Epistemic Practices-
A Reply to William Wainwright
The differences between William Wainwright and
myself concerning epistemic practices are not periph-
eral. 1 If we say that the central question of epistemology
is whether we can have any contact with reality, it has
to be said that we differ, not only on how the question
is to be answered, but about the kind of question it is.
It is a difference which affects o n e ' s conception of
philosophical enquiry.
Since Descartes, many epistemologists have seen
their primary task to be that of combatting scepticism.
As we know, Descartes searches for a general method
which will guarantee truth concerning the world around
us. Are there any general principles that can be relied
on? Prominent among these is belief in the reliability of
the senses. Barry Stroud has brought out how central
the senses are in our lives by reflecting on what sensory
deprivation involves. 2 He imagines someone born deaf
and blind, without taste buds or a sense of smell. If this
person were deprived of a sense of touch as well, we
might wonder whether we are left with enough to speak
of a human organism at all. Yet, despite the extent of
our dependence on the senses, philosophers, including
Descartes, have said that they cannot be relied on.
Stroud points out, however, that Descartes's doubts con-
cerning the senses do not depend on the fact that
they mislead us in certain circumstances. Descartes is
as aware as anyone that these circumstances are
unfavourable. These are not the circumstances in which
Descartes doubts the senses. As Stroud says, when
Descartes has his doubts, he "is sitting in a warm room,
by the fire, in a dressing-gown, with a piece of paper
in his hand" (p. 9). How can he doubt this? Certainly
not by generalizing from unfavourable cases. He has
chosen to doubt what he regards as the best case. If we
do not have knowledge here, we do not have it
anywhere. At first, Descartes says that to doubt all this
Topoi 14: 95-105, 1995.
© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
D. Z. Phillips
"would be no less mad than those paupers who say they
are kings or those madmen who think they are pumpkins
or are made of glass" (p. 11). But, then, Descartes intro-
duces his Dream Argument.
At the same time I must remember that I am a man, and that con-
sequently I am in the habit of sleeping, and in my dreams repre-
senting to myself the same things or sometimes even less probable
things, than do those who are insane in their waking moments.
How often has it happened to me that in the night I dreamt that
I found myself in this particular place, that I was dressed and
seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressed in bed!
At this moment it does indeed seem to me that it is with eyes
awake that I am looking at this paper; that this head which I move
is not asleep, that it is deliberately and of set purpose that I extend
my hand and perceive it; what happens in sleep does not appear
so clear nor so distinct as does all this. But in thinking over this
I remind myself that on many occasions I have in sleep been
deceived by similar illusions, and in dwelling carefully on this
reflection I see so manifestly that there are no certain indications
by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep that
I am lost in astonishment. And my astonishment is such that it is
almost capable of persuading me that I now dream (quoted on
p. 11).
As a result of this argument, all experiences become
"as if" experiences. Stroud says: "With this thought, if
he is right, Descartes has lost the whole world" (p. 11).
He says that the Dream Argument gives rise to three
questions which, if pursued, reveal the depth of the
argument. First, is the possibility that he might be
dreaming a real threat? Second, must he know that he
is not dreaming before he can know anything about the
external world? Third, is he right in thinking that he can
never know that he is not dreaming? If Descartes is
wrong about any of these questions, the sceptical chal-
lenge may be avoided.
Consider the first question: Is the possibility that he
might be dreaming a real threat? Stroud agrees that if
Descartes dreams that he is sitting by the fire, etc, he
does not k n o w that he is sitting by the fire, even if this
is the case. It would be a mere coincidence, not a case
96 D. Z. PHILLIPS
of knowledge. Stroud says: "He would be like a certain
Duke of Devonshire who, according to G. E. Moore,
once dreamt that he was speaking in the House of Lords
and woke up to find that he was speaking in the House
of Lords" (pp. 14-15). A banging shutter might cause
me to dream of a banging shutter, but I still would not
know that the shutter is banging. The dream does not
help me in knowing what is going on in the world.
There are cases where Stroud does not think that
there is any incompatibility between "dreaming" and
"knowing". He argues that if I dream that seven times
nine equals sixty-three, I both dream it and know it. It
seems to me that in this case, too, Stroud should ask
how "calculating", knowing something, enters human
life, and whether this can ever be equated with
dreaming. But, in any case, Stroud does not think that
such examples affect the main thrust of Descartes's
argument, since the dreamer does not know that he is
dreaming that seven times nine equals sixty-three, and
so does not know that there is a difference between what
is the case and dreaming about what happens to be the
case.
But Stroud also thinks that the whole argument to this
point has been too hasty. It ignores Descartes's main
challenge: to show that a person who is awake does
know that seven times nine equals sixty-three, given that
he does not know that he is not dreaming. This raises
the third of the three questions mentioned: Is he right
in thinking that he can never know that he is not
dreaming? Descartes appeals to actual deceptions which
have occurred, but all he needs is the possibility of
deception, and the impossibility of eradicating it. Since
it seems that we can dream about any state of affairs,
it seems, too, that we must meet Descartes's challenge.
The most promising way of meeting it is to show that
we do know that we are not dreaming.
Stroud argues that this straightforward attempt to
refute Descartes is a total failure. The trouble with it is
that it accepts Descartes's challenge on its own terms.
Once we do this, Stroud argues, Descartes cannot be
refuted. Stroud is not saying that we should conclude
that we do not know that we are not dreaming. He is
insisting that we must face the following choice: either
to accept that we do not know that we are not dreaming,
or to reject the condition of Descartes's challenge. The
straightforward response to Descartes is to say that we
can know that we are not dreaming, and this denies both
alternatives in the choice Stroud says we must face.
