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

[Sam26]

@Fooloso4

@Sam26

He’s saying it’s the condition under which evaluation is possible at all.

The condition that makes the picture and evaluation possible is not part of that picture. Evaluation is made on the basis of that picture.

@Sam26

Once the different levels are clarified, then it becomes clear why certain arguments keep running in circles.

Our disagreement is not due to lack of clarification. It is a matter of what is to count as a hinge. A dog acting without doubt is not a hinge is it simply the absence of doubt. The quote from Goethe is not “in the beginning was the hinge”.

Let me try a different angle.

Your saying a dog acting without doubt isn’t a hinge, it’s simply the absence of doubt. But there’s a difference between the absence of doubt and an orientation toward the world. A rock doesn’t doubt. That’s absence of doubt. A dog is doing something different. It expects the ball to be where it lands. It navigates around obstacles it expects to persist. It recognizes its owner as the same person from day to day. These aren’t mere absences. They’re structured things that presuppose the reliability of the environment. Without them the dog’s behavior would be random rather than intelligible. The question is what to call that structured presupposition. You say it’s not a hinge. I say it’s doing exactly the work that Witt describes hinges as doing. It stands fast so that the dog’s engagement with the world can proceed. Whether we call it a hinge or something else, it needs to be accounted for in any reading of OC, because Witt is pointing to exactly this level when he quotes Goethe in connection with PI paragraph 2, “In the beginning was the deed.” Not the proposition. Not the evaluation. The deed. Action is prior to propositional thought.

You also say the condition that makes the picture and evaluation possible is not part of that picture. I agree. But notice what you’ve just conceded. If the background isn’t part of the picture, then it can’t be evaluated as true or false within the picture. Earlier you said we can distinguish true and false within the background but simply don’t unless we have reason to. Now you’re saying the background isn’t part of the picture within which we make those distinctions. Those two claims pull in different directions. If the background is outside the picture, then it’s outside the space of evaluation, which is what I’ve been saying. If it’s inside the space of evaluation but we just happen not to evaluate it, that’s a different claim, and it’s the one you were making before. Which is it?

I take your point that restating the same examples won’t resolve our disagreement. So let me put the question back to you directly. You’ve said that object persistence, the existence of other people, and the ground holding aren’t hinges. You’ve said the background isn’t part of the picture. You’ve agreed with OC 204 that what lies at the bottom is our acting, and with OC 253 that at the foundation lies belief that is not founded. What do you think those remarks are pointing to, if not to something deeper than the linguistic propositions you’re willing to count as hinges?

[Meta_U]

@Sam26

A source of persistent confusion is that when we discuss these deepest hinges, we necessarily use propositions to describe them. We say, “objects persist” or “other people exist” and it looks as though the hinge is the proposition

Yes, this use of propositions such as “objects persist” is misleading. In reality we’d have to describe the situation like many philosophers do, something like this: “we have an appearance of persisting objects”. The latter, which is a more truthful representation removes the faulty sense of certainty and demonstrates that this sort of “hinge” cannot support any certainty. Plato exposed this years ago, sense perception is unreliable.

@Sam26

The second level is non-linguistic hinges of bodily certainty.

This is a type of inductive conclusion. Things have always seemed to be a specific way, and we conclude that they will continue to be like this. Hume covered this issue, and showed how this sort of “hinge” cannot support certainty either.

@Sam26

The third level is linguistic hinges. These are certainties that take propositional form and function within our language-games.

This type of hinge cannot support certainty either, for the reasons Wittgenstein exposes. The language-games and meaning of words are always changing, therefore language is incapable of providing certainty.

In each of these three levels, it is a mistake to conclude that a “hinge” can provide the grounds for certainty. It may be the case that “hinges” as described, form a base for all sorts of activities, but there is no reason to conclude that just because they provide the support for activities, they therefore provide certainty. That would be an invalid conclusion, lacking the required premises.

[Fooloso4]

@Sam26

But there’s a difference between the absence of doubt and an orientation toward the world

194. With the word “certain” we express complete conviction,
     the total absence of doubt

@Sam26

Without them the dog’s behavior would be random rather than intelligible.

It is not random. Wittgenstein would say the dog acts from instinct.

@Sam26

I say it’s doing exactly the work that Witt describes hinges as doing.

Except you continue to ignore the fact that he refers to them as propositions. He does not say that some things are exempt from doubt but rather that some propositions are. The mathematical proposition is given the stamp of incontestability.

