Rules and Practices

Philosophical Review
Rules and Practices

Author(s): Hubert Schwyzer
Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Oct., 1969), pp. 451-467
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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RULES AND PRACTICES'
PHILOSOPHERS have often told us that language or speech
is governed by rules. In the hands of certain writers in
recent years this has come to mean the following. To speak is
to engage in a form of behavior that is defined by rules, rather
in the way that certain games and moves in games are defined
by rules. Thus, when we open our mouths and utter words sig-
nificantly, the "speech act"-or, to use Austin's special term,
the "illocutionary act"-we thereby perform is determined by
what rules apply to that utterance. For example, for the utterance
"I promise to return this book to you tomorrow" to constitute
a promise is for it to be subject to a set of specific rules. One of
these rules, as applied to this utterance, states that I must not
already have returned the book to you; another, that when I
utter those words I should intend to act accordingly. And what
is true of promising is true of an indefinite number of other
speech acts- for example, asserting, commanding, asking ques-
tions, issuing warnings, making requests. Each of these is defined
by a set of rules. I think this position is held, explicitly or im-
plicitly, by quite a number of contemporary and recent philos-
ophers.2
Now, one of the points in favor of this view, and at the same
time a rationale of the view, is this: the mention of rules makes
sense of certain crucial facts about promising, asserting, and so
forth, facts which, it might seem, would otherwise remain utterly
perplexing. Suppose I ask, in a philosophical frame of mind,
1
A version of this paper, entitled "Rules and Grammar," was read before
the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, at Berkeley, Cali-
fornia, in December, I967.
2 I have in mind W. P. Alston, Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.,
i964),
and "Linguistic Acts," American Philosophical Quarterly, I
(i964);
J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass., I962); John
Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," Philosophical Review, LXIV
(I955);
and two
papers by J. R. Searle, "How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is,'
"
Philosophical
Review, LXXIII (i964), and "What is a Speech Act?," in Philosophy in America
(London, i965).
451
HUBERT SCHW2ZER
"What has my promising to do something got to do (logically)
with my intending to do it ?" There might seem to be just these
alternatives: either intending is necessarily involved in promising
or it is not. If it is, then one cannot make a promise without
intending to keep it; in which case there cannot be any insincere
promises; anyone who says "I promise to do A" without intend-
ing to do A will be justified in claiming later that he did not
really promise anything (since he lacked the appropriate inten-
tion) and that therefore we have no right to turn on him for not
intending to do what he promised to do. And that surely will not do.
So it seems that intention is not necessarily involved in promising
after all. But if that is so, then it would be quite conceivable that
there should be a tribe of people somewhere to whom it never
so much as occurred to intend to do what they promised to do,
and who never even expected intentions to accompany promises.
And that, it would seem, will not do either. We resolve the
dilemma by revealing that promising is a practice governed by
rules; and one of those rules states that when you make a promise
you are obliged to intend to keep it. If it were not for that rule,
promising would not be what it is: the rule is "constitutive" of
the nature of promising. And what is true of promising is equally
true of asserting: just as promises, in the sense specified, "require"
intentions, so assertions require beliefs. To make an insincere
promise, or to say what you do not believe, is like cheating in a
game; the rules forbid that sort of behavior. So, according to
this view, the concept of a promise, or that of an assertion, is
explicated by listing the constitutive rules that govern one's
behavior in promising or asserting. Promising and asserting and
the others are practices or institutions, like chess or baseball, or
making a will, or performing civil matrimony. They are systems
of rules, and the rules
define
them. Alston, Rawls and Searle
(see note 2) make much of this analogy with games and institutions
in their discussion of the concepts of these sorts of acts.
Now I think this view has quite a lot to recommend it: in
particular the insight that promising and intending, asserting
and believing (in general, if you like, "speech" and its "internal
companions") are not merely contingently related to one another.
