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Wittgensteinian Anti-Scepticism and Epistemic Vertigo

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“An admission of some question as to the mystery of existence, or the being, of the world is a serious bond between the teaching of Wittgenstein and that of Heidegger. The bond is one, in particular, which implies a shared view of what I have called the truth of skepticism, or what I might call the moral of skepticism, namely, that the human creature’s basis in the world as a whole, its relation to the world as such, is not that of knowing, anyway not what we think of as knowing.”

Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, 241

Abstract

We offer an overview of what we take to be the main themes in Annalisa Coliva’s book, Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense. In particular, we focus on the ‘framework reading’ that she offers of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and its anti-sceptical implications. While broadly agreeing with the proposal that Coliva puts forward on this score, we do suggest one important supplementation to the view—viz., that this way of dealing with radical scepticism needs to be augmented with an account of the meta-sceptical problem which this proposal generates, which we call epistemic vertigo.

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Notes

  1. Published as Wittgenstein (1969).

  2. See Moore (1925, 1939), respectively.

  3. Here is a key passage:

    “[…] the questions that we raise and our doubts depend upon the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn.

    That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.

    But it isn’t that the situation is like this: We just can’t investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.” (OC, §§341–3)

  4. See especially Pritchard (2011a, b, forthcoming).

  5. See Stroud’s (1984) towering work on philosophical scepticism for a penetrating account of the idea that radical scepticism presents us with a paradox. For further discussion of the idea that we should not conceive of the radical sceptic as an adversary, see Wright (1991).

  6. Pyrrhonian scepticism was, of course, a ‘lived’ scepticism (indeed, insofar as it could be called a ‘proposal’, it was an ethical proposal). But this feature of the view is notoriously problematic. In a nutshell, the worry is that one can make sense of Pyrrhonian scepticism as a ‘lived’ proposal only insofar as we suppose that the doubt in play is mitigated, and certainly falling short of a widespread Cartesian doubt. For a helpful recent discussion of this point, see Ribeiro (2002).

  7. For further discussion of this distinction, see Pritchard (2012, pt. 3).

  8. As Cavell (1979) famously recognized—hence the quotation that heads this article. Interestingly, even Wright, who offers an ‘epistemic’ treatment of hinge propositions, regards his anti-sceptical proposal as a ‘sceptical’ solution to the problem. See Wright (2004, 206).

  9. See, for example, Pritchard (2005a: ch. 9, b, forthcoming).

  10. Some of the ideas in this paper were explored in a talk (by DHP) to the Edinburgh Epistemology Research Group in 2012, and we are grateful to the audience on this occasion. We are also grateful to two anonymous referees from Philosophia for feedback on an earlier version of this paper. Special thanks go to Annalisa Coliva.

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Boult, C., Pritchard, D. Wittgensteinian Anti-Scepticism and Epistemic Vertigo. Philosophia 41, 27–35 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-012-9401-6

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