Criterialism

Abstract This section focuses on Anscombe’s paper ‘Brute Facts’ and its Wittgensteinian background. The introduction (section 7.1) sketches later Wittgenstein’s approach to language as embedded in life and culture (‘language-games’). Section 7.2 then outlines two traps in practical philosophy: the fact-value distinction and the practicality of evaluation. Concentrating on the first, section 7.3 contrasts Anscombe’s position with Hume’s and draws out three central aspects: that one predicate is brute relative to another, i.e., criteria-governed; that this relation iterates; and that it relies on a wide contextual background that gives life and point to such language-games. Section 7.4 then expands on Wittgensteinian criterialism: the incomplete specifiability of defeating conditions and of criteria; its manifestation in teaching such predicates; the variety of criteria, their family resemblance, changes, and open-ended, creative exploration, with as much attention to the role of qualification as of defeasibility. Section 7.5 briefly outlines Wittgenstein’s double strategy against the Frege-Plato objection that language must have clear fixed boundaries to be usable. Section 7.6 concludes by turning from the rules of language-games briefly to consider aspects of the points or goals at issue in them.