Reading Wittgenstein's On Certainty as a Whole: An Interpretive Picture

Metaphysics & Epistemology
54

I respect the fact that you dont want to hand Wittgenstein over to the postmodernists. Wittgenstein scholars are strongly divided over whether to read him this way or as a realist. But my mention of Piaget was designed to show that one doesn’t have to go full-on relativist in order to interpret hinges as intrinsically responsive to events.

Piaget writes:

The subjective and the objective, integration and differentiation, affirmation and negation, structure and genesis, form and content, are implicit in the event of meaning; … every assimilatory scheme has to be accommodated to the elements it assimilates … " \ and thus, “from the beginning assimilation and accommodation are indissociable” •.
…assimilation can never be pure because by incorporating new elements into its earlier schemata the intelligence constantly modifies the latter in order to adjust them to new elements. Conversely, things are never known by themselves, since this work of accommodation is only possible as a function of the inverse process of assimilation. …We thus see how the very concept of the object is far from being innate and necessitates a construction which is simultaneously assimilatory and accommodating. “

56

Did you mean to say here that the entire language of appearance and reality presupposes the framework that the grammatical language game of physical objects provides?That wording would clarify that it’s not physical objects which ground language, as if there were an ontological scaffold of objects that makes discourse possible. Instead, it’s language-games which ground the sense of objects.

We don’t discover that physical objects form the necessary structure of reality; rather, we recognize that our language-game involving physical objects sets the conditions under which “empirical proposition,” “appearance,” and “reality” have their sense at all. This is the difference between “this is how our language works” and “this is how reality must be structured.”

57

I wasn’t making an ontological claim that physical objects ground language. So “the framework that the grammatical language game of physical objects provides” is better wording.

You present two options, “this is how our language works” versus "this is how reality must be structured, "and place Wittgenstein on the language side. I don’t think he’s on either side. At the hinge level, language and world aren’t two separate things that need connecting. The separation between them is something that only arises once we step back and start doing philosophy. “There are physical objects” isn’t a discovery about reality, but it’s also not a convention of our language game. It’s the ground on which both language and world already stand together before anyone thinks to ask which one comes first.

Saying language games ground the sense of objects just reverses the priority. Instead of objects grounding language, language grounds objects. But Witt refuses the priority question altogether. The hinge holds fast, not because it’s grounded in anything. That’s what makes some hinges bedrock.

And this connects to a familiar problem. If language games ground the sense of objects, then a pre-linguistic child reaching for a cup can’t have anything functioning as object-certainty. But the child does and so do animals. The certainty is in the act of reaching. It’s not yet propositional, not yet inside a language game, but it’s already functioning as a hinge. That’s the level Witt keeps pointing to when he talks about acting with basic certainty rather than asserting it.

58

You’re right to point out that we shouldn’t succumb to the temptation of replacing ’physical reality grounds language’ with a simple reversal in the direction of ‘language grounds physical reality’.
But what would it mean to think together language and world prior to any ontological split? Specifically, how does the sentence “there are physical objects” ground language-world? There is a risk of reading this as a pre-normative fusion of language and world, a kind of undifferentiated bedrock, as if there were a primordial unity prior to grammar, prior to standards, prior even to correctness. In other words, that “there are physical objects” points to a brute entanglement of organism and world.

But if we are serious about integrating language and world, then we have to extend the contingently relative normative function of language to pre-linguistic interactions as well. Before the child learns to speak, their entanglement with a world already pre-supposes the construction of normative, rule-governed perceptual practices. There is no layer of sheer entanglement beneath normativity. Even perception is rule-governed in a tacit way. The child does not first inhabit a brute world of perception and later acquire linguistic norms. The child is initiated into a normatively articulated world from the beginning.

If language games ground the sense of objects, then a pre-linguistic child reaching for a cup can’t have anything functioning as object-certainty. But the child does and so do animals. The certainty is in the act of reaching. It’s not yet propositional, not yet inside a language game, but it’s already functioning as a hinge. That’s the level Witt keeps pointing to when he talks about acting with basic certainty rather than asserting it.”

