d r a w i n g p r o j e c t | " o n c e r t a i n t y "
“on certainty” (1969) is a compilation of ludwig wittgenstein’s notes from the last two years of his life, mostly reflections on the issue of epistemological doubt prompted by g.e.moore’s attempts to refute philosophical scepticism in his articles “a defence of common sense” (1925) and “proof of an external world” (1939). moore writes: “i can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. how? by holding up my two hands, and saying, as i make a certain gesture with my right hand, ‘here is one hand’, and adding, as i make a certain gesture with the left, ‘and here is another.’” wittgenstein was clear that moore had failed to refute philosophical scepticism, but remained interested in moore’s remarks as representing not so much instances of “certain knowledge” as examples of situations where doubt is, essentially, nonsensical. this thought underlies and guides the series of notes: that everything cannot be doubted, because doubting can only occur within a framework, or as wittgenstein puts it: “doubting and non-doubting behaviour. there is the first only if there is the second.” [OC 354]
set of approximately 170 drawings
pen & ink on paper
8” x 4.5”
1. If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest. When one says that such and such a proposition can't be proved, of course that does not mean that it can't be derived from other propositions; any proposition can be derived from other ones. But they may be no more certain than it is itself. (On this a curious remark by H. Newman.)
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4. "I know that I am a human being." In order to see how unclear the sense of this proposition is, consider its negation. At most it might be taken to mean "I know I have the organs of a human". (E. g. a brain which, after all, no one has ever yet seen.) But what about such a proposition as "I know I have a brain"? Can I doubt it? Grounds for doubt are lacking! Everything speaks in its favour, nothing against it. Nevertheless it is imaginable that my skull should turn out empty when it was operated on. |
20. "Doubting the existence of the external world" does not mean for example doubting the existence of a planet, which later observations proved to exist. - Or does Moore want to say that knowing that here is his hand is different in kind from knowing the existence of the planet Saturn? Otherwise it would be possible to point out the discovery of the planet Saturn to the doubters and say that its existence has been proved, and hence the existence of the external world as well. |
36. "A is a physical object" is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn't yet understand either what "A" means, or what "physical object" means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and "physical object" is a logical concept. (Like colour, quantity,...) And that is why no such proposition as: "There are physical objects" can be formulated. Yet we encounter such unsuccessful shots at every turn. |
66. I make assertions about reality, assertions which have different degrees of assurance. How does the degree of assurance come out? What consequences has it? We may be dealing, for example, with the certainty of memory, or again of perception. I may be sure of something, but still know what test might convince me of error. I am e. g. quite sure of the date of a battle, but if I should find a different date in a recognized work of history, I should alter my opinion, and this would not mean I lost all faith in judging. |
67. Could we imagine a man who keeps on making mistakes where we regard a mistake as ruled out, and in fact never encounter one? E. g. he says he lives in such and such a place, is so and so old, comes from such and such a city, and he speaks with the same certainty (giving all the tokens of it) as I do, but he is wrong. But what is his relation to this error? What am I to suppose? |
70. For months I have lived at address A, I have read the name of the street and the number of the house countless times, have received countless letters here and given countless people the address. If I am wrong about it, the mistake is hardly less that if I were (wrongly) to believe I was writing Chinese and not German. |
84. Moore says he knows that the earth existed long before his birth. And put like that it seems to be a personal statement about him, even if it is in addition a statement about the physical world. Now it is philosophically uninteresting whether Moore knows this or that, but it is interesting that, and how, it can be known. If Moore had informed us that he knew the distance separating certain stars, we might conclude from that that he had made some special investigations, and we shall want to know what these were. But Moore chooses precisely a case in which we all seem to know the same as he, and without being able to say how. I believe e. g. that I know as much about this matter (the existence of the earth) as Moore does, and if he knows that it is as he says, then I know it too. For it isn't, either, as if he had arrived at this proposition by pursuing some line of thought which, while it is open to me, I have not in fact pursued. |
90. "I know" has a primitive meaning similar to and related to "I see" ("wissen", "videre"). And "I knew he was in the room, but he wasn't in the room" is like "I saw him in the room, but he wasn't there". "I know" is supposed to express a relation, not between me and the sense of a proposition (like "I believe") but between me and a fact. So that the fact is taken into my consciousness. (Here is the reason why one wants to say that nothing that goes on in the outer world is really known, but only what happens in the domain of what are called sense-data.) This would give us a picture of knowing as the perception of an outer event through visual rays which project it as it is into the eye and the consciousness. Only then the question at once arises whether one can be certain of this projection. And this picture does indeed show how our imagination presents knowledge, but not what lies at the bottom of this presentation. |
