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Leaps in the Dark: Epistemological Skepticism in Kripke's Wittgenstein

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Leaps in the Dark: Epistemological Skepticism in Kripke's Wittgenstein From G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford (eds.), Skepticism: historical and contemporary inquiries (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018) First published 2018 Contents by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford; individual chapters, the contributors The right of G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Notes on contributors vii All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, Acknowledgments XI or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Introduction 1 Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks G. ANTHO:--.:Y BRUNO AND A.C. RUTHERFORD or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data PART! A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Forms of skepticism 5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bruno, G. Anthony, editor. Title: Skepticism: historical and contemporary inquiries/ 1 Homeric contributions to skepticism 7 edited by G. Anthony Bruno and A.C. Rutherford. Description: 1 [edition]. I New York: Routledge, 2017. I MICHAEL N. FORSTER Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017027605 Subjects: LCSH: Skepticism. 2 Hurne and the sceptical malady 25 Classification, LCC B837 .S2744 2017 I DDC 149/.73-dc23 DONALD C. AINSLIE LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017027605 JSBN, 978-1-138-28522-4 (hbk) 3 Skepticism and intellectual freedom: A post-Kantian perspective 42 JSBN, 978-1-315-26851-4 (ebk) BRADY BOWMAN Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra PART II Skepticism and certainty 59 4 Facts and certainty 61 CRISP!:": WRIGHT 5 Facts and certainty: A Retrospect 100 CRISPIN WRIGHT 6 Pyrrhonian scepticism and the agnostic state of mind 114 CASEY PERI'.\/ ,.,,,,,,,_,,.,,, ,.,,,,. ____________________________________ _ vi Contents PART III Skepticism and knowledge 129 Notes on contributors 7 Skeptical arguments in the later Middle Ages 131 MARTIN PICKAVE 8 Leaps in the dark: Epistemological skepticism in Kripke's Wittgenstein 149 HANNAH GINSBORG 9 Empirical knowledge as contradiction 167 SEBASTIAN R◊DL Donald C. Ainslie is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Hume's True Scepticism (2015) and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hume's Treatise (with Annemarie PART IV Butler, 2014). He has published articles on Hume and biomedical etb­ Skepticism and transcendental method 183 ics in Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Health Care Analysis, Hume Studies,Journal of the History 10 Kant on self-conscious knowledge and the idea of a capacity of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Social for judgment 185 Philosophy and Policy. ANDREA KERN Brady Bowman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of two monographs, Hegel's Meta­ 11 Skepticism, deduction, and reason's maturation 203 physics of Absolute Negativity (2013) and Sinnliche Gewi(sheit: Zur G. ANTHONY BRUNO systematischen Vorgeschichte eines Problems des deutschen Idealismus (2003 ), and has published articles on classical German philosophy in PARTY Hegel-Studien, the Journal for the History of Philosophy, the Owl of Minerva, and other journals. Anti-Skeptical strategies 221 G. Anthony Bruno is Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University 12 Unnatural doubts 223 of London, prior to which he was a SSH RC Postdoctoral Research Fellow DUNCAN PRITCHARD at McGill University, a Faculty Lecturer at the University of Toronto Scar­ borough, and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Bonn. He has published articles on Kant, German ide­ 13 Overcoming locality skepticism by abandoning the world 248 alism, and phenomenology in Analecta Hermeneutica, The Bloomsbury MARKUS GABRIEL Companion to Fichte, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Conti­ nental Realism and its Discontents, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Index 265 Review, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Idealistic Studies, Northern European Journal of Philosophy, PhaenEx: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, Rethinking Kant Volume 4, and The Significance of Indeterminacy: Perspectives from Asian and Conti­ nental Philosophy. Michael N. Forster is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Uni­ versity of Bonn. He is the author of German Philosophy of Language from Schlegel to Hegel and Beyond (2011), After Herder (2010), Kant 148 Martin Pickave Nicholas of Autrecourt. His Correspondence with Master Giles and Bernard of Arezzo. A Critical Edition from the Two Parisian Manuscripts with an Intro• 8 Leaps in the dark duction, English Translation, Explanatory Notes and Indexes by L.M. de Rijk. Leiden: Brill, 199 7. Pasnau, Robert. Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Epistemological skepticism in Cambridge University Press, 1997. Kripke's Wittgenstein ---, ed. The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, uol. III: Mind and Knowledge. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2002. ---. "Cognition." In The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, edited by Hannah Ginsborg T. Williams, 285-331. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Perler, Dominik. Zweifel und Gewissheit: Skeptische Debatten im Mittelalter. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2006. Pickave, Martin. "Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus on Skepticism and the Possibility of Naturally Acquired Knowledge." In Rethinking the History of I. Introduction Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Backgro1md, edited by H. Lagerlund, 61-96. Leiden: Brill, 2010. In his famous discussion of Wittgenstein on rules and private language, Pini, Giorgio. "Ex Defectu Intellectualis Luminis: Giles of Rome on the Role and Kripke describes Wittgenstein as having "invented[ ...} the most radical and Limits of Metaphysics." Quaestio 5 (2005): 527-541. original skeptical problem that philosophy has seen to date" (60).1 He pre­ -~~. "Scotus on Doing Metaphysics in statu isto." In John Duns Scotus, Phi• sents the problem by imagining a skeptic who challenges an interlocutor's losopher. Proceedings of 'The Quadruple Congress' on John Duns Scotus. Part certainty both about the correctness of her present use of an expression 1, edited by M.B. Ingham and 0. Bychkov, 29-55. Munster: Aschendorff, 2010. and about what she meant by the expression in the past. The problem as Porro, Pasquale. "Il Sextus Latinus e l'immagine dello scetticismo antico nel medi­ first introduced appears on the face of it to be an epistemological problem oevo." Elenchos 15 (1994): 229-253. Richard Middleton. Questions Disputees. Vol. VI: 38-45 L'homme, edited by A. on the model of skepticism about the external world or about other minds. Boureau. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2014. What is called into question is our knowledge of the meanings of our ex­ Schmitt, Charles B. Cicero Scepticus. A Study of the Influence of the Academica in pressions and of how we ought to use them. But Kripke goes on to draw a the Renaissance. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972. conclusion that is metaphysical rather than epistemological. 2 The upshot of ---. "The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times." In The Skepti­ the skeptical argument is not just that we don't know what we mean by our cal Tradition, edited by M. Burnyeat, 225-251. Berkeley: University of California expressions, but that there is no such thing as meaning. Press, 1983. Many commentators have held that Kripke's skeptical problem is exclu­ Scully, John P.E. Reality and Truth in Thomas of York. PhD dissertation: Univer­ sively, or at least fundamentally, metaphysical or constitutive. Kripke, it is sity of Toronto, 1960. thought, presents this problem in the guise of an epistemological problem, Spruit, Joke. Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge, vol. 1. Leiden: or using the language of epistemological skepticism, but the weight of it Brill, 1994. rests on the metaphysical question of what constitutes the fact of someone's Vier, Peter C. Euidence and its Function Acwrding to John Duns Scotus. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 19 51. meaning something by an expression, or of the expression having a mean­ Wittwer, Roland. "Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism in the Middle Ages.'' ing. Some commentators take epistemological considerations to figure as Vivarium 54 (2016): 255-285. constraints on answers to the metaphysical question, but, at least on one in­ fluential line of interpretation, epistemological considerations play no role in the skeptical argument at all. And even where it is thought that epistemo­ logical considerations do play a role, the basic thrust of the argument is still understood as metaphysical or constitutive: the skeptic who casts doubt on your knowledge of meaning is seen as a dispensable and potentially mis­ leading device for questioning the
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