Ranaee, Mahdi
Junior Fellow: October 2021–September 2022
Research Project: Rule-Following and Scepticism: Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein
The aim of this research project is to bring together historical as well as systematic considerations regarding Wittgenstein’s rule-following argument conceived as a scepticism concerning meaning and language. The main idea behind the project is that the argument in question is a radicalisation of Kantian scepticism, which is itself a radicalisation of Humean scepticism concerning causality. Hume famously challenges the notion of causality by arguing that in our experience, there is nothing more than a kind of succession in physical entities. Kant radicalises this problem by arguing that it is not limited to the concept of causality, but that it rather applies to all pure concepts of the understanding or categories. Following this line of thought from Hume to Kant to Wittgenstein, this project puts forward the idea that the rule-following argument is a radicalisation of Kantian scepticism in two important respects. First, it transfers the problem from a conceptual to a linguistic phase. In so doing, it makes it a problem not just about the pure concepts of the understanding, but also about the meaning of all linguistic units. More importantly, it changes the problem’s direction of fit. Whereas for both Hume and Kant the problem merely concerns the objects of experience, in Wittgenstein’s version, there is also a corresponding problem in one’s actions.
Mahdi Ranaee is writing a PhD thesis in philosophy at Universität Potsdam, Germany.