Kuhn 12: Scarves and hats
Suppose that someone deliberately says "scarf" where we would say "hat" and says "hat" where we would say "scarf," out of whimsy or contrariness. We could say he's breaking the rules. Suppose someone else - not deliberately, but perhaps because he's a foreigner just learning the language, or a young child, or has some cognitive impairment - also says "hat" where we would say "scarf" and vice versa. We could say that he doesn't know the rules.
Now, it's not easy to see, when you're just reading along casually, but the word "rules" in those two examples doesn't necessarily mean the same thing. In the first, the rule he's breaking is "Use the word scarf in the way everybody else does." You might then say, "Yes, and there are specific rules for how you apply the word 'scarf,' and those are what everybody else follows and he doesn't." But those are still two different types of rules. And our second person most likely does know our first rule and is trying to obey it, is trying to use the words "scarf" and "hat" in the way everybody else does, he simply doesn't know how.
The question we run into with Kuhn,* though, is just what is it that the second person doesn't know when he doesn't know "the rules"? And the person who does know "the rules" in this second sense, what is it that he knows? But Kuhn thinks we're wrong to use the word "rules" in our question - "rules" is the wrong word for what we employ when we recognize a scarf we'd never seen before as being a scarf or, in general, when we see something as being similar to something else. He says that paradigms are prior to, more binding, and more complete than any set of rules that can be unequivocally abstracted from them. So rules are ex post facto, less in force (if a "rule" conflicts with a paradigm, the paradigm rules, as it were), and less complete (whatever he means by "complete") than paradigms are.
Now, it's not easy to see, when you're just reading along casually, but the word "rules" in those two examples doesn't necessarily mean the same thing. In the first, the rule he's breaking is "Use the word scarf in the way everybody else does." You might then say, "Yes, and there are specific rules for how you apply the word 'scarf,' and those are what everybody else follows and he doesn't." But those are still two different types of rules. And our second person most likely does know our first rule and is trying to obey it, is trying to use the words "scarf" and "hat" in the way everybody else does, he simply doesn't know how.
The question we run into with Kuhn,* though, is just what is it that the second person doesn't know when he doesn't know "the rules"? And the person who does know "the rules" in this second sense, what is it that he knows? But Kuhn thinks we're wrong to use the word "rules" in our question - "rules" is the wrong word for what we employ when we recognize a scarf we'd never seen before as being a scarf or, in general, when we see something as being similar to something else. He says that paradigms are prior to, more binding, and more complete than any set of rules that can be unequivocally abstracted from them. So rules are ex post facto, less in force (if a "rule" conflicts with a paradigm, the paradigm rules, as it were), and less complete (whatever he means by "complete") than paradigms are.