WITTGENSTEIN ON AGENCY AND ABILITY:
CONSEQUENCES FOR RATIONALITY
AND CRITICALNESS

Walter C. Okshevsky ¹
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Last year I developed some aspects of what I take to be the central argument of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and I applied it to work in educational philosophy on the nature and conditions of criticalness and its relation to rationality.² In this paper I want to develop further that argument with a specific focus on the roles of rules and abilities within human practice. I do so in an attempt to defend my view of the logical relations between rationality and criticalness against a number of potentially fatal objections which have been brought against it by Professor Siegel and others.³

I

One of the significant aspects of Wittgenstein’s work for contemporary educational philosophy rests in its value in redressing a specific prevalently-held bias in our attempts to address the question of the relation between our capacities for criticalness, or “critical thinking”, and our capacities for rational action and belief. Borrowing an expression which Richard Rorty borrows from Heidegger and uses in characterizing much of “the tradition” of twentieth century philosophy, we can refer to this bias as displayed within educational philosophy as the “epistemologically-centered” prejudice.⁴ While exhibited in different ways by the writings of Professors Ennis, Scheffler, and Hirst,⁵ it is perhaps most clearly and forcefully evident in Professor Siegel’s thesis that rationality as such is ultimately identifiable with, i.e., “co-extensive with”, criticalness.⁶ On such a formulation, a belief or action is deemed “rational” if and only if that action or belief is justifiable in the sense of being critically arrived-at and appraised. “Criticalness” here is essentially an epistemological matter having to do with such criteria and standards as the relevance of evidence, the force and coherence of reasons and argument, and the probity and soundness of justification. For Siegel, it is analytic that a theory of rationality is a theory laying-out the conditions and criteria of criticalness, and this is why he commends, in the spirit of “the tradition”, specifically the discipline of epistemology for our clarifications of the nature and conditions of both “rationality” and “criticalness”.⁷ It is this “co-extensiveness” thesis which subsequently comes to under-write the pedagogically relevant view that our ascriptions of rational action and belief within any domain of knowledge and/or learning, together with our attempts at the development of people’s capacities for rationality within domains, are only as cogent as our understanding of the epistemological components and criteria operative within critical thought and performance.

My primary task here is not to argue against the relevance of epistemology for contemporary conceptions of rationality or for educational practice, but rather to pursue a specific direction of Wittgenstein’s argument in the attempt to put to rest the identification of our capacities for rationality with our specifically epistemic competencies at “critical thinking” as this is posited by philosophers’ various versions of the co-extensiveness thesis. Wittgenstein allows us to see that our epistemic/critical competencies, however essential they may be, comprise but a part of what “rationality” and rational “grounding” is about and that it is a mistake of metonymy to reductively conflate rationality with “criticalness” epistemologically understood. I want to here maintain that Wittgenstein’s position offers an important corrective to epistemologically-centered accounts of rationality in virtue of his recognition that the issue of the original locus and ground of rationality is incorrectly viewed when taken to be necessarily directed at problems of knowledge, truth, and justification. Rather, as I now want to put it, the issue requires a comprehension of the ways in which rationality and justification come to be grounded in socially organized, rule-governed, practices and the consequent forms of competence/mastery/ability at the language-games enabled there-by.⁸ His critique relies on a reconstruction of a form of practical agent-understanding and agent-judgement the “rationality” of which is not accountable for under the traditional epistemic forms of justification constitutive of rationality-qua-criticalness, and this in virtue of the presupposed status of such practical understanding and judgement within our epistemic competencies at such things as the giving of evidence and the justification of knowledge-claims. It is this position of Wittgenstein’s on the notion of “rationality” which led me in my above-mentioned article to call it a “praxeological” conception of rationality. But I have come to see, specifically in light of nineteen objections and critical questions which Professor Siegel has developed against my position, that an adequate understanding and defense of the soundness of Wittgenstein’s praxeology requires an explanation of the specific ways in which the agent’s abilities at a practice entail a form of practical competence and judgement which is misconstrued if considered in epistemological terms. I believe it is ultimately only through such an explanation that my argument concerning the precise role of our epistemic or critical competencies within our over-all capacity for rational action and belief can be properly understood and defended. It is hence with this specific connection between rationality and the praxis of human agency, between justification and ability for a practice, that I shall be concerned here.

