Abstract
My goal here is to assess whether Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophical conception of a descriptive philosophy is in accordance with his philosophical practice. I argue that Wittgenstein doesn’t really limit himself to description when he criticizes Moore’s use of the verb “to know”. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein argues that Moore’s claims of knowledge (such as “I know I have two hands”) are at odds with the everyday use of the verb “to know”, because, among other things, they don’t allow the possibility of justification. That is, Wittgenstein considers that proper, everyday claims of knowledge require the possibility of justification. What I try to show is that this idea cannot be derived from the mere observation and description of knowledge claims in ordinary language. I conclude that Wittgenstein’s treatment of the verb “to know” constitutes an inconsistency between his metaphilosophical posture and his philosophical practice.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
PI, § 38. Another interesting, little known metaphor used by Wittgenstein about the philosophers’ use of language: “The language used by philosophers is already deformed, as though by shoes that are too tight.” (Wittgenstein 1998, p. 47).
Many other examples could be given. Here I mention one more: “I would rather say that the later Wittgenstein’s position is really no philosophical position at all. Almost everything he is doing is in the service of reaching complete clarity on various specific points, and not in the service of developing a new philosophical position” ((Stenlund 2002, p. 04)).
Even when they work separately, Baker and Hacker never consider that there may be in the philosophy of Wittgenstein anything contrary to his metaphilosophical observations. The chapter “Wittgenstein’s later Conception of Philosophy”, from Insight and Illusion by Hacker (1972) is a perfect example of his view that Wittgenstein never develops theories. Baker, in the essays collected on Wittgenstein’s Method, makes the same point, and argues that Wittgenstein adopts a purely therapeutic attitude toward philosophical problems. According to him: “Wittgenstein’s therapy is, as it were, a kind of homoeopathy. Conscious analogies and comparisons are useful tools for curing diseases of the intellect, whereas unconscious ones generate insoluble problems by exercising an imperceptible tyranny over our thinking” ((Baker 2004, p. 34)).
“I think it’s fair to say that a real integration of Wittgenstein’s official conception of philosophy with his own practice is something which has so far eluded even the best commentary. But we are at least in position to identify two quite striking instances, each a fundamental problem, where Wittgenstein’s procedures may be made out to accord pretty well with his official conception of the way philosophical problems arise and how they may be treated.” (Wright, p. 439)
For my part, I believe that the metaphilosophical observations, i.e., the observations on the nature and role of philosophy, that Wittgenstein presents in the Philosophical Investigations, are still valid in On Certainty. This can be considered controversial, and would perhaps be denied by the advocates of the “third Wittgenstein”. I believe, though, that the idea of a third Wittgenstein is very problematic, not only because, in general, it’s not clear what criteria should be observed in order to separate different phases of the thought of an author, but also because the differences between the Investigations and the subsequent writings are not as salient, for example, as the differences between the Tractatus and the Investigations. In On Certainty, there is not an explicit rejection of what was said in the Investigations, as we find in the Investigations concerning the Tractatus. Nothing indicates that Wittgenstein has changed his way of conceiving philosophical problems. This is why I don’t see any reason to think that the metaphilosophical remarks from the Investigations shouldn’t apply to On Certainty.
I will only say that the idea of a purely descriptive philosophy, like the one that Wittgenstein advocates, seems to me a contradiction in terms. Any metaphilosophical position seems to involve or assume a philosophical position, no matter what opinion one is trying to maintain: that one should suspend judgment about metaphysical issues, that philosophical problems and statements are meaningless, or, the issue being discussed here, that philosophy should be merely descriptive. It seems necessary to accept that any attempt to assess philosophy, if not itself philosophical, is at least a theoretical stance. So when Wittgenstein holds that philosophy should describe only the ordinary uses of words or expressions, he is taking a theoretical stance and going beyond description, for he assumes that only the ordinary use is to be taken as the proper use. Genuinely non-theoretical attitudes toward philosophy do not involve metaphilosophical arguments. The proposal for a critique of philosophy from an external point of view, it seems to me, is a project doomed to failure.
This happens, in part, because On Certainty was not a text prepared for publication, but mainly, I believe, because Wittgenstein considers that both the skeptic and Moore commit the same basic mistake, which is to think that knowledge can be an attribute of objective certainties.
According to Moore, a rigorous proof must satisfy three conditions: (1) the premise(s) should be different from the conclusion; (2) the conclusion should follow from the premise(s); (3) the premise(s) must be known. The first two are incontrovertibly met in his proof. Here I only call attention to the third, because it is the one that interests Wittgenstein.
