Wittgensteinian Anti-Scepticism and Epistemic Vertigo

status: publishe

Drawing Boundaries

In “On Drawing Lines on a Map” (1995), I suggested that the different ways we have of drawing lines on maps open up a new perspective on ontology, resting on a distinction between two sorts of boundaries: fiat and bona fide. “Fiat” means, roughly: human-demarcation-induced. “Bona fide” means, again roughly: a boundary constituted by some real physical discontinuity. I presented a general typology of boundaries based on this opposition and showed how it generates a corresponding typology of the different sorts of objects which boundaries determine or demarcate. In this paper, I describe how the theory of fiat boundaries has evolved since 1995, how it has been applied in areas such as property law and political geography, and how it is being used in contemporary work in formal and applied ontology, especially within the framework of Basic Formal Ontology

Embodying culture: Body pedagogics, situated encounters and empirical research

Contemporary research into the field of body pedagogics has produced a growing number of studies concerned with the embodied character of cultural transmission, experience, reproduction and change. This paper advances this sociological development by reinterpreting recent writings on situated epistemic relations (SER) and practical epistemological analysis (PEA) as complementary, methodological, techniques that can enhance these investigations. After outlining existing explorations into the body pedagogics of occupational, sporting, religious, educational and other cultures, I demonstrate how the interlinked approaches to learning made possible by systematising SER and PEA can be developed into a new approach that increases the effectiveness with which the theoretical and empirical concerns of studies into embodied acculturation are harnessed

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