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Wittgenstein vs. Evil Demon

-- By DanLEe - 16 Apr 2021

The Skeptical Argument

THE SKEPTICAL ARGUMENT

P1: If one doesn’t know that she is not a brain in a vat, then one doesn’t know that she has hands.

P2: One doesn’t know that she is not a brain in a vat.

C: Therefore, one doesn’t know that she has hands.

Skepticism, as a philosophical concept, has been around since even before Descartes, who put forth its most popular form in Meditations in the seventeenth century. Descartes examines all propositions that he ordinarily believes to be true but are vulnerable to doubt. Ordinarily, he believes in his sensory perceptions, his memories, and his knowledge of mathematical and geometric axioms. But what if an omnipotent evil demon has set itself to deceiving him, and he is in a dream where even his most basic concepts regarding reality may be false? Descartes arrives at the famous conclusion that there is only one undoubtable proposition: cogito ergo sum, or “I think, therefore I am.” Big whoop. Although I may know that I exist, that doesn’t provide any evidence for the existence of my corporeal body, the veracity of my memories, or the existence of an external world. As Gilbert Harman says, I may be a brain in a vat, plugged into a computer that, through the appropriate electric and chemical signals, is convincing me that I have hands and eyes; cogito ergo sum provides no fuel to escape this skeptical or solipsistic conundrum.

The Moorean Argument

Then, along comes George Edward Moore in the early twentieth century. Moore writes two of the most maddening philosophical treatises of all time: “A Defence of Common Sense,” and Proof of an External World. Both are concerned with adding another proposition to our scant list of sureties: namely, that there is an external world. In the latter, he writes that “here is one hand, here is another.” Therefore, there are two objects in the external world. Therefore, skepticism is defeated. How absurd, he says, would it be to say that one doesn’t know that one’s hands exist. In these treatises, Moore shifts the above argument from a modus ponens (affirming the antecedent) to a modus tollens (denying the consequent). His argument is this:

THE MOOREAN ARGUMENT

P1: If one doesn’t know that she is not a brain in a vat, then one doesn’t know that she has hands.

P2

One knows that she has hands.

C

Therefore, one knows that she is not a brain in a vat.

These two treatises are some of the most oft-cited in philosophical academia. Hundreds, if not thousands, of philosophers have chimed in to laud the argument’s boldness, disparage it brazenness, or simply shake their heads at how annoying it is. There is something obviously compelling about the argument. Common sense decrees that we know of the reality of our hands, which proves the reality of our external world. But at the same time, the argument is irritatingly question-begging; if we actually are in a skeptical scenario, common sense has no weight at all. Most philosophers agree that the argument fails to robustly counter the skeptical hypothesis, although it does have its proponents, like Pritchard and Pryor.

Wittgenstein's Argument

But instead of discussing the enormous debate fueled by Moore’s treatises, which form an important bulk of the last century’s epistemological analysis, I’d like to turn to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work On Certainty. On Certainty, unlike Wittgenstein’s more famous Tractatus, lacks definable structure and is a decidedly rough and unpolished work. It is more correct to call it a compilation of notes that Wittgenstein wrote as he was dying from cancer, only given structure by Wittgenstein’s friends posthumously. The work has been interpreted through a variety of frameworks, and its unrefined nature yields itself to diverse forms of analysis. Undoubtedly, the following analysis will fall far short of encapsulating all Wittgenstein meant to say.

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein notes both the boldness of Moore’s approach to the skeptical problem, as well as its question-begging, epistemically circular nature. Furthermore, the epistemic strength of the evidence that justifies any given proposition must be greater than that of the proposition that is being proved, and what possible statement could we possibly be more epistemically secure in than “Here are two hands”?

In a brilliant move, Wittgenstein sidesteps the metaphysical issue of whether or not a radically skeptical scenario is possible in favor of discussing the role that propositions such as “Here are two hands” play in our epistemology. Such statements, in Wittgenstein’s view, work like hinges on a door; the entire framework of propositions that form our epistemic systems of belief and justification, and our linguistic systems of expression, relies on our accepting them. Wittgenstein writes, “If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either… If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything.”

For Wittgenstein, the radical skeptic of the brain-in-vat or Cartesian variety cannot exist. To doubt the hinge propositions “Here are two hands,” or “There is an external world” would be to cast doubt onto such vast swaths of our knowledge, belief, and reasoning, that any form of philosophical inquiry becomes utterly impossible. The skeptic, to Wittgenstein, is like a student in class who interrupts every sentence his instructor utters, saying, “How do we know this to be true? How do we know that to be true?” The everyday inquiries that we concern ourselves with would be either unanswerable or utterly incomprehensible, and a true skeptic would be stuck in a kind of cognitive paralysis, unable even to make an argument or pose a hypothesis.

Wittgenstein, to me, offers the best solution to the angst that can be caused by radically skeptical inquiry. He, like Kant, believes that no metaphysical justifications to the reality of our world can be offered, as none can exist. Instead, he posits that there is the world of sense, which all have taken part in since birth, and to doubt this world is to devolve into entirely unintelligible nonsense.

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