Thesis On Certainty Part 6

Part 5 = here. (A predicative, not ontological "=.") So we left a cliffhanger yesterday, ending the post one paragraph before the end of the section. We'd like to think of ourselves as modern-day Dan Browns. (Also, don't forget to check out B. Michael's Notebook Miscellany.)

We got a new iPod, an 80gb one. Having only filled maybe 50gb of it, we find ourselves already sitting in traffic blocking green lights looking for something to which to listen. This, we think, could be the phenomenon described by Arcade Fire's "No Cars Go." And, well, we blame them, too. We can never decided between Neon Bible and Funeral. Thesis after the jump.







[The metaphorical jump.]

It could be objected that Moore seems to be trustworthy regarding the knowledge of his hands. As a respected academician, no one would think he would write outright lies. And isn’t the knowledge of one’s hands precisely the kind of knowledge about which it would be impossible to be mistaken? Moore’s utter certainty that he has two hands, coupled with the fact that people just don’t make mistakes about such things, seems to justify our trust in his knowledge. We simply agree with Moore that he does have two hands. Such a thing could go without saying. This apparent certainty, though, is the interstice in which Moore’s metaphysical presupposition finds purchase. And it is precisely for playing on this sense of certainty that Wittgenstein will criticize Moore. Moore’s utterance, “I know I have two hands,” is nonsense precisely because it expresses something that we would never doubt. And, paradoxically, it’s for this very reason that Moore cannot say he knows that he has two hands. In asserting why Moore can’t say that he knows he has two hands, Wittgenstein will re-characterize knowledge in a fairly radical way.

Moore’s Common Sense View

We said earlier that Moore’s notion of knowledge is something like justified true belief, but that his justification for knowing some things does not entail his being able to say he knows some things. Moore’s criterion of justification seemed to be that he was “quite certain” of something. Moore is quite certain that he has two hands, and it’s impossible that he merely believes such to be true; it isn’t merely highly probable. Therefore, Moore “knows” he has two hands. But to say so is a misuse of “I know…” that seems to reveal a “queer and extremely important mental state.”[i] When Moore says above, “I know I have two hands,” there seems to be at work in his mind a specific faculty, which secures his knowledge and is conditioned by his utter certainty: the indubitable (self) assurance of a wrinkled brow, a semi-articulated force of expression. We’ve said above that Wittgenstein explicitly denies the importance of mental states in evaluating the knowledge claims of one’s interlocutors. The mental state that accompanies one’s certainty is something of a ghost whose insubstantiality Wittgenstein points out throughout his work. The certainty that one feels is of little importance for our purposes: such a feeling indicates a merely subjective certainty. This subjective certainty falls short of what Wittgenstein leads us toward. We want to say that “perfect certainty is only a matter of [one’s] attitude,” which attitude fails to be philosophically interesting if our investigation is for an objective indication of certainty.[ii] To speak about knowledge and certainty with regard to mental states is a circumlocution around the logical crux of the matter, the source of objectivity in a sense.

However, presuppositions concerning mental states corresponding to knowledge and certainty underlie much of the philosophic discourse. Moore describes the symptoms of such mental states in his essay, “A Defence of Common Sense.” In the essay he describes knowing propositions like “I have two hands.” He says,

I think I have nothing better to say than that it seems to me that I do know them, with certainty. It is, indeed, obvious that, in the case of most of them, I do not know them directly: that is to say, I only know them because, in the past, I have known to be true other propositions which were evidence for them. If, for instance, I do know that the earth had existed for many years before I was born, I certainly only know this because I have known other things in the past which were evidence for it. And I certainly do not know exactly what the evidence was. Yet all this seems to me to be no good reason for doubting that I do know it. We are all, I think, in this strange position that we do know many things, with regard to which we know further that we must have had evidence for them, and yet we do not know how we know them, i.e., we do not know what the evidence was.[iii]

