Abstract
This chapter builds on the conclusions of Chap. 5, that our grasp of concepts depends on our mastery of a social practice, and develops them more fully to argue that reason and knowledge are grounded in social practice. I argue that any notion of reason seen to involve an appeal to, or to depend on, the consultation of a ‘real rule’ or a ‘rule itself’ leads to an infinite regress. This regress can only be stopped by seeing the consulting of rules as bottoming out in the tacit grasp of how to perform appropriately in social space. I also argue that knowledge more broadly is a social practice; it is something that we do. As such, the epistemological sceptic’s attempt to detach himself from the world of practice, and to bring everything he believes and everything that he does before himself as a theoretical object requiring justification, is in principle incoherent. By this point I take the account of rational progress discussed in Chap. 2 to be more fully justified, and I take the notion of a disengaged rational agent to have been shown to be false.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Winch (2003), 54.
- 2.
Descartes (1996a), 28.
- 3.
A statement of his conception of reason can be found in Sections II, III and IV of Hume (2007).
- 4.
Winch (2003), 54.
- 5.
For Ryle’s deployment of this term in relation to ‘Ryle’s regress’ which I will be discussing here, see Ryle (2000), 28–32.
- 6.
Carroll (1895), 278.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Wittgenstein (2001), 23.
- 9.
Tanney (2013), 89.
- 10.
Ibid., 90.
- 11.
Ibid., 90.
- 12.
Ibid., 93.
- 13.
Ibid., 94.
- 14.
Taylor (1997), 166.
- 15.
‘This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. … What this shews is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call “obeying the rule” and “going against it” in actual cases … we ought to restrict the term “interpretation” to the substitution of one expression of the rule for another .’ Wittgenstein (2001), 69.
- 16.
Tanney (2013), 96.
- 17.
Ryle (2000), 31.
- 18.
Ryle applies his regress argument to this sort of case in section III of Ryle (2009).
- 19.
Taylor (1997), 177.
- 20.
Winch (2003), 57.
- 21.
McGinn (1989).
- 22.
Ibid., 3.
- 23.
Ibid., 3.
- 24.
Ibid., 4.
- 25.
McGinn covers responses offered by B. Stroud, G.E. Moore, J.L. Austin and S. Cavell, which all involve simply asserting common sense knowledge, or the validity of those framework judgements, over and against the sceptics’ demand for justification. See Stroud (1984), Moore (2013), Austin (1961a, b, 1962) and Cavell (1979).
- 26.
Moore (2013).
- 27.
McGinn (1989), 42.
- 28.
Ibid., 46, quoting Moore (2014), 160.
- 29.
McGinn (1989), 103.
- 30.
Ibid., 103.
- 31.
See sections 80 and 81 of Wittgenstein (1972).
- 32.
McGinn (1989), 134.
- 33.
Mulhall (1996), 96.
- 34.
Descartes (1996b), 96.
Bibliography
Austin, J.L. 1961a. Other Minds. In Philosophical Papers, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1961b. A Plea for Excuses. In Philosophical Papers, 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1962. Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Braver, Lee. 2012. Groundless Grounds. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Carroll, Lewis. 1895. What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. Mind 4 (14): 278.
Cavell, S. 1979. The Claim of Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Descartes, René. 1996a. In Meditations on First Philosophy, ed. John Cottingham, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1996b. Objections and replies. In Meditations on First Philosophy, ed. John Cottingham, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hume, David. 2007. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Millican. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McGinn, Marie. 1989. Sense and Certainty. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Moore, G.E. 2013. Proof of an External World. In Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Routledge.
———. 2014. Hume’s Philosophy. In Philosophical Studies. Oxford: Routledge.
Mulhall, Stephen. 1996. Heidegger and Being and Time. London: Routledge.
Ryle, Gilbert. 2000. The Concept of Mind. London: Penguin Books.
———. 2009. Why Are the Calculuses of Logic and Arithmetic Applicable to Reality? In Collected Essays 1929–1968, 2nd ed. Oxford: Routledge.
Stroud, B. 1984. The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tanney, Julia. 2013. Real Rules. In Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 1997. To Follow a Rule. In Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Winch, Peter. 2003. The Idea of a Social Science. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1972. In On Certainty, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. Wright. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
———. 2001. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. 3rd ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Whittingham, M. (2018). The Ground of Reason and Knowledge. In: The Self and Social Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77246-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77246-2_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77245-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77246-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)