But I find objectionable the way this insight is expressed in the
452
RULES AND PRACTICES
view outlined above. What I shall try to do here is show that
those who have talked about rule-governed practices and institu-
tions, and who have placed illocutionary acts among them, have
misconstrued the role of the rules of such practices and institu-
tions. I shall argue that in the relevant sense rules do not, and
cannot, define the nature of an activity; the rules of chess, for example,
do not explicate what it is to play chess. That they do not do so is in
their very nature as the rules of chess. On the other hand, I
would claim that the so-called "rules" governing illocutionary
acts do indeed explicate the nature of those acts; but just for
that reason they are not rules at all, on analogy with the rules
of games or of such practices as making a will. I shall now try
to make this clearer.
Let us first ask what is meant by saying that practices and
institutions are "systems of rules" or that they are "constituted"
or "defined" by rules. Consider this in the case of games, like
chess or football. Both Rawls and Searle are quick to point out
that the rules of such games (for example, "Only the king can
be checked," "The bishop moves along the diagonal," "A touch-
down is scored when . . .") do not merely "regulate" or "guide"
one's behavior while playing; their force is not to summarize
past decisions as to how the game is best played (or the move
best made); nor, we might add, do they state how it is usually
played. For a game in which it was not the case that the bishop
moved only along the diagonal, that only the king could be
checked, would not be chess at all. For the game to be chess is
for it to be played in accordance with these rules. Now, allowing
this to be true, the correct way to describe the situation would
be to say that the game of chess is defined or constituted by its
rules, which is to say no more than that chess is a game played
in accordance with these rules. But Searle, at least, makes a
significantly different point from this. He says, in distinguishing
"constitutive" from "regulative" rules:
Some rules regulate antecedently existing forms of behavior. For
example, the rules of polite table behavior regulate eating, but eating
exists independently of these rules. Some rules, on the other hand,
do not merely regulate, but create or define new forms of behavior:
the rules of chess, for example, do not merely regulate an antecedently
453
HUBERT SCHWTZER
existing activity called playing chess; they, as it were, create the pos-
sibility of or define that activity. The activity of playing chess is con-
stituted by action in accordance with these rules.3
Now, there is all the difference in the world, I shall argue,
between saying that the game of chess is defined by its rules, or
that chess is a game played in accordance with these rules, and
saying that the activity of playing chess is constituted by action
in accordance with these rules, or that the rules define that
activity. The former is unexceptionable, the latter false, and
importantly so. Moreover, what Searle says cannot be regarded
as a mere slip of the pen; his view that constitutive rules create
or define new forms of behavior (as opposed to, for example,
new games) is essential to his discussion of the nature of illo-
cutionary acts.
What Searle does is, in effect, to confuse the rules of an activity
of a given kind with what Wittgenstein calls the "grammar" of
an activity, which makes it an activity of that kind.4 A few words on
this cryptic remark. We might say that what distinguishes chess
from checkers, or even, perhaps, from tennis or football, is fully
given in the list of rules for that game. Chess is played according
to these rules, checkers is played according to those rules; and that
is all. It is also the case, however, that chess is distinct from such
forms of behavior as making a contract, performing civil matri-
mony, saying Mass, buying and selling. These are all rule-
governed activities, institutions, in Searle's sense. But they are
not different games, they are different sorts of activity altogether.
And what distinguishes playing chess from each of these-that is,
what makes it the kind of activity it is-is not, I shall argue, a
matter of its rules. Rather what makes chess-playing the kind of
thing it is is a matter of what sorts of things it makes sense to say
with respect to chess, of what sorts of things are, in a logical sense,
relevant or appropriate to say with regard to chess. Following
Wittgenstein and for the sake of brevity, I shall sometimes refer
3
"How to Derive 'Ought' from 'Is,"' p. 55.
4
Wittgenstein says: "Essence is expressed by grammar.... Grammar tells
what kind of object anything is" (Philosophical Investigations, 2nd ed.
[Oxford,
i967],
??37I,
373).