Moore calls this queer phenomenon “the Common Sense view of the world.”[iv] His perplexity at how we know certain things arises from trying to connect the feeling of certainty, a mental state, to some sort of outward criteria that would count as a substantiation or explanation for his mental state. Moore cites a paucity of evidence for his perplexity at the phenomenon. Rather than direct evidence for his certainty, he constructs a deductive chain that counts as pseudo-evidence. Moore knows the earth existed for many years before he was born because he knows, for example, that he was born of two parents who must have lived on the earth; and he knows he was born from two parents because of the entire circumstances of his life, but he lacks direct evidence of his birth and parentage. He could trace back this certainty to other certainties, but he couldn’t say how he knows them because he lacks direct evidence. The mental state of knowing seems to be unsubstantiated. But rather, this mental state itself is the unsubstantial “thing,” the unnecessary and unimportant piece of our picture of knowledge.

Moore is right in linking evidence with knowledge. After all, that one knows something can be shown, and this showing counts as evidence. But what of the propositions that fall under the purview of the Common Sense View? It is unreasonable to doubt the existence of the earth long before our birth because then we would have to doubt “all sorts of things that stand fast” for us.[v] That is, we would have to doubt the many branches of the deductive chain that seem solid. For instance, it stands fast for us that all humans come from two human parents who must certainly have lived on the earth. This proposition seems to be grounded on experience and scientific testimony. Moore’s point appears to be twofold: 1) Experience and scientific testimony lack an evidential ground; and thus, how can we know such a thing as the earth has existed long before our birth? 2) Nonetheless, “all this seems to be no good ground for doubting that I do know” that the earth has existed long before my birth. Wittgenstein’s response to this aporia is that we do not know (in Moore’s sense of knowing as justified true belief) that the earth has existed long before our birth. How could we show that this proposition is the case—justify it? We would go through a brief chain of reasoning as above. But this chain of reasoning isn’t a proof. A proof tries to demonstrate the objective correctness of a proposition.

[i] On Certainty, §6.
[ii] On Certainty, §404.
[iii] Moore, “Defence,” 44.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] On Certainty, §234.

Thesis On Certainty Part 5

We put up Part 4 of our Thesis on On Certainty last week. Part 5 here begins with a new section, The Flaws in Moore's Argument, and it is the beginning of the specifics concerning Wittgenstein's conception of language, proof, and certainty.



The Flaws in Moore’s Argument


Moore’s proof is more robust than Wittgenstein sometimes characterizes it. It is compelling enough that Wittgenstein feels compelled to critique it; and Wittgenstein seems even to appropriate for his philosophy parts of Moore’s thought in the two essays. Moore’s conclusion is that there are things in existence, i.e., two human hands. And as premises, he holds up his two hands, saying, “Here is one hand,” and then, “here is another.”[i] This argument hinges on three things: 1) that the premises are different than the conclusion; 2) that the premises are known by Moore to be the case; and 3) that the conclusion follows from the premises.[ii] Wittgenstein critiques the second condition. Moore is completely certain that he has satisfied the second condition, which he makes obvious by saying,

How absurd it would be to suggest that I did not know it, but only believed it, and that perhaps it was not the case! You might as well suggest that I do not know that I am now standing up and talking—that perhaps after all I’m not, and that it’s not quite certain that I am![iii]

Moore thinks his knowledge here is completely incontestable and self-evident. This sense of certainty is important, and it will figure prominently in Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge. But here it is important to see why Moore is wrong to say he knows he has two hands. We should not suggest, after all, that Moore does not know he is “standing up and talking,” but we would suggest that it is incorrect for Moore to say, “I am now standing up and talking.”

For Moore, knowledge of a something is constituted by its being the case; by one’s not “only [merely] believing” it to be the case; and by one’s being “quite certain” that it is the case. This notion of knowledge is what one would call justified true belief. Of course, the difficult criterion to satisfy with justified true belief is the criterion of justification. Moore thinks he is justified to know he has two hands because he is “quite certain” that he has two hands. And this seems correct to us. But just because Moore may be justified in knowing that he has two hands does not mean he is justified in saying he has two hands. The epistemological notion of knowing he has two hands has influenced his grammatical use of “I know…”

