Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889 into one of the richest families in Austria. His father was a self-made man and a steel magnate. Ludwig was the youngest of eight children and grew up in a very musical family. His brother Paul had a successful career as a concert pianist even after losing his right arm in the First World War. As a child, Ludwig was not an exceptional student, and he was sent to a technical school in the hope that he would learn engineering and follow his father in the family business. For one year, he was a pupil at the same school as a younger boy named Adolf Hitler.
Wittgenstein developed an interest in the nascent field of aeronautics and went to the University of Manchester to study aeronautical engineering. While he was there, he became increasingly preoccupied by mathematical and philosophical questions. Understanding that the highest authority on these questions at the time was Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein impulsively traveled to Cambridge in 1911 and requested that Russell take him on as a student. Russell was hesitant at first but was soon impressed by Wittgenstein’s intelligence. Within a year, the roles were reversed, and Russell was looking up to the young Wittgenstein as the greatest hope for the field of logic.
Wittgenstein’s work on logic was interrupted by the First World War. Wittgenstein enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army and served on the eastern front. Driven by a desire to face his own mortality, he constantly requested the most dangerous assignments and was twice decorated for bravery. While in the trenches of the eastern front, Wittgenstein completed his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which he believed solved all the problems of logic and philosophy. After the war, Wittgenstein gave his large fortune away to his siblings and, satisfied that he had nothing more to offer philosophy, took a position as a schoolteacher in the mountains of rural Austria. Gradually, he became convinced that the Tractatus was flawed and that he had more to contribute to philosophy, and by 1929 he found himself back at Cambridge.
For nearly twenty years, Wittgenstein taught on and off at Cambridge, never entirely happy with his role as philosopher but unable to abandon his calling. He was known for his severity and his unusual teaching style, and he persuaded many of his brightest students to abandon philosophy for more practical pursuits. During these years, he kept extensive notebooks outlining his thoughts. The only notes he deemed fit for publication are the 120-odd pages that make up the first part of the Philosophical Investigations, but many of his other notebooks have survived and have been published. Wittgenstein requested that none of his work be published during his lifetime. He died of cancer in 1951, and the Investigations were published in 1953.
The Vienna of Wittgenstein’s youth was a place of tremendous decline and reinvention. On one hand, Vienna was the seat of the declining Habsburg Empire, whose internal conflicts were among the leading causes of the First World War. On the other hand, the decline of the old order led to tremendous intellectual and artistic innovation, as the Viennese struggled to build a new order. Turn-of-the-century Vienna was the birthplace of psychoanalysis with Freud, of modern music with Schönberg, and of modern architecture with Adolf Loos, and it was home to such innovative artists as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. One would not be remiss in identifying Wittgenstein’s revolutionary work in the Tractatus as a further manifestation of the innovative spirit of early twentieth-century Vienna.
Wittgenstein’s adult life spanned the first half of the twentieth century, a time of great upheaval for Europe. Just as the modern age seemed to be promising a future of prosperity and material comfort for all, two world wars ripped Europe apart and permanently ended its preeminent position on the world stage. Austria was hit harder than most of Europe. At the beginning of the century, Austria was a vast empire covering much of central and eastern Europe. After the First World War, it was reduced to its present diminished size, and in the Second World War it became a willing pawn of the Nazi Reich. Wittgenstein’s family was half Jewish, and they had to forfeit much of their great wealth to buy their safety from the Nazis.
Wittgenstein was brought into philosophy by Bertrand Russell, who was one of the founders of the analytic movement in philosophy. Russell and Gottlob Frege were the two foremost figures in a movement that brought advances in the field of mathematical logic to bear on philosophical questions. They found that logical analysis could reveal the deep structure of language, which could in turn expose the source of much philosophical confusion. Russell and Frege shared what is known as a universalist conception of logic. They believed logic to be the most fundamental set of laws: while the laws of physics govern physical phenomena and the laws of grammar govern grammatical phenomena, the laws of logic are supremely universal and govern all phenomena. Exploring and codifying the laws of logic, then, is a supremely important activity.
