The rule-following topic goes to the heart of the most fundamental questions of contemporary philosophy of mind and language, thus concerning the metaphysics and epistemology of linguistic meaning and mental context. This volume of essays seeks to gather the important contributions to the debates surrounding the topic of rule-following and meaning. The debates have centred on Saul Kripke's reading of the rule-following sections in Wittgenstein, which presents a "sceptical paradox" that threatens to undermine completely our everyday notions of linguistic meaning and mental content, with the notion of meaning, as Kripke puts it "vanished into thin air". These essays, from leading philosophers in the field, are an attempt to respond to this challenge and together they represent some important work in contemporary theory of meaning.
The essays examine a wide range of central issues including the notion of meaning; whether it is possible to find a suitable meaning-constituting fact from our previous behaviour or mental histories; objections to, and defences of, dispositional accounts of meaning; the plausibility of non-factualism about meaning; and the sources of the normativity which attaches to meaning, such as the linguistic practice of the community or the dispositions of the individual. With an introductory essay and a comprehensive guide to further reading, this is designed as a resource for final-year undergraduates taking courses in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, Wittgenstein, and metaphysics, as well as postgraduates and professional philosophers with interests in these areas.