II

As agents engaged in some practice or another, our abilities and performances are intertwined with a great number and variety of judgements. Towards some of these, we at times need to take up a critical attitude. Considered as a class of judgements, we can say that such judgements consist of those for which questions concerning their truth or correctness are logically possible. Empirical judgements, technical judgements pertaining to tools, resources, means and ends of action, together with moral and political judgements are all instances in which the taking up of an epistemic attitude toward truth, correctness and justification, is conditioned for its possibility on the fact that such judgements are in principle able to be true or false, correct or incorrect. One can, by definition, be mistaken about the truth of such judgement or wrong in one way or another in acting in accordance with them. Such judgements, in other words, are generally corrigible and as such logically admit of doubt in any given case. Corrigibility and dubitability here comprise necessary characteristics for the possibility of coherent criticalness as displayed in the search for evidence, corroboration or disconfirmation of hypotheses, provision of reasons, argument, justification for or against a given decision or course of action.⁹ In these cases of judgement, the rationality of our holding a belief, or abiding by a judgement in practice, is indeed a matter for which relevant epistemic criteria of appraisal and truth are possible and in order. But the question we need to ask here is whether all judgements possess the characteristics of corrigibility and dubitability and thus takes an epistemic form.

In these post-foundational days, there exists a consensus amongst philosophers that the answer here must be in the affirmative. Fuelled especially by recent critiques of the notion of analyticity, the consensus reads that no judgement is impervious to doubt, and that consequently, one can demand justification for any proffered judgement.¹⁰ Thus it comes about that any question concerning the rationality of judgement and action is ipso facto a question of the epistemic grounds for holding it. Rationality is thus “co-extensive” with criticalness. It is precisely such a view of the matter according to Wittgenstein that is so simplistic and abstract as to be mistaken. Together with the operative metonymy, such a view merely ends up epistemologizing the possibilities of human judgement by subsuming all such cases under the conception of theoretical knowledge as epistemic judgement. Wittgenstein’s thesis in On Certainty, on the other hand, is that if we bracket for a moment our usual pan-epistemological tendencies, and examine phenomenologically the character of our abilities within the language-games of our community and form of life, then we discover a form of rational judgement which, while not open to coherent doubt, falsification, and epistemic justification, nevertheless remains one which we as agents cannot give up or choose to suspend “belief” in. This form of judgement manifests itself as a form of certainty or trust which Wittgenstein identifies with our very “form of life” itself: “I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life.”¹¹ Our capacity for this form of judgement is, for Wittgenstein, constitutive of our basic abilities to be human agents in that the intelligibility and coherence of an agent’s performances within a practice or language-game presuppose that certain judgements be accepted and adhered to within action, that is they must “stand-fast” for the agent.¹² Such certainty is in no way to be taken as an “anti-critical” orientation on the agent’s part, for here the notion of epistemic justification is not as yet applicable, and, as we have seen, the possibility for criticalness is logically related to the epistemic categories of dubitablity and corrigibility. The key to understanding Wittgenstein’s position here is to see that the judgements expressive of our capacity for this certainty are not epistemic claims possessing a truth-value open to doubt and justification. Hence, with reference to such judgements, the identification between the rational holding of a judgement and its critical/epistemic appraisal or justification is untenable. One cannot, as such, fault the agent for not being able to “justify” the truth or correctness of such judgements: “that something stands-fast for me is not grounded in my stupidity or credulity.”¹³ Rather, what we need to see here is that the certainty with which an agent holds and abides by such judgement, together with the “rationality” of the adherence, is a function of the judgement’s constitutive role and status within the definition of the practice being engaged in. Judgements which determine or individuate a practice as a specific language-game are, for Wittgenstein, logically distinct from judgements functioning as epistemic claims within a language-game. The latter comprise “moves” which logically admits of corrigibility and dubitability - and hence, of justification in normal epistemic terms. The former, however, provide the scaffolding or framework for the possibility of making a move. And for these, the issue of “justification” and “rationality” cannot again be comprehended in the same, epistemic, way. As I now want to develop this position, praxeological judgements “stand-fast” for an agent, that is they are held with certainty by the agent, in that such judgements function methodologically as rules governing correct procedure within a practice, and as such, simultaneously serve to enable the possibility of an agent’s ability for the practice.

