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Following a Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Colwyn Williamson
Colwyn Williamson
Affiliation:
University College of Swansea
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Extract

These remarks on following a rule are especially concerned with what Peter Winch has had to say on the matter, and with the flawed logic of his reasoning; but they are also intended to cast some light on the logical character of metaphysical reasoning generally. In The Idea of a Social Science, one of Winch's main aims is to show that what he calls meaningful behaviour must involve some kind of understanding or reflection. His strategy appears to consist in trying to show, first, that all such behaviour, or perhaps behaviour as a whole, is rule-governed and, secondly, that following a rule necessarily involves ‘matters for reflection’. It will be my contention that the method employed in this argument, like the method employed throughout his book, is essentially metaphysical and incapable of yielding anything other than vacuous conclusions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 64 , Issue 250 , October 1989 , pp. 487 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1989

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References

1 Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958)Google Scholar. Wherever in what follows a page number is simply inserted in brackets, the reference is to this book.

2 Further arguments for the view that Winch's method is incorrigibly metaphysical and vacuous will be found in Williamson, Colwyn, ‘Witchcraft and Winchcraft’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences (forthcoming).Google Scholar

3 For Winch's views on the importance of not underestimating the extent of what may be said a priori see The Idea of a Social Science, 15–18.Google Scholar

4 Winch holds that science, history, religion, art, philosophy, and several other things too, are all concerned with the same thing, namely ‘making reality intelligible’. But since he also notices that ‘in very many important ways the objectives of each of them differs from the objectives of any of the others’, he is obliged to conclude that ‘the notion of intelligibility is systematically ambiguous’. He fears that this claim will lead to the accusation that he is ‘just punning’ (The Idea of a Social Science, 18)Google Scholar. All of this provides another example of the a priori method at its best.

5 What I mean by the fallacy of spurious contrast is the procedure of seeming to confer sense on what would otherwise strike us as unintelligible by making arbitrary and artificial comparisons. The Idea of a Social Science contains many examples of this fallacy.

6 Marx, K. and Engels, F., The Holy Family (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing, 1956), 121.Google Scholar

7 Kant, I., Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, trans. Abbott, T. K. (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1955), 16.Google Scholar

8 Winch consistently refers to ‘science’ as though it were one thing, and he thinks that the difference between science and philosophy is explained by saying that the former investigates the nature of the reality of particular real things, whereas the latter investigates the nature of reality in general (The Idea of a Social Science, 8)Google Scholar. The fact that so many other philosophers have indulged in this way of speaking does not make it any the less vacuous.

9 Moore, G. E., ‘Proof of an External World’, Philosophical Papers (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959)Google Scholar. Winch speaks of Moore having produced his (Moore's) hands in order to prove the existence of external objects. He does not seem to realize just how difficult it is to produce one's own hands.

10 Marx, K. and Engels, F., The German Ideology (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965), 294.Google Scholar

11 Not allowing an example to speak for itself is, I believe, a recurring theme in Winch. A striking illustration of this is his treatment of the so-called Mass, Black in ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’ (American Philosophical Quarterly I, 1964)Google Scholar. I have discussed this particular case at length in ‘Witchcraft and Winchcraft’, op. cit.

12 Mr Sean Wilkie has drawn my attention to a real example of this happening. An avid reader of his reviews, Sonny Rollins consciously set out to play in the style ascribed to him by the critic Gunther Schuller. ‘The effort only left him confused, and in time he dropped the idea and announced thai henceforward he would not read anything written about him’ (Collier, James Lincoln, The Making of Jazz (London: Macmillan, 1981), 451).Google Scholar

13 Oakeshott, M., ‘The Tower of Babel’, Cambridge Journal 2Google Scholar, as quoted by Winch, , p. 58.Google Scholar