The Limits of Stipulation: Reconsidering the Standard Meter

This paper criticizes Ruffino’s illocutionary defense of Kripke’s famous example of the contingent a priori: the standard meter. Ruffino uses Searle and Vanderveken’s speech act theory to argue that measurement stipulations generate a priori knowledge of contingent facts. Against this, I argue that the institutional conditions underlying these stipulations cannot be separated from the grounds of justification. Unlike mathematical or logical knowledge, knowledge that these institutional conditions are satisfied is essential to knowledge of measurement stipulations, preventing genuine a priori status.