The "Big Book" is a
thought experiment
A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.
History
The ancient Greek ''deiknymi'' (), or thought experiment, "was the most anc ...
developed by
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is con ...
about the nature of
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
and the verifiability of ethical
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as Descriptive knowledge, awareness of facts or as Procedural knowledge, practical skills, and may also refer to Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called pro ...
. This account is given by him in an early work, the 1929 ''Lecture on Ethics'', and it matches also his position given in the early ''
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is a book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein which deals with the relationship between language and reality and aims to define th ...
'' (Proposition 6.41).
The experiment
"No statement of fact can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute value. Suppose one of you were an
omniscient
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
person and therefore knew all the movements of all the bodies in the world dead or alive and that you also knew all the states of mind of all human beings that ever lived, and suppose you wrote all you knew in a big book, then this book would contain the whole description of the world; and what I want to say is, that this book would contain nothing that we would call an ethical judgment or anything that would logically imply such a judgment."
Comparison to Wittgenstein's later positions
Just four years later, in 1933, in another lecture on ethics at
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
, Wittgenstein seems to have taken up a very different view. Instead of saying that ethical propositions would not be part of a complete account (or a complete ''physical'' account, at least) of the world, Wittgenstein said in the 1933 lecture that an ethical quality like ''good'' should be discoverable like any other quality, and that a full investigation of some action would reveal whether it had this quality or not.
[Stern, ''op. cit.'', p. 203.]
See also
*
Is–ought problem
References
Further reading
*
*{{cite journal , author=Wolcher, L. E. , year=1998 , title=A meditation on Wittgenstein’s Lecture on ethics , journal=Law and Critique , volume=9 , issue=1 , pages=3–35 , doi=10.1007/bf02699906
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Metaethics
Thought experiments in ethics
Concepts in the philosophy of language