The straightforward response denies that we do
not know that we are not dreaming, but it accepts
Descartes's condition, the condition expressed in the
second of the three questions: Must we know that we
are not dreaming before we can know anything about
the world? In order to meet this condition we would
need an external test for our experiences. But how could
we have such a test if, in order to know anything, we
must know that we are not dreaming? Stroud asks us
to imagine that we actually had a test or an experience
which we can have only if we are not dreaming. But
this is something we would need to know. Then, once
again, in order to know that, one would have to
know that one was not dreaming. After all, we could
dream that we had the test, and that we had applied it
successfully.
In Descartes's challenge, Stroud argues, anything that
goes beyond experience requires that we know, with
respect to it, that we are not dreaming. As we have
noted, Stroud says that Descartes loses the whole world
in the Dream Argument. All experiences become "as-
if" experiences. I want to suggest that the world seems
lost in Descartes's argument only because it is forgotten
in it. One of the ways in which it is forgotten is
by Descartes's and Stroud's use of "experience".
"Experience" is spoken of in an atomistic way, hence
the naturalness of speaking of "going beyond it". But
the strain in this way of speaking becomes evident if we
emphasize the contexts in which we have experiences
and speak of them; their place in the world which is con-
stitutive of what it is to have experiences of that kind.
In discussing the difference between feeling depressed,
and dreaming that we feel depressed, we would be dis-
cussing the different contexts the feeling and the dream
occupy in our world. We would not be starting with two
experiences, atomistically conceived, cut off from any
context, for which we have to provide one of two com-
peting labels, "feeling depressed" or "dreaming that one
feels depressed."
The so-called experiences must be cut off from their
normal contexts, since the challenge could be said to
be that of knowing which context they occur in, dreams
or waking life.
Of course, Stroud argues that Descartes's argument
is invulnerable only if we accept his condition for
knowledge of the external world. The condition,
expressed in the second question, is the question which,
Stroud says, receives least attention: Must we know that
we are not dreaming before we can know anything about
the external world? But Stroud says that it looks as
 EPISTEMIC PRACTICES - A REPLY TO WILLIAM WAINWRIGHT
though Descartes's condition is a reasonable one, an
extension from more familiar cases. I know x if I know
it isn't y. I know it's a goldfinch if I can rule out that
it's a canary. Descartes's condition must be satisfied if
we accept, as a general condition, that to know p is to
know the falsity of anything incompatible with p. Since
"dreaming" is incompatible with "knowing", it seems
to follow that I can know p only if I know that I am
not dreaming.
Stroud outlines the consequences of failing to refute
Descartes's arguments as they stand at the end of the
First Meditation. It is important to note that Stroud's
account relies on the atomistic conception of experience
already noted, with its problematic separation of expe-
riences from the place they occupy in the world. If
Descartes is right, Stroud argues, we are confined to our
sensory experiences. We cannot get beyond them to see
how things are. We cannot know whether we are sitting
at a fire or merely dreaming about it. Confined to
our own ideas, the world is beyond our grasp. The
veil of sensory experience comes between us and the
world. Stroud compares the situation to being in a
room full of TV screens with no way of knowing
whether the pictures which appear do tell us anything
about reality.
Stroud argues that, faced by the consequences of
Descartes's arguments, many feel a sense of frustration
at not being able to meet his challenge. This frustration
leads to a number of responses to the challenge which
Stroud regards as premature. Despite the extreme fate
of a life behind the bars of our sensory experience, one
cannot help but notice that it has no practical con-
sequences in our lives. So why not settle for our
experiences as they are, without attempting to meet
Descartes's challenge? The rejection of the challenge
may take a strong form. Because of the lack of any prac-
tical consequences, some have argued that Descartes's
spectre of an inaccessible reality, a reality we can never
know, is nothing but a philosophical contrivance. The
Dream Argument is not, after all, an extension of our
ordinary investigations. On the contrary, by misplaced
reflections on these investigations, it is said, an esoteric
use of "know" is postulated. Stroud does not accept this
view. He argues that Descartes reaches his conclusions
by reflecting on ordinary uses of "know", not by
inventing an esoteric use. But if this is so, others ask,
why should we not settle for uncertainty? Stroud asks,
however, whether we can really accept the restrictive
picture Descartes leaves us with: I am not simply cut
97
off from a world of thinking and acting, but also have
no grounds for thinking that there are other human
beings. Stroud concludes, then, that the consequences
of accepting Descartes's conclusions are disastrous.
We need to remind ourselves that these reactions to
Descartes - settling for our experiences - settling for
uncertainty - dismissing the challenge as a philosoph-
ical contrivance - are all regarded as premature by
Stroud. He does not think they go deep enough. On the
other hand, he has to take account of our natural reaction
in finding Descartes's conclusions absurd. Stroud does
not want to discourage this reaction, as long as we
locate, accurately, the source and nature of the absur-
dity. He believes that reflecting on scepticism should
lead us to a deeper understanding of human knowledge
and of the world in which we live (ix).
I agree with this point of view, but I do not think
Stroud would be happy with the direction in which I
think this deeper understanding is to be found. His
argument, of course, advances throughout his book,
but, for present purposes, I want to stay with the
conclusions of his first chapter. Like Stroud, I, too
think that Descartes's condition must be rejected: we do
not have to know that we are not dreaming in order to
know anything in the world. Stroud and I probably
differ on what rejecting Descartes's condition amounts
to.
What does accepting Descartes's condition involve?
As we have seen, it involves going beyond our experi-
ences, atomistically understood, in the search for a cri-
terion which would show us that we are not dreaming.
The problem is that any criterion chosen, for example,
some qualitative feature of a waking experience, must
itself be known. But in order for it to be known, we
must know that we are not dreaming.
