Public rules and the logic of natural language

Abstract

As philosophers continue to develop a more comprehensive philosophy of language traditional philosophical distinctions will inevitably be cast anew. The following work might best be considered a critique of an oversimplified conception of the foundations and logical structure of natural language. More specifically three topics will be considered in relationship to metaphysical skepticism and the metaphysical distinction between appearance and reality: the nature of the foundations of language, the range of contingency in language, and the possibility of an analytic/synthetic distinction. The term "metaphysical", above, refers to any contention that our every-day ontology of material objects is more accurately expressed in terms of a language which makes reference only to our immediate experience, where material objects are taken to be non-sensible (empirically transcendent) entities, and not only to attempt to talk of such entities. The three topics mentioned above will each provide the focus of one of the following chapters, and will be organized respectively, around three rather Wittgensteinian themes. The first chapter will argue that no language can be established on a genuinely private foundation, the second deals with the manner in which the meaningful use of language is established publicly, and the third investigates the sense in which the rules which govern linguistic use are necessary.