An epistemologist tells you that knowledge is more than justified true belief. You trust them and thus come to believe this on the basis of their testimony. Did you thereby come to know that this view is correct? Intuitively, there is something intellectually wrong with forming philosophical beliefs on the basis of testimony, and yet it's hard to see why philosophy should be significantly epistemically different from other areas of inquiry in a way that would fully prohibit belief by testimony. (...) This, I argue, is the puzzle of philosophical testimony. In this paper, I explore the puzzle of philosophical testimony and its ramifications. In particular, I examine the case for pessimism about philosophical testimony—the thesis that philosophical belief on the basis of testimony is impossible or is in some way illegitimate—and I argue that it lacks adequate support. I then consider whether the source of the apparent intellectual wrongness of testimonial‐based philosophical belief is grounded in non‐epistemic norms and goals of philosophical practice itself and argue that such norms are implausible, don't conflict with testimonial‐based philosophical belief, or else are mere disciplinary norms, lacking substantial normative force that would make it wrong to form testimonial‐based philosophical belief. (shrink)

The paper develops and addresses a major challenge for therapeutic conceptions of philosophy of the sort increasingly attributed to Wittgenstein. To be substantive and relevant, such conceptions have to identify “diseases of the understanding” from which philosophers suffer, and to explain why these “diseases” need to be cured in order to resolve or overcome important philosophical problems. The paper addresses this challenge in three steps: With the help of findings and concepts from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, it redevelops the (...) Wittgensteinian notion of “philosophical pictures.” Through a case study on seminal versions of familiar mind-body problems, it examines how such pictures shape philosophical reflection and generate ill-motivated but captivating problems. Third, it shows that philosophical pictures are constitutive of “diseases of the understanding,” in a quite strict sense of the term. On this basis, the paper explains when and why philosophical therapy is required. (shrink)

In the scholarship on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of mathematics, the dominant interpretation is a theoretical one that ascribes to Wittgenstein some type of ‘ism’ such as radical verificationism or anti-realism. Essentially, he is supposed to provide a positive account of our mathematical practice based on some basic assertions. However, I claim that he should not be read in terms of any ‘ism’ but instead should be read as examining philosophical pictures in the sense of unclear conceptions. The contrast here is (...) that basic assertions that frame philosophical ‘isms’ are propositional such that they are subject to normal argumentative evaluation, while pictures in Wittgenstein’s sense are non-propositional—they lack a clear truth condition. They, therefore, need clarification rather than argumentation. In this paper, I provide a detailed analysis of Wittgenstein’s treatment of philosophical pictures with special focus on his argument on contradiction. I begin by explaining the problem with this trend of theoretical interpretation, taking Steve Gerrard’s otherwise excellent interpretation as a representative example and pointing out why it is problematic. Next, I will argue that those problems do not arise if we take Wittgenstein’s task as the clarification of philosophical pictures. I do this, first, by explaining Wittgenstein’s method using his argument concerning the Augustinian Picture in Philosophical Investigations and then pointing out that the same method can be identified in the crucial arguments in his philosophy of mathematics. Finally, in order to connect my interpretation with the current scholarship, I will explain the relation of my interpretation with those of New Wittgensteinian scholars. (shrink)