“I can know things, which I cannot prove; and among things which I certainly did know, even if (as I think) I could not prove them, were the premises of my two proofs.” (Moore, “Proof”, p. 170)
Wittgenstein sometimes calls them “objective certainties”, as opposed to “subjective certainties”. Unlike subjective certainties, objective certainties are convictions shared by the majority of people, and, because they function as the basis for our thinking, they are normally not reflected upon and are unjustifiable. But I don’t believe this distinction to be relevant for the purposes of this paper. My focus here is going to be only on the alleged failure of Moore’s propositions to qualify as knowledge.
Another requirement is that a mistake should always be possible whenever one claims to know something. This is why the expression “I thought I knew” makes sense, since claiming to know something does not guarantee the thing to be an undisputable fact (OC, § 12). Wittgenstein thinks that Moore’s claims of knowledge also fail to fulfill this requirement. Roughly, we cannot be mistaken about them because they are the background that has to be accepted in order for mistakes to be possible. But because it would be necessary to recall some skeptical arguments, which would make this paper much longer, I’m not going to deal with this alleged condition for knowledge and the supposed failure of Moore’s propositions to meet it.
In fact, Wittgenstein seems to be committed not only to the idea that Moore misuses the expression “I know”, but also to a stronger claim: that Moore’s claims of knowledge are meaningless. In this article I’m only focusing on Wittgenstein’s remarks that Moore’s claims of knowledge cannot be justified, but Wittgenstein raises several other issues against this type of knowledge claim, such as that it cannot be proven wrong (we cannot be mistaken about them) (cf. OC § 12, § 32, § 178), and that they don’t seem to be part of any appropriate ordinary context, for they involve a “philosophical intention”(cf. OC, § 350, § 352, §§ 406–7, § 433). I believe that all those problems, taken as a whole, led him to consider them meaningless. The lack of sense of certain claims of knowledge is suggested in a few passages (OC, § 10, § 432, § 504). Since, however, I’m not approaching all the alleged problems with Moore’s claims of knowledge in this paper, I prefer to refer to them as being, in the eyes of Wittgenstein, misuses of the verb “to know”.
This idea is, for instance, formulated in the Blue Book: “Take another example: Socrates’ question “What is knowledge?” (...) We should reply: “There is no one exact usage of the word ‘knowledge’; but we can make up several such usages, which will more or less agree with the ways the word is actually used”” ((Wittgenstein 1965, p. 26)).
That does not mean that Wittgenstein would agree with the conclusion of a skeptical argument, according to which we lack knowledge about the external world. For Wittgenstein, the skeptical conclusion is meaningless (as is also Moore’s reaction to it) because it makes a category error: it assumes that it is possible to attribute or deny knowledge to a basic certainty.
Other examples could be given. A common case of knowledge claims that in most, if not all, instances are not justifiable seems to be those associated to religious beliefs (e.g., “I know God is looking out for you”, “I know death is not the end”, etc.). Another would be claims about what seem to be unknowable events in the future (“I know my team is going to win”, “I know I’ll be rich one day”).
Also, Wittgenstein seems to suggest that Moore’s error was to go beyond the ordinary use of “know”. I have tried to argued that this is not the case. But even if Moore were not following any ordinary use, it would still be unclear why ordinary use is to be the standard for correctness. Wittgenstein can’t just appeal to ordinary usage and end it there, not while still claiming that his philosophy doesn’t rest on any presuppositions. If Moore’s use is not to enter the description of correct usage, because it is not an ordinary use, we can still ask what grounded the decision that only ordinary usage should be taken as the standard for correctness. Answering this question will require going beyond description to an explanation of why what ordinary language deems correct is correct.
References
Baker, G. (2004). Wittgenstein’s method. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Baker, G., & Hacker, P. (2005). Wittgenstein: Understanding and meaning. Part 1: Essays. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Cook, J. W. (2006). Did Wittgenstein practise what he preached? Philosophy, 3, 445–462.
Hacker, P. (1972). Insight and illusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horwich, P. (2012). Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, G. E. (2006). Selected writings. New York: Routledge.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (Ed.). (2004a). The third Wittgenstein: The post-investigations works. Burlington: Ashgate.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2004b). Understanding Wittgenstein’s on certainty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stenlund, S. (2002). Wittgenstein and his commentators. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical assessments of leading philosophers, vol. II: The later Wittgenstein: From philosophical investigations to on certainty. London and New York: Routledge.
Stroll, A. (1994). Moore and Wittgenstein on certainty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1965). The blue and brown books. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Wittgenstein, L. (1972). On certainty (D. Paul & G.E.M. Anscombe, Trans.). New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Wittgenstein, L. (1998). Culture and value (P. Winch, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Wittgenstein, L. (2005). Philosophical investigation: The German text, with a revised English translation (G.E.M. Anscombe Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Wright, C. (2001). Rails to infinity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Evan Keeling and an anonymous referee for many valuable comments and suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Krempel, R. Wittgenstein on knowledge: a critique. Synthese 192, 723–734 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0593-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0593-0