Wittgensteinian Anti-Scepticism and Epistemic Vertigo

status: publishe

What anti-realism about hinges could possibly be?

The paper addresses the issue of what epistemic anti-realism could possibly be, in the context of “hinge epistemology.” According to this new epistemological trend, justification depends on evidence together with general background assumptions—for example, that there is an external world, that our sense organs are mostly reliable, that we are not the victims of persistent and lucid dreams what has regularly happened in the past will happen in the future, that people are generally reliable informants, and so on. The paper then addresses two issues. First, whether these assumptions are arbitrary, as relativists would claim. Second, how we should conceive of their metaphysical status. It responds negatively to the first question and puts forward an anti-realist conception of hinges to respond to the latter. Central to the proposal is that the kind of truth that can be predicated of hinges is of a minimalist kind. The paper also explores the compatibility of minimalism about hinges' truth and alethic pluralism

Precis of epistemic angst:Book Symposium: Duncan Pritchard, Epistemic Angst (Princeton University Press, 2015, xiii + 236 pages)

ABSTRACT This book symposium features three critical pieces dealing with Duncan Pritchard's book, 'Epistemic Angst'; the symposium also contains Pritchard's replies to his critics

On Coliva's Judgmental Hinges

Annalisa Coliva's Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense does On Certainty, and Wittgenstein generally, a great service: it is the first in-depth study of Moore and Wittgenstein that places On Certainty within current epistemology. By this I mean, that it discusses its content, reception and repercussions in the technical terms of current epistemology and in the midst of current epistemologists. But it also manages to do this without losing the non-specialist reader to the often bewildering jargon of epistemology, and without viewing hinge certainty as an epistemic certainty. There is much that I agree with in Coliva’s reading of On Certainty, but her view of hinges as both judgments and norms seems to me to go against the spirit and the letter of On Certainty. In what follows, I will be mainly concerned with that view, but will conclude by adding a few words on Coliva's rejection of foundationalism in On Certainty. [opening paragraph]Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio

Wittgenstein's later philosophy

The entry lists and comments major bibliographical references on Wittgenstein's later philosoph

Realism, but not empiricism : Wittgenstein versus Searle

On Wittgenstein's view, in being concerned with conceptual elucidation, philosophy is inextricably concerned with our life, though not empirically concerned. Empiricism is, for philosophy, off-limits. It is not to be ignored, but nor is it to be used. The first part of this paper shows how Wittgenstein's conceptual elucidation is concerned with life, and is therefore a realism, but without empiricism. In the second part, Wittgenstein's realism is contrasted with a kind of realism that is an empiricism: Searle's biological naturalism, where conceptual description gives way to naturalistic explanation. Though there is much in Searle's philosophy that is close to Wittgenstein – his descriptions of the visible aspects of our human form of life; of the relationship between language and action; of the Background as underpinning linguistic meaning in particular and all intentionality in general, and indeed of language as partly constitutive of institutional reality – the affinity ceases where Searle seeks to make the visible 'bottom out' in brute facts. Yet here again, were those brute facts something like the 'very general facts of nature' that Wittgenstein sees as conditioning our concepts, there would be harmony. But Searle's brute facts are not of that general type; they are of the order of molecules and neurons. And to make language, action and institutions bottom out in those is where Searle and Wittgenstein radically differ.Non peer reviewe