On Certainty by Ludwig Wittgenstein & G. E. M. Anscombe & George Henrik von Wright

Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein & G. E. M. Anscombe & George Henrik von Wright
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Tags: Doubt, Epistemology, Certainty, Philosophy, Knowledge
ISBN: 9780631169406
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
Published: 1965-05-11T12:00:00+00:00

16.3.51

369. If I wanted to doubt whether this was my hand, how could I avoid doubting whether the word ‘hand’ has any meaning? So that is something I seem to know after all.

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?

372. Only in certain cases is it possible to make an investigation “is that really a hand?” (or “my hand”). For “I doubt whether that is really my (or a) hand” makes no sense without some more precise determination. One cannot tell from these words alone whether any doubt at all is meant—nor what kind of doubt.

373. Why is it supposed to be possible to have grounds for believing something if it isn’t possible to be certain?

374. We teach a child “that is your hand”, not “that is perhaps (or ‘probably’) your hand”. That is how a child learns the innumerable language-games that are concerned with his hand. An investigation or question, “whether this is really a hand” never occurs to him. Nor, on the other hand, does he learn that he knows that this is a hand.

375. Here one must realize that complete absence of doubt at some point, even where we would say that ‘legitimate’ doubt can exist, need not falsify a language-game. For there is also something like another arithmetic.

I believe that this admission must underlie any understanding of logic.

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