454
RULES AND PRACTICES
to this as the "grammar"5 of chess. Thus, it belongs to the
"grammar" of chess that we can say such things as "Let's play
chess," "That was a wise (a silly) move," we can ask who won
or is winning, say "Bad luck" to the one and "Well played" to
the other after the game is over; these ways of speaking are
intrinsically relevant in the context of chess, not in the context of,
say, Mass. If these locutions were as inappropriate with respect
to chess as they are with respect to Mass, chess would play a
quite different role in our lives, we would regard it as, it would
be, something essentially different from the sort of thing it is, a
competitive game. Now the fact that these locutions are appro-
priate in the case of chess and not in the case of Mass is not, I
maintain, established by the difference in the two lists of rules
in accordance with which the respective activities are conducted.
In short, Searle misconstrues rules, the rules of chess, as having
the force of "grammar"; he holds that the rules define the nature
of chess-playing, that they state what kind of thing chess-playing
is.
Now Searle's interest is in giving an "analysis," or "explication
of the notion" of illocutionary acts, taking as his example the
act of promising. To this end he assembles a number of "gram-
matical propositions" (see note 5) about promising-that is,
statements which do explicate the notion of promising, state what
5 In what follows, "grammar" will occur always in quotation marks, to
indicate this rather special use. For my purposes in this paper, nothing
(beyond convenience, Wittgenstein's precedent and the lack of any more suit-
able term) hangs on my choice of this word. I think it is worth pointing out,
however, that Wittgenstein's use of the term is not altogether idiosyncratic,
for there is at least this connection between grammar, in the ordinary sense,
and "grammar." Ordinary schoolbook grammar tells us that "children" is a
noun and "play" a verb. This means nothing more than that it makes sense
to say "The children play" and not "The play children." "Grammar" tells
us the same sort of thing, but goes much further. It says, for example, that
chess is a competitive game (that sensations are private, that expectation is a
state, not a process). And that, in turn, means nothing more than that it
makes sense to say such and such things about chess (see immediately below)
and not such and such other things. To this extent, both grammar and
"grammar" tell (remind) us (of) what it makes sense to say. (It is Wittgen-
stein's achievement to have seen that statements like "sensations are private,"
"expectation is a state," are indeed "grammatical" propositions, and not, e.g.,
introspection reports with, as it were, a peculiar "necessity" built into them.)
455
HUBERT SCHWrZER
kind of thing promising is (for example, "promises ought to be
kept")-and casts them as rules, on analogy with the rules of
chess. Thus he miscontrues both rules and those propositions which
state what kind of thing something is. All this has yet to be shown,
however. In the limited scope of this paper I shall argue only that
rules, in the relevant sense, do not define the nature of an activity.
Imagine the following. I have now been in Ruritania some
time, and can speak the language tolerably well. One day I ac-
company my host with his family to a certain
building,
where a
large number of people are sitting in a circle on the floor, mur-
muring among themselves agitatedly. In the center of the circle
is a small table with two chairs, and on the table is a chessboard
with chessmen arranged as for the beginning of a game. After
a while, two men in elaborate clothes enter the room and seat
themselves at opposite sides of the table; whereupon those sitting
on the floor fall silent and watch intently. The men at the table
then proceed, with what appears to be an air of great concentra-
tion, to move the chess pieces around on the board according to
the rules of chess. It strikes me, however, that they play a rather
wild game, and I can see no consistent strategy in the moves of
either player. The excitement mounts until, after an hour or so,
white mates black. Then everyone present, including both men
at the table, shows signs of extreme relief; they mop their brows,
smile and congratulate one another. This seems odd, but not
especially so; I have seen many odd things in Ruritania.
Anyhow, I am overjoyed that the Ruritanians are familiar
with chess; I have brought a set with me from home, and now
look forward to many pleasant evenings playing with my host.
When we arrive at his house, I show him
my chess set and ask
if he would like to play. He turns pale, is horrified and appalled,
and insists that I put it away immediately. "Blasphemer!" he
exclaims. "Did you want to play at chess with me? And did you
forge that chess set?" I protest that I meant no harm, and ask
him to explain all about chess.6 After some hesitation he does so.
