Exploring Certainty: Wittgenstein and Wide Fields of Thought considers how, where, and to what extent the thoughts and ideas found in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty can be applied to other areas of thought, including: ethics, aesthetics, religious belief, mathematics, cognitive science, and political theory. Robert Greenleaf Brice opens new avenues of thought for scholars and students of the Wittgensteinian tradition, while introducing original philosophies about human knowledge and cognition.

When is it permissible to rely on a proposition in practical reasoning? Standard answers to this question face serious challenges. This paper uses these challenges to motivate a certainty norm of practical reasoning. This norm holds that one is permitted to rely on p in practical reasoning if and only if p is epistemically certain. After developing and defending this norm, I consider its broader implications. Taking a certainty norm seriously calls into question traditional assumptions about the importance (...) of belief and knowledge. In particular, it raises the possibility that many epistemological jobs that are usually assigned to belief and knowledge should be reallocated to two related but importantly different states: psychological and epistemic certainty. (shrink)

Michael G. Titelbaum presents a new Bayesian framework for modeling rational degrees of belief—the first of its kind to represent rational requirements on agents who undergo certainty loss.

Certainty The following article provides an overview of the philosophical debate surrounding certainty. It does so in light of distinctions that can be drawn between objective, psychological, and epistemic certainty. Certainty consists of a valuable cognitive standing, which is often seen as an ideal. It is indeed natural to evaluate lesser cognitive standings, in particular … Continue reading Certainty →.

Reading Certainty offers incisive historical analysis of the foundational questions of the Christian tradition: how are we to read scripture, and how can we know we are saved? This collection of essays honors the work and thought Susan E. Schreiner by exploring the import of these questions across a wide range of time periods. With contributions from renowned scholars and from Schreiner's students from her more than three decades of teaching, each of the contributions highlights the nexus of (...) class='Hi'>certainty, perception, authority, and exegesis that has defined her scholarly work. Intellectual historians, early modernists, and scholars of Christianity will all appreciate this testament to Schreiner's influence. Contributors include: Vincent Evener, Bruce Gordon, Ralph Keen, Mark Lambert, Kevin J. Madigan, Richard A. Muller, Willemien Otten, Daniel Owings, Elizabeth Palmer, Karen Park, Barbara Pitkin, Ronald K. Rittgers, William Schweiker, Jonathan Strom, and Matthew Vanderpoel. (shrink)

This volume combines philosophy, the social theory of knowledge, and historical analysis to present a comprehensive study of the idea of certainty as defined in the Western and Chinese intellectual traditions. Philosophical ideas such as certainty are the products of deeply layered socio-historical constructions. The author shows how the highly abstract idea of certainty in philosophical discourse is connected to the concrete social process from which the meaning of certainty is derived. Three different versions of (...) class='Hi'>certainty--in modern Western thought, in German Idealism, and in traditional Chinese philosophy--are examined in the context of a historical-comparative study of Western and Chinese social processes. Three versions of the idea of certainty are represented by the three distinct philosophical discourse and societies explored in this book. However, the pursuit of certainty transcends culture as a fundamental aspect of philosophical thought. This in-depth study shows how the social genesis and function in philosophy of the specific meaning of certainty has been delineated through a process of complex idealogical negotiation by dominant social groups--the bourgeoisie in modern Western Europe, the nobility and state bureaucrats in 18th- and 19th-century Germany, and the landed gentry in traditional China. The author concludes by suggesting new avenues for study inspired by his research. (shrink)

When we engage in practical deliberation, we sometimes engage in careful probabilistic reasoning. At other times, we simply make flat out assumptions about how the world is or will be. A question thus arises: when, if ever, is it rationally permissible to engage in the latter, less sophisticated kind of practical deliberation? Recently, a number of authors have argued that the answer concerns whether one knows that p. Others have argued that the answer concerns whether one is justified in believing (...) that one knows that p. Against both of these, this paper argues that the answer concerns whether p is ‘practically certain’—that is, whether the actual epistemic probability that p differs from epistemic certainty that p only in ways that are irrelevant to the decision one currently faces. (shrink)

