Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" Summary- Part 1

As a part of my course at the MA level, I chanced to read Wittgenstein's last scribbled philosophical remarks (published as a book titled "On Certainty"). As a part of the course assessment, I was asked to write a summary of the book in its entirety. I've divided the book into three parts, each containing at least 200 sections. In this first post, I'm going to post a summary of 1-200 sections, followed by remaining sections.

Summary of 1-200 sections.

Wittgenstein was motivated by the anti-skeptical and anti-idealist essays of Moore and tried to give a stronger counter-argument to skeptic’s position on knowledge claims. Moore was famously known for his ‘“commonsensical argument” that “Here is my hand and I can know it,” thereby he professes to refute the skeptic's position altogether. However, Wittgenstein seems to disagree with this line of argument in the first section itself.

If you do know the here is one hand, we’ll grant you all the rest. (section 1)

From it is seeming to me- or to everyone to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so. What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it. (section 2)

In the above sections, Wittgenstein seems to suggest that Moore doesn’t know that he has two hands in the strict sense of “knowing.” And at the same time, he is taking a jibe at Sceptics’ arguments that sometimes seeming so doesn’t necessarily latch onto what is the actual state of affairs; thus, there is a possibility of committing a mistake in claiming certainty about those claims. What Wittgenstein has in his mind when he says that “whether it can make sense to doubt it” is that he sees an inseparable relationship between “knowledge” and “doubting.”

Throughout the earlier sections, Wittgenstein makes a clear cut distinction between the concept of knowledge and certainty and in what way Moore was wrong in assuming that “he knows that he has two hands.” In addition to defining the above concepts, he seems to give a family of different conceptual notions which are loosely connected with either of the concepts as mentioned earlier. For example, when he was talking about the notion of “knowledge,” invariably he makes a point to refer to the notion of “doubt,” “making sense,” and “committing a mistake,” etc. In the same way, when he was talking about the concept of certainty, he always falls back on to the notions like “grammatical propositions,” “rules,” “unimaginability,” “inconceivability,” and “bedrock propositions,” etc.

He says that there is not much difference between “knowing” and “being certain” provided you know the subtle logical element that is always associated with the notion of certainty, i.e., when I’m certain, I can’t be mistaken. But, the notion of “doubting” is always associated with the notion of “knowledge.” We can think of or conceive of the negation of a knowledge claim at least at a theoretical level. Going by the logic of the two-valued system, if a particular knowledge claim is true, then we are very well can imagine or conceive of its negation without leading ourselves into a contradiction. Since most of these knowledge claim can be construed in what is called an “empirical” propositions, and it is logically consistent to think about their negations because they are merely contingent propositions altogether.

However, that is not the case with the propositions with certainty. According to Wittgenstein, propositions with certainty are not empirical and so the notion of truth and falsity doesn’t arise in their cases. Since these propositions are not coming in the purview of truth and falsity, their negation is also unthinkable, meaning we can’t imagine them being otherwise. To use his own words, propositions with certainty are simply as it is. So, if anyone were to doubt these propositions in the strict sense of “doubting,” that means either they didn’t understand the meaning of these propositions or they are not using “doubt” in a general or standard sense at all.

In section 12, he points out the common mistake that one would commit while characterizing the knowledge claims as such. Some people think that when someone said I know, it means that it is the case (a sense of necessity or oughtness), meaning it can’t be otherwise. He adds that “I know” seems to describe a “state of affairs which guarantees what is known,” guarantee it is a fact. He also argues that giving an assurance of “I know” doesn’t suffice to assert that there wouldn’t be any possible doubts that will creep into our judgments. Rather one needs to establish the notion of indubitability objectively. This notion of objectivity might be included giving a set of rules (be it grammatical or language-game rules, etc.) which will hold for every person who is taking part in the language game of certainty. Also, Wittgenstein seems to argue that the notion of “it is so” is nothing to do with knowledge. Instead, it is a ground on which the language game of certainty would take place.

At section 30, he gives a working definition of certainty. He says “ Certainty as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one doesn’t infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.” So basically, it is similar to that of a following a rule in doing mathematics. In mathematical calculations, you do follow a rule while calculating something. However, you don’t infer anything from the rule itself. It is just a way of doing things so. So, being certain about some belief claims doesn’t necessarily lead to inferring some logical conclusions from those beliefs itself. In close connections with this functioning definition of certainty, he also talks about how he wants to erase some propositions that don’t get us any further. He says that in a philosophical language, he wants to expunge those propositions which come back to again and again as if bewitched. In a sense, these propositions with certainty are like the ground on which the language game of philosophy, in general, is being played upon.