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is largely a response to the work of Frege and Russell, and it is impossible to appreciate it fully without a strong grasp of the work of those two philosophers. By contrast, the Philosophical Investigations are interesting precisely in the way that they do not seem to fit into any particular context. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein is concerned primarily with the very impulse to think philosophically more than he is with any particular philosophical views. Nevertheless, we find in the Investigations a preoccupation with language, and we can see the enduring influence of Frege and Russell in Wittgenstein’s conviction that a proper understanding of language will expose the hidden flaws in philosophical reasoning.
Themes, Arguments, and Ideas
Early vs. Later Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein is famous for revolutionizing philosophy not once but twice. He claimed to have solved all the problems of philosophy in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, only to return to philosophy ten years later, repudiate many of the central claims of the Tractatus, and reinvent philosophy a second time with the Philosophical Investigations. Among the central differences between the early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the later Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations and his various notebook writings is a shift in emphasis regarding the importance of logic. In the Tractatus, logic is given central importance as determining the structure of language and reality, but it receives scarcely a mention in the Investigations. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy abandons the rigidly structured world of the Tractatus in favor of a less pristine and more modest conception of a complex world that resists any simple articulation. While the differences between the early and later philosophies of Wittgenstein go deep, significant similarities remain. The four themes that follow trace some of the most important points on which Wittgenstein’s position does not change radically throughout his career.
Language as a Source of Philosophical Confusion
While Wittgenstein repeats that ordinary language is fine as it is, he also identifies the misuse of that language as the source of much philosophical confusion. Language is suited to its everyday business of facilitating communication between people. Philosophers make the mistake of abstracting language from its ordinary contexts to understand the essences of things. For example, when people talk about knowing things, in most contexts it is perfectly obvious what they mean. But despite the fact that we can talk about what we know without complication, we are puzzled when confronted by a question like, what is knowledge? All of a sudden, we are faced with an abstract concept, “knowledge,” divorced from the contexts in which this concept is used. When philosophers get confused over the question of what knowledge is, they are not confused because the essence of knowledge is difficult to identify. Rather, they are confused because they have abstracted a word from the contexts in which it has a function and find that, outside these contexts, the word loses its meaning. If philosophers were careful about how they use language, Wittgenstein believes, philosophical confusion would cease to exist.
The Dissolution of Philosophical Problems
The correct approach to philosophical problems, according to Wittgenstein, is not to attempt to solve them but rather to reach a point where the problems dissolve of their own accord. The problems of philosophy, in this view, are in fact pseudoproblems. Where we think we perceive a problem, we are in fact caught in philosophical confusion. For example, in On Certainty, Wittgenstein attempts to unravel the problem of external-world skepticism, showing that the very question of how we can know that there is a world external to our senses only arises if we misunderstand the nature of propositions, such as “here is a hand”—in actual life, such propositions are not offered as knowledge that might be proven true or false. Wittgenstein’s approach is not to say that external-world skepticism is false but rather to show that the very question of whether external-world skepticism is true or false arises out of a misunderstanding of the language we use. If we absorb Wittgenstein’s teachings, we do not come to settled solutions to the philosophical problems that haunt us, but rather we reach a state where these problems cease to haunt us. What Wittgenstein seeks is not solutions so much as an end to theorizing.
Philosophy as an Activity of Clarification
Wittgenstein emphasizes the difference between his philosophy and traditional philosophy by saying that his philosophy is an activity rather than a body of doctrine. We can identify definite positions and theories in the writings of most traditional philosophers but not with Wittgenstein. In fact, Wittgenstein’s writings are distinctly antitheoretical: he believes that the very idea of a philosophical theory is a sign of confusion. He conceives of the role of philosophy as an activity by which we unravel the sorts of confusion that manifest themselves in traditional philosophy. This activity carries with it no theories or doctrines but rather aims at reaching a point where theories and doctrines cease to confuse us. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein writes, “the work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.” That is, his ideal philosopher works to remind those confused by abstract theorizing of the ordinary uses of words and to set their thinking in order. The clarity achieved through this kind of activity is not the clarity of a coherent, all-encompassing system of thought but rather the clarity of being free from being too influenced by any systems or theories.
The End of Philosophy?
Wittgenstein scholars disagree as to whether his work ought to represent an end to philosophy. Certainly, his work has a conclusive feeling about it. In the preface to the Tractatus, he writes, “I am . . . of the opinion that the problems [of philosophy] have in essentials been finally solved.” If we wholeheartedly embrace his work, either the Tractatus or his later writings, we will no longer be able to speculate about the problems of philosophy as thinkers have done for the previous two and a half millennia. However, it is far from clear that Wittgenstein intends for all philosophical activity simply to cease. Rather, he seems to intend a new role for philosophy, as an activity of clarification.
