ON CERTAINTY

01. It seems to me that the whole philosophical confusion surrounding propositions in the
form “I know …” (general form: S knows that p) stems from two facts:
A. that ‘doubt’ and ‘certainty’ (epistemic capacities of subjects; and, at their absolute
values, each being a state of mind characterized by the total absence of the other) ---
the feelings of doubt and certainty --- play ambivalent roles with regard to acquisition
of (doxastic) knowledge and in developing commitment to courses of action in
infancy (conceived as the stage of learning the game and characterized by an
incapacity to doubt) as opposed to when the subject engages with the world as a
rational adult; and
B. that we do not seem to have at present any other way to explain such a proposition (S
knows that p) except by taking recourse to other propositions within language.
Propositions may be shown to be derived from other propositions. But what
guarantees that a particular proposition (ṕ) is any more certain than the proposition it
allegedly grounds (p)?

02. That ‘A’ above plays a role in this confusion is not always realized by philosophers and
most skeptical objections to claims of certain knowledge are, therefore, really based only
on ‘B’ above, which we may call the groundlessness of our beliefs argument. For
example, Wittgenstein begins his On Certainty (written: 1950-51; published: 1969) with
these words:
“… When one says that such and such a proposition can’t be proved, of
course that does not mean that it can’t be derived from other propositions;
any proposition can be derived from other ones. But they may be no more
certain than it is itself.” (Wittgenstein, 1969, #01)

03. And we cannot bypass the problem by replacing “I know” with “I believe” etc. For,
unless there are non-doxastic grounds for holding the belief that p (or not p) there seems
to be little possibility of effectively answering the skeptical objections that are raised
against such and similar propositions. If the grounds for our beliefs are only other beliefs,
then the “groundlessness of our believing” (Wittgenstein, 1969, #166) is a conclusion that
cannot be resisted.

04. But skeptics (like Peter Unger) must first answer one very important question: whether
we can, in fact, doubt all our beliefs? Isn’t our capacity to doubt limited? Doesn’t the
game of doubting stop somewhere? As Wittgenstein puts it:
 “If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting
anything. The game of doubting presupposes certainty.” (Wittgenstein,
1969, #115)

05. Indeed, the thought, that as reasonable persons we cannot doubt all our beliefs seems to
be strongly backed by our intuition; although we can very easily wonder what such an
experience --- the experience of madness, the feeling of losing one’s reason --- will be
like. Wittgenstein says: “the reasonable man does not have certain doubts” (ibid., #220),
but then, soon after, wonders: “… mightn’t I be crazy and not doubting what I absolutely
ought to doubt?” (ibid, #223).

06. The classical skeptical argument is deliberately designed to circumvent this question (in
#04 above). We are asked to participate in a thought experiment involving an ‘evil
demon’ (Descartes, Meditations I), or, in its modern formulation, an ‘evil scientist’ who
is by definition able to deceive us in all our beliefs. From here it is short work to show
that we can never know anything for certain, nor have any reasonable beliefs whatsoever.
(Unger, Ignorance, 1975).

07. But what is it really like to doubt everything? Don’t our actions betray our doubting as
merely a gesture, a poor, hypocritical gesture? What is it to doubt (say) the certain belief
‘that the fan will not just fall on my head right now’, and not worry about getting hurt?
What is it to doubt ‘that there are rocks in the world’, and not worry about losing my
sanity?

08. Doubts about the external world (Cartesian doubts) must be realized for what they really
are: not about doubting per se, but about ‘how we know what we know’. Would the
doubt be resolved, we find ourselves asking, if the person doubting about the existence of
the Earth is taken in his spaceship by Jeff Bezos and shown the Earth from outside our
atmosphere? Does being able to see a system from the outside as opposed to being
swaddled by it all the time count as certainty of its existence? At least certainty for me
(psychological certainty), prompting me to assert: “I know …” etc.?

09. Also, we must ask, why is the ‘evil scientist’ in Unger’s account of the classical skeptical
argument not omnipotent in the sense that, apart from all that it is already able to do in
that account, it is also able to deceive me in my belief in logically necessary truths, for
example? As soon as we ask this question we realize that very far from reluctantly
conceding possible knowledge in the form of logical truths and of certain exotic
 conditionals etc. (See Unger, 1975, I.13, pp. 44-6), skeptics like Unger actually hold on
to this possibility of knowledge with their dear life.