6
In case it should be thought that there is some difficulty about his calling
it "chess," in the light of what turns out to be the case, let us assume that the
Ruritanian word is, in fact, "chess," pronounced as we pronounce it; it is a
loan-word.
456
RULES AND PRACTICES
There is, he says, only one chess set for each community. Chess
is enacted once every year by the priests of the community, for
purposes of determining the will of the gods. If white mates
black, the community and the crops will flourish; if black mates
white, there will be trouble. "Does white always win?" I ask
incredulously. My host looks puzzled, and again shocked. "Chess
is not a duel or a battle," he explains. "It is a sacred rite. There
is no winning or losing at all." ("Of course there is," I say to
myself: "for white to mate black is for him to win the game!")
So, unconvinced by my host, I talk to several of my other Ruri-
tanian friends, and do a little research on my own, consult
encyclopedias, and so forth. I discover that all my host told me is
true. Chess is not regarded by any of these people as something
that can be won or lost; they do not respond to checkmate as
we do at all. Not only does no one in fact congratulate (or admire
or envy) the "winner" because he has mated the other, nor
console (or pity or despise or ridicule) the "loser" because he
has been mated-no one considers it so much as relevant or
appropriate to react in any of these ways.7 And when I talk to
them about these sorts of reactions, they do not understand:
"Chess is not a battle," they repeat. I soon discover that the
notions of winning and losing have their place only in such things
as wars and battles and duels, and that these people do not have
competitive games at all, as we understand them.8 The only way
they can construe the proposal "Let's play chess" is to take it as
an invitation to play at the sacred rite. It is as if a child in our
culture were to suggest that we play (at) Mass, marriage, con-
fession.
7
I also discover a legend to the effect that the rite of chess was instituted
many centuries ago by a Ruritanian prophet, on his return from travels in the
East. We can presume that he watched games of chess while he was there,
carefully noting all the moves, and "mistook the import" of what was going on.
8 The only kinds of playing they recognize are (a) "intransitive" playing,
or playing simpliciter, as in, e.g., "Go and play in the garden, with Johnny,
with this ball"; and (b) playing at something (like playing teacher, or soldiers,
or cowboys and Indians, mother and father). Among the latter, there are
cases of competitive playing, but only derivatively so-i.e., only where the
form of activity played at (e.g., cowboys and Indians) is itself a competitive
one. There is no playing that is eo ipso competitive: there are no games like
tennis, football, or chess.
457
HUBERT SCHWTZER
I think it should be evident that these Ruritanian priests do
not play chess when they move their pieces in accordance with
the rules of the game. But before we go on, we should pause to
consider a rather natural objection. Someone might argue as
follows. "You might have discovered that the Ruritanians do not
play any other competitive game, but you have by no means
shown that they do not play chess. Nothing you have said proves
that the priests were not playing the game when you watched
them. All you have shown is that, in that country, chess is played
and looked upon rather differently from the way it is played and
looked upon here. That is, it is played only on certain occasions,
by certain people and for certain definite purposes, different from
ours; and that the Ruritanians have a different attitude to the
game than we have. None of this, however, alters the nature of
the activity in which they engage, as you seem to suggest. For
there could easily be, and there doubtless have been, taboos as
to who may play a given game, and when. And one can play a
game-for example, chess-for all sorts of purposes; not neces-
sarily to win, or for the game's sake, or for fun; one can play to
lose, or just to see what happens, or to please someone, and so
on. So there is nothing logically odd about playing chess to deter-
mine the will of the gods. And what is true of the purposes of
players is equally true of the attitudes or reactions of onlookers.
These can be as varied as you please, and still have no bearing
on what the thing is about which one has that attitude or to
which one is reacting in that way."
Let us begin with the part of the objection that is about
"attitudes" and "reactions," for this, I think, is the crucial part.
What we had to say concerning these was not simply that the
Ruritanians happen to react differently from the way we (usu-
ally) do, to chess; it is not just that they do not in fact, for
instance, say "Let's play chess" to one another, or ask who is
winning, or congratulate the "winner" and console the "loser."
