Community Rules: What Does Kripke’s Sceptical Paradox Imply for Private Language?

Abstract

Wittgenstein’s private language argument is often taken to imply that an individual could not master a language by himself. This conclusion is explicitly drawn in Saul Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein on the basis of general considerations on rule-following. But is an individual really not able to follow rules, as Kripke also contends? In this paper I argue for a novel conception of rule-following that can incorporate the insights of the private language argument without accepting its most counterintuitive implication.