Delusions are unhinged hinge certainties. Delusions are defined as strongly anchored beliefs that do not change in the face of adverse evidence. The same goes for Wittgensteinian certainties. My paper refines the so-called framework views of delusion, presenting an argument that epistemically speaking, considering them to be certainties best accounts for delusions’ doxastic profile. Until now there has been little argument in favour of this position and the original proposals made too extreme predictions about the belief systems of delusional patients. (...) I show that my account fares better with the diverse objections that have been raised against older framework views of delusion (Campbell 2001, Gipps and Rhodes 2008). Finally, I examine what makes a harmless hinge into a pathological delusion. (shrink)

Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? Answers to these questions are offered through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Researchers have debated whether knowledge or certainty is a better candidate for the norm of assertion. Should you make an assertion only if you know it's true? Or should you make an assertion only if you're certain it's true? If either knowledge or certainty is a better candidate, then this will likely have detectable behavioral consequences. I report an experiment that tests for relevant behavioral consequences. The results support the view that assertability is more closely linked to knowledge (...) than to certainty. In multiple scenarios, people were much more willing to allow assertability and certainty to come apart than to allow assertability and knowledge to come apart. (shrink)

After Certainty offers a reconstruction of the history of epistemology, understood as a series of changing expectations about the cognitive ideal that we might hope to achieve in this world. Pasnau ranges widely over philosophy from Aristotle to the 17th century, and examines in some detail the rise of science as an autonomous discipline.

In this paper, we identify and explain three kinds of bedrock in moral thought. The term "bedrock," as introduced by Wittgenstein in §217 of the Philosophical Investigations, stands for the end of a chain of reasoning. We affirm that some chains of moral reasoning do indeed end with certainty. However, different kinds of certainties in morality work in different ways. In the course of systematizing the different types of certainties, we argue that present accounts of certainties in morality do (...) not reflect their diversity. Our analysis yields three types of moral certainty: QUASI-UNDOUBTABLE CERTAIN PROPOSITIONS, CERTAIN PROPOSITIONS, and TRANSCENDENTAL CERTAINTIES. We show that the first two types can, at least to some extent, be intelligibly doubted. Therefore, they do not possess the characteristics that would classify them as bedrock in the strictest sense. TRANSCENDENTAL CERTAINTIES cannot likewise be doubted because they are rules that enable moral thinking. Thus, deviating from them is unintelligible. We shall argue that all three types reflect ways in which moral language games come to an end, while only one, TRANSCENDENTAL CERTAINTIES, displays the characteristic of being solid bedrock. (shrink)

Now in paperback, Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking philosophy of human uncertainty. In Negative Certainties, renowned philosopher Jean-Luc Marion challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions we have developed about knowledge: that it is categorical, predicative, and positive. Following Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, he looks toward our finitude and the limits of our reason. He asks an astonishingly simple—but profoundly provocative—question in order to open up an entirely new way of thinking about knowledge: Isn’t our uncertainty, our finitude, and rational limitations, one (...) of the few things we can be certain about? Marion shows how the assumption of knowledge as positive demands a reductive epistemology that disregards immeasurable or disorderly phenomena. He shows that we have experiences every day that have no identifiable causes or predictable reasons and that these constitute a very real knowledge—a knowledge of the limits of what can be known. Establishing this “negative certainty,” Marion applies it to four aporias, or issues of certain uncertainty: the definition of man; the nature of God; the unconditionality of the gift; and the unpredictability of events. Translated for the first time into English, Negative Certainties is an invigorating work of epistemological inquiry that will take a central place in Marion’s oeuvre. (shrink)

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

I consider the relationship between the notion of certainty and the notion of a form of life. There are circumstances under which a feeling of certainty may become the ground for adopting a certain form of life. The forms of life I have in mind are those with a formal orientation towards the realization of the (morally) good for its own sake. The article proceeds in three steps: First I consider Luther’s certainty of salvation as a kind (...) of inaugural (theological) reflection on what will be called immediate certainty as the basis for a form of life aiming at the realization of the morally good for its own sake. With reference to Kierkegaard’s “Either-Or” I then try to show that such an immediate certainty can also be considered as the ground of an ethical form of life without religious implications. With the help of contemporary cognitive psychology I will finally propose an explanation of such a certainty as one that we experience because of our universal cognitive and conative constitution. The three steps amount to a universalization and naturalization of Luther’s certainty of salvation. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to formulate a proposal for the conceptual analysis of the notion of predictability of law, in order to make clear its theoretical and practical implications. To achieve this goal, I will explain the theoretical (what conceptual implications it has) and practical (what decisions it requires us to make) commitments that this conceptualization requires. Specifically, I analyze the commitments to the types of receivers of predictions and issuers of predictions; then I identify what kinds of (...) relationship can be assumed between the predictability of law and its effectiveness; next I indicate what the use of predictions as a means of assessing the degree of satisfaction of legal certainty commits us. Finally I indicate what commitments must be made in adopting a methodology for making predictions. (shrink)