While the main target of this activity seems to be traditional philosophy, it would presumably continue to have a role even if everyone were to give up traditional philosophy. So long as we continue to think, we are liable to fall into intellectual confusion. While philosophy is a particularly rich source of intellectual confusion, no field of thought is free from confusion. In his later writings, Wittgenstein devotes a great deal of energy to picking apart the confusion inherent in the nascent field of experimental psychology. We might conclude that Wittgenstein does not want to do away with philosophy so much as he wants to reinvent it.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Summary
The Tractatus consists of a series of terse propositions numbered in a decimal form from 1 to 7. It divides roughly into three parts: propositions 1 to 2.063 deal with the nature of the world; 2.1 to 4.128 deal with the nature of language; and 4.2 to 7 deal with the nature of logic and its implications for mathematics, science, philosophy, and the meaning of life.
Proposition 1.1 announces, “The world is the totality of facts and not things.” A complete description of the world is not a list of all the objects in the world but a list of all the facts that are true of the world. In other words, facts are metaphysically prior to objects: an object only has being insofar as it is a constituent of a fact. Facts can be logically analyzed into constituent parts. Fundamental, atomic facts that cannot be further analyzed are called states of affairs, and they are all logically independent of one another. Any given state of affairs can be true or false regardless of the truth or falsity of any other state of affairs. Objects link together to form facts by virtue of their logical form, much as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle link together by virtue of their shape.
Language depicts reality by virtue of sharing a logical form in common with reality. We know that a picture of a sunset represents a sunset because both the picture and the sunset share a similar “pictorial form.” Similarly, a proposition and what it represents share a similar “logical form”: a proposition depicts a fact, and just as a fact can be analyzed into independent states of affairs, a proposition can be analyzed into independent elementary propositions.
Wittgenstein draws an important distinction between saying and showing: while a proposition says that such-and-such fact is the case, it shows the logical form by virtue of which this fact is the case. The upshot of this distinction is that we can only say things about facts in the world; logical form cannot be spoken about, only shown. Because logical form shows itself and cannot be spoken about, there is no need for the so-called logical objects, the connecting glue between different propositions that plays a central role in the logic of Frege and Russell. Wittgenstein asserts that most philosophical confusion arises from trying to speak about things that can only be shown.
At proposition 4.31, Wittgenstein introduces his method of truth tables, which show how logical form makes itself apparent without the need for logical relations or objects. One consequence of this view is that all the propositions of logic are tautologies—they are the set of propositions that are true no matter what. As such, they tell us nothing about the world, and they are all equivalent.
The foregoing reflections on the nature of the world, language, and logic lead Wittgenstein to address a series of long-standing philosophical problems. He suggests that solipsism, the belief that we have no knowledge of a world outside of our own minds, is technically valid but that there is no distinction between solipsism and realism that can properly be expressed in language. He claims that mathematics can be derived from the successive application of logical operations and that the laws of science are neither logical laws nor empirical observations but rather an interpretive method. Because language can speak about only facts in the world, we can say nothing about the world as a whole (metaphysics) or about the value of things in the world (ethics and aesthetics).
Philosophy has no propositions. Properly speaking, philosophy is the activity of clarifying language, and the correct method in philosophy is to remain silent and only to speak up to correct people who misuse language. Since Wittgenstein has already asserted that only propositions that depict facts in the world have meaning, he concludes that all the propositions in the Tractatus are meaningless. They are like a ladder that one can cast away once one has climbed up it. He concludes with the mystical reflection, “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”
Analysis
The Tractatus opposes Frege and Russell’s universalist conception of logic. In the universalist view, logic is the supremely general set of laws, the foundation on which the edifice of knowledge is built. Wittgenstein, by contrast, argues that logic is not a set of laws at all. Logic is not distinct from the sciences simply by virtue of being more general but by virtue of being something entirely different altogether from the sciences. According to Wittgenstein, logic has no laws, and there are no logical objects or relations. The assumption that there must be laws, objects, and relations is a holdover from the assumption that logic is like the sciences, only more general. Laws, objects, and relations are the content of a body of knowledge, and according to Wittgenstein, logic is all form and no content. If the universalist conception sees logic as the foundation on which the edifice of knowledge is built, Wittgenstein sees logic as the metallic framework around which the edifice is structured. Logic itself says nothing, but it determines the form and structure of everything that can be spoken about.
