page 4 of Wittgenstein on Scepticism and Certainty

suggests that the existence of a public realm of referents is a condition of the existence of language, and hence of sceptical doubt itself being articulated. And this goes precisely in the direction he sought.

VI

Apart from the vitiation of Wittgenstein's thesis threatened by OC2, there are other difficulties in OC, of which I here mention one: his conflation of scepticism with idealism. It is not fatal to the OC1-based account of knowledge, but that account needs to be shrived of it.

Wittgenstein identifies scepticism with idealism in 19, 24 and 37 (WR247). In 37, moreover, he shows that he takes realism to be the thesis opposed to idealism. This is an error which many besides Wittgenstein make. Realism and idealism are not opposed theses; they are not competitors for the same territory, for realism is an epistemological thesis and idealism a metaphysical one. There is no entailment from the truth of either to the negation of the other. Moreover, the chief varieties of idealism are intended to show that, in an associated epistemological sphere, scepticism gets no grip. Consider Berkeley; it was the avowed aim of his construction of an anti-realist epistemology and (what is a different and further matter) idealist metaphysics, to refute scepticism.

Idealisms form a various family of theses about the nature of reality, but it is safe to say that their characteristic common thesis is the metaphysical one that the universe is mental. Their chief historical opponent is materialism, the metaphysical thesis that the universe is material, that is, ultimately consists of 'material substance', a view that should not be confused with physicalism, which claims that the universe consists of what can be described by physics. (What can be described by physics is not only not coterminous with matter, but might well entail that there is no such thing as matter.)

Idealism is not the same thing as anti-realism. This latter is an epistemological thesis which denies that the relations between thought and its objects, perception and its targets, experience and the realms over which it ranges (these are different, though related, relations) are external or contingent relations. There are realistic forms of idealism (see, for example, Sprigge ), and there is no reason in principle why there should not be anti-realistic forms of materialism or–even more plausibly–physicalism. I take it that quantum theory under the Copenhagen interpretation is an anti-realist physicalism.

The claim that the relations between thought and its objects (etc.) is internal is far from the claim that all objects of thought are causally dependent upon thought (or, more generally, experience, or sentience) for their existence. Certain forms of idealism (for example, Berkeley's) put matters this way, and doubtless this is why some confuse idealism with anti-realism. Rather, anti-realism is at most the claim–until more is said; as to which, there can be much variety–that no complete description of either relatum can leave out mention of the other.

It is important to be clear about what this means. Realism is the view that the relation between thought and its objects is contingent or external, in the sense that description of neither relatum essentially involves reference to the other. This is the force of saying that realism asserts the independence of things from any mental or perceptual acts that might intend them. Call this the 'independence thesis'. Anti-realists argue that this thesis is incoherent. A simple way of showing why is afforded by the idiom of relations already adopted. A little reflection shows that the independence thesis, understood as the claim that the relations between thought and its objects are external, is a mistake at least for the direction object-to-thought, for any account of the content of thoughts about things, and in particular the individuation of thoughts about things, essentially involves reference to the things thought about–this is given by the least that can be said in favour of notions of 'broad content'. So realism offers us a peculiarly hybrid relation: external in the direction thought-to-things, internal in the direction things-to-thought. It is an easy step for the anti-realist to show that thought about (perception of, theories of) things is always and inescapably present in, and therefore conditions, any full account of the things thought about. The poorly-worded 'Tree Argument' in Berkeley, aimed at showing that one cannot conceive of an unconceived thing, is aimed at making just that elementary point. The best statement of such a view is afforded by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory alluded to, in which descriptions of quantum phenomena are taken essentially to involve reference to observers and conditions of observation. Such a view does not constitute a claim that the phenomena are caused by observations of them. No more does anti-realism claim this. However, a moment's thought shows that if this claim–that the relations between thought and things is internal–is correct, then one needs to think again about truth, objectivity, the modalities and knowledge.

One often sees an opposition posed between realism and idealism, as if the labels marked competitors for the same terrain. As the foregoing shows, this is a surprisingly common, simple, but serious mistake.

Wittgenstein makes this mistake. But he also makes the mistake, or seems to, of confusing idealism and scepticism. This mistake stems from the crude view that idealism consists in the denial of the existence of the external world, and that this is what scepticism denies too. But as we see, idealism is the metaphysical claim that the world is ultimately mental in some sense, and scepticism is an epistemological challenge to us to justify our beliefs and our methods of acquiring them. In view of this one is sometimes puzzled as to what exactly Wittgenstein takes scepticism to be. It has already been noted that he confuses the 'grammatical' and the contingent as targets of sceptical attack; here he seems to imply that a sceptic claims something (viz. that the world is ideal). But it is obvious that scepticism had better not be an agniology. The scepticism that consists in challenges to justify our beliefs and epistemic practices, rather than claims that (weakly) we lack or (more strongly) cannot have knowledge in some domain, is the scepticism most worth addressing.

Strip away all but OC1 as characterised in section I above, and it can be seen as addressing scepticism thus conceived. So protection of the central insight of OC is possible: it requires no more than selective pressure on the 'delete' key.

VII

OC is uncharacteristic of Wittgenstein in at least one striking way: that it is straightforward workaday philosophy of just the kind he earlier thought his views demonstrated to be fly-in-the-bottle. Perhaps this is evidence of a third turn; had Wittgenstein lived we might have seen him engaging even more with the problems of the philosophical tradition, thus tracing a journey from, first, thinking he had solved all its problems, to, secondly, articulating a different vision of how we misunderstand the workings of our language and thereby generate spurious problems, to, thirdly and finally, seeing that philosophical problems are real ones after all, amenable to investigation–and solution.

Wittgenstein makes a contribution to solving the central problem in epistemology in OC. His contribution is to insist on the internal connection between the concepts of knowing and doubting. This is useful to the work of showing that epistemic justification is provided by the conceptual scheme within which it alone gets content. The provisional character of OC leaves much hanging: OC2, the grammar-contingency matter, and the unworked conception of scepticism are examples. One of the most serious of the matters left hanging was recognised by Wittgenstein himself as such: the vague and generalised appeal to practice and a 'form of life' as the basis of the scheme, carried over from PI: 'Now I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life. (That is very badly expressed and probably badly thought as well)' (358). (Read this remark with e.g. 94, 105 and 162 [WR252] open before one.) But even as a provisional and sketchy view OC offers convincing support for a set of possibilities–admittedly, familiar ones–debated elsewhere in the epistemological tradition, namely, the framework-invoking or 'conceptual scheme'-invoking refutation of scepticism .

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