The Enigma of Rules

Abstract

In a remarkable early paper, Wilfrid Sellars warned us that if we cease to recognize rules, we may well find ourselves walking on four feet; and it is obvious that within human communities, the phenomenon of rules is ubiquitous. Yet from the viewpoint of the sciences, rules cannot be easily accounted for. Sellars himself, during his later years, managed to put a lot of flesh on the normative bones from which he assembled the remarkable skeleton of the early paper; and his followers too. However, what they say is somewhat divergent; and therefore my aim in this paper is to concentrate on the very concept of rule and analyse it in the context of the question what it is about us humans that makes us special.

Keywords:

• rules
• normativity
• evolution
• language

Notes

* Work on this paper has been supported by research grant No. 401/07/0904 of the Czech Science Foundation.

1 American readers should not be confused by the fact that football is what they call soccer.

2 Von Wright (1963) calls them directives, whereas Raz (1999) speaks about technical norms.

3 I discuss this development elsewhere (see Peregrin, forthcoming).

4 See Peregrin, 2006.

5 See also Noble, 2000.