Many philosophers have called this interpretation of Wittgenstein Kripke’s Wittgenstein or Kripkenstein because, as Kripke himself emphasizes, it is “Wittgenstein’s argument as it struck Kripke, as it presented a problem for him” (Kripke 1982, 5) and “probably many of my formulations and re-castings of the argument are done in a way Wittgenstein would not himself approve” (Kripke 1982, 5). Kripke presents Wittgenstein as proposing a skeptical argument against a certain conception of meaning and linguistic understanding, as well as a skeptical solution to such a problem. Saul Kripke, in his celebrated book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), offers a novel reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s main remarks in his later works, especially in Philosophical Investigations (1953) and, to some extent, in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). In this paper, I will argue that she would not be successful in her project. Hannah Ginsborg, one of the most important contemporary philosophers of language, has recently attempted to resist Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s arguments against by defending a new sort of reductive dispositionalism which can meet both demands at the same time. He argues that facts about dispositions are finite and are incapable of constituting facts about what speakers mean by their words they are also essentially descriptive, not prescriptive and thus, cannot meet the Normativity Demand. He particularly argues against the dispositional view, according to which meaning facts are constituted by facts about the speaker's dispositions to respond in a certain way on certain occasions. Kripke in his famous book on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy argues, on behalf of Wittgenstein, that there can be no fact of the matter as to what a speaker means by her words, that is, no fact that can meet the Constitution Demand and the Normativity Demand. I will use the distinction George Wilson draws between two different conclusions of the sceptical argument and show that Kripke has respected all of the remarks that Wittgenstein has put in section 201. Wittgenstein does not accept such a sceptical conclusion. McDowell, McGinn, and others have objected that Kripke has failed to properly understand Wittgenstein’s main remarks in 201, that is, that the paradox is the result of a misunderstanding of the ordinary notion of meaning. As Kripke reads Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein is in agreement with his sceptic on the sceptical conclusion of the sceptical argument, that is, that there is no fact about meaning, and builds his sceptical solution on an endorsement of that. Wittgenstein presents this paradox in paragraph 201 of the Philosophical Investigations. For Kripke, this conclusion, combined with Classical Realist view of meaning, leads to the Wittgensteinian paradox, according to which there is no such thing as meaning anything by any word. According to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument, there is no fact as to what someone means by her words. I will show that their interpretation of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view is misplaced. In this paper, I will argue against certain criticisms of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument and sceptical solution, made especially by Baker and Hacker, McGinn, and McDowell.
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