Abstract
This chapter begins to tackle On Certainty by examining some significant consonances between Wittgenstein and Peirce on the issues of doubt and certainty. A clear similarity between the two thinkers concerns their opposition to the Cartesian idea of doubt as the beginning of philosophy. Both underline that doubt only arises within a context of undoubted certainties and that in order to be a real doubt it has to be concrete and connected with actual practices. Anti-scepticism and fallibilism are also dealt with. There follow the illustration of Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘hinges’ and a critical evaluation of two comparisons proposed in the literature with the Peircean notions of ‘indubitables’ and ‘regulative assumptions’ of inquiry. The analysis shows that both these associations have some limits.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Other affinities have been identified with respect to RFM (Hutto 2004, p. 29), PI (Perissinotto 2011, p. 169; Rhees 2003, p. 5) and RPP (Perissinotto 2011, pp. 163–164). See also in this light the fragment from MS 107 examined in Chap. 1, and the reflection on ‘I know’ in Rhees (1984, p. 132) and in section V of PPF.
- 4.
See also CE, p. 399.
- 5.
See also OC, §354.
- 6.
Wittgenstein seems very close to this point of view in OC, §177.
- 7.
Also in CP 5.265, from ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’, 1868.
- 8.
From ‘The Fixation of Belief’, 1878, also in CP 5.376.
- 9.
From What Pragmatism Means’, 1905.
- 10.
From‘Answers to Questions Concerning my Belief in God’, ca. 1906.
- 11.
In both cases, the opposition also concerns other aspects; see Bambrough (1981).
- 12.
- 13.
See OC, §255.
- 14.
‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’, 1868, also in CP 5.265.
- 15.
See also OC, §§160, 288, 450.
- 16.
From ‘Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism’, ca. 1905.
- 17.
- 18.
From ‘Six Characters of Common-Sensism’, ca. 1905. See also CP 5.524. Perhaps there is a bit of a stretch in the comparison here, in that in the case of surprise, deciding to surprise oneself makes surprise itself impossible, while in the case of doubt, it is not decision that makes doubt impossible; more simply, deciding to (genuinely) doubt is impossible.
- 19.
But also mathematics: see the complete note in 5.443.
- 20.
From MS 136, p. 140b, and also in Z, §§409–410. See Perissinotto (2011) for an analysis connected to OC.
- 21.
- 22.
‘How to Make our Ideas Clear’, 1878, also in CP 5.394.
- 23.
Ca. 1896, also in SW, p. 54.
- 24.
From ‘Six Characters of Common-Sensism’, ca. 1905. See also CP 5.514.
- 25.
Hamilton (2014, p. 97) is an exception; nevertheless, he does not linger on this point.
- 26.
See Sections ‘Wittgenstein’s “hinges”’ and ‘“Indubitables” and Regulative Assumptions in Peirce’ (in this chapter) for a more cogent comparison on the theme of hinges.
- 27.
But see also CP 5.451.
- 28.
Both republished in Moore (1959). According to M. Williams (2003), Wittgenstein generally refers to ‘Proof of an External World’ in the first 65 sections of OC, and to ‘A Defence of Common Sense’ in the rest of the notes. To be thorough, Moore’s ‘Certainty’, published in the same 1959 volume but already known before (it was a conference Moore held in 1941), should be added to these texts, as well as another paper Moore read in 1939 at the Moral Science Club, now known with the title ‘Being Certain that One is in Pain’ (Moore 1993). Finally, some works by Malcolm might have had a role (see Malcolm 1942 and 1949), and also John Henry Newman’s 1870 An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Newman 1979; see Kienzler 2006; Pritchard 2015). On Moore and Wittgenstein, see Stroll (1994) and Coliva (2010a). On Moore and Wittgenstein’s discussion in 1939 see Citron (2015b).
- 29.
Wright (2004a) and (2004b). Interestingly, while working on perceptual justification, Coliva (2015) labels Pryor and Wright’s positions, respectively, as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’: the former because it claims that an appropriate course of experience suffices to justify a belief about material objects, the latter because it claims that justification requires, besides the perceptual experience, a warranted assumption about the existence of the external world. Coliva’s own position (‘moderatism’) claims that the assumption is needed, but it does not require in turn to be warranted (it is, in fact, unwarrantable).
- 30.
- 31.
See Section ‘Secondary Literature: Relativism and Other Issues’ in Chap. 5.
- 32.
From ‘Consequences of Critical Common-Sensism’, ca. 1905. See also W 3, p. 24 (or CP 5.376).
- 33.
From‘Pragmaticism and Critical Common-Sensism’, 1905.
- 34.
See for instance McGinn (1989).
- 35.
Cavell (1979, pp. 7, 47–8, 241, 496).