III

In the abstract, any judgement or proposition remains ambiguous and indefinite. Its sense and status is able to be determined only with reference to some context or network of concepts and practices. The meaning here of a proposition consists of its use within such contexts.¹⁴ This is central to bear in mind for both the identification of a judgement functioning praxeologically, methodologically as a rule stipulating performance, and its differentiation from epistemic claims possessing an always disputable truth-value. If we approach all judgement from an a-priori pan-epistemological orientation within which all propositions are homogeneously open to verification and/or argument, we can easily end up confusing methodological judgements with one specific kind of epistemic judgement which bears a surface similarity with them, namely, empirical judgement. Here it is central to note the following distinction made by Wittgenstein:

Our “empirical propositions” do not form a homogeneous mass. …It is clear that…[they]…do not all have the same status, since one can lay down such a proposition and turn it from an empirical proposition into a norm of description. …[T]he same proposition may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing. …The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference.¹⁵

Wittgenstein draws our attention here to the fact that the “praxeological” status of a proposition is identifiable correctly only in context, that is, in that (those) context(s) where the proposition functions methodologically as a norm or rule constitutive of a procedure or practice. For Wittgenstein, the “standing-fast” character of a proposition or judgement, together with the “certainty” with which the agent adheres to its directives within action, is a function of the rule-governed nature of any given language-game. We would err, here, in immediately discounting the very possibility of praxeological judgement simply on the grounds that the “same” proposition does not function as such across all possible contexts. It is not an argument against the existence of our capacity for praxeological judgement, or against its necessity within a given language-game, to say that there is another context in which the proposition in question functions as a clear case of an empirical judgement. What is it, then, for a judgement to function praxeologically as a rule or norm and how is the character of the “certainty” here related to the ability for a practice?

“To accept a proposition as unshakeably certain,” Wittgenstein writes, “means to use it as a grammatical rule.”¹⁶ Consider the following simple proposition which Wittgenstein frequently returns to in On Certainty: “ The earth has existed long before my birth.”¹⁷ Call this proposition “E”. Ostensibly, this appears to be a straight-forward empirical claim. That is to say, in the abstract, without any context embedding its sense, that is what it looks like. (More accurately: we are quick to ascribe an empirical context for this proposition.) Now if E is such an epistemic claim, then it is necessarily a falsifiable proposition logically admitting of doubt and corrigibility. It would be as such coherently possible to take-up a critical attitude towards E wherein E is submitted to some procedure of testing for purposes of verification or falsification. Wittgenstein’s position, however, is that within the language-game of inquiring into the past and making judgements about the past, E does not function as an empirical claim “to test by experience”. Rather, E functions methodologically as a “rule of testing”, a “norm of description” which stands fast within the very definition and possibility of historical investigation. This is to claim that, formally, the features of dubitability and corrigibility do not and cannot apply to E within the myriad of procedures involved in our practice of historical inquiry. Nevertheless, the inquirer’s orientation towards E does remain one of certainty. But, importantly, not because the “truth” or validity of E is the consequent of some inference arrived at on the grounds of evidence. The methodological, “standing fast” status of E is a matter of its resting at the foundations of historical investigation as a praxis. Now, in the specific case of E, Wittgenstein claims that E actually remains foundational across all of our language-games having to do with inquiry. “But in the entire system of our language-games it [E] belongs to the foundations. The assumption, one might say, forms the basis of action, and therefore, naturally, of thought.”¹⁸ My argument here, however, is a less ambitious one. I want to ask whether E remains foundational specifically with reference to historical inquiry.

