Wittgenstein and Moral Realism: A Foundationalist
Approach
MA Thesis
Supervisor: Martin Stokhof
Second Reader: Gijs van Donselaar
Word Count: 18,182
23/6/2018
Table of Contents
1. Introduction………...………..2
2. Wittgensteinian Foundationalism……….4
3. Setting the Problem: How Foundationalism Can Lead to Ethical
Incommensurability………..12
4. Undesirable Conclusions………..18
5. An Alternative View………...………...………....24
6. Moral Realism………...37
7. Conclusion……….49
8. Works Cited………...50
1
The argument between moral relativism and moral realism is an old one, but one that is still relevant today. Some philosophers have neatly divided the world into facts and values, with facts being verifiable (and thus objective) and values being unverifiable. Morals are thought to fall into matters of value, and thus have been variously labelled completely subjective, relative, prescriptive, or some other version of non-objectivity that make matters of morality separate from fact. The strongest form of moral relativism involves incommensurability. This means that one ethical system cannot be reconciled with another; each ethical system has its own normative processes of dictating what is good or correct, and so what is good or correct in one system cannot be compared with what is good or correct in another. In other words, both are equally valid or invalid depending on how you want to phrase it. To say that ethical systems have widely different standards of what is morally good or correct is to me tautological. However, making the jump from this observation to ethical incommensurability is, I think, hasty and unnecessary. The interesting question that should be addressed, then, and that will be addressed in this thesis is how we can acknowledge the differences in ethical systems without abandoning objectivity and without resigning ourselves to the idea that ethical systems in principle are different to the extent that they cannot be reconciled.
The effects of moral relativism are often thought to be positive. They result, so it is said, in a sort of utopian liberal society where everyone respects everyone else’s morals and opinions - because they are just that, opinions - and no one mindset or framework has to be dominant. Think, for example, of how the Democratic Party in the United States heralds multiculturalism. It allows people from various religions, backgrounds, and political orientations to live together in harmony. However, when we are faced with extreme examples, it becomes hard to maintain this worldview. What do we say, for instance, to cultures who subjugate women or maintain a racial hierarchy? We respect difference to a certain extent, but when it crosses a line, we are no longer tolerant. Is this unjustified?
On the other hand, the result of moral relativism could also be exactly the opposite of the liberal utopia; if we conclude that rational debate is impossible between moral positions, then we
may fall into a sort of “might makes right” mentality where there is no non-arbitrary way to settle disputes. The extreme results of this could be gulags, civil war, political deadlocks, and the likes. White nationalists, for example, weaponize this sort of relativism in their justifications for wanting to keep immigrants out of their countries. Without moral realism and the position that it is possible to rationally debate matters of ethics, it is hard to see how one could avoid these problems.
But the undesirability of a position does not make it false. That is why it is necessary to lay out a plausible framework that can avoid the problems that relativism falls into. I will attempt to do this from a Wittgensteinian perspective. While it is true that the later Wittgenstein had next to nothing to say about ethics, there have been many discussions on his supposed epistemic relativism and his relationship to a broader form of realism. Generally, people who ascribe a kind of relativism to him also ascribe to him a form of foundationalism. The ascription of foundationalism is one that I agree with. Wittgenstein has given us, I will argue, the insight that our language-games or social constructions always rely on unquestioned and in principle unquestionable foundational certainties. Certainties are what allow for the existence of these constructions. Relativism and incommensurability come in when it is thought that these foundations are not uniform across cultures, communities, or positions, and are thus in a sense arbitrary. Realism then becomes necessary to avoid this deadlock of incommensurability.
These discussions usually do not involve moral relativism or moral realism, but I think that the discussion can be fruitfully extended to include considerations of ethics. The purpose of this thesis, then, will be threefold. First, I will argue that Wittgenstein held a naturalistic
foundationalist position. Then, I will argue that this foundationalism can extend not only to epistemic practices but also to ethical practices and show how this has been done before by other commenters. Finally, I will argue that a moral realist position is compatible with a
Wittgensteinian foundationalist ethics, and that in this way we can avoid strong forms of moral relativism that entail ethical incommensurability.
2
“If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.”
-Philosophical Investigations 217
2. Wittgensteinian Foundationalism
The theoretical background of my thesis requires a reading of Wittgenstein that is called “foundationalism.” This, like most views on Wittgenstein, is a contentious position, and there are many debates on the topic. To go into full detail on this debate is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is nonetheless necessary to make a strong case that Wittgenstein can be read as a unique sort of foundationalist. To do this, I will present a shortened version of the debate on the issue. I will present a standard version of the Wittgensteinian foundationalist position presented by Avrum Stroll and a counter-argument by Michael Williams. Finally, I will attempt to show 1
why I think that Williams is mistaken in denying any sort of foundationalist reading of Wittgenstein.
2.1 Stroll’s Foundationalist Reading
One of the most perplexing problems of modern philosophy is the problem of radical skepticism. The position basically holds that knowledge is not possible because, at a certain point, our knowledge rests on unjustified beliefs, propositions, or judgments. If these beliefs are not true or justified, then any beliefs, propositions, or judgments that rely on them are also unjustified. For example, I cannot be sure of the existence of my own body because the supposed knowledge of its existence relies on my senses, which I trust without justification. It could be that I am simply a brain in a vat somewhere and that a super-computer is merely
1There are many other contributors to this debate such as Rush Rhees, Joachim Schulte, Duncan Richter,
and Meredith Williams. However, I take these two authors to be representative enough of the debate for the purpose of this thesis, as their works exemplify most of the major points on the two sides of the discussion.
deceiving me into believing that I have a body. How could I really know that this is not the case - that is, how could I prove it? This problem is termed the “infinite regress.”