Relying on the say–show distinction, the Tractatus draws strict limits to what can be said intelligibly. Wittgenstein limits the sayable to empirical propositions: language is suited to describing facts in the world. By contrast, we cannot say anything that speaks about the world as a whole, that speaks about value, or that purports to speak from a perspective outside the world. Consequently, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and most of philosophy goes out the window. Wittgenstein does not claim that these things are useless, simply that language is unsuited to dealing with them. For instance, the attitude we hold toward the world and the way we go about living expresses our ethical worldview. Wittgenstein criticizes the notion that this worldview can be put into words in the form of ethical maxims or laws and still remain meaningful. For him, our ethical worldview can only be shown and cannot be said. In asserting that most of what we consider philosophy lies beyond the limits of what can be said, Wittgenstein reconceives the role of philosophy. Philosophy should stand as a watchdog at the limits of what can be said and correct those who try to say the unsayable.
The final few self-refuting propositions of the Tractatus are the subject of great scholarly controversy. What should we make of Wittgenstein’s claim that all the propositions in the Tractatus are nonsense? One school of thought takes the Tractatus to be the last word in nonsense, so to speak. According to this interpretation, the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense, strictly speaking, but it is only by understanding them that we can recognize that they are nonsense. Although they are nonsense, the propositions of the Tractatus point to deeper truths, and once we have recognized these deeper truths we can reject the Tractatus along with all the other nonsense that makes up philosophy. An alternative school of thought rejects this previous interpretation as being too soft. If the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense, then they are nonsense, and that is all there is to it. The important thing, according to this second interpretation, is to grasp the frame of mind that would think that these propositions make sense and, by grasping it, to recognize the inconsistency of this frame of mind. According to this view, the propositions of the Tractatus do not point to deeper truths. There are no deeper truths, and we can only appreciate this once we have grasped that the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense.
The Blue and Brown Books Summary
The Blue and Brown Books are transcripts of lecture notes Wittgenstein gave to his students in the early 1930s, shortly after returning to philosophy. They are so named because of the color of the paper they were originally bound in.
The Blue Book criticizes the idea that the meaning of a word resides in some sort of mental act or act of interpretation. Calling meaning a “mental” act is just a means of obscuring the matter. If the meaning of language is a matter of how we use words, we could just as easily say that meaning resides in the voice box as in the head. Rather than identify meaning with a mental act, Wittgenstein identifies meaning with use: the meaning of a word is determined by the way we use it and nothing more.
Wittgenstein attacks the philosophical “craving for generality” that leads philosophers to try to make the most general claims without properly considering particulars. This craving leads philosophers to make such general claims as the Heraclitean doctrine that “all is in flux.” Such claims amount to redefinitions: if all is in flux, for instance, the word stable ceases to have meaning. In their attempts to make grand metaphysical pronouncements, philosophers really just twist language out of shape.
Philosophers also often fail to distinguish between physical impossibility and grammatical impossibility, drawing on false analogies. If A has his mouth closed, it is physically impossible to know whether A has a gold tooth. Analogously, we might say that it is impossible to feel A’s toothache and conclude that the feeling of A’s toothache is a piece of knowledge to which we do not have access. In fact, feeling A’s toothache is a grammatical impossibility: the grammar of the word toothache is such that only the person who has the toothache can feel it. If we think that our knowledge is somehow incomplete because we are unable to feel the pains of others, we are simply showing that we have allowed ourselves to become confused about the grammar of certain words. Toothaches are things that people feel when they have them. Toothaches are not objects of knowledge that we can know or not know.
The Brown Book develops Wittgenstein’s concept of a “language game,” where he develops simpler forms of language to examine more closely the contrasts between different kinds of words. The upshot of these experiments is to show that most attempts to draw general theories of language are misguided and to draw our attention to the diversity of the uses and functions of words. Wittgenstein also examines the many different uses of such words as compare, recognize, and understand, showing that they have a variety of uses, all of which are related, but not in any definite way. He calls the relations between the various uses of a word family resemblances because, like the members of a family, the uses of a word share a certain resemblance but that resemblance is not based in any single feature.