10. I think the most relevant fact in any analysis of certainty is also the one that has been
completely missed or overlooked so far by philosophers --- namely, that in infancy we
are incapable of doubting and are thus in a default state of (absolute) certainty, as it were.

11. Wittgenstein, I think, correctly analyses the case of the pupil who constantly interrupts
the teacher by raising doubts (both silly and legitimate) about the veracity of what is
being taught. “He has not learned the game that we are trying to teach him” (ibid., #315),
writes Wittgenstein and compares the behaviour of the child with one who’s looking for
some object in a room but is searching again and again in the same drawer. Just as we
would conclude in the case of the man with the repetitive behaviour that “he hasn’t
learned how to search for an object” so also we reach the conclusion that the doubting
pupil has “failed to learn the game we are trying to teach him”.

12. The important thing to notice here is that even if the doubts raised by the pupil are, in
fact, legitimate, --- like, “… is there a table there even when I turn around, and even
when no one is there to see it?” (ibid, #314) --- the evaluation of the teacher need not
change. He would still have to conclude that such a pupil is not able to pick up the game
we are trying to teach him.

13. Must we not therefore ask, why is it in fact the case that a three-year-old would believe as
certain whatever we tell her, no matter how fantastic, but the same girl would doubt
almost everything we tell her once she believes she can figure things out on her own?
What role does ‘doubt’ and ‘certainty’ play in these cases?

14. I believe this question to be central to any attempt at analyzing the concept of certainty
and in delineating the limits of our knowledge, the possibility thereof.

15. But it is seldom realized as what it is: a relevant fact in our analysis of problems
surrounding propositions in the form S knows that p. We seem to be defending (Moore, A
Defense of Common Sense, 1925) or challenging, at least questioning, doubting our
common sense worldview (Unger, Ignorance, 1975) without taking into account the fact
that when we acquired the beliefs pertaining to and making up that worldview, we were
incapable of doubting its veracity, or, in other words, we were in a default state of
certainty regarding our beliefs when we first acquired them. One example each from
Moore (1925), Wittgenstein (1969) and Unger (1975) should suffice to illustrate the
point:
A. In a rare paragraph in his long essay, A Defense of Common Sense (1925), G. E.
Moore allows himself to finally face very briefly the skeptical challenge to
knowledge:
“Nevertheless, my position that I know, with certainty, to be true all the
propositions in (1), is certainly not a position, the denial of which entails
both of two incompatible propositions. If I know all these propositions to
be true, then, I think, it is quite certain that other human beings also have
known corresponding propositions: that is to say (2) also is true, and I
know it to be true. But do I really know all the propositions in (1) to be
true? Isn’t it possible that I merely believe them? Or know them to be
highly probable? In answer to this question, I think I have nothing better to
say than that it seems to me that I do know them, with certainty. It is,
indeed, obvious that, in the case of most of them I do not know them
directly: that is to say I only know them because, in the past, I have known
to be true other propositions which were evidence for them. If, for
instance, I do know that the earth had existed for many years before I was
born, I certainly know this because I have known other things in the past
which were evidence for it. And I certainly do not know exactly what the
evidence was. Yet all this seems to me to be no good reason for doubting
that I do know it. We are all, I think, in this strange position that we do
know many things, with regard to which we know further that we must
have had evidence for them, and yet we do not know how we know them,
i.e. we do not know what the evidence was.” (Moore’s italics).

What evidence could Moore have had, we wonder, for his knowledge that the earth had
existed for many years before he was born, etc., other than his incapacity to doubt its
veracity when he first acquired this belief as a toddler? What evidence is there for my
knowledge of a proposition like ‘this is my hand’ other than the fact that I was incapable
of doubting this belief about ‘my hands’ when I first acquired it as a one-year-old-toddler
perhaps? More importantly, if there indeed was such a previous evidence (now
forgotten), why did we consider it more trustworthy and as a ground for my belief that
‘this is my hand’?

B. Wittgenstein (1969), I think, correctly analyses our phase of ‘learning the game’:

“When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single

proposition, it is a whole system of propositions (light dawns gradually on
the whole) [ibid, #141]; or,

“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 unshakably 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” (ibid,
#144); or,

“The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief” (ibid,
#160); and,

“I learned an enormous amount and accepted it on human authority, and

then I found some things confirmed or disconfirmed by my own
experience.” (ibid,161).