To what extent can we doubt certainties? How are certainties expressed in words? Which language games convey certainty? To answer these questions we have to recall the method Wittgenstein used in his investigations. When we look at language games and forms of life as inseparable phenomena, do forms of life then provide any certainty? On the other hand, do we automatically relapse into relativism once we doubt certainties? Which formal structures underlie certainty and doubt? The book is (...) intended to answer these questions. (shrink)

After describing Wittgenstein's notion of ‘certainty’, in this article I provide four arguments to demonstrate that no certainty can be acquired at will. Specifically, I argue that, in order to assimilate a certainty, it is irrelevant whether the individual concerned has found a ground that seemingly justifies that certainty; has a given mental state; is willing to accept the certainty on the proposal of a persuader; or tries to act according to the certainty involved. (...) Lastly, I analyse how each of these arguments is reflected in the way children acquire certainties. (shrink)

Most philosophers, including all materialists I know of, believe that I am a complex thing?a thing with parts?and that my mental life is (or is a result of) the interaction of these parts. These philosophers often believe that I am a body or a brain, and my mental life is (or is a product of) brain activity. In this paper, I develop and defend a novel argument against this view. The argument turns on certainty, that highest epistemic status that (...) a precious few of our beliefs enjoy. For example, on the basis of introspection, I am certain that I am not in fierce pain right now. But if I am a complex thing like a body or a brain, then introspection might be a causal series of events extended in time. And any such process could go awry. So, if introspection is such a process, then I could gain good evidence that the introspective process has gone awry and that I am, contrary to appearances, feeling fierce pain right now. Therefore, the view that I am a complex thing like a body or a brain forces open the possibility that I cannot be certain that I am not feeling fierce pain right now. Since that is clearly not an open possibility, it follows that I am not a complex thing. I conclude by responding to three objections. (shrink)

This overview of the philosophy of certainty will distinguish two types of certainty, specify controversial theses about certainty from recent literature, and explain some of the arguments for and against those theses.

This paper argues that we should assign certainty a central place in epistemology. While epistemic certainty played an important role in the history of epistemology, recent epistemology has tended to dismiss certainty as an unattainable ideal, focusing its attention on knowledge instead. I argue that this is a mistake. Attending to certainty attributions in the wild suggests that much of our everyday knowledge qualifies, in appropriate contexts, as certain. After developing a semantics for certainty ascriptions, (...) I put certainty to explanatory work. Specifically, I argue that by taking certainty as our central epistemic notion, we can shed light on a variety of important topics, including evidence and evidential probability, epistemic modals, and the normative constraints on credence and assertion. (shrink)

During the 1630s Descartes recognized that he could not expect all legitimate claims in natural science to meet the standard of absolute certainty. The realization resulted from a change in his physics, which itself arose not through methodological reflections, but through developments in his substantive metaphysical doctrines. Descartes discovered the metaphysical foundations of his physics in 1629-30; as a consequence, the style of explanation employed in his physical writings changed. His early methodological conceptions, as preserved in the Rules and (...) sketched in Part Two of the Discourse, pertained primarily to his early work in optics. By the early 1630s, Descartes was concerned with new methodological problems pertaining to the postulation of micro-mechanisms. Recognition of the need to employ a method of hypothesis led him to lower the standard of certainty required of particular explanations in his mature physics. (shrink)

