Wittgenstein On Certainty Quotes

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic

What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it.

If a blind man were to ask me “Have you got two hands?” I should not make sure by looking. If I were to have any doubt of it, then I don’t know why I should trust my eyes. For why shouldn’t I test my eyes by looking to find out whether I see my two hands? What is to be tested by what?

I want to say: We use judgements as principlesof judegement.

Certainty is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.

476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc. etc., - they learn to fetch books sit in armchairs, etc. etc.

471. It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to being at the beginning. And not to try to go further back.

In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me. And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.

But doesn't it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision?

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? 477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite? For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge? 478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists? 479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?

Ultimately Russell himself admitted that he made his greatest efforts in the field of traditional philosophy – in epistemology, the search for the ultimate grounds of our knowledge about the world. How can we be certain that what we claim to know is true? Where lies the certainty in our experience of the world? Can even the most precise knowledge – such as mathematics – be said to rest on any sure logical foundation? These were the questions that Russell sought to answer during the periods of his most profound philosophical thinking. They have remained the perennial questions of philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Descartes, Hume, and Kant, to Russell and Wittgenstein.

O fato de uma proposição poder revelar-se falsa depende, em última instância, daquilo que eu considerar como predominantes dessa proposição.

A certeza é por assim dizer um tom de voz em que alguém declara como são as coisas, mas não se infere desse tom que tem razão.

Das Spiel des Zweifelns selbst setzt schon die Gewißheit voraus.

My life consists in my being content to accept many things.

Ich möchte den Ausdruck ' Ich weiß ' für die Fälle reservieren , in denen er im normalen Sprachverkehr gebraucht wird.

In order to make an error, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind.

476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc. etc., - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc. etc.

471. It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin and the beginning. And not try to go further back.

471. It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much as the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.

Tem de admitir-se que é verdade que saber qualquer coisa não implica pensar nisso - mas alguém que saiba de alguma coisa não tem de ser capaz de duvidar dela? E duvidar significa pensar.

383. The argument "I may be dreaming" is senseless for this reason: if I am dreaming, this remark is being dreamed as well - and indeed it is also being dreamed that these words have any meaning.

I believe it might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to read my notes. For even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize what targets I had been ceaselessly aiming at.

That I am a man and not a woman can be verified, but if I were to say I was a woman, and then tried to explain the error by saying I hadn't checked the statement, the explanation would not be accepted.

Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; but the end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true i.e. It is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting which lies at the bottom of the language game.

I like ethics." The question of morality, how and why do people behave in certain ways. "And the principle of knowledge." I continue, "I've read this one." I show him On Certainty (book) by Ludwig Wittgenstein wrapped in my hand. "An intelligent one, that is, though, modern mind rarely appreciates such kind of writing. Not any more. I studied philosophy myself, and you know what I think? Every branch of knowledge needs philosophy for it helps to organise the flow of ideas and articulate meanings. I could not agree more to that. "Do you think it will be deserted one day?" "Probably. Nobody will bother about it any more, just like history. What is the only thing people become more interested in nowadays?" he asks. "Making money." His thumb rubs repeatedly over the tip of the index finger. "Philosophy and history are considered as eccentric. They don't usually offer people high income, and that's the inexorable reality. We've got to deal with it anyhow.

95. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules. 96. It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid.

Believing is not to be reduced to thinking that such-and-such might be the case. It is not a weaker form of thinking, laced with doubt. Sometimes we speak like this: ‘I believe that the train leaves at 6:13', where ‘I believe that’ simply means that ‘I think (but am not certain) that’. Since the left hemisphere is concerned with what is certain, with knowledge of the facts, its version of belief is that it is just absence of certainty. If the facts were certain, according to its view, I should be able to say ‘I know that’ instead. This view of belief comes from the left hemisphere's disposition towards the world: interest in what is useful, therefore fixed and certain (the train timetable is no good if one can't rely on it). So belief is just a feeble form of knowing, as far as it is concerned. But belief in terms of the right hemisphere is different, because its disposition towards the world is different. The right hemisphere does not ‘know’ anything, in the sense of certain knowledge. For it, belief is a matter of care: it describes a relationship, where there is a calling and an answering, the root concept of ‘responsibility’. Thus if I say that ‘I believe in you’, it does not mean that I think that such-and-such things are the case about you, but can't be certain that I am right. It means that I stand in a certain sort of relation of care towards you, that entails me in certain kinds of ways of behaving (acting and being) towards you, and entails on you the responsibility of certain ways of acting and being as well. It is an acting ‘as if’ certain things were true about you that in the nature of things cannot be certain. It has the characteristic right-hemisphere qualities of being a betweenness: a reverberative, ‘re-sonant’, ‘respons-ible’ relationship, in which each party is altered by the other and by the relationship between the two, whereas the relationship of the believer to the believed in the left-hemisphere sense is inert, unidirectional, and centres on control rather than care. I think this is what Wittgenstein was trying to express when he wrote that ‘my’ attitude towards the other is an ‘attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul.’ An ‘opinion’ would be a weak form of knowledge: that is not what is meant by a belief, a disposition or an ‘attitude’. This helps illuminate belief in God. This is not reducible to a question of a factual answer to the question ‘does God exist?’, assuming for the moment that the expression ‘a factual answer’ has a meaning. It is having an attitude, holding a disposition towards the world, whereby that world, as it comes into being for me, is one in which God belongs. The belief alters the world, but also alters me. Is it true that God exists? Truth is a disposition, one of being true to someone or something. One cannot believe in nothing and thus avoid belief altogether, simply because one cannot have no disposition towards the world, that being in itself a disposition. Some people choose to believe in materialism; they act ‘as if’ such a philosophy were true. An answer to the question whether God exists could only come from my acting ‘as if’ God is, and in this way being true to God, and experiencing God (or not, as the case might be) as true to me. If I am a believer, I have to believe in God, and God, if he exists, has to believe in me. Rather like Escher's hands, the belief must arise reciprocally, not by a linear process of reasoning. This acting ‘as if’ is not a sort of cop-out, an admission that ‘really’ one does not believe what one pretends to believe. Quite the opposite: as Hans Vaihinger understood, all knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, is no more than an acting ‘as if’ certain models were, for the time being, true. Truth and belief, once more, as in their etymology, are profoundly connected. It is only the left hemisphere that thinks there is certainty to be found anywhere.

