Consider the following dialogue:
Someone asks you, ‘Why are you doing that?’
You respond, ‘because of ‘x, y, z’ reasons.”
They say, ‘well, why do you do this action because of ‘x’?
You respond, “I justify it with ‘a, b c’ reasons.”
They ask again, “But why do you do ‘a’?”
After a while of continuous questioning on the reasons for why you acted a particular way, you can only respond, ‘this is just the way we/I do it.’
In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstien discusses the reasons we have for actions and rule following. He demonstrates that, at a certain point we exhaust our reasons as he states in remark #211
“How do I know? - If that means “Have I reasons?”, the answer is: my reasons will soon give out. And then I shall act, without reasons.” (Wittgenstein 90)
Later in #217, he states
“How am I able to follow a rule? - If this is not a question about causes, then it is about the justification for my acting in this way in complying with the rule. Once I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: This is simply what I do…we sometimes demand explanations for the sake not of their content, but of their form.” (Wittgenstein 91)
At the core of our actions is custom, not a rational justification. Wittgenstein is expressing that, just as in following a rule, we appeal to behaviour and not our reason. We do things in a particular way because that is the ‘behavioural usage’ of the pattern/practice of a particular action or how to follow a rule.
In remark #211, Wittgenstein is stating that our actions are based on, in the most basic circumstances, primitive responses, like pain behaviour. Small children learn to communicate their expression of pain whimpering and crying by saying that they are hurt. They still feel the pain but the form of expression has changed. If we asked someone why they acted in such a way, they would not be able to give an adequate justification beyond appealing to this is the way they behave in such a circumstance or that they have learned the custom relative to that circumstance. His main point is that they acted in a particular way not for any reason but because it is how they do things or how people in general, relative to culture, do things.
Remark #217 is about rule following and in this instance it is more about custom than our own primitive responses. Here, Wittgenstein is addressing the nature of justification when an action is relative to some rule specifically. In this case, the rule, like the signpost, is followed because of custom or the pattern people follow in the usage of the rule/sign. He identifies that there are neither causes or justifications in why we follow rules as we hit ‘bedrock’ after a series of questioning.
Rules make sense within the embedded social nexus they are contextualized in. If one were to travel to a different culture and observe some sign on a trail, the meaning of that sign is relative to the people who use it. An external person could not automatically know what the meaning of the sign is without observing how it is used and having some form of testing via the acceptance of the primary users to determine if their interpretation is correct. Following a rule is based on the custom it was derived from the language it is based on,
“To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to have mastered a technique.” (Wittgenstein #199, pp.87)
Mastering a technique is akin to playing a game.
We see this in the interpretation of games like chess where the meaning of a rule is not explicitly stated in a book but is interpreted relative to the usage of chess players. We cannot rely on interpretation itself but must appeal to the usage of the rule to understand the criteria of meaning. He states in #198,
“Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning.” (Wittgenstein 86)
We learn the meaning of a rule based on how we are trained to respond to it based on
“an established usage, a custom.” (Wittgenstein 86)
In remark #217, Wittgenstein concludes ‘this is simply what I do’ and identifies the distinction between content and form in why we do things in our desire for explanations. The content for why one behaves or acts would be relative to some rational, reasonable justification. Whereas the form of the explanation is the pattern of behaviour that we all engage in relative to the usage of the rule. The difference here would be someone explaining why something is the case in contrast to demonstrating why it is done.
These two quotes, #211 and #217, are essentially based on the same point: that actions and rule following are rooted in our customs, not our reasons. We cannot rely on a rational justification to explain why a person did something or followed a rule. The most our reason can do is point us in the direction of the custom we are following. The reason they did so is because they were taught to by someone else and have engaged in practice/training that is tested constantly by the responses by others that shows our understanding. We know a person understands a rule, when they are able to use that rule correctly based on circumstance.
References
Wittgenstien, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 35e - 38e)
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