This work starts from three complementary and interdependent questions: 1) How should we interpret Wittgenstein’s anti-skeptical strategy as presented in On Certainty, and especially the elusive and yet central concept of ‘hinges’? 2) Can Wittgenstein’s strategy, when properly understood and developed, provide a satisfactory response to Cartesian skepticism? 3) Does a Wittgensteinian epistemology license epistemic relativism, and if so to what extent? In Chapter 1, I present Cartesian-style skepticism and its epistemological implications along with the Dretske-Nozick’s ‘relevant alternatives’ theory, based on the rejection of the Closure principle for Knowledge which underlies the skeptical challenge. After a brief discussion of the main concerns raised against this proposal, I argue that this line is untenable and that a successful anti-skeptical proposal has to retain Closure. Having shown the shortcomings of the Dretske-Nozick proposal, I then focus my attention on G. E. Moore’s famous anti-skeptical works, namely “A Defence of Common Sense” (1925, henceforth DCS) and “Proof of an External World”, (1939, henceforth PEW). In these seminal papers, Moore famously argued that it is possible to know several ‘obvious truisms of commonsense’ such as ‘There are external objects’, I have a body’ and so on and that this knowledge can offer a direct response to skeptical worries; the aim of this strategy is then to retain both Closure and our confidence in our everyday knowledge claims. After a detailed presentation of DCS and PEW I will discuss the problems of Moore’s direct response against the skeptic, drawing on the works of distinguished commentators such as Malcolm, Clarke, Stroud and Wright. Roughly, I argue that Moore’s strategy is both unnecessary and unconvincing: unconvincing because Moore’s knowledge-claims cannot refute Cartesian skeptical arguments; unnecessary for they can ‘work’ only within our everyday ‘non-philosophical’ context, thus when no skeptical hypothesis can be sensibly raised. Even if Moore’s anti-skeptical attempts have unanimously been considered unsatisfying, for several reasons his works have nonetheless been extremely influential, to the extent that quite a few contemporary anti-skeptical proposals can be fairly described as ‘Moorean’. In Chapter 2, I present and discuss the dominant ‘Moore-Inspired’ positions, namely Pryor’s Dogmatist Reading of PEW, Neta’s interpretation of the Proof, Greco’s reliabilist account, Fara’s ‘Second Proof’, DeRose’s ‘Moorean contextualism’ and Sosa ‘Neo-Mooreanism’. I criticise these accounts in turn, in order to show that all these strategies inherit the main problems of Moore’s treatment of skepticism and also have unpalatable consequences with regard to the so-called ‘value problem for knowledge’. After having extensively criticised both Moore’s and ‘Neo-Moorean’ epistemologies, in Chapter 3 I focus my attention on Wittgenstein’s On Certainty; given the obscurity and ambiguity of this work, in this chapter I present some of the less contentious aspects of Wittgenstein’s treatment of skepticism and I emphasise the role played by ‘hinges ’ in his anti-skeptical strategy. This will give me the background to assess the different ‘Wittgensteininspired’ anti-skeptical strategies I consider in Chapter 4, namely Conant’s ‘therapeutic’ reading, Wright’s ‘rational entitlement’ account, Williams’ ‘Wittgensteinian contextualism’, McGinn’s ‘framework’ reading and Pritchard’s ‘hinge commitment’ strategy. I argue that these proposals are wanting, both as plausible interpretations of Wittgenstein’s thought and more importantly as viable anti-skeptical strategies. Moreover, I show that McGinn and Williams’ proposals can lead to a form of epistemic relativism, according to which our epistemic practices are the result of pre-rational, social commitments not subject to rational evaluation of any sort; a conclusion which is not more palatable than skepticism itself. Chapter 5 is devoted to presenting Moyal-Sharrock’s ‘non-epistemic’ reading of OC, for which ‘hinges’ such as ‘There are external objects’ or ‘I have a body’ are the expression of a pre-theoretical, animal certainty which she sees as constitutively different from knowledge. While I defend Moyal-Sharrock’s exegesis and her analogy between ‘hinges’ and 'rules of grammar’ as the most plausible interpretation of Wittgenstein’s thought, in this chapter I also criticise her ‘non-epistemic’ account; roughly, I argue that following this strategy we will be forced either to reject the Closure principle, thus inheriting the problems of the Dretske-Nozick’s line, or else to endorse skepticism. Moreover, I also consider some of the relativistic implications of Moyal-Sharrock’s account, which make her proposal vulnerable to the same objections I have raised against McGinn’s framework reading and Williams’ Wittgensteinian contextualism. In Chapter 6, I develop my own anti-skeptical proposal, which is informed by the analogy between ‘hinges’ and ‘rules of grammar’ and their peculiar status. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s reflections on grammatical rules, developed in the socalled second phase of his thought, and especially in his Philosophical Investigations, I argue that ‘hinges’ cannot be object of knowledge but are subject to an altogether different epistemic standing, namely understanding or ‘mastery of techniques’. A promising anti-skeptical implication of this account is that it will help us to dismiss Cartesian-style skepticism as the result of a logical error, based on a misleading way of representing the structure of our epistemic practices, which are not based on propositional beliefs but rather on non-propositional, normative rules. In the rest of Chapter 6, I consider a final problem that a Wittgensteinian epistemology so construed has to face in order to be considered a fully viable antiskeptical position; that is, whether Wittgenstein’s account of ‘hinges’ would lead to epistemic relativism of a kind that is generated by the proposals put forward by Williams, McGinn and Moyal-Sharrock. Chapter 7 is devoted to addressing this question in detail. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s views on mathematics, metrology and religious beliefs, I aim to show that his remarks on ‘hinges’ will help us to dissolve epistemic relativism rather than licensing it. This is so because following Wittgenstein’s remarks on the structure of reason the disagreement between epistemic communities committed to different ‘hinges’ (for instance a community which believes in oracles rather than in science) is either solvable, as different epistemic practices can be compared and assessed if they have similar aims, or is a pseudo-disagreement which stems from a misguided comparison between different practices.