One way of attempting to combat radical skepticism that has been used throughout the history of philosophy is what is called “foundationalism.” Foundationalism is the position that there is a certain class of basic knowledge, beliefs, or propositions that are unquestionably true and justified and solve the problem of radical skepticism and the infinite regress. I will argue that Wittgenstein has a significant contribution to this tradition, but one that is formulated in a unique and new way that eschews much of traditional foundationalism. Preliminary echoes of this position can be found in Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 1953, henceforth PI), but the attribution of a foundationalist position to Wittgenstein comes mainly from readings of
On Certainty (Wittgenstein 1969, henceforth OC) where it is worked out more completely. In
Avrum Stroll’s article “Why On Certainty Matters,” Stroll argues that Wittgenstein’s most important contribution from OC is his unique foundationalist position that solves the problem of infinite regress. According to Stroll, Wittgenstein identifies the foundations of our language game with certainty, which Wittgenstein describes through a series of metaphors (Stroll 2005, 34). These metaphors include: “the rock bottom of my convictions” (OC 248), “the substratum of all my inquiring” (OC 162), and what “stands fast for me and many others” (OC 116). These certainties are things that are “not subject to justification, proof, the adducing of evidence or doubt, and [are] neither true nor false” (Stroll 2005, 34). For Stroll there are two types of certainties - those which are exempt from doubt in some contexts but may be subject to doubt in others, and those which are absolutely beyond doubt. The first class of certainties are relative certainties, whereas the others are absolute. 2
Wittgenstein’s foundationalism is different from traditional foundationalism in that he does not call these foundations “true.” Instead, he identifies the foundations as neither true nor false. For a more traditional foundationalist, like Descartes, the foundations are true though not provable (Stroll 2005, 35). They are evidently true and do not need justification; they are a certain class of knowledge. Wittgenstein takes this to be a misuse of the term “knowledge.” For Wittgenstein, foundations are certainties, and certainties are distinct from knowledge. OC is
2This distinction will become important later and will be discussed in greater length, but for now this
largely a response to GE Moore’s “Proof of an External World” in which Moore makes a “common sense” refutation of skepticism. He does this by listing things that he thinks he “knows.” He follows a more classical line of foundationalism in which there are evidently true things that cannot be doubted. For example, he famously claims to prove that he has two hands by holding them up and saying “here is one hand… and here is another” (Moore 1993, 166). Moore thinks that by doing this he has proven the existence of his hands, and if knowledge is justified true belief, then he has knowledge of the existence of his two hands. Wittgenstein is not trying to say that Moore does not in fact have two hands, or that he cannot say that he has two hands, but that he does not have knowledge of the existence of his two hands. Wittgenstein says, in response to Moore’s assertion that he knows he has two hands, “Instead of ‘I know…’
couldn’t Moore have said: ‘It stands fast for me that…’? And further: ‘It stands fast for me and many others…’” (OC 116). Here we have a distinction between “knowing” something and having something “stand fast.” What stands fast is what is certain and not proven.
As an example of something that is not proven but certain, Wittgenstein invites us to think about performing a scientific experiment with a piece of scientific equipment. He says: “If I make an experiment, I do not doubt the existence of the apparatus before my eyes. I have plenty of doubts but not that” (OC 337). The “existence of the apparatus is foundational for that specific investigation” (Stroll 2005, 36). In every investigation, something is necessarily exempt from doubt, or certain. This is not by choice, or for the sake of convenience, but a necessary feature of any sort of inquiry or use of language. To this point, Wittgenstein says: “But it isn’t that the situation is like this: We just can’t investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put. My
life consists in my being content to accept many things” (OC 343-344). It is not just a matter of
convenience, but a matter of life. This is the essence of Wittgenstein’s refutation of the radical skeptic.
Certainties are things for which a mistake is logically excluded (OC 194). To be wrong about a certainty is not to make a mistake, but to be mentally disturbed. Wittgenstein gives an example in OC 195. He says: “If I believe that I am sitting in my room when I am not, then I shall not be said to have made a mistake” (OC 195). If someone believes he is sitting in a room
when he is not, the difference between this and making an error is “a different sort of gravity” (Stroll 2005, 37). A mistake is an error in judgment that is in conformity with a framework; for example the misspelling of a word. There is a presupposition of being “in accordance with mankind” (OC 156). To be mentally disturbed is to question the framework in which mistakes are made. For example, if someone was to question the existence of the world, or the existence of her community, we would regard this person as having something deeply wrong with her (Stroll 2005, 38). This person’s conception of the world would be “wildly deviant” and we would treat them “analogous to our way of dealing with a paranoid” (Stroll 2005, 39). Asserting the opposite of a certainty results in absurdity; Stroll calls this concept, which helps to identify certainties, “negational absurdity” (Stroll 2005, 38). 3
To illustrate with one more example, take as a given that the world is around 4.5 billion years old. If someone stated that the world was 6 billion years old, they would be wrong, but the magnitude by which they were wrong (though large in actual number of years) would not be so large. This is because if the world were 6 billion years old, it would still be perfectly
comprehensible to us. The certainty that the world is very old is still intact; almost nothing would be different in our everyday understanding of the world; there would be “no discernable or practical differences in our attitude towards or comprehension of the world” (Stroll 2005, 39). If, on the other hand, someone pronounced that the world was only 100 years old, that would be absurd. There would be many discernable and practical differences in our attitude towards the world for someone who believed that the world was 100 years old instead of 4.5 billion years old. This person’s understanding of history would be radically different, as well as their
understanding of geology, biology, and many other things. This would be incomprehensible to a normal, properly socialized person, and there would be little we could do to correct such a person. We would instead regard them as radically confused, or mentally disturbed, since they sincerely believe the opposite of what for a normal person is certain. Whether we simply treat them as confused or as deranged depends on the severity of their claims and its incompatibility with ours. To take a real-life example, think of a creationist who sincerely believes that the world is 6,000 years old. It is instructive to look at the elaborate ways they try to make their
3 See also PI 251-255 where Wittgenstein employs a similar strategy in investigating the negation of “a
worldview still fit with the world (for example that God put dinosaur fossils in the ground to test their faith in His word). Since certainties such as these are the foundations for all of our
institutions and language-games, people whose certainties radically depart from ours are viewed as at best confused and at worst incomprehensible to us.
As I alluded to before, the attribution of a foundationalist position to Wittgenstein is somewhat controversial. I will now explore an argument against attributing a foundationalist position to Wittgenstein offered by Michael Williams.
2.2 Michael Williams’ Argument Against Foundationalism
In his concisely titled article “Why Wittgenstein Isn’t a Foundationalist,” Michael Williams levels criticisms against people like Stroll who attribute a foundationalist position to Wittgenstein. He takes issue with using the term “foundationalism” to describe Wittgenstein’s position because he feels that it is a term with a specific meaning that involves “specific commitments, methodological and theoretical” that we should be hesitant to associate with Wittgenstein (Williams 2005, 50). He outlines four commitments that historically define the foundationalist tradition and attempts to show that Wittgenstein is not committed to any of them. As a result, according to Williams, we should reject any attribution of foundationalism to
Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The four commitments are: “universality, specifiability, autonomy, and rational adequacy” (Williams 2005, 57). In this section I will address three of these four commitments: universality, specifiability, and rational adequacy. I will briefly explain these characteristics as Williams describes them and explain Williams’s objections to attributing them to Wittgenstein’s approach. I will show why I do not think that these observations should make us abandon a foundationalist reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The third commitment, that of autonomy, will be discussed in section 5.1.