The Brown Book contains a number of other significant ideas that are developed further in the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein discusses rule following, arguing that there is no rock-bottom justification for the rules we follow and that we need not consciously follow or interpret a rule every time we obey a rule. He discusses the word can and the way that misunderstandings regarding this word give us mistaken notions about the past and future. He also discusses the distinction between seeing and seeing as, arguing that we can see a bunch of squiggles on a page as a face, but we cannot see a fork as a fork, since no alternative presents itself. In other words, when philosophers speak of seeing things “as themselves,” in the sense of seeing things in their essence, such statements have no meaning. For example, it would not make sense to speak of seeing someone “as a human being” or “as a person”—there’s no difference between that and how we normally see people.
Analysis
The Blue and Brown Books represent a strong repudiation of some of the central ideas of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein’s philosophy from the Blue Book onward is often referred to as his “later philosophy,” in contrast to the “early philosophy” of the Tractatus. While the Tractatus argues that language corresponds to reality by virtue of sharing a common logical form, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy abandons the idea of any abstract link between language and reality. Instead, Wittgenstein asserts that language has meaning simply by virtue of how it is used. Unlike the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy does not present a grand, tidy theory that explains how everything falls into place. Instead, the later philosophy is profoundly antitheoretical and unapologetically asserts that there is no way to tidy up the various aspects of language and experience into a single, unified whole. However, the similarities between Wittgenstein’s early work and his later work are possibly more revealing than the differences. Throughout his work, Wittgenstein asserts his conviction that the problems of philosophy only arise through confusion and that a proper understanding of the matter at hand will not answer philosophical problems so much as it will make the problems vanish.
The Brown Book marks the peak of Wittgenstein’s interest in language games and their usefulness as a tool for attacking the idea of fixed meaning. Wittgenstein is wary of theories of language, fearing that they are too simplistic. Any attempt at discussing how words have meaning is liable to assert that there is a single, fundamental link between language and reality and that through this link the meanings of words are fixed in place. One of Wittgenstein’s fundamental ideas is that words do not have fixed meanings but rather carry a family of related meanings. Wittgenstein develops the concept of language games as a tool for counteracting the tendency toward theorizing about language. While theories of language seek to find unity in diversity, language games are diverse by their very nature. Wittgenstein invents series upon series of simpler forms of language, not to highlight the commonalities between all of them but to reveal the irresolvable differences between them. Language games are his tool for showing that no single theory of language can possibly account for the diversity of linguistic phenomena.
Philosophical Investigations Summary
We are often tempted to think that language is fundamentally a relationship between names and objects. The danger is that we may conclude that the name–object relationship is the fundamental link that connects language to the world. In fact, names of objects can only be identified as such when we contrast them with other kinds of words, such as words for colors, prepositions, numbers, and the like. The supposedly fundamental relation between names and objects only makes sense within the broader context of language and cannot be abstracted from it. The meaning of words is not determined by an abstract link between language and reality but by how words are used.
By talking about meaning in the abstract, we are tempted to think of the meanings of words as fixed, with definite limits. However, the meanings of words are often vague and fluid without their being any less useful as a result. Wittgenstein takes the example of game, showing that there is no rigid definition that includes everything we consider a game and excludes everything we do not consider a game, but we nevertheless have no difficulty in using the word game correctly. As far as Wittgenstein is concerned, ordinary language is perfectly adequate as it is. His aim is not to show the underlying structure of language but rather to show that all attempts at digging beneath the surface of language lead to unwarranted theorizing and generalization.
One of Wittgenstein’s primary targets in the Philosophical Investigations is the language of psychology. We are tempted to think that words like understanding, meaning, thinking, intending, and the like denote mental states or processes. Wittgenstein conducts what he calls a “grammatical investigation,” looking closely at the way these words are used to show that the criteria we use for judging whether someone has, for example, understood how to play chess have nothing to do with that person’s mental state and everything to do with that person’s behavior. That is not to label Wittgenstein as a behaviorist: he is trying to show the inevitable flaws in any theory of the mind, not to set up an alternative theory of his own.