Whereas Wittgenstein doesn’t wade into this arena, phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty investigate the constructed nature of norms of pre-linguistic perception like object permanence. I see their work as consistent with and an extension of Wittgenstein’s analysis of the social construction of linguistic norms. For them, object permanence is a rule-bound normative achievement. The certainty comes from the ground provided by an idealizing construction. But the normative ground providing object permanence is itself contingent. It is a belief in the persistent self-identity of the object. This belief is stable but ultimately changeable. In sum, moving from the realm of linguistic social practices to pre-linguistic perceptual construction does not land us in a space prior to contingent norm-based rules.

When Merleau-Ponty states

“The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world which it itself projects”

he means this to apply equally to the linguistic and pre-linguistic worlds.

59

I’m getting quite confused by the mixing of metaphors here. It seems very odd to call something that is described as a hinge as a foundation. My impression is that W talks about hinges in the context of debates and doubts. I understand them as propositions that are protected from question and debate, at least in a given context. Perhaps its not unduly mixing metaphors to say that an actual hinge enables the door to swing and also defines the space through which it can swing.
The idea of protecting a proposition is exemplified for me by the following. We may well notice that water that is heated will often begin to boil at a certain point. We can measure that point, and when we do, we find that it does not always boil at the same temperature. We could abandon our generalization, but we don’t. We look for additional variables and end up with a more complicated, but more accurate generalization.

Two more metaphors. One of which is very useful because it allows us to think about multiple levels of certainty (the water in the bed and the bed in the landscape) But can it be applied to hinge propositions. But multiple levels of hinges doesn’t make sense.

There’s a wide range of metaphors in the text.

There’s no reason to suppose that these are interchangeable. I don’t think we are likely to be able to build a taxonomy out of this.
Should we not expect that all these metaphors will give us slightly different pictures, which might be more appropriate in some cases rather than others. Treating them as interchangeable seems very confusing.

A taxonomy of hinges?
60

You’re right that I’m not pointing to a “brute entanglement” or some undifferentiated primordial unity. But extending normativity all the way down to pre-linguistic perception creates a different problem. For e.g., if a cat chasing a mouse is engaged in a rule-governed normative activity, what isn’t normative? The term does work when it marks a distinction, between activities subject to standards of correctness and activities that aren’t. If everything is normative, the concept stops distinguishing anything.

Object permanence in a kitten isn’t normative. The kitten doesn’t construct object permanence according to rules that could be otherwise. It develops object permanence because that’s how perception matures in creatures with its kind of nervous system. Calling that “rule-governed” stretches the term past its breaking point.

You acknowledge that Witt doesn’t wade into this arena, and I don’t think that’s accidental. When he describes certainty that shows itself in action, sitting in a chair, reaching for a cup, he’s not characterizing it as normatively constructed. When he says, “It is there, like our life” (OC 559), he’s pointing to something prior to the question of whether it’s constructed or natural, contingent or necessary. That’s not a gap in his analysis. It’s the point.

The Merleau-Ponty quote is actually closer to what I’m saying. “The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world,” that’s mutual implication, not normative construction. The subject doesn’t construct the world according to contingent rules. Subject and world are already intertwined before the question of construction arises. That’s very close to what I mean by the hinge level being where language and world stand together before anyone asks which grounds which.

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Is normativity identical with explicit rule-following, or can it exist at the level of embodied comportment? Wittgenstein resists intellectualizing rule-following. Following a rule is not consulting an inner formula. It is acting in accord with a practice. And the possibility of going wrong is internal to rule-following. That does not require propositional articulation. It requires a contrast space between correct and incorrect continuation.

