Epistemic undecidability as a framework for action. Wittgenstein before a cultural paradox

Abstract

This essay seeks to dissolve a cultural paradox: our search for knowledge and its prior conditions are always provisional, which threatens the criterion of correction; but human understanding and actions develop precisely under such indeterminacy. So epistemic-cultural undecidability is only such if absolute criteria are admitted. Instead, each vital situation ­rests on some base that provides the necessary confidence for both the seeking of understanding and the corresponding execution of actions. Therefore the paradox is only apparent.