Recall that we are dealing here not with epistemology per se, but rather with a praxeology. This is evident in the idea that E “forms the basis of action, and therefore, naturally, of thought.” Primacy is here being bestowed upon our agency rather than our thinking or cognitive capacities. This is central for the comprehension of the notion that our practices and abilities necessarily presuppose and entail the standing-fast status of methodological judgement. Thomas Morawetz puts this point well in his analysis of On Certainty:

In describing practices and practitioners, it is appropriate to think of such matters in terms of activity rather than in terms of cognition. To say that I [am certain of p in the sense that ] I cannot doubt p is not to speak of a cognitive disability. It is that my actions presuppose that I hold p fast and that they would otherwise be pointless. (emph. mine)¹⁹

Rendered in a slightly different way, this is to say that if E is indeed a rule defining historical inquiry as a practice, then its reference to “action” will be internal to it. Understanding something as a rule is intrinsically related to recognizing applications of it as being either in accordance with the rule or as contravening the rule. So the question here is whether E is to be regarded as a rule, a norm of description, which is constitutive of the doing of historical inquiry, or an empirical knowledge-claim itself open to testing by procedures of historical investigation.

I believe we can grant that E is clearly presupposed in all historical knowledge and inquiry. For how could one do history if one believed that the earth appeared with one’s own birth? But to claim that E is itself an instance of knowledge, and of historical knowledge in particular would be to claim that there is some sort of investigation of the past which we could perform in order to establish the truth or the falsity of the proposition. This possibility, however, raises the question whether such an investigation would not itself again presuppose the validity or “truth” of the proposition being verified. Is it not the case here that the projected investigation into the “truth” of the proposition is already relying on, “holding fast to”, both the coherence of such an inquiry and to the validity of the findings resulting from the inquiry itself? In engaging in the historical investigation my actions must already hold to the view that such an investigation is capable of actually providing me with relevant and valid evidence one way or the other. That is to say that I am here presupposing the validity of historical findings and, hence, the possibility of historical research as itself a coherent and valid practice. If I did not trust the reliability of historical research, if I doubted the very possibility of history as a practice, I would be calling into question the possibility of “evidence” for or against the truth of the proposition I am seeking to verify. But in the inquiry into the “truth” of E, it is already the case that I am searching for evidence. Which is to say, I cannot coherently be doubting or questioning that possibility without sawing off the branch I am sitting on. Here, the validity or “truth” of the judgement that the earth existed long before my birth can be said to be anchored in the very method of inquiry constituting both the language-game of investigating the past and, through this, the possibility for my ability at this practice. I believe this is why, for Wittgenstein, E cannot be an empirical or any other kind of epistemic claim. Rather, it functions normatively as a rule embedded within historical practice and competence. In adhering to it, I display the required trust in the historical methods and procedures by means of which other things, such as, hypotheses, can be tested, provided with evidence, argued for, or demonstrated. As Wittgenstein writes:

If someone doubted whether the earth had existed a hundred years ago, I should not understand for this reason: I would not know what such a person would still allow to be counted as evidence and what not. …This doubt isn’t one of the doubts in our game. (But not as if we chose this game.) …It’s no good saying: “Perhaps we are wrong.” when, if no evidence is trustworthy, trust is excluded in the case of the present evidence.²⁰

I believe that the example of E comprises one specific instance of a more general logical point. Questions of truth and falsity, correctness or incorrectness, of moves within a language-game, arise within our practices of inference-making, hypothesis-testing, reason-giving. But such questions do not arise in the same sense at the level at which the actual procedures and techniques of a practice are themselves constituted. This is the level at which the possibility for the very ability and competence at the practice is enabled. I can identify bad grammar within your utterances only because rules of grammar are accepted by me as standing fast. I can justify to you my claim that your grammar here is incorrect. But I cannot “justify” the rules themselves by appealing once again to these same rules within my justification. For their use would be presupposed within my speaking since they are the same rules that make it possible to speak grammatically and to recognize grammatically incorrect speech. There can be no “justification” of rules of grammar, although I can appeal to a native speaker whose competence defines her as an authority.