@Sam26

Not the proposition. Not the evaluation. The deed. Action is prior to propositional thought.

And that is why actions are not hinges.

@Sam26

If the background isn’t part of the picture, then it can’t be evaluated as true or false within the picture.

The background is part of the picture. It is the condition for having that picture that in not part of the picture.

@Sam26

Now you’re saying the background isn’t part of the picture

That is not what I am saying. What I am saying that you are conflating the background picture and the condition for that picture.

@Sam26

What do you think those remarks are pointing to, if not to something deeper than the linguistic propositions you’re willing to count as hinges?

Certainly not that there is something deeper. It is, rather, that there are no further grounds of justification. No further reason or explanation. There is no door or hinge. Nothing that must open to pass through.

192. To be sure there is justification; but justification comes to an end.

[Paine]

@Sam26

I’m not imposing a framework from outside. I’m describing what Witt is doing when he reaches for different images at different points.

Is that not a hypothesis justified through language not used by Wittgenstein?

I suppose all of our responses to what is said in the text are paraphrases of some kind. We imagine different things are going on and translate different meanings accordingly. My perspective is the following:

A theme often returned to in the book is asking what does Moore’s certainty do for him. By extension, we are asking what it does for us. We hear statements like this:

30. When someone has made sure, then he will go on to say, “Yes, the calculation is correct”, but he doesn’t draw this conclusion from the state of being certain. One does not infer matters of fact from one’s own certainty.

The question becomes how does one infer matters of fact. One set of passages look at how judgement works:

139. For there to be a practice, rules aren’t enough – one also needs examples. Our rules leave backdoors open, and the practice must speak for itself.

140. We don’t learn the practice of empirical judging by learning rules; we are taught judgements and the way they hang together with other judgements. A totality of judgements is made plausible to us.

141. When we first begin to believe anything, then it isn’t a single proposition, but a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.)

142. It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, but rather a system in which consequences and premises support each other.

But this description, by itself, is not sufficient to explain why Wittgenstein interrogates what benefit Moore’s certainty provides to Moore. Toward that end, a lot of effort is spent separating “knowing” from “believing.”

86. What if one replaced ‘I know’ with ‘I am unshakeably convinced’ in Moore’s sentences?

87. Can’t an assertoric sentence that could function as a hypothesis, also be used as a principle of enquiry and action? That is, can’t it simply be withdrawn from doubt, even if not according to any express rule? It would simply be taken as a matter of course, never called in question, indeed perhaps never even put into words.

88. It could be, for example, that all human enquiry is so set up that certain propositions, if ever expressed at all, are in a position remote from doubt. Their position is remote from the road along which enquiry travels.

This matter of inquiry shows up many times as to why questions may be interesting or not. Moore might be right in his opinions on certain facts but they are boring facts.

In any case, the value of claiming certainty will have to coexist with the condition that degrees of certainty do not surpass the conditions of belief.

[Sam26]

@Fooloso4

Except you continue to ignore the fact that he refers to them as propositions. He does not say that some things are exempt from doubt but rather that some propositions are. The mathematical proposition is given the stamp of incontestability.

If hinges were just propositions, Witt wouldn’t have needed a new name for them. The whole point of the hinge metaphor is that these things don’t behave like propositions, they don’t get tested, justified, doubted, or arrived at through reasoning. He called them something different because they are something different. You’re holding onto the word proposition while ignoring that Witt himself signaled they aren’t that.

Yes, Witt says propositions. And then he spends the rest of OC showing that these propositions don’t do what propositions do. When a mathematical proposition is given the stamp of incontestability, it’s no longer operating in the space of truth and falsity the way propositions normally do. It’s hardened into something we act on. The propositional form is still there, but the propositional function has been replaced by something closer to a deed.

@Fooloso4

That is not what I am saying. What I am saying that you are conflating the background picture and the condition for that picture.

You say I’m conflating the background picture and the condition for the picture. Fine, let’s take that distinction seriously. You have two options, either the condition for the picture is itself propositional, in which case your distinction collapses into propositions all the way down. Or the condition is something non-propositional, in which case you’re conceding my argument, that something beneath propositions is doing the foundational work. You can’t draw that distinction and then say there’s nothing deeper. Your own move contradicts your conclusion.