If, on the other hand, we think of experiences in the
contexts in which they have their sense, the places our
dreams and experiences have in the stream of life, then,
to ask after noting all this, how we know whether we
are dreaming or awake, is to ask how we know that we
are in the world. We are asked of our being in the world,
"How do you know it isn't all a dream?" To be the kind
of "knower" who could answer the question is, per
impossible, to take up a position outside the world. That
is why I said that Descartes's Dream Argument loses
the whole world only because it is prepared to forget
it. The metaphysical move loses the world by denying
it.
We can now see the understanding to be reached by
98 D.Z.
reflecting on Descartes's sceptical challenge, a deeper
understanding of human knowledge and of the world
in which we live. That deeper understanding is the
realization that our being in the world is not based on
a foundation o f knowledge which is logically prior to
it. We do not have to know that we are not dreaming in
order to speak of our being in the world. Our being in
the world does not wait on the kind of verdict Descartes
would have us make as to whether it is all a dream or
not. Rather, it is in the context of our being in the world
that distinctions between knowledge and ignorance,
dreams and waking life, have their sense. Further, if our
being in the world is not an item of knowledge, a radical
disruption of it cannot be described as a lack of knowl-
edge, a mistake, or a state of ignorance. If we think of
this disruption which exercised Descartes, not in the
context of how his theoretical speculations developed,
but as an actuality, we have to think of someone
who lives in a twilight existence, hopelessly confused
between dreams and waking life. Descartes's first reac-
tions were right after all: such a person would be in a
state of madness. What Descartes did not conclude is
that such a state needs, in order to be relieved, not the
provision of knowledge and the correction of a mistake,
but the provision of treatment and restoration to a nor-
mality in which dreams, awakenings, knowledge and
belief, correct observations and mistakes, can be shared
with the rest of us. "Being in the world" remains an item
of knowledge for Descartes, hence his later need of a
proof of God's existence to guarantee that we know it.
But since we have to know that the proof works his
solution has a hopeless circularity. Seeing that "our
being in the world" is a given, may not only be a more
promising beginning for those who react religiously to
it, but also a more promising beginning for an appreci-
ation of a wonder which can play a fundamental role
in philosophical enquiry:
Perhaps it is that thinking about the notions of reality and of
understanding leads one constantly to the threshold of questioning
the possibility of understanding at all, and to wonder at the pos-
sibility of understanding.3 . . . Puzzlement or uncertainty about
the distinction between intelligibility and unintelligibility.
Puzzlement about what it is that makes it possible to understand
anything at all. Trying to find the ultimate ground or ultimate
reason for everything. . . . What is it to seek understanding? What
would it be to lose understanding? (Why have so many said that
our understanding is imperfect or incomplete or impure?) The
feeling that we ought to be able to understand why language is
the way it is: that we ought to be able to understand the princi-
ples of language. Thought trying to catch its own tail:
PHILLIPS
II
I have chosen to begin with Descartes's Dream
Argument because I believe it has illuminating con-
nections with Wainwright's treatment of epistemic
practices. For "experience" in Stroud's chapter, read
"epistemic practice" in Wainwright's paper. For any
"experience" Descartes wants to ask how we know it
is not a dream. For any "epistemic practice" Wainwright
wants to ask how it informs us about "how things are".
In each case an epistemological wedge is driven
between us and our being in the world. In the former
case, "experiences" wait the verdict on whether they are
dreams or not. In the latter case, "epistemic practices",
said to be "systems of belief", await the verdict on
whether or not they are true of ultimate reality.
Here are some examples of Wainwright writing in the
way I have depicted: "Conceptions of how the world is
should be distinguished from our conception that there
is a way the world is (independent of our practices). The
former may logically presuppose historically specific
epistemic and linguistic practices - Christian practices,
for example. The latter, however, does not" (p. 90). In
that case, Wainwright should be able to specify the sense
of "how things are" independently of "our being in the
world". This, of course, he cannot do. He says of the
conception of "how things are": "It is of course, a
human conception (What else could it be?)" (p. 90).
Unfortunately, Wainwright does not take his own inter-
jection seriously enough. Instead, he argues that the con-
ception of how things really are "isn't a conception
which is presupposed by only some epistemic and lin-
guistic practices and not others. It is presupposed by any
use of assertoric language" (p. 90).
It is essential to Wainwright's whole metaphysical
enterprise that epistemic practices are thought to be
systems of belief, uses of assertoric language. Since
he is criticising my arguments in Faith After Founda-
tionalism, 5 it is surprising that he ignores the arguments
I deploy there to show that treating epistemic practices
as systems of belief leads to deep confusions. I there-
fore repeat my arguments here, arguments in which
epistemic practices are not beliefs, but contexts in which
beliefs, true or false, are expressed and have their
sense.
Wittgenstein remarks: "It is what human beings say
that is true or false; and they agree in the language
they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form
of life. ''6 For example, our agreement concerning the
 EPISTEMIC PRACTICES - A REPLY TO WILLIAM
concept of pain makes possible true or false judgements
concerning whether so-and-so is in pain. If our judge-
ments are true, contact is made with reality. Thus, if
Harry is in pain, and I say, "Harry is in pain", I make
contact with reality. My judgement is correct. It is true
that Harry is in pain. But if I had made a false judge-
ment, if Harry was not in pain, the meaning of "being
in pain" has not changed. What enables such judgements
to have sense is our practice concerning the concept of
pain. That is the epistemic practice. It does not change
when we make mistaken judgements, otherwise we
would not understand that we had made a mistake. If
one wants to know how things are, in this example, the
answer is "Harry is in pain." But if one treats the epis-
temic practice as though it is itself a belief about reality,
then, as Peter Winch has shown, one is led into the
following difficulties:
If Tom believes that Harry is in pain and Dick that he is not, then,
in the ordinary sense of the word "belief", Tom and Dick have
different beliefs. But according to [the confused] way of speaking,
Tom and Dick, because they both speak the same language and
mean the same thing by the word "pain", share a common belief:
even though their descriptions of Harry are mutually contradic-
tory - indeed precisely because they are - they in a sense share
a c o m m o n belief about reality: perhaps that it contains such a
thing as pain. But if it is possible to affirm that there is such a
thing as pain, it might be possible to deny it too. The language
in which the denial is couched must be meaningful; and it must
mean the same as the language in which what is denied might be
affirmed, else the denial would not contradict the affirmation. So
to deny that there is such a thing as pain, I must mean by "pain"
just what someone who affirms that there is such a thing means
by "pain". Hence we are still both speaking the same language
and still, according to [the confused] way o f thinking, offering
the "same description of reality". 7
This is the result of giving in to what Winch calls
"the seductive idea that the grammar of our language
is itself the expression of a set of beliefs or theories
about how the world is, which might in principle be
justified or refuted by an examination of how the world
actually is. ''8 This idea of "how the world actually is"
is a philosophical chimera. It refers, not to a reality we
do not know, but to a conceptual confusion.
