My purpose in this article is to provide a reconstruction of the mechanics of philosophical analysis that Wittgenstein carried out in “On Certainty”. I will show that this analysis is based, specifically, on an appeal to a wide propositional typology that serves to evaluate and diagnose Moore’s propositions. To this end, I shall first explain how common readings of the methodological issues in “On Certainty” fail. Secondly, I focus on the mechanics of analysis found in paragraphs 1-65, specifically the analysis (...) of three sentences: “There are physical objects”, “I know that there is a hand here” and “here the mistake is impossible”. Thirdly, I proceed to identify different stages of the method and justify in what sense the strategic core of such research is the table of propositional typologies. (shrink)

Questions about the possibility of thought as an activity directed to reality, are deeper than those concerning the possibility of knowledge. These deeper questions have found intuitive expression in the Agrippan Trilemma, particularly in the trope of arbitrary presupposition. This trope can be raised as a criticism of current varieties of hinge epistemology inspired by Wittgenstein, mainly by virtue of the fact that Wittgensteinian hinges are foundational principles governing our epistemic practice. As such, they are necessarily unsupportable, being thus dificult (...) to see how it would be possible to conciliate the hinges’ lack of support with their being not bare, arbitrary assertions. Facing up to this challenge, hinge epistemologists have proposed practical --though not pragmatic-- arguments according to which hinges are either postulates legitimately demanded to every epistemic agent or rules constitutive of quotidian practices. It is the aim of this article to show that practical arguments for hinges fall short, necessarily so. (shrink)