page 2 of Wittgenstein on Scepticism and Certainty

At one level, OC1 and OC2 can of course be so interpreted as to make them consistent. One can postulate foundations that are historically and in other ways parochial to the discourse under consideration, consisting in beliefs and principles which are basic in the OC1 sense for a given discourse, and not justified independently of it; but which are not immutable or absolute but as vulnerable to change, even if more slowly and circumstantially, as any of the ordinary beliefs comprehended in the framework. This precisely seems to be the import of Wittgenstein's river-bed metaphor: the river-bed is only relatively stable with respect to the water flowing over it, because it is worn away with time, and shifts its course.

But a relativistic foundationalism renders OC1 superficial as a response to scepticism, because so construed it does not begin to meet the really serious problem scepticism poses, and of which Wittgenstein is perfectly aware (see e.g. 14-16). To see what that is, one must retrace some steps.

Let us simplify the model we are working with. A sceptic challenges us to justify a particular empirical belief, for example that there is a book on the table here before us. We respond, exploiting the same resource for doing so as OC does, by saying in effect that these circumstances are such and those words mean such that this is tantamount to a paradigmatic circumstance for using those words in these circumstances–that is, for claiming that there is a book on the table. The sceptic pushes his point, invoking considerations about non-standard perceptual phenomena and other psychological contingencies, including error; at which point we change gear and invoke countervailing considerations about the framework of the discourse (the system of beliefs constituting it; the 'conceptual scheme') by stating the assumptions upon which not just the claim, but also the challenge to it, make sense. And at this level of sceptical challenge, that has to be enough: justifications in ordinary discourse come to an end at this point.

But now the sceptic mutates; he becomes a different and bigger monster. He is no longer interested in hearing what we have to say about the book on the table, but in what we have to say about the framework, the system of beliefs. What justifies our acceptance of the framework, or (more weakly) our employment of it? What if there were another framework, or other frameworks, in which different assumptions led to different outcomes with these words and these circumstances? And so on. The sceptic, in other words, has adopted the habiliments of relativism. Relativism, indeed, is the ultimate form of scepticism, because it challenges us to justify, as a whole, the scheme within which mundane judgments get their content and have their life.

The answer which says: 'this is the scheme we have; it is a bare given that we have it', and which might–but this is a different thing–add, 'and of course there might be others', and–yet a further and a bigger step again–'we might never know what these other schemes are like or even that they exist', is unsatisfactory, at very least as the first response to relativism. One might end by responding with (in this emergency: preferably) the first step just described, after a long haul; but there are strong anti-relativist arguments to evaluate first, which, if they turn out to be plausible and stable in the face of challenge, provide a powerful way of blocking scepticism altogether. It would seem that for the argument of OC1 to work as a refutation of scepticism, this stronger recourse is required. Without it, knowledge and truth are concepts parochial to the scheme; they are not knowledge and truth but 'knowledge-in-the scheme' and 'truth-in-the scheme', as 599 says. (Think of being told that 'Jarndyce is a lawyer' is true "in" Bleak House' is the only kind of exemplification the concept of truth has.) There are good reasons for thinking that the assumptions constitutive of the framework have to be undischargeable. These reasons are drawn from seeing how the notion of alternative frameworks collapses under direct pressure, the terminus of the argument being that anything recognisable as a framework has to be identical in fundamental respects with the framework from which it is so recognised. The argument is adapted from a familiar one offered by Davidson, who writes of "conceptual schemes" rather than frameworks, and individuates them as sets of intertranslatable languages .

The argument, familiarly enough, is as follows. The relativist proposal is that there can be languages which we might not be able to recognise as such–which, that is, we cannot translate. But how do you recognise a language as such if you cannot translate it? The problem can be stated in terms of what the only plausible candidate for a criterion of languagehood can be, namely, translatability into a familiar idiom. Since language-use involves 'a multitude of finely discriminated intentions and beliefs' which we could not attribute to someone unless we could understand his speech, we can only recognise the presence of such intentions and beliefs if translation is possible. Moreover, if it turns out that there are differences between our and the alien's beliefs, this will be courtesy of a shared background of beliefs which makes the differences apparent. Differences are more meaningful when there are fewer of them; when there are few against a shared background of belief, the differences are more of opinion than conceptualisation–they relate to variances in the scheme's superstructure, which tolerates conflicts of view in (for characteristic examples) politics and taste, while still locating them in the same world. Since the cognitive foundations of the scheme have to be shared for these more entertaining differences to be possible, the conclusion is that conceptual relativism is incoherent. (Davidson takes this to mean that the very idea of a framework is empty because it implies what the argument denies, namely, the possibility of real conceptual diversity.)

