Shouldered in and out of the Reality of Mortality: Rethinking the Relation between Moral Certainty and Moral Change

I consider two examples of experiences of being struck by thoughts that, upon initial reflection, both speakers suspect to be thoughts they must have surely already been previously aware of. The first is Allison Hope's description of the thought, in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, "I could easily die sooner than later". The second is Martin Gustafsson's description of the thought, in relation to his then one-year-old daughter, "She is going to survive me". Gustafsson draws on the work of both Ludwig Wittgenstein and Cora Diamond to describe his experience of the thought that struck him as both "unfathomable"to doubt, and as the kind of thought that involves "one's whole view of, and mode of being in the world". Though not explicitly mentioned by Gustafsson, I suggest there are important similarities between his description and some of Wittgenstein's remarks in On Certainty, and that these similarities can also be seen in Hope's case. This leads me to suggest that both Hope's and Gustafsson's experiences are instances of fundamental moral change that go beyond Wittgenstein's "river-bed"metaphor as it is ordinarily understood. I suggest this insight highlights important differences between an account of moral certainty and moral change exemplified by Hope and Gustafsson, and the account of moral change developed by proponents of what I call the dominant reading of moral certainty, and their use of Wittgenstein's "river-bed"metaphor.