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Frege’s own ideas are lost in the struggle with larger issues. Reading Currie, by
contrast, one is likely to feel occasional impatience. As the discussion veers

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towards some unresolved question of contemporary interest - the semantics
for arithmetic or the analysis ofbelief-contexts, for example - Currie drops the
topic, and moves on to further exegesis. We have a more complete picture of

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Frege in Currie’s book, but there is far less life to it.
UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT PHILIP KITCHER

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Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.
By SAUL A. KRIPKE.
Blackwell, 1982. x+150 pp. 29.50.
[U.S.A. :Haward Univ. Press]

Versions of the material in this book have been around for some time.
Professor Kripke gave one version as a lecture at the Wittgenstein Colloquium
in London, Ontario, in 1976; later versions were given as several series of
lectures in the United States, Canada and England. A version somewhat
shorter than the book is included in the British, but not the American,
edition of Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, edited by I. Block
(containing the proceedings of the London, Ontario conference). Buyers of
the American edition have had no reason to suspect that they were not
getting all that was included in the British edition. In the circumstances,
the prefaces to both Kripke’s book and Block’s are puzzling. Neither mentions
the very queer business of publishing a book with the same title, at the same
time, on two sides of the Atlantic, with different contents. Some buyers have
been - I have to say - cheated by this regrettable way of doing things; the
prefaces give the impression (at any rate) of covering things up.
Here is a summary of Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein. It is wrong
to think of the “private language argument” as beginning with 8 243 of
Philosophical Investigations. What begins there is rather the application to
sensations of a more general argument, developed in the preceding sections,
“the real ‘private language argument’ ”. That argument has two essential
elements: a sceptical paradox about rules and what Kripke calls a “sceptical
solution” of the paradox; the impossibility of private language follows
directly from the sceptical solution. The paradox itself is regarded by Kripke
as “the fundamental problem of Philosophical Investigations” and as a major
contribution to philosophy: “a new form of philosophical scepticism”. The
paradox is that if we consider the formulations we give of a rule, the ex-
amples we use in teaching it, the states of mind of teacher or learner, in none
of these separately or together can we find anything that determines that
doing this rather than that shall count as applying that rule correctly. Any
course of action can thus, or so it seems, be made out to accord with the
rule; but that means that the very notion of a rule is incoherent. Two features
characterise what Kripke calls sceptical solutions to sceptical problems.
(1) Such a solution begins “by conceding that the sceptic’s negative assertions
are unanswerable” (in conceding that, sceptical solutions differ from
“straight” solutions). (2) The ordinary practice or belief called into question

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by the sceptic’s argument is held to be justified because what the sceptic
has shown to be unavailable is not really necessary for justification. In the

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case of Wittgenstein’s sceptical solution t o his own paradox, what does this
come to? Kripke holds, though he knows that Wittgenstein might well reject
his way of putting the matter, that Wittgenstein does take the view that there
is no fact in virtue of which one course of action rather than another is in
accord with a rule, That is feature (1) of the sceptical solution. The second
feature is provided by an account of when we can say that such-and-such is
in accord with a rule. No fact, of the sort the sceptic shows will not do, is
necessary. Some such fact appears to be necessary only if we insist on an
account of meaning in terms of truth-conditions. But, according to Kripke
(following Michael Dummett on this), Wittgenstein went from a truth-con-
ditions theory of meaning to a theory couched in terms of assertability-
conditions. Our training in following rules brings us to a point at which we
simply take certain steps. Inclined in that way t o take them, we may say
(i.e., we are entitled to say) that what we are doing is what we earlier meant,
that what we are doing is in accord with a rule grasped earlier. No fact about
our earlier state makes that correct, but the assertability-conditions are never-
theless fulfilled. We may say of someone else that what he is doing is in
accord with a rule (say, for addition) if our inclinations t o go on in such-and-
such a way coincide with his. Again no fact stands behind such assertions,
but our practice does not require that there be such facts. The practice
(of making assertions about rule following by ourselves and by others, about
what we ourselves and others mean, about our grasp of concepts and that of
others) has point only where there is general agreement in the responses to
training. It is part of the practice, then, of ascribing concepts to others that
we be able to use those concepts ourselves. There are simply no conditions
for saying of someone else that he is following a rule which others cannot
follow: the normal assertability-conditions for saying that someone else is
following a rule are absent and (by the sceptic’s argument) there is no alter-
native account, no intelligible notion of truth-conditions which would sustain
the idea of such a possibility.
That brief summary cannot do justice to a rich and powerful exposition.
I d o not believe Kripke’s story, but there is not space here to spell out why
not. One crucial issue which would need to be raised I have already touched
on. To make out the case that Wittgenstein offers a sceptical solution to the
problem, Kripke needs to claim that Wittgenstein denies what the sceptic
denies; he knows, however, not only that there is no such explicit denial in
Wittgenstein’s discussion, but that the ascription to Wittgenstein of such a
denial goes against unambiguous general statements of Wittgenstein’s about
philosophy. Kripke recognises how delicate the issue is. He knows that
Wittgenstein would repudiate any suggestion that our ordinary forms of ex-

