But as I understand it looking closer could never provide Wittgenstein with justification for knowledge, and thus it is odd to say that "looking closer" will somehow yield justification. — Leontiskos

Yep. He and I might agree with you. Here he is perhaps looking at common misuses of "know".

The oddity is that the ultimate justification for empirical knowledge is usually thought to be sense data, and so for Wittgenstein to say that sense data does not count as a justification seems to commit him to the view that knowledge of this kind does not exist at all. — Leontiskos

Yep. Do you think Wittgenstein would agree that "the ultimate justification for empirical knowledge is usually thought to be sense data"? I doubt it. I can't imagine him using such a construct. it's the sort of thing he found so disagreeable in the Vienna Circle.

Would it help if we noticed that Wittgenstein is acknowledging uses of "know" that he subsequently argues are illegitimate?

Would it help if we noticed that Wittgenstein is acknowledging uses of "know" that he subsequently argues are illegitimate? — Banno

Sure I can see that, but I am wondering if he would be able to provide a legitimate use of "know."

hence were there is no proposition to supply the justification, one cannot be properly said to know. — Banno

And yet, in 3 and 7 he gives examples of things he knows without giving propositional justification.

By the way, I agree that whether Wittgenstein dislikes Hume is bedsides the point.

The point about texts as a whole is a general point regarding interpretation. For example, if an author says one thing and then another that seems to contract it, we need to pay attention and see it the seeming contradiction can be reconciled.

Trouble is, this text is not a whole. It is an incomplete process, a work in progress. Sam26 and I have pointed this out repeatedly. — Banno

And as I responded: where does this leave the reader? And:

The act of thinking, both for the writer and the interpretive reader, takes place without sight of the finish line. There may, in fact, be no finish line.

and:

It is within the space and tension of interpretive uncertainty that we engage the text, whether it is a completed whole or not.

If he says "x" and then a few pages later seems to contradict this, you might try to explain this away by claiming that the text is incomplete, but this seems to me to be a way a trying to avoid the problem.

No. It is a prompt towards seeking justification - "Can't you see it?. Look closer". — Banno

How is "look closer" propositional justification? It is not about the proposition of looking closer but the act of looking closer.

Notice that (7) does not include the word "Know"? — Banno

7. My life shows that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there ...

And yet, in 3 and 7 he gives examples of things he knows without giving propositional justification. — Fooloso4

And does he maintain this position despite his later arguments? That's kinda the point.

How is "look closer" propositional justification? — Fooloso4

It's not. Again, that's the point.

We're never going to come to a consensus on OC, that's clear. There will always be some interpretation that someone has that you'll disagree with. What's important is that Witt established that there are some very basic beliefs about the world (call them hinges, foundations, Moorean propositions, call them what you like) that are starting points for language games, a place where there is no need for justification.

I think this idea has ramifications beyond epistemology. I think it solves the problem posed by Godel's two theorems. These hinge beliefs seem to exist in any system where proofs are required, whether epistemological or mathematical. This of course goes beyond anything Witt talked about in OC, but I think it has merit.

You’re making Wittgenstein’s point for him. He sees Moore’s raising of his hand as a performance which is grounded in a picture of the world which cannot be proved more correct than any other. To doubt the truth of this picture is to substitute a different picture, a different language game, just as doubting the picture of the world implied by the rules of chess is to no longer be playing chess. Moore’s demonstration convinces doubters of its certainty by bringing them to look at the world in a different way, not by satisfying them of its correctness. — Joshs

If Moore knows, that would mean there's a sense of "know" that amounts to being unable to doubt. And per Hume, you can't prove what you can't doubt. So Moore would have some kind of unprovable knowledge, which doesn't sound right. — frank