If this were all, then there might well have been some explanation
of their failure to do and say these things, and of their doing and
saying other things instead-and it might still be true that the
priests were playing chess. Had chess been a sacred game, say,
which only priests were permitted to play, then others would
458
RULES AND PRACTICES
certainly have had reason not to say "Let's play chess" to one
another. And it might then have been a show of impiety to ask
who is winning, or to congratulate or console priests. But this is
not the picture we drew. Our account was not that these ways
of behaving and speaking were not practiced with regard to
chess, because it was bad form, or sinful, or otherwise improper,
to practice them, but that saying and doing these things made no
sense in that context at all. To ask in Ruritania which of the priests
is winning, for example, means as little as the question: which
of these two men (the priest and the server) is winning this Mass?
It is to miss the point altogether. In short, none of the things we
say and do vis-a-vis chess-things which distinguish chess as the
kind of thing it is, a competitive game-have, in Ruritania, any
application to what the priests are doing when they move the
pieces according to the rules of chess.
"But," you will perhaps say, "surely this does not prove that
the priests are not playing chess. All it shows is that chess is not
a game for the onlookers, that those who watch do not regard it as
a game. But that does not prevent it from being one; it could
still be one for the priests. They could still compete with one
another when they make their moves. And surely, in fact, they
must so compete, for otherwise the outcome of the whole pro-
cedure would be known to them in advance, and that you must
not allow, for the whole point of the procedure, you claimed, is
to determine the will of the gods." There are two parts to this
objection. First, the rite of chess could indeed be a game for the
priests, but again, only given a rather different story from ours.
If Ruritanian priests formed a closed order in which alone com-
petitive games were played, and chess among them (that is, if
the priests among themselves spoke and acted as we do with
regard to chess); and
if,
once a year, they played a game before
the public in order to determine the will of the gods9-then we
would have grounds for saying that, unbeknown to the public,
9 They could be perfectly sincere about this. It would not have to be that
they were really playing just for fun and only pretending to be determining
the will of the gods. The objector was quite right in saying that one can play
a game for all sorts of purposes-given, that is, that the circumstances are such
that it is correct to say that a game is being played.
459
3
HUBERT SCHWrZER
the priests were playing chess. But in our account it was not
assumed that priests, as a society, had a secret practice of playing
competitive games; they do not in that way have a privileged
access to what they are doing. It makes as little sense to them as
it does to the public to ask who is winning, to congratulate the
"winner," and so forth. Secondly, the fact that the outcome of
the procedure must be initially uncertain to the priests does not
in any way require that the priests compete with one another.
For although competition is one way of preventing the outcome
from being certainly known in advance, it is not the only way.
We need not suppose that the priests' moves are determined by
considerations of chess strategy at all. They might make their
moves on purely aesthetic grounds, or, what is rather more
fitting in our example, they might meditate before each move,
waiting upon divine inspiration. In either case, their moves could
still accord with the rules, and the outcome would be as un-
predictable as in a game of chess.
But perhaps something different is being thought of in the
objection above-namely, that a pair of priests might, despite
all that we have said, nevertheless enter into the rite of chess in
the spirit of a competitive game. That is, they might (nothing we
have said makes this impossible) actually try to checkmate one
another-that is, compete with one another, each of them regard-
ing his own and the other's moves as pursuing a strategy; and
the one who mated the other might feel victorious and the other
downcast at the result. If this were so, could it possibly be denied
that they were playing chess? It could. For the element of com-
petition comes too late now, and in the wrong place, and makes
no difference at all to what the priests are doing, or even to what
they see themselves as doing. For suppose two wayward priests
were to compete in this way and to have these feelings while,
and after, performing the sacred rite. This would be quite ex-
traneous and incidental to the nature of the activity, even as they
saw it. The best we (and they) could say would be that while
performing the rite of chess, they also engaged in a competition
with each other. It would be as if the priest, the deacon, and
the subdeacon in a High Mass were to try to outdo one another
in, say, solemnity of bearing, or vocal resonance, each regarding
460
RULES AND PRACTICES
his own and the others' moves as pursuing a strategy. The fact
that they did so would not make it possible (except as a joke) to
talk of winning Mass, or winning the game of Mass. All that
could be said is that one of them won, and that they each tried
to win, a posture or voice competition, which was being engaged
in while saying Mass. The competitive element brought in at this
stage and in this way does not make Mass into a competitive
game, even for the performers. Equally, given that the activity
of the Ruritanian priests is as we have described it-that is,
given that these and these are relevant things to say with regard
to it, given its "grammar"-whatever competitive feelings or
other mental conditions might accompany the activity, such
feelings cannot make the performing of it a case of playing chess.
