I read through Minar's paper. Here are my first impressions:

Cavell cannot see that “Wittgenstein’s certainty logically dismisses scepticism.”(Ibid.) Now, nostalgia for metaphysics is supposed to be the desire to transcend the human. Cavell is trying to place that yearning in the weave of our lives, not indulging it. Disappointment with criteria is a function of how criteria do work, their dependence, in particular, on our attunement in judgments and agreement in form of life. It does not, then, feed an “ineluctable skepticism”, as though Cavell agrees with some skeptical conclusion about the failures of certainty. That is, 1) Cavell explicitly does not accept the thesis of skepticism, that we do not know the world or other minds with certainty. Our relation to the world is not one of knowing. The truth of skepticism is not the expression of “dissatisfaction with knowledge” from some metaphysical height; rather, it points to a feature of our condition of which, presumably, the urge to transcend the human is an expression. To go further, 2) “if the fact that we share, or have established, criteria is the condition under which we can think and communicate in language, then skepticism is a natural possibility of that condition; it reveals most perfectly the standing threat to thought and communication, that they are only human, nothing more than natural to us.”(CR, 47) — Minar's paper

There seems to be tension between 1) and 2) here.

According to 1), Cavell does not accept "the thesis of skepticism, that we do not know the world or other minds with certainty". However, according to 2), Cavell also considers skepticism to be "a natural possibility" which results from "the fact that we share, or have established, criteria [which] is the condition under which we can think and communicate in language". In other words, skepticism is a natural possibility which results from our having language.

How can Cavell reject the thesis of skepticism - that we do not know the world or other minds with certainty - while also claiming that skepticism is a natural possibility which results from having language?

The reason Cavell can reject 1) and accept 2), it seems, is because he rejects the meaning of "skepticism" given in 1). In 2), the "truth of skepticism" is not a metaphysical dissatisfaction with knowledge, but is instead an expression of "the urge to transcend the human".

But how exactly are these different? What does the "expression of the urge to transcend the human" amount to if it is not a "metaphysical dissatisfaction with knowledge"?

Criteria bring out that the thesis of skepticism – which starts life as a claim about our intellectual or epistemological limitations – transmutes into the truth, which is (again) that “our relation to the world is not one of knowing, where knowing construes itself as being certain. So it is also true that we do not fail to know such things.” (CR, 45) — Minar's paper

What does this have to do with skepticism? Since Cavell changes (or "transmutes") the meaning of the word, then we are no longer talking about metaphysical skepticism.

4.2 Disappointment with criteria
The connection with Wittgenstein here is all but explicit:
If I am to have a native tongue, I have to accept what "my elders" say and do as consequential; and they have to accept, even have to applaud, what I say and do as what they say and do. We do not know in advance what the content of our mutual acceptance is, how far we may be in agreement. I do not know in advance how deep my agreement with myself is, how far responsibility for the language may run. — Minar's paper

What does "agreement with myself" mean?

Here Rhees underscores the importance of the kind of openness – openness that in some sense “threatens the possibility of understanding altogether”(Rhees, 13) – that I have suggested he associates with skepticism: “If language really were a technique, then…. there would be no connexion between philosophy and scepticism. You should not understand what was meant by the notion of the distrust of understanding.” — Minar's paper

I take the argument here to be that if language were a technique then there should be perfect understanding and no room for scepticism or doubt. Therefore, we should not understand what "scepticism" (or the notion of the distrust of understanding) even means. But this does not follow. If language is a technique then we should perfectly understand what the word "scepticism" means, and be able to use it sensibly, even if there is none.

One area I believe we can agree on is Wittgenstein's pointing out the importance "of natural actions and reactions that come before language and are not the result of thought."…

'You say you take care of a man who groans, because experience has taught you that you yourself groan when you feel such-and-such. but since in fact you don't make any such inference, we can abandon the argument from analogy' (Zettel, 537) — Richard B

Yes, we do not know the other because we infer them from our experience. But we do not know the other because of our shared history of actions and reactions either—we do not know the other. As I have been saying, the “natural actions and reactions” to others are the particular mechanics of our relation. Thus, it is no longer a “problem” to be solved by knowledge, by analogy or otherwise. Part of the workings of our natural actions and reactions to the other is that sometimes we can’t predict them, we aren’t sure they will agree with us, follow us, remain consistent to our expectations of them, etc. We sometimes cannot find our feet with them, understand them. This is not a philosophical problem; it is part of the human condition. So, instead of intellectually trying to “solve” or minimize it, we are simply trying to make explicit the (unspoken) ordinary criteria we live with for what counts in terms of getting to know someone.

