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fledgling sciences. In no other field of thought are there "perennial"
problems. Sciences grow by virtue of the fact that problems are
solved, theoretical difficulties mastered, basic distinctions in language
recognized. But in the field of philosophy, even distinctions that
would appear to be basic, such as that between analytic and
syn–
thetic statements, are constantly being challenged. In our own time
a mind as honest and acute as that of G. E. Moore has judged
that ". . . unless new reasons never urged hitherto can be found,
all the most important philosophic doctrines have as little claim to
assent as the most superstitious beliefs of the lowest savages."
This
would seem to suggest that to apply the term "knowledge"-in the
sense in which we use
it
for undisputed conclusions gained through
one set of disciplines, the sciences-to the disputed conclusions or
claims of philosophers, is only to invite confusion.
It may be argued that such confusion is more apparent than
real. All large terms like "experience" and "life," no less than
"knowledge," are infected with ambiguities which do not obstruct
but facilitate communication. In this they are like terms in ordinary
use whose meanings are blurred at the edges. We may say of them
what Wittgenstein says of "games"-they are words that designate
a
range
of familiar or similar meanings among which a "family
resemblance" is present. Provided we recognize that some activities
are
not
games, that there are different family-trees of resemblance,
so that not everything is classifiable as one family, this observation,
already suggested by Peirce, is illuminating. But I do not believe that
it vindicates the conception of "philosophical knowledge." And
this
for two reasons. Some terms seem to possess a "more typical" family
resemblance than others, just as we can more easily recognize some
individuals as belonging to a certain family than we can others.
For example, a basketball game is more clearly a game than is a
bull fight which is played according to rules. And the latter is more
clearly a game than is a political contest, or competitive business
activity, which are sometimes cited as instances of the game of poli–
tics or the game of business. But although we call Russian roulette
by the
name
of a game no one in his senses uses it
,as
a game. In
the end what determines whether we are to call some marginal ac–
tivity a game or give it membership
in
a family of meanings is its
resemblance to the most typical case, to the paradigmatic situation,
