Thanks for the heads up - but it's at 1am.

Interested as I am, that's more than I am willing to sacrifice.

Thanks for the heads up - but it's at 1am. — Banno

4:00 pm CET is 7:00 am PST where I am but yeah philosophy lecture in the middle of the night is sure-fire sleep aid. I’ll try to summarize if I make it.

Hacker is problematic for me, — Joshs

I would argue there is always something to learn; as, if we dismissed philosophers given any flaw, we would never give them the chance to surprise us.

@Sam26 @Banno @Ludwig V @Joshs

Well I hope someone else had a chance to catch Hacker's amazing lecture (130 people attended). He was very erudite and thorough about the different senses of knowledge. I think the new translation will be definitive (compared to Anscombe), and I believe he will be coming out with another book discussing On Certainty directly. After the translation comes out, there will be a video copy of the lecture available on the Nordic Wittgenstein Society website.

I will try to post my notes, but I could only record my thoughts and any connections, as his explication of all the examples was voluminous and I could never do that justice. I did get to ask a question, but I made such a mess of it we couldn't get past the premises.

Be aware that I provided a link to this discussion in the chat of the lecture.

It'll be interesting to sere the comparisons.

Actually, the book is out (at Albris here), so I think they are waiting, to put the video up, for the lecture to be given or published, as this was an abbreviated version.

Hacker Lecture

@Sam26 @Banno @Ludwig V @Joshs

I made 4-pages of scribbles during Professor Hacker’s recent lecture (mentioned above). I will try to make the following clean of my sense of importance and responses (which I will separate parenthetically), but there was such amazing detail and thoroughness that I couldn’t hope to capture or do it justice (I may have just written parts down wrong). I ordered his translation just based on his acuity and clarity, regardless of any disagreement; I can already tell it was done well.

He methodically went through all the different senses of know and certainty that Witt looks into, and captured Witt’s claims of their logical distinctions and limits. And, much like Austin, was very disciplined to just and only describe these judgments we make, and did not venture much more beyond that, which was refreshing because people tend to impatiently jump to conclusions. He did seem to enjoy the surprise of things that we wouldn’t think of, or wouldn’t realize made such a difference, and he was very patient and humble.

So, first he explained that in translating he looks at the contrasts, what connects, and the contextual in the sense of the logical field of a concept (can/cannot, do/do not; what makes it up/breaks it; distinctions, implications, exclusions, etc.)—what categorically makes a thing what it is, like claiming “we only… if…”, (or “we must… if we want to…”).

Some of the senses or types of knowledge, or what logically constitutes (or is different from) knowledge, that he says Wittgenstein points out are:

-Saying (claiming?) that I know does not mean I know, is not the same as knowing; and we may know without having made a claim.
-One claim to know is that I can demonstrate my knowledge, as in: give reasons (explanations or justifications) responding to “How do you know?”
-Another is I am asserting that I am not mistaken (that I am right?)
-To say you know is to swear you do, to promise to me (which Austin says is about our relationship, not a justification).
-The sense of certainty as being/feeling sure, in the sense being unsure is not the same as not knowing (he notes, curiously, that Witt does not distinguish this much, without answer or elucidation).
-The sense of saying “I think I know, but…” [he scrunched his face] i.e., don’t trust me.
-The sense in saying “Yes, I know all that” [while he waved a hand in dismissal] (brushed off because things can be obvious, are not necessarily questioned and already, say, justified).
-That we “know” in the sense of being familiar with, have experience with, an environment, like the builders need for pre-existing “knowledge” to even be able to start to do the simplest tasks (knowing your way around).
-The depth of knowledge evidenced in not claiming “I don’t know” [hands thrown up], having looked closer, been more rigorous (like expertise).
-And the sense of “unshakable” certainty that Moore/Descartes want, proof of the world (at all) and you/me.

Knowledge (or some sense of it) functions as where, what, when, but not why. In this sense, non-human animals can know, e.g., how to do things, have a purpose, be familiar, but not temporality, generalities, explanations, necessities.

That something is known to be so, does not make it “true”. There are conditions that warrant a claim to truth, and it is the form that makes it true (like the method of science), not the truth of the expression. A determination of a fact is warranted in some cases (even these logical facts), but we also know stories, rumors, have political constraints; and how we know is sometimes not reducible, like with music, poetry (not denying the intelligibility of paraphrase and the constraints of mediums, forms of genre). He says French and German still hold a distinction (perhaps @Astorre can help here). “I know that…” is not always a transitive verb; an attitude or proposition is not an “object” of knowledge (here see the Blue Book), though not only transcendentally logical (only form).

Knowing (or certainty?) is most of the time not new information but is still how things are, without (necessarily) lacking or needing anything else. We ask about knowledge when something is not reliable or is unexpected or when we ask for authority, “well, who does know?” Analogously, we do not “recognize” someone we know every time we see them (but only when we do not at first recognize them). Reasons have a time (after) and a place (not always), evidenced, for example, by the (logical) fact that a claim for knowledge allows for, but only sometimes needs, excuses or further clarification (not just justification), filling in or excluding omissions, mistakes, etc.