Let us consider another example within the broader case of science in general as a form of inquiry. What defines science as the kind of language-game it is is surely a certain commitment to the search for evidence in testing and developing hypotheses. The methods and goals of any particular science, together with its rationality, are bound up with the kind of evidence it seeks and produces. But here, once again, it would be a logical mistake (in the grammatical sense) to say that the practising scientist’s commitment to something like the “method of evidence”²¹ is itself arrived at through, or is grounded in, some kind of evidence. The “certainty”, as we should call it, on the scientist’s part as to the relevance and possibility of this method cannot itself be the consequence of further evidence. For here, as was illustrated above with the specific case of historical inquiry, the possibility of evidence is itself presupposed within the act of seeking and providing such evidence. And, of course, no such transcendental investigation is ever attempted within science. Rather than being itself the result of evidence, the scientist’s commitment to evidence as a method provides the necessary constitutive grounds upon which the activity of and competence at giving, formulating, evidence within actual scientific practice is itself possible. Such a commitment is not a “hypothesis” within the language-game of science. It must itself remain immune to procedures of verification and falsification. It must itself “stand-fast” if these are at all to have point and sense. The method of evidence can here be said to be constitutive of the practice of science in the form of a rule which normatively stipulates something formal about the very practice and possibility of science as an activity and a competence. A commitment to it thus comprises a form of certainty which is displayed by the scientist as agent through her adherence to it within her competence in investigation and hypothesis testing. For a scientist to have doubts about this, for her to want to subject this norm of inquiry to critique, as if it were a knowledge-claim possessing truth-value, is to undermine the very practice of science by calling into question a judgement which is methodologically definitive of that practice. And it is also to jettison one’s ability to engage in the practice, since an ability for a practice entails the givenness of the practice as a rule-governed set of procedures. Thus Wittgenstein writes:

[I]t belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed [in der Tat] not doubted.…All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis already takes place within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.²²

The idea that to critically subject certain judgements to epistemic justification is to call into question an entire practice or language-game whose existence is predicated upon those judgements is well-illustrated by the examples Wittgenstein gives of methodological judgement as operative within our native linguistic competence. Such propositions as “This is called ‘blue’.”, “This is a chair.”, “I am a human being”, “This is my hand.”, are not in their normal contexts of utterance instances of knowledge-claims, but are rather, formal exemplifications of the rule-governed uses of the words involved.²³ They are, in each case, methodological and normative pronouncements which display the correct uses of language and define competence in its use. To treat them as items of knowledge logically open to doubt and requiring justification is tantamount to doubting one’s competence as a native speaker of the language: “If I wanted to doubt whether this was my hand, how could I avoid doubting whether the word ‘hand’ has any meaning?”²⁴ Similarly, a doubt over whether this thing I am presently sitting on at my desk while typing in my office is a chair, or over whether an “external world” exists, can only signal an uncertainty in my ability to understand how the word “chair” or “world” is used in the language. For consider the normal cases in which we make such utterances as the above. Typically, they occur in pedagogical contexts of some sort or another. In such contexts, we are explaining to someone what a “hand” is, what a “human being” is, what a “chair” is. If one were to doubt our explanations and require justification of the “truth” of our utterances here, our reply would, in Wittgenstein’s terms, “characterize a method”.²⁵ We would reply, and could only reply by making recourse to the conventions of our language, conventions which lay-out in a rule-governed manner correct and incorrect applications of linguistic expressions. This is all one could say in normal circumstances and this because in making a “This is a ‘___’” kind of utterance, the competent speaker of a language is referring to the objects named in the expression as standards or samples within the explanation.²⁶ In such standard contexts, “justification” of the utterance is out of place and it would be unreasonable for one to doubt the utterance in this context. Within the pedagogical context, we recognize that the teacher possesses mastery of the language and is explaining to the other the conventional uses of the terms. The teacher is conveying a basic method of representation, a technique of description, which exists in the language and which is considered a basic tool for initiation into the linguistic practice of such description.²⁷ Such explanation intends the transmission of a competence, which competence entails a certainty towards the meanings of the words in the language:

We say: if a child has mastered a language - and hence its application - it must know the meaning of words. It must, for example, be able to attach the name of its colour to a white, black, red, or blue object without the occurrence of any doubt …[I]sn’t this certainty already presupposed in the language-game? Namely by virtue of the fact that one is not playing the game, or is playing it wrong, if one does not recognize objects with certainty. …The fact that I use the word “hand” and all the other words in my sentences without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings, shows that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question “How do I know…” drags out the language-game or else does away with it.²⁸

