Abstract
Part one offers a précis of my book, Epistemic Angst (Princeton UP, 2015), with particular focus on the themes discussed by the participants in this symposium. Part two then examines a number of topics raised in this symposium in light of this précis. These include how best to understand the ‘non-belief’ account of hinge epistemology, whether we should think of our hinge commitments as being a kind of procedural knowledge, whether hinge epistemology can be used to deal with underdetermination-based scepticism, what the status of my acceptance of the closure principle amounts to, whether one’s total evidence in fact supports our hinge commitments, and the nature of the kind of reasoning that Wittgenstein employs when advancing a hinge epistemology. Finally, I offer some remarks on the notion of epistemic risk in the context of the sceptical problematic, and show how this has application to legal epistemology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This claim is rooted in earlier work, especially Pritchard (2005b).
Wittgenstein (1969).
Just to clear, in calling the über hinge a commitment I am not suggesting that it is something that one needs to have ever explicitly considered. That one has this commitment is rather manifest in one’s actions.
I offer a more extensive articulation and defence of epistemological disjunctivism in Pritchard (2012b).
I further discuss the phenomenon of epistemic vertigo, and its philosophical implications, in Pritchard (2019, forthcomingb, forthcomingd).
Note, by the way, that this passage comes immediately after a passage where I make clear that I’m only talking about belief in the specific sense of that propositional attitude that is a constituent part of rationally grounded knowledge, rather than belief in general, so it really is very odd that Simion, Schnurr and Gordon overlooked this qualification.
Incidentally, Simion, Schnurr and Gordon regularly cite the existence of the external world as an example of a hinge commitment on my view. In fact, I agree with Wittgenstein that it isn’t obviously a contentful claim in the first place, which would mean there’s no straightforward way in which we can be committed to it, much less hinge committed to it. To be fair to the authors, however, this point appears in an endnote, and so is easily missed—see Pritchard (2015a, pp. 201–02). (Indeed, Coliva also misses this point in her commentary—see endnote 12). As I explain there, on this exegetical point, I follow Williams (2004).
At one point Zhang (2019) is puzzled by my claim that we can still endorse the propositions that function as our hinge commitments, given that I claim that they are not beliefs. But what is puzzling about this? I don’t deny that we think that our hinge commitments are true, after all; indeed, I maintain that we are optimally certain of them, so we clearly regard them as true. Moreover, I don’t even deny that they are beliefs in a loose everyday sense of the notion. So where is the puzzle? One would only find this puzzling if one has set aside the distinction between belief in general and the more specific notion of belief that I claim is lacking in the case of our hinge commitments.
As noted above—see endnote 8—to be fair to Coliva this point appears in a footnote, and so it is easily missed; see Pritchard (2015a, pp. 201–02).
The same goes for another important monograph relevant to hinge epistemology—Schönbaumsfeld (2016)—which appeared just after Epistemic Angst.
I should note that Coliva closes by raising an objection to metaphysical disjunctivism—which, plausibly, epistemological disjunctivism is at least dialectically committed to, as I’ve noted elsewhere (e.g., Pritchard 2012b)—that has been forcefully put by Burge (2010). This objection trades on claims from the cognitive science of perception. While I am aware of this line of argument, I must confess that I lack sufficient knowledge of the relevant empirical work to adequately assess it.
For an important representative work defending the non-propositional reading of hinge epistemology, see Moyal-Sharrock (2004).
In terms of propositional knowledge, I express this claim in terms of a view that I call anti-luck virtue epistemology—or, more recently, anti-risk virtue epistemology, though the differences between the two formulations don’t matter for our purposes—for the former, see, e.g., Pritchard et al. (2010, ch. 1–4) and Pritchard (2012a); for the latter, see, e.g., Pritchard (2016, forthcominga). Although this departs from the kind of robust virtue epistemology that Greco has defended—see, e.g., Greco (2010)—we are both defending a core claim about the necessity of a virtue condition on knowledge.
See endnote 16 for more on the differences.
For details about the anti-luck/risk and virtue-theoretic elements of my account of knowledge, see endnote 16.
See especially Pritchard (forthcomingc).
For further discussion of how these three types of reason come apart in different conditions—and why this is important, especially for our understanding of epistemological disjunctivism—see Pritchard (forthcomingc).
Moreover, the notion of total evidence is a very strange one for someone like Neta to endorse, given that one of the proposals that he is famous for is a distinctive kind of contextualism which is concerned with evidential standing. On this proposal, the scope of one’s evidence can shift from one (attributer) context to another, such that one might be truly ascribed quite robust evidence relative to one context and yet at the same time be falsely ascribed that level of evidence relative to another. It is difficult to see how one squares this position with a view (presumably acontextual) about total evidence. See Neta (2002, 2003).
Interestingly, my former self made the very same exegetical mistake, as at one point I attempted to formulate Wittgenstein’s reasoning as an argument appealing to general epistemological claims—see Pritchard (2010). I subsequently came to recognize that this reflected a misunderstanding of what Wittgenstein is trying to do.
See especially my earlier monograph, Pritchard (2005a).
For more on the modal account of luck, see Pritchard (2014). For a comparative discussion of the notions of luck and risk, see Pritchard (2015b). For my account of epistemic risk, specifically—including how this notion comes apart from the closely related notion of epistemic luck—see Pritchard (2016, 2017, forthcominga).
In fact, I argue that understanding the nature of legal risk can help us to resolve some other problems in legal theory, such as what level of fallibility is permissible in the criminal trial (Pritchard 2018b) and a puzzle regarding the proper requirements of due care (Helmreich and Pritchard forthcoming).