93. The propositions presenting what Moore 'knows' are all of such a kind that it is difficult to imagine why anyone should believe the contrary. E. g. the proposition that Moore has spent his whole life in close proximity to the earth. - Once more I can speak of myself here instead of speaking of Moore. What could induce me to believe the opposite? Either a memory, or having been told. - Everything that I have seen or heard gives me the conviction that no man has ever been far from the earth. Nothing in my picture of the world speaks in favour of the opposite. |
102. Might I not believe that once, without knowing it, perhaps is a state of unconsciousness, I was taken far away from the earth - that other people even know this, but do not mention it to me? But this would not fit into the rest of my convictions at all. Not that I could describe the system of these convictions. Yet my convictions do form a system, a structure. |
106. Suppose some adult had told a child that he had been on the moon. The child tells me the story, and I say it was only a joke, the man hadn't been on the moon; no one has ever been on the moon; the moon is a long way off and it is impossible to climb up there or fly there. - If now the child insists, saying perhaps there is a way of getting there which I don't know, etc. what reply could I make to him? What reply could I make to the adults of a tribe who believe that people sometimes go to the moon (perhaps that is how they interpret their dreams), and who indeed grant that there are no ordinary means of climbing up to it or flying there? - But a child will not ordinarily stick to such a belief and will soon be convinced by what we tell him seriously. |
108. "But is there then no objective truth? Isn't it true, or false, that someone has been on the moon?" If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our whole system of physics forbids us to believe it. For this demands answers to the questions "How did he overcome the force of gravity?" "How could he live without an atmosphere?" and a thousand others which could not be answered. But suppose that instead of all these answers we met the reply: "We don't know how one gets to the moon, but those who get there know at once that they are there; and even you can't explain everything." We should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from someone who said this. |
117. Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life. When I say "Nothing speaks for, everything against it," this presupposes a principle of speaking for and against. That is, I must be able to say what would speak for it. |
130. But isn't it experience that teaches us to judge like this, that is to say, that it is correct to judge like this? But how does experience teach us, then? We may derive it from experience, but experience does not direct us to derive anything from experience. If it is the ground for our judging like this, and not just the cause, still we do not have a ground for seeing this in turn as a ground. |
135. But do we not simply follow the principle that what has always happened will happen again (or something like it)? What does it mean to follow this principle? Do we really introduce it into our reasoning? Or is it merely the natural law which our inferring apparently follows? This latter it may be. It is not an item in our considerations. |
144. The child learns to believe a host of things. I. e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it. |
182. The more primitive idea is that the earth never had a beginning. No child has reason to ask himself how long the earth has existed, because all change takes place on it. If what is called the earth really came into existence at some time - which is hard enough to picture - then one naturally assumes the beginning as having been an inconceivably long time ago. |
233. If a child asked me whether the earth was already there before my birth, I should answer him that the earth did not begin only with my birth, but that it existed long, long before. And I should have the feeling of saying something funny. Rather as if a child had asked if such and such a mountain were higher than a tall house that it had seen. In answering the question I should have to be imparting a picture of the world to the person who asked it. If I do answer the question with certainty, what gives me this certainty? |
238. I might therefore interrogate someone who said that the earth did not exist before his birth, in order to find out which of my convictions he was at odds with. And then it might be that he was contradicting my fundamental attitudes, and if that were how it was, I should have to put up with it. Similarly if he said he had at some time been on the moon. |
239. I believe that every human being has two human parents; but Catholics believe that Jesus only had a human mother. And other people might believe that there are human beings with no parents, and give no credence to all the contrary evidence. Catholics believe as well that in certain circumstances a wafer completely changes its nature, and at the same time that all evidence proves the contrary. And so if Moore said "I know that this is wine and not blood", Catholics would contradict him. |
240. What is the belief that all human beings have parents based on? On experience. And how can I base this sure belief on my experience? Well, I base it not only on the fact that I have known the parents of certain people but on everything that I have learnt about the sexual life of human beings and their anatomy and physiology: also on what I have heard and seen of animals. But then is that really a proof? |
264. I could imagine Moore being captured by a wild tribe, and their expressing the suspicion that he has come from somewhere between the earth and the moon. Moore tells them that he knows etc. but he can't give them the grounds for his certainty, because they have fantastic ideas of human ability to fly and know nothing about physics. This would be an occasion for making that statement. |
