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71Kierkegaard’s influence on Wittgenstein’s conception of religious belief was profound, but this hasn’t so far been given the attention it deserves . Although Wittgenstein wrote comparatively little on the subject, while the whole of Kierkegaard’s oeuvre has a religious theme, both philosophers have become notorious for refusing to construe religious belief in either of the two traditional ways: as a ‘propositional attitude’ on the one hand or as a mere ‘emotional response’ with no reference to t…Read more
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15Wittgenstein published next to nothing on the philosophy of religion and yet his conception of religious belief has been immensely influential. While the concluding, ‘mystical’ remarks in his early work, the Tractatus, are notorious, we find only a single allusion to theology in his magnum opus, the Philosophical Investigations, posthumously published in 1953. Wittgenstein’s mature views on the nature of religious belief must therefore be pieced together from scattered remarks made in his notebo…Read more
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16In this paper I examine the connection between religious belief, despair and gender in Kierkegaard's Sickness unto Death and Fear and Trembling. I argue that despite Kierkegaard's abhorrent gender stereotyping, his concept of 'masculine despair' and its more extreme manifestation - the demonic - can be read ironically as a reductio ad absurdum of traditional 'male' virtues: pride, autonomy and dignity. That is to say, although the demonic is, according to Kierkegaard, the exact mirror-image of f…Read more
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4Transzendentale Argumentation und SkeptizismusLang. 2000.Die Arbeit veranschaulicht anhand der Argumente von Kant, Strawson und Davidson, daß vier Kriterien für Transzendentalität identifiziert werden können: ein Reductio des skeptischen Zweifels, die Ablehnung einer Schema/Inhalt-Distinktion, die Etablierung einer transzendentalen Präsupposition sowie eine holistische Vorgehensweise. Das Ziel transzendentaler Argumentation ist, darzulegen, daß der skeptische Zweifel entweder lösbar oder nicht kohärent formulierbar ist. Es wird gezeigt, daß transzende…Read more
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3Worlds or Words Apart? Wittgenstein on Understanding Religious LanguageIn John Preston (ed.), Wittgenstein and Reason, Wiley-blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: I II.
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3‘Resolution’ – an Illusion of Sense?In Volker Munz (ed.), Essays on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, De Gruyter. pp. 169-184. 2010.
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23Scepticism About Scepticism or the Very Idea of a Global ‘Vat-Language’Topoi 42 (1): 91-105. 2023.This paper aims to motivate a scepticism about scepticism in contemporary epistemology. I present the sceptic with a dilemma: On one parsing of the BIV (brain-in-a-vat) scenario, the second premise in a closure-based sceptical argument will turn out false, because the scenario is refutable; on another parsing, the scenario collapses into incoherence, because the sceptic cannot even save the appearances. I discuss three different ways of cashing out the BIV scenario: ‘Recent Envatment’ (RE), ‘Lif…Read more
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26Introspective DistinguishabilityMidwest Studies in Philosophy 45 241-256. 2021.It is generally thought that if introspective distinguishability were available, it would provide an answer to scepticism about perceptual knowledge by enabling us to tell the difference between a good case perceptual experience and a bad kind. This paper challenges this common assumption by showing that even if ID were available, it would not advance our case against scepticism. The conclusion to draw from this result is not to concede to scepticism, however, but rather to give up on the idea t…Read more
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67Précis of The Illusion of DoubtInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1-6. forthcoming.The Illusion of Doubt shows that radical scepticism is an illusion generated by a Cartesian picture of our evidential situation—the view that my epistemic grounds in both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ cases must be the same. It is this picture which issues both a standing invitation to radical scepticism and ensures that there is no way of getting out of it while agreeing to the sceptic’s terms. The sceptical problem cannot, therefore, be answered ‘directly’. Rather, the assumptions that give rise to…Read more
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49Response to CriticsInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1-17. forthcoming.In this paper I respond to the objections and comments made by Ranalli, Williams, and Moyal-Sharrock, participants in a symposium on my book on scepticism called The Illusion of Doubt.
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32IntroductionInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9 (3): 179-182. 2019.This introduction provides an overview of the content of the papers published in the special issue on epistemic vice and forms of scepticism.
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66Epistemic Angst, Intellectual Courage and Radical ScepticismInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9 (3): 206-222. 2019.The overarching aim of this paper is to persuade the reader that radical scepticism is driven less by independently plausible arguments and more by a fear of epistemic limitation which can be overcome. By developing the Kierkegaardian insight that knowledge requires courage, I show that we are not, as potential knowers, just passive recipients of a passing show of putatively veridical information, we also actively need to put ourselves in the way of it by learning to resist certain forms of epis…Read more
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37The aesthetic as mirror of faith in Kierkegaard's Fear and TremblingEuropean Journal of Philosophy 27 (3): 661-674. 2019.One of the most intractable issues in Kierkegaard scholarship continues to be the question of what one is to make of the relation between infinite resignation and faith in Fear and Trembling. Most commentators follow Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author in claiming that progression to faith is a “linear” process that requires infinite resignation as a first step. The problem with such a reading is that it leads to paradox: It seems to require attributing to the “knight of faith” two inconsistent be…Read more
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20How Threatening are Local Sceptical Scenarios?Wittgenstein-Studien 10 (1): 261-278. 2019.In this paper I distinguish between ‘local’ and ‘global’ forms of ‘envatment’. I show that recent envatment arguments work similarly to arguments from perceptual illusion and that neither of them are able, by themselves, to get us ‘global’ scepticism. Consequently, motivating the radical sceptical idea that all of our perceptual beliefs might be false is harder than it looks.
