Edoardo Sartore

The present work discusses some of the main epistemological views of the later Wittgenstein, as developed in the notes written in the last eighteen months of Wittgenstein’s life and posthumously published in "On Certainty" (1969).
Chapter 1 introduces the issues that occupied Wittgenstein in those months. Hence, after presenting a typical radical sceptical argument, I briefly discuss the two articles by G. E. Moore – “A Defence of Common Sense” (1925) and “Proof of an External World” (1939) – which prompted Wittgenstein’s reflections, as well as Norman Malcolm’s (1949) “Defending Common Sense”.
Chapter 2 is dedicated to the discussion of Wittgenstein’s criticism of Moore and to his grammatical investigation on the use of “know”. Here I engage critically with the "framework reading" of "On Certainty" and more specifically with the thesis according to which Wittgenstein maintained that when Moore claimed to know the truisms of common sense, he ended up producing nonsense.
In chapter 3 I take issue with another tenet upheld by some members of the framework reading, namely, the idea that Moore’s common-sense propositions (also known as “hinge propositions”) are (and were held by Wittgenstein to be) grammatical proposition. I point out that this thesis has little textual support and is at odds with Wittgenstein’s overall conception of grammar.
In chapter 4 and 5 I engage in two debates concerning the relations between Wittgenstein’s reflections in "On Certainty" and some traditional epistemological positions, namely foundationalism (chapter 4) and relativism (chapter 5).
In chapter 4 I argue against the idea that "On Certainty" shows Wittgenstein putting forth a sui generis foundationalist theory of knowledge.
In chapter 5 I distinguish between conceptual and epistemic relativism, and I endorse the view that Wittgenstein is correctly described as a conceptual relativist. Then I argue that, although the textual evidence is not decisive and different interpretative lines remain possible, the relevant passages in "On Certainty" do not commit Wittgenstein to epistemic relativism.

This article examines Wittgenstein’s criticism of Moore’s use of “know”, as he developed it in On Certainty. Arguing against much of the literature, the author claims that, by Wittgenstein’s own lights, Moore was not talking nonsense. He does so by showing, first, that the standard reading is based on the idea that hinge propositions are non-epistemic, and second, that Wittgenstein’s alleged adoption of the non-epistemic view is not adequately supported by the textual evidence. The author argues that
claims to the contrary depend on an undue conflation, on the part of interpreters, of Wittgenstein’s treatment of psychological avowals in Philosophical Investigations and his discussion of hinge propositions in On Certainty. Moreover, a closer look at Wittgenstein’s objections to Moore shows that Wittgenstein himself repeatedly charged Moore with a similar confusion between the status of psychological statements and the status of his common-sense truisms.

This paper engages critically with the thesis according to which Wittgenstein in On Certainty propounded a highly original form of epistemological foundationalism. It starts by briefly presenting Avrum Stroll's version of the thesis and goes on to discuss Michael Williams' criticism of it. It argues that, while instructive, Williams' objections are mainly terminological and do not provide a conclusive argument. Moreover, they hinge on an unfair reconstruction of Stroll's position. In the second half, it presents a more substantial criticism of the foundationalist interpretation, arguing that (i) it fails to take into account the undeniable holistic strand in On Certainty, and (ii) it misunderstands Wittgenstein as being engaged in a project of justification of our knowledge. It concludes that Wittgenstein's last notes do not commit him to any form of foundationalism.

Whereas Wittgenstein's post-1929 considerations on the will have been subject to considerable attention, his (extremely condensed) treatment of freedom of the will in the Tractatus has been largely neglected. Recently, however, a few scholars have attempted to provide an exegesis of the relevant passages (most importantly TLP 5.1362) and have come to remarkably different conclusions. Their disagreement concerns both the purpose and the structure of the argument that is ascribed to Wittgenstein. In the following I will focus on Diego Marconi's recent presentation of the passage in Marconi (2021), which is supposed to avoid an issue of intelligibility that arises in connection with traditional interpretations, such as the one by Mion (2017). I will argue that Marconi's proposal suffers from a problem analogous to the one he detects in the traditional reading. To drive home this point, I shall make use of a distinction between what I call metaphysical and epistemic incompatibilism. The main result will be that, their differences notwithstanding, the traditional and Marconi's alternative reconstructions of TLP 5.1362 share one crucial feature: in both cases, Wittgenstein's argument implicitly commits him to metaphysical incompatibilism, i.e., the view that freedom of the will is incompatible with determinism. Most importantly, all sides of the debate have failed to see that, by their own lights, Wittgenstein is so committed.