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pression (e.g., talk of the fact that So-and-so meant such-and-such) might as
it were say something false even while the sentences containing these ex-
pressions, and the same sentences with ‘is true’ attached, are justifiably as-
sertable. Yet he must at the same time ascribe to Wittgenstein the view that
there is no fact of the matter what someone meant; otherwise Wittgenstein
is not offering a “sceptical solution”. The difficulties at this point go very

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deep. They are, I believe, connected with others. A full understanding of the
private language argument must place it in relation to the view of language
taken in the Tractatus. Kripke attempts to make the relation clear, but his
remarks about the Tractatus are the weakest thing in the book. My objections
would not just be to what he makes of some of its central ideas; more im-
portant, he misses what it is after, philosophically - what it tries to get us
to stop wanting from philosophy. But that, I should say, is exactly what
he misses in Wittgenstein’s later work too. What would need to be shown,
what I am not here even attempting to show, is how the difficulties of arguing
convincingly that Wittgenstein puts forward a sceptical solution to the
sceptical paradox are related to a failure to grasp the force of Wittgenstein’s
view of philosophy itself. The very idea that the sceptical paradox is the
fundamental problem in Philosophical Investigations reflects a false conception
of the relation between philosophical questions and ordinary questions about
what someone meant.
Kripke’s interpretation, and his arguments, deserve - and will repay -
extremely careful attention. Besides the main argument, there is much else
that is valuable, for example, the suggestions about how to take Wittgenstein’s
puzzling remarks about the “image” of pain not being a “picture” (PI 5 8
300-301). The book is well produced, the writing clear and straightforward
(though with occasional lapses from English idiom); there is a useful index. I
noticed misprints (or systematic spelling errors) on pages 22(3), 29, 47,
50(3), 71 and 106.
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CORA DIAMOND

Reference and Generality (third edition).

By PETER THOMAS GEACH .

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Cornell Univ. Press, 1980.231 pp. 512.60.

The first edition was published twenty years ago. The third has some import-
ant changes, Professor Geach now brings his view of common names into
line with his view of proper names: there are no empty ones. Indeed syntax
knows only the category of names; whether they are proper or shared is a
matter for semantics. There is also a distinction between being a name for
and being a name of which plays a considerable role in the revised theory.
The applicative ‘most’ has increased its share of the action: ‘most A’ is now
numbered amongst the referring phrases. The presentation of the dictum de
omni has been revised: it appears now as a (thematic) rule for deriving valid
arguments from other valid arguments, not as a (schematic) rule directly
giving us valid patterns of argument. A new account has been given of propo-
sitions whose subject term is a common noun annexed to a demonstrative
pronoun, e.g., ‘That man . , ,’ ($32). Frege has joined Quine as target of an
attack on a particular view of unrestricted quantification, The attack is no
longer conducted in terms of Heraclitus and the bath water, but in terms of
Lord Newriche and the College of Heralds. This avoids trouble with mass
terms.
There are errata as follows (most items contributed by Professor Geach

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