Moore's paper, "Proof of an External World”, is an appeal to common sense. His intuition tells him that a philosophical analysis arriving at a radically skeptical answer is not a source of truth but evidence that something has gone wrong. I believe Wittgenstein would hold the same position as Moore when he says, “I certainly did at the moment know that which I expressed by the combination of certain gestures with saying the words ‘There is one hand and here is another’. I knew that there was one hand in the place indicated by combining a certain gesture with my first utterance of ‘here’ and that there was another in the different place indicated by combining a certain gesture with my second utterance of ‘here’. 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!” However, Wittgenstein seems to think Moore is in error here in a different way. I believe Norman Malcolm summaries this position nicely when he says:

"But, this insight led Moore into an error. (This is the second layer of meaning.). His perception of the absurdity of saying , in that situation, "I don't know if I have clothes on (or have hands)" drew him into the assumption that it would be correct to say "I know I have clothes on." Yet what Moore had actually perceived was that nothing in that situation made a doubt as to whether he had cloths on intelligible. He should have concluded that both "I don't know" and "I know" were out of place in that context. "I know" is often used to express the absence of doubt. But the absence of doubt and the unintelligibility of doubt are very different things. Wittgenstein says in the Investigations, "I know...may mean "I do not doubt...but does not mean that the words "I doubt...are senseless, that doubt is logically excluded." Wittgenstein is referring here to the way that "I know..." is used in ordinary language. He is saying, correctly, that this expression is not used in ordinary language to make a conceptual, philosophical point. But this is kind of point that Moore needed to make, namely, the point that the statement "It is uncertain that I have clothes on" would be a conceptual absurdity in that situation. I suspect that Moore was misled here by the assumption of Excluded Middle: "Either I know it or I don't know it." He perceived that "I don't know it" couldn't be said, and wrongly concluded that "I know it" must therefore by right and true." (Moore and Wittgenstein on the Sense of "I know")

Some remarks on this summary

I find it strange to not say "I know here is one hand" in the particular context. Would it also be absurd for Moore to say in front of such an audience of skeptical philosophers that "I know it is raining outside" while looking outside the window while it is raining. Malcom says, "Being perfectly certain (i.e. objectively certain) of something in the sense of regarding it as unintelligible that one might be wrong-is an attitude, a stance, that we take towards various matters: but this attitude does not necessarily carry truth in its wake. (Nothing is Hidden)". But in these contexts, are they not carrying "truth in its wake." How is what Moore is doing, by holding up a hand and pointing to it and saying "Here is one hand" making a conceptual point only? Is this not a way of establishing the truth, or the correctness of what he is saying? Moore is not trying to describe the language game "I know", he trying to get the language game of "I know" right. He is responding to the skeptical philosopher that has taken the language game of "I know" and distorting it in such a way that knowledge becomes a logical impossibility. For Moore, in the example he provides, "knowing that" merges with "knowing how". Moore is aware of the truth, understands the fact that he has two hands by demonstrating that he can point to one hand and saying "Here is a hand." Why can't there be other ways of clearing up philosophical confusion other than describing how words are ordinarily use. For example, why not tidy up the concept itself, narrow its scope, broaden its scope, eliminate its absurdities, etc.

I agree with this, but as part of the web the work should not get lost. — Fooloso4

Do you think that's happening here? If so, what's getting lost? I'm asking.

Why can't there be other ways of clearing up philosophical confusion other than describing how words are ordinarily use. — Richard B

I think the rudder of OC is that people could walk away from Moore's work thinking that because he used the word know, that his assertion is justifiable when it's not. In other words, he's heading off more mistaken metaphysics?

I suppose a key difference I see is that Moore is ultimately concerned with the truth. It's not just that he knows he has a body, but also that it's true—it really is the case that he has a body. What bothers him isn't just the doubt of the obvious.

Whereas, I at least try to read "On Certainty," as being about, well... certainty—justification, etc. After all, Wittgenstein didn't title it "On Truth." At least, I think this is a more charitable reading. Certainly, there are folks like Rorty who think Wittgenstein is telling us about truth. Indeed, Rorty argues that the main benefit of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is that it has shown us that questions about “which pieces of our language lock on to reality and which do not,” and the questions of metaphysics and truth more generally, are “simply... a waste of time.”