Wainwright cannot embrace these conclusions since
he is still in the grip of the seductive idea Winch refers
to. He asks:
But is the notion of the way things really are the notion of a Ding-
an-sich? Only if the way things really are is unknowable . . . . That
we can't step outside our practices to determine how things are
independent of our practices d o e s n ' t entail that we d o n ' t have a
WAINWRIGHT 99
way of finding out how things are independent of our practices
. . . For our religious or scientific practices may themselves be
ways of discovering how things really are and, if they are and
we employ them correctly, we know how things are (p. 90).
This makes it look as though I am speaking of some
kind of restriction: we are locked inside something
and we can't get out. Whether we can get out, for
Wainwright, depends on whether "how things are" is
knowable or unknowable, whereas I am questioning the
very intelligibility of this metaphysical notion of "how
things are". It is an unmeditated, context-free notion
lacking sense. I have tried to indicate some of the con-
ceptual routes by which this confused idea is arrived
at.
In the example we have considered, "how things are"
has a precise meaning. It refers to Harry's health. If we
want to know how things are with Harry, we are asking,
in our example, whether Harry is in pain or not. Within
our epistemic practice we give expression to our pains,
observe others in pain, wonder what acute sufferers are
going through, ease pains, cause pains, and so on. It is
in this, our epistemic practice, that our certainties,
doubts and mistakes have their sense. To ignore the
epistemic practice is to ignore our being in the world,
a consequence all too evident in the convoluted con-
clusions to which Wainwright's arguments lead him:
"From the fact that we can't step outside our practices,
the most that follows is that we don't (can't) know that
we know how things are" (p. 90). How is this supposed
to work with Harry? I advised him not to eat that food
he loves so much. Later, I saw him grimace and double-
up with pain as he always does when he eats it. As I
said to my friend, "As soon as I saw Harry I could see
he was in pain." I knew how things were and got the
tablets. What was lacking? Judging from the way
Wainwright argues, in another context, 9 he might say
that "knowing that I know" would involve comparing
the epistemic practice (our system of beliefs, on his
view) with what is independent of it, namely, "how
things are". This, Wainwright claims, we cannot do.
We have already argued, however, that epistemic
practices are not beliefs, but the context in which
beliefs, correct or incorrect, are expressed. The epis-
temic practice does not depend on a prior metaphysical
belief about how things are, since "how things are" gets
its sense from the epistemic practice. In our example,
citing the epistemic practice does not determine the truth
of the proposition, "Harry is in pain". For that, I have
to find out about Harry. What the epistemic practice
100 D.Z.
provides is the context in which such judgements, right
or wrong, have their sense. Wainwright might say of the
reactions concerning pains I have mentioned: "the reac-
tions make sense (are appropriate) only if the person
having them has the (metaphysical) belief. The belief
is thus logically (if not temporally and causally) prior. ''~°
Our epistemic practices, so far from depending on a
prior metaphysical belief concerning "how things are",
give sense, in a variety of contexts, to the distinction
between how things are and how things are not. Winch
expresses the point well when he says,
But it is speakers of a language who attempt to say what is true,
to describe how things are. They do so in the language they speak;
and this language attempts no such thing, either successfully or
unsuccessfully. [It] is right to say that on my view, "different
languages cannot be thought of as different attempts to describe
the same reality", but wrong to suppose that the alternative which
I must accept is that different languages attempt to describe
different realities: they do not attempt to describe anything at
all. II
What lies outside the epistemic practice (to employ
a strained way of talking) is not a metaphysical state
of affairs, but the loss of the conception manifested in
the practice. For example, what we mean by calculation
gives sense to correct and incorrect answers in arith-
metic. If we are outside the practice, this means that
we cannot calculate; we are in no position to be correct
or to be mistaken. I shall try to show, in relation to the
concept of pain, that, as Stanley Cavell has argued, 12 our
epistemic practices do not settle anything, but show
what is already settled.
When I see Harry grimace, double-up, I conclude that
he is in pain. Philosophers have said that this criterion
does not guarantee the truth of the proposition, "Harry
is in pain." Harry may be pretending, rehearsing, acting
in a play, and so on. It appears, then, as though the
criterion falls short of certainty. What falls outside the
criterion, as we have seen, is pretence, play-acting, and
the like. This does not mean that the connection between
the criterion and the ascriptions of pain is contingent.
