Paul Boghossian (1990) summarizes four components of what has become the received interpretation of Saul Kripke's book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982) (WRPL): (i) Kripke's meaning-skeptic argues that meaning is normative and from descriptive facts one cannot derive normative claims, so descriptive facts cannot explain or reduce meaning; (ii) nonreductive accounts of meaning are not vulnerable to the meaning-skeptic's argument; (iii) Kripke's skeptical solution is a kind of nonfactualism about meaning; and (iv) Kripke's arguments do not show that an isolated individual cannot follow rules. Contributions to the literature about rule-following published after 1989 include criticisms of the meaning-skeptic's argument, investigations of the nature and coherence of nonfactualism about meaning, revisionary interpretations of WRPL, and interpretations of Wittgenstein that challenge Kripke's and others' understanding of rule-following.

Ruth Garrett Millikan (1990) argues that the normativity of meaning can be explained in terms of biological purposes shaped and...