The Final Foundations of Knowledge
The “final foundations” and supporting columns of our judgements do not belong to our experiences in the sense that we would get to the final points by learning from experience. The last arguments have a unique role in the system of our sentences of experience.
The final point precedes experience and the knowledge based on it. Little by little, we manage to develop a system of beliefs. Some things are then inherently stable, while some are more or less mobile. What is stable is not stable because it is obvious or convincing, but because the things surrounding it all have “their place”.As Wittgenstein thought, all argumentation takes place in a language-game. On the other hand, all games are locked by certain foundations, which are no longer held in doubt. These foundations are not given to us by our everyday experience, nor do we become aware of them intuitively (by “inner vision”). They are given to us. “The proofs that are certain are those that we unconditionally accept as certain” (Wittgenstein 1969, 163, 232). Therefore, the hypothesis that earth has existed long before my birth is not an experiential sentence or an intuitive invention. It is part of the complete picture that forms the starting point for my belief.
The proving of every proposition requires that a part of the sentences has been locked into something. But that which one holds on to is not a single sentence but a whole colony of sentences. To use the rope metaphor again, the binding matter is not a single fibre but a whole lot of fibres, in the midst of which, every new fibre, for example a statement on judicial interpretation, is added. Wittgenstein states that the “colony” of sentences is, in a way, forged into the foundation of our language-games. It forms the framework for everything we hold as true or false, right or wrong (Wittgenstein 1969, 105, 140-142, 225).
It is a foundation that simultaneously makes the shared beliefs and attitudes, and, of course, all linguistic communication, possible. Without a foundation that precedes the giving of meanings, communication would come apart.This implicates Wittgenstein’s stand on the relationship between knowledge and certainty. Knowledge requires the possibility of doubt and this, in turn, requires argumentation. What we hold as certain is held as such without argument, because we no longer have any doubts about it. Therefore, certainty is the precondition for all knowledge. The “colony of sentences” that forms our shared foundation of knowledge has gained the name world-view from Wittgenstein (von Wright 1972, 27).
This should not be taken to mean a unified and stable set of sentences. On the contrary, its borders are unsteady and the set itself is composed of a huge number of sub-systems. Each of these systems is, in its way, a fragment of the world-view, a single part in an interlocked whole. For their part, the fragments of the world-view are the foundations for the language-games. They are the pieces that lock down the final links in the language-games. Bearing in mind what has been said about the family resemblance between language-games, it is easy to grasp the meaning of the sub-systems of the world-view being “interlocked”.
If we were to call the group of sentences that forms the world-view preknowledge (Vorwissen), as von Wright does, we might, following his thoughts, say that every language-game has a foundation that forms a fragment of the player's preknowledge (von Wright 1972, 25). For Wittgenstein, the world-view is not a thing of assurance. It is an inherited background with which one makes the distinction between true and false. The sentences that belong to the world-view have a similar role to rules in a game, even though the world-view is not definitively locked. It is not a petrification, but something that is in constant change. The world-view is a dynamic foundation that Wittgenstein compares to a river bed.
Little by little, the bed changes its shape, even though it is somewhere at every moment, constantly determining the direction the water takes.At its core, the world-view is not a propositional matter. If anything, we should say that the foundation of the world-view is a non-propositional phenomenon, for which Wittgenstein has reserved the title form of life. He maintains that the end point of the chain of arguments is not a certain point of reference (“seeing”) but action (Wittgenstein 1969, 369,487; Taylor 1976, 221). The form of life is a matter of actions. We use actions to shape our form of life, and by our actions we can see what we finally trust. Once one knows how to act in a certain way in a certain situation, one is proven to belong to a certain form of life.
It is possible to understand the form of life (and its propositional manifestation, the world-view) as a “layered” phenomenon. At its core (“at the bottom”) there are certain elementary actions - the building blocks of human culture. In the case of law, let us, according to Aleksander Peczenik, call it the deep justification of law.
These elements of the deep structure, for their part, make possible a form of life that includes language, in our case the primary norms of everyday life like commands, prohibitions and permissions. At some point - admittedly at quite a high level of abstraction - the form of life is connected with statutes. This is how the texture of a world-view is formed, giving rise to a vast network of sub-systems.
As regards this background, what the standing on language as a manifestation of the form of life means becomes understandable. When Wittgenstein says that an expression gains its meaning in the use of language, he means that meaning is revealed exactly in the special way the language-game is played. Nevertheless, the question is not about language in itself as an autonomous phenomenon. On the contrary, an individual expression is part of the language-game, while this, for its part, is connected to the form of life.
It is not possible to understand activity (playing) without having a certain shared basis. This shared basis is nothing other than the form of life. Language-games are wholes in which the use of language, the form of life and the way of observing the world are combined. Therefore, the analysis of language is, for Wittgenstein, always and in every setting, an analysis of the form of life. Language, thought and the form of life are necessary elements of man's intellectual existence.If we try to abstract the language-game and separate it from its connections, we can no longer understand language. Language as an activity can only be comprehended when it is seen as connected to the form of life. Words have their “home” in the form of life; thus belonging to a certain form of life is a precondition for taking part in a language-game, or, vice versa, playing a language-game is taking part in a form of life. Someone not involved in this interplay cannot understand language, neither can he be understood in the first place.