Wittgenstein Rehinged

By Annalisa Coliva

This volume brings together thirteen papers on hinge epistemology written by Annalisa Coliva and published after her influential monographs Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense (2010), Extended Rationality. A Hinge Epistemology (2015). By mixing together Wittgenstein scholarship and systematic philosophy, they illuminate the significance of hinge epistemology for current debates on skepticism, relativism, realism and anti-realism, as well as alethic pluralism, and envision its possible extension to the epistemology of logic. Along the way, other varieties of hinge epistemology, such as Moyal-Sharrock’s, Pritchard’s, Williams’ and Wright’s, are considered, both with respect to Wittgenstein scholarship and in their own right.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839982811

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Wittgenstein Rehinged

ANTHEM STUDIES IN WITTGENSTEIN

Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein publishes new and classic works on Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian philosophy. This book series aims to bring Wittgenstein's thought into the mainstream by highlighting its relevance to 21st century concerns. Titles include original monographs, themed edited volumes, forgotten classics, biographical works and books intended to introduce Wittgenstein to the general public. The series is published in association with the British Wittgenstein Society.

Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein sets out to put in place whatever measures may emerge as necessary in order to carry out the editorial selection process purely on merit and to counter bias on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and other characteristics protected by law. These measures include subscribing to the British Philosophical Association/Society for Women in Philosophy (UK) Good Practice Scheme.

Series Editor

Constantine Sandis – University of Hertfordshire, UK

Forthcoming Titles in the Series

Extending Hinge Epistemology

Intercultural Understanding: Wittgensteinian Approaches

Meaning, Mind and Action: Philosophical Essays

Normativity, Meaning and Philosophy: Essays on Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein and Certainty as Tacit Knowledge

Wittgenstein and the Life We Live with Language

Wittgenstein on Other Minds

Wittgenstein Rehinged

The Relevance of On Certainty for Contemporary Epistemology

Annalisa Coliva

Anthem Press

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Copyright © Annalisa Coliva 2022

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Credits

Part I In Quest of a Wittgensteinian Hinge Epistemology

Chapter One Which Hinge Epistemology?

Chapter Two Which Hinge Epistemology between Animal, Biscopic, and Constitutivist?

Chapter Three I Know, "I K now, I K now": Hinge Epistemology, Invariantism, and Skepticism

Chapter Four Propositional and Doxastic Hinge Assumptions

Chapter Five Are There Mathematical Hinges?

Part II Hinge Epistemology, Anti-Realism, and Relativism

Chapter Six What Anti-realism About Hinges Could Possibly Be

Chapter Seven Relativism and Hinge Epistemology

Chapter Eight Was Wittgenstein an Epistemic Relativist?

Chapter Nine Rituals, Philosophy, Science, and Progress: Wittgenstein on Frazer

Bibliography

Author Index

Subject Index

INTRODUCTION

When I published Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense (2010a) and Extended Rationality. A Hinge Epistemology (2015) I could have not imagined that in just a few years hinge epistemology¹ would have become one of the contemporary paradigms in epistemology.

Of course, this would not have been possible without the important contributions already made by Danièle Moyal-Sharrock (2004), Crispin Wright (1985, 2004a, 2014) and Michael Williams (1992/1996), or the coeval one by Duncan Pritchard (2015). Yet, as even a cursory look at the number of publications concerning hinges in the last few years would show, it is only recently that hinge epistemology has started affirming itself both as a paradigm in general epistemology, including its bearing onto issues such as skepticism and relativism, and in social epistemology, with special attention to the nature of disagreement, testimony and trust, and in applied epistemology, with respect to epistemic injustice, and feminist philosophy—just to mention a few prominent examples—, or branching out in areas such as moral, political, and religious epistemology.²

Most interestingly to my mind, this surge of interest can be taken to show that Wittgenstein’s ideas in On Certainty (OC), far from being merely of historical interest, deserve to be taken very seriously by contemporary epistemologists, working in general, social, and applied epistemology. Still, they remain open to a variety of interpretations, which in turn may and do fuel an array of possible developments. This explains why hinge epistemology is often intertwined with exegetical work on OC.

It is perhaps because of such a rise of interest that I have been invited to contribute to the Anthem Studies in Wittgenstein by the series’ editor—Constantine Sandis—as the aim of this book series is to bring Wittgenstein’s thought into mainstream by highlighting its relevance to 21st century concerns.³ In fact, I take it, it is because my own work—together with that of distinguished colleagues—has already contributed to bringing Wittgenstein into mainstream epistemology that that invitation has been issued.