Underlying such arguments, very interestingly, is an implicit commitment to the controversial view that possibility is an epistemic notion, that is, that possibility is conceivability. Something is a possible state of affairs (a possible past fact, a possible language or scheme) only if it is constructible from actual states of affairs (from what we know, from the language we speak). The intended contrast is this: on the idea that possibility is a purely logical notion, denoting mere absence of contradiction, the number of possible worlds there can be other than the actual world is infinite. But on the idea that possibility is an epistemic notion, denoting graspability in thought (or translatability into a familiar idiom), the number of possible worlds other than the actual world is limited by accessibility relations between them and it. But where there are such relations, the idea of a world being in some strong sense different from this one loses its grip. Standard ways of defining possible worlds involve redistributing truth-values over the propositions constituting the world-book of the actual, or increasing their number by adding other propositions consistent with them. But to do this is to redescribe this world, not–except by courtesy of the phrase–to create new worlds.

These considerations rule out relativism. They therefore rule out OC2. There is no other way of taking OC2 than as a seriously strong relativist argument ('the river-bed of thoughts may shift' ... 'a language-game changes with time'). In the ideal state of things, therefore, OC1's offer of a response to scepticism is elected to stand, and OC2 is ditched. But as the text of OC was left to us, Wittgenstein was developing arguments for both, so the next question is: is there any way they could be made to reconcile, further up the road where their parallels meet?

III

The destination available to Wittgenstein in the light of the tension between OC1's need for an anti-relativistic resource, and OC2's undermining of this, is one made familiar by his treatment of the request for justifications in PI. It is to say: justification must come to an end: "my spade is turned". In PI this seemed to offer a form of foundationalism in which the basis–the given, that which justifies itself by being what it is–is practice: and moreover shared practice, which in its essentially mutual character is constitutive of the content (so, in the case of language, the meaning) of what is based upon it. This indeed is Wittgenstein's resource: see 7, 92, 110, 116, 196 (WR253), 229, 559; and perhaps also 232, 219, 344 and 378. Does this do, as a somewhat fudging way out of the problem?

I think not, because the PI turned-spade thesis is considerably weakened in OC by the degree of relativism OC2 constitutes. Of course there are relativistic noises in PI: such claims as that we would not understand a speaking lion if we met one, and that we no more understand Chinese facial expressions than words, have that tendency, because they are premissed on the lack of the shared form of life which makes understanding possible. But these relativities could be reducible–nothing implies that we cannot gain entry to the alien forms of life, that is, that we can find ways of translating lionese remarks and Chinese expressions upon doing so. Reducible synchronic relativities look very like familiar cultural differences, and hence are superficially relative only. But the idea that the foundations of sense are themselves merely relative–that the bed and banks are in constant process of erosion–implies a greater insecurity. Consider a relativist thesis like Feyerabend's, say, in which change in assertion-conditions entails change of sense. A different way of calibrating thermometers on his view changes the meaning of "temperature". If the bed and banks of discourse were shifting over time, meanings would change with them. But we would be in the position of a speech community whose meanings are shifting without our realising the fact, because agreements remain. (The rules change, but we all keep observing them in common as they do so. This falls foul of Wittgenstein's own rule-following considerations. The whole community is in the dilemma of the solitary would-be language user, who cannot tell the difference between following the same rule again, and only thinking he is doing so.)

A different and better way out of the problem is to suppose that Wittgenstein might have developed his conflicting lines to the point where the conflict became intolerable–I would say: where he recognised the unhealthy mixing of contingent and framework propositions in his examples, which constantly seduced him into thinking relativistically: more on this shortly. And then he just might have preferred the strong anti-relativist argument available in the line he was himself taking in OC1 on the grounds of sense. For in that aspect of his discussion he in effect reinvented the strategy, as noted, of employing a transcendental argument to show that sceptical challenge is defeated by appeals to the framework. Why not therefore see that the transcendental argument militates equally against relativism?

But if one does not supplement the response to scepticism (OC1) by some such strategy, the exercise in OC is at best partial, at worst self-defeating, with the self-defeat stemming from acceptance of OC2. As OC stands, it stands defeated in just this way, for it only deals with scepticism at the lower, less threatening level, and fails to recognise that scepticism in its strongest form is, precisely, relativism.

There are hints in OC of an alternative better way out: namely, some version of naturalism–in Hume's, not Quine's, sense; that is, as appealing to natural facts about our psychological make-up (not, as in Quine, as appealing to the deliverances of current theory in natural science: although the latter form of naturalism takes itself to absorb the former). See 287: 'The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well.' This hint is strengthened by 505: 'It is always by favour of Nature that one knows something' and the paradigmatically Humean 277: '"I can't help believing ...".' If one re-reads the practice-cum-form-of-life entries in the light of these–a twist of the kaleidoscope–a plausibly naturalistic thesis comes fully into view.

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