Why do people pretend or play-act in this way? Pretence
and play-acting underline, not undermine, the concept
of pain, since they are parasitic on it. The concept shows
itself in a form of life, an epistemic practice, which
includes expressions of pain, observations of pain,
pretence, deception, and so on. What, then, would fall
outside this form of life? Cavell asks us to imagine a
bizarre case. A patient in a dentist's chair lets out a
terrible scream. Concerned, the dentist reaches for
PHILLIPS
another injection of novocaine. The patient is puzzled
and asks what he is doing. The dentist, even more
puzzled, asks, "But aren't you in pain?" The patient
replies, "No, I ' m calling my hamsters." What is more,
we do not simply have his words to go on. He opens the
door, and in come the hamsters. At other times, we see
the patient in country lanes, uttering his strange cries,
and, behind him, following him, the hamsters. This
bizarre case, Cavell argues, again underlines, not under-
mines, the form of life. Our epistemic practice deter-
mines the patient's fate: he is, indeed, the strange
one.
But we do not need such bizarre examples to appre-
ciate that exclusion from an epistemic practice would
be exclusion from an aspect of human life. Imagine
someone who does not flinch when touching red-hot
objects. Imagine the danger involved in lacking those
reactions which give sense to the notion of something's
being red-hot. Again, think of a child who exhibits no
co-ordination between words and facial expressions.
When the child says, "I hate you", there is a smile on
the child's face. Such a lack of co-ordination, if perva-
sive, would be eerie and terrifying. Parents would feel
estranged, cut off from the child. This need not mean
that the child is not the object of pity and compassion,
but it is our common understanding, our epistemic
practice, which gives sense to the identification of the
terribleness of the child's condition. A child may be
happy or sad. These are possible alternative descriptions
of a child. But the common understanding in which
these descriptions have their sense is not an alternative,
not a b e l i e f - it is there, like our lives.
For philosophical realists, like Wainwright, our
common understandings, our epistemic practices, are
thought of as beliefs about a Reality which is indepen-
dent of them. In principle, we are told, these practices
need have nothing to do with that Reality. Perhaps
things could be very different from what we take them
to be. How do we know that the chairs on which we sit
will not simply vanish? How do we know that houses
will not turn into flowers, or that cows will not start
writing poetry? Perhaps they do. Perhaps the cows
say, "Here come the tourists, w e ' d better get back to
chewing the cud". How do I know that the printed words
on the page will not vanish or be replaced by different
words? 13
Do we respond to these challenges in this way - "I've
read millions of words, and none of them have ever dis-
appeared" - "No one has ever come across a poetry-
 EPISTEMIC PRACTICES - A REPLY TO WILLIAM WAINWRIGHT
writing cow, so we have good reason for saying that
cows do not write poetry"? What would we make of
someone, who, when asked what he was doing when,
apparently, he was checking the pages of a book,
replied, " I ' m just checking whether the words have
vanished"? So far from thinking of him as the rational
enquirer par excellence, we might well think this was
the first sign of madness. And what of the person we
find looking in the hedgerows hoping to find some
poetry-writing cows? The aping of the patient camera-
crew, recording the nocturnal habits of animals, serves
only to underline the madness. These reactions do not
compete with our epistemic practices as beliefs about
an ultimate reality. Once again, it is our practices which
determine the character of such reactions as bizarre or
as forms of madness. The irony is that some philoso-
phers offer them as alternatives worthy of rational con-
sideration; alternatives which could, for all we know,
reflect ultimate reality more than those we regard as
familiarly reliable.
It should be obvious, by now, that in attacking philo-
sophical realism, I am not propounding any form of
non-realism. To speak of anti-realism is simply the other
side of the metaphysical coin which is not genuine
currency. If we expose the confusions of philosophical
realism, we have no reason to speak of non-realism or
of anti-realism. After their demise, we simply have
ordinary realism.
III
If to be cut off from an epistemic practice is to be cut
off from the use of an epistemic concept, to be initi-
ated into an epistemic practice is to gain an epistemic
concept one did not have before. Let me begin with
an example in the style of what has been called
Wittgenstein's anthropological method. Sometimes,
Wittgenstein would invoke the actions of an imaginary
tribe for purposes of comparison with our own. One
purpose of such examples was to wean us away from
the idea that our epistemic practices are underwritten by
a metaphysical reality. Consider, then, the example of
a tribe whose behaviour in relation to pain resembles
our own in many respects, except that it is exhibited
only when injuries are visible. Where this is not the
case, their concept of pain has no application. The
person, with no visible injuries, but whom we regard
as suffering, does not speak of pain or expect any
101
responses to pain from others. Others exhibit no such
responses in these cases. We, of course, have no choice
in the matter. We would say that the person grimacing,
and doubled-up, is in pain. But are the members of the
tribe making a mistake? If they say the person is not in
pain, they are not making a mistake as they would be
were they to miss the visible injuries of the person
doubled-up. Rather, they are saying that talk of pain is
inappropriate here. It is not a case, as Wainwright might
say, of their cognitive faculties not functioning properly.
The difference between us is a difference in our epis-
temic practices in this context. It may be possible to
get the tribe to see the point of our practice. In that case,
what we would be doing would be not to correct a
mistake, but to initiate them into the use of a concept
which, in some ways, overlaps with one they already
possess.
I mention this example because it can serve as a
bridge to examples of greater complexity. These are
examples where epistemic practices, unlike those con-
cerning physical objects, arithmetic or pain, though
extremely important to those who participate in
them, may be completely enigmatic to other people.