274. One such is that if someone's arm is cut off it will not grow again. Another, if someone's head is cut off he is dead and will never live again. Experience can be said to teach us these propositions. However, it does not teach us them in isolation: rather, it teaches us a host of interdependent propositions. If they were isolated I might perhaps doubt them, for I have no experience relating to them. |
275. If experience is the ground of our certainty, then naturally it is past experience. And it isn't for example just my experience, but other's people's, that I get knowledge from. Now one might say that it is experience again that leads us to give credence to others. But what experience makes me believe that the anatomy and physiology books don't contain what is false? Though it is true that this trust is backed up by my own experience. |
279. It is quite sure that motor cars don't grow out of the earth. We feel that if someone could believe the contrary he could believe everything that we say is untrue, and could question everything that we hold to be sure. But how does this one belief hang together with all the rest? We should like to say that someone who could believe that does not accept our whole system of verification. This system is something that a human being acquires by means of observation and instruction. I intentionally do not say "learns". |
315. That is to say, the teacher will feel that this is not really a legitimate question at all. And it would be just the same if the pupil cast doubt on the uniformity of nature, that is to say on the justification of inductive arguments. - The teacher would feel that this was only holding them up, that this way the pupil would only get stuck and make no progress. - And he would be right. It would be as if someone were looking for some object in a room; he opens a drawer and doesn't see it there; then he closes it again, waits, and opens it once more to see if perhaps it isn't there now, and keeps on like that. He has not learned to look for things. And in the same way this pupil has not learned how to ask questions. He has not learned the game that we are trying to teach him. |
337. One cannot make experiments if there are not some things that one does not doubt. But that does not mean that one takes certain presuppositions on trust. When I write a letter and post it, I take it for granted that it will arrive - I expect this. If I make an experiment I do not doubt the existence of the apparatus before my eyes. I have plenty of doubts, but not that. If I do a calculation I believe, without any doubts, that the figures on the paper aren't switching of their own accord, and I also trust my memory the whole time, and trust it without any reservation. The certainty here is the same as that of my never having been on the moon. |
347. "I know that that's a tree." Why does it strike me as if I did not understand the sentence? though it is after all an extremely simple sentence of the most ordinary kind? It is as if I could not focus my mind on any meaning. Simply because I don't look for the focus where the meaning is. As soon as I think of an everyday use of the sentence instead of a philosophical one, its meaning becomes clear and ordinary. |
370. But more correctly: The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings - shows that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question "How do I know..." drags out the language-game, or else does away with it. |
371. Doesn't "I know that that's a hand", in Moore's sense, mean the same, or more or less the same, as: I can make statements like "I have a pain in this hand" or 'this hand is weaker than the other" or "I once broke this hand", and countless others, in language-games where a doubt as to the existence of this hand does not come in? |
417. "I know that for the last month I have had a bath every day." What am I remembering? Each day and the bath each morning? No. I know that I bathed each day and I do not derive that from some other immediate datum. Similarly I say "I felt a pain in my arm" without this locality coming into my consciousness in any other way (such as by means of an image). |
428. For suppose a person of normal behavior assured us that he only believed his name was such-and-such, he believed he recognized the people he regularly lived with, he believed that he had hands and feet when he didn't actually see them, and so on. Can we show him it is not so from the things he does (and says)? |
431. "I know that this room is on the second floor, that behind the door a short landing leads to the stairs, and so on." One could imagine cases where I should come out with this, but they would be extremely rare. But on the other hand I show this knowledge day in, day out by my actions and also in what I say. Now what does someone else gather from these actions and words of mine? Won't it be just that I am sure of my ground? - From the fact that I have been living here for many weeks and have gone up and down the stairs every day he will gather that I know where my room is situated. - I shall give him the assurance "I know" when he does not already know things which would have compelled the conclusion that I knew. |
451. My objection against Moore, that the meaning of the isolated sentence "That is a tree" is undetermined, since it is not determined what the "that" is that is said to be a tree - doesn't work, for one can make the meaning more definite by saying, for example: "The object over there that looks like a tree is not an artificial imitation of a tree but a real one." |
459. If the shopkeeper wanted to investigate each of his apples without any reason, for the sake of being certain about everything, why doesn't he have to investigate the investigation? And can one talk of belief here (I mean belief as in 'religious belief', not surmise)? All psychological terms merely distract us from the thing that really matters. |