I am therefore very grateful to have been given the opportunity to collect here some of the papers which have appeared after my two main monographs. In consultation with the series’ editor, I have decided to include in this volume only those papers that deal with the bearing of hinge epistemology on issues in general epistemology and that represent a development of the themes explored in those volumes. Hopefully, another book containing my recent reflections on social and applied hinge epistemology will appear in the next few years.

Stemming closely from those books, the papers collected here are better appreciated if one has at least some familiarity with my previous works. Yet, I do not presume or hope that only people who have already read those volumes will read the present one. It is with these new readers in mind that I have decided to include here extensive overviews of the ideas presented and defended in those monographs (§§2–3). Along the way, I signposted the themes that are developed further in this collection, so that interested readers may more easily follow the development of my views. For expository reasons, I present them in reverse chronological order. Readers new to my version of hinge epistemology will have an opportunity to see its main motivations and claims and will then decide if they also want to dig deeper in the exegetical issues to which OC gives rise and my stand on them. Readers who, by contrast, are already familiar with my former works, may well skip those final sections.

Another word of caution before proceeding. This is a collection of previously published papers. It is in the nature of this kind of volumes that they will likely contain repetitions. I have strived to minimize them as much as possible, sometimes by combining and cropping multiple papers in one, or by cutting some sections. Yet, some repetitions are inevitable and even necessary to make each chapter self-standing. Hopefully the result will not disappoint either a reader of the whole book or one interested only in some parts of it.

1. The Present Volume

The present volume develops many of the themes discussed in my previous monographs. It is divided into two parts. The first one—In quest of a Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology—contains five chapters. The first two—Which hinge epistemology? and Which hinge epistemology between animal, biscopic and constitutivist?—take a close look at various other brands of hinge epistemology, proposed by Michael Williams, Crispin Wright, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Duncan Pritchard, and offer reasons to side with my constitutivist version.

In particular, I focus on the notion of hinge proposition and criticize interpreting OC as advancing the view that hinges are non-evidentially warranted (Williams and Wright), or even known (Williams). I also take issue with Pritchard’s contention that hinges are specific codifications of our über-hinge commitment that we cannot be massively wrong in our inquiries. Likewise, I criticize Moyal-Sharrock’s view that hinges are not propositional and manifested, as such, only in action.

I claim, rather, that they are propositions that play a normative function, at least in context. However, whereas Wittgenstein was very liberal and comprised dozens of them, in my systematic development of hinge epistemology I argue that hinges properly so-regarded are much fewer. They comprise, in my view, only very general propositions, like There is an external world, My sense organs are mostly reliable, I am not a BIV/the victim of a lucid and sustained dream, etc. that make the acquisition of justification and knowledge—particularly in the empirical domain—possible in the first place.

The characteristic feature of hinges that sets them apart from empirical propositions and generalizations—no matter how entrenched in our web of beliefs and epistemic practices—is that they need to be presupposed either to justify or to doubt them, based on empirical reasons. Since, in my view, no a priori justification for them is possible either, they turn out to be the unjustified and unjustifiable presuppositions of any empirical inquiry. Furthermore, given that producing reasons for or against empirical propositions is the constitutive practice of epistemic rationality, I hold that hinges are in turn constitutive of epistemic rationality. In fact, on an extended notion of epistemic rationality, they turn out to be rationally mandated by epistemic rationality itself and therefore epistemically rational, even though they are neither justified nor justifiable.

Furthermore, I object to developing hinge epistemology either along conservative lines—à la Wright—and to his notion of non-evidential warrants, or along disjunctivist lines—à la Pritchard. Not only are non-evidential warrants for hinges nowhere to be found in OC, but they are also problematic in their own right, since they do not corroborate the truth of the propositions they are supposed to warrant, and thus are, at most, only pragmatic warrants. Similarly, I argue that nowhere does Wittgenstein lean toward disjunctivism and toward the idea that empirical reasons are factive. On the contrary, he held the view that such reasons are always defeasible. Furthermore, I raise some criticism against Pritchard’s way of preserving the (unconditional) validity of the Principle of Closure under known entailment for epistemic operators such as justification and knowledge.

Wittgenstein’s treatment of I know is the focus of the third chapter—"I Know, I know, I know—, where I argue that he distinguished between the ordinary (or empirical) use of I know and its grammatical and philosophical counterparts. The ordinary use depends on the possession of (noncircular and stronger) reasons and evidence in favor of the propositions which are claimed to be known. Since empirical reasons are always defeasible for Wittgenstein, this use of I know is defeasible too. Yet, ordinary knowledge ascriptions are invariant," for they do not change in truth-conditions or value depending on the standards that may be operative at different contexts (of use or assessment). Thus, Wittgenstein’s contextualism about knowledge ascriptions was radically different from contemporary versions of it, such as Keith DeRose’s or Stewart Cohen’s, or indeed from relativism about knowledge ascriptions à la John MacFarlane.

