Abstract
Wittgenstein famously introduced the notion of ‘hinge propositions’: propositions that are assumptions or presuppositions of our languages, conceptual schemes, and language games, presuppositions that cannot themselves be rationally established, defended, or challenged. This idea has given rise to an epistemological approach, ‘hinge epistemology’, which itself has important (negative) implications for argumentation. In particular, it develops and provides support for Robert Fogelin’s case for deep disagreements: disagreements that cannot be rationally resolved by processes of rational argumentation. In this paper, I first examine hinge epistemology in its own right, and then explore its implications for arguments and the theory of argumentation. I argue that (1) the Wittgensteinian approach to hinge propositions is problematic, and that, suitably understood, they can be rationally challenged, defended, and evaluated; (2) there are no well-formed, coherent propositions, ‘hinge’ or otherwise, that are beyond epistemic evaluation, critical scrutiny, and argumentative support/critique; and (3) good arguments concerning hinge propositions are not only possible but common. My arguments will rely on a thoroughgoing fallibilism, a rejection of ‘privileged’ frameworks, and an insistence on the challengeability of all frameworks, both from within and from without.
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Notes
Pritchard’s ‘biscopic’ approach to defeating skepticism utilizes hinge epistemology to defeat closure-based skeptical arguments, while McDowell-inspired disjunctivism is used to defeat underdetermination-based skeptical arguments. Pritchard’s complex anti-skeptical case is well worth detailed study, though it will not occupy us here.
Pritchard pairs this quotation from On Certainty with a parallel from John Henry Newman: “None of us can think or act without the acceptance of truths, not intuitive, not demonstrated, yet sovereign.” (Pritchard 2016, p. 61; 2005, p. v.)
My answer may not serve as a justifier if the blind man’s question is posed in a skeptical spirit. But my concern is not with skeptical doubts here. Pritchard grants the point just made in the text but, correctly in my view, denies that it can play “the remarkable anti-skeptical role” (2016, p. 85) that Moore’s ‘I have two hands’ is meant to play in Moore’s anti-skeptical effort.
As a reviewer correctly points out, the discussion of the blind man in this section is not by itself sufficient to upend Wittgenstein’s claim concerning groundlessness. That discussion continues in the following sections. Another reviewer worries that my discussion fails to take account of the fact that ‘hinges’ involve not specific, unchanging propositional contents but rather particular commitments. This is addressed in sections 2.1–2.3 below. I thank both reviewers for their stimulating challenges.
Pritchard (2016) insightfully discusses this skepticism-inspiring sort of consideration under the label of the ‘insularity of reasons’ thesis, according to which the support perceptual evidence offers to a given claim is indistinguishable in the ‘good case’, in which I actually see what I think I see, and the ‘bad case’, in which I seem to but don’t actually see it (because, for example, I’m deceived by the evil genius).
A referee doubts that Pritchard embraces the ‘direction of justification’ claim just discussed, and doubts that Pritchard attributes it to Wittgenstein. I should note that (1) that claim is ascribed here to Wittgenstein, not Pritchard, and (2) the reason Wittgenstein offers for thinking that optimal certainties are beyond rational doubt is precisely that such certainties are always less susceptible to rational doubt than any considerations that might lead us to doubt them. As Pritchard puts it, in explicating Wittgenstein’s claim, Moorean certainties are “immune to rational doubt [, f]or any rational basis for doubting the Moorean certainty would be necessarily less certain than the optimally certain Moorean certainty, and hence one would have more reason to doubt the grounds offered for doubting the Moorean certainty than to doubt the Moorean certainty itself.” That is, on Wittgenstein’s view something that is less certain cannot successfully provide a reason for doubting something that is more certain. Why not? Because the direction of justification must go from the more to the less certain. That thesis explains why Wittgenstein thinks that optimally certain claims cannot be rationally doubted: we are more justified in doubting the grounds offered for doubting the Moorean certainty than in doubting that certainty itself. If Wittgenstein rejects the direction of justification thesis, his argument for thinking that optimal certainties cannot be rationally doubted fails. My claim is that that thesis is false. As far as Pritchard attributing the thesis to Wittgenstein goes, cf. Pritchard’s explication, 2016, pp. 64, 65, concerning “epistemic basis”, “rational grounds”, etc. If Pritchard does not attribute the thesis to Wittgenstein, how are we to understand the arguments in which those phrases occur?
