Kripke's Wittgenstein
In his book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke proposes a related argument that leads to skepticism about meaning rather than skepticism about induction, as part of his personal interpretation (nicknamed "Kripkenstein" by some) of the private language argument. He proposes a new form of addition, which he calls quus, which is identical with plus in all cases except those in which either of the numbers to be added are greater than 57; in which case the answer would be 5. He then asks how, given certain obvious circumstances, anyone could know that previously when I thought I had meant plus, I had not actually meant quus. Kripke then argues for an interpretation of Wittgenstein as holding that it is not possible to state the meaning of a word.
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Famous quotes containing the words kripke and/or wittgenstein:
“Let’s call something a rigid designator if in every possible world it designates the same object, a non-rigid or accidental designator if that is not the case. Of course we don’t require that the objects exist in all possible worlds.... When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. A rigid designator of a necessary existent can be called strongly rigid.”
—Saul Kripke (b. 1940)
“It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)