Wittgenstein’s Refutation Of Skepticism

Skepticism has always had an important place in Western philosophy.Skeptics are not afraid of authority and dare to challenge the powerful,and this skeptical spirit of theirs has to some extent contributed to the progress and development of philosophical research,but some skeptics have pushed skepticism to the extreme,arguing that we cannot find an absolute certainty as the basis of our cognition,denying the possibility of people gaining knowledge and knowing the world correctly possibility.Wittgenstein was extremely concerned with the problem of skepticism,and in both his early and later thought,he refuted it,but in different ways.In the early period,Wittgenstein tried to dismantle skepticism through a logical analysis of language and by drawing boundaries between his ideas,but because his refutation of skepticism was so brief and because it was so difficult to find arguments in the original text to support his thesis,scholars could easily misunderstand Wittgenstein’s original ideas when they interpreted them.Later,Wittgenstein realized this,and at the same time,he realized that a logical analysis of language would not solve the confusion caused by traditional metaphysics in the way he had hoped.Thus,he abandoned the logical analysis he had previously maintained and turned to the study of grammar.On Certainty is an important source of research for Wittgenstein’s later ideas refuting skepticism.In this book,Wittgenstein starts with Moore’s famous argument against skepticism,"Here is a hand",and demonstrates the invalidity of this argument through a grammatical analysis of the expression "I know".Wittgenstein then gives his own rebuttal to skepticism,but his main purpose is not to refute skepticism,but to clarify the use of "doubt" and try to give criteria for its correct use.Wittgenstein’s refutation of skepticism has caused a huge impact on skepticism and has attracted a large number of scholars to study his ideas in depth.This is because some of Wittgenstein’s views are closely related to skepticism,and this has led some scholars to regard him as a sceptic,among them,a very representative scholar is Kripke,who believes that Wittgenstein’s arguments contain skeptical ideas,but this view of his has also caused a lot of controversy,many scholars think that Kripke misunderstands Wittgenstein’s ideas,and give their own views from different perspectives.The view of Kripke This analysis leads us to conclude that Wittgenstein was not a sceptic,but that he only occasionally used skepticism to correct long-standing misconceived patterns of thought and to establish the correct usage of words.