'For the person or persons that hold dominion, can no more combine with the keeping up of majesty the running with harlots drunk or naked about the streets, or the performances of a stage player, or the open violation or contempt of laws passed by themselves than they can combine existence with non-existence'.

- Benedict de Spinoza. Political Treatise. 1677.




Thursday, June 16, 2011

on certainty 677*



677. A proposition is a proposal. A proposal is open to question, open to doubt, is uncertain. A proposition is true if assented to. A proposition is false if dissented from. Assent and dissent are open to question, open to doubt. If you are certain there can be no mistake. In an uncertain reality there are no mistakes; what you face is uncertainties. The notion of the mistake has no role to play in epistemology. The  claim of knowledge is a claim to an authority for a proposition. The only authority is authorship. The authorship of a proposition is logically irrelevant. Any claim to an authority other than authorship is rhetorical.



*There is no 677 in Wittgenstein’s text. Wittgenstein ends with 676.


© greg t. charlton. 2011.