Wittgenstein was assessing the soundness of Moore’s response to the skeptics. He asks “Is it an adequate answer to the skepticism of the idealist, or the assurance of the realist, to say that “They are physical objects” is nonsense?. He would argue that it is not all nonsensical to the idealists at all. However, we can object their claims by saying that in expressing the above propositions or its negation, what they are doing is nothing but stepping onto something that can’t be conceivable at all. They lie on the other side of the possibility and also those propositions are unimaginable in the first place itself. In addition to the above critique, Wittgenstein also levels another criticism against Moore response by saying that Moore was confused about the distinction between the knowledge and certainty itself. He says that what Moore is presenting as propositions that he “knows” are not knowable. It’s is difficult to believe as to why anyone should believe the contrary to those claims. In general,  it is possible to think/imagine the contrary/negation to all of the beliefs claims that we profess to “know.” Whereas in Moore’s examples, there is no way that we can conceive/think of their contrary/negation. This way of explaining the propositions indicates that there is a subtle difference between the nature of propositions that are “knowable” and the propositions that are “certain” in nature. This way of discerning the propositions into two different types is the reason why in the very first section itself, he says “If you (Moore) know that here is one hand, then we will grant you rest of them.”

In general, Wittgenstein argues that there is a possibility of committing a mistake about an empirical proposition. If that is the case, then it means that we might construe of a physical phenomenon in some manner and accordingly passed a judgment. But, at the same time, in future, there is a probability that there will arise a situation or a material condition in which we can think of the same empirical proposition in a completely different sense, meaning the truth-value of the same proposition might change in the future. But, he would argue that the notion of mistake freezes to be a mistake when you enter into the realm of the propositions with certainty. You simply don’t conceive of any negation in the case of this proposition. So, it is not true that a mistake merely gets more and more improbable as we pass from the plane to the plane. At some point, this mistake ceases to be inconceivable.

In addition to defining empirical propositions and grammatical propositions in this manner, he also gives the broader definition of logic and a straightforward answer for truth. He defines logic as something that belongs to the description of the language-games. And h also says that “The truth of my statements (empirical) is the test of my understanding of these statements.” And at the same time, he also talked about how the truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference. So, when one inquiry about the truth and falsity of the propositions in general in philosophical analysis, then empirical propositions are coming under the purview of that inquiry. Whereas on the other side, propositions with certainty don’t. Because they are like presuppositions of the very inquiry itself and lies beneath the act of analysis itself, so, propositions with certainty lie apart from the route travelled by inquiry.

He goes one step further in section 94 and says that propositions with certainty are like inherited background (beliefs/propositions) against which I distinguish between true and false. As said earlier, the truth values don’t apply to these propositions at all. He even compares these propositions with the river-bed. He says that these logical propositions are like river-bed, meaning the sand in the river or the stream of the water might change depending upon the time. But, no matter what, the river-bed remains the same throughout the time. The sand and the stream of water are nothing but empirical propositions. As we know that the status of empirical propositions changes based upon the new evidence because they are contingent propositions.

But, one would wonder how do we acquire these logical propositions in the first place itself?

To which Wittgenstein gives an interesting answer. Interesting because one could read his response in different ways. He says that we are thought about these propositions from our childhood itself. And at the same time, when we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. So, we were bred with a web of beliefs from our childhood itself; we are given a world-picture itself. The child starts to act according to these beliefs and slowly came to realize that what are the empirical propositions and what are the propositions that are unshakably certain to her. So, he says in section 160 that the child learns by believing the adult, doubt comes after belief. We learn an enormous amount of beliefs and accept it on human authority, and then found out that some things are confirmed or disconfirmed by our very own experience. In a sense, believing is more fundamental than the doubting itself, which might be going against the Descartes’ idea of doubt as a primary tool to arrive at some indubitable beliefs.

And the second interesting question would be how do we know them? How does one realizes the nature of these propositions or what are the propositions with certainty?

In line with the above explanation of acquiring them, he also gives an answer which is consistent with the above one. In section 152, he says that I don’t explicitly learn the propositions that stand fast for me. I can discover them subsequently like the axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not fixed in the sense that anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility.

Some people associate Wittgenstein with a foundationalist(In terms of Epistemology) because of his notion of “river-bed” propositions and bedrock propositions. But, there are also people who will identify him as an anti-foundationalist. Precisely, he was recognized as an activist (one of the forms of anti-foundationalist). In section 110, he talks about how the test for any empirical propositions comes to an end and how do we characterizes this end itself. He says that the notion of testing comes to an end when we are dealing with logical propositions. The test will eventually come to an end because these propositions are nothing but what we as a human being are constituted off. We act in the way that we are acting because of those propositions. Hence, he is also called an anti-foundationalist.