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28‘Meaning-dawning’ in Wittgenstein’s Notebooks: a Kierkegaardian reading and critiqueBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (3): 540-556. 2018.ABSTRACTIn this paper, I am going to propose a new reading of Wittgenstein’s cryptic talk of ‘accession or loss of meaning’ in the Notebooks that draws both on Wittgenstein’s later work on aspect-perception, as well as on the thoughts of a thinker whom Wittgenstein greatly admired: Søren Kierkegaard. I will then go on to argue that, its merits apart, there is something existentially problematic about the conception that Wittgenstein is advocating. For the renunciation of the comforts of the worl…Read more
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33Beliefs-in-a-VatProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 117 (2): 141-161. 2017.The over-arching claim that I intend to defend in this paper is that while widespread ‘local’ error is conceivable, we cannot, in the end, make sense of the radical sceptical idea that all our perceptual beliefs might be false – that no one has, as it were, ever been in touch with an ‘external world’ at all. To this end, I will show that an asymmetry exists between ‘local’ and ‘global’ sceptical scenarios, such that the possibility of ‘local’ error does not imply that ‘global’ error must also be…Read more
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14RupertRead and Matthew A.Lavery (eds.), Beyond the Tractatus Wars: The New Wittgenstein Debate (New York: Routledge, 2011). xi + 200, price £24.99 pb (review)Philosophical Investigations 36 (1): 83-87. 2013.
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6Vom Zweifel zur Verzweiflung: Grundbegriffe der Existenzphilosophie Sören Kierkegaards (review)European Journal of Philosophy 12 (1): 145-148. 2004.Books Reviewed:Kristin Kaufmann,Annemarie Pieper, Søren Kierkegaard.
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41Vom Zweifel zur verzweiflung: Grundbegriffe der existenzphilosophie sören kierkegaardsEuropean Journal of Philosophy 12 (1). 2004.Books Reviewed:Kristin Kaufmann,Annemarie Pieper, Søren Kierkegaard
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73McDowellian Neo-Mooreanism?International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3 (3): 202-217. 2013.In a series of recent articles, Duncan Pritchard argues for a ‘neo-Moorean’ interpretation of John McDowell’s anti-sceptical strategy. Pritchard introduces a distinction between ‘favouring’ and ‘discriminating’ epistemic grounds in order to show that within the radical sceptical context an absence of ‘discriminating’ epistemic grounds allowing one to distinguish brain-in-a-vat from non-brain-in-a-vat scenarios does not preclude possessing knowledge of the denials of sceptical hypotheses. I argue…Read more
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63A confusion of the spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on philosophy and religionOxford University Press. 2007.As well as contributing to contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of the Spheres addresses issues which not ...
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657Wittgenstein and the ’Factorization Model’ of Religious BeliefEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6 (1): 93--110. 2014.In the contemporary literature Wittgenstein has variously been labelled a fideist, a non-cognitivist and a relativist of sorts. The underlying motivation for these attributions seems to be the thought that the content of a belief can clearly be separated from the attitude taken towards it. Such a ”factorization model’ which construes religious beliefs as consisting of two independent ”factors’ -- the belief’s content and the belief-attitude -- appears to be behind the idea that one could, for ex…Read more
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11True, but Inexpressible? Wittgenstein and ‘McDowellian Neo-Mooreanism’In David Wagner, Wolfram Pichler, Elisabeth Nemeth & Richard Heinrich (eds.), Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society - N.S. 17, De Gruyter. pp. 163-176. 2011.
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264It is the object of this paper to investigate the parallels discernible between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings. While such attempts have, in the past, generally focussed on either trying to show that Kierkegaard’s notion of paradox is similar to Wittgenstein’s concept of the ineffable or that both thinkers seek to undermine the idea that there are things that cannot be put into words, I argue here that we must look for the affinities between the two philosophers…Read more
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79Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy: Essays for P.M.S. Hacker * EDITED BY Hans-Johann Glock and John Hyman (review)Analysis 70 (2): 379-381. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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283No New KierkegaardInternational Philosophical Quarterly 44 (4): 519-534. 2004.The aim of this paper is to contest an infl uential recent reading of one of Kierkegaard’s most important books, the pseudonymously written Concluding Unscientific Postscript. According to the reading offered by James Conant, the Postscript is an “elaborate reductio” of the very philosophical project in which it itself appears to be engaged, namely, the project of attempting to clarify the nature of Christianity. I show that Conant’s position depends upon four inter-related theses concerning Kie…Read more
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484A “resolute” later Wittgenstein?Metaphilosophy 41 (5): 649-668. 2010.Abstract: “Resolute readings” initially started life as a radical new approach to Wittgenstein's early philosophy, but are now starting to take root as a way of interpreting the later writings as well—a trend exemplified by Stephen Mulhall's Wittgenstein's Private Language (2007) as well as by Phil Hutchinson's “What's the Point of Elucidation?” (2007) and Rom Harré's “Grammatical Therapy and the Third Wittgenstein” (2008). The present article shows that there are neither good philosophical nor …Read more
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20th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
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Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Religion |
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20th Century Philosophy |
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