incomplete answers to some queries

C (hey C!) asked some interesting and important questions which i will repost briefly. i will attempt to answer them as an exercise in critical engagement with the text.

he asks:

(1) what are the implications of when we are mistaken about concepts in this manner?

(2) Since employment of the two different concepts in the same linguistic instance results in the same answer, what is the fundamental difference between employing the two? Is the answer yielded actually the "same"?

(3) How does this differ from other forms of skeptical possibility, if at all? Does this generate a sort of skeptical problem similar to the Cartesian one?

ok. i think i'll try to answer (3) first, as it will make the answers to the other questions clearer. the skepticism kripkenstein presents is much more devastating than descartes's. this is because descartes's skepticism was epistemological in character, whereras this skepticism is both epistemological and metaphysical. descartes's skepticism was with the goal of establishing a certain, true set of beliefs from which to base the rest of his epistemological enterprise. foundationalist through and through, he designated an epistemically privileged set of propositions that he used to justify shakier propositions, so to speak. and much has been written (cs peirce, susan haack) about how this kind of cartesian epistemic skepticism was pretty much just bafoonery to get to propositions he wouldn't alter anyway because they were 'clear' and 'distinct' to him anyway, thanks to god.

however, kripkenstein's skeptical paradox is a more serious threat. not only does the quaddition example show that we, at this moment, don't know whether we are using addition or quaddition, an epistemic skepticism, there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function we are performing at the moment, a metaphysical skepticism. this of course extends to previous uses of the function and future uses of the function. and then the same principle carries over to not only addition, but ultimately every function, name, natural kind term, description, etc.

so, if we take a step back for a sec, what kripkenstein is actually doing is presenting to us a very real, encompassing, epistemological as well as ontological skepticism of meaning that pretty much runs the full sweep of both speech acts and mental acts. there is no fact of the matter concerning what we ever mean by any linguistic utterance. part of the problem here, of course, is that there is an underlying assumption that we have to explain meaning in terms of something else, but that problem isn't very relevant for the present discussion, so we'll just give it to him for now.

now to address (1). well the implication here is that we don't ever know what we're talking or thinking about because there is never any fact of the matter as to what we are talking or thinking about! the implications themselves are rather tough to formulate apart from this previous statement. my initial reaction was to say that "even if we think we know what we're talking about, we don't actually know because there is no fact to speak of." but the problems of saying this are pretty evident: i mean, communication in general would be a farse, but further even the possibility of cogent thought comes into question. if we take kripkenstein's skepticism seriously, then it is almost undeniably, irrefutably serious!

finally, for (2) i'm going to use another mathematical example. the functions (n+m), (n x m), and (n^m) are of course different functions. but if we happen to say for each of these functions n=2=m, then they all yield the same answer. the fundamental difference in them is the nature of the method of manipulating the numbers, but given specific circumstances they might coincide in output. the problem with kripkenstein's kind of skepticism is that all math, all communication through symbols, actually, is lacking meaning. if nothing has meaning, because there is no ontological fact concerning meaning, then every communicative act is a coincidence, just as those functions happened to coincide at 2.

well i hope i helped a bit, as it helped me understand kripkenstein a bit more myself.