The first commitment that Williams rejects is the commitment of universality. Williams especially takes issue with the vagueness of “foundations” and “certainties” as they are used by people who attribute a foundationalist position to Wittgenstein. He claims that foundationalism as it is usually articulated implies that the foundations are universal to all humans. When Wittgenstein speaks of certainties, they are only sometimes universal, while in other
circumstances they are not necessarily universal, and in other circumstances still they are clearly
not universal (Williams 2005, 54). Accordingly, there are only some cases in which asserting the
opposite of a certainty would result in being labelled “mentally disturbed.” In other cases, they may just be indications of a worldview that “diverges seriously from our own” but that is still on some level intelligible (Williams 2005, 54). While I agree that Williams’s observation is valid, I do not think that it is an argument against attributing a foundationalist position to Wittgenstein. Stroll himself sees this tension between the different types of certainties and handles it by
distinguishing between absolute certainties and relative certainties. Relative certainties are those that are foundational to specific language games and are not doubted when those language games are being played. However, they can be doubted in other circumstances. For example, for a Christian who is fully committed to a theistic worldview, the existence of God is a certainty beyond doubt - it is neither justified nor proven but foundational to their world view. For 4
someone who is staunchly atheist, the opposite is true. If a committed Christian and a committed atheist were to meet and discuss religion, it would become clear that their views diverged
seriously from one another, but they would not call each other mentally disturbed. The 5
existence or non-existence of God is not a universal certainty like, say, the example from the previous section of the earth being very old. Compare this to someone who simultaneously claimed to be a Christian and claimed to not believe in God. In that case, this person would be attempting to be within a system and transgressing the bounds of that system (analogous to someone wanting to play chess without following the rules) and could be properly labelled radically confused and not making sense. There is a difference of magnitude between the two types of certainties, but one can still be a foundationalist and accept that not all foundations are universal. It is just a matter of holding a properly qualified version of foundationalism.
Williams then goes on to assert that foundationalism entails that there is a specific class of basic judgments, beliefs, or (in Wittgenstein’s case) certainties, and that they must be able to be theoretically delimited (Williams 2005, 51). However, Wittgenstein expressly denies the possibility of specifying the circumstances in which certainties manifest themselves. Certainties “are presupposed in particular circumstances; and these circumstances - hence the judgments that
4 I do not mean to say that all Christians would agree with this. For more on this, see the conclusion. 5Assuming the argument took place in person and not on the internet
hold fast in them - cannot be identified by any rule” (Williams 2005, 52). As a result, certainties are themselves, in principle, unspecifiable (Williams 2005, 51). For traditional foundationalists, basic and non-basic judgments (that is, foundational and non-foundational judgments) are strictly separate, “like acids and alkalis for a chemist” (Williams 2005, 31). However, in Wittgenstein’s writings, what is foundational in certain circumstances might well be a hypothesis in another, and since no strict demarcation can be made to classify the foundational certainties, it is not proper to call it foundationalism. Again, I respond to this by saying that Wittgenstein’s foundationalism is not traditional foundationalism, so expecting it to have the same
characteristics is misguided. This problem is solved again by bringing to attention the fact that there are both universal and relative certainties. Relative certainties can be foundational for certain language-games but a hypothesis in another. Universal certainties, on the other hand, are certain for all. Whether one is reducible to the other is something that I will discuss later in the paper, but for now just accepting that there are different kinds of certainties is enough to bring Williams’s argument into question.
Finally, Williams makes the claim that there are no rationally adequate certainties that serve as a basis for rationality and can adjudicate empirically significant disputes (Williams 2005, 55). It is conceivable that someone could be brought up with radically different basic beliefs (certainties) and if we were confronted with such a person, we would not be able to rationally argue our position with them because what we take to be true and justified would not be the same as what they take to be true and justified. This is largely the focus of section 4.2 so I will not go into too much detail here, but suffice it to say that while this may be true, it does not lead to relativism (as Williams himself acknowledges) and with a proper distinction between types of certainty we can address this point. So, in conclusion, contrary to what Williams 6
thinks, he has only shown that Wittgenstein is not a traditional foundationalist, which is not a position I want to endorse either. However, there is still enough significant overlap between traditional foundationalism and Wittgenstein’s version of foundationalism to still justify calling it foundationalism. Once it is made clear that that is not what we mean by foundationalism when
we apply it to Wittgenstein and we are specific about what we do mean by foundationalism, worries by Williams and others like him should go away.
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3. Setting the Problem: How Foundationalism Can Lead to Ethical Incommensurability
In this chapter, I will attempt to show how a foundationalist reading of ethics could lead to a version of ethical incommensurability. This hinges on a particular reading of
foundationalism that is exemplified by Michael Kober in his article “‘In the Beginning Was the Deed’: Wittgenstein on Knowledge and Religion.” I will present his view more or less without comment, as the next chapter will be devoted to critiquing his view. Then, I will present a foundationalist reading of ethics by Nigel Pleasants in his article “Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Basic Moral Certainty.” After, I will return to Kober’s view of foundationalism and show that, if we take the two together, we are led to a problem of incommensurability. The rest of the paper will be devoted to providing an alternative conception of foundationalist ethics.
3.1 Kober’s Foundationalism
In his article “‘In the Beginning Was the Deed’: Wittgenstein on Knowledge and
Religion,” Michael Kober presents a form of foundationalism that, I will argue, leads to cultural incommensurability. Kober embraces the idea that language-games rest on unquestioned (or unquestionable) foundations, but he finds the location of these unquestionable foundations to be in the community of the speaker. He says “to be a person is to be able to apply rules, that is, to be a possible competent participant of a practice whose correct application is, as a matter of fact, an object of community agreement” (Kober 2005, 231). Kober identifies the practices which are constituted by rules to be made up of “community agreement.” These primitive, community based practices are irreducible and exist by sheer facticity (Kober 2005, 231) - they are simply there and not justifiable. We are not able to step back and look at these primitive practices critically because we are fundamentally already engrossed in them as a starting point. Kober says:
“We also lack the distance to criticize or justify the primitive practices of our own cultural community. Rather, we have already accepted their facticity by our own deeds. There is no way of stepping back into a ‘neutral’ practice or context, since a ‘neutral’ practice or context is not a practice or context at all. In other words: in the beginning of all our philosophizing we were already involved in practices of our form of life, including our investigative practices. This is a fact that we need to accept” (Kober 2005, 232) Kober is not just pointing out that we are socialized into a community that results in our unreflectively accepting certain things as a starting point, but he is also asserting that our primitive community practices are the unquestioned, a-rational foundations that all our
constructions or language-games rest on. This means that there is a substratum of community based practices that are unjustified not only in practice, but are in principle unjustifiable. They are the foundation of our practices in which justification is possible - they are the certainties that stand fast for us.
Kober claims that Wittgenstein’s view can be summarized as follows: “humans are ‘born into’ a specific cultural tradition and are ‘trained’ to accept its peculiar practices, its standards of rationality, and its world-picture, which is the set of convictions and values a cultural community shares” (Kober 2005, 233). This is a background of agreement that people within a community share. This background is ungrounded and those who have the background are unable to step back and criticize the certainties that make up the background. Kober says nothing of how a set of convictions and values would or could compare to another community’s set of convictions or values. However, he does say that single practices within a community can be improved, and even the certainties that make up these primitive practices can be changed (Kober 2005, 233). It is not possible to change the entire “form of life” or background of agreement in the community. This is because “in order to change or improve anything, some things have to be retained: the certainties of the practices one is in during the change” (Kober 2005, 233). It is only possible to change the background agreement of a community’s practices piecemeal.
Kober places the unquestionable foundations in the culture of the speaker. This means that the certainties that make up a worldview are based on nothing more than community agreement. These certainties are shown in the way we act. If two communities have
significantly different primitive practices on which they found their other, more complex practices, then the two may have no possibility of compatibility. According to Kober’s version of foundationalism, nothing is stopping this situation from occurring. This dilemma will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter.
3.2 Basic Moral Certainty
Nigel Pleasants, in his article “Wittgenstein, Ethics, and Basic Moral Certainty,” uses foundationalism and expressly applies it to ethics. He explores why we accept the wrongness of killing and the badness of death. Pleasants follows the normal foundationalist line by asserting that there are certain states of affairs which can be neither affirmed nor denied (Pleasants 2008, 241). Though this is usually discussed as it relates to epistemic practices, Pleasants proposes to use this observation and apply it to ethical practices. This sheds light on what he calls “basic moral certainties” - foundational certainties that make up the bedrock of our ethical practices, moral inquiries, and moral judgments (Pleasants 2008, 241). These basic moral certainties are the hinge certainties of ethical practices and share their characteristics - they are unjustified, a-rational, non-epistemic, and self-evident.
Pleasants examines how ethical statements compare to empirical statements. He says that they share many characteristics; both can vary in their degrees of certitude and contentiousness, from “unshakeably sure” to “very unsure” with intermediate degrees of certainty in the middle (Pleasants 2008, 255). There are also some that require justification and others that seemingly do not. In OC, Wittgenstein goes over a number of what seem like empirical propositions (statements with truth value) that seem extremely strange when put into the form of a
proposition. They can take the form of an empirical proposition, but that does not make them empirical propositions; there is nothing “that could be proffered as evidential support or grounds for the truth of [this assertion that] could be as certain as the very thing they purport to support or ground” (Pleasants 2008, 255). Attempting to find grounds for such a (seeming) proposition misunderstands the nature of the assertion. It is not asserting knowledge, as a proposition does, but asserting certainty, which does not have grounds or support. Therefore it is not a proposition at all. Saying “the world has existed for a very long time,” which was discussed last chapter, is
an example of an assertion that takes the form of a proposition but is really a certainty. Pleasants claims that this can also be extended to ethics; in other words, there are things that take the form of ethical propositions but are not really ethical propositions. They are assertions of moral certainty.
Pleasants uses the wrongness of murder and the badness of death as examples. He
examines how philosophers in the past have attempted to explain these two by attempting to give grounds for them and claims that their explanations “add no enlightenment to our ordinary ways of talking about the badness of death and the wrongness of killing” (Pleasants 2008, 259). They mostly rely on figurative language like concepts of loss or of having something of value taken from the person being killed. This ordinary way of speaking about the badness of death may serve a purpose as a way of expressing our own outrage or sadness at the death of a loved one, for example, but it is not a justification for the badness of death or the wrongness of killing. When this figurative language makes up “the active ingredient of philosophical theories” that purport to explain or disclose the badness of death, “the result is a gross pseudo-explanation” (Pleasants 2008, 260). The figurative language does nothing more than “rephrase in
grandiloquent philosophical language what anyone already knows just in virtue of being able to 7
use the concepts ‘death’ and ‘killing’ appropriately” (Pleasants 2008, 260). Speaking of the wrongness of having a life taken, or of the badness of loss when speaking of death offers nothing that is not already self-evident. Therefore, though it may at first look like a justification, it is not.
Pleasants concludes from this that the wrongness of killing and the badness of death are foundational certainties. According to Pleasants, these moral certainties cannot be affirmed, doubted, or treated like propositional knowledge because they are a fundamentally different class. In these ways, they are analogous to the epistemic certainties such as “I have a hand.” Both types of certainties are not able to be doubted except in extreme circumstances (like, for example, when someone who is experiencing unbearable suffering dies). They also share the characteristic of being strange to have to explain. Asking someone to explain how they know
7 Here, Pleasants uses “know” to mean having the ability to be a competent performer. He does not mean
knowledge in the sense that a person would “stand in an epistemic relation to the taken-for-granted nature and conditions of her actions” (Pleasants 2008, 265 n 6). It is a self evident type of knowledge that is the same as certainty as I am using it.
their hands exist would probably be met with the same sort of exasperated response as asking someone to explain how they know that killing is wrong. Any competent moral agent is aware that it is wrong to kill innocent people without having to explain why they are aware aware of it. The wrongness of killing innocent people “is just as certain as any logical or analytic truth, or any object of basic empirical certainty” (Pleasants 2008, 263). This certainty is not able to be expressed by propositions, but rather “is manifest in how we live and conduct ourselves, how we respond to sad events and wrongful acts” (Pleasants 2008, 263).
Pleasants identifies the wrongness of killing and the badness of death as two hinge certainties. They underpin our ethical constructions and serve as ungrounded ground for ethical language-games. This means that they are “inviolable” - meaning they are not possible to be violated while staying within an ethical framework. However, this does not mean that the whole of our ethical frameworks are made up of these certainties. A background of agreement on the wrongness of killing and the badness of death means that we can have proper ethical debates. These certainties are “the hinge on which enquiry into the rightness or permissibility of particular acts, practices, and institutions involving the death and killing of various kinds and states of beings turns” (Pleasants 2008, 264). For example, since we agree on the fact that killing is wrong, we can debate whether or not abortion and euthanasia are wrong by having the common reference that killing is wrong (Pleasants 2008, 264). It becomes a matter of what is considered murder or death that is debated. The hinge is not debated, but what is included in the hinge is. Thus, the implication of this view is not that ethical systems on the whole are exempt from inquiry, but only that the hinges on which they turn are exempt from inquiry.
3.3: The Problem of Incommensurability
Now I would like to discuss why these two views, when taken together, can lead to ethical incommensurability. Pleasants makes a good case for basic moral certainties as the foundations of our ethical language-games. However, if these moral certainties, like the epistemic certainties discussed by Kober, are acquired through socialization and are purely community-based and nothing more, then it is easy to see how incommensurability arguments would come up. If there are two communities with radically different primitive ethical practices,
or moral certainties, then two communities could have radically incommensurable ethical practices. Pleasants uses two very obvious examples - the wrongness of killing and the badness of death - to illustrate the existence of moral certainties. However, not all ethical hinges are so obvious to everyone, and ethical hinges are not always so easily distinguished from ethical propositions.
There is also an ambiguity about the form of moral certainties. If moral certainties are never subject to doubt - that is, they are absolute and unchanging, like the wrongness of killing and the badness of death seem to be - then it is difficult to say exactly what we are left with in the class of moral certainties. Pleasants is not explicit about whether he thinks that they are
absolutely unchanging, relatively unchanging, or something in between the two. If they are
absolutely unchanging, then we are committed to embracing some form of ethical absolutism. However, if we instead grant that they are relative to a particular culture or community, then we are at risk of extreme versions of relativism and incommensurability. To avoid this, then, the task must be to show that ethical hinges need neither be arbitrary nor absolute. There are other problems that taking this view of foundationalism presents. The next chapter will be focused on bringing these problems out and showing why we should reject this version of ethical
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“What we believe depends on what we learn. We all believe that it isn’t possible to get to the moon; but there might be some people who believe that is possible and that it sometimes happens. We say: these people do not know a lot that we know. And, let them be never so sure of their belief - they are wrong and we know it. If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far”
-On Certainty 286
4. Undesirable Conclusions
This view of Wittgensteinian foundationalist ethics leaves many unanswered questions. If we are to accept the idea that the foundational hinges of ethics are found in the community of the speaker, then there are logical conclusions of this that we may be hesitant to accept. Whether they are necessary conclusions from a Wittgensteinian framework is something that I will
discuss in the next chapter; this chapter will be devoted to uncovering these conclusions and showing how they may be dubious claims at best. These conclusions are: that community-based hinges are in some sense arbitrary and as a result do not “progress” in any meaningful way, that there is a problem of incommensurability between communities that results in no way of
rationally discussing ethics across frameworks, and that there is no way to criticize moral convictions either from inside the community that they are found in or from outside the culture that they are in. I will continue to explore Kober and Pleasants, and I will also consider
Greenleaf-Brice’s analysis of Wittgensteinian foundationalist ethics and show how they produce these problems and why they are problematic.
4.1: The Arbitrariness of Ethical Hinges
The first such conclusion is that if ethical hinges are cultural and the justification of ethical codes do not go beyond the community they are in, then we must say that these ethical hinges are in some sense arbitrary. With Kober’s foundationalism, it seems we would have to endorse this view. For example, he says “we lack the distance to criticize or justify the primitive
practices of our own cultural community” (Kober 2005, 232). This seems only partly true, and he himself seems to contradict the statement when he says “This does not mean, of course, that we cannot change our practices, but that we can change them only piecemeal; that is, by changing or improving single practices, including their constitutive rules or their certainties” (Kober 1983, 233 emphasis my own). By using the word “improving,” Kober describes something that is not accounted for in his own framework. If ethical hinges are completely community based, by what standard can we say that they are ever improved? There is no reference aside from the hinges themselves to appeal to by which we could say they have been improved. There is a sort of deadlock here; Kober admits that certainties can be updated and improved, but his framework does not explain how this would be possible. He is right to point out that we can only change our practices piecemeal, and that calls to mind the image of the riverbed in OC 95-97, where Wittgenstein likens our framework of certainties to a riverbed and our practices to the water that runs through it. We cannot immediately shift the whole riverbed, but only parts of it at a time. However, if they are being improved, as Kober admits in his language use, he still does not give us a standard by which we can say this. Perhaps we can only look back on our previous ethical hinges now and, by appealing to our own cultural and
historical standards, say that they have improved. However this still does not answer why they were improved in the first place. If we “lack the distance to criticize or justify”our practices (including our ethical practices), how then are we able to improve our hinges - that is, how does the process of questioning and changing begin - regardless of what standard we are improving them by?
To illustrate the strangeness of Kober’s view, take the following example. Say that I am a southern slave owner in Mississippi in 1830, before the American Civil War and before the emancipation of the slaves. On Kober’s paradigm, there is no reason for another person living in the same culture at the same time to criticize my idea that slavery is acceptable. The inferiority of black people was a cultural hinge that was agreed upon by the community, and since the highest standard of good is the one set by one’s community, there would be no way to criticize this point. Now, of course, we look back on slavery with intense shame and are revolted by the prospect of it. Someone in our community today who professed that slavery was good would not
be reasoned with, but would be considered deranged. The negation of the statement “slavery is not morally justified” falls to negational absurdity. Our hinges have changed to such an extent that we now cannot fathom doing what was normal practice for a long time. And are we to say that our hinges merely changed and did not improve by any standard other than our own? Imagine saying that to a child when teaching him about the history of slavery, or saying that in any other normal discourse. Also, think of the other tools available to us that allow us to judge such a claim that are not singularly ethical. Kober offers no account for real improvements in 8
ethical systems that are (to some extent and at some point) by design that happen within the system.
4.3: Rational Ethical Discourse Between Systems
We don’t need to look so far back to think of examples. Slavery is still practiced today in some parts of the world. What would we say to people from a different culture who still
practiced slavery if we wanted to have a conversation with them? Can we really say that our own arbitrary and ungrounded standards prohibit such a thing, but that other ethical codes may permit it so the only stance we can take against it is at best a sort of ironic stance? If the only appeal we can make in ethical discussions is an appeal to our own community-based ethical framework, then this appeal would mean nothing to someone with a different cultural ethical framework. The conclusion of a view like this is that there is no such thing as rational ethical discourse. When two communities with different ethical hinges clash, there is no possibility of comparison or compatibility. Proponents of this view would claim that there is nothing to “get right” in ethics; it is simply a matter of widespread agreement or cultural decisions. We have our ethical views because we are from a certain community with its own ethical hinges and these cannot be questioned. This leads to a problem of incommensurability; if all we have is our own cultural ethical systems, then there is no way of understanding or rightfully criticizing another cultural ethical system.
However, it seems that we question our ethical hinges all the time. We need only look at our society’s cultural and political landscape to find examples of this happening. Think, for
example, of the recent debate on gender and sexuality in Western countries, which just thirty years ago would not have been able to happen. I do not wish to say that Kober’s view is entirely false, just that it cannot be the whole picture. When we change our ethical practices, there seems to be a reason why we change them, and Kober’s view affords no account of this. Claiming that the foundations of our ethical practices are just our community decisions is to assert that there is no such thing as ethical progress, a point that is difficult to maintain when faced with extreme examples like slavery. While he offers some insight into how we are acculturated, making his view a foundationalist view which, in a Wittgensteinian framework, makes cultural values ungrounded leaves room for too many problems. As a result, we should reject his account.
4.4: Bottom-up and Top-down Certainties
Like Kober, Pleasants leaves much to be explained. He does not explain where to find ethical hinges. Are they cultural or are they natural? If they are cultural, how are they not also arbitrary? These are questions that he does not address. He says that we would regard someone who claimed that murder is acceptable as deranged, but what would we say if there was a whole community that held this view? Would we accept their view as equally justified?
Robert Greenleaf-Brice takes up some of these questions in his analysis of Pleasants’ paper. He introduces a distinction between bottom-up and top-down certainties. Bottom-up certainties are “non-propositional, non-ratiocinated action” (Greenleaf Brice 2013, 482) that are universal and entirely unreflective. Top-down certainties, on the other hand, are “arrived at” (Greenleaf-Brice 2013, 482). These top-down certainties did at one point originate from
ratiocination but became unreflective certainties over time. He locates the wrongness of murder among these top-down certainties. They are no longer learned rationally; children of a
community are trained into a background picture that contains this hinge. As will be seen in the next chapter, I think this is a crucial distinction to make. Greenleaf-Brice claims that these are not certain in exactly the same way as having a hand. For example, the hinge that it is wrong to kill innocent people has come to function differently over time. At one point (evidenced by the quote from The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn) black people in America were not considered people, so the hinge “it is wrong to kill innocent people” did not include them and had a different
meaning. However, as our understanding of race updated and our culture changed, the certainty changed to include black people (Greenleaf-Brice 2013, 483). The hinge clearly changed and it did so at a level that was not unconscious or a-rational. Now we are acculturated into being certain that it is wrong to kill any innocent, non-threatening people regardless of their race. We do not learn this rationally (we are trained to accept it), but that does not mean that there was never a rational conversation around the issue that was resolved. This resolution resulted in a conviction that became accepted unreflectively. The new hinge is a result of a long cultural struggle. He uses this as an example to illustrate that this form of certainty is not the same type of certainty as something like “the earth exists” or “I have a hand.” It may play a foundational role when situated in our ethical language-game, but it is and can be subject to change in a way that natural, bottom-up certainties are not.
My question with this analysis is the following. If top down certainties originated through ratiocination and only became unreflective certainties over time, can we allow for this and still maintain a foundationalist view? They are not ratiocinated now (normally at least), but they once were. This means that there is in fact some kind of explanation that could justify them, so they are not universally certain, but only relative to a particular system. Greenleaf-Brice feels this tension and this leads him to say that the existence of bottom-up and top-down certainties cannot “be reconciled to fit one overall Wittgensteinian view” (Greenleaf-Brice 2013, 486). While I agree that there is a crucial distinction between the two types of certainties, I am more optimistic about the possibility of a reconciliation. This will be the focus of the next chapter.
Greenleaf-Brice makes the same omission as Kober. He says rightly that ethical hinges may change over time, but he does not explain why or how a change like this would occur. He is describing something that is observable and undeniable while leaving no room in his view to explain why it happens. This is something that is neglected at large in discussions of
Wittgensteinian ethics. Greenleaf-Brice also does not discuss the possibility of ethical discourse across cultures. Here, however, he offers more than Kober in that he at least allows that
(top-down) ethical hinges can be arrived at rationally. If this is the case, then it is conceivable that we could recreate this rational process in attempting to persuade someone from another
community or ethical commitment to accept our ethical conclusions. This will be discussed more at length in the next chapter.
4.5: Do We Have to Abandon Foundationalism?
The main problem with standard views of Wittgensteinian ethics is that they do not account for where ethical hinges come from. These views are right to point out that we are trained into a worldview that comes with certain ethical hinges that we do not learn rationally and do not normally have to justify. This, however, does not necessarily mean that they cannot be justified, or that they never were justified- just that they normally do not have to be. The usual view of Wittgensteinian foundationalist ethics, by placing the foundational hinges in the community of the speaker and leaving no room to justify them beyond that, treats ethical hinges as if they magically appear from nowhere. There are reasons to think that this is wrong, and the purpose of the final chapters will be to lay out a Wittgensteinian framework that addresses these concerns and avoids falling into the traps that Wittgensteinian foundationalist ethics normally cannot avoid.
5
“The origin and the primitive form of the language game is a reaction; only from this can more complicated forms develop. Language – I want to say – is a refinement. “In the beginning was the deed.”
Culture and Value pg. 31
5.1 An Alternative View
What all of these authors overlook or neglect to mention is the fact that we do not arbitrarily construct language-games, but we construct them because we have a need for them and do so in order to adapt to the world. We make houses because we need shelter from the natural world, we make art because we have need for a creative outlet, we go to parties because we are social beings, and so on. These are very real human needs that we react to by creating language-games that address these needs. Each language game has a point, or a telos, that is a reaction to a human need that is influenced by our interaction with the world. Ethics is no exception; it too must be a construction that we make in reaction to a need. We are not passive creatures; we are as much the creators of our culture as we are the products of our culture. If ethics is a reaction to a human need that is primary to our cultural constructions, then there is something to get right in ethics that goes beyond our community standards. This would solve the three problems laid out in the previous chapter: it would allow us to assert that cultural ethical hinges are not arbitrary, it would allow for us to criticize things like slavery from a non-arbitrary standard thus allowing for moral progress, and it would allow us to have rational ethical
discourse across cultures (the last two are dependent on the first one being true). This is not the normal view of Wittgensteinian ethics, but that does not mean that this view is
un-Wittgensteinian. It is also not necessary to abandon foundationalism - it just may be that the foundations are not what we originally thought they were. To understand why, first we must make a digression to explain Daniele Moyal-Sharrock’s idea of “Enactive Foundationalism.”