We must not misconstrue Wittgenstein’s position here. He does not intend to imply that mistakes in colour attributions never occur or that a specific doubt concerning the colour of any given object is in principle impossible. The point is that a competent speaker cannot doubt or be mistaken about what comprises a sample or standard of description within the language and what thus serves as paradigmatic within the practice. For this is what “competence” here partially entails: “To understand a language means to be master of a technique.” Mastery of a language here does not mean that one can never mistake in certain circumstances red for brown (given a certain coloured light) or crimson for magenta (given my limited uses of these terms). Mastery does mean, however, that one cannot be mistaken about such things as the fact that this (i.e., the color of the sky on a cloudless day) is what “blue” refers to in the language. Or that this colour is called “red” in the language. (What would it mean to “forget that”, or “be in doubt as to whether”, or to have to “justify that” this colour is “red”?) This is again to say that we need be on guard against conflating judgements which function methodologically within a practice to define that practice and to enable the possibility for an ability at the practice, with judgements which are items of knowledge and which are legitimately open to doubt and justification. One way of seeing clearly this difference is given by Morawetz in the following passage:

The difference between having a practice [an ability] and having factual knowledge can…be explained by the distinction between losing the ability to use a certain tool and questioning a fact. We say that one knows certain facts, has knowledge, when it makes sense to say that one can doubt, question, or test these facts. This presupposes that one has the “tools” to do so, that one has mastered the relevant techniques. An astronomer can check the distance of a galaxy. …But what would it be like for the child who has come to use “blue” correctly to question and try to check whether the sky is really blue? To do so would be to lose a tool, to be impoverished in a way in which neither the questioning scientist nor the astronomer is impoverished by the questioning. The scientist who corrects a finding replaces one fact with another; the child loses an aspect of reality by losing something that he once knew how to do.²⁹

CONCLUSION

I want to conclude with the following two remarks. First, to point-out, as philosophers are wont to do, that any and every rule or judgement is in principle revisable or corrigible, is perhaps to make a universally valid point (which should, for the sake of consistency, be applied to itself.) But the attainment of a valid epistemological point here is bought at the cost of forfeiting a pedagogically attuned recognition of the structural exigencies of a practice, and of the relation between our practices at any given time, our abilities for the practice, and our theoretical understanding of things. “The game of doubting”, Wittgenstein writes, “itself presupposes certainty.”³⁰ This is to say that epistemic competence that involves criticalness is made possible by the prior givenness of some set of methodological judgements and rule-governed procedures which stand fast for an agent and, without which, neither a display of mastery nor the prior learning of the practice is at all possible. Both in the case of learning and of mastery, our capacity for what I have been calling “praxeological” judgement is essential. It is to this capacity that we, as educators, always necessarily appeal in the difficult task of transmitting competence.

The corollary here for the teaching of criticalness is that “rationality” is never being simply a matter of giving reasons for actions or beliefs. A comprehensive conception of rationality, in both philosophical and educational terms, must include both the ability to believe in and act on what one has no coherent reason to question, no grounds to doubt or address, as well as the ability to examine critically that which genuinely does require interrogation, evidence, or argumentation. Understanding which is which, and being able to recognize the difference is critical for the development of any kind of epistemic competence. This involves the ability to recognize when reasons are called for, the kind of reason that the context demands, and under what circumstances a reason can legitimately play the role of a reason within justification. This recognition is germane to any analysis of what it means to be rational or better, to be “reasonable”. For one way of being reasonable is to be able to participate in a practice in accordance with its contextual demands. In the abstract, from the vantage point of a spectator, or from a “general epistemological” perspective, we can doubt and criticize whatever catches our fancy. But as agents competently engaged in the practice of a language-game not everything that can “in principle” be doubted and questioned is coherently able to be so addressed:

“Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game.”³¹

For a response to this essay, see D. C. McCarty.

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¹ I would like to thank Professor Siegel for his written criticisms which led me to re-formulate my argument in the present manner, and Professor Stephen Norris and Ki Su Kim for their comments on this paper.

