NDPR Alex Miller Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Meaning: “To Follow a Rule Blindly”

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2025.09.10 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Alex Miller, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Meaning: “To Follow a Rule Blindly”, Oxford University Press, 2024, 192pp., $90.00 (hbk) ISBN 9780192856487.

Reviewed by Paul Boghossian, New York University

Interest in the thought of the later Wittgenstein was hugely revived by Saul Kripke’s groundbreaking Wittgenstein On Rules and Private Language, first published in 1982. As is well known, in that book, Kripke developed a skeptical problem about the possibility of meaning and rule-following that he found in Wittgenstein’s later writings. The intuitive notion of following a rule that Kripke was working with can be summarized in terms of the following ACER model (see Boghossian 2008). (Acceptance) If S is following rule R (‘If C, do A!’), then S has accepted (or ‘internalized’) R. (Correctness) If S is following rule R,...

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