Now, given all or any of this, knowing is different, or at least consists of more usages, than just certainty, which is also not always in the sense Descartes wanted. Certainty is not always like historical dates, about confirmation, or just about justification. Yes, in the absence of doubt, or the ability to doubt, we do not make a claim to knowledge; but just: we do not, cannot logically (not as foundational, as an end). Doubt has its logic, constraints, one being: certainty is ensured by foreclosing possibilities (in response). Most times, as with a claim to knowledge, there is no warrant for certainty. [He mentions, appreciatively, that White points out how specific evidence or actions are excluded.] Part of its logic is there is a question of how certainty is made (its constitution is not inherent). We can (not arrogantly) claim certainty without making a claim of knowledge. In some ways, we exclude doubt not because something is settled, but because we are not worried, we are okay.


Now Wittgenstein addresses the (specifically Moore’s) desire to have proof of the world. Witt does not critique this as unintelligible. But there is no sense of what “external” here would mean, though this does not leave the logic of Witt’s many examples as transcendental (self-enclosed), as if only about their form. There is no assuring someone that that is their hand like being certain about whether something is gold or brass (previously he noted there is something different about being certain of people than being certain about objects). Moore (and Hume?) would say proof is in doing what we do, but there is no challenge asking for proof and so none possible (Austin’s example is there is no discussion of intention unless there is something off about a situation.) (Here Hacker questions why Witt says “this” body, rather than “my body”.)

Worrying about something is an occasion; there must be a time and a context (and a specific subject). Certainty of the world is not settled agreement after rigorous debate, as if we made a guess. We do not presuppose certainty (we come to it), so doubt is not resolved by a specific kind of support. We are not immune to doubt, as certainty is only knowledge cleared “as much as…”, but we begin without doubt in the sense that certainty is constituted of a judgment, afterwards, but not: starting from belief.

Our common lives do not “prove” certainty. They allow for its logic—and that of argument and what counts as a justification, etc.—thus our lives cannot be more certain (it’s not a matter of that). This point is grammatical, i.e., meant only to show these are separate categories. So refutation is an inadequate response to the skeptic’s expression of their (legitimate, intelligible) difficulty. You will not satisfy them with an assertion; we cannot empirically check. (He discusses noetic as explaining—making legitimate/justified—what cannot be justified; making visible what was thought invisible (explicit/implicit?)). Our lives (culture) is not rigid, but a change “is a conversion”, like a “shift in the riverbed”. These changes are not argued by persuasion; they are before, but not more “correct” than, science (Kuhn’s paradigms). There is a certain point (not initially) when we are deemed unreasonable, thought of as from a different tribe (reaching bedrock is not justification, but exclusion).

Not sure if anyone said this already. But it seems to me that the original argument has an additional conclusion.

"...Hence an external world does exist."

@Sam26 @Banno @Ludwig V @Joshs

As I said [in my notes], Prof. Hacker’s lecture stayed at the level of Witt as head-down here, just mapping out the facts of the logic of certainty and knowledge. Recognizing that the lecture was about the translation, and thus was focused on the interpretation, sense, and logic of the words (concepts), my question was (meant to be): did he have any sense of why Witt was doing this methodical work? Or did Witt come to any conclusion(s), or about Moore (his why)?

My "premises" being that: in the Blue Book he starts by specifically asking “Why does the skeptic frame thought as an object?” And the, at least initial, presumption is they want the kind of outcomes of science: an answer, its standards, a specific kind of certainty. So then the PI asks why do they (did he) want that singular, general standard of certainty/“crystalline purity” when he goes on to say, “look, we have all these ordinary reasons (logic, criteria) that are different for each type of thing”? Which then begs the question: “what actually is certainty? Well, let’s look (in On Certainty).”

Given all that, is there a “why” Witt has in On Certainty? or about Moore? The context being there are a lot of conclusions people make: Witt is refuting the skeptic, either by giving a (better, correct) answer than Moore/Descartes, or in saying the question is not important or just a confusion. He is again saying, “look at all these different senses of knowledge and certainty”, but is he simply (only) claiming “this is how they work”?

Prof. Hacker was so nice we got into the weeds about other affinities I mentioned (Austin, Cavell) and other senses of know I thought were in the book that he had not included in his list (the “know” of the patient’s bedside companion; its being about the relation/response to the other, not, say, the “truth” of them).

Nevertheless, as much as we got to him addressing the question, he said, roughly, “This was not, did not get to become, a ‘book’.” Which I take to mean his impression is that these end at being preliminary notes (as I find the Brown Book to primarily be), sketching out the ground without starting with a presumption, and never getting to any definitive, thought-through conclusion(s). Hacker did seem to imply his own rejection of the idea that Witt was answering the “difficulty” (BB, Harper, p. 48) of the skeptic foundationally, just in a different/better way.