Wittgenstein begins On Certainty by saying, “If you do know that here is one hand, we’ll grant you all the rest.”[iv] He goes on in that section to say that from any proposition another may follow, but this entailment doesn’t make the proposition from which others are derived any more certain. That is, B may follow from A, but that doesn’t make A more certain. Further, if I say, “I know I have two hands,” it follows that I have two hands; but that Moore has two hands does not follow from his saying “I know I have two hands.”[v] Another person’s assertion that he knows doesn’t secure objectivity. However, there are two important caveats to the preceding remark. On the one hand, “I know…” does not always mean “I cannot be wrong about…” or “I am certain of…”[vi] A fact is not necessarily entailed by the utterance “I know…” Such a use would result in the most absurd solipsism; but philosophers often commit themselves to such a position. After his psychological reduction, Descartes perceives clearly and distinctly that he is a thinking thing; consequently, he knows that he is a thinking thing. His perceiving clearly and distinctly, i.e., knowing, that he is a thinking thing satisfies him that he is a thinking thing. Similarly, when Moore says, “I know I have two hands,” he makes it clear that he cannot be wrong, that he must in fact have two hands. In both cases, a certainty—a certain piece of knowledge—entails a fact. Wittgenstein denies that certainty can entail a fact. Philosophic uses of “I know…” “seem to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact,” but this guarantee ignores the phrase “I thought I knew.”[vii] Obviously—trivially, even—things are contrariwise. That is, we are left with facts; and to these facts knowledge or certainty need not correspond. The desire to talk about knowledge often confuses us about what it is that comprises knowledge.

On the other hand, when someone else says, “I know…” it doesn’t follow that he does know; but this is not to say that he doesn’t know it. Rather, that another person does know “takes some showing.”[viii] Showing that one knows is central to Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge and objectivity. We often mistake the grammar of a proposition with a guarantee of the proposition’s being the case. A proposition of the form, “I know…” doesn’t automatically denote a state of affairs—it doesn’t secure objectivity or even necessarily give a piece of knowledge. When someone says, “I know…” the utterance is an indication of assurance; but such an assurance only means that he thinks he is not mistaken.[ix] Someone’s knowledge or certainty does not assure a fact. Rather, the fact—the real existence of a state of affairs—is the possibility of assurance. That is, when someone says he knows something, his interlocutor “must be able to imagine how one may know something of the kind.”[x] Reality and experience—life itself—govern this imagining. In this way Wittgenstein’s philosophy seems to echo Kant’s notion of transcendental idealism: a concept without experience is empty. Moreover, given that the fact is the case does not assure that one knows that fact. For someone to sensibly say to another person, “I know…” the other person must be satisfied with this knowledge. This satisfaction is part of Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge. As we would like to show, Wittgenstein’s notion of knowledge depends heavily on an intersubjective type of agreement, which goes toward justifying another’s belief that his interlocutor (which is to emphasize Wittgenstein’s focus on utterances) actually knows something.

Someone might ask his neighbor on what day the city collects the garbage. If the neighbor says, “I know it gets collected on Wednesday,” he may be satisfied that the neighbor knows this and that it’s true. If the neighbor takes care of his home, seems concerned with its upkeep, and seems trustworthy, then a person would probably be satisfied. If, however, piles of rubbish lie next to the neighbor’s house and if he seems unconcerned with keeping up his home, then a person would probably be unsatisfied. He would think that his neighbor might not know when the garbage is collected. That is, the neighbor has failed to show that he knows when the garbage is collected. We don’t have to try to infer his mental state—whether it is one of knowing, believing, not knowing, etc.—we can see with our own eyes that he does not know. From his saying, “I know it gets collected on Wednesday,” someone wouldn’t necessarily (that is, have to) think that that’s when it does get collected; and in fact, we would think he does not know.

[i] Moore, “Proof,” 146.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Moore, “Proof,” 146-7.
[iv] On Certainty, §1.
[v] On Certainty, §13.
[vi] On Certainty, §8.
[vii] On Certainty, §12.
[viii] On Certainty, §14.
[ix] On Certainty, §15.
[x] On Certainty, §18.