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WITTGENSTEINâS PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT AND METHOD
1.1. THE THEMES OF ON CERTAINTY
On Certainty focuses on a rather heterogeneous class of apparently empirical yet indubitable propositions, such as âThe Earth is very oldâ, âMy name is Andy Hamiltonâ, âThe person opposite me is N.N., whom I have known for yearsâ, âThe colour of human blood is called âredâ (in English)â, âI have handsâ, and âNo human has yet left the solar systemâ. Other examples are found at OC 234:
I believe that I have forebears, and that every human being has them. I believe that there are various cities, and, quite generally, in the main facts of geography and history. I believe that the earth is a body on whose surface we move and that it no more suddenly disappears or the like than any other solid body: this table, this house, this tree, etc.
Wittgenstein found the philosophical questions arising from these propositions so compelling that he devoted the last months of his life to thinking about and writing on them. He was fascinated by the way in which the propositions seem to arise from experience, but are nonetheless immune to doubt.
I call these propositions Moorean propositions, in reference to their discovery by G.E. Moore, which Wittgenstein drew on. They are not the kind of propositions that philosophers normally address, and they do not amount to philosophical claims; the propositions are not normally stated, and sound odd when they are.1 They appear empirical, but most philosophers would agree that they are no longer available for empirical investigation. One is tempted to say that they have accrued such an overwhelming amount of evidence that any attempt to justify them further seems absurd. The philosophical difficulty concerns how their certainty should be acknowledged or explained.
Moore himself regarded them as empirical, but Wittgenstein is not satisfied that they are either in the metaphysical sense of âfactualâ or âcontingentâ, or the epistemic sense of âliable to be supported by evidenceâ. While querying their empirical status, Wittgenstein is not tempted to treat them as belonging to any traditionally non-empirical category of certain truths â what OC 470 refers to as âthe indubitable truthsâ. According to a central project of Western epistemology since Descartes, such indubitable truths form the bedrock of certain knowledge. On Certainty rejects that project. In particular, it denies that âThe Earth is very oldâ or âI am called Andy Hamiltonâ are foundations in any post-Cartesian sense.
According to a familiar historical narrative, the search for foundations of human knowledge has involved one of two broad approaches. For rationalists, including Descartes himself, foundational âindubitable truthsâ are known by pure reason, or are otherwise self-evident â they are knowable a priori, independently of confirmation by experience. Examples of such truths include arithmetical truths such as â2 + 2 = 4â, and logical truths such as âIf Socrates is a man and all men are mortal, then Socrates is mortalâ; and avowals such as âI have a headacheâ or âI believe that the Conservatives will win the electionâ, and self-verifying propositions such as âI am thinkingâ. In contrast, empiricists who seek foundations tend to privilege observation-sentences or reports of immediate experience, such as âThe meter reading seems to be 2.5â or âThatâs a red patchâ. It is these certainties of reason or experience that Wittgenstein calls the âindubitable truthsâ (OC 470).
On Certainty denies that there are foundations of knowledge, whether these are rationalist, empiricist or Moorean propositions. For Wittgenstein, the latter form a heterogeneous class, distinct both from those non-empirical propositions considered certain by Descartes and his successors, and from the experiential certainties stressed by empiricists. Consider Wittgensteinâs examples âI am called L.W.â, and âThis is N.N.â:
Why is there no doubt that I am called L.W.? It does not seem at all like something that one could establish at once beyond doubt. One would not think that it is one of the indubitable truths.
(OC 470)
⊠what could make me doubt whether this person here is [my old friend] N.N., whom I have known for years? Here a doubt would seem to drag everything with it and plunge it into chaos ⊠the foundation of all judging would be taken from me.
(OC 613â14)2
There are many things that we seem justified in regarding as certain, but for which we find it difficult to adduce evidence. An example is that water boils at 100°C (at 1 atmosphere of pressure), a âvery elementary [proposition] in our text-booksâ:
What kind of grounds have I for trusting text-books of experimental physics? I have no grounds for not trusting them. And I trust them. I know how such books are produced â or rather, I believe I know. I have some evidence, but it does not go very far and is of a very scattered nature. I have heard, seen and read various things.
(OC 600)
Such propositions are so fundamental to our understanding of the world that it seems impossible for us to deny them. Many of them once functioned as empirical truths, but now lie âapart from the route travelled by enquiryâ (OC 88). On Certainty contrasts âtranscendent certaintyâ with mundane or âlifeâ certainty (OC 7) â âMy life shows that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there âŠâ. For Wittgenstein, being âexempt from doubtâ, in the case of Moorean propositions, is not a psychological phenomenon, like someone being unable to doubt their sonâs innocence.3 It is a matter of logic, in Wittgensteinâs broad sense, not one of psychology.
Moorean propositions seem to be empirical, Wittgenstein holds, yet turn out not to be. That is â to reiterate â they are not empirical either in the metaphysical sense of factual or contingent, or in the epistemic sense of liable to be supported by evidence. Unlike ordinary empirical propositions â a brief selection would be âThe River Wear is in floodâ, âIt was sunny yesterday in Durhamâ, âThe boss is off work because of illnessâ, âThereâs no cheese left in the fridgeâ â they are not normally open to doubt. Rather, Moorean propositions function more like a kind of framework within which genuinely empirical propositions operate. Wittgenstein compares Moorean propositions to a river-bed, which must remain in place for our linguistic and epistemic practices to flow smoothly; he also likens them to the hinges of a door, which must remain fixed for language to function. For this reason Wittgenstein suggests that they make up what he calls a world-picture, a body of often unspoken and unanalysed beliefs that forms the basis of an individualâs or societyâs belief-system; they are, as Wittgenstein puts it, âthe inherited background against which I distinguish between true and falseâ (OC 94). As we see, one could perhaps talk of our common-sense world-picture, or a Christian or scientific world-picture.
