This book considers the important twentieth century Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his conception of certainty.
In his work entitled
On Certainty
, Wittgenstein provides not only a brilliant solution to a previously intractable philosophical problem, but also the elements of an entirely new way of approaching this and similar longstanding, apparently unresolvable, problems. In
, he re-conceives the problem of
radical skepticism
–the claim that we can never really be certain of anything except the contents of our own minds–as a kind of philosophical “disease” of thought. His approach to the problem, which is emphasized in the book, is similar to the treatment of disease, has two main goals: (1) bring about an awareness in the philosopher that this kind of extreme skepticism is not a methodological approach to be taken seriously, and, with this awareness, (2) an attempt to replace this radical skepticism with a practical, Common Sense framework. Implicit in Wittgenstein’s approach are a number of strategies found in a contemporary approach to psychotherapy known as
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
. These strategies, along with philosophical methods and scientific practices rooted in the
Scottish School of Common Sense
, seek to diagnose and treat irrational thoughts and beliefs that often emerge (and re-emerge) in the discipline of philosophy.
The aim of this book, then, is to provide students of philosophy with the tools necessary to adjust and reshape these irrational, self-defeating thoughts and beliefs into something new, something healthy.