Hi Urpflanzen:

Was Wittgenstein a skeptic? If so, when was he a skeptic? In the era of the Tractatus, or in the era of the Investigations, or in the era of On Certainty? And if he was a skeptic in any of these three eras (did I leave one out? should two or more of them collapse?--I think the TLP era differs from the last two, and I don't think that there is much if any of a "Third Wittgenstein" in On Certainty that sets a new stage in his thinking apart from Philosophical Investigations), what kind of skeptic was LW?

Well, it seems that there are two main strands of philosophical skepticism--Cartesian skepticism and Pyrrhonian skepticism. Now, Descartes actually claimed to refute cartesian skepticism (so we don't give it a capital 'c'), and almost nobody tries to defend that view. Yet there are a number of philosophers who embrace the Pyrrhonian alternative: Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne, Hume, and Wittgenstein. This claim is made by Robert Fogelin, who places himself within this same skeptical camp. The Pyrrhonians maintain that it is possible to know everyday truths and yet suspend judgment about the the broad claims of cartesian skepticism and those who deny wholesale skepticism.

So, I've been looking at these issues lately. Some of the background texts are Fogelin's almost classic book Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); W. Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Pyrrhonian Skepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and, of course, Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Cambridge: Harvard, 1984).

I'll be posting and commenting on these fairly recent debates on this thread. All three of LW's main works (TLP, PI, and OC) figure heavily in these debates. It's a solid, pertinent topic for urpflanze. Thanks, --Ron