This dissertation is a contribution to two fields of study: applied social epistemology and the philosophy of technology. That is, it is a philosophical study, based on empirical fieldwork research, of social and technical knowledge. Social knowledge here is defined as knowledge acquired through the interactions between epistemic agents and social institutions. Technical knowledge is here defined as knowledge about technical artefacts (including how to design, produce, and operate them). I argue that the two must be considered collectively both in the sense that they are best considered in the light of collectivist approaches to knowledge and in the sense that they must be considered together as part of the same analysis. An analysis solely of the interactions between human epistemic agents operating within social institutions does not give adequate credit to the technological artefacts that help to produce knowledge; an analysis of technical knowledge which does not include an analysis of how that technical knowledge is generated within a rich and complex social network would be similarly incomplete. I argue that it is often inappropriate to separate analyses of technical knowledge from social knowledge and that although not all social knowledge is technical knowledge, all technical knowledge is, by definition, social. Further, the influence of technology on epistemic cultures is so pervasive that it also forms or 'envelops' what we consider to be an epistemic agent.

My thesis examines the nature and value of knowledge and normative implications of its value. With this in mind I examine Greco’s account of knowledge in detail and consider whether it convinces. I argue against the account on a number of fronts; in particular I argue against Greco’s treatment of the Barney and Jenny cases. In doing so I draw on the dialectic in the literature and go beyond it by showing how his treatment of those cases is such as to raise problems for his treatment of other cases. More specifically I argue that Greco’s treatment of the Barney case is such as to threaten his treatment of standard Gettier cases and his treatment of the Jenny case threatens his treatment of the Careless Math Student case. I also consider an alternative virtue epistemic approach offered by Pritchard which I reject. In attempting to overcome the challenges that the Barney and Jenny cases pose I articulate an alternative account according to which what I call “epistemic grace” is a requirement of knowledge. It is via this epistemic grace requirement that I also account for the value of knowledge. Recognition of the value of knowledge serves as the basis for the articulation of the notion of epistemic environmentalism. With epistemic environmentalism in view, trust is analysed and its significance to the gaining of knowledge, albeit knowledge of a certain kind, is considered. Finally, the normative implications of epistemic environmentalism are laid out in a framework to show how findings in epistemic value theory relate to approaches that can provide a basis for justifying intervention or non-intervention in the assisting of the attaining or holding of epistemic goods of value.

