Knowledge and Human Nature: Wittgenstein's Naturalizing of Epistemology

Indrani Bhattacharya

Abstract: I argue that Wittgenstein's remarks concerning the practices of human enquiry in On Certainty contain a naturalistic view of epistemic norms. The norms by which an agent is said to know, be certain of, or doubt a proposition are not grounded in reason but instead are products of human nature, where 'human nature' is understood as including both biological and socially modified elements. I show that this interpretation of the main lines of argument in the text sheds light on Wittgenstein's criticism of the internalist model of justification presupposed by Moore and the external world (or radical) skeptic. Furthermore, I explain the relationship between Wittgenstein's naturalism and his preferred method of doing philosophy (in this case epistemology) through "perspicuous  representations" of (epistemic) language-games.