For Merleau-Ponty, embodied comportment isn’t brute mechanism. The organism isn’t a causal chain; it is a style of comportment oriented toward optimal grip. The kitten’s tracking of the mouse is structured by anticipations that can be fulfilled or disappointed. It can misjudge distance. It can anticipate wrongly. It can correct its movement mid-leap. That structure of anticipation-and-correction is not mere physiology; it is teleological organization. Wherever there is purposive, self-correcting comportment toward a world, there is at least minimal normativity.

Wittgenstein doesn’t describe hinge certainty as natural necessity in the way digestion is natural necessity. He says it is part of our form of life. A form of life is not reducible to neural wiring. It is patterned activity. And patterned activity is the soil in which normativity grows.

If we make hinge certainty purely biological maturation, we risk naturalizing it in a way Wittgenstein doesn’t endorse. He doesnt say: “It is there because our nervous systems evolved this way.” He says: “It is there, like our life.” That phrase is deliberately non-reductive.

For Merleau-Ponty the “mutual implication” between perception and world isn’t norm-neutral. The body’s “project” is oriented toward equilibrium, coherence, optimal grip. Those are evaluative structures. They are not conventions, but neither are they brute physics. They are forms of organization that make sense of error.

I should add that for Piaget, object permanence in humans isnt simply inherited. Nor is it merely the unfolding of a fixed neural program. It is constructed through the child’s active sensorimotor engagement with the world. In The Construction of Reality in the Child, he argues that early infants do not yet grasp objects as enduring independent entities. Rather, object permanence gradually emerges through coordinated action schemas such as reaching, grasping, tracking and recovering hidden objects. This development is different from the historical unfolding of discursive practices as Wittgenstein understands them. In Piaget they follow a dialectical teleological path. But the important point is that he sees object permanence not as pre-given but as an actively constructed normative system.

62

You’re right that the metaphors aren’t interchangeable. But I don’t think they’re giving us different pictures so much as different viewing angles on the same structural insight. The riverbed captures the relationship between what moves and what holds still and allows for gradual change. The scaffolding captures the enabling function. The axis captures the fixed point around which inquiry revolves. The hinge captures the fixed/moving relationship. Foundation and bedrock capture depth. So, they emphasize different things, stability, enabling, depth, the relationship between fixed and moving, but they converge around a single idea, viz., something stands fast, and it’s not part of our epistemic language. It makes epistemic language possible.

I don’t think hinge and foundation are incompatible. A hinge is what has to stay fixed for the door to swing. A foundation is what has to be in place for the building to stand. Both describe something that enables activity without participating in it. The metaphors come from different domains but they’re picking out the same structural role.

On your reading of hinges as propositions protected from questioning in a given context - I think that’s a bit too narrow. It captures something about how hinges function locally, within specific language games. But when Witt introduces the hinge metaphor in OC 341-343, he’s not talking about debate conventions. He’s talking about what has to stand fast for questioning to be possible. That’s not context-dependent protection. It’s the precondition of the practice.

Your boiling water example actually illustrates this well. The decision not to abandon the generalization and instead look for additional variables, that’s a hinge commitment in action. The framework holds fast and inquiry adjusts around it. That’s exactly how hinges function as foundations.

I think the riverbed metaphor handles this naturally. The water flows, the riverbed holds, and the riverbed itself sits in a wider landscape. Some hinges are local and can shift over time. Others, such as object persistence, experiential continuity, are bedrock in a way that “no one has been to the moon” never was. That’s not mixing metaphors. It’s recognizing that not all hinges sit at the same depth.

63

No need to talk about hinges here. Sam26 has made it to OC 35, and the issue is how can we make sense of doubt about the existence of physical bodies. Talk of “hinges” is out of context.

Wittgenstein is saying that we don’t readily understand this sort of doubt and so he is trying to expose it a bit. There’s no point in jumping ahead until we can grasp how he characterizes this doubt.

64

Is your remark directed at Sam26 or Ludwig?

It is Sam26 who is introducing “hinge” into the discussion at this point in the text.

