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Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense
Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
- GenresPhilosophy
262 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 9, 2018
This is a dense and detailed analysis of Moore's "Defense of Common Sense" and "Proof of an External World", Wittgenstein's On Certainty, and the relationship between them. Given its density (and price), it almost goes without saying that this is not really for casual reading.
Moore's "Proof" has always been particularly vexing. He employs ordinary everyday judgements, e.g., "This is my hand," to establish the existence of an external world and our knowledge of that world. His argument is directed against philosophical skepticism (and also idealism). The skeptical argument is usually associated with Descartes' Meditations, in which the skeptic calls such ordinary judgements into question via "radical doubts" (e.g., "How can you tell that you aren't only dreaming right now and that in fact, you are seeing no hand in front of you?").
Moore either seems obviously right or obviously wrong. He seems "right" in so far as we want to say, "Well, OF COURSE, yes, that is your hand. We can't REALLY doubt that." And he seems "wrong" in so far as we want to say, "But of course that misses the point." The philosophical question of the existence of the external world seems obviously unsolved by a simple, everyday example -- otherwise we would have no question at all. And Moore's proof in fact seems vulnerable to Cartesian doubt.
The bulk of Coliva's book is an attempt to understand Wittgenstein's reaction and response to Moore. Wittgenstein himself provides many, sometimes apparently conflicting, directions of thought in On Certainty, and Coliva attempts to find the most consistent and most promising of those directions.
Ultimately she adopts a reading whereby Wittgenstein's disagreement with Moore links back to Wittgenstein's treatment of language. According to Wittgenstein, judgements and propositions, such as those listed by Moore in his "Defense" and "Proof," play a normative role in our practices of making claims about the external world. But those propositions themselves are not known to be true, or assumed to be true. Rather they are, as Coliva says, "hinge" propositions (leveraging an analogy from On Certainty). They provide no conventional grounding per se of our ordinary empirical judgements but rather play this normative role, as if to express the bounds of language games. Contrary to Moore's account, they are not assumed, known, or otherwise established other than through our actual use. In speaking them, if we are doing anything at all, we are trying to express the norms of our language games. Despite their apparent similarity to empirical propositions, they are, as Wittgenstein says, "grammatical" propositions -- ones that set out how we talk about the world rather than what facts the world itself contains.
Coliva goes on to discuss differences between this line of thinking in Wittgenstein and various other positions -- including one analogous to Kantian transcendental idealism (with the constitutive practices of language games swapped in for Kant's conditions of experience), epistemological foundationalism, and relativism.
It's not clear how convincing Coliva herself finds Wittgenstein's response. I doubt very much that Moore would have found it convincing. After all, there's no reason to think that Moore had in mind any sort of layer of linguistic practice (or transcendental framework) between his claim to know that "Here is a hand" and what I believe he thought of as "reality". I think he believed that his knowledge claim was correct, that it was plainly and simply a claim about his hand . . . end of story.
Wittgenstein's response leaves us feeling a bit "weird" -- what we thought was our relationship to reality was exactly what Moore seems to have thought it was. It's there, we see it, we know it, and when we talk about it, we are talking about it as it is in itself, independently of the fact or mode in which we are talking about it. But that "weirdness" may be precisely what Wittgenstein has properly given us to consider.
Moore's "Proof" has always been particularly vexing. He employs ordinary everyday judgements, e.g., "This is my hand," to establish the existence of an external world and our knowledge of that world. His argument is directed against philosophical skepticism (and also idealism). The skeptical argument is usually associated with Descartes' Meditations, in which the skeptic calls such ordinary judgements into question via "radical doubts" (e.g., "How can you tell that you aren't only dreaming right now and that in fact, you are seeing no hand in front of you?").
Moore either seems obviously right or obviously wrong. He seems "right" in so far as we want to say, "Well, OF COURSE, yes, that is your hand. We can't REALLY doubt that." And he seems "wrong" in so far as we want to say, "But of course that misses the point." The philosophical question of the existence of the external world seems obviously unsolved by a simple, everyday example -- otherwise we would have no question at all. And Moore's proof in fact seems vulnerable to Cartesian doubt.
The bulk of Coliva's book is an attempt to understand Wittgenstein's reaction and response to Moore. Wittgenstein himself provides many, sometimes apparently conflicting, directions of thought in On Certainty, and Coliva attempts to find the most consistent and most promising of those directions.
Ultimately she adopts a reading whereby Wittgenstein's disagreement with Moore links back to Wittgenstein's treatment of language. According to Wittgenstein, judgements and propositions, such as those listed by Moore in his "Defense" and "Proof," play a normative role in our practices of making claims about the external world. But those propositions themselves are not known to be true, or assumed to be true. Rather they are, as Coliva says, "hinge" propositions (leveraging an analogy from On Certainty). They provide no conventional grounding per se of our ordinary empirical judgements but rather play this normative role, as if to express the bounds of language games. Contrary to Moore's account, they are not assumed, known, or otherwise established other than through our actual use. In speaking them, if we are doing anything at all, we are trying to express the norms of our language games. Despite their apparent similarity to empirical propositions, they are, as Wittgenstein says, "grammatical" propositions -- ones that set out how we talk about the world rather than what facts the world itself contains.
Coliva goes on to discuss differences between this line of thinking in Wittgenstein and various other positions -- including one analogous to Kantian transcendental idealism (with the constitutive practices of language games swapped in for Kant's conditions of experience), epistemological foundationalism, and relativism.
It's not clear how convincing Coliva herself finds Wittgenstein's response. I doubt very much that Moore would have found it convincing. After all, there's no reason to think that Moore had in mind any sort of layer of linguistic practice (or transcendental framework) between his claim to know that "Here is a hand" and what I believe he thought of as "reality". I think he believed that his knowledge claim was correct, that it was plainly and simply a claim about his hand . . . end of story.
Wittgenstein's response leaves us feeling a bit "weird" -- what we thought was our relationship to reality was exactly what Moore seems to have thought it was. It's there, we see it, we know it, and when we talk about it, we are talking about it as it is in itself, independently of the fact or mode in which we are talking about it. But that "weirdness" may be precisely what Wittgenstein has properly given us to consider.
December 21, 2020
To call it a tough read is an understatement. It’s really only for those very interested in the nitty-gritty of the Moore-Wittgenstein literature on skepticism and certainty. That said, the author goes over the major interpretations of the issues in the debate while also giving their own interpretation.
Good read if you’re invested in these debates. I wasn’t, and I’m not sure most philosophers are.
Good read if you’re invested in these debates. I wasn’t, and I’m not sure most philosophers are.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews