Hello urpflanze group:

If you're following along on the Wittgenstein as some-kind-of-skeptic thread, here is some further grist for the mill.

I provide an extended excerpt from Sluga's article on Wittgenstein and Pyrrhonism; cf. H. Sluga, "Wittgenstein and Pyrrhonism," in W. Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Pyrrhonian Skepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 99-117.

OK, what Sluga says (p. 100) is as follows: "We are conscious, for instance, of Wittgenstein's dismissal of skepticism as 'nonsensical' in the Tractatus (6.51) and his apparently equally sharp hostility to it in On Certainty. In consequence, we might take him to be an antiskeptial thinker. But he also writes much of the time in a strikingly skeptical tone of voice. His Tractatus proposes, for instance, to show us that metaphysical claims are strictly senseless. And what are we to say of his 'skeptical' considerations concerning the supposed necessity governing the application of rules? And what about his 'skeptical' arguments against the possibility of an essentially private language? Do these not amount to a philosophical skepticism? Or at least, to a partial theoretical skepticsm concerning necesssity and private experience?"

Sluga continues: "Robert Fogelin has argued that we can reconcile most of these features of Wittgenstine's thought by classifying him as a Pyrrhonian thinker." [Sluga, p. 100]

Thanks, --Ron


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