65

Both, I’ve already been critical of Sam for jumping way ahead, and reflecting interpretive conclusions drawn from much later in the book back on to the beginning. This is like reading with prejudice. In my opinion, if one has already read a text, and they endeavour to reread it, they ought to drop all prior conclusions to allow for a new understanding of what might have been missed before. It’s kind of pointless to reread under the assumption that you already know and understand everything that you will be reading.

66

How is that point about assumptions a charge against Ludwig’s observation about metaphors?

67

Obviously, that specific remark was directed at Sam26.

To be honest, I do not understand Ludwig’s point at all. I see it as a reply to something which sam26 said about hinges, which was already off track. So Ludwig might be offering a step back toward the track, or a step further off track. I really can’t say, because Sam26 has already taken us so far off track that I cannot even relate Ludwig’s post to Wittgenstein.

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The way I look at it concerns a careful reading of the text. Your reading or my reading turns on what was said or written.

Build your argument upon that basis.

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There are only 639 remarks to go.

71

OK. But if it is a precondition of the practice, doesn’t that allow that it may not be a precondiiton of other practices, i.e. contexts. In that case, it ight not be protected from question in some other context.
I see that we can distinguish between hinges and preconditions. I find this a bit confusing. Can you explain?

Do you mean that Godel show that formal systems rest on something non-epistemic or just that just Witt shows that?

Yes, I think it does, and that it is - just like the private language argument.
I think there’s a but of a lacuna about the possibility of philosophical discourse. Witt wants to rule certain questions out as not legitimate questions and so not deserving answers. But that’s exactly what Moore is trying to do, and surely he has to be engaging with that project in some way. Maybe philosophy is a special context in which one can raise questions that don’t make sense elsewhere?

[quote=“Fooloso4, post:179, topic:113”]
And one can not say that of the propositions that I am called L.W.[/quote]
That’s an interesting example. In one way, to make certain that L.W. is his name, one must go back to the baptism event or some certificate of it. But I would maintina that’s insufficient. What is fundamental is that he responds to “L.W.” as his name and other people use it to call him or address him.In other words, it is certain because the on-going use of it maintains it.

Yes, that’s true. But doesn’t it rest on ruling out philosophical contexts. My difficulty is that they seem to be sufficiently well-established, for all their uselessness, to count as language-games of a sort. What am I missing?

I don’t disagree. But hinges are liminal, and, in a sense, they do have to move to allow the door to move. Of course, the physical connection is not present in our discussion, but still, there has to be a connection between logical hinges and the propositions that do move. They are not entirely self-sufficient entities.

72

So, the situation here is that Wittgenstein claims that both the realist’s assertion “there are physical objects”, and also the idealist’s assertion “there is no physical objects”, are equally nonsense.

If we put this in context, he has been asking what does it mean to doubt the existence of the physical world, how could such a doubt be explained, so that we might understand it.

Now he has provided the answer. The two phrases, one which affirms and one which denies the existence of physical objects are equally nonsense. Therefore we can conclude that the only thing which makes sense in this context is to doubt the existence of physical objects.

73

Ludwig, I’ll take these in order.

On preconditions and contexts, you’re right that something can be a precondition of one practice without being a precondition of every practice. That’s where the layered picture of hinges comes in. The deepest hinges, object persistence, experiential continuity, are preconditions of any practice whatsoever. But more local hinges can hold fast in some contexts and not others. “No one has been to the moon” functioned as a hinge until it didn’t. So not all preconditions are universal, but that doesn’t undermine the concept. It means hinges sit at different depths.

On Godel, I’ve described this parallel as mostly structural in the past, but I think it’s more than that. Godel’s result is mathematical epistemology. He showed that formal systems can’t fully justify themselves from within. There are truths the system relies on but can’t prove using its own resources. Witt showed the same thing about epistemic practices. They rest on something non-epistemic that they can’t internally secure. Both are epistemological results about the limits of internal justification, arrived at through different methods in different domains. Godel proved formally what Witt showed grammatically. The conclusion is the same, viz., no system of justification is completely self-contained.