[Meta_U]

@Sam26

OC 77 and 78 shift to a different angle on certainty through the example of checking a calculation. You might check it twice, or get someone else to check it. But would you check it twenty times? Would you get twenty people to check it? Witt’s answer is no, and the question is why not.

I think this is a misreading. Witt asks, would the certainty be greater if checked twenty times. And he answers with: “And can I give a reason why it isn’t?”. That implies that he thinks checking twenty times would increase the certainty.

It is the carrying out of the practise and producing success from it, which creates the certainty. The more times the practise is carried out, and produces success, the higher the degree of certainty. The degree of certainty continues to increase.

It’s like an inductive generalization, the more examples we get, the higher the certainty. But the possibility of an exception is never ruled out absolutely, so certainty will increase, seemingly forever, without ever reaching the absolute.

[Fooloso4]

Here are two propositions:

2+2=4
2+2=5

Are they both true? Or both false? Or is one true and the other false? Or are they both neither true of false?

The earth revolves around the sun is a hinge. This proposition is true, it has been tested, doubted, and arrived at through reasoning.

@Sam26

He called them something different because they are something different.

He calls them propositions and describes their function, which differs from that of other propositions, in our language-games,

@Sam26

When a mathematical proposition is given the stamp of incontestability, it’s no longer operating in the space of truth and falsity the way propositions normally do.

Of course it is! Only its truth is not contested, unless someone claims something like 2+2=5.

@Sam26

You have two options, either the condition for the picture is itself propositional … Or the condition is something non-propositional,

Having a picture is the condition for evaluating. The content of that picture contains far more than propositions. You are, however, begging the question of what is to count as a hinge when you treat the background picture as hinges, and conclude that you have demonstrated that hinges are pre-linguistic because the background picture contains pre-liguistic elements.

[Fooloso4]

@Sam26

Where This Thread Fits in the Literature

How extensive is your access to the current literature? Are you relying on what you can find online or are you following what is in the current journals?

How decisive is this literature? From a historical perspective I think we have good reason to not put too much weight on it. Not only do interpretations change over time, they generate their own literature and generate questions, puzzles, and problems which can take on a life of their own.

The proliferation of hinge theories is antithetical Wittgenstein’s philosophy. He does not present a theory of hinges, but a description of our practices of inquiry, and the role of certainty and knowledge within those practices.

@Sam26

Witt’s own examples range from “here is a hand” to “my name is such and such” to “the earth has existed for a long time.”

More question begging!

[Fooloso4]

More on the need for a historical perspective on the literature:

From Topoi
November 2022

Introduction: Groundless Grounds and Hinges. Wittgenstein’s On Certainty within the Philosophical Tradition

Link

… Moreover, Saul Kripke’s reading of the Philosophical Investigations ([1982] centred on rule-following, conditioned and guided, both positively and negatively, the critical literature on Wittgenstein for many years.

Indeed, the interpreters of On Certainty have often wondered, sometimes without much caution, whether the Wittgenstein of these remarks is a foundationalist or an anti-foundationalist, a sceptic (and, if so, what kind of sceptic: whether ancient or modern, whether Pyrrhonian or Cartesian, and so on), or a convinced and radical anti-sceptic. But they have also asked, for example, whether he is a phenomenist or some kind of realist; or whether he is a pragmatist, and whether he is eventually a pragmatist in the sense of C. S. Peirce or of W. James. And one could go on recalling, for example, the naturalistic readings of On Certainty or the attempts to read in it premises and anticipations of contemporary enactivism or of the so-called “4E Cognitive Science”. This would explain the distrust of those scholars who have taken care to stress that Wittgenstein is not a philosopher that can be labelled and that his aim was never to defend any philosophical doctrine or theory.

Although On Certainty initially had difficulties in attracting the attention of Wittgenstein scholars, with the turn of the century this situation has changed radically,
and these late annotations have come to occupy a prominent place in Wittgenstein’s philosophical production, to the point that On Certainty has been considered to be Wittgenstein’s third masterpiece.

It may be that we have not yet moved beyond this interpretation of the text, but it seems likely that we will.

[Paine]

What I question in the works you cited is the equivalence made between “exempt from doubt” and “degrees of certainty.” I began my statement above quoting #30 where it simply states:

One does not infer matters of fact from one’s own certainty.

The difference between knowledge and “levels of conviction” is what needs to be discovered. How will we avoid mixing them since we are prone to do that?

306. “I don’t know whether this is a hand.” But do you know what the word ‘hand’ means? And don’t say “I know what it means for me now”. And isn’t it an empirical fact that this word is used in that way?