Wainwright half-acknowledges this fact, but wants to
resist drawing my conclusions. I say "half-acknowl-
edges" because after his confidently, straightforward
claim at the outset of his paper that "participants in reli-
gious disputes employ the same criteria that are used
to assess the comparative merits of rival metaphysical
systems and, indeed, the relative merits of any com-
peting explanatory hypothesis" (p. 87) we are told a
little later that things are not so straightforward after all:
"A little reflection suggests that faith doesn't depend
upon evidence in a straightforward fashion" (p. 88). At
first, Wainwright seems to acknowledge that "No
evidence for (e.g.) Christian theism is such that all
rational, informed, and (by the usual standards) fair-
minded inquirers find it compelling" (p. 88). But, again,
things are not what they seem. It transpires that the facts
are compelling after all, but that some people's cogni-
tive faculties are not properly ordered to appreciate
them. This is the point at which Wainwright resists my
conclusion: what separates believers and atheists is not
the state of their cognitive faculties, but the fact that the
practices of the believer may mean nothing to the
atheist. Wainwright's view reminds one of those early
anthropologists who, not understanding some of the
practices of primitive peoples, attributed mistakes and
confusions to them which, it was said, were due to the
102 D. Z. P H I L L I P S
inevitable underdeveloped state of their cognitive
faculties. What was needed, of course, was a readiness
to pay attention to the concepts at work in the practices,
a readiness which would have brought a full stop to a
lot of condescending misunderstanding. What is needed
in response to the appeal to faulty faculties is Berkeley's
response to Locke when the latter made a similar appeal
to explain what he took to be limits to human under-
standing: "That we have first raised a dust, and then
complain we cannot see. ''~4
When we do speak of faulty faculties, this has sense
within a practice where common standards are recog-
nized. People with faulty eyesight is an obvious
example, and the flourishing of opticians underlines my
point. In other cases, what I lack is sufficient knowl-
edge of a practice to know what is going on within it
at a given time, for example, in an advanced physics
laboratory. This is not a question of my having faulty
faculties. In the case of religion, Wainwright adds a
further condition: in order to appreciate evidence for
God's existence, I must possess a properly disposed
heart. But nothing of this kind was needed to explain
the faulty eyesight, or the ignorance about physics.
The fault was recognized by the person with faulty
eyesight, and ignorance of a practice was recognized
by the person who had an elementary grasp of physics.
In both cases, there are shared standards, whereas
Wainwright wants to speak of cases where religious
responses mean nothing to another. We can ask why this
is so, but an appeal to faculties which are not properly
ordered does not help. What this shows is that different
cases cannot be run together in a single account.
I gave a moral example of a practice being an enigma
to another person, but Wainwright is unhappy with it.
According to Wainwright, when Socrates says that the
just man is happy, and that Archelaus the tyrant is the
most miserable of men, Socrates is arguing within a
common conception of happiness and misery shared by
the just man and Archelaus. Otherwise, Wainwright
asks, how is the Platonic dialectic possible?
I find this a strange reading of the Gorgias. The point
of the dialectic, in relation to Polus and Callicles, is
not to correct a mistake within a perspective, but to
initiate an appreciation of a perspective hitherto not
grasped. 15 Callicles says that if he were to take Socrates
seriously, it would turn his world upside down. Socrates
is not saying, "Happiness is one thing. As a matter of
fact, justice leads to it, but tyranny does not." Rather,
he is saying, "Happy is the man who is just." Justice is
not defined in terms of happiness, but happiness is
defined in terms of justice. When the cry is heard down
the centuries, "Why do the wicked prosper?", is the
answer to say that they have all miscalculated, and that
the wicked have not prospered after all? 16 When we are
asked, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?" can "gaining the world"
and "losing one's soul" be cashed into a common
coinage? Is the question to be compared with, "What
profiteth it a man if he gains $2000 on the 2.30 and loses
$4000 on the 4.30?"
On such a reading, applied to a religious context,
what is needed to turn from sin is not conversion, but
recalculation. Callicles did not understand Socrates
when the latter said that all would be well with him in
Athens, no matter what his lot. How could he, since, for
Callicles, whether all is well with one depends, pre-
cisely, on what one's lot is. 17 Coming to God, on such
a view, would not be a change of direction, but of
backing the right horse. Why worship God rather than
the Devil? Because God and the Devil play the same
game only God is better at it than the Devil? Coming
to God is surely a change of direction; not a correction
on the old way, but turning to a new way. Not a cor-
rection within the old practice, but a change of practice.
IV
On this occasion, I am going to give less attention to
the notion of God's reality, and its relation to our epis-
temic practices. 18 If we appreciate the conclusions
reached in the first two sections of this paper, we can
see that if there is talk, in a religious epistemic practice,
of a reality which is beyond this world, it is to that
practice we must look to see what that talk comes to,
and not to a relation (seen to be confused) between the
practice and a metaphysical ontology (also seen to be
confused) which is said to be intelligible independent
of it.
We may think that disputes over whether God exists
are like disputes over whether unicorns exist or not. But
there are obvious differences. If I say there are no
unicorns, my denial has sense within our wider epis-
temic talk of animals. The question of the existence of
animals could be realized within our wider epistemic
talk concerning animate and inanimate things. But if I
do not believe in God, in what wider category does my
denial have its sense? Suppose I say that I am asking
 EPISTEMIC PRACTICES - A REPLY
whether there is a thing called "God". That gives the
impression that just as there are unicorns, trees and
human beings, so there are"things". But this is confused.
We can ask what kind of thing a table is, or what kind
of things trees are, but it makes no sense to ask what
kind of thing is a "thing". Unless "things" falls under
some description, we have no idea what we are talking
about. So if we say that every word, including "God",
refers to some thing, until we specify what distinctions
we want to draw, we have said absolutely nothing. It is
not "how things are", metaphysically understood, which
gives sense to our epistemic practices, but our epistemic
practices which give sense to their respective notions of
"how things are". For this reason, along with the others
I have advanced, I cannot agree with Wainwright's view
when he says: "It is doubtful that religious attitudes,
values, and practices can be retained once the relevant
metaphysical beliefs have been abandoned. Most of the
attitudes, practices, and values in question are appro-
priate only if the relevant metaphysical claims are true"
(p. 88). On the contrary, the wonder is that the practices
and the beliefs have survived the metaphysical specu-
lation about them. ~9
If Wainwright and I got down to the details of elu-
cidating the grammar of various religious beliefs, no
doubt further disagreements would emerge. I have said
little about these, but I do want to comment on method-
ological issues in the epistemology of religion which
such disagreements occasion. There are times when
Wainwright seems to suggest that analytic issues could
be settled by a survey of what religious believers would
say, if asked. Imagine conducting any philosophical
enquiry in this way. Would we settle the conceptual
issue of what it is to think about something, by asking
people to tell us what they do when thinking? In their
replies, those asked would themselves be engaging in a
kind of philosophical speculation which may or may not
be confused. Where religion is concerned, Wainwright
suggests that, if devout believers disagree with my
analyses, it is unlikely that they are confused. But reli-
gious devotion is no guarantee against philosophical
confusion. Belief or atheism may get in the way of con-
ceptual clarity. When my first book, The Concept of
Prayer, appeared in 1965, it annoyed many philosoph-
ical attackers and defenders of religion because it urged
them to give up a common game they were playing.
