Abstract
In On Certainty, Wittgenstein’s reflections bring into view the phenomenon of basic certainty. He explores this phenomenon mostly in relation to our certainty with regard to empirical states of affairs. Drawing on these seminal observations and reflections, I extend the inquiry into what I call “basic moral certainty”, arguing that the latter plays the same kind of foundational role in our moral practices and judgements as basic empirical certainty does in our epistemic practices and judgements. I illustrate the nature and significance of basic moral certainty via critical examination of contemporary philosophical “explanations” of the wrongness of killing. These pseudo explanations, as I show them to be, will be seen to founder in a similar manner to Moore’s “Proof” of an external world, that is, in a manner that discloses the phenomenon of basic (moral) certainty.
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Notes
Moore contrasts what he says he knows to be the case with “merely something which I believed” (1959, 146).
L. W. Sumner also asserts that “not all instances of murder are morally wrong”, and even claims—most implausibly—that “this contention is common to utilitarianism and most other moral theories” (1976, 147).
Hereafter just “killing”.
Wittgenstein presumably had this argument in mind when he wrote in the Tractatus that “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death” (6.4311).
Act I, scene V.
I would like to thank Danièle Moyal-Sharrock for her encouragement on this paper, and for her perceptively helpful comments on its various drafts; thanks also to participants at the 2008 inaugural British Wittgenstein Society conference, especially Mikel Burley, who made me rethink some of my original claims.
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An earlier version of this paper entitled ‘Wittgenstein, ethics and basic moral certainty’ was first published in Inquiry 51:3, 2008, 24–67. I am grateful to the editor and publisher for permission to draw on some of this material.
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Pleasants, N. Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty. Philosophia 37, 669–679 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9198-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9198-0