The grammatical use of I know, in contrast, does not depend on (noncircular and stronger) reasons and evidence for propositions thereby claimed to be known, and is indubitable. This is the use of I know which takes hinges as its content. It could be glossed by saying that a mistake is impossible, or that the propositions thereby known stand fast for me and everyone else. Yet, it is not in virtue of a subject’s especially secure epistemic standing that such propositions are excluded from doubt or mistake, but because of the role that they play in inquiry, at least in context.

Finally, the philosophical use of I know—the one made by G. E. Moore with respect to his truisms or the premises of his celebrated proof, or criticized by skeptics—is in fact nonsensical, for Wittgenstein, for it straddles the ordinary and the grammatical one. Like the former, it would have to be based on genuine reasons, yet, unlike the former and just like the latter, it should give rise to indubitable claims to knowledge. Yet, this would only be possible if there were indefeasible empirical reasons, which for Wittgenstein is simply impossible.

In passing, I contrast this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks about the various uses of I know with contextualist interpretations of his thought put forward by Charles Travis and Michael Williams. I conclude by pointing out the difference between my own version of hinge epistemology and contemporary contextualism.

In the fourth chapter—Propositional and doxastic hinge assumptions—I take up the issue, already adumbrated in Extended Rationality, of our attitude toward hinges, if it is not one of belief sustained by (noncircular) reasons and evidence. I contend that they are the object of an attitude of acceptance (or assumption), which may occur at the propositional or at the doxastic level. I distinguish three species of assumption—varying from hypothetical to categorical and to factual—and argue that we accept hinges in the second sense, for we neither hypothetically assume them, nor posit their truth; rather, we are committed to their truth as part of our world-picture. In closing, I defend such an account, and my constitutivist version of hinge epistemology from objections raised by Crispin Wright (2012b).

The final chapter in this part—Are there mathematical hinges?—takes up the issue of whether Wittgenstein’s arithmetical examples in OC should be considered hinges. It is argued that, contrary to what some eminent interpreters hold, they should not. Rather, it is claimed that they were introduced as objects of comparison to familiarize the reader with the possibility that also propositions endowed with empirical content could be as firm and indubitable as ordinary mathematical statements, and therefore play an altogether different role from ordinary empirical ones. The chapter closes by sketching the basics of a possible hinge philosophy of mathematics, where axioms are taken to play a hinge role with respect to the theorems that are derived from them.

The second part, titled Hinge epistemology, antirealism and relativism, contains four chapters. The first one—What anti-realism about hinges could possibly be—defends the proposal, already sketched in Extended Rationality and arguably in keeping with some passages of OC, that hinges are true. Yet, if they are, it is neither because they correspond to mind-independent, pre-ordinate facts, or because they are supported by all, or our best available evidence. Rather, their truth—following Horwich (1982) or Wright (1992)—would be of a minimalist or deflationary kind. Thus, there is nothing more to true than its disquotational function, and the satisfaction of some platitudes. The idea is then explored of combining minimalism about hinges with more robust accounts of the truth of empirical propositions, or, more generally, of those propositions for which we can provide justification, thanks to taking hinges for granted. Thus, the possibility of combining minimalism about hinges’ truth and the suggestion that non-hinges may be true in virtue of different alethic properties—going from robust correspondence to coherence within a doxastic system or to invariance through arbitrary increments of information (aka superassertibility)—is explored. The chapter closes by defending this combination of alethic minimalism and alethic pluralism from objections raised by critics.

The following two chapters—Relativism and hinge epistemology and Was Wittgenstein an epistemic relativist?—explore the relationship between, on the one hand, epistemic relativism and, on the other, Wittgenstein’s remarks in OC and contemporary versions of hinge epistemology. While Wittgenstein’s liberal view of hinges has led many scholars to interpret him as a relativist, several passages in OC and in other later works present powerful anti-relativist strategies.

The first of these two chapters is in fact a survey of various interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ideas vis-à-vis the issue of epistemic relativism and of the bearing of various kinds of hinge epistemology onto that kind of relativism. It also argues against relativistic interpretations of Wittgenstein and against relativistic developments of hinge epistemology. In particular, it is argