The Elusive Third Way: the Pyrrhonian Illumination In
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The Elusive Third Way: The Pyrrhonian Illumination In Wittgenstein’s On Certainty Roger Eichorn University of Chicago [email protected] Draft: January 3, 2012 ABSTRACT: In this paper, I argue that, as with the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, Wittgenstein’s response to skepticism in On Certainty involves the attempt to free us from philosophy itself and is therefore not a philosophical position, strictly speaking, but is best understood as a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that we simultaneously come to recognize (a) the pragmatic-transcendental ‘self-standingness’ of the everyday, and (b) its philosophico–epistemic groundlessness. The result of this ‘illumination’ of the everyday is therapeutic in the sense that it is intended to transform our meta-doxastic attitude by purifying it of dogmatism. KEYWORDS: Wittgenstein; skepticism; Pyrrhonism; Sextus Empiricus; ancient skepticism “The Elusive Third Way” / 2 The difficulty of philosophy not the intellectual difficulty of the sciences, but the difficulty of a change of attitude... Work on philosophy is... actually more of a kind of work on oneself. On one’s own conception. On how one sees things. (And what one demands of them.) – Wittgenstein, “Philosophy” (§86 of The Big Typescript) 1. Introduction Commentators on Wittgenstein all agree that he had something to say about philosophical skepticism. Beyond that, one finds in the literature precious little—if any—common ground regarding Wittgenstein’s attitude toward, or the nature of his response to, skeptical threats to knowledge. In the collection of notes that his literary executors published under the title On Certainty (henceforth: OC), it is clear that Wittgenstein is concerned, at least as a jumping-off point, to address G.E. Moore’s responses to skepticism and idealism in “A Defence of Common Sense”1 and the later “Proof of an External World.”2 Most commentators regard Wittgenstein as hostile to Moore, yet some take him to be largely sympathetic to Moore’s anti-skeptical strategy.3 Even if we grant that Wittgenstein rejects, in some strong sense, Moore’s response to skepticism and idealism, the literature abounds with differing accounts of just what charge Wittgenstein wants to lay at Moore’s feet.4 It isn’t even agreed that Wittgenstein ultimately wants (or that he has the conceptual resources) to confute the philosophical skeptic’s claims.5 In 1 Moore 1925. 2 Moore 1939. 3 Cf., Morawetz 2007, 186: “Wittgenstein is fundamentally in sympathy, as I read him, with Moore’s critique of scepticism.” Anthony Rudd claims, echoing Kripke (Kripke 1982, 63), that “Wittgenstein is often still regarded as a robust ‘common sense realist,’ an implacable opponent of idealism and scepticism—essentially just a subtler version of G. E. Moore” (Rudd 2003, 73). 4 Cf., de Pierris 1996, 188; Conant 1998, 230; Wright 2004, 41; Moyal-Sharrock 2005, 165; Proessel 2005, 345; Stroll 2007, 36; Morawetz 2007, 185; Coliva 2010, 59–60; Pritchard (forthcoming), 3. 5 Cf., Wright 2004, 27; Pritchard 2007, 208; Rudd 2003, 89; Stone 2000, 96–9. “The Elusive Third Way” / 3 other words, although everyone agrees that Wittgenstein had something to say about skepticism, it isn’t clear even whether he opposed skepticism or propounded a form of it himself. According to a common interpretive line, the later Wittgenstein responds to skepticism by (a) rejecting some assumption or set of assumptions shared by both the skeptic and the (traditional) anti-skeptic, and subsequently (b) advocating a third option, one that forges (or at least attempts to forge) a new path through the problem. One encounters ‘third way’ interpretations with such frequency because it’s clearly—or so it seems to me—the right sort of account.6 I don’t think, however, that the details of the account have been satisfactorily worked out. In what follows, I argue that the nature of Wittgenstein’s ‘third way’ comes into sharper focus when seen in relation to the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus; likewise, important aspects of Pyrrhonism become clearer, at least to contemporary philosophical eyes, when seen in relation to Wittgenstein’s work. In the opening sections of Outlines of Pyrrhonism (henceforth: PH), Sextus presents a taxonomy of philosophers according to which they fall, with respect to any given investigation, into one of three categories: dogmatists, who claim to have discovered the truth; skeptics, who claim that the truth cannot be discovered; and Pyrrhonians, who suspend judgment.7 Generalizing, we can say that a dogmatist will typically claim to know many (perhaps all) truths, skeptics will typically claim that many (perhaps all) truths are inapprehensible, and Pyrrhonians 6 Cf., Philosophical Investigations (henceforth: PI) §352. 7 For ease of exposition, I have modified Sextus’s taxonomy in two important ways. First, the opening sections of PH refer not to dogmatists, skeptics, and Pyrrhonians, but to dogmatists, Academics, and skeptics. By ‘Academics,’ Sextus is referring to the skeptics of Plato’s Academy, the original school of ancient skepticism. The Academics, Sextus says (fairly or not), “have asserted that things cannot be apprehended” (PH §1.3; cf., PH §§1.220–35). The Academics, then, are (at least as Sextus presents them) akin to what modern philosophers think of when they think of ‘skeptics.’ For that reason, I have decided to refer to such ‘negative dogmatists’ as ‘skeptics,’ and to distinguish them from Pyrrhonians, who are not only not skeptics so understood but are opposed to such forms of skepticism. Second, Sextus does not initially distinguish Pyrrhonians from dogmatists and skeptics by saying that the former suspend judgment, but rather by saying that they “are still investigating” (PH §1.4). But (a) Pyrrhonians continue the investigation, if they do, because they suspend judgment, i.e., because for them the question remains open, and therefore (b) their suspension of judgment on the conclusions of philosophical arguments is what sets Pyrrhonians apart from dogmatists and skeptics in Sextus’s taxonomy. “The Elusive Third Way” / 4 will suspend judgment on a broad (perhaps maximally broad) range of philosophical claims and arguments. Both the dogmatist and the skeptic are in the business of promoting acceptance of the conclusions of philosophical arguments. They are mirror images of each other: the skeptic is simply a negative dogmatist. Pyrrhonians, on the other hand, are in the business of promoting suspension of judgment (epochē) regarding the conclusions of philosophical arguments (cf., PH §§3.280–1). The skeptic’s attitude toward skeptical arguments is one of acceptance. The dogmatist, on the other hand, will generally want to refute the skeptic’s arguments by marshalling other philosophical arguments. Unlike both dogmatist and skeptic, however, the Pyrrhonian will, when faced with a skeptical argument, neither accept its conclusion nor claim that the argument can be or has been refuted. In this way, Sextus signals at the outset of PH that Pyrrhonism represents a third way with skepticism (and with philosophy more generally). We’ve already seen that some commentators read the later Wittgenstein as belonging, with Moore, among (traditional) dogmatists. We’ve also seen that others think—or worry that— he belongs instead among (traditional) skeptics.8 As for ‘third way’ interpretations, they come in three basic forms: those that see Wittgenstein as advocating a revised dogmatism; those that see Wittgenstein as advocating a revised skepticism; and those that see Wittgenstein as wanting to reject the framework in which it makes sense to talk in terms of either dogmatism or skepticism (however revised). We’ll look at examples of each in §2. For now, I want to point out that those who advance the third type of ‘third way’ reading have struggled to articulate a principled means of responding to skepticism while also breaking free from the traditional philosophico- conceptual framework in which skepticism has its natural home.9 Call this the principled- 8 Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s ‘skeptical paradox’ in Kripke 1982, coupled with widespread dissatisfication with Kripke’s proposed ‘skeptical solution,’ has been especially influential in generating concerns that Wittgenstein falls prey to skepticism. 9 An example should make the outlines of the problem clear. In Mind and World, John McDowell claims to have “The Elusive Third Way” / 5 rejection problem.10 It is my contention that, by viewing Wittgenstein’s ‘third way’ in light of what I take to be Pyrrhonism’s third way, a new and compelling interpretive avenue opens up, one that solves the principled-rejection problem. According to the reading advocated here, Wittgenstein’s response to skepticism is predicated on freeing us from philosophy’s epistemic constraints and so is not strictly speaking a philosophical position at all, but is rather a therapeutic metaphilosophy designed to bring into view—to ‘illuminate’—the relationship between our everyday epistemic practices and those of philosophy such that (a) we come to recognize common life as constituting a self-standing pragmatic-transcendental framework in which we live and move and have our being, while simultaneously (b) coming to recognize the rational groundlessness of that framework, i.e., the fact that it seems to lack the sort of objective or absolute justification (i) that we are naturally inclined to think it must possess, even if we’ve never attempted to secure it, and (ii) that alone is capable of underwriting a dogmatic discovered, with his conception of ‘experience’ as an ‘openness’ to a richly conceptual ‘world,’ a way for us to “achieve an intellectual right to shrug our shoulders at skeptical questions” (McDowell 1994, 143). It is far from clear, however, that he succeeds at dislodging skepticism. As he admits, “[i]t is true that we could not establish that we are open to facts in any given case.