This paper presents the concept of ‘religious certainty’ I have developed by drawing inspiration from Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘certainty’. After describing the particular traits of religious certainty, this paper addresses two difficulties derived from this concept. On the one hand, it explains why religious certainty functions as such even though all its consequences are far from being absolutely clear; on the other hand, it clarifies why, unlike the rest of certainties, the loss of religious certainty (...) does not result in the collapse of the world-picture made up of all certainties. Subsequently, it analyzes to what extent the teacher can teach religious certainty by acting as a facilitator for its acquisition–if desired—particularly bearing in mind that religious certainty cannot be attained at will. These basic teaching guidelines have several advantages. First, they make it possible to know the nature of religious certainty even better. Second, and most importantly, the fact of having adopted the perspective of a teacher who tries inculcating a religious certainty contributes to detecting and preventing forms of indoctrination that, arguably, might go unnoticed even when attempting to properly present religious certainty—or rather, this way of being religious—in current schools to foster understanding thereof. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive study of the origins of seminal early modern debates on the certainty and ontology of mathematics. It analyzes Alessandro Piccolomini's De certitudine mathematicarum (1547), a work that ignited widespread controversy by challenging the scientific status of mathematics. The study delves into Piccolomini's logical doctrines, his philosophy of mathematics, and his perspectives on the relationship between mechanics and natural philosophy. Special attention is given to Piccolomini's ancient and medieval sources, the 16th-century rediscovery of Proclus' In (...) Euclidem, and the influence of Priscian's In De Anima. (shrink)

This is a collection of articles on two central topics in epistemology: certainty and surfaces. Of the ten articles, four discuss Avrum Stroll's Surfaces. The topics explored have been the subject of intense philosophical debate since ancient times.

Demands for absolute or near certainty are a common way for those with a political agenda to undermine science and to delay action. Through our combined experience in science, philosophy and cultural theory, we are acquainted with these attempts to undermine science. We want to help readers figure out how to evaluate their merits or lack thereof.

This paper seeks to widen the dialogue between the “epistemology of peer disagreement” and the epistemology informed by Wittgenstein’s last notebooks, later edited as On Certainty. The paper defends the following theses: not all certainties are groundless; many of them are beliefs; and they do not have a common essence. An epistemic peer need not share all of my certainties. Which response to a disagreement over a certainty is called for, depends on the type of certainty in (...) question. Sometimes a form of relativism is the right response. Reasonable, mutually recognized peer disagreement over a certainty is possible.—The paper thus addresses both interpretative and systematic issues. It uses Wittgenstein as a resource for thinking about peer disagreement over certainties. (shrink)

This radical reading of Wittgenstein's third and last masterpiece, On Certainty, has major implications for philosophy. It elucidates Wittgenstein's ultimate thoughts on the nature of our basic beliefs and his demystification of scepticism. Our basic certainties are shown to be nonepistemic, nonpropositional attitudes that, as such, have no verbal occurrence but manifest themselves exclusively in our actions. This fundamental certainty is a belief-in, a primitive confidence or ur-trust whose practical nature bridges the hitherto unresolved categorial gap between belief (...) and action. (shrink)

On Certainty continues Rescher s longstanding practice of publishing occasional studies that form part of a wider program of investigation of the scope and limits of rational inquiry in the pursuit of understanding. And pragmatism forms a subtextual Leitmotiv of these essays, seeing that the linking idea at work throughout is that knowledge is a tool for the management of our theoretical and practical affairs, and that what we ask of it is serviceability for the uses we have in (...) view.". (shrink)

This paper argues that Wittgenstein does not assimilate certainties to either linguistic norms or empirical propositions but assigns them to a liminal space between rule and experience. This liminal space is also brought into play in remarks written at the same time as those compiled in On Certainty, but attributed to different bodies of text. The paper maintains that certainties express the agreement and constancy in judgements without which – as Wittgenstein contends in his Philosophical Investigations – rule-following would (...) not be possible. It is shown that this intrinsic relation between rule-following and certainties can explain the liminal status of the latter. (shrink)

Meaning, believing, thinking, understanding, reasoning, calculating, learning, remembering, intending, expecting, loving, longing: these experiences are, according to Wittgenstein, embodied actions. In Certainty in Action, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock argues that there is hardly anything traditionally thought to be a mental process or state, that, in fact, Ludwig Wittgenstein has not shown to be primarily embodied or enacted. The book traces the radical, diverse and recurrent importance of action and 'ways of acting' as the original and cohesive thread weaving through all of (...) Wittgenstein's philosophy, especially language and memory. Moyal-Sharrock highlights throughout Wittgenstein's clarification of 'the inner' and his belief in the certainty of action. With Wittgenstein's philosophy increasingly influencing multiple branches of psychology, particularly those concerned with child development, language acquisition and memory, Certainty in Action is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the philosophy underpinning these areas, as well as Wittgenstein specialists. (shrink)

In a recent number of Philosophy of Science, Mr. C. D. Hardie offers some interesting suggestions concerning the problem of other minds. In his view the fact that we feel certain of their existence constitutes a problem; and he wishes to find a rational justification for this certainty. “What grounds have I for believing in the existence of other minds?” he asks. He is attracted by the traditional argument from analogy, but finds it incomplete; for “any conclusion arrived at (...) by analogy and induction is at best only probable,” and “I am certain that other minds exist.” Again we find him remarking that “there is room for an account which makes our knowledge of them depend in some way on analogy... but which is such that we can be certain that other minds exist....”. (shrink)

We ordinarily assume that we have reliable knowledge of our immediate surroundings, so much so that almost all the time we entrust our lives to the truth of what we take ourselves to know, without a moment’s thought. But if, as Karl Popper and others have maintained, all our knowledge is conjectural, then this habitual assumption that our common sense knowledge of our environment is secure and trustworthy would seem to be an illusion. Popper’s philosophy of science, in particular, fails (...) to do justice to the distinction we ordinarily draw between secure knowledge and mere conjecture. But Popper’s philosophy of science, in particular his attempted solution to the problem of induction, is defective. It fails to take into account that physics, in only accepting unified theories, even though endlessly empirically more successful disunified rivals are always available, makes the persistent metaphysical assumption that all disunified theories are false. Once this point is acknowledged, it becomes clear that a new conception of scientific method is required which sees science as making a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe. This provides a framework of relatively unproblematic assumptions and associated methods of science within which much more problematic assumptions and associated methods can be critically assessed and improved. This hierarchical view seems at first to intensify the problem of distinguishing certainty from conjecture, in that it emphasizes that scientific knowledge, and even humble common sense knowledge, contain usually unacknowledged cosmological conjectures. But actually it explicates the basis we have for drawing the distinction between trustworthy knowledge and mere conjecture, and even goes some way towards providing a rationale for this distinction, in so far as one exists. (shrink)

Certain lines of reasoning common in evolutionary taxonomy have been termed viciously circular. They are quite obviously not logically circular. They do give the superficial appearance of epistemological circularity. This appearance arises from the method of successive approximation used by evolutionary taxonomists. It is argued that this method is not epistemologically circular, even when the only evidence that the taxonomist has to go on is the phenetic similarity of contemporary forms. The important criticism of evolutionary taxonomy is rather that in (...) the absence of fossil evidence phyletic reconstructions are not warranted. It is argued that this charge stems initially from a misunderstanding of the kind of certainty possible in empirical science. When this criticism is couched in appropriate terms, it may be seen to have some force. Many phyletic inferences are not as warranted as one might wish. However, there is a great deal of difference between arguing that a line of reasoning is unwarranted and arguing that it is viciously circular. (shrink)

In this paper Peter Klein's criticism of Wittgenstein in "Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism" is addressed. Klein claims that, according to Wittgenstein, we attribute knowledge of a proposition p to a person only if that person is not certain of p. I argue that a careful reading of Wittgenstein's On Certainty reveals that there are two kinds of objective certainty that Wittgenstein had in mind; propositional objective certainty and normative objective certainty. Klein fails to distinguish (...) between the two and uses what I call propositional objective certainty to make his point against Wittgenstein. I claim that when Wittgenstein said that knowledge and certainty belong to different categories he was talking of normative objective certainty and, therefore, that Klein's criticism is misplaced and attributes to Wittgenstein a position that is not his. (shrink)

According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007), certainty-associated emotions increase risk taking compared with uncertainty-associated emotions. To date, this general effect has only been shown in static judgement and decision-making paradigms; therefore, the present study tested the effect of certainty on risk taking in a sequential decision-making task. We hypothesised that the effect would be reversed due to the kind of processing involved, as certainty is considered to encourage heuristic processing that takes into account (...) the emotional cues arising from previous decisions, whereas uncertainty leads to more systematic processing. One hundred and one female participants were induced to feel one of three emotions (film clips) before performing a decision-making task involving risk (Game of Dice Task; Brand et al., 2005). As expected, the angry and happy participants (certainty-associated emotions) were more likely than the fearful participants (uncertainty-associated emotion) to make safe decisions (vs. risky decisions). (shrink)

After Certainty: A History of Our Epistemic Ideals and Illusions, by PasnauRobert. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 384.