But soon (at #166) he accepts the ‘groundlessness of our beliefs argument’ outlined in its
essential form in 01(B) above. Indeed, this keeps coming back throughout Wittgenstein’s
last work, On Certainty (1969), and after reading his notes, the reader is inexorably led
towards questioning her own beliefs. If our beliefs are grounded only on other beliefs
then their ‘groundlessness’ becomes all too apparent. For, even if we succeed in listing
[like Moore’s list of propositions in (1)] a set (say S) of unique beliefs (b1, b2, b3, …)
from which all my other beliefs (b1́, b2́, b3́ …) can be derived [like Moore’s proposition
in (2)], the grounds for my holding the set of beliefs S, and each belief therein
individually (b1, b2 etc.) must be non-doxastic for me to have any real justification in
holding them. I think, it’d be fair to say that Wittgenstein has left us this open problem in
epistemology (in his words):

“Why is there no doubt that I am called L.W.? It does not seem at all like
something that one could establish at once beyond doubt. One would not
think that it is one of the indubitable truths. [Here there is still a big gap in
my thinking. And I doubt whether it will be filled now] (ibid, #470;
Wittgenstein’s parenthesis).

C. The analysis of certainty in Peter Unger’s Ignorance (1975, pp. 63-5) similarly misses
the relevant fact of our being initially in a default state of absolute certainty regarding
our beliefs, and focuses instead on a semantic analysis of certainty to show, very
easily, that nothing can ever be certain.

16. Also, I think, we all realize that the search for a non-doxastic justification for our beliefs
is equivalent to searching for a final answer to skepticism, in so far as we understand by
knowledge ‘Justified True Belief’ (JTB). If I make beliefs my object of analysis it is
because beliefs are logically prior. For S to know that p, S must at least believe that p etc.
 17. It will also be realized, I hope, why, at 01 (A) above, I spoke of the ‘ambivalent roles’ of
doubt and certainty with regard to knowledge and action in infancy and adulthood. But
perhaps I’m not understood. So let me rephrase: certainty is enough in infancy for us to
know and act accordingly, whereas in adulthood it obstructs the acquisition of further,
more precise knowledge, while doubt, absent in infancy, is what takes us to more precise
knowledge about many things we already know.

18. But not only is absolute certainty not a necessary condition of (fallible, revisable)
knowledge (for S to know that p, it is not necessary that S is absolutely certain that p etc.,
because then the follow up question to someone asserting “I know …” --- ‘Are you
absolutely certain?’ etc. --- would become a meaningless tautology, would become
trivial)1, but in adults, absolute certainty acts as a hindrance to the acquisition of further,
or more precise, knowledge2. Both Wittgenstein and Unger bring to our attention this
aspect of certainty. Wittgenstein notes:

“I know that this is my foot. I could not accept any experience as proof to
the contrary ….” (ibid, #360);

“… doesn’t it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision” (ibid,

#362); and,

“If someone says he will recognize no experience as proof of the opposite,

that is after all a decision.” (ibid, #360).

And Unger writes:

“A main hypothesis of my work is this: that an excessively severe attitude,

or approach, or frame of mind, is entailed in one’s being absolutely ceratin
of something, and that speakers of English at least (perhaps only
implicitly), accept the idea that this is so. The attitude is at least roughly
this: No matter what experience may seem to show or suggest as to

1
See Goodman and Holguin, Thinking and being sure, where the authors defend the surety norm on assertion and
argue against those who gainsay the existence of such a norm --- what the authors call ‘being sure’ and what we
would like to designate as ‘psychological certainty’, i.e. certainty for me, regardless of absolute certainty which
would imply not only zero doubt but zero grounds for doubt --- as making proper assertion “unrealistically
demanding” (Section 1, Footnote 2). Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2022; 1-21. But since in asserting
that p we represent ourselves as being sure of it, as having at least psychological certainty, the follow up question
--- “Are you absolutely certain that p?” --- is felicitous and indeed, is never taken for granted in law courts, for
instance. If, however, absolute certainty were necessary for assertion, how trivial would it be to ask such a follow
up question, if not in every instance, but certainly in a good number of instances.
2
See Luca Zanetti, The Quest for Cetainty in De Gruyter, Kriterion – J. Philos 2021; 35(1): 71-95. In section 4 of the
essay Zanetti argues that in so far we take the truth of a proposition (p) to be certain we are no longer able to
genuinely wonder whether p. “Wondering whether p is true is being open minded as to whether p is true …” (p.78)
 whether or not something is so, I will now reject as misleading any
experience which seems to show or suggest that the thing is not so”
(Unger, 1975, p.30; Unger’s emphasis).