Religious newspapers, however, greeted the book as
characterising a faith they knew. I do not quote this
fact to counter Wainwright's appeal to the faithful,
TO WILLIAM WAINWRIGHT 103
but to show that you cannot philosophize by Gallup
poll.
Wainwright also complains that as well as assum-
ing that my grammatical accounts of beliefs are
correct, even when believers protest that they are not,
I refuse to call any beliefs I cannot endorse "religious",
calling them "confusions" or "superstitions" instead.
Wainwright is not the first to make this complaint. 2° I
outlined five relations in which Wittgenstein's philo-
sophical enquiries stand to religious belief in my paper,
"Religion in Wittgenstein's Mirror". 21 First, he criticizes
those who want to argue that all religious beliefs are
meaningless. Second, he criticizes confused accounts of
religious belief. Third, he discusses the distinction
between religion and superstition. Fourth, he discusses
different forms of religious belief. In saying one is
higher than another, each person must speak for himself
or herself. Fifth, he says that we ought to be pragmatic
and not assume that we must have something to say
about every phenomenon claiming religious signifi-
cance. We can see, from the fourth relation, that it
makes sense to speak of a low form of religion without
calling it superstitious. Wainwright and I may differ in
what we see as central in belief in the resurrection. In
certain circumstances, I might speak of superstition.
But, in other circumstances, I might (speaking for
myself) talk of a low belief, one which craved for the
company of human beings, rather than for communion
with God. Wittgenstein called the craving for survival
after death a desire for a temporal eternity and said it
blinded us to other possibilities. Simone Weil, in a
similar context, distinguished between natural and
supernatural religion. =
Confronted by varieties of belief and unbelief, the
task of philosophy is conceptual clarification rather than
adjudication. Wainwright does not seem to be content
with this. He says that "holding a moral or religious
perspective does commit one to regarding it as superior
to its rivals" (p. 91) and sees philosophy as an aid in
establishing this. This feature of holding a moral or reli-
gious perspective certainly does not hold in all circum-
stances. 23 But, even if it did, the philosophical task
would be to elucidate the grammar of "superior" in
such contexts. Of course, I may conclude that certain
attempts at elucidation are confused. In Faith After
Foundationalism, for example, I discuss those totali-
tarian post-Humean epistemologies which argued that
religious belief is the product of an illusion and that,
therefore, there are no real believers, and those
104 D. Z. P H I L L I P S
Reformed epistemologies which, identifying unbelief
with self-deception, end up saying that there are no real
unbelievers. 24 Here, too, we find, as in Wainwright, an
emphasis on a desire for answers.
I do not deny, of course, that in all branches of phi-
losophy we can find, in the subject's history, those who
seek correct answers in the way Wainwright describes.
I may want to claim that there is confusion in this search
in philosophy. But, putting that aside, why should it
not be possible for Wainwright and others to acknowl-
edge that there is a different emphasis to be found in
philosophy, whatever they think of it - one which con-
templates possibilities of human life rather than seeks
answers? 25 Wainwright says: "Equally intelligent, in-
formed, and religiously sensitive philosophers disagree
as to whether philosophical theism is confused or not,
whether authentic religion has empirical implications,
and so on" (p. 92). He thinks that since agreement is not
forthcoming, I must be committed to holding that there
are no common methods for settling these disputes and,
hence, no issue of truth or falsity, correctness or incor-
rectness involved. In reply, I would say that there is a
common method, that of philosophical discussion, for
which there is no short-cut. But the aim of the discus-
sion is not truth or correctness in Wainwright's sense,
but a contemplation of possibilities which leads to an
understanding that life can be like that. Wainwright,
ironically enough, alludes to it in a footnote to the
comment of his which I have just quoted. He says that
by "religiously sensitive" he means "sharing or appre-
ciating the reactions in which (as Phillips rightly points
out) religious assertions have their life" (fn 21, my
italics). The distinction is important: we appreciate more
than we appropriate. Since the philosopher appreciates
moral and religious perspectives which differ with each
other, how could it be otherwise? The contemplation
of that which we do not appropriate personally can itself
deepen our understanding of human life, an under-
standing which is not a search for solutions,
This brings us full circle to the end of the first section
of the paper, where I quoted Rush Rhees's comments
on a conception of philosophy as a contemplative
activity. I conclude by showing how Rhees combines
methodological considerations with an appreciation of
the kinds of perspectives we find in the complex inter-
actions between belief and unbelief in our own culture
and in other cultures we have known. He brings out
excellently, I believe, how contemplation and an under-
standing of such perspectives may be blocked by the
desire for answers, the desire to treat all questions as
though "finding solutions" were the only interest we can
have in them:
Wonder is characteristic of philosophy anyway, as it is of the
thinking of less corrupted peoples. Wonder at death - not trying
to escape from death; wonder at (almost reverence towards)
madness; wonder that there should be the problems that there are,
and that they should have the solutions that they do (Pythagoras
treating the "discovery" that any triangle inscribed in a semi-circle
is right-angled, as divine revelation, as a word to be reverenced).