Certainty and Practical Reason is concerned with Kant's practical response to epistemological skepticism and radical doubt. ;It begins from Kant's remark that the concept of freedom is the keystone of the arch of reason, theoretical as well as practical, and sustains reason against skepticism; and from Kant's account of the practical motives of transcendental realism, the source of skepticism, in the First and Second Critiques. The Critiques suggest both that Kant's response to skepticism is practical, and that skepticism is (...) itself both practically motivated and associated with practical error. ;In the first chapter, it is argued that the Transcendental Analytic of the First Critique is not a final refutation of skepticism and radical doubt, and that Kant does not see it as such. The theoretical arguments of the Transcendental Analytic need to be completed with an appeal to practical reason if we are to ground Kant's starting assumption, the fact of experience. ;The second chapter considers epistemological skepticism as involving a practical error answered by the practical cure of the categorical imperative. ;The third chapter begins by considering Cartesian doubt as a practically motivated attempt to pose the problem of practical rationality, and Kant's response to this problem. It then discusses Kant's view that the transcendental realist demand for knowledge of the noumenal, which gives rise to skeptical doubt, is a pursuit of the unconditioned whose hidden meaning is practical; and explains how Kant responds to the doubt by responding to and interpreting transcendental realism as a practical project. ;The fourth chapter discusses the Critique of Judgment as a response to "enthusiasm" or the transcendental realist claim to knowledge of the unconditioned, and thereby to skepticism as well. (shrink)

Hume appeals to different kinds of certainties and necessities in the Treatise. He contrasts the certainty that arises from intuition and demonstrative reasoning with the certainty that arises from causal reasoning. He denies that the causal maxim is absolutely or metaphysically necessary, but he nonetheless takes the causal maxim and ‘proofs’ to be necessary. The focus of this paper is the certainty and necessity involved in Hume’s concept of knowledge. I defend the view that intuitive certainty, (...) in particular, is certainty of the invariability or necessity of relations between ideas. Against David Owen and Helen Beebee, I argue that the certainty involved in intuition depends on the activity of the mind. I argue, further, that understanding this activity helps us understand more clearly one of Hume’s most important theses, namely that experience is the source of a distinct kind of certainty and of necessity. (shrink)

Written over the last 18 months of his life and inspired by his interest in G. E. Moore's defence of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

Empiricist theories of knowledge are attractive for they offer the prospect of a unitary theory of knowledge based on relatively well understood physiological and cognitive processes. Mathematical knowledge, however, has been a traditional stumbling block for such theories. There are three primary features of mathematical knowledge which have led epistemologists to the conclusion that it cannot be accommodated within an empiricist framework: 1) mathematical propositions appear to be immune from empirical disconfirmation; 2) mathematical propositions appear to be known with (...) class='Hi'>certainty; and 3) mathematical propositions are necessary. Epistemologists who believe that some nonmathematical propositions, such as logical or ethical propositions, cannot be known a posteriori also typically appeal to the three factors cited above in defending their position. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine whether any of these alleged features of mathematical propositions establishes that knowledge of such propositions cannot be a posteriori. (shrink)

The tension between the need for critique and its (often unperceived) limits through our given common sense, a tension Charles S. Peirce describes as critical common sense, hasn’t lost its actuality. Vague certainty is one root of this tension, which the paper unfolds by distinguishing two forms: while the first one grounds common sense as a form of life, the second one, self-certainty, represents the purpose of endeavors, and it serves, speaking with Pierre Bourdieu, as a form of (...) distinction (1). As part of an indifference towards power structures of exclusion, vague certainties contribute to what Judith Butlers describes as the violent derealization of others, which is being discussed in the light of the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movement. (Self-)certainty, as is being shown, is not (merely) an epistemological matter, but encompasses the fields of the political and aesthetic. Accordingly, as a crucial part of political critique and practices to counter (self-)certainties, a differentiation of doubting is required – the paper proposes four different kinds: authoritarian, anti-authoritarian, acknowledging and imaginative doubting. They help understand the political struggles of re-realizing formerly derealized positions within society (2). Particularly through imaginative doubting, some shortcomings within Peirce’s notion of the self (and, for that matter, within the pragmatist notion of doubting) are being overcome by showing how to link it to creative processes of abduction, which in turn have consequences for political matters by unsettling implicit consent, or, in the words of Jacques Rancière, the partition of the sensible (3). (shrink)