Likewise there are post-structuralist readers of Wittgenstein who claim that his findings suggest cognitive relativism, discussed in the other Wittgenstein thread on nested forms of life.

Either of these views deflate truth. Yet in doing so they seem to recreate the same sort of skepticism that Wittgenstein is at pains to try to correct.

I'd argue that it is possible for us to accept that our notions of truth are inextricably bound up in malleable social practices and language games without jettisoning the idea that there is something external to human social practices grounding such notions, that our language games are not arbitrary, nor are they determined by "nothing but" social practices (i.e., the principles of social practice are not self-contained and subsistent, nor arbitrary and untinelligible). So, we can agree that claims as basic as "I have hands," require the use of some language game, that they always take place in the context of such a game, without having to conclude that our having hands or not is merely a matter of language games. All such systems have first principles, but this only implies a sort of deflation if one assumes first principles are arbitrary.

Ultimately, it seems to me that Wittgenstein is circling around the same ideas Aristotle grapples with in his writings on discourse and the instruments of reason. A crucial question here then, which I do think Wittgenstein leaves vague, is if reason is "nothing but" these tools and instruments.

Obviously for Aristotle the two are not equivalent. Logic isn't just about speech. Logic isn't just formal logic. By Wittgenstein's time logic has largely been reduced to mere form. Yet material logic is important too; there is form and matter. So he will tell us things like this in the Prior Analytics:

"All syllogism, and a fortiori demonstration, is addressed not to the spoken word, but to the discourse within the soul, and though we can always raise objections to the spoken word, to the inward discourse we cannot always object."

Basically, we can speak the untinelligible. We can say "square circle," or "A is B and ~B," but this is not equivalent with believing the untinelligible.

In a way, "On Certainty" is an excellent demonstration of the foibles of reducing logic, and discourse as a whole, to form (although it is perhaps not intended that way).

And does he maintain this position despite his later arguments? That's kinda the point. — Banno

Yes. There is a direct through line with propositional analysis on one side and in the Tractatus' showing/seeing on the other, plus form of life in PI, plus doing/acting ("In the beginning was the deed.") in OC.

How is "look closer" propositional justification?
— Fooloso4
It's not. Again, that's the point. — Banno

I don't think that is the point. Looking/seeing stands over/against/ beside propositional justification. A few of many examples:

PI 66. ... look and see whether there is anything common to all ... [emphasis in the original]

To repeat: don’t think, but look!

And the upshot of these considerations is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: similarities in the large and in the small.

PI 122 A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. a Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation [übersichtliche Darstellung] produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.

I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous [durchsichtig] view of the foundations of possible buildings. (CV, p. 7)

(I once read somewhere that a geometrical figure, with the words "Look at this", serves as a proof for certain Indian mathematicians. This looking too effects an alteration in one's way of seeing.)

(Zettel 461)

I agree with this, but as part of the web the work should not get lost.
— Fooloso4

Do you think that's happening here? If so, what's getting lost? I'm asking. — frank

Do you mean by referencing Hume? No, not as it stands.

Do you mean by referencing Hume? No, not as it stands. — Fooloso4

No, just in general. Is there something you think is being lost?

I'd argue that it is possible for us to accept that our notions of truth are inextricably bound up in malleable social practices and language games without jettisoning the idea that there is something external to human social practices grounding such notions, that our language games are not arbitrary, nor are they determined by "nothing but" social practices (i.e., the principles of social practice are not self-contained and subsistent, nor arbitrary and untinelligible). So, we can agree that claims as basic as "I have hands," require the use of some language game, that they always take place in the context of such a game, without having to conclude that our having hands or not is merely a matter of language games. All such systems have first principles, but this only implies a sort of deflation if one assumes first principles are arbitrary — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is assuming there is something ‘external’ to human social practices which leads to dualism, skepticism and arbitrariness. Our practices are not on one side and the world on the other of a divide . Our linguistic practices are grounded in and express material circumstances as those circumstances interact with our practices. As Joseph Rouse argues:

“The "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself. The practice itself, however, already incorporates the material circumstances in and through which it is enacted

No, just in general. Is there something you think is being lost? — frank

In a remark to Drury Wittgenstein says :

Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things that look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: ‘I’ll show you differences.’

