Photo: Moritz Nähr, 1929 (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons
Ludwig Wittgenstein public figure — reconstructed profile
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
Philosopher of language and certainty (Tractatus, Philosophical Investigations, On Certainty). For him, many "beliefs" are the hinges our questions turn on. Positions from his published works — not a member.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Which comes closest to your actual position on God? | I genuinely don't know either way | Lectures on Religious Belief (1938) and Culture and Value — same stance, same misfit. |
| Stipulate: you learn from strong data that, given your parents' views on God, there was about a 90% chance you'd hold your current view regardless of the arguments you've met since. Nothing else changes. Your confidence in your view should: | Stay unchanged | On Certainty (1969), §§94, 110, 167 — the world-picture is inherited before it is examined; learning how it was acquired does not, by itself, loosen a hinge. Certainty here is enacted, not concluded. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Five people you know well report the same event: one evening, an object hovered unsupported in a public square for about ten seconds. Stipulate: each has been reliable for years, none knows the others, each reported separately, there's no footage, and no one has identified a trick, wire, magnet or collusion that could explain it. How likely is it that the object really hovered, with no conventional explanation? | Extremely unlikely — some ordinary explanation exists, found or not | On Certainty (1969), §§512–514 — what stands against an event is not one belief but the whole scaffolding of the world-picture; testimony moves it barely at all. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You've held a belief for about ten years, for reasons you still find good. This month three different people gave you three new arguments against it, and you couldn't immediately rebut any. Stipulate: nothing practical hinges on the belief this year. Your next move: | Hold it; unrebutted arguments alone wouldn't move me much | On Certainty (1969), §110 — "the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting." Unrebutted arguments alone do not move what stands fast. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You clearly remember a conversation going one way; a colleague clearly remembers it going another. Stipulate: there's no recording, you're both usually reliable, and neither of you gains anything from either version. How likely is it that your version is the right one? | Leaning mine | On Certainty (1969) — memory is a source of certainty in practice, yet certainty is shown in acting, not in a guaranteed inner mark; a reliable peer's conflict earns real doubt. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Someone holds the opposite view on God from yours. Stipulate: strong data shows that, given their parents' views, there was about a 90% chance they'd hold it regardless of the arguments they've met since. Nothing else changes. Their confidence in their view should: | Stay unchanged | Same hinge doctrine applied to the other person, symmetrically. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| God exists | Genuinely unsure | Lectures on Religious Belief (1938) — God-talk is not a hypothesis to be assigned a probability; the scale misfits his view, and the honest box on it is "genuinely unsure." He also wrote that he could not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view while not being a religious man. |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Probably false | Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), 6.431–6.4311 — "Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death." Survival is not the picture his philosophy gives. |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Genuinely unsure | Philosophical Investigations (1953), §293 (the beetle in the box) — consciousness pictured as an inner object produced by an organ is a confusion of our language; the scale's framing is what he rejects. Scored unsure. |
| Long-standing traditions usually contain wisdom we can't see | Probably true | On Certainty (1969), §§94–99 — "I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness... it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false." |
| Human life has a purpose beyond the one we choose for it | Probably true | Tractatus (1921), 6.41 — "The sense of the world must lie outside the world"; 6.52 — even with every scientific question answered, the problems of life remain untouched. |