Prompt Two — The Regress and Its Dissolution

Prompt

Setup. Three arguments share a structure. Carroll's tortoise accepts the premises and accepts that the premises imply the conclusion, and still declines the conclusion. Each new licence for the inference is added as a further premise and stands in need of its own licence. Hume asks what justifies inference from observed to unobserved. Any justification appeals to the past success of such inference, which is the practice under examination. Kripke's sceptic asks what fact about a speaker's past use determines that "plus" meant addition rather than quaddition. No fact about past use, dispositions, or introspected states settles it. The proposal: all three demand that a practice be certified by something standing outside it, and all three show that no such certification is available. The proposed dissolution is that the demand is malformed. A rule is a constraint on a class of models, not an object that could license its own application. Asking what certifies the practice from outside is asking for a model of models, and the request has no well-formed content rather than an unavailable answer. A tempting move, offered for assessment, not endorsement. Since Wittgenstein writes that no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule, he holds that meaning is fixed by dispositions, or else that there are no facts about meaning at all. Your tasks. State the shared structure of the three arguments in one paragraph. Use the word "regress" at most once. Assess whether the model-theoretic move is a dissolution or a redescription. Give the strongest case that it is only a redescription — that it renames the impasse without removing it — and then say which you believe. Wittgenstein appeals to training, to Abrichtung, and says that when he has exhausted the justifications he has reached bedrock. Does this answer the sceptic or change the subject? Distinguish the two readings sharply and defend one. Say what the model-theoretic dissolution owes to the causal story about training. If it owes anything, say whether the debt reintroduces the original demand one level down. Constraints. One thousand words maximum. Do not rehearse Kripke's exposition at length; assume I know it. Quote at most one short passage, and only if you are certain of its wording — otherwise cite by section number and paraphrase. A misquotation counts as a failed answer. Do not attribute the sceptical argument to Wittgenstein without marking the attribution as Kripke's.