Abstract
This paper is a response to Prof. B. Sambasiva Prasad’s paper, entitled ‘Wittgenstein’s Criticism of Moore’s Propositions of Certainty: Some Observation’ published in this journal, Volume XX, Number-3, July–September 2003. The objective of Prasad’s paper, as he puts it, is to examine Wittgenstein’s criticism of the propositions of certainty which Moore has made in his essays ‘A Defence of Common Sense’ and ‘Proof of an External World’ with the twin aims of refuting idealism and skepticism and upholding common sense realism. But, a close reading of Prasad’s paper reveals that its main agenda is to defend Moore by justifying his propositions and the realist project as a whole against Wittgenstein’s attack of them in On Certainty. The objective of my paper is to argue that Prasad’s defence of Moore is untenable, since he has tried to side with him without fully comprehending the logic behind Wittgenstein’s criticism of him. Prasad has sought to justify Moore’s propositions and his realism without taking into account Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and his conception of proposition, meaning, knowledge, certainty and doubt. My paper is also an attempt at asserting that Wittgenstein’s analysis of the problem of scepticism and the existence of the world and the ‘resolution’ thereof is more profound than those offered by Moore. It seeks to affirm Wittgenstein’s radical remark that the idealists are demented in doubting the existence of the world and the realists are doubly demented in trying to refute the idealists and prove the existence of the world of physical objects. The paper embodies my justification of Wittgenstein’s criticism of Moore on the four important issues with reference to which Prasad has tried to uphold Moore. It constitutes my objections to the observations and arguments which Prasad has made by way of defending Moore and denouncing Wittgenstein on these issues. The issues are (1) the nature of Moore’s propositions; (2) Moore’s use/misuse of the expression ‘I know’; (3) Moore’s and Wittgenstein’s approach to idealism/scepticism; and (4) their world-views.
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Notes
The sentence ‘I am cutting red into bits’ can be turned into a meaningful one by adding the term ‘something’ to it. The sentence, ‘I am cutting something red into bits is meaningful, since I mean something definite by it. Wittgenstein therefore says that meaning prevents a sentence from being nonsensical. He also says that it is not correct to draw a permanent line of demarcation between significant and insignificant sentences. One can be changed into the other by a slight modification.
Wittgenstein says that uniform appearance of words when heard or seen confuses us and does not allow us to understand clearly their diversified applications. This is so, especially, when we are doing philosophy. Philosophical investigation sheds light on the problems by clearing away the misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different areas of language. The analysis removes some of the misunderstandings by substituting one form of expression for another.
It is following the philosophers of mathematics like Frege and Russell that Wittgenstein tried hard to eliminate psychologism from philosophy. In this he resembles the phenomenologists and existentialists like Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre who too maintained anti-psychological stance consistently and rigorously. Wittgenstein’s work, Philosophy of Psychology gives an impression that he gave up his anti-psychologism. But the fact is that the book embodies the analysis of the psychological concepts from a grammatical point of view. His metaphysical vision of reality made him reject even the epistemological entity, namely, the knowing subject, which is also the subject of psychology. Wittgenstein’s perennial concern was the theory of meaning from which every trace of the traditional epistemological and scientific elements have been removed.
Wittgenstein admits that in the Tractatus, he committed an error by saying that there is an agreement of form between thought and reality. Later on, he said that it is not a kind of agreement but a pictorial character that is there between thought and reality. ‘Instead of agreement here one might say with a clear conscience pictorial character’, Wittgenstein says.
Prof R.C. Pradhan in his essay, Wittgenstein on Forms of Life: Towards a Transcendental Perspective has clearly dealt with Wittgenstein’s way of settling the issues of skepticism, solipsism and subjectivism through his notion of transcendental logic. Wittgenstein solves skepticism by making it clear that it is language itself which makes the statement of skepticism possible; he resolves solipsism by admitting the plurality of the selves; and, he overcomes the problem of subjectivity by emphasizing the inter-subjective and public nature of language.
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Vedaparayana, G. Discussion and Comments: A Response to Prof. Prasad’s ‘Wittgenstein’s Criticism of Moore’s Propositions of Certainty…’. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 32, 143–155 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-015-0011-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-015-0011-0