Practical certainty must be distinguished from absolute certainty. The former can be had, while the latter cannot.

Wittgenstein insightfully noted that doubt presupposes the mastery of a language, its procedures and rules. Doubt cannot be so radical that it calls into question the very meanings of the words used to express it; to doubt a sentence, you need first to understand what is meant by the sentence. Thus, 'if you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either.' So also, a reasonable suspicion about some assertion requires specific-not just imaginable-grounds. One could always imagine that what is described in some indicative sentence, p, is actually the contrary, not-p; yet doubting p would be idle unless a concrete reason against p could be offered, Therefore, the very activity of doubting requires a context of accepted beliefs; one can doubt only if he first has learned to handle a language and to use some judgements to call other judgements into question. Learning precedes doubt, and learning precludes doubting everything; to get on with learning, the student must not doubt certain things. 'For how can a child immediately doubt what it is taught? That could mean only that he was incapable pf learning certain language games.' These observations have important epistemological consequences. 'The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief. Also 'doubt itself rests only on what is beyond doubt. Thus, 'a doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt.; In short, Wittgenstein has shown universal doubt to be impossible. Doubt requires the testing of assertions, but testing comes to and end and thus assumes something which is not tested; therefore, 'the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn. Wittgenstein's conclusion on this point is surely one with which we should agree: 'If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubt itself presupposes certainty.

What one takes as certain is not learned, said Wittgenstein, but implicitly swallowed along with what is learned. Presuppositions are smuggled in with our learned beliefs and not argued for or against. Thus, one's system of indubitable propositions is 'acquired'-but not 'learned'-by instruction; that is, they re simply 'inherited background'...Argumentation comes to an end at one's language game or worldview...The epistemological quest for certainty is eventually washed away in the flood of intellectual arbitrariness and radical skepticism at the presuppositional level. The procedure described by Wittgenstein above may very well be an accurate reflection of what actually happens as one initially forms his presuppositions. However, it dos not lay down what should happen when men philosophically reflect upon serious questions about knowledge or certainty-when there is a conflict over foundational certainties. To leave matters where Wittgenstein did is not to finish the task of the philosopher, but to descend to the sociology of prejudice. Wittgenstein too quickly abandoned epistemological theorizing and capitulated to a skeptical relativism which chooses to follow those teachings bolstered by some group's esteem for them. He should have pressed on and considered the question: Which presuppositions should be most trusted, obvious, and indubitable to us (not merely which propositions are most indubitable in this society)?

Wittgenstein may have seen the necessity and function of presuppositional certainties, but he was wrongly led to think that epistemological reasoning had to be abandoned at this point between differing philosophers. Where did he go wrong? I propose that it was with a confusion here: 'I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness.' This observation is true-for Wittgenstein and many others. But it does not properly imply either that one should not, or that one cannot, be satisfied (intellectually, not merely emotionally) with the correctness of his presupposition (or worldview) in the face of skepticism or a competing system. That one does not verify or prove his presupposition in any ordinary manner (i.e., the like hypotheses to be experimentally and logically tested-which would be deceptively circular since the presuppositions themselves set the standards and starting point for verification) does not mean that some cannot be seen to be wrong and others right; it simply indicates that philosophical argumentation here must take a different, yet legitimate, track-namely, examining which presuppositions provide the necessary preconditions for any intelligent reasoning and which presuppositions scuttle man's epistemic endeavors. Wittgenstein (and others) may not have satisfied himself about the correctness of his presuppositions precisely because they were not correct. In that case, he could avoid reforming his thinking and admitting error by placing everyone in the same (sinking) ship of presuppositional arbitrariness, that is, by teaching that one's certainties were not a matter of truth and intellectual grounding but sociological conditioning.

As Rorty, James’s successor in twentieth-century philosophy, said, Russell had a theory of truth, a natural corollary of his foundationalism and his demand for certainty, against which pragmatism recoiled. But, as is his wont, Rorty goes further than he should: ‘Neither William nor Henry James would have had anything to say in a world without Russells’ (1982: 136). This is rather strained, to say the least, since William and Henry were putting their ideas forward before Russell came on the scene. But Rorty is using Russell as an archetype for ‘straight men’ who defend ‘common-sense realism’.

Prior to my breakdown I went through a 5 week manic phase, with increasing mental excitation, decreasing sleep, and a near certainty that I wa sthe first person to actually understand what Ludwig Wittgenstein was actually saying.