Regularities and Social Practices: Reconsidering Wittgenstein’s Rule-Following Argument

Wittgenstein’s rule-following argument captures the underlying problem concerning how meaning gets attached to what we do. Besides the debate on rules as normative constraints of meaning in the philosophy of language, the illustration of the problem is also evident in how regularities and necessity play a role in understanding social practice in the philosophy of social science. The contested views on the notion of practice are between a thin view (Humean regularist view) and a thick view (e.g., presumably, Wittgensteinian view). While the thin view is represented as the view that there are mere regularities in behaviour, the thick view takes it that necessities (in the sense of normativities) are inhered in regularities. According to Haslanger (2013), the thickest view can fall into the trap of an intentionally overloaded thick view, namely, the view that there is no gap between the regularities in what we do and the normativity of what we do. Examples of the intentionally overloaded thick view discussed in this paper include the ideas of Winch and Diamond. Based on McDowell’s reading of Wittgenstein’s rule-following argument, this paper argues for the non-intentionally overloaded thick view where rules are engaged within practices but are objectively characterizable. Arguing for the non-intentionally overloaded thick view, the paper exploits Haslanger’s project of doing philosophy, namely, the ameliorative aim. This sort of thick view entails realism about social structure, which may lead to the circularity problem. That is, behaviour regularities are assumed to be the effect of some causal properties of a social structure before it is known whether such properties exist. However, the paper argues that the regularities in question should be taken as phenomenal regularities, which can be stated as counterfactual conditions.