Although certainty is a fundamental notion in epistemology, it is less studied in contemporary analytic epistemology than other important notions such as knowledge or justification. This paper focuses on Wittgensteinian certainty, according to which the very basic dimension of our epistemic practices, the elements of our world-pictures, are objectively certain, in that we cannot legitimately doubt them. The aim of the paper is to offer the best philosophical way to clarify Wittgensteinian certainty, in a way that is (...) consonant with Wittgenstein's fundamental insights. The paper critiques two alternative proposals for clarifying Wittgensteinian certainty that are philosophically unsatisfying: the rule view and the proposition view. Finally, it instead shows how viewing world-pictures as pictures, in the sense of unclear conceptions, is a more philosophically fruitful approach to understanding world-pictures. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLloyd encourages us to look anew at philosophy and science by using a comparative methodology, comparing the familiar Western form of philosophy, for example, with the forms found in ancient China. Taking lessons from comparative biology, this paper attempts to show that such comparison can only take place when we understand what we are looking at in the familiar case. The question of the centrality of the drive for certainty is addressed. Why has certainty been so attractive and (...) what does it mean if philosophers and scientists cannot achieve certainty? (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to vindicate the Cartesian quest for certainty by arguing that to aim at certainty is a constitutive feature of cognition. My argument hinges on three observations concerning the nature of doubt and judgment: first, it is always possible to have a doubt as to whether p in so far as one takes the truth of p to be uncertain; second, in so far as one takes the truth of p to be certain, (...) one is no longer able to genuinely wonder whether p is true; third, to ask the question whether p is to desire to receive a true answer. On this ground I clarify in what sense certainty is the aim of cognition. I then argue that in judging that p we commit ourselves to p’s being certain and that certainty is the constitutive norm of judgment. The paper as a whole provides a picture of the interplay between doubt and judgment that aims at vindicating the traditional insight that our ability to doubt testifies our aspiration to know with absolute certainty. (shrink)

This paper defends a position that parts ways with the positivist view of legal certainty and reasonableness. I start out with a reconstruction of this view and move on to argue that an adequate analysis of certainty and reasonableness calls for an alternative approach, one based on the acknowledgement that argumentation is key to determining the contents, structure, and boundaries of a legal system. Here I claim that by endorsing a dialectical notion of rationality this alternative account espouses (...) an ambitious approach to reasoning in law and conceives of the theory of legal argumentation as the vantage point from which to analyze legal systems and tackle the main problems connected with their existence. Next, I look at what this alternative approach does for the way we should go about treating certainty and reasonableness, considered singularly as well as in their reciprocal relationship. I conclude on this basis that when argumentation receives its due emphasis in law we have to redefine certainty and reasonableness and recast their connection as non-conflictive. (shrink)

Annalisa Coliva (Int J Study Skept 10(3–4):346–366, 2020) asks, “Are there mathematical hinges?” I argue here, against Coliva’s own conclusion, that there are. I further claim that this affirmative answer allows a case to be made for taking the concept of a hinge to be a useful and general-purpose tool for studying mathematical practice in its real complexity. Seeing how Wittgenstein can, and why he would, countenance mathematical hinges additionally gives us a deeper understanding of some of his latest thoughts (...) on mathematics. For example, a view of how mathematical hinges relate to Wittgenstein’s well-known river-bed analogy enables us to see how his way of thinking about mathematics can account nicely for a “dynamics of change” within mathematical research—something his philosophy of mathematics has been accused of missing (e.g., by Robert Ackermann (Wittgenstein’s city, The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1988) and Mark Wilson (Wandering significance: an essay on conceptual behavior, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006). Finally, the perspective on mathematical hinges ultimately arrived at will be seen to provide us with illuminating examples of how our conceptual choices and theories can be ungrounded but nevertheless the right ones (in a sense to be explained). (shrink)