A reviewer correctly points out that Descartes had to hold some things fixed (for example, that what he thought he was doing was what he was actually doing; that he was capable of rational thought; etc.) in order to carry out his thought experiment. But, as argued below, this does not establish the ‘fixedness’ of hinges, since these things, held fixed here, can in turn be ‘unfixed’ and subjected to rational scrutiny. Another reviewer holds, bizarrely in my view, that apparent debates and arguments about skeptical theses are necessarily “fake” and “pretense”—Descartes (in Meditation 1), Hume, Unger, and other skeptics weren’t in fact doing what they took themselves to be doing, but only went “through the motions of doubt”, and did “not express genuine doubts at all”. Apparently, doubt is necessarily “fake” because universal rational evaluation is impossible, at least on the Wittgensteinian view. But that view is itself untenable—so I’m arguing, at any rate.
Pritchard introduces the notion of ‘über hinge’ propositions and commitments to avoid this worry about the changeability of other, non-über hinge propositions and commitments: the “entirely general” über hinge commitment is simply “that one is not radically and fundamentally mistaken in one’s beliefs”; and our other, “personal” hinge commitments “codify” the über one (2016, p. 95; cf. pp. 95–98). This is an ingenious move, and I’m happy to grant that it helps Pritchard’s attempt to undercut skepticism along partly Wittgensteinian lines, although the idea of ‘codification’ in play here is in need of further explication. Whether or not it helps establish the claims that hinge propositions are groundless, local, indubitable, etc. remains to be seen.
In addition to the many passages of On Certainty already cited, cf. Pritchard (2016, e.g. pp. 64–66 and 85), in which all these various understandings of ‘certain’ may be found.
A referee urges that according to Wittgenstein, ‘our certainty in the hinges is revealed in our actions.’ But this doesn’t help, since we often—indeed, always, if ‘certainty’ is understood non-psychologically—act without certainty. I head to the assigned classroom at time t because I believe that the class is scheduled to begin at t + 5 minutes. Does my action reveal my certainty? Certainly not—I’ve got the time wrong too many times to be certain of any such thing. Actions no more reveal certainty than do beliefs.
Thanks here to Al Neiman for helpful e-correspondence.
A referee wonders why this should be a problem for Wittgenstein. The preceding sentence expresses the problem.
The connection here to the problem of epistemological relativism is evident. On relativism generally, cf. Siegel (2004). Whether or not Wittgenstein’s view is relativistic in an epistemically pernicious way is a question widely discussed by Wittgenstein scholars; cf. Pritchard (2009, 2011, 2016, pp. 109–110), and the papers in Coliva and Pedersen (2017), esp. Carter (2017).
The main reason for thinking that Wittgenstein is right about all this, at least as far as Pritchard’s analysis goes, is that his view enables the development of Pritchard’s original, sophisticated and plausible undercutting of the skeptic’s challenge: his ‘biscopic proposal’ (2016, pp. 173–175 and passim), which promises to relieve us of epistemic angst. Key to Pritchard’s, and also fellow hinge epistemologist Annalisa Coliva’s (2015) articulations and defenses of hinge epistemology, is their taking Wittgenstein to be responding to radical skepticism, according to which we don’t, or more strongly can’t, have knowledge of the external world. As noted above, this is not my concern here. There are many different versions or forms of skepticism, the varieties of which needn’t occupy us at present. For a thorough and penetrating discussion, cf. Pritchard (2016). I regret my inability to consider Coliva’s challenging book here.
In addition to “faulty theorizing”, Pritchard also convicts his skeptically-minded or anti-Wittgensteinian opposition of engaging in or being misled by “dubious philosophical theory” (p. 3), “faulty philosophical theory” (p. 4, 68), “misguided philosophical theory” (p. 59), “a faulty philosophical picture” (p. 67), and “defective philosophy” (p. 175). But is unclear why these are ‘faulty’, ‘dubious’, ‘misguided’, or ‘defective’ other than that they are incompatible with his defense of Wittgenstein, which is itself an integral part of his overall anti-skeptical case, and in particular that they (mistakenly in Pritchard’s view) reject the essential locality of rational evaluation, although, as argued above, that thesis is itself problematic.
Pritchard, in his treatment of Barry Stroud’s thesis that “radical skeptical practices of epistemic appraisal” are a “purified version” of our ordinary, “quotidian” epistemic practices, suggests that Wittgenstein’s “account of the structure of reasons demonstrates” that Stroud’s thesis cannot be right because the skeptic’s practices “aspires to an impossible ideal” (2016, p. 149, emphasis added; cf. p. 69). But ‘demonstrates’ seems less appropriate than ‘presupposes’, given the points just made in the text. Moreover, that the ideal is impossible to realize, if it is, does not even suggest, let alone entail, that the ideal is defective. Justice, for example, is a completely legitimate ideal, one we ought to continue to strive to achieve even if it can’t be perfectly realized. If the skeptic’s ideal of universal rational evaluation is impossible to realize, that doesn’t show that it’s a flawed ideal, but rather that our inability to realize it indicates a genuine limitation on our ability to know.
Pritchard might object that the reason for embracing the über hinge commitment (and the rest of the Wittgensteinian view) yielded by this argument is pragmatic rather than epistemic: we should embrace the view because if we don’t we cannot achieve our aims of confronting the skeptical challenge and overcoming epistemic angst; we should embrace it not because it is true but because it is the only way to achieve our ends (cf. Pritchard 2005, pp. 241 ff.). But since embracing or “holding” a commitment is something we do (or not), the argument seems clearly to provide a reason for doing that very thing. For properly epistemic reasons to regard the Wittgensteinian view as false, cf. sections A2a-g above.
Although I don’t think Pritchard’s case works, for the reasons noted above, I am happy to acknowledge that his argument is exceptionally powerful, a terrific example of original philosophical theorizing at its best. In addition to the lengthy passage just cited, cf. his summary of his case for the Wittgensteinian view, pp. 173–175.
For a sampling of recent work, cf. Goldschmidt and Pearce (2017).
This point, that it is difficult to grant Pritchard’s claim that ‘belief’ in hinge propositions does not amount to belief, is well articulated in Coliva 2016. I should acknowledge that Wittgenstein is himself ambivalent about the claim that the appropriate propositional attitude to hinge propositions is belief: the passages just cited suggest that it is belief, while others suggest, as Pritchard puts it, “that in the relevant sense Wittgenstein does not think of our hinge commitments as beliefs either” (2011, p. 282).
A referee complains that Pritchard’s view precludes Fogelin-style deep disagreements, in that Pritchard argues that his embrace of Wittgenstein allows him to avoid what he calls ‘epistemological incommensurability’, such that deep disagreements involving divergent hinge propositions can be rationally resolved. (Cf. in particular Pritchard 2009, 2011). But the complaint is misplaced. I do not claim anything about Pritchard and deep disagreements, and am happy to welcome him as an ally in the rejection of such disagreements.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version was presented at the 9th ISSA conference, Amsterdam, July 2018. I am grateful to the audience members on that occasion for their critical reactions, and to John Biro, Al Neiman, the editors of this special issue, two anonymous reviewers, and especially Adam Carter for their challenging comments and helpful suggestions on an earlier draft.
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Siegel, H. Hinges, Disagreements, and Arguments: (Rationally) Believing Hinge Propositions and Arguing across Deep Disagreements. Topoi 40, 1107–1116 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9625-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9625-6