307. And here it’s strange that, even though I am completely sure about the use of words, have no doubts about it, nevertheless I can give no reasons for my ways of doing things with them. If I tried, I could give a thousand reasons, but none as sure as what they are supposed to justify.

308. ‘Knowledge’ and ‘sureness’ belong to different categories. They are not two ‘mental states’ like, say, ‘suspecting’ and ‘being sure’. (Here I’m assuming that it makes perfectly good sense for me to say, “I know what the word ‘doubt’ (for example) means”, and that this sentence assigns a logical role to the word ‘doubt’.) What we are now interested in is not being sure but knowing. That is, we’re interested in the fact that if any judgement at all is to be possible, then there can be no doubt about certain empirical propositions. Or, again: I am inclined to think that not everything that has the form of an empirical proposition is an empirical proposition.

The difference between the “propositional” and what is not said is drawn out many times in these notes. Perhaps the most salient being:

166. The difficulty is accepting the groundlessness of our believing.

167. It is clear that our empirical statements don’t all have the same status; for one can hold such a proposition firm and convert it from an empirical proposition into a rule //norm // of description.

Think of chemical investigations. In his laboratory Lavoisier makes experiments with substances and concludes that in combustion such‐and‐such happens. He doesn’t say that some other time something different might happen. He has got a particular world‐picture, which, of course, he has not invented but rather acquired as a child. I say world‐picture and not hypothesis, for this is the foundation of his research that is taken for granted and as such not even mentioned.

This statement combined with #308 fits in well with this distinction between knowledge and belief:

550. When someone believes something, one doesn’t always have to be able to answer the question ‘why he believes it’; but when he knows something, then it must be possible to answer the question “How does he know that?”

551. And if one answers this question, then it must be in accordance with generally accepted principles. That’s how one can know something like that.

Whatever else may be meant by the hinge metaphor, it at least seems to say the above.

This acceptance echoes the one heard in #166.

I propose to rename the set of notes to: The Groundlessness of our Believing.

[Joshs]

@Sam26

there’s a difference between the absence of doubt and an orientation toward the world. A rock doesn’t doubt. That’s absence of doubt. A dog is doing something different. It expects the ball to be where it lands. It navigates around obstacles it expects to persist. It recognizes its owner as the same person from day to day. These aren’t mere absences. They’re structured things that presuppose the reliability of the environment. Without them the dog’s behavior would be random rather than intelligible

What I am finding problematic in your analysis of the varieties of hinges is a certain foundationalist tendency touched on by Paine.

@Paine

I propose to rename the set of notes to: The Groundlessness of our Believing.

How are we to treat from a Wittgensteinian vantage your incorporation of a concept like ‘pre-linguistic’ hinge? Where in his later work does Wittgenstien draw a distinction between what is linguistic and what is pre-lingustic, and on what basis other than practices of use? Clearly, Wittgenstein is rejecting the view of language as symbolic representation, so he is not contrasting the linguistic with a mode of experience which excludes or is prior to symbols and representations. His notion of the linguistic is irreducibly intersubjective and performative-enactive. It is a social dance. In later works like On Certainty, does he introduce a way to think about what precedes the performative-enactive processes of language?

Or are we to treat language, not as symbolic representation but as enaction, as the groundless practical starting point for understanding terms like hinge, form of life and language game? I think the latter is the case, which means that your concept of the pre-linguistic is itself a mode of language-as-practice for Wittgenstein, one which isnt doing anything. The perceptual practices in dogs and children you’re pointing are already part of the human social weave where meaning lives. That is to say, we have to ask ‘what is the word ‘pre-linguistic‘ doing in Wittgenstein’s pragmatic linguistic sense? And we have to ask: what is a notion like ‘stable environmental features’ doing when we treat it as a hinge? Does asserting authoritatively that there really, really are such stable environmental features, do any more than Moore authoritatively asserting ‘this is my hand’ while waving it forcefully?

You claim there are hinges which “don’t shift with the riverbed. They aren’t susceptible to change through practice, science, or experience. They’re the ground beneath the riverbed. The map is linguistic. The territory is not. And it is the territory, not the map, that is doing the work at this level.”