Connections often obscure differences. When differences are taken into account the problem of what this guy is saying and what it means is compounded by what that guy is saying and what it means.

I don't disagree with the quote. However, I do disagree with your formulation that the world is "nothing but social practice," and "social practices all the way down." There is an important sense in which a rock or a horse is not a social practice. But you seem to be stretching the term "social practice," to the point where it has at best a merely analogical relationship to how the term is usually used, since it's straightforwardly ridiculous to claim a horse is a "social practice," given common usage of the term, so I may be missing something.

Is the idea at work here also a sort of panpsychism?

Anyhow, a rejection of subject/object dualism, a rejection of truth as mere correspondence, and embrace of enactivism and phenomenology (hallmarks of most pre-modern philosophy anyhow) need not require the assertion that a horse and its intelligibility have no principles/causation outside human social practice.

Here it is worth considering Kenneth Gallagher's summation of the metaphysical (as opposed to physical) principle of causation—“that the order of becoming and existence must be intelligible; that no phase of the process of contingent existence is intelligible in itself; and that therefore contingent existence is always relative existence, essentially referred, qua existing to another.” To be intelligible—to not be arbitrary—social practice must have its explanation in something other than itself since its essence does not explain its existence. On the view that the world is intelligible, such an explanation must be possible.

For example, human cultures have come up with different ways to categorize the colors. However, no cultures gave names to colors corresponding to light of ultraviolet wavelengths. Why? Because human beings, and our hominid ancestors, do not have photoreceptors capable of distinguishing UV light (unlike most insects). But the biology of the human eye, its lack of sensitivity to UV light, can only be considered a "social practice," if we use the term equivocally. Eyes are something humans have by nature, not an activity they engage in (except to the extent that all form is activity).

Looking/seeing stands over/against/ beside propositional justification — Fooloso4

Indeed. Imagine I am looking at a drawing of a duck , and you come along and say ‘I see the image of a rabbit there’. I say ‘where’? You respond ‘look closely’. If I then spot the rabbit, it wasn’t the result of a process of justification but of seeing differently, reconfiguring the pattern of connections among the elements of the picture such that something new emerges from the ‘same’ drawing.

I do disagree with your formulation that the world is "nothing but social practice," and "social practices all the way down."…” contingent existence is always relative existence, essentially referred, qua existing to another.” To be intelligible—to not be arbitrary—social practice must have its explanation in something other than itself since its essence does not explain its existence. On the view that the world is intelligible, such an explanation must be possible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s not social practice all the way down, it’s normativity all the way down. That is, the contingent relationality of existence doesn’t ground itself in some non-normative explanation. Rouse doesn’t separate nature and culture. He instead refers to ‘nature-culture’ as a single entity. This doesn’t mean that linguistic practices directly influence the nature of DNA functioning in rats. It means that the physiological and environmental culture within which genes operate influence how they operate, and the environment within subatomic processes occur shape the nature of those processes and even their ‘lawfulness’.

the biology of the human eye, its lack of sensitivity to UV light, can only be considered a "social practice," if we use the term equivocally. Eyes are something humans have by nature, not an activity they engage in (except to the extent that all form is activity). — Count Timothy von Icarus

The biology of the human eye is not a social practice, but it is a practice. The eye exists by functioning, and its functioning takes place within an integrated internal and external milieu which continually shape how it functions, in a way not unlike the way that linguistic practices shape the meaning of concepts for humans. We know now that environmental factors directly shape genetic structures, so any attempt to locate a pre-cultural explanation for the origin of an eye will be lacking.

Good example.