Wonder at any natural scene that is beautiful. Wonder at the
beauty of human actions and characters when it appears in them.
And in the same way, wonder at what is terrible and what is evil
(We cannot say "wonder at what is mediocre", and there may be
something important in this). Wonder - treating as important -
what is terrible just because it is terrible; as primitive peoples
may celebrate it in rites: the burning of human figures, perhaps
of children, in effigy; treating what is terrible as a sacrament. If
someone can think of these practices as "morbid" or as "perver-
sions" - or if he can think of them only as methods designed to
ward off the terrible things they celebrate - this means he cannot
imagine how people might wonder at terrible events because of
what they are (as opposed to: wondering what neglect should have
allowed them to happen, how they might be avoided, etc).
To do philosophy, a man must be able not only to see ques-
tions where those not given to philosophy see none, but also to
look on these questions in a particular way. Not wanting to
dismiss the questions, nor to "get rid of them" through any sort
of answer, or to show that they are a sort of needless worry to be
put out of mind. (Wittgenstein sometimes spoke about this in a
way that was misleading and contrary to his own practice.) Trying
rather to understand these questions - and from this angle or in
this sense to understand human thinking and human investiga-
tion and human life; to understand how they arise in, and in one
sense belong to, our thinking about other questions that we ask
and answer. This goes with contemplation of the ways in which
people think and inquire - e.g. in trying to solve problems in
physics, or in connexion with moral problems. And this is diffi-
cult. Perhaps especially so in a culture which has become as tech-
nological as ours - as much preoccupied with getting things done,
with how to do things, with results.26
Notes
1 William Wainwright, 'Theism, metaphysics, and D. Z. Phillips' in
this issue.
2 Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism,
Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991. All references to Stroud are to this
work.
3 Rush Rhees, 'The fundamental problems of philosophy', ed. by
Timothy Tessin, Philosophical Investigations 17(4), October 1994,
578.
4 Ibid, pp. 585-586.
5 First published by Routledge in 1988. A paperback edition is to
be published by Westview Press.
 EPISTEMIC PRACTICES - A R E P L Y TO W I L L I A M W A I N W R I G H T
6 Philosophical Investigations I: par. 241.
7 Peter Winch, 'Language, belief and relativism', in Trying To Make
Sense, Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 196. Quoted on p. 61 of Faith After
Foundationalism.
8 Ibid., p. 206. Quoted on p. 60 of Faith After Foundationalism.
9 See fn 6.
~o Ibid.
l Op. cit., p. 196.
~2 Stanley CaveU, The Claim of Reason, Oxford University Press,
1982, e.g. Chapter II, 'Criteria and skepticism'.
~3 See Wittgenstein's On Certainty for a discussion of these issues.
t4 George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge~Three
Dialogues, ed. by Roger Woolhouse, Penguin Books, 1988, p. 38,
par 3.
~5 For a fuller discussion of how we can come to appreciate what
was once beyond our understanding see my 'From coffee to
Carmelites', in Wittgenstein and Religion, Macmillan and St Martin's
Press, 1993.
~6 For further discussion see my 'Does it pay to be good?' and 'On
morality's having a point' (with H. O. Mounce) in Interventions in
Ethics, Macmillan and SUNY Press, 1992.
~7 For discussion of further issues arising from the Socratic per-
spective see Peter Winch, 'Can a good man be harmed?', in Ethics
and Action, Routledge, 1972 and my 'Necessary rewards, necessary
punishments and character', in Interventions in Ethics.
~8 Partly, this is because it is no longer true to say, with Wainwright,
that Faith After Foundationalism is my 'most recent foray into these
areas' (p. 93). In 'Searle on language-games and religion' (t989) and
'Sublime existence' (1990), I discuss the disastrous results of sub-
liming the logic of our language in discussions of the existence of
the sublime. In 'On really believing' (1991) I discuss the unmedi-
ated, unintelligible notion of belief which results from philosophical
realism. These papers are in Wittgenstein and Religion. Further
criticisms of this notion of belief can be found in 'How real is
105
realism?' and 'Great expectations: philosophy, ontology and religion'
in Is GodReal? ed. J. Runzo, Macmillan and St Martin's Press 1993.
The effect of philosophical realism on any intelligible notion of
authority in relation to religious experience is discussed in 'Authority
and revelation', Archivio di Filosofia 1994 and 'Mysticism and epis-
temology: one devil of a problem' in Faith and Philosophy (forth-
coming). I discuss the isolated soul of philosophical realism in
'Dislocating the soul' (unpublished).
~9 In 'In the beginning was the dance' (unpublished), I have argued
against the intellectualization involved in ignoring the primacy of
practice and suggesting that practice requires a foundation of meta-
physical beliefs.
20 My reply to a critical notice of Wittgenstein and Religion by
Brian Clack, a recent complainant on this issue, 'On giving practice
its due' is to appear in Religious Studies.
zl In Wittgenstein and Religion.
z2 I have contrasted temporal eternities with eternal life in
'Dislocating the soul'. I have discussed the contrast in twentieth-
century literature in From Fantasy to Faith, Macmillan and St
Martin's Press 1991.
23 For a striking example see Peter Winch, 'The universalizability
of moral judgements' in Ethics and Action.
24 See Chapter Eight. I also discuss these epistemologies in 'At the
mercy of method' in Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious
Belief, ed. by Timothy Tessin and Mario yon der Ruhr, Macmillan
and St Martin's Press 1995. This collection contains criticisms of my
work akin to Wainwright's along with responses to them.
25 I owe this way of putting the point to my colleague, R. W.
Beardsmore.
26 Op. cit, pp. 578-579.
University o f Wales,
S w a n s e a a n d C l a r e m o n t G r a d u a t e School,
California, USA