Is philosophy as a special context? This is an interesting point. I don’t think Witt is ruling out philosophical discourse. He’s diagnosing what goes wrong when it tries to treat framework conditions as propositions within the framework. OC 37 makes this clear. The difficulty the realist and idealist are responding to is real. Their first expressions of it, though, land in the wrong place, and investigation is needed to find the right point of attack. That’s philosophy working, not philosophy being dismissed. What misfires isn’t the investigation. It’s the attempt to assert or deny hinges as though they were empirical claims.

I agree with your name example. What makes “I am L.W.” certain is the ongoing practice, not the baptismal event. The certainty is maintained in the use.

On philosophical discussions as language games: what makes something a language-game is that it has criteria for correctness internal to the practice. Measuring, calculating, reporting all have this. Philosophical assertions like “There are physical objects” don’t have conditions of success within a functioning practice. They’re moves that look like they belong to a game but don’t connect to anything that could count as getting it right or wrong. That’s what Witt means by language going on holiday.

On hinges being liminal and connected, I think you’re right that hinges aren’t isolated. They’re what makes the movement of empirical propositions possible, so there is a relationship. The hinge doesn’t swing, but the door couldn’t swing without it. The connection is real. But it’s enabling, not inferential. The hinge doesn’t participate in the logical space of the propositions it supports. It makes that space possible.

74

The final step doesn’t follow. If both “there are physical objects” and “there are no physical objects” are nonsense, then that doesn’t leave doubt as the one thing that makes sense. Doubt requires an intelligible proposition to doubt. If the assertion is nonsense and its denial is nonsense, then doubting it is nonsense too. You can’t meaningfully doubt what can’t meaningfully be affirmed or denied.

Witt’s point is that all three moves fail for the same reason. Affirmation, denial, and doubt are all trying to operate on something that isn’t a proposition in the relevant sense. “Physical object” is a logical concept, a grammatical category. You can’t step outside the framework it provides and then affirm, deny, or doubt it. The framework is what makes affirming, denying, and doubting possible in the first place. That’s what makes it a hinge.

75

The door couldn’t swing unless half of the hinge swings. half of the hinge is fixed to the solid foundation, the other half swings with the door, supporting its swing, but limiting it to a specific relation with the solid part. By limiting the possibility, the hinge actively participates in the logical space.

I don’t understand why you would insist that “Doubt requires an intelligible proposition to doubt”. Nothing has been said so far in the text to indicate this. Don’t you think that “doubt” is induced when something appears to be unintelligible? Doubt is the decision not to judge. Obviously, if something appears unintelligible we would be wise not to pass judgement on it, and we are left with doubt.

Your mistake appears to be that you assume doubt must be meaningful. Doubt, by its very nature seems very nonsensical, so you are trying to make sense of it when this is not warranted. This is exactly why Wittgenstein says that this type of doubt is so difficult for us to understand. Just like “there are physical objects”, and “there is not physical objects”, are nonsense statements, the doubt involved is also nonsense. However, this does not prevent people from making these statements, nor does it prevent the doubt from being real. So it’s a mistake to try to argue that this is not doubt, or that it cannot be doubt.

This is clearly incorrect. The only way to doubt something is to step outside the framework. That is what I am explaining to you about why doubt is completely different from affirmation and denial. But you keep wanting to class doubt in with affirming and denying as if it is the same type of thing.

Affirmation and denial are dependent on the principles by which those judgements are made, i.e. they are dependent on a framework. They are judgements and the framework is required to support the judgement. To doubt is to refuse judgement, and this is to say that the framework itself is insufficient for the requested judgement. That the framework is insufficient, is a judgement about the framework, therefore made from outside it. The decision to doubt is a type of judgement not supported by the framework which is being doubted.