Connections often obscure differences. When differences are taken into account the problem of what this guy is saying and what it means is compounded by what that guy is saying and what it means. — Fooloso4

Yea, it's a thing to take an issue and have Quine and Heidegger discuss it. You see the things they agree on, what the bone of contention amounts to. But I wasn't talking about that. With regard to this thread: what do you think is being overlooked about Wittgenstein's thoughts? Nothing?

what do you think is being overlooked about Wittgenstein's thoughts? Nothing? — frank

The central importance of seeing.

The central importance of seeing. — Fooloso4

Seeing as in the visual sense? Or seeing as something the mind does, as in "I see your point."

Seeing as in the visual sense? Or seeing as something the mind does, as in "I see your point." — frank

Both and more. Some things I posted in prior discussions. This in no way meant to be comprehensive:

113. I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience “noticing an aspect”.

114. Its causes are of interest to psychologists.
115. We are interested in the concept and its place among the concepts of experience.
— Philosophy of Psychology - a Fragment



111. Two uses of the word “see”.
The one: “What do you see there?” - “I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness in these two faces” - let the man to whom I tell this be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.
What is important is the categorial difference between the two ‘objects’ of sight.

He goes on to say at 116:

But we can also see the illustration now as one thing, now as another. - So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.

The idea of seeing something according to an interpretation blurs the line between seeing and thinking. "Now I see it" can mean, "Now I understand". Seeing is not limited to passive reception, it involves both perception and conception.

254. The concept of an aspect is related to the concept of imagination.
In other words, the concept ‘Now I see it as . . .’ is related to ‘Now I am imagining that’.
Doesn’t it take imagination to hear something as a variation on a particular theme? And yet one does perceive something in so hearing it.

The focus on propositions can occlude the importance of seeing for both the early and latter Wittgenstein. Seeing connections involves making connections and seeing things in light of this perspective.

Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (Culture and Value)

What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory, but of a fertile new point of view. (CV 18)

I can't see how any of the multiple quotes count against the contention that Wittgenstein held the proper use of "know" to involve justified true belief.

- Good points. :up:

I can't see how any of the multiple quotes count against the contention that Wittgenstein held the proper use of "know" to involve justified true belief. — Banno

Must the justification for a belief that is true be in the form of a proposition?

How is what Moore is doing, by holding up a hand and pointing to it and saying "Here is one hand" making a conceptual point only? Is this not a way of establishing the truth, or the correctness of what he is saying? Moore is not trying to describe the language game "I know", he trying to get the language game of "I know" right — Richard B

One doesn’t get a language game right or wrong, one gets issues defined within the parameters of a language game correct or incorrect . The game itself, the particular pattern of connections between elements that sets up the rules and criteria of validation, is grasped like a picture.

Must the justification for a belief that is true be in the form of a proposition? — Fooloso4

Not all beliefs have justification. If a belief is to count as a piece of knowledge, then according to the usual account, it must be justified. Hence unjustified true beliefs on that account do not count as knowledge.

If A justifies B, presumably the truth of A justifies B. I don't know what could count as a justification that could not be put into propositional form and take a truth value.

There's a bunch of misunderstanding about "propositional form". What should be understood is that if A justifies B, then B is true because A is true. Hence it should be possible to provide a proposition that states A.

If A justifies B, presumably the truth of A justifies B. I don't know what could count as a justification that could not be put into propositional form and take a truth value. — Banno

If I say "the key is on the desk" what proposition justifies it? I might say that I left it there I might add that no one has been in the room. That keys do not just disappear. In the end the only thing that justifies it is not a proposition but finding the key on the table.

When Wittgenstein says:

7. My life shows that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so on. - I tell a friend e.g. "Take that chair over there", "Shut the door", etc. etc.

It is not only that propositional justification is not necessary but that a proposition cannot serve as justification.

In the end the only thing that justifies it is not a proposition but finding the key on the table. — Fooloso4

The justification is that you found the key on the table. Everything that follows the word "that" is a proposition.

It is not only that propositional justification is not necessary but that a proposition cannot serve as justification. — Fooloso4

This sounds like you're misunderstanding what a proposition is.