Inst this exactly the kind of move Wittgenstein calls “language on holiday”? The words are still grammatically in order, but they’ve been pulled out of the ordinary contexts that give them sense. “Ground,” “territory,” “doing the work” , these normally have very specific uses. Here they’re being stretched to point at something that, by definition, isn’t part of any describable practice.As soon as we starting talking not about the river which changes continually and the riverbed which changes much more slowly, but about a foundation beneath them, a “territory which is doing the work,” we’ve stepped outside language and are now describing the machinery underneath it.

When you say “this is the ground beneath the riverbed,” what are you contrasting it with? In what situation would you say this, and what would count as getting it right or wrong? If no such situation can be given, then the expression isn’t clarifying anything, it’s just giving us a powerful image that tempts us to think we’ve explained something. And notice that in coming up with a contrast, a situation and criteria of correctness for the sense of meaning of ‘non-linguistic pre-bedrock territory’, we also acknowledge the contingency and groundlessness of the use of these terms, that they are irreducibly in play, ensconced within moving practices of sense-making.

If you are claiming that the robustness of pre-linguistic hinges comes from the robustness of environmental structure, then youre giving what a realist explanatory story: the world has stable features, and our most basic certainties are reliable because they track those features. The hinges are “secure” because they’re anchored in something mind-independent.

But Wittgenstein would reject that whole explanatory direction. in On Certainty, the key move is that hinges don’t get their status from anything more fundamental, not from evidence, not from reasoning, and not from the structure of the environment. Their “robustness” is just the fact that they are woven into our practice, our form of life. They’re what stand fast for us, and that “standing fast” is exhibited in what we do, not explained by what they correspond to.

[Sam26]

@Joshs

What I am finding problematic in your analysis of the varieties of hinges is a certain foundationalist tendency touched on by Paine.

My claim is not that knowledge rests on a class of basic beliefs justified independently of the rest (traditional foundationalism). My claim is that Witt’s stopping point is practical before it is propositional. Some certainties are enacted in our shared life before they are stated. When I distinguish non-linguistic from linguistic hinges, I am not identifying an inferential base from which language is derived. I am distinguishing different ways in which certainty stands fast within a form of life

[Paine]

The editors of the collection make helpful observations about the environment of current scholarship. I do, however, have an issue with this statement:

What we have just commented on explains the variety of essays collected in this issue. On the one hand, there are papers focused on a careful and conscious exegetical-analytical work of the remarks included in On Certainty. On the other hand, there are papers born from the conviction that historical-exegetical work is not an end in itself, but a means to a better approach to philosophical questions, both old and new.

I have no problem with distinguishing scholarly works by this measure. But if we do that, a distinction needs to be made between Wittgenstein’s treatment of what can be recognized on the list of theses and those brought in by others. That difference is elided when the editors say:

…Wittgenstein is not a philosopher that can be labelled and that his aim was never to defend any philosophical doctrine or theory.

Wittgenstein has spoken dismissively of debates over realism, idealism, and solipsism. The limits of psychology are a part of his method before it is a result.

The life of results is what concerns me in much of the secondary reading I have done so far. For instance, I agree with Wright’s conclusion that no comfort can be found for the “skeptic” in On Certainty but nonetheless find that he misunderstands what is being said.

[Fooloso4]

@Paine

The life of results is what concerns me in much of the secondary reading I have done so far.

This can clearly be seen when looking back at the shadow that Kripke cast over the literature on Wittgenstein. More recently Moyal-Sharrock’s “third Wittgenstein” and her ascription of an epistemological theory of enactivism to Wittgenstein have done much the same.

But none of this is new. There are still those who cannot see Plato except through the distortions of Plotinus or Aristotle through those of Aquinas.

This is not to say that we can ever be free of such influences, but we may be able to identify them and attempt separate the text from the commentary. Although some, of course, might see all of it as of a whole.

[Meta_U]

@Sam26

My aim is not to isolate famous passages or extract a set of disconnected themes, but to follow the movement of the work itself and to make that movement intelligible.

So far he has shown that he has not found any way to justify “certainty”.

@Sam26

You can understand “the population of France is 45 million” perfectly well and simply be wrong. The understanding is intact even when the claim fails.

But this is what we judge as misunderstanding. Both understanding and misunderstanding are essentially the very same thing within the mind of the person who has it, but one has been judged as a wrong understanding.

@Sam26

But Witt is identifying a class of propositions where this separation breaks down. Getting them wrong doesn’t register as being misinformed. It registers as not grasping the practice itself. If someone says “I am a woman” while being a man, or “I have never been near this table” while having used it daily for months, the problem isn’t that they have bad information.