But the more we emphasize the fact that the Ruritanian
priests are not playing chess when they move their chessmen
around on the board, the more it might seem that they cannot
be really, or fully, acting in accordance with the rules of chess.
This suspicion might take a number of different forms. It is not
enough, you might say, that the behavior of these people is such
that we would say that it accorded with the rules of chess. They
must say so, too; they must see themselves as obeying those rules.10
But there is no reason to suppose that our priests do not see their
actions in this light. It is not as if a priest ought to give a different
answer from the one a chessplayer would give to the question
"Why did you move that piece (the bishop) along the diagonal
instead of in a straight line ?" On the contrary, the correct answer
would be the same for the priest as for the chessplayer-namely,
"Because that is the rule." The rite of chess is as much a "prac-
tice" or "institution" as is the game of chess.
"But," you will say, "you have still not shown that the activity
of the Ruritanian priests is in accordance with the rules of chess
in the full sense required. All you have shown is that (a) their
actions conform to what we call the rules of chess and (b) that
10
"Those engaged in a practice recognize the rules as defining it. The rules
cannot be taken as simply describing how those who engage in the practice in
fact behave: it is not simply that they act as if they were obeying the rules.
Thus it is essential to a practice that the rules be publicly known and under-
stood as definitive" [Rawls, op. cit., p. 24].
46i
HUBERT
SCHWrZER
they justify their actions by appeal to rules-rules which, as a
matter of fact, are what we would call the rules of chess. What
you would have to show to make out your case is that the priests
regard their actions as conforming to the rules of chess; not to
the rules of some other practice. This you have not shown: on
the contrary, you have shown that the priests regard their actions
as conforming to the rules of a sacred rite."
What is meant by saying that one must regard one's actions
as conforming to the rules of chess? What are the rules of chess?
Surely these rules: (we produce the list, exemplify moves). And
these are precisely the rules which the priests recognize as governing their
actions."' To continue to insist that the priests do not regard their
actions as conforming to the rules of chess on the sole grounds that
those rules are, for them, the rules of a sacred rite is to say no more
than that they are not, and do not see themselves
as,
engaged in
playing a game of chess; which is just what we have been
arguing all along. What the objection does, therefore, is to in-
corporate a requirement to the effect that people be engaged in
playing chess into what is meant by saying that they are acting
according to the rules of chess. But this makes the claim that the
activity of playing chess is constituted by action in accordance
with the rules vacuously circular, for, given this interpretation, to
say that someone was acting in accordance with the rules of chess
would already be to say that he was playing chess. If this were
the case, Searle's claim would be quite uninformative. It would
read thus: the activity of playing chess is constituted by action in
accordance with the rules, where such action constitutes playing
chess. Here the mention of rules serves no purpose at all. This
is clearly not what Searle intended, for his claim purports to
explain what it is to play chess in terms of acting in accordance
with the rules.
But then, what is it precisely to "act in accordance with the
rules"? Just what is included among the "constitutive" rules of
chess? There is still a lack of clarity here. Certainly so much is
11
This does not mean that they are able to state the rules; that is clearly
not required. Nor does it mean that if they did state them, they would state
them in just the way we would (see below).
