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5 - Political authority and skepticism

from Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

Jonathan Havercroft
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma
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Summary

Introduction

In this chapter I examine the connection between skepticism and sovereignty from a different perspective: the critiques of skeptical arguments that were developed in the middle of the twentieth century by philosophers of ordinary language such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Stanley Cavell. Their work responded to the skeptical arguments that dominated modern philosophy by arguing that the force of skepticism resulted from the tendency of philosophers to abstract their concepts from their ordinary and everyday uses. Skeptical arguments often imagine situations that might arise in order to illustrate the uncertainty about a given truth claim. The ordinary language philosophers respond to skeptical arguments by assembling reminders of everyday conversations where skeptical problems might arise. In these ordinary conversations people have recourse to a set of background assumptions that make specific truth claims intelligible. For instance, a skeptic might argue that because our senses deceive us, we cannot use our senses to prove the existence of the world. The ordinary language philosophers reply that skeptical arguments such as these abstract a problem that might arise in a particular case – such as a mirage or an optical illusion – and then generalize the problem. However, if one considers actual cases where concerns about sensory perception might arise, then what is at stake in these situations is not whether or not the world exists, but our ability to trust our senses in a particular instance. Furthermore, we often have recourse to other resources – such as changing our perspective or touching the object in question – in order to overcome our doubt.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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