Chapter 3: Common Sense and Weltbild

Abstract

The inquiry into the concept of certainty is widened here through examination of Wittgenstein’s and the pragmatists’ attitudes towards common sense. The first part draws on Peirce’s characterization of ‘critical common-sensism’ and James’ description of common sense as ‘the mother tongue of thought’. The following section examines Wittgenstein’s position, first stated during his lectures and writings in the 1930s and later in On Certainty, where instead of common sense he preferred to speak of Weltbild: some reasons are adduced for this choice. Whereas common features of their accounts are holism, vagueness, a new approach to the issue of the ‘ground’, and the connection with action, differences emerge on the relationship between common sense, science, and philosophy.