I am a little unclear what you mean by "Wittgenstein's strange people", but based on the cited paragraph, it could mean people who you may find difficult to understand. — Richard B

Sorry, the sentence before (which I have also referred to) and the passage from p 223 of the PI, 3rd, in its entirety (emphasis in the original) is:

“If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me.

We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them.”

How can Cavell reject the thesis of skepticism - that we do not know the world or other minds with certainty - while also claiming that skepticism is a natural possibility which results from having language? [that] the "truth of skepticism" is not a metaphysical dissatisfaction with knowledge, but is instead an expression of "the urge to transcend the human". — Luke

Minar is accurate and tells the story with all the parts, but it’s lacking in paraphrasing, unpacking Cavell’s terms of art. I am impressed and thankful you read the paper though and these are exactly the right questions to ask. I think how I put this to @Bano here might be a good start.

Summarizing that story, out of our fear of the other, philosophy created an intellectual problem of doubt about them that knowledge could then try to solve (with metaphysics, etc.), when the skeptic is right that there is no fact of the other (or ourselves) to know that will resolve our worries. But Wittgenstein sees that this truth is only because our relation to others (the mechanics of it, the grammar) is not through knowledge resolving our doubts about them, but that it is part of our situation as humans that we are separate, that our knowledge of the other is finite. But the implications of that are simply that the ordinary mechanics of our relation to others is not one of, here, knowing “their understanding”, but of accepting or rejecting them; that their otherness is at times a moral claim on us, to respond to them (or ignore them), to be someone for them. Thus “the urge to transcend the human”, in our ordinary lives, is to avoid exposing ourselves to the judgment of who we are in how we relate to others. In the case of understanding, by only wanting to treat what others say as information we simply need to get correct, rather than acknowledge their concerns and interests, and have ours be questioned. To put it that this is the “result of having language” is the picture of something like that what we say has a “meaning” that stands alone from who we will be judged to be in having said it, rather than it expressing us, allowing who we are to be read through it.

I do not know in advance how deep my agreement with myself is, how far responsibility for the language may run. — Minar's paper

What does "agreement with myself" mean? — Luke

This is a lot in one sentence, but I know what Minar is trying to get at. Our language reflects our interests and judgments (as Wittgenstein sees), and, so, in a sense, reflects who we are (by default—see my discussion about the self and conformity). If I am to use language responsibly, then, in saying something, I consent to be judged by it, for its criteria to be what matters to me. However, at a point (in time I argue elsewhere), my consent to be spoken for by language, as Minar says, “may run” out. This is to break with my culture, to stand against it, “adverse” (Emerson says in Self Reliance) to what language demands that we answer for; that I refuse to be determined by the shared judgments we make from it.

“If language really were a technique, then…. there would be no connexion between philosophy and scepticism. You should not understand what was meant by the notion of the distrust of understanding.”
— Rhees, as quoted in Minar's paper

I take the argument here to be that if language were a technique then there should be perfect understanding and no room for scepticism or doubt. — Luke

Yes, that is the implication. To say we “should not understand what was meant [by skepticism]” is a bit dramatic, fanciful. To make this more pedestrian, if traditional philosophy had its way, then what I say would be certain to you if I only mastered language. I would have control of the “meaning” of what I say, as if there were something in me, say, “my understanding” (or “intention”, or “thought”) which only fails because language is flawed, not able to capture my unique specialness, or I am just not good enough at it, when it is really the other way around. I am only as much as I capture in language (or action); but I don’t just either do that or not, because my expressions are mine to own (or not), as if they were my promise. Thus I can continue to make them intelligible, ask they be forgiven, take them back as poorly said, attempt to weasel out of the consequences of their inherent implications, etc.

Summarizing that story, out of our fear of the other, — Antony Nickles

What or who is this "other"? Other minds (i.e. everyone else) or just those who are different to us (those with whom we identify)? I don't think that most of us have a fear of everyone else, so I assume you mean only those who are different to us?

philosophy created an intellectual problem of doubt about them — Antony Nickles

Philosophy created a problem about knowing whether other people have minds, not only about those who are different to us.

when the skeptic is right that there is no fact of the other (or ourselves) to know that will resolve our worries. — Antony Nickles

Is this the skeptic's claim?

