emphasizing. The so-called
‘sceptical challenge’ shows how quickly the taken-for-granted level can
itself be made to look mysterious. That is why it is important to address the
argument at all levels, including the most basic.
There is no denying that reduction is difficult. One pervasive problem
facing the reductivist is the need to recover the non-intentional under-
pinning of intentionality from a state of affairs which is most naturally
described in an intentional idiom.2 Much of the work of reduction involves
going backwards from the intentional to the non-intentional and trying to
exhibit the non-intentional behind that which has meaning. The task is
one of analysis, rather like the early chemists trying to go back to the
‘elements’ and recover the unfamiliar gases we call ‘oxygen’ and ‘hydrogen’

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600 Social Studies of Science 34/4

from the familiar stuff called ‘water’. Once this has been done, then it is
necessary to reverse the process and explain the complex in terms of the
simple, that is, water in terms of oxygen and hydrogen and intentionality in
terms of simple instincts and reactions. But while the chemist has real
experiments to reflect upon, the reductivist dealing with meaning has to
rely to a great extent on thought-experiments – hence Wittgenstein’s
strange re-description of the trip to the grocer’s. The degree of success or
failure attributed to a reductive enterprise is a matter of judgement and is
strongly sensitive to a priori probabilities. Ultimately the reductivist has no
compelling way to argue against a hostile critic who wants to project a
different metaphysic onto the data.
Nor should the reductivist be too ready to object if a friendly critic
points to the proposed analysis and says it is weaker than it ought to be.
For my own part I certainly want to see the links between the intentional
level and its non-intentional basis made stronger, and any suggestions that
Kusch has to offer would be welcome. To get a sense of the difficulties, it is
worth remembering that even the chemists who had synthesized water
experimentally had not thereby logically deduced the properties of water
from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. The interplay between logical
and causal considerations in a proposed reduction is in need of sensitive
handling.3 If friendly criticism is to be constructive, not only must the
demands be realistic, but the overall shape of the enterprise must be kept
in view. This means that the whole of the reductive argument must be
addressed rather than merely part of it.

Notes
1. Instinctive sociality is taken to be non-intentional and non-normative. If, as I believe,
Kusch rejects Winch’s idea that all social relations are mediated by ideas this should be
acceptable to him.
2. I speak of social actors ‘invoking’ rules and Kusch objects that this is an intentional act,
but when Kripke uses the idea that rules are ‘attributed’ this is allowed to pass and is
not subject to the charge of circularity. Is a double standard at work?
3. A critic might construct an argument against reduction in chemistry analogous to that
over meaning. The reduction of water to oxygen and hydrogen must be spurious, says
the critic, because you can drink water and wash in it but you cannot drink or bathe in
oxygen and hydrogen gas. How can a valid deductive argument have a conclusion
containing the concepts of drinking and washing (to do justice to the properties of
water) while its premises contain no such concepts (to be true to the properties of
oxygen and hydrogen)? X cannot be identical to Y, if Y can be wet and X cannot be wet.
(Compare: X cannot be identical to Y, if Y is intentional and X is non-intentional.) If we
do not use this argument to criticize the chemists it is because we see that explanation is
a richer concept than deduction and is responsive to a wider range of methodological
considerations. Sociologists claiming to have a reductive account (that is, an explanation)
of meaning may reasonably ask that what is granted to the chemists be granted to them
as well.

References
Baker, G.P. & P.M.S. Hacker (1984) Scepticism, Rules and Language (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Barnes, Barry (1983) ‘Social Life as Bootstrapped Induction’, Sociology 17: 524–45.

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Bloor: Institutions and Rule-Scepticism 601

Bloor, David (1997) Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions (London: Routledge).

Kusch, Martin (2004) ‘Rule-Scepticism and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: The
Bloor–Lynch Debate’, Social Studies of Science 34: 571–91.
Pickering, Andrew (ed.) (1992) Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago, IL: The University
of Chicago Press).
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1967) Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell).
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969) On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell).

David Bloor works at the Science Studies Unit in Edinburgh and has a
personal chair in the sociology of science. He has written two books on
Wittgenstein. His current interest is in the history of aerodynamics and fluid
mechanics.
Address: Science Studies Unit, 21 Buccleuch Place, University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh EH8 9LN, UK; fax: +44 131 650 6886; email: d.bloor@ed.ac.uk

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