These Moorean propositions are certainties, perhaps, but not in any ordinary sense; they are not âthe indubitable truthsâ, and indeed â in a novel move â Wittgenstein regards them as neither known nor doubted. Echoing his view of mathematics and other areas of discourse, Wittgenstein treats them as normative or rule-like, and therefore empirical only in appearance:
âI cannot doubt this proposition without giving up all judgement.â But what sort of proposition is that? ⊠It is certainly no empirical proposition. It does not belong to psychology. It has rather the character of a rule.
(OC 494)
The rules of chess are one model. âThe king moves one squareâ is a rule of chess, in that a game in which the king does not move one square is not chess. If someone says âI doubt that the king moves only one squareâ, their utterance is a perplexing; it is not clear what game, if any, they think they are playing.4 Similarly, Wittgenstein suggests, a context in which it is not accepted that I know that I have hands is not one in which questions about evidence, doubt, knowledge, belief, certainty, etc. can be asked or settled; it is not our normal âlanguage-gameâ. It is not that Moorean propositions ground the practice, as foundational propositions are normally regarded as doing. They are not ârules of grammarâ, more like âpresuppositions of a language-game, practice or disciplineâ. Wittgensteinâs suggestion is just that, unless they are accepted, the âgameâ of empirical enquiry cannot be, or is not being, played.5 Nothing like this view of Moorean propositions is found in Moore, who treats them as well-established empirical claims.
Wittgenstein controversially maintains, in his non-epistemic model of Moorean propositions, that they lie beyond the possibility of both knowledge and doubt. Clearly, this is an unusual kind of âcertaintyâ. Some writers treat them as bedrock or basic certainties, required for judgment to be possible. But there is a tension between regarding something as both a rule and a âcertaintyâ, even a ânon-epistemicâ one, i.e. one that can neither be known nor doubted. In learning-contexts, even ânon-epistemic certaintyâ seems the wrong term. âCertain propositionâ masks the difference we want to stress â that âThis is a handâ usually works as a rule, not as a factual assertion.6 So instead of âMoorean certaintiesâ, I call them âMoorean propositionsâ.7
A succinct statement of On Certaintyâs concerns is found at OC 308. There, Wittgenstein claims that the very possibility of making judgments rests on accepting Moorean propositions:
⊠we are interested in the fact that about certain empirical propositions no doubt can exist if making judgments is to be possible at all. Or again: I am inclined to believe that not everything that has the form of an empirical proposition is one.
What âwe are interested inâ is a useful summary of On Certaintyâs concerns: Mooreâs discovery of a class of what for him are indubitable propositions, that according to him are empirical, but which Wittgenstein argues are not; the resulting contrast between knowledge, and a kind of certainty that should not be described as knowledge; and the relation of that contrast to the debate over scepticism. The result may be one of On Certaintyâs key insights: that propositions that appear to function empirically are in fact framework propositions or rules.
This insight rests on Wittgensteinâs conception of meaning, as we see later â and indeed, his conclusion may be more radical. At various points in On Certainty he questions the very concept of an empirical proposition, which had been central to his philosophy from the beginning. He now believes that it is more problematic than he had thought. At OC 402 he criticises his earlier remark at OC 308 that Moorean propositions have âthe form of empirical propositionsâ; this description âis itself thoroughly badâ, he writes. He may be wondering whether âempirical propositionsâ is a correct or valid category.
On Certainty perhaps suggests that the divide between a priori and empirical is not an absolute one; that our understanding of conceptual possibilities is conditioned by experience. His student Rush Rhees reported that in 1944, Wittgenstein talked with him for several weeks about the relations of grammatical and empirical propositions, suggesting that the distinction between them was not sharp. Rhees argues that this suggestion, found at OC 309 and OC 319, was new to On Certainty.8
Discussion of these issues in On Certainty goes to the heart of questions of truth, meaning and the nature of propositions that preoccupied Wittgenstein throughout his career. Here, he develops the ideas of the Philosophical Investigations, notably the latterâs claim that propositions have no essential features, drawing out the implications that Wittgenstein had not previously realised they had.9
The preceding themes are considered in Chs. 5â7 of the Guidebook, following an introduction to Wittgensteinâs thought in Chs. 1â4. At least as much attention is devoted subsequently, in Chs. 8â11, to a further major theme, the bearing of the Moorean propositions on the question of scepticism. Moore presents his propositions in the context of debate over scepticism, and they figure in his defence of what he called a âcommonsense view of the worldâ, against challenges from sceptical and idealist philosophers. As a âcommonsenseâ philosopher, Moore responded to scepticism with a âdogmaticâ defence of everyday beliefs. In his âProof of an External Worldâ, he tried to show that he knows that âI have a handâ, simply by holding up his hand and saying âI know I have a handâ.
Like Moore, Wittgenstein rejected metaphysics, and scepticism; but he regarded Mooreâs attempt to refute them as misconceived. âThis is a handâ or âI have a handâ, Wittgenstein argues, are not normally â including in the circumstances of Mooreâs Proof â possible objects of kn...