Ludwig Wittgenstein - On Certainty

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Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The child learns to believe a host of things. I. e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already 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 our arguments have their life.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
But more correctly: The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the other words in my sentence 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.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."

Ludwig Wittgenstein
It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I believe it might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to read my notes. For even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize what targets I had been ceaselessly aiming at.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say "yes" to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say "I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same."

Ludwig Wittgenstein
A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all."

Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic

Ludwig Wittgenstein