It's tempting to think of tacit rules as just rules we haven't stated - as though they are still in a cupboard somewhere, just not having been taken out and looked at yet.
This metaphor is misleading, though. Is it a tacit rule of chess that the normal rules stay the same at least until next Wednesday? Or next Thursday? We can ask an indefinte number of questions to which 'rules' like this might be answers.
The fact that 'normal' interlocutors know most of the answers to these questions (when asked) is like the fact that they give commensurate answers to questions about their immediate perceptions. They just know how to talk - or so we would say in any shared game with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment