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Wittgenstein on the moon
"...is there then no objective truth?"

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Wittgenstein on the moon

Gadfly II
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Posted 08/09/09 - 06:07 AM:	#21
One thing that has occurred to me is that 108 can be seen as an expression of the knower paradox. And it seems appropriate for the discussion so far. I know that the statement "someone travels in time" is false. I know that the statement "no one has traveled in time" is true. 1. If I do not know what it is to time travel, then I do not know how to recognize a time traveler. I do not know what it is to time travel ---------------------------------------- I do not know how to recognize a time traveler 2. If I do not know how to recognize a time traveler then I can not evaluate the statement "someone travels in time" I do not know how to recognize a time traveler ---------------------------------------------- I can not evaluate the statement "someone travels in time" I used time traveler rather than moon visitor because time travel is a physical impossibility so it is easier, I think, to grasp what W. is getting at. I think that he is trying to dispel the sort of confusion that the above argument creates by reminding us of different things, such as the child who believes in a moon visitor or a time traveler. Personally, I don't think philosophical therapy is appropriate here. At least I'm not ready to stop looking for a solution in this case, because, and I cringe to express it this way, I think that it is likely that we can be certain of things about which we have no knowledge. (I need to make progress on this if only to express it better ) My gut tells me that the solution may be to deny the first premise to one, but how? Edited by Gadfly II on 08/09/09 - 10:32 AM. Reason: wrong object of denial
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

brainpharte
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Posted 08/09/09 - 08:01 AM:	#22
Wittgenstein wrote: If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon. But doesn't a claim of certainty require that "our system" exhaust all possibilities? That there exist no possible unknown contingencies that would falsify the claim? That all our premises and presuppositions be true? That all our reasoning be valid (and sound.) If our system does not exhaust all possibilities, then the possibility that we are wrong exists. How can we know that our system exhausts all possibilities? If there exist unknown contingencies that would falsify our claim, then it is possible that we are wrong. How can we know that our system accounts for all contingencies, that there exist none that could falsify our claim? If any of our premises or presuppositions are false, then the certain truth of our claim is not established by them. How can we establish the truth of our premises and presuppositions without just moving the whole issue of certain truth back one step in a regress or circular loop?
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

ragus
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Posted 08/09/09 - 08:39 AM:	#23
Gadfly 1 wrote This is why the last speaker in 108 sounds so strange to W. W said "we should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from someone who said this". He's encapsulating the structure of our beliefs and contrasting this with an alternative structure. It's not that "on the moon" needs verifying : it's a musing about the coherence of such structures.
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

brainpharte
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Posted 08/09/09 - 09:26 AM:	#24
"we should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from someone who said this" W explained his intellectual reasoning for rejecting the claim that someone had been on the moon--and these reasons amount to the claim's failure to meet his epistemic criteria. W concludes that someone who ignores or rejects reasoning based on those criteria is "intellectually very distant" from those of us whose reasoning is based on these criteria. What differentiates their reasoning about the claim form ours is the epistemic criteria that they deem relevant.
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

Gadfly II
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Posted 08/09/09 - 10:25 AM:	#25
brainpharte wrote: But doesn't a claim of certainty require that "our system" exhaust all possibilities? I think that is too high a standard for certainty for anyone. There is a potential for ambiguity here. what is meant by "all possibilities?" It could be that all possibilities known, i.e. follows from our knowledge and our system, OR all possibilities known and unknown. If you mean the latter then it's obvious that the bar is set so high that nothing would count as certain, but, if you mean the former then that is quite within our capabilities and the only requirement for certainty would be a proposition that is entirely consistent with our knowledge, for example we are certain that a two dimensional triangle has three sides. so, certainty would overlap the a priori. A more restricted sense would be those possibilities that are verifiable and I believe that this is what W was referring to. In any event, what counts as all possibility is an open question. One can insist on one or the other but that would require a positive normative argument, i.e. why we should adopt one or the other.
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

ragus
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Posted 08/09/09 - 11:30 AM:	#26
brainpharte wrote What differentiates their reasoning about the claim form ours is the epistemic criteria that they deem relevant. Yes. It's the criteria that the reasoning works with - that's the issue. Immediately afterwards W starts musing about empirical propositions. It's that groping towards clarity that's fascinating.
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

brainpharte
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Posted 08/09/09 - 11:36 AM:	#27
Gadfly II wrote: I think that is too high a standard for certainty for anyone. There is a potential for ambiguity here. what is meant by "all possibilities?" It could be that all possibilities known, i.e. follows from our knowledge and our system, OR all possibilities known and unknown. If you mean the latter then it's obvious that the bar is set so high that nothing would count as certain, but, if you mean the former then that is quite within our capabilities and the only requirement for certainty would be a proposition that is entirely consistent with our knowledge, for example we are certain that a two dimensional triangle has three sides. so, certainty would overlap the a priori. A more restricted sense would be those possibilities that are verifiable and I believe that this is what W was referring to. In any event, what counts as all possibility is an open question. One can insist on one or the other but that would require a positive normative argument, i.e. why we should adopt one or the other. Or one can explicitly stipulate what one means by certainty and avoid much confusion. W's certainty that no one has been on the moon, then, is relative. That is, such certainty is meaningful only in the context of the particular system he deems relevant, and as I've said, is based on his epistemic criteria, which includes the physics of the time, the technological constraints of the time, serious reportage from reasonable people. and a thousand other things that are part of that system. If certainty is relative to a system, then, true believers in any ideological dogma can assert such certainty about their beliefs just as meaningfully as W can assert certainty about his claims. In fact, if certainty is relative to a system, then those "intellectually very distant" people W speaks of can just as meaningfully assert certainty about their claim. With the result that it is certain that no one has been to the moon (as W insists) AND it is certain that someone has been to the moon (as the intellectually very distant people insist.) Relative certainty doesn’t seem to add any understanding to the matter. It seems to me that we can differentiate what’s at issue a whole lot more meaningfully and usefully simply by specifying the epistemic criteria that the claims can meet or fail to meet.
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

ade90212
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Posted 08/09/09 - 11:57 AM:	#28
I think the passages that Banno quotes in the OP actually tie in quite nicely with Wittgenstein's account of certainty. The river may wash away some sediment, but it cannot wash away the river bed.
"Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?" - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said: "this is a man", "this is a house", etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?" - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

Gadfly II
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Posted 08/09/09 - 03:58 PM:	#29
brainpharte wrote: Or one can explicitly stipulate what one means by certainty and avoid much confusion. Relative certainty doesn’t seem to add any understanding to the matter. It seems to me that we can differentiate what’s at issue a whole lot more meaningfully and usefully simply by specifying the epistemic criteria that the claims can meet or fail to meet. Of course, criteria within a system defines certainty, and two systems that have conflicting criteria are incompatible, e.g classical bivalent logic and multivalued logic. The problem is what do you do with incompatible expressions within the system that the expression is incompatible with. We understand the phrase, "Time travel" and yet by all accounts it is impossible. How is it we use that phrase meaningfully within our system of language use, knowledge, practices, etc if we don't know it when we see it? To put it another way, if we don't know what it is to time travel how do we define the criteria to recognize time travel? You quite correctly point out that we can not rely on some other system's criteria, and If we arbitrarily stipulate just anything, then we simply dodge the issue.
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

brainpharte
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Posted 08/09/09 - 04:45 PM:	#30
Gadfly II wrote: Of course, criteria within a system defines certainty, and two systems that have conflicting criteria are incompatible, e.g classical bivalent logic and multivalued logic. The problem is what do you do with incompatible expressions within the system that the expression is incompatible with. We understand the phrase, "Time travel" and yet by all accounts it is impossible. How is it we use that phrase meaningfully within our system of language use, knowledge, practices, etc if we don't know it when we see it? To put it another way, if we don't know what it is to time travel how do we define the criteria to recognize time travel? You quite correctly point out that we can not rely on some other system's criteria, and If we arbitrarily stipulate just anything, then we simply dodge the issue. I suggest that "time travel" as we use the term is ambiguous, vague, half-baked, muddled--not unlike some well-worn religious language. We use it, and it seems to mean something, and we are convinced that we have some understanding of what we're talking about, but if pressed, we babble. Essentially the metaphor in which we conceive of time travel is one of movement in space--we speak of going forward or going back. Forward and back are spatial metaphors. If we conceive of a given spacetime as a particular spatial arrangement of everything in the universe, then to time travel to the past would be to change from our present spatial arrangement of everything to a spatial arrangement that existed at the time we travel "back" to. And to travel to the future would be to change rapidly or even instantly from the present spatial arrangement of everything to an arrangement that eventually would have emerged more slowly from our present arrangement. But the time travel dilemma persists. Our arrival and sudden presence in the past spatial arrangement of everything in the universe changes that arrangement--and presumably would change the future from which we'd traveled, perhaps in such a way that we'd never have existed, and therefore couldn't have time traveled back in the first place.
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

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