5.1 Enactive Foundationalism
Daniele Moyal-Sharrock offers a distinct view of foundationalism. She follows the standard line of Wittgensteinian foundationalism by asserting that our foundations are
“nonepistemic,” but she departs from the normal view by asserting that they are “enacted” and “animal” (Moyal-Sharrock 2016, 97). Wittgenstein’s greatest achievement in philosophy, she says, is that he “revived the animal in us” (Moyal Sharrock 2013, 263). She grounds this in Wittgenstein’s passage from OC when he says: “I want to conceive [this certainty] as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, something animal” (OC 359). By “something animal,” Moyal-Sharrock takes Wittgenstein to mean that our foundations are made up of “unreflective ways of acting” (Moyal-Sharrock 2016, 98). The certainties may resemble empirical conclusions, but that is a misleading appearance.
She uses Wittgenstein’s example of how children learn the word “furniture” as an illustration of her point. He says:
“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?” (OC 476).
Questions of existence do not occur to someone until a question presents itself, and the question of the existence of everyday external objects does not present itself except in the most abnormal of circumstances. Certainty of something’s existence is not epistemic, but “enacted.” A child shows he is certain of the existence of his body by reaching out to grab his mother. Are we to say that the child knows that he has a body? Knowledge means that grounds are present to be given, and what grounds does the child have? But through the child’s action, we can observe 9
certainty.
For Moyal-Sharrock, Wittgenstein has shown that the foundation of knowledge is not more knowledge, but a specific kind of enacted certainty. Wittgenstein says “One says ‘I know’ when one is ready to give compelling grounds” (OC 243); knowledge is, as it is standardly understood to be, justified true belief. However, there are such things that are certain but are not knowledge. Examples of these are “I have a hand,” “The earth has existed long before I was born,” and “I am standing here.” They are not true, nor are they justified. As Wittgenstein says, “If the true is what is grounded, then the grounds are not true, nor yet false” (OC 205). They are certainties - not true, not false, but the grounds for calling things true or false, and certainty is shown through primitive action. They are an ungrounded ground that allows for the existence of truth and falsity. Wittgenstein says: “I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false” (OC 94). These certainties make up what Wittgenstein refers to as one’s frame of reference or worldview. They are shown in action; action comes first, then language.
It is not possible to be mistaken about a hinge certainty; pronouncing the opposite of (or acting in a manner that is opposite to) a hinge certainty is like someone stating they don’t believe in the rules of chess; there is no way to correct such a person. Doubt is “logically excluded” (OC 454) in cases of basic certainties, since for a mistake to occur there must be a system of reference in place that is transgressed. Instead, to doubt a hinge certainty is to be deranged. Wittgenstein uses the example of a man attempting to doubt the existence of his body. He says “If someone said to me that he doubted whether he had a body, I should take him to be a half-wit. But I shouldn’t know what it would mean to try to convince him that he had one” (OC 257). What he is hinting at is that it is difficult to change someone’s mind about their world picture which is made up of certain hinges. Someone who doubted the existence of his body would appear very strange to us. Since we do not learn the existence of our body in a rational, epistemic way, it would be a nearly impossible task to rationally convince someone that they have a body. Having a body is as central to our existence as anything, so someone who doubted that would likely not accept as evidence the usual things we would use as evidence to support the claim that we have a body.
The hinges that make up these foundations are conditioned by how the world is, but the conditions of the world are not themselves reasons for certainties (Moyal Sharrock 2016, 110). They are conditioned by “very general facts of nature” and rooted “in our human form of life and the various forms of human life” (Moyal Sharrock 2016, 110). The way that the world is plays an important role in the conditioning of the hinge certainties but they are causes, not reasons. Wittgenstein makes this distinction in OC 429, speaking of his being certain of having ten toes even when he cannot see them. He says: “Is it right to say that my previous experience has always taught me so? Am I more certain of previous experience than that I have ten toes? That previous experience may very well be the cause of my certainty, but is it the ground?” (OC 429). Importantly, Wittgenstein emphasizes that our certainties are rooted in the world and that there is some sort of causal connection between the way the world is (and the way we experience it) and our hinge certainties. Our actions, as human animals, correspond with the way that the world is, and it is this primitive, animal action that underlies our language-games.
With this version of foundationalism we can now answer Michael Williams’ third concern: the supposed autonomy of basic and non-basic judgments. This position held in traditional foundationalism states that the foundations of knowledge must stand on their own; that is, they are adequate without reference to any other beliefs, propositions, or knowledge. Williams states that this is not a position Wittgenstein would endorse because he endorses a form of “limited semantic holism” where certainties are “held in place by things around them”
(Williams 2005, 54). Thus, there are no certainties that are independent of other, less basic beliefs, propositions, or objects of knowledge, so Wittgenstein’s position is not truly a
foundationalist position. It seems to me that this worry is based in the idea that certainties are primarily and necessarily linguistic. If instead, as Moyal-Sharrock argues, certainties are primarily action based and are only propositionalized after (if even at all), then the worry of semantic holism is not relevant to the discussion. If the foundational certainties are
non-epistemic actions, they can be attributed even to pre-linguistic children. A baby can be certain of the existence of the outside world without being able to say it. Instead the baby shows its certainty through its actions, for example through reaching out for something. This
action-based certainty is autonomous in that it is shown without reference to any other beliefs, propositions, or knowledge.
5.2 Imaginary Naturalism?
The idea that Wittgenstein suggested that natural actions underlie our linguistic constructs is not accepted by everyone in the literature. Keith Dromm’s article “Imaginary Naturalism: The Natural and Primitive in Wittgenstein’s Later Thought” directly attacks such an idea. Dromm admits that there are passages that may suggest that Wittgenstein thought that there is a connection between “language use and the possession of certain natural, instinctive behaviors,” but that a closer reading of the passages does not suggest that it would be a position Wittgenstein seriously entertained (Dromm 2003, 673). He makes this claim for three reasons: (1) that the passage that most clearly states the supposed theory of language acquisition (PI 244) comes in the midst of a discussion about something totally different and thus would seem out of place, (2) that Wittgenstein offers no proof for his supposed theory of language acquisition, and (3) that in PI 244, Wittgenstein remarks before the discussion that it is a “possibility” (Dromm 2003, 679). These considerations lead him to conclude that “Wittgenstein does not offer it with the intention that we accept it as true, or in other words, to persuade us in believing that this is how language developed and how we learned to speak” (Dromm 2003, 679). Instead, he is only offering what might be seen as one possibility which is an important thing to be able to imagine, but that is not necessarily a factual account.
I find this argument to be peculiar for a few reasons. First of all, while it is true that Wittgenstein says in PI 244 that the idea that words are “connected with the primitive, natural, expressions of sensation and used in their place” is only “one possibility” (PI 244), he does not include any such consideration in the numerous other passages in which he makes similar claims. For example, in CV 31, he says: “The origin and the primitive form of the language-game is a reaction; only from this can more complicated forms develop. Language - I want to say - is a refinement, ‘in the beginning was the deed’” (CV 31). Here he unambiguously makes a formulation of what Dromm would call his theory of language development that is just as explicit as the one on PI 244, but he says nothing about it being only “one possibility.” Rather,
he does present it simply as a matter of fact. In addition, the final remark in PI 244 which is the conclusion of the discussion on primitive action and its relation to language is also presented unambiguously. Wittgenstein says: “‘So you are saying that the word “pain” really means crying?’ On the contrary: the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it” (PI 244). Again, Wittgenstein does not say “it is one possibility that the word pain replaces crying” but simply that “the word pain replaces crying.” It seems to me that Dromm is selectively reading into PI 244 too heavily when he may just as well have focused instead on another passage where Wittgenstein makes a similar claim, like in Culture and Value 31
(Wittgenstein 1980, 31), OC 204, or Zettel 545 (Wittgenstein 1967, 545), which present the idea that language is based in primitive action straightforwardly and not as “one possibility.”
Furthermore, it is not clear why Wittgenstein would repeatedly make this claim and not explain any of the other “possibilities” if he indeed thought that it was only one of many possibilities and did not want us to accept it as true.
The textual evidence for attributing to Wittgenstein the idea that language develops from primitive actions greatly outweighs the supposed textual evidence against it. This is an idea that comes up multiple times in multiple different sources, and only in one passage did Wittgenstein preface it with a qualifier that it is only a possibility. In the other discussions of it, Wittgenstein straightforwardly endorses such an idea.
5.3: Persuasion vs. Giving Reasons
The distinction between persuasion and giving reasons is important for the question of incommensurability between systems. Luigi Perissinotto explores this problem in depth in his article “How Long Has the Earth Existed? Persuasion and World-Picture in Wittgenstein’s On
Certainty.” He examines the seeming dichotomy that Wittgenstein sets up between “persuasion”
and “giving reasons” in OC. In 262, Wittgenstein imagines a man who has been brought up “in quite special circumstances” to believe that the earth has only existed for 50 years (OC 262). He imagines trying to convince the man of ourpicture of the world which includes the hinge that the world has existed much longer than that. He does not say that we would be changing his beliefs,
but rather that we would be “trying to give him our picture of the world” (OC 262) This would consist in “a kind of persuasion” (OC 262).
One important thing that Perissonotto acknowledges is that imagining someone with such a radically different certainty “means imagining many other and different things about him, about his environment and about the course of his life” (Perissonotto 2016, 157). A man who believed that the world was 50 years old would not merely be just like us in every regard except that belief; that would not be possible. That the world existed long before us is a certainty that is so central to our existence that if we were to doubt it, we would also have to doubt history, archaeology, the stories of our parents, and many other things that we do not usually doubt. To imagine such a man is to imagine someone who either was never exposed to these things or has been taught about them in an extremely peculiar way. We would have to also imagine “what such words as ‘father’ and ‘mother’ mean to him” (Perissonotto 2016, 157).
Perissonotto asks what it would take to prove to this man that his belief was wrong. This is where we begin to run into problems. Can we prove to ourselves that our most basic beliefs are correct? And if not, how could we possibly prove to him that our belief is correct and that his is wrong? Wittgenstein’s answer seems to be, according to Perissonotto, a definite no. In another passage of OC, Wittgenstein imagines Moore attempting to convince a king who believes that the world began at the time of his birth of our certainty that the world has existed long before us. Wittgenstein does leave the possibility that Moore could “convert the king to his view” (OC 92). The king might change his belief after a conversation with Moore, but “not because Moore has finally proved to him that the earth existed long before his birth but, rather, because he has been converted to Moore’s view” (Perissonotto 2016, 163 emphasis my own). The king is not just convinced to favor one belief over the other, but rather he has come “to look at the world in a different way” (OC 92).
Persuasion, in the sense that Wittgenstein uses it, is tantamount to a “conversion.” In order to understand Moore’s frame of reference, the king will have to, in effect, “become another man” (Perissonotto 2016, 166). This is because Moore would not just be working on changing standard, everyday beliefs, but changing the king’s certainties that make up his frame of reference. This is not done on a rational basis. Perissonotto gives the example of a Christian
missionary converting natives. He says “one does not convert natives when and because one has proved to them that their beliefs are false and deceitful; rather, it is once they have been
converted and as part of their conversion, that their previous beliefs can be false and deceitful” (Perissonotto 2016, 167). In other words, the old hinges only become irrational by comparison to the new hinges. This does not mean that then whole process of conversion is irrational necessarily, only that it is not done rationally. Calling a conversion irrational would “be like saying that education is for the most part irrational because, as we know, children are given very few proofs and justifications for what they are taught” (Perissonotto 2016, 168).
Does this mean that the conversion is unjustified? It is not rational, after all; can
something be non-rational (not irrational) and be justified at the same time? Let’s leave aside the example of the religious conversion of natives for obvious reasons and focus again on the king. Can we maintain that, although converting him to our own world picture (persuading him to adopt our hinges in lieu of his), though not a rational process of contesting his hinges one by one and proving the superiority of ours, that this is not a justified process? Are we not, though we cannot produce a justification on demand, more justified in our belief that the world has existed long before us than he is for believing the world began with him? Are we completely unjustified for teaching our children things we ourselves cannot prove on the spot? 10
I think the answer to the last question is obviously no. To understand why (beyond just an appeal to intuition) we have to return to Moyal-Sharrock. In a 2015 article “Wittgenstein on Forms of Life, Patterns of Life, and Ways of Living,” Moyal-Sharrock acknowledges a bilateral reading of the idea of “form of life.” She distinguishes between “vertical,” or natural, forms of life and “horizontal,” or ethnological forms of life. Each form of life is made up of its own collection of certainties. Vertical forms of life are made up of such certainties as “people need to breathe air, eat, drink, sleep; that they can walk, feel pain, and use language,” and so on
(Moyal-Sharrock 2015, 27). These are “objects of certainty for all human beings” (Moyal-Sharrock 2015, 27) and can be said to make up the distinctly human form of life.
However, there is also “possibility for diversity and variation” (Moyal-Sharrock 2015, 27) within the human form of life, and this is why Moyal Sharrock allows also for horizontal forms of life.
