On foundationalist readings of On Certainty

What distinguishes the foundationalist reading from the constitutive (‘framework’) reading is that the latter acknowledges the interdependence of certainty and knowledge, whereas the former considers certainty to be independent.

Some, e.g., Robert Brice, make a distinction between  ‘heterogeneous’ and ‘homogeneous foundationalism’, arguing that  the former position is the one  Wittgenstein takes in On Certainty, whereas the latter is the traditional position, that is incapable of fending off the attack by the radical sceptic. The distinction between these two positions as such is clear, and important. But why exactly would one want to call them both ‘foundationalism’? That suggests that besides the difference there is also something they have in common. But what might that be?  A constitutive relation is not a founding relation, the former involves an essential dependency that the latter lacks. What constitutes and what is constituted depend on one another, one cannot consists without the other. But what is founded and what founds are not in that way dependent: one can clear what is founded and be left with the foundations. 

Moyal-Sharrock  argues that the fundamental difference between what she considers Wittgenstein’s foundationalism and traditional foundationalism that the latter, but not the former, is propositional. This raises an interesting question. Is Descartes cogito propositional, or is it Descartes’ exposition of it that is propositional? The latter is certainly true, but does that entail the former?  Or consider forms  of foundationalism that consider sensory experience as foundation. Any exposition of this position will have to resort to descriptions of sensory experience, and these descriptions are, of course, propositional. But does it make sense to say that the sensory experiences themselves are necessarily also propositional? That seems not to follow, at least not without additional premisses. 

Martin Stokhof
from: EOL Discussion Board
date: March 2020