Our language and customs are fixed not by laws so much as by what Wittgenstein calls “forms of life,” referring to the social contexts in which language is used. In other words, the most fundamental aspect of language is that we learn how to use it in social contexts, which is the reason why we all understand each other. We do not understand each other because of a relationship between language and reality. Wittgenstein gives the example of a student who obeys the rule “add 2” by writing 1004 after 1000 and insisting that this is a correct application of the rule. In such an instance, there is nothing we can say or do to persuade the student otherwise because the misunderstanding lies at a deeper level than explanation can reach. Such examples do not occur in ordinary life not because there is some perfectly unambiguous explanation for “add 2” but because we share forms of life: people, on the whole, simply understand one another, and if this basic understanding were missing, communication would be impossible.
Elaborating on his view that language functions according to shared norms and forms of life, Wittgenstein denies the possibility of a private language. That is, it is inconceivable that someone could invent a language for his or her own private use that describes his or her inner sensations. In such a language, there would be no criteria to determine whether a word had been used correctly, so the language would have no meaning. Wittgenstein illustrates this point by arguing that the sentence, “I know I am in pain” makes no sense. The claim to know something carries with it further baggage that is inapplicable when talking about our own sensations. To claim to know something, we must also be able to doubt it, we must have criteria for establishing our knowledge, there must be ways other people can find out, and so on—all of which is absent when dealing with our inner sensations.
The last 300 sections of part I, as well as part II, of the Investigations deal with a number of related issues but lack a general thrust. Wittgenstein attacks the idea that we have privileged knowledge of our own mental states, suggesting that our relation to our mental states is not one of knowledge at all. This suggestion diminishes the thrust of “other minds skepticism,” the philosophical claim that we have only imperfect knowledge of other minds, which is based on the premise that the subject is the only one with privileged knowledge of his or her own mind. Part II deals primarily with the grammar of the word see, discussing, among other things, the distinction between see and see as. We do not see a fork as a fork: we simply see the fork. The word as implies an act of interpretation, and we do not interpret what we see except in those cases where we really do entertain more than one possible interpretation.
Analysis
The philosophy that Wittgenstein preaches and practices in the Investigations is concerned primarily with dissolving problems rather than solving them. A philosophical problem, in Wittgenstein’s view, is not a difficult question for which we must search long and hard for an answer. Rather, a philosophical problem is a mental knot we create by thinking theoretically, and untying it requires considerable mental clarity. For example, in the early sections of the Investigations, Wittgenstein criticizes the idea that there is a fundamental, abstract link between names and objects, but he does not criticize this theory in order to replace it with some other theory of language. Instead, he wants us to recognize that, when we consider language in the right light, there is no need to develop a theory to explain the connection between language and reality at all. Some commentators have observed that the Investigations is therapeutic in its aim. A therapist does not attempt to solve a patient’s problems but rather attempts to help to shift the thinking of a patient so that the problems no longer seem like problems. Similarly Wittgenstein aims to shift our philosophical thinking so that the problems of philosophy no longer seem like problems.
Wittgenstein repeatedly draws our attention to the subtle line between everyday speech and philosophical theorizing, a line he believes most philosophers cross unconsciously. Scientific disciplines, among others, have a very specific specialized vocabulary: a physicist uses words like electron and gluon to refer to phenomena that are distinct to the field of physics and are unfamiliar to everyday experience. Philosophy, by contrast, carries the conceit of drawing only on familiar, everyday experience. (Philosophers may use specialized or unfamiliar words, but the things they talk about, such as knowledge and certainty, are things with which we are all familiar.) A skeptical argument, such as that in Descartes’ first Meditation, draws its strength from beginning with ordinary observations that no one could deny and then reaching startling conclusions. If philosophy, unlike physics, has no specialized data and draws only on the world of everyday experience, then philosophers are in no position to draw up a specialized vocabulary and complex theories. The field of philosophy has something suspicious about it, in that it makes no claims to have specialized data and yet claims to be a form of specialized knowledge. Wittgenstein’s response to this fact is to identify the purported specialized knowledge of philosophy as consisting of confusion and to reconceive the role of philosophy as clarifying precisely that sort of confusion.