There is no such difference. Nor is Wittgenstein trying to draw such a distinction. To think “I am a woman”, while being a man, is just another form of misunderstanding. When the man thought he was a woman, he misunderstood the principles by which that judgement is made. And the person who was wrong about the population of France, also just misunderstood the principles by which that judgement is made. They are two instances of the same thing, misunderstanding.

@Sam26

Getting them wrong doesn’t register as being misinformed. It registers as not grasping the practice itself. If someone says “I am a woman” while being a man, or “I have never been near this table” while having used it daily for months, the problem isn’t that they have bad information. The problem is that their competence as participants in the language game has come into question.

Isn’t it the case, that being incompetent in the language-game may be nothing other than being misinformed? So why insist on a difference here? We might look at mental activity for example, to derive such a difference, and possibly see that the person was informed, but the information didn’t register (faulty memory), or look at some other form of faulty mental activity.

But Wittgenstein doesn’t want to go there. Therefore he has no principles to insist on the distinction which you are making. Nor does he make that distinction. What would be required would be to distinguish different forms of misunderstanding, and that would be different issues in mental activity.

At 73 he asks about the difference between a mistake and a mental disturbance. Then at 75 he asks if he makes the same mistake over and over again how would that be other than just a mistake? So at 77-78 he turns things around, to show that the more times the practise is done, only seems to increase the certainty. So when we turn this back on 75, the more times the mistake is made, the propensity for the same mistake is enhanced, because each time that it gets through without being judged as mistaken, increases the certainty that it’s not mistaken. If this is “mental disturbance”, then mental disturbance is a matter of carrying on with the same understanding, when it might actually be judged as misunderstanding.

Since simple repetition (practise) cannot properly support certainty, because it could be mental disturbance, as shown (73-78), he proceeds at 80-83 to ask, “what counts as an adequate test”? The answer is that “logic” determines this, and the applicable logic is dependent on the language-game. So 83 provides an example, the truth of some empirical statements depends on the frame of reference.

Therefore, I interpret that when 82 says logic determines what counts as an adequate test, that the adequate test is relative. What counts as an adequate test is relative to the specific language-game which is relevant, as the example demonstrates. The “frame of reference” is the relevant language-game. This is consistent with Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, where he says that we seek the degree of certainty which is appropriate to the field of study.

@Sam26

The thread running through all five remarks is that competence in a practice isn’t built up from below by accumulating evidence. It’s already in place when evidence-gathering begins. You don’t check your way into the framework. You’re already standing in it when you start to check.

I have to say, that I think this goes somewhat off track from where Wittgenstein is leading. He has shown that practise does not guarantee certainty. I might be mistakenly calling that thing a table, over and over again for months, only increasing my subjective certitude, when I am actually mistaken. So competence in a practise may imply a framework (language-game), as you say, and the practise may support a subjective attitude of certitude, but the framework does not provide certainty. It may be based in misunderstanding which is mistaken for understanding.

[Fooloso4]

You seem to have missed the point:

84. … but it is interesting that, and how, it can be known.

It is known that the earth existed long before Moore’s birth. For him to have known this does not require him to do radiometric age-dating. Others have done that work. It is a geological fact that he learned.

288. I know, not just that the earth existed long before my birth, but also that it is a large body, that
     this has been established, that I and the rest of mankind have forebears, that there are books about
     all this, that such books don’t lie, etc. etc. etc. And I know all this? I believe it. This body of
     knowledge has been handed on to me and I have no grounds for doubting it, but, on the contrary, all
     sorts of confirmation.
     And why shouldn’t I say that I know all this? Isn’t that what one does say?

It is not just that he is certain of it, it is supported by a body of knowledge.

Moore’s “I know” in this case is not a misuse of the word. It is “what one says”

@Sam26

The question isn’t whether it’s true but what has to be in place for it to be the kind of thing that could be true or false.

The question isn’t what has to be in place for it to be the kind of thing that could be true, but rather:

85. … what goes into someone’s knowing this?

In part the answer is:

He must know what it means to say: the earth has already existed for such and such a length of time.

It is, in other words, a conceptual problem. It requires knowing that the earth has a history. That it is not a fixed and unchanging center of things.

A mountain may appear to be permanent but it too is in the flux of time. What goes into someone knowing that the earth has existed long before their birth is not simply a non-specific framework. If that framework does not include modern science it obviously cannot account for what is known about the history of the earth.

