The Expressive Role of Variables and Disagreements about Rules

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that given what variables enable us to express, although there may be disagreements about which statement expresses a rule one has been following, such disagreements do not lead to any paradoxes such as the one Kripke finds in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.To follow a rule is to undertake a commitment to the applicability of a certain condition over a domain of items, and variables can be used to express one's understanding of the condition and domain of a rule.These notions couched in inferentialist terms enable us to explain how we can resolve a disagreement about the expression of a rule and also why even if we cannot resolve one, we do not find anything paradoxical there.