462
RULES AND PRACTICES
true: if there were a book of rules for the sacred rite of chess
it would look very different from our rule book. Chess would not
be described as a game; such things as "winning" and "losing"
and "opponent" would not be mentioned at all; and there would
be no section on "principles" or "strategy" or "maxims." But
that chess is a game is in no way a rule of the game. Nor is there
a rule of chess stating that one must treat chess as a game. And
principles, maxims, and strategy are just the kinds of rules that
both Rawls and Searle wish to exclude; they are merely "regu-
lative" or "summary" rules, stating what it is advisable or
prudent to do. Now it is indeed part of what it is to play chess
that there be advisable courses of action-that is, that there be
better and worse moves to make; that is, that playing chess in-
volves skill. But that chess involves skill is no more a rule of chess
than that chess is a game; rather, it is part of the "grammar" of
playing chess: we can say, "That was a brilliant move, a rash
one," and so forth. However, even some of the rules that define
the moves (clearly constitutive rules) would be written differently
in the Ruritanian rule book. The rules would never be formu-
lated in such a way as to make use of competitive-game-depen-
dent notions, such as "winning" or "opponent." Checkmate, for
example, would not be defined as the "winning move." Does
this mean that the priests could not act in accordance with that
rule? Well, what would it be for one's action not to accord with
the rule? It would be to go on making moves after checkmate
had been reached. But our priests do not do that; they stop at
that point. And that is all that the rule can require; it cannot
require that one go on to talk in certain ways with regard to
what has happened, that one deem it relevant to congratulate
the one who checkmated the other, for example.
This, then, is the point we have reached. There is nothing in
what the priests do, nor in what they feel, while moving the
pieces on the chessboard, that in any way conflicts with what is
required by the rules of chess. For what they do and feel while
at the chessboard need in no way be crucially different from what
we do and feel while playing chess. The difference between the
rite of chess and the game of chess lies not at all in what goes
on at the board, nor in anything in the minds of those who make
463
HUBERT SCHWTZER
the moves. Rather, the difference lies away from the board al-
together, in what Wittgenstein calls the "role" of the activity in
the lives of those for whom it is a practice. It is this that makes the
one a sacred rite and the other a competitive game. And the
difference in roles is shown by what happens, for example, before
and after the activity at the chessboard; it is determined by the
different ways of speaking and behaving which are appropriate
with respect to each case. But the rules of chess can govern what
happens only on the chessboard; they can regulate behavior only
while the activity is in progress. That is why it will not do to say
that "the activity of playing chess is constituted by action in
accordance with these rules."
Our argument shows that the game of chess is not adequately
characterized as a "system of rules." Playing chess does not
consist in acting in accordance with the rules. The rules do not
explicate the concept of playing chess; they do not establish what
it is to play chess.
Now this, I think, is generally true in all cases where we can
sensibly speak of rule-governed practices or institutions, where
the "moves," "positions," and so forth internal to these are de-
fined by the rules. The rules of a practice do not tell us what the
practice is of which they are the rules. Suppose I tell you I have
created a new form of behavior, invented a new practice, and
that these are the rules. No, it is not a game or competition of
any kind, nor a rite or ceremony, nor is it in any sense a "way of
doing something," as making a will is a way of providing for
one's property after death, has that purpose built into it. It is a
new practice altogether, called "X-ing";
it requires two parti-
cipants, the "initiator" and the "respondent," and the procedure
is as follows. First, the initiator signs his name on this special
piece of paper, called "the pad"; his signing his name there is
called "launching." The respondent then has a choice: either he
"submits," which is to do this, or he . .. and so forth. The whole
business is terminated when the respondent "declares"-that is,
signs his name on the other side of the pad.
What is X-ing? "An activity according to these rules." So you
say, but that does not tell us what it is at all. Suppose you learn
the rules, and follow them flawlessly, and also conscientiously-
464
RULES AND PRACTICES
that is, because they are the rules. That will not tell you what it
is you are engaged in. For, given our preface to the "activity"
of X-ing, we have made it impossible that X-ing should be any-
thing at all, other than a system of movements in accordance
with rules. The description of the procedure perhaps makes it
look like a game of some sort, and especially so, since we denied
that it was a "way of doing" something, that it had a built-in
purpose, as making a will has. But we also denied that it was a
game of any kind, or a ceremony or rite, or, indeed, that it
belonged to any familiar category of behavior. For it was claimed
that X-ing was a new practice, a new form of behavior altogether.