² Walter C. Okshevsky, “Wittgenstein and Siegel on Rationality and Criticalness,” Philosophy of Education, 1991, ed. Margret Buchmann and Robert E. Floden (Normal, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society, 1992), 280-293.

³ Personal written communication.

⁴ Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), 11.

⁵ I have developed this argument with reference to Professor Paul Hirst’s theory of the Forms of Understanding in, “Epistemological and Hermeneutic Conceptions of the Nature of Understanding: The Cases of Paul H. Hirst and Martin Heidegger,” Educational Theory, 42, no. 1 (1992): 1-23.

⁶ Harvey Siegel, Educating Reason (New York: Routledge, 1988), 30.

⁷ Ibid., 35-36, 37-38.

⁸ Relevant to the development of Wittgenstein’s position here is the important work on the problem of the relationship between our abilities as agents and propositional/theoretical knowledge by Professor David Carr in, “Practical Pursuits and the Curriculum,” Journal of the Philosophy of Education, 12 (1978): 13-33; “Does ‘education concerns the development of knowledge and understanding’ express a necessary truth?” Educational Philosophy and Theory, 11 (1979): 35-50; “Knowledge in Practice,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 18, no. 1 (1981): 53-61.

⁹ Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, trans. Denis Paul & G.E.M Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979), 4, 58, 121, 136, 178. (References are to the numbered sections of this text unless otherwise indicated.) In all of these passages, Wittgenstein points to the necessary relationship between knowledge and doubt.

¹⁰ See W.V.O Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953).

¹¹ Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 358.

¹² Ibid., 151. Other formulations of “standing fast” include: 670, 103, 246, 87, 88, 167, 94, 341.

¹³ Ibid., 235.

¹⁴ “There is always the danger of wanting to find an expression’s meaning by contemplating the expression itself, and the frame of mind in which one uses it, instead of always thinking of the practice.” Ibid., 601.

¹⁵ Ibid., 213, 167, 98.

¹⁶ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. G. H. von Wright, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), no.170.

¹⁷ Wittgenstein’s analyses of this proposition are found in On Certainty, 84-85, 89, 91, 138, 182, 185, 187-190, 203, 206, 231, 233-236, 288.

¹⁸ Ibid., 411.

¹⁹ Thomas Morawetz, Wittgenstein and Knowledge (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978), 24. My interpretation of Wittgenstein here is deeply indebted to this text.

²⁰ Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 231, 317, 302. Wittgenstein’s basic claim here is I believe clearly and correctly articulated by Morwetz in the following way: “We gather evidence for the facts of history, and our degree of certainty is determined by the evidence. But one’s certainty of the not systematically delusive character of the evidence is not grounded and is not something one knows. There can be no evidence for this certainty since the hypothesis that one is wrong undercuts the very possibility of having evidence.” Wittgenstein and Knowledge, 19.

²¹ See Harvey Siegel, “What is the Question Concerning the Rationality of Science?” Philosophy of Science, 52 (1985): 517-537.

²² Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 342, 105.

²³ Ibid., 4, 355, 522, 526-7, 530.

²⁴ Ibid., 369.

²⁵ Ibid., 318.

²⁶ On the notion of “samples”, see Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), par. 16, 50, 53, 56, 73-74. The underlying theme is this: “This sample is an instrument of the language used in ascriptions of colour. In this language-game it is not something that is represented, but is a means of representation…. It is a paradigm in our language-game.” Philosophical Investigations, par. 50.

²⁷ Marie McGinn, in Sense and Certainty: A Dissolution of Scepticism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), appropriately refers to the content of such utterances as “technique-constituting propositions”. An excellent clarification of Wittgenstein’s conception of their non-epistemic role within the mastery of a practice is given by McGinn in Chapter 8.

²⁸ Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 522, 446, 370. See as well 630.

²⁹ Thomas Morawetz, Wittgenstein and Knowledge, 10. In this connection, Wittgenstein writes that an answer to the question “How do I know that this colour is red?”, would be “I have learnt English.” Philosophical Investigations, par. 381.

³⁰ Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 115.

³¹ Ibid., 204.