Abstract
Having presented some central concepts of the later Wittgenstein, I shall now consider in greater detail his reflections on knowledge, doubt and certainty. This chapter will focus on the notes published as On Certainty1, which I shall seek to interpret within the context of the Philosophical Investigations and the notes published as Remarks on Colour, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (hereafter ‘ Last Writings’), Cause and Effect, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, and Zettel. I shall follow Gennip, Kim van who, in her detailed and well-researched study into the historical and philosophical background of On Certainty, argues against the common view that it is a ‘stand-alone work’ and places it ‘more firmly in the continuous development of Wittgenstein’s thinking’.2 My reflections on Wittgenstein’s views on knowledge, doubt and certainty, which of course make no claim to be a comprehensive interpretation of On Certainty, provide the basis for my reflections on moral knowledge, doubt and certainty.3 In Chapter 5, I shall present an analogy between certainty regarding the empirical world and moral certainty.
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Notes
On Certainty is comprised of notes written by Wittgenstein during the last eighteen months of his life. It is taken from four different notebooks and ‘a bundle of loose sheets’. Gennip, Kim van, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in the Making: Studies into Its Historical and Philosophical Background (PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2008), p. 52. He did not have time to revise these notes, in which he attempts to come to grips with something by turning around the same questions and examples time and again. At some points, Wittgenstein expresses his dissatisfaction with the way in which he formulated his thoughts. According to Gennip, Kim van, he was not satisfied with the first 299 paragraphs. Ibid., p. 19. She also points out that Wittgenstein did not clearly separate the sections that were later published as On Certainty from those that were published as Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology Vol. II and Remarks on Colour. Ibid., p. 53.
P. M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
Thomas Morawetz, Wittgenstein & Knowledge: The Importance of On Certainty (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980).
Michael Williams, ‘Wittgenstein, Truth and Certainty,’ in Wittgenstein’s Lasting Significance, ed. Max Kölbel and Bernhard Weiss (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Avrum Stroll, Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
G.E. Moore, ‘A Defence of Common Sense,’ ‘Proof of an External World,’ and ‘Certainty,’ in Philosophical Papers, ed. G.E. Moore (London and New York: Allen and Unwin, 1959).
Andreas Krebs, Worauf man sich verlässt (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), p. 44. Strictly speaking, these features apply to that which someone like Moore tries to express with those sentences.
Some interpreters have identified Moorean propositions with grammatical propositions, including for example Michael Kober, Gewißheit als Norm. Wittgenstein’s erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen in Über Gewißheit (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1993). Others have rejected such an identification. See
Timo-Peter Ertz, Regel und Witz. Wittgensteinsche Perspektiven auf Mathematik, Sprache und Moral (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2008); Krebs, Worauf man sich verlässt. Moyal-Sharrock conceives of our non-propositional certainty as grammatical. Her conception of grammar is much broader than that of for instance Krebs. According to the broad understanding of grammar that she ascribes to the ‘third’ Wittgenstein, grammatical propositions are ‘bounds of sense’. Moyal-Sharrock, Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, pp. 85 ff. The formulation ‘the third Wittgenstein’ refers to the view that we should add a third Wittgenstein to the standard distinction between the early and the later Wittgenstein. The works of that third Wittgenstein are those written after the Philosophical Investigations. This view is associated with the claim that On Certainty has long been underestimated and should be conceived of as Wittgenstein’s third great work. Ibid., p. 164. This position might seem to be in conflict with Gennip, Kim van’s view of On Certainty as containing reflections on topics that had occupied Wittgenstein for a long time already, and with her emphasis on the fact that the final form of this work is the result of some rather arbitrary editorial decisions (see note 1). However, the points emphasised by Gennip, Kim van are compatible with Moyal-Sharrock’s insistence that the post- Investigation works go beyond Wittgenstein’s previous writings and make an important contribution to philosophy. See Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigation Works, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004) and ‘Beyond Hacker’s Wittgenstein: Discussion of HACKER, Peter (2012) ‘Wittgenstein on Grammar, Theses and Dogmatism’ Philosophical Investigations 35: 1, January 2012, 1–17,’ Philosophical Investigations 36, no. 4 (2013).
See Michael Kober, ‘On Epistemic and Moral Certainty: A Wittgensteinian Approach,’ International Journal of Philosophical Studies 5, no. 3 (1997): p. 369.
See Meredith Williams, Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 200: ‘[A] Wittgensteinian conception of practice is one in which an object becomes a standard or norm in virtue of the ways in which that object is used.’
The term ‘use’ could be misleading in this context, since it is characteristic of certainties that they are normally not formulated propositionally. The view that Wittgenstein’s remarks on mathematical propositions can illuminate his notes on propositions that are beyond doubt is supported by Gennip, Kim van’s study, which demonstrates that Wittgenstein’s account of knowledge and certainty is ultimately rooted in his criticism of intuitionism in mathematics. Gennip, Kim van, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in the Making: Studies into Its Historical and Philosophical Background, PhD dissertation, p. 108. Marie McGinn’s discussion of the peculiarity of Moorean propositions also departs from Wittgenstein’s reflections on the role of mathematical propositions. Marie McGinn, Sense and Certainty. A Dissolution of Scepticism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 121 ff. Wittgenstein was critical of L. E. J. Brouwer’s account of rule-following in mathematics, according to which the application of a mathematical rule requires ‘a fresh intuition at every step’. Gennip, Kim van, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in the Making: Studies into Its Historical and Philosophical Background, PhD dissertation, p. 111. I will not go into the details of Wittgenstein’s critique.
Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, ‘Coming to Language: Wittgenstein’s Social “Theory” of Language Acquisition,’ in Language and World: Essays on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, ed. V. Munz, K. Puhl, and J. Wang (Frankfurt am Main: Ontos Verlag, 2010), p. 306.
In the words of Stanley Cavell: ‘What is left out of an expression when it is used ‘outside its ordinary language-game’ is not necessarily what the words mean […], but what we mean in using them when and where we do. The point of saying them is lost.’ Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 207.
Peter Winch, ‘Judgment: Propositions and Practices,’ Philosophical Investigations 21 (1998): p. 198.
Bertrand Russell, ‘The Limits of Empiricism,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 36 (1937): p. 132.
Russell B. Goodman, ‘Wittgenstein and Ethics,’ Metaphilosophy 13, no. 2 (1982): p. 145.
Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, ‘Words as Deeds: Wittgenstein’s “Spontaneous Utterances” and the Dissolution of the Explanatory Gap,’ Philosophical Psychology 13, no. 3 (2000): pp. 364 and 369.
See G.P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity, 2nd, extensively rev. ed. (Chichester, U.K. and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), p. 155: ‘It is acting according to a rule, a practice of normative behaviour, regularities perceived as uniformities that lie at the bottom of our language-games.’
Krebs, Worauf man sich verlässt : p. 82, my translation. The original reads: ‘Ohne eine solche grundsätzliche Übereinstimmung könnte es ein Befolgen unserer sprachlichen Regeln tatsächlich nicht geben […].’ That without an agreement in judgements ‘there would be no understanding of any rules at all’ is also pointed out by Barry Stroud. Barry Stroud, ‘Wittgenstein and Logical Necessity,’ The Philosophical Review 74, no. 4 (1965): p. 515.
Nigel Pleasants, ‘Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty,’ Philosophia 37 (2009): p. 670, my italics.
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Hermann, J. (2015). Certainty. In: On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137447180_3
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