Abstract
This introductory chapter provides the background of the debate around the notion of basic moral certainty. Showing its roots in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, I go on to talk about Nigel Pleasants’ seminal contribution to the debate, and justify relevant aspects of the Wittgensteinian framework I will work within.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. for example OC 56, 116 and 151.
- 2.
This is not to disparage previous work on the subject, but only to say that Pleasants ’ treatment seems to have galvanized the discussion and set it in a particular direction. Previous attempts are rarely dealt with in detail now, except that of Timmons whose influence I will discuss below.
- 3.
An exception can be found in recent work by Robert Schmidle (2016) who seems to accept the badness of death as a basic moral certainty , though under his revised understanding of the term (179–81).
- 4.
This is not to say that a claim is always beyond the need for justification because it has been sufficiently checked (that is because we have sufficient reason to stop).
- 5.
As Wittgenstein puts it ‘Giving ground, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end…’ (ibid., 28, italics mine) and ‘[i]n certain circumstances, for example, we regard a calculation as sufficiently checked. What gives us a right to do so? Experience? May that not have deceived us? Somewhere we must be finished with justification …’ (ibid., 29).
- 6.
The term ‘optimally’ here should not be taken to imply that some Wittgensteinian certainties are less than optimally certain. As a class all Wittgensteinian certainties are equally immune to doubt . It is here only meant to pick out the fact that, in the case of Wittgensteinian basic certainties, no evidence could be produce to make us more certain.
- 7.
This is a more pointed version of G.E. Moore ’s example ‘…the earth had existed also for many years before my body was born…’ (1993, 106–7).
- 8.
It is worth noting as an aside that many other philosophical attempts to doubt basic certainties fall foul of this type of argument. For example, the Eleatic arguments to the effect that motion is not possible. According to Zeno and others, the metaphysical Monism that they propose necessarily implies that motion (as a form of change) is impossible. Zeno’s famous arguments against the impossibility of motion aim to further support this Monist position. However, our belief that things move is so fundamental to our thought that it always seems more rational to doubt the philosophical argument than to doubt our belief in motion, of which I am optimally certain. That is to say, it always seems better to conclude that there is something wrong (perhaps as yet undiagnosed) with Zeno’s argument, than to conclude that nothing ever moves (and the same could also be said of philosophical arguments aimed at throwing doubt on beliefs like ‘I have hands’ or ‘I have a body’). Of course one cannot go too far with such a method, as we should be open to radically revising our views based on convincing philosophical arguments. But if there are things about which we can be optimally certain, then there will be limits to the reach of such revisions.
- 9.
Of course one may be unsure as to what gender they are, or even what sex they should be. But this is not the same as being unsure what sex one currently is, physiologically speaking. Indeed, doubt as to whether or not one is the right sex relies upon the certain belief in what sex one actually is at present. Also, cases of ambiguous sex do not figure here. I am imagining, for the sake of clarity, cases where no such ambiguity pertains.
- 10.
A few examples of such foundationalist passages should serve to highlight Wittgenstein ’s foundationalism. ‘I have a world-picture. Is it true or false? Above all it is the substratum of all my enquiring and asserting.’ (OC 162); mentioning Lavoisier’s experiments he says ‘He has got hold of a definite world-picture… I say world-picture and not hypothesis, because it is the matter-of-course foundation for his research and as such goes unmentioned.’ (OC 167); ‘At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.’ (OC 253); ‘I might go on: ‘Nothing in the world will convince me of the opposite!’ For me this fact is at the bottom of all knowledge. I shall give up other things but not this.’ (OC 380); ‘To say of man, in Moore ’s sense, that he knows something; that what he says is therefore unconditionally the truth, seems wrong to me. – It is the truth only inasmuch as it is an unmoving foundation of his language-games.’ (OC 403); ‘Something must be taught us as a foundation’ (OC 449).
And Wittgenstein speaks elsewhere of ‘hard rock’ (OC 99), ‘bedrock ’ (OC 498); ‘the rock bottom of all my convictions’ (OC 248). Though some have doubted the presence of foundationalism in On Certainty it is beyond the scope of this chapter to enter into detailed refutations of those positions. But see the brief reply to Michael Williams in Moyal-Sharrock (2013, 443, note 5). See also Moyal-Sharrock (2005, 75–80). The arguments there, mainly involving showing how foundationalist images can sit alongside the coherentist or holist images Wittgenstein also uses, are I think decisive.
- 11.
Of course this may cease to be a basic belief , but only where pathology is involved, for example when an elderly person forgets their child’s name, or someone with brain damage loses the ability to make new memories.
- 12.
Although in the case of local moral certainties such contradictions may occur where moral traditions come into conflict, a phenomenon I will discuss at Sect. 5.5.
- 13.
For a fuller discussion of the non-propositionality of basic beliefs see Moyal-Sharrock (2005, 31–51). I will assume the possibility of non-propositional beliefs , or non-propositional attitudes, in what follows.
- 14.
These examples are derived from the text of On Certainty, and cited in Moyal-Sharrock (2005, 102).
- 15.
Of course some may not agree with this formulation, thinking it imprecise. Plato for instance held the human soul to be immortal and not subject to death, so to say that human beings die is not quite correct. But even Plato will not disagree that we die physically, and that is all that is meant here.
- 16.
This is discussed as an example of a universal moral certainty at Sect. 4.2.1.
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O’Hara, N. (2018). Basic Certainty and Morality. In: Moral Certainty and the Foundations of Morality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75444-4_1
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