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    If all meaning derives from rule-following within a share... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→True expression requires both 'speaking speech' (the act of genuine creation) and 'spoken speech' (the shared linguistic substrate).

    If all meaning derives from rule-following within a shared form of life, the 'speaking speech' pole collapses into 'spoken speech', making the distinction incoherent rather than complementary.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Rule-following requires internalization of communal norms, making individual innovation derivative of collective patterns already established.
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    • 2.The distinction between speaking and spoken speech presupposes a speaker transcending rules, but all speech acts instantiate existing rule-systems.
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    • 3.If meaning emerges only through rule-governed practice, creative speech-acts cannot generate genuinely new meaning—only recombine existing elements.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
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    • 1.Rules themselves must be interpreted and applied contextually; this interpretive moment requires agency exceeding mechanical rule-following.
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    • 2.Shared forms of life evolve through individual innovations that reshape norms; this requires a generative pole distinct from rule-instantiation.
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    • 3.The distinction survives as complementary: spoken speech stabilizes forms of life while speaking speech continuously reinterprets their meaning.
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    Key Terms

    Incoherent(describing whether moral responsibility can exist)
    Logically impossible or contradictory; something that cannot make sense or cannot exist at the same time as something else.
    Speaking speech(Merleau-Ponty's distinction between two modes of speech; corresponds to the moment of genuine creation in expression.)
    The generative, creative dimension of expression — the act by which a speaker produces something genuinely new, transforming the shared linguistic substrate.
    Spoken speech(Merleau-Ponty's distinction between two modes of speech; corresponds to the communal, transmissible aspect of language.)
    The sedimented, shared dimension of language — the already-constituted linguistic material that makes expression intelligible to a community.
    collapses into(as used in philosophical reasoning)
    Loses its distinct identity and merges with or reduces to something else.
    complementary(as used in this philosophical argument)
    When two things work together and enhance each other, like how peanut butter and jelly complement each other.
    distinction(One of the two components of Arendtian plurality)
    The aspect of plurality by which no two human beings are ever interchangeable, each being endowed with a unique biography and perspective on the world
    form of life(Wittgensteinian concept applied by Winch to rationality debates)
    A backdrop of norms governing a given language and social practice that determines what counts as rational within that context.
    meaning(Possible-worlds semantic theory of meaning)
    A rule specifying what an expression would stand for if the world were a certain way, rather than what the expression actually stands for in the current circumstance
    rule-following(Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument)
    Continuing a practice in the same way as a community of like-minded others, such that the community's shared behavior fixes what counts as correct continuation.

    Connections

    2 topics

    Philosophy of Language1 linkedAesthetics1 linked

    Related

    If meaning emerges only through rule-governed practice, creative speech-acts can...Rule-following requires internalization of communal norms, making individual inn...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    Rules themselves must be interpreted and applied contextually; this interpretive...
    Shared forms of life evolve through individual innovations that reshape norms; t...
    +3 moreShow less
    The distinction between speaking and spoken speech presupposes a speaker transce...The distinction survives as complementary: spoken speech stabilizes forms of lif...True expression requires both 'speaking speech' (the act of genuine creation) an...