But this means that we deprived X-ing of any role in our lives
that it might have had. There are now no relevant ways of
speaking or acting with regard to it at all; X-ing has no "gram-
mar." Nothing (or everything) could count as an appropriate
occasion for engaging in it; nothing could show that one entered
into it rashly or wisely or in the right spirit, that one won or
lost, or accomplished it successfully, or even "got the right thing
out of it." We could not even say that X-ing is "just something
to do," like making pointless lists, for even that, vague though it
is, has a "grammar." (It has occasions: when bored, on a rainy
evening; and purposes: to pass the time, distract oneself.)
Nor is it that the trouble with X-ing is that it is as yet a mere
blueprint for a practice; that all it needs in order to be a practice
is to bepracticed.12 For suppose a whole community were to adopt
X-ing and to engage in it on occasion.13 This, as such, could
12
Rawls
says:
Blue-prints for a practice do not make a practice. That there is a practice
entails that there are instances of people having engaged and now being
engaged in it (with suitable qualifications) [op. cit., p. 25].
I am not sure what is meant to be covered by the phrase in parentheses, but
Rawls certainly does not mean by it "given that those people also speak and
act with regard to the practice in certain ways"; for he holds that a practice
is a system of rules. All that he is adding here is that we would not call it a
practice if it existed only on paper. This does not alter his view that the
practice is defined by its rules.
13 We would have to be careful about how we specified the "occasions,"
if we did so at all. For if we said "when bored," or "in their spare time," for
example, this would incline X-ing toward some familiar category of behavior.
465
HUBERT SCHWIZER
make no difference; for in the light of all our denials as to what
sort of activity X-ing is, all we could say would be that these
people engage in a system of rule-governed movements. That
they do so does not of itself give what they do a role. (Though,
indeed, for them to find it worthwhile to engage in X-ing would
be for them to find a role for it-for instance, to make a game of
it.)
We might sum up by saying that the system of rules that con-
stitute X-ing does not amount to a practice of any kind. To act
in accordance with those rules is not to do or to be engaged
in
anything other than just that, action in accordance with those
rules. It follows from this that where we do have a practice-
for example, making a will, playing chess-it is not the rules of
that practice that specify what the practice is.
Now, since the nature of a given practice is defined not by
its
rules, but by its "grammar," by what things it is relevant to say
and do with regard to it, it follows that one can bring a new
practice into being by setting up rules for engaging in it14 only
where the "grammar" of that behavior-according-to-the-rules
is
already given. Another way of putting this is to say that one can
create a new practice by setting up rules only where the sort of
activity that is to result from acting in accordance with the rules
is one that already belongs among the things we do, one with
regard to which there already exist relevant ways of speaking
and acting, prior to the setting up of the rules. Thus, one can,
by drawing up defining rules, invent a new game (chess) or a
procedure for declaring one's intentions with regard to the dis-
tribution of one's property after one's death (making a will)
or
an alternative to the cumbersome business of bodily exchanging
mutually desired objects (buying and selling). This is possible
because playing games, giving away one's possessions, exchanging
mutually desired goods are activities that already have a place
in our lives; we know how to deal with them. What one cannot
do, by setting up defining rules, is invent a wholly new practice
14
Both Rawls and Searle seem to regard practices-rightly,
I think-as
essentially the sorts of things that can be brought into being, invented, by
devising systems of rules.
466
RULES AND PRACTICES
with a wholly new "grammar," as if that "grammar" could be
somehow imbedded in and created by the rules for engaging in
the practice. Rules (constitutive rules) do not themselves specify
how the behavior in accordance with those rules is to be regarded;
that is something that the very setting up of the rules must pre-
suppose.
HUBERT SCHWYZER
University of California, Santa Barbara
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