One of Wittgenstein’s main targets is the mental realm and the very idea of a sharp distinction between “inner” and “outer.” When we think of inner and outer as two distinctive, parallel realms, we are tempted to think that the kinds of understanding we have about the outer world should apply similarly to our inner lives. There must be inner states and processes about which we can have knowledge or fail to have knowledge, and this knowledge must be based on some sort of data, and so on. Wittgenstein devotes a great deal of the Investigations to showing how these parallels between inner and outer break down. The relation a person has with his or her own inner life is far more intimate than the kind of knowledge-based relation we have with the world around us, but this more intimate relation does not simply translate as knowledge with greater certainty. Rather, it is the kind of relation with regard to which talk of knowledge and certainty, and language more generally, loses its hold. Much of our confusion as regards psychology comes from attempts to theorize or speak about the mind using false analogies.
On Certainty Summary
On Certainty is a series of notes Wittgenstein took toward the end of his life on matters related to knowledge, doubt, skepticism, and certainty. Although the notes are not organized into any coherent whole, certain themes and preoccupations recur throughout.
On Certainty takes as its starting point Wittgenstein’s response to a paper given by G. E. Moore, called “A Proof of the External World.” In this paper, Moore tries to prove that there is a world external to our senses by holding up his hand and saying “here is a hand.” Wittgenstein admires the boldness of Moore’s approach, which implicitly questions the reasonableness of doubting such a claim, but he suggests that Moore fails because his claim that he knows he has a hand automatically invites the question of how he knows, a question that would embroil Moore in the sort of skeptical debate he wishes to avoid.
The idea of doubting the existence of a world external to our senses gains a foothold from the fact that any knowledge claim can be doubted, and every attempt at justification of a knowledge claim can also be doubted. Traditional epistemology has sought a bedrock of certain knowledge, knowledge that is immune to all possible doubt, but from Descartes to Moore, this search has always come across problems.
Wittgenstein asserts that claims like “here is a hand” or “the world has existed for more than five minutes” have the form of empirical propositions but that in fact they have more in common with logical propositions. That is, these sorts of propositions may seem to say something factual about the world, and hence be open to doubt, but really the function they serve in language is to serve as a kind of framework within which empirical propositions can make sense. In other words, we take such propositions for granted so that we can speak about the hand or about things in the world—these propositions aren’t meant to be subjected to skeptical scrutiny. At one point, Wittgenstein compares these sorts of propositions to a riverbed, which must remain in place for the river of language to flow smoothly, and at another, he compares them to the hinges of a door, which must remain fixed for the door of language to serve any purpose. The key, then, is not to claim certain knowledge of propositions like “here is a hand” but rather to recognize that these sorts of propositions lie beyond questions of knowledge or doubt.
Analysis
Wittgenstein does not try to refute skeptical doubts about the existence of an external world so much as he tries to sidestep them, showing that the doubts themselves do not do the work they are meant to do. By suggesting that certain fundamental propositions are logical in nature, Wittgenstein gives them a structural role in language: they define how language, and hence thought, works. “Here is a hand” is an ostensive definition, meaning that it defines the word by showing an example. That statement explains how the word hand is to be used rather than making an empirical claim about the presence of a hand. If we begin to doubt these sorts of propositions, then the whole structure of language, and hence thought, comes apart. If two people disagree over whether one of them has a hand, it is unclear whether they can agree on anything that might act as a common ground on which they can debate the matter. Communication and rational thought are only possible between people when there is some sort of common ground, and when one doubts such fundamental propositions as “here is a hand,” that common ground shrinks to nothing. Skeptical doubts purport to take place within a framework of rational debate, but by doubting too much, they undermine rationality itself, and so undermine the very basis for doubt.
Behind Wittgenstein’s belief that “here is a hand” is an odd proposition, either to assert or to doubt, lies his insistence on the importance of context. The very idea of doubting the existence of the external world is a very philosophical activity. A philosopher can doubt away, but it is impossible to live out this sort of skepticism. In essence, skepticism only has a foothold when we abstract it from the activity of everyday life. Similarly, skepticism gains its foothold by doubting propositions like “here is a hand” when these propositions are abstracted from the activity of everyday life. According to Wittgenstein, a proposition has no meaning unless it is placed within a particular context. “Here is a hand,” by itself, means nothing, though those words might come to have meaning in the context of an anatomy class or of a parent teaching a child to speak. However, once we give propositions a particular context, the doubts cast by a skeptic lack the kind of generality that would throw the very existence of the external world into doubt. Only by removing language from all possible contexts, and hence rendering language useless, can skepticism function.