In this thesis I argue that our philosophical account of the nature and norms of belief should both inform and be informed by our scientific understanding of monothematic delusions. In Chapter 1, I examine and criticise standard attempts to answer the question “What is delusion?” In particular, I claim that such attempts are misguided because they misunderstand the kind of term that “delusion” is. In Chapter 2, I look at the nature of explanation in psychology and apply it to delusions. In particular I look at the constraints on a successful explanation of a person’s psychological state in terms of brain damage or dysfunction. I then propose, in Chapter 3, a way of understanding how delusions of misidentification arise. In particular, I criticise the standard view that they are formed via inference (in the relevant sense of “inference”) on the basis of anomalous experience. I draw on empirical work on object and individual tracking, on dreams, and on the Frégoli delusion, and argue that inference is not only un-necessary, but is actually often bypassed in humans, for judgments of identification. The result is a non-inferential file-retrieval view. On certain views of belief, this would mean that the Capgras delusion lacks the right functional role to count as a genuine belief. In Chapter 4, I criticise such views of belief, and put forward a “downstream only” view. Roughly, something is a case of believing if and only if it disposes people to act in certain ways. I defend such a view against two serious and influential objections. In Chapter 5, I ask whether this means that the Capgras delusion can therefore safely be called a belief. I argue that there is a risk – even if one accepts the downstream only view of belief – that it still won’t count as a belief, as a result of the subject’s “incoherence” or “agentive inertia.” However, I then distinguish egocentric from encyclopaedic doxastic states. This opens the possibility that one can truly say that the subject has the egocentric belief, “This man is not my father”, but may fail to have the encyclopaedic belief, “My father has been replaced by an impostor”. It also demonstrates that the question “Are delusions beliefs?” has been approached in an unhelpful way by the main participants in the debate. This thesis is important because it shows the extent to which real-world phenomena can inform and be informed by central philosophical notions like belief. More precisely, it shows that the most plausible way of accounting for monothematic delusions involves abandoning both a strong normativism, and a discrete representationalism, about belief.

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Stanford Goldman...[et al.]. / "Nov. 15, 1950." / Bibliography: p. 11. / Army Signal Corps Contract No. W36-039-sc-32037. Project No. 102B. Dept. of the Army Project No. 3-99-10-022.

by Randall S. Hiller and Jeremy F. Shapiro. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 22-23). / Supported by National Science Foundation ECS-8117105

This thesis is concerned with the challenge truth-value gaps pose to the principle of bivalence. The central question addressed is: are truth-value gaps counterexamples to bivalence and is the supposition of counterexamples coherent? My aim is to examine putative cases of truth-value gaps against an argument by Timothy Williamson, which shows that the supposition of counterexamples to bivalence is contradictory. The upshot of his argument is that either problematic utterances say nothing, or they cannot be neither true nor false. I start by identifying truth-bearers: an utterance, for instance, is a truth-bearer if it says that something is the case. Truth-bearers are evaluable items, with truth- and falsity-conditions statable in corresponding instances of schemas for truth and falsehood. A genuine case of a truth-value gap should be an utterance that is neither true nor false but says something to be the case. But it is inconsistent to accept the schemas for truth and falsehood and the existence of genuine cases of truth-value gaps. Secondly, I expound Williamson’s argument, which explores this inconsistency, and I identify two kinds of strategy to disarm his argument: those that preserve the schemas for truth and falsehood, and those that do not. Neither strategy is found to be persuasive. Thirdly, I argue that cases of reference failure causing truth-value gaps illustrate the upshot of Williamson’s argument. Fourthly, I examine Scott Soames’s account of liar sentences as counterexamples to bivalence. Soames adopts a strategy of the first kind to avoid contradictions. I argue that his solution allows some contradictions to be true, and that he fails to show that liar sentences are truth-bearers. Finally, I examine Charles Travis’s case for isostheneia: an equal balancing of reasons to evaluate a statement as true or as false, in which case a statement is neither. Travis avoids contradictions by adopting a strategy of the second kind. I argue that the schemas for truth and falsehood are immune to Travis’s objections, and that isostheneia fails to identify evaluable items. The cases examined confirm that utterances that are neither true nor false say nothing. My claim is thus that truth-value gaps are not counterexamples to bivalence.

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