Doubt Presupposes Certainty
“If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.” This is perhaps the most devastating critique of Cartesian skepticism ever formulated. Descartes attempted to doubt everything to find an indubitable foundation — but Wittgenstein shows this is structurally impossible. Doubt is not a freestanding activity. To doubt X, you must hold Y fixed. To doubt Y, you must hold Z fixed. The “game of doubting” requires pieces that don’t move. There is no view from nowhere, no Archimedean point from which all can be questioned. ...