rule-following, meaning and coordination giacomo sillari [email protected] lorentz center...
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Rule-Following, Meaning and Coordination
Giacomo [email protected]
Lorentz CenterWorkshop on Formal Theories of Communication
24/2/2010
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Make the following experiment: say “It’s cold here” and mean “It’s warm here”. Can you do it?
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
§510
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
I can’t say “it’s cold here” and mean “it’s warm here”—at least not without a little help from my friends
David Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study, p.177
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
I can’t say “it’s cold here” and mean “it’s warm here”—at least not without a little help from my friends
David Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study, p.177
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Background
• Kripke’s skeptical paradox...– indeterminacy of interpretation
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Background
• Kripke’s skeptical paradox...– indeterminacy of interpretation
• …and its skeptical solution– correctness conditions held in the community
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Background
• Kripke’s skeptical paradox...– indeterminacy of interpretation
• …and its skeptical solution– correctness conditions held in the community
• Normativity of rule-following– Past use– Dispositions– Mental States
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Background
What do correctness conditions consist of?• Equilibria of recurrent coordination games
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Rules and Conventions
§198
“A person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom.”
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Rules and Conventions
§198
“A person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom.”
“[w]e need more than a generalized awareness of the importance of social processes: we need a specific understanding of what is meant by the word ‘institution’”
(Bloor 1997)
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Rules and Conventions
§198
“A person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom.”
“[w]e need more than a generalized awareness of the importance of social processes: we need a specific understanding of what is meant by the word ‘institution’”
(Bloor 1997)
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Rules and Conventions
§198
“A person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom.”
Lewis-conventions
Regularity in the solution of recurrent coordination games
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Rules and Conventions
§198
“A person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom.”
Lewis-conventions
Regularity in the solution of recurrent coordination gamesConventions as “a kind of social norms”?
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Rules and Conventions
§198
“A person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom.”
Lewis-conventions
Regularity in the solution of recurrent coordination gamesConventions as “a kind of social norms”?
“How, then, do I explain accepting a norm? I explain it by placing it in a speculative psychology. Accepting a norm, I hypothesize, is a state of mind that is linked to a special kind of linguistically infused motivation or tendency. The tendency, roughly, is to do what the norm says. The psychic mechanisms that underlie this state have as a chief biological function coordination through discussion---with coordination taken in the broad, game-theoretic sense expounded by Thomas Schelling
(Gibbard 1994)
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• (§198) “[W]hat has the expression of a rule […] got to do with my actions?”
• (§201) This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule [and] it can also be made out to conflict with it.”
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• (§198) [A]ny interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support.
• (§202) And to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule.”
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• (§202) And hence also ‘obeying a rule’ is a practice.
• (§201) [T]here is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call “obeying the rule” and “going against it” in actual cases.
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• Expression of a rule• Situation (sign-post)
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• Expression of a rule• Interpretation of a rule
• Situation (sign-post)
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• Expression of a rule• Interpretation of a rule
• Situation (sign-post)• Possible actions (strategies): “Going in the direction of its
finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one”
(§85)
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• Expression of a rule• Interpretation of a rule
• Following a rule
• Situation (sign-post)• Possible actions (strategies): “Going in the direction of its
finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one”
(§85)
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Wittgenstein on Rule-following
• Expression of a rule• Interpretation of a rule
• Following a rule
• Situation (sign-post)• Possible actions (strategies): “Going in the direction of its
finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one”
(§85)
• Practice (actual play): Coordination on equilibrium or miscoordination
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
What do correctness conditions consist of?• Equilibria of (recurrent) coordination games
Meredith Williams (1989):
“The normativity of rules is grounded in community agreement over time.”
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
What do correctness conditions consist of?• Equilibria of (recurrent) coordination games
Meredith Williams (1989):
“the community is not required in order to police the actions and judgments of all members, but in order to sustain the articulated structure within which understanding and judging can occur and against which error and mistake can be discerned.”
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
What do correctness conditions consist of?• Equilibria of (recurrent) coordination games
Meredith Williams (1989):
“the community is not required in order to police the actions and judgments of all members, but in order to sustain the articulated structure within which understanding and judging can occur and against which error and mistake can be discerned.”
Builder-Assistant Game
S
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Lack of pillar “Pillar!” Bring a pillar
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Lack of pillar “Pillar!” Bring a pillar
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Lack of pillar “Pillar!” Bring a pillar
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Lack of pillar “Pillar!” Bring a pillar
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Lack of pillar “Pillar!” Bring a pillar
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Lack of pillar “Pillar!” Bring a pillar
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Lack of slab “Slab!” Bring a slab
Lack of pillar “Pillar!” Bring a pillar
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Cold “it’s cold here!” Turn up heat
Warm “it’s warm here!” Open window
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Builder-Assistant Game
State Signal Action
Cold “it’s cold here!” Turn up heat
Warm “it’s warm here!” Open window
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]
Giacomo Sillari [email protected]