But Wittgenstein sees that this truth is only because our relation to others (the mechanics of it, the grammar) is not through knowledge resolving our doubts about them, but that it is part of our situation as humans that we are separate, that our knowledge of the other is finite. But the implications of that are simply that the ordinary mechanics of our relation to others is not one of, here, knowing “their understanding”, but of accepting or rejecting them; that their otherness is at times a moral claim on us, to respond to them (or ignore them), to be someone for them. Thus “the urge to transcend the human”, in our ordinary lives, is to avoid exposing ourselves to the judgment of who we are in how we relate to others. In the case of understanding, by only wanting to treat what others say as information we simply need to get correct, rather than acknowledge their concerns and interests, and have ours be questioned. To put it that this is the “result of having language” is the picture of something like that what we say has a “meaning” that stands alone from who we will be judged to be in having said it, rather than it expressing us, allowing who we are to be read through it. — Antony Nickles

I consider it a massive stretch that Wittgenstein says any of this. This is reading a lot into the text that just isn't there. This is better attributed to Cavell than to Wittgenstein.

I think how I put this to Bano here might be a good start. — Antony Nickles

We actually are scared of the ever-present truth of our human condition: that we are separate, that there is no guarantee that we will work out our differences, or that our criteria will always be sufficient, or that we won’t be wrong even after working to (pre)determine what is right, that we might still be guilty (or lost) after following all the rules, etc. — Antony Nickles

I don't believe Wittgenstein gives any indication that Cavell's so-called "skepticism" or "need for certainty" is an "ever-present truth of our human condition". I might be inclined to agree that it has been an historical philosophical problem. However, Wittgenstein is explicit that his philosophical approach solves particular philosophical problems, not an "ever present truth of our human condition".

109. [...] All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light — that is to say, its purpose — from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language, and that in such a way that these workings are recognized — despite an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by coming up with new discoveries, but by assembling what we have long been familiar with. Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the resources of our language.

123. A philosophical problem has the form: “I don’t know my way about.”

133. We don’t want to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of ways. For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.The real discovery is the one that enables me to break off philosophizing when I want to. — The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question. — Instead, a method is now demonstrated by examples, and the series of examples can be broken off. —– Problems are solved (difficulties eliminated), not a single problem. — Wittgenstein, PI

This just seems very different to what Cavell reads into it.

What I feel remains to be explored further is the process of "finding our feet with them", say, as a matter of imagining ourselves as them, getting at why one might want to judge as they do. Maybe: in taking them seriously; allowing another's reasons to be or become intelligible; respecting their interests by taking their expressions as a commitment of their self, their character as it were (what "type" of person they are). I take this not as a matter of critique, but of letting them be "strange" to us without rejection (tolerating but not assuming/resigned to difference); with open curiosity, (cultural) humility (that my interests and context are not everyone's). In a sense: understanding as empathy; understanding in the sense of: being understanding (Websters: vicariously experiencing the [interests] of another; imagining the other's attitudes as legitimate; the imaginative projection of [myself] into [the other] so that [they] appear to be infused with [me, being a person]). — Antony Nickles

Isn't it shown by Wittgenstein, that any sort of completeness to "finding our feet with them" is actually impossible? To understand them requires communication with them, but communication with them requires that we understand them. So we are forever isolated from each other. It's as if the other person is a lion. Learning the other's language does not necessitate an understanding of the other. Understanding the lion requires that one could put oneself in the lion's shoes, but to obtain this sort of understanding requires knowing the lion's language. The best we can do, is learn the other's language, then attempt to put oneself in the other's shoes. Therefore this way of looking at things, that learning a language requires an understanding of the other, therefore communication implies understanding, gives us a problematic philosophical perspective replete with an irresolvable problem.

Consequently, we must dismiss this way of looking at language. We must start with the proposition that each one of us is an island of isolation, with one's own private language. Then we see how language as a communicative tool comes into being, independent from, and not reliant on an understanding of the others whom we communicate with. So it evolves through processes like justification, which ultimately develop into formal knowledge. The key point though, is that skepticism cannot be removed, and is inherent within the nature of language, therefore also within the structure of formal knowledge which is a product of language. Skepticism is an essential part of what it means to be human, as a living being. It is what keeps us on our toes, wary, and keen to the real possibility of deception, and other lurking dangers. And what Wittgenstein demonstrates is that those philosophers who take as their goal or aim, to remove skepticism (as he did in the Tractatus), are profoundly misguided toward an impossible ideal, which is not at all representative of reality.