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
From‘Pragmatism in Retrospect: a Last Formulation’, ca. 1906, also in EP 2, pp. 401–402 and SW, p. 272. James uses the term ‘hinge’ as well, in connection with themes relevant to Wittgenstein: in discussing whether attention involves a ‘principle of spiritual activity’ or not, he affirms that this question is like a hinge on which our picture of the world swings between different perspectives (PP, p. 424).
- 39.
I shall come back to this in the last chapter.
- 40.
The most complete is probably in Moyal-Sharrock (2007, pp. 100 ff.).
- 41.
- 42.
This paper was republished with revisions in von Wright (1982).
- 43.
See also Rhees (2003, p. 89).
- 44.
- 45.
Cf. Wittgenstein’s MS 129, p. 181.
- 46.
As a forerunner of the later view, Winch cites PI, §§545–546, two remarks which, interestingly, sound reminiscent of William James’ perspective on the bond between meaning and feeling. In the same manuscripts containing originally these remarks, MS 129 and MS 165, Wittgenstein makes explicit reference to James on contiguous themes and on a similar example. I will work on these references in Chapter 6.
- 47.
See also Pritchard (2016, pp. 77 ff.), whose criticism is not focused on Wittgenstein but on the validity of Wright’s position as an anti-sceptical strategy.
- 48.
Pritchard (2016) shows similarities with this position, albeit the two authors seem to differ on the issue of the rationality of hinges.
- 49.
An even more radical view is that of Wolgast (1987), according to whom what is precluded is not only the possibility of uttering a hinge, but also of talking about it—which is the reason why Wittgenstein was unsatisfied with his own way of dealing with these issues; cf. OC, §358, and see also Rhees (2003, p. 58).
- 50.
- 51.
- 52.
See also Kober (1996).
- 53.
For a further reply by Moyal-Sharrock, see Moyal-Sharrock (2013a). More recently, while building on her understanding of hinges, Coliva (2015) proposes what she calls a ‘hinge epistemology’, without thereby offering—if I get her correctly—an epistemic reading of OC. Her view is that an appropriate conception of hinges as unwarranted and unwarrantable assumptions can ground a new approach to perceptual justification and rationality itself.
- 54.
See OC, §§359, 475.
- 55.
See Ryle (1945).
- 56.
An anonymous reviewer has rightly observed that the history of science shows that most often doubt does precede certainty, and in particular that there is usually a phase of disbelief (presumably distinct from doubt) characterizing the attitude of a community towards a new scientific proposition before it becomes indubitable. Yet, I am not claiming that this does not happen; rather, the point is that when we learn basic certainties, including those deriving from science, like for instance that the earth rotates around the sun, we learn them as indubitable, and not as dubitable. As children, we are taught that this is the case, and not that perhaps this is the case. The fact that science develops by hypothesizing new propositions which first are scoffed at, and then progressively gain the status of indubitable beliefs, albeit clearly true, does not imply that the same happens in the process of learning.
- 57.
See Tiercelin (1992) on vagueness and realism in Peirce. As for the comparison with Wittgenstein, consider that Peirce affirms that logic cannot dispense with vagueness, just like mechanics cannot dispense with friction (CP 5.512), and that Wittgenstein makes use of a very similar image. In dealing with a logic which seeks purity, clear-cut concepts, the nature of ‘the real sign’ (PI, §105), he observes that when there is no friction, the conditions seem ideal, but they are only apparently so; in fact, on the slippery ice, we are actually unable to walk because there is no resistance. ‘We want to walk: so we need friction—he affirms—Back to the rough ground!’ (PI, §107).
- 58.
The same example of fire that burns is also proposed by Wittgenstein as an illustration of certainty (Sicherheit), for instance in MS 111, p. 121 (cf. BT, section 55).
- 59.
See CP 5.451, 5.498, 5.514 ff.
- 60.
On the latter aspect, see also Tiercelin (2016, p. 194).
- 61.
It is one of the Cambridge Conferences of 1898; see CP 1.616 ff. or RLT, pp. 105 ff.
- 62.
- 63.
See also Stroll (1994, pp. 149, 156, 161 and 169).
- 64.
Also in CP 5.367. See also W 3, p. 246 (or CP 5.369).
- 65.
From‘On the Algebra of Logic’, 1880, also in W 4, p. 165.
- 66.
See the previous section.
- 67.
See Section ‘Wittgenstein Reader of Peirce?’ in Chap. 1.
- 68.
From ‘Partial Synopsis of a Proposed Work in Logic’, 1902. See also Misak (2011, p. 265).
- 69.
Gava (2014, pp. 80, 156–157) proposes a different yet somewhat related reading, according to which Peirce rejects transcendentalism as a justificatory and foundational perspective, but adopts a form of ‘explanatory transcendentalism’.