19. In infancy, when we are unable to doubt, the worldview we accept as true, and which we
carry into our adulthood, which survives into our adulthood, our name, our address etc,
must have therefore some epistemic privilege by virtue of being literally beyond doubt.

20. The physiology of this feeling of certainty, of being sure of many things like “what our
names are, where we were born, whether we are currently looking at a screen, and so on”,
things that we matter-of-factly accept as something we know, something we are certain
of, such as our knowledge of what a screen is, I wish to express through the following
hypothesis: that for every absolutely certain belief (because infants) we have in the
primitive Hippocampus a corresponding neuron, and recognizable synaptic connections
between neurons, i.e. recognizable nural pathways, for derived beliefs, and that
myelination, the final process of brain development, is causally related to the fact that
(whether or not) the neuron corresponding to a particular belief that p has crossed a
certain threshold that now makes it more certain than my other beliefs in that it is literally
more difficult for me to give up the belief that p.

21. This equivalence of Hippocampal neurons with certain beliefs and synapses and neural
pathways with derived certainties [Moore’s sets (1) and (2)] faces some very strong
difficulties with known facts about brain development and its influence on behaviour in
children.3 For instance, a new-born child has many times more neurons in the brain than
an adult.4 How is it possible for an embryo to be certain of more things and have more
neurons in the Hippocampus of the brain, corresponding to certain beliefs or knowledge,
than an adult human being? It indeed, prima fascie, looks impossible, but we surmount
the difficulty when we realize that the whole of the developing embryo’s knowledge is
genetic, and there is much knowledge carried from the genes that will eventually be
rejected, a process called apoptosis or programmed cell death. Although it is not the
active knowledge we associate with adults, the genetic heritage of the embryo definitely
allows itself to be interpreted as bits of certainties carried blindly by the genes: the
knowledge of its sex for instance. The embryo ‘knows’ whether it’s a boy or a girl, albeit
blindly, genetically.

22. It is important now to clarify what exactly we are proposing. We are saying that

3
See Tierney and Nelson, ‘Brain Development and the Role of Experience in the Early Years’, Zero Three. 2009
November 1; 30(2): 9-13.
4
Ibid. p. 10. Brain cells in the developing embryo proliferate at a logarthmic rate and “this proliferative stage
continues for some time, with the consequence that the new born brain will have many more neurons than the
adult brain….”
 A. unilike Biology we consider neurons, particularly those in the Hippocampus of our
brains, to be the physical co-relates of our beliefs over and above their roles as
information messengers. In fact, we want to say that neurons are able to transmit
messages only because they themselves consitute the physical repository of those
messages;
B. neurons, representing certainly held beliefs, form synaptic connections with other
neurons when we derive certainties from existing ones;
C. in the final phase of brain development (can take up to six to seven years) neurons,
through the process of myelination, become entrenched as fixed certainties, like our
name, our address, this is a table, I have two hands etc.

23. The known fact of neurogenesis in young children is explained by the further hypothesis
that neurogeneis occurs when we are able to believe something new with absolute
certainty, and since that is the default state in infancy, neurogenesis in infants and young
children should not surprise us. In a sense this is a corollary of our main hypothesis that
for every certainly held belief there must be either a neuron in the Hippocampus or a
relevant synaptic connection between neurons.

24. It is also known that a child aged about one year develops many more synaptic
connections than it would have as an adult and that with experience certain synaptic
connections are severed: a process called synaptic pruning.5

25. But the great beauty of the hypothesis lies in the fact it is able to effectively answer the
groundlessness of our beliefs argument in 01(A) above. It provides a non-doxastic ground
for certainty and justifies our beliefs.

5
Ibid., pp.10-11.