460. I go to the doctor, show him my hand and say "This is a hand, not...; I've injured it, etc., etc." Am I only giving him a piece of superfluous information? For example, mightn't one say: supposing the words "This is a hand" were a piece of information - how could you bank on his understanding this information? Indeed, if it is open to doubt 'whether that is a hand', why isn't it also open to doubt whether I am a human being who is informing the doctor of this? - But on the other hand one can imagine cases - even if they are very rare ones - where this declaration is not superfluous, or is only superfluous but not absurd. |
468. Someone says irrelevantly "That's a tree". He might say this sentence because he remembers having heard it in a similar situation; or he was suddenly struck by the tree's beauty and the sentence was an exclamation; or he was pronouncing the sentence to himself as a grammatical example; etc., etc. And now I ask him "How did you mean that?" and he replies "It was a piece of information directed at you." Shouldn't I be at liberty to assume that he doesn't know what he is saying, if he is insane enough to want to give me this information? |
476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc., etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc., etc. Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not? |
492. "Do I know or do I only believe...?" might also be expressed like this: What if it seemed to turn out that what until now has seemed immune to doubt was a false assumption? Would I react as I do when a belief has proved to be false? or would it seem to knock from under my feet the ground on which I stand in making any judgements at all? - But of course I do not intend this as a prophecy. Would I simply say "I should never have thought it!" - or would I (have to) refuse to revise my judgement - because such a 'revision' would amount to annihilation of all yardsticks? |
510. If I say "Of course I know that that's a towel" I am making an utterance. I have no thought of a verification. For me it is an immediate utterance. I don't think of past or future. (And of course it's the same for Moore, too.) It is just like directly taking hold of something, as I take hold of my towel without having doubts. |
554. In its language-game it is not presumptuous. There, it has no higher position than, simply, the human language-game. For there it has its restricted application. But as soon as I say this sentence outside its context, it appears in a false light. For then it is as if I wanted to insist that there are things that I know. God himself can't say anything to me about them. |
558. We say we know that water boils and does not freeze under such-and-such circumstances. Is it conceivable that we are wrong? Wouldn't a mistake topple all judgment with it? More: what could stand if that were to fall? Might someone discover something that made us say "It was a mistake"? Whatever may happen in the future, however water may behave in the future, - we know that up to now it has behaved thus in innumerable instances. This fact is fused into the foundations of our language-game. |
564. A language-game: bringing building stones, reporting the number of available stones. The number is sometimes estimated, sometimes established by counting. Then the question arises "Do you believe there are as many stones as that?", and the answer "I know there are - I've just counted them". But here the "I know" could be dropped. If, however, there are several ways of finding something out for sure, like counting, weighing, measuring the stack, then the statement "I know" can take the place of mentioning how I know. |
603. I am taught that under such circumstances this happens. It has been discovered by making the experiment a few times. Not that that would prove anything to us, if it weren't that this experience was surrounded by others which combine with it to form a system. Thus, people did not make experiments just about falling bodies but also about air resistence and all sorts of other things. But in the end I rely on these experiences, or on the reports of them, I feel no scruples about ordering my own activities in accordance with them. - But hasn't this trust also proved itself? So far as I can judge - yes. |
632. Certain and uncertain memory. If certain memory were not in general more reliable than uncertain memory, i. e., if it were not confirmed by further verification more often than uncertain memory was, then the expression of certainty and uncertainty would not have its present function in language. |
659. "I cannot be making a mistake about the fact that I have just had lunch." For if I say to someone "I have just eaten" he may believe that I am lying or have momentarily lost my wits but he won't believe that I am making a mistake. Indeed, the assumption that I might be making a mistake has no meaning here. But that isn't true. I might, for example, have dropped off immediately after the meal without knowing it and have slept for an hour, and now believe I have just eaten. But still, I distinguish here between different kinds of mistake. |
671. I fly from here to a part of the world where the people have only indefinite information, or none at all, about the possibility of flying. I tell them I have just flown there from... They ask me if I might be mistaken. - They have obviously a false impression of how the thing happens. (If I were packed up in a box it would be possible for me to be mistaken about the way I had travelled.) If I simply tell them that I can't be mistaken, that won't perhaps convince them; but it will if I describe the actual procedure to them. Then they will certainly not bring the possibility of a mistake into the question. But for all that - even if they trust me - they might believe I had been dreaming or that magic had made me imagine it. |