- 70.
From ‘The Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents’, ca. 1901.
- 71.
From ‘A Guess at the Riddle’, 1887–88; also in CP 1.405.
Bibliography
PPF—Philosophische Untersuchungen II / Philosophy of Psychology—A Fragment. Ed. P.M.S. Hacker, J. Schulte. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Bambrough, R. 1981. Peirce, Wittgenstein and Systematic Philosophy. In Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume VI, The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, ed. P.A. French, T.E. Uehling Jr., and H.K. Wettstein. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Bax, C. 2013. Reading On Certainty Through the Lens of Cavell: Scepticism, Dogmatism and the ‘Groundlessness of our Believing’. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21 (4): 515–533.
Bilgrami, A. 2004. Scepticism and Pragmatism. In Wittgenstein and Scepticism, ed. D. McManus. Abingdon: Routledge.
Brandom, R. 2002. Pragmatics and Pragmatisms. In Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism, ed. J. Conant and U.M. Żegleń. Abingdon: Routledge.
Brice, R. 2014. Exploring Certainty. Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Broyles, J.E. 1965. Charles S. Peirce and the Concept of Indubitable Belief. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 1 (2): 77–89.
Calcaterra, R.M. 2003b. Lo spazio normativo dei sentimenti nell’ottica di Peirce. In Normatività fatti valori, ed. R. Egidi, M. Dell’Utri and M. De Caro. Macerata: Quodlibet.
Cavell, S. 1979. The Claim of Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Citron, G. ed. 2015b. A Discussion Between Wittgenstein and Moore on Certainty (1939): From the Notes of Norman Malcolm. Mind 124 (493): 72–84.
Coliva, A. 2010a. Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Coliva, A. 2015. Extended Rationality. A Hinge Epistemology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cook, J.W. 1980. Notes on Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Philosophical Investigations 3 (4): 15–37.
Gava. G. 2014. Peirce’s Account of Purposiveness. A Kantian Perspective. New York and London: Routledge.
Gennip, K. van 2008. Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in the Making: Studies Into Its Historical and Philosophical Background, PhD Thesis. Groningen (Netherlands): University of Groningen.
Gennip, K. van 2011. Wittgenstein on Intuition, Rule-following, and Certainty: Exchanges with Brower and Russell. In The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, ed. O. Kuusela, and M. McGinn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gill, J. 1974. Saying and Showing: Radical Themes in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Religious Studies 10 (3): 279–290.
Goodman, R. 2002. Wittgenstein and William James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haack, R. 1982. Wittgenstein’s Pragmatism. American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (2): 163–171.
Hamilton, A. 2014. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and On Certainty. Abingdon: Routledge.
Hookway, C. 2000. Truth, Rationality and Pragmatism. Themes from Peirce. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howat, A. 2013. Regulative Assumptions, Hinge Propositions and the Peircean Conception of Truth. Erkenntnis 78 (2): 451–468.
Hutto, D.D. 2004. Two Wittgenstein too Many: Wittgenstein’s Foundationalism. In The Third Wittgenstein, ed. D. Moyal-Sharrock. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Johanson, A.E. 1994. Peirce and Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. In Living Doubt. Essays Concerning the Epistemology of Charles S. Peirce, ed. G. Debrock and M. Hulswit. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kienzler, W. 2006. Wittgenstein and John Henry Newman on Certainty. Grazer Philosophische Studien 71: 117–138.
Kober, M. 1996. Certainties of a World-Picture: the Epistemological Investigations of On Certainty. In The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. H. Sluga and D. Stern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kripke, S. 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Malcolm, N. 1942. Moore on Ordinary Language. In The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. P.A. Schilpp. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Malcolm, N. 1949. Defending Common Sense. Philosophical Review 58 (3): 201–220.
Malcolm, N. 1952. Knowledge and Belief. Mind 61 (242): 87–92.
Malcolm, N. 1958. Ludwig Wittgenstein. A Memoir, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McGinn, M. 1989. Sense and Certainty. Oxford: Blackwell.
McGinn, M. 2001. Saying and Showing and the Continuity of Wittgenstein’s Thought. The Harvard Review of Philosophy 9 (1): 24–36.
Menary, R. 2003. Peirce and Wittgenstein on Doubt: A Comparison. In Knowledge and Belief. Papers of the 26th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. W. Löfflerand P. Weingartner. Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Wittgenstein Society.
Meyers, R. G. 1967. Peirce on Cartesian Doubt. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 3 (1): 13–23.
Misak, C. 2004. Truth and the End of Inquiry. A Peircean Account of Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Misak, C. 2011. Presidential Address: American Pragmatism and Indispensability Arguments. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47 (3): 261–273.
