Professor Hannah Ginsborg, "The Significance of Signposts: A Challenge to ‘Quietism’ about Meaning"

Hannah Ginsborg is a Professor at the University of California.

Abstract: John McDowell holds that questions about the possibility of linguistic meaning – in particular, those raised by Saul Kripke in his reading of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations – should be rejected as illusory.  I challenge this view through a consideration of one of McDowell’s central examples, that of following a signpost.  I argue  that reflection on the signpost example shows that Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations raise a genuine problem about the possibility of linguistic meaning.  I go on to suggest, again drawing on the signpost example, a way of resolving it.