In addition, there are people who are certain that the earth is 6,000 years old, others may be certain that it has always been and always will be, without beginning or end.

@Sam26

We’d be at OC 166, the difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing. The question isn’t a puzzle to be solved. It’s a way of showing that what we take for knowledge here has no grounds beneath it.

Once again you are conflating belief and knowledge. Moore had ample grounds for knowing that the earth existed before his birth. The difference turns on the fact that grounds can be given for what is known. That one knows can be shown. (14)

@Sam26

The word “know” is doing no work here.

It is, rather, that the “I” does no work here. “It is known …” and it can be shown to be something known. Whether or not this will satisfy the radical skeptic is a different question.

[Sam26]

@Fooloso4

@Sam26

We’d be at OC 166, the difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing. The question isn’t a puzzle to be solved. It’s a way of showing that what we take for knowledge here has no grounds beneath it.

Once again you are conflating belief and knowledge. Moore had ample grounds for knowing that the earth existed before his birth. The difference turns on the fact that grounds can be given for what is known. That one knows can be shown. (14)

You say Moore had ample grounds for knowing the earth existed before his birth. But OC 84 says exactly the opposite. Witt says if Moore had told us he knew the distance between certain stars, we’d conclude he had made some special investigation, and we’d want to know what it was. But Moore chose precisely a case in which we all seem to know the same as he, and without being able to say how. Moore hasn’t pursued any line of thought open to the rest of us but that we haven’t followed. There is no investigation. There are no grounds to display. So I’ll ask you directly, what are these ample grounds? Name them. Because Moore can’t, and that’s Witt’s point.

On OC 14, “that he does know takes some shewing” isn’t Witt offering Moore a lifeline as you seem to think. It’s Witt stating a condition Moore cannot meet. OC 15 completes the thought: giving the assurance “I know” doesn’t suffice, it needs to be objectively established that no mistake was possible. The whole passage is showing that Moore’s claim collapses precisely because the shewing can’t be done. The certainty here isn’t epistemic, i.e., the result of an investigation whose grounds could be displayed. It’s presupposed by the practice within which displaying grounds operates. Witt isn’t telling Moore to try harder. He’s telling him the attempt is misconceived.

And the conflation charge has it backwards. I’m not conflating belief and knowledge. You are conflating a hinge certainty with ordinary knowledge and then treating OC as though Witt’s point is that Moore just needs better evidence. That is Moore’s mistake, and you keep repeating it. OC 83 says the truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference. Not to the space of grounds and evidence. To the frame of reference. Treating a framework condition as though it were an epistemic achievement waiting to be cashed out is precisely the confusion Witt spends the entire text working against.

[Fooloso4]

@Sam26

So I’ll ask you directly, what are these ample grounds? Name them. Because Moore can’t, and that’s Witt’s point.

There is no indication that he can’t. If he doesn’t then that is a different issue.

You ask directly but pay no attention to answer given by Wittgenstein. Once again:

288. I know, not just that the earth existed long before my birth, but also that it is a large body, that
     this has been established, that I and the rest of mankind have forebears, that there are books about
     all this, that such books don’t lie, etc. etc. etc. And I know all this? I believe it. This body of
     knowledge has been handed on to me and I have no grounds for doubting it, but, on the contrary, all
     sorts of confirmation.
     And why shouldn’t I say that I know all this? Isn’t that what one does say?

It seems as though you have not understood the concept of a body of knowledge.

[Paine]

@Fooloso4

This is not to say that we can ever be free of such influences, but we may be able to identify them and attempt separate the text from the commentary.

I share your desire to find the original intended meaning in writings. That is a job for Hercules in many cases. I give myself a smaller preliminary task: When considering different responses to Wittgenstein, where do they stand in relation to the description of the project in Philosophical Investigations from #108 to #115. The following from #109 is particularly clear:

And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them.

Does the “third wave”, touted by Moyal-Sharrock and company, signal that the prohibition of 109 has been lifted by Wittgenstein in On Certainty?

I don’t think Wittgenstein did that. But if he did, it becomes a different book from the one I am reading.

[Sam26]

@Fooloso4

It seems as though you have not understood the concept of a body of knowledge.

You can give your opinion about my understanding, but it’s my opinion that you don’t understand hinges, nor do you understand what Witt is doing in OC. I don’t see any reason to continue this discussion.

All you are to me is a troll.