Moore, G.E. 1959. Philosophical Papers. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Moore, G.E. 1993. Being Certain that One Is in Pain. In G. E. Moore, Selected Writings, ed. T. Baldwin. London; New York: Routledge.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. 2003. Logic in Action: Wittgenstein’s Logical Pragmatism and the Impotence of Scepticism. Philosophical Investigations 26 (2): 125–148.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. ed. 2004. The Third Wittgenstein. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. 2007. Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. 2013a. On Coliva’s Judgmental Hinges. Philosophia 41 (1): 13–25.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. and Brenner, W.H. eds. 2005. Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Newman, J.H. 1979. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Perissinotto, L. 1991. Logica e immagine del mondo. Studio su Über Gewissheit di Ludwig Wittgenstein. Milan: Guerini.
Perissinotto, L. 2011. ‘…to begin at the beginning’. The Grammar of Doubt in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. In Doubt, Ethics and Religion. Wittgenstein and the Counter-Enlightment, ed. L. Perissinotto and V. Sanfélix Vidarte. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.
Pihlström, S. 2012. A New Look at Wittgenstein and Pragmatism. The European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 4 (2): 9–26.
Pritchard, D. 2011. Wittgenstein on Scepticism. In The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, ed. O. Kuusela and M. McGinn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. 2015. Wittgenstein on Faith and Reason: The Influence of Newman. In God, Truth and other Enigmas, ed. M. Szatkowski. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Pritchard, D. 2016. Epistemic Angst. Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pryor, J. 2000. The Skeptic and the Dogmatist. Noûs 34 (4): 517–549.
Putnam, H. 2000. Rethinking Mathematical Necessity. In The New Wittgenstein, ed. A. Crary and R. Read. London: Routledge.
Putnam, H. 2006. Philosophy as the Education of the Grownups. Stanley Cavell and Skepticism. In Reading Cavell, ed. A. Crary and S. Shieh. London and New York: Routledge.
Rhees, R. ed. 1984. Recollections of Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rhees, R. 2003. Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. There—Like Our Life. Ed. D.Z. Phillips. Oxford: Blackwell.
Ryle, G. 1945. Knowing How and Knowing That: the Presidential Address. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 46: 1–16.
Schönbaumsfeld, G. 2016. ‘Hinge Propositions’ and the ‘Logical’ Exclusion of Doubt. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (2–3): 165–181.
Schulte, J. 2005. Within a System. In Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, ed. D. Moyal-Sharrock and W.H. Brenner. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shieh, S. 2006. The Truth of Skepticism. In Reading Cavell, ed. A. Crary and S. Shieh. London and New York: Routledge.
Stern, D. 1996. The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy. In The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. H. Sluga and D. Stern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stroll, A. 1994. Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stroll, A. 2004. Wittgenstein’s Foundational Metaphors. In The Third Wittgenstein, ed. D. Moyal-Sharrock. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Tiercelin, C. 1992. Vagueness and the Unity of Peirce’s Realism. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 28 (1): 51–82.
Tiercelin, C. 2010. Peirce et Wittgenstein face au défi sceptique. Paradigmi. Rivista di critica filosofica 28 (3): 13–28.
Tiercelin, C. 2016. In Defense of a Critical Commonsensist Conception of Knowledge. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (2–3): 182–202.
von Wright, G.H. ed. 1972. Problems in the Theory of Knowledge/Problèmes de La Théorie de La Connaissance. Nijhoff, The Hague: Kluwer.
von Wright, G.H. ed. 1982. Wittgenstein. Oxford: Blackwell.
von Wright, G.H. ed. 1993. The Wittgenstein Papers. In Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Occasions 1912–1951, ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Williams, M. 2003. Wittgenstein’s Refutation of Idealism. In Wittgenstein and Scepticism, ed. D. McManus. Abingdon: Routledge.
Williams, M. 2005. Why Wittgenstein Isn’t a Foundationalist. In Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, ed. D. Moyal-Sharrock and W.H. Hunter. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Winch, P. 1998. Judgement: Propositions and Practices. Philosophical Investigations 21 (3): 189–202.
Witherspoon, E. 2003. Conventions and Forms of Life. In Socializing Metaphysics. The Nature of Social Reality, ed. F. Scmitt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Wolgast, E. 1987. Whether Certainty is a Form of Life. The Philosophical Quarterly 37 (147): 151–165.
Wright, C. 2004a. Warrant for Nothing (and Foundations for Free)? Aristotelian Society Supplement 78 (1): 167–212.
Wright, C. 2004b. Wittgensteinian Certainties. In Wittgenstein and Scepticism, ed. D. McManus. Abingdon: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Boncompagni, A. (2016). Chapter 2: Reasonable Doubts and Unshakable Certainties. In: Wittgenstein and Pragmatism. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58847-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58847-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58846-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58847-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)