This symposium arose out of a conference devoted to Epistemic Angst held at the Sorbonne in 2017. I am very grateful to the organizer of this event, Jean-Baptiste Rauzy, and also the participants, especially the speakers. Thanks also to the editors of this special issue—J. Adam Carter, Gregoire Leffetz, and Guillaume Dechauffour—and to all the contributors. Finally, thanks to Ram Neta for helpful discussion.
References
Burge, T. (2010). Origins of objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cavell, S. (1979). The claim of reason: Wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cavell, S. (1988). In quest of the ordinary: Lines of skepticism and romanticism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Cohen, L. J. (1977). The probable and the provable. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coliva, A. (2010). Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, certainty, and common sense. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Coliva, A. (2015). Extended rationality. A hinge epistemology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Coliva, A. (2019). Strange bedfellows: On Pritchard’s disjunctivist hinge epistemology. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02046-z.
Enoch, D., Spectre, L., & Fisher, T. (2012). Statistical evidence, sensitivity, and the legal value of knowledge. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 40, 197–224.
Greco, J. (2010). Achieving knowledge: A virtue-theoretic account of epistemic normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Greco, J. (2019). Hinge epistemology and the prospects for a unified theory of knowledge. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02225-6.
Hawthorne, J. (2005). The case for closure. In E. Sosa & M. Steup (Eds.), Contemporary debates in epistemology (pp. 26–43). Oxford: Blackwell.
Helmreich, J., & Pritchard, D. H. (forthcoming). Due care and modal risk: A solution to the problem of aggregative permissibility. In Z. Hoskins & J. Robson (Eds.), Truth and trials: Dilemmas at the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of law. London: Routledge.
Jope, M. (2019). Closure, credence and rationality: A problem for non-belief hinge epistemology. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02153-5.
McDowell, J. (1994). Knowledge by hearsay. In B. K. Matilal & A. Chakrabarti (Eds.), Knowing from words: Western and Indian philosophical analysis of understanding and testimony (pp. 195–224). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
McDowell, J. (1995). Knowledge and the internal. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55, 877–893.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2004). Understanding Wittgenstein’s on certainty. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Neta, R. (2002). S knows that P. Noûs, 36, 663–689.
Neta, R. (2003). Contextualism and the problem of the external world. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66, 1–31.
Neta, R. (2019). An evidentialist account of hinges. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02061-0.
Nozick, R. (1981). Philosophical explanations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (2005a). Epistemic luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (2005b). The structure of sceptical arguments. Philosophical Quarterly, 55, 37–52.
Pritchard, D. H. (2007). Anti-luck epistemology. Synthese, 158, 277–297.
Pritchard, D. H. (2008). McDowellian neo-mooreanism. In A. Haddock & F. Macpherson (Eds.), Disjunctivism: Perception, action, knowledge (pp. 283–310). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (2010). Epistemic relativism, epistemic incommensurability and Wittgensteinian epistemology. In S. Hales (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to relativism (pp. 266–285). Oxford: Blackwell.
Pritchard, D. H. (2012a). Anti-luck virtue epistemology. Journal of Philosophy, 109, 247–279.
Pritchard, D. H. (2012b). Epistemological disjunctivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (2014). The modal account of luck. Metaphilosophy, 45, 594–619.
Pritchard, D. H. (2015a). Epistemic angst: Radical scepticism and the groundlessness of our believing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (2015b). Risk. Metaphilosophy, 46, 436–461.
Pritchard, D. H. (2016). Epistemic risk. Journal of Philosophy, 113, 550–571.
Pritchard, D. H. (2017). Anti-risk epistemology and negative epistemic dependence. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1586-6.
Pritchard, D. H. (2018a). Aesthetic risk. Think, 17, 1–14.
Pritchard, D. H. (2018b). Legal risk, legal evidence, and the arithmetic of criminal justice. Jurisprudence, 9, 108–119.
Pritchard, D. H. (2019). Wittgensteinian epistemology, epistemic vertigo, and pyrrhonian scepticism. In J. Vlasits & K. M. Vogt (Eds.), Epistemology after sextus Empiricus, ch. 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (forthcominga). Anti-risk virtue epistemology. In J. Greco & C. Kelp (Eds.) Virtue-theoretic epistemology: New methods and approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (forthcomingb). Epistemic vertigo. In B. Brogaard & D. Gatzia (Eds.) Ambivalence. London: Routledge.
Pritchard, D. H. (forthcomingc). Shadowlands. In J. Dutant (Ed.) The new evil demon: New essays on knowledge, justification and rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (forthcomingd). Wittgenstein’s on certainty as pyrrhonism in action. In N. de Costa & S. Wuppuluri (Eds.), Dordrecht Wittgensteinian (adj.): Looking at things from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Berlin: Springer.
Pritchard, D. H., Millar, A., & Haddock, A. (2010). The nature and value of knowledge: Three investigations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schönbaumsfeld, G. (2016). The illusion of doubt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simion, M., Schnurr, J., & Gordon, E. (2019). Epistemic norms, closure, and no-belief hinge epistemology. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02165-1.
Thomson, J. J. (1986). Liability and individualized evidence. Law and Contemporary Problems, 49, 199–219.
Vorms, M., & Hahn, U. (2019). In the space of reasonable doubt. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02488-z.
Williams, M. (2004). Wittgenstein’s refutation of idealism. In D. McManus (Ed.), Wittgenstein and scepticism (pp. 76–96). London: Routledge.
Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On certainty, (eds.) G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright, (tr.) D. Paul & G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wright, C. J. G. (2004). Warrant for nothing (and Foundations for Free)? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 78, 167–212.
Zhang, X. (2019). Closure, deduction and hinge commitments. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1679-x.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pritchard, D. Scepticism and Epistemic Angst, Redux. Synthese 198 (Suppl 15), 3635–3664 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02504-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02504-2