Abdolhamid Mohammadi; Ali Paya
Abstract
The later Wittgenstein presents all types of knowledge claims in the context of language games. He also maintains that no language game is possible without certainty. Certainty lies outside of language games, but the very existence of any kind of language game depends on it. In his view, even "the game ...
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The later Wittgenstein presents all types of knowledge claims in the context of language games. He also maintains that no language game is possible without certainty. Certainty lies outside of language games, but the very existence of any kind of language game depends on it. In his view, even "the game of doubting presupposes certainty". According to Wittgenstein, certainty, as well as absolute doubt and absolute knowledge are meaningless. But relative doubt, or as he calls it, "reasonable doubt", is meaningful and can produce its own language game. The language game of doubting, like other language games, is based on what Wittgenstein dubs a set of "world-picture" or a system of "hinge propositions". In Wittgenstein's opinion, ‘hinge propositions’ are based on people’s lived experiences and their collective agreements over them. ‘Hinge propositions,’ in this sense, are objective, and although he refers to them as ‘propositions’, they are not propositions in the usual sense of this term: they do not partake in reasoning and arguments but the discourses of causes (and their effects). In this article, we first discuss the characteristics of relative doubt and the rules of the language game of doubt, as well as the characteristics of certainty and the system of ‘hinge propositions’. We then move on to a critical assessment of Wittgenstein’s views on the above topics by highlighting some internal inconsistencies in his arguments and exposing some shortcomings in his views through the prism of Critical Rationalism.
