In CE, Wittgenstein constructs an elegant Gedankexperiment to show how we come to speak of causes: Not to question certain things is a practical methodology. I cannot be certain about any specific cause: but I must (I want to) be certain about there being a cause in general. There could be endless possible alternative causes for the pain: while the blow may only have the function of giving me the impression of touch, pain could actually be exploding inside me (a micro-bomb, previously inoculated).Ĭausal propositions are beyond doubt not because they are solidly grounded on a priori categories or intuitions, but because their being grounded at all is not even in question. But not because we are directly and unmistakably made aware of a specific cause. The experience of pain is one we may genuinely call “experience of a cause”, says Wittgenstein. However, to consider causal statements as “beyond doubt” does not amount to their being transcendentally grounded (contra Kant) nor (contra Russell) to their being intuitions, as when I am hit with a stick, experience pain, and intuitively know that the blow caused the pain. The linguistic game of causality does not start with a doubt. To explain why we describe the world as causally structured there is no need to postulate any direct intuitions of causal relations: it is enough to point out that certain statements, describing a first event as the cause of a second, are simply never subjected to criticism. In CE, Wittgenstein rejects Russell’s thesis on causality. This interpretation of PI, XII sees reason as a tribunal, and human practice as the jury. A concept is like a style of painting, but we do not choose it on aesthetic grounds: it embodies the evolution of social judgements. We may, for our convenience, invent many alternative natural histories in order to study concepts: but to know with certainty we must decide and elect only one among them, and not doubt our decision thereafter. The grammar of the world/language evolves from the practical facts of society. What reason does is investigating but, pace Kant and Tractatus, this is not a logical enterprise. This fits with popular characterizations of reason as a tribunal. “When a guy says that he will not recognize any experience as evidence for the contrary this is no doubt a decision”. The way we think matches the morphology of the way we act. Before ramifying into the world, logical structures germinate from the seeds of action. There Wittgenstein does the background work for his final conception of what “knowing” is.
The roots of this view are to be sought in Cause and Effect. “But here, is it then not shown that knowledge resembles a decision?” OC, 362 It consists of this: that I would not be able to see where a doubt could arise, where supervision would be possible”. “My ‘state of mind’, the “knowing”, is for me not a guarantee of what happened. We are presented with the plausibility of a totality of judgements”. “We do not learn the praxis of empirical judgement by learning rules we are taught judgements, and their connections to other judgements. Indeed, in On Certainty knowledge would finally be characterized as a decision: Can we just choose it or not? Are we here simply talking of what’s pretty and what’s ugly?” PI, XII “Compare a concept with a style of painting. “If the formation of concepts can be explained in reference to natural facts, then, rather than on grammar, should we not perhaps involve ourselves with what, in nature, grounds it?” PI, XII Causality is the grammar of science.Īt the end of the Philosophical Investigations, however, Wittgenstein throws in a totally original viewpoint, questioning the primacy of grammar in general:
Natural laws, whether they exist or not, are the grammar of our thoughts and language. causality is the only form in which our descriptive systems can be conceived. Hume’s influence was evident: the cause-effect relation cannot be observed: belief in the causal nexus is superstition.īut Wittgenstein also embraced the Kantian insight: though there are no causal facts, the logical structure of the world/language is causal, i.e. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s position was radically anti-factualist.
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