Wittgenstein’s epistemological frame in »On Certainty«

Abstract

It is well known that Wittgenstein wasn't interested in epistemic claims (A. Gargani, 1982), or epistemology, not until the last years of his life (A, Kenny, 1973), when he wrote -On Certainty- [1950-51). Our task isn't to expose his answer to the sceptical question which he elaborated partly against Moore and especially against Descartes though the last has not been mentioned. The theme of this paper is to investigate the possibility which the logico-syntactical approach of Wittgenstein’s philosophical grammar has for the principal epistemic terms, like belief and knowledge. The analysis is guided by considering P. K. Moser's (1988) interpretation of paragraph 253 from -On Certainly-. The result is that his critique of doxastic theories in Pollock's classification (1986) of the contemporary epistemological theories for unexhaustivity is not adequate, because the same lack is shown by undoxastic theories. Through the epistemic terms like doubt, grond/reason, foundation/basis and those already mentioned, it follows that Wittgenstein's epistemological frame heads to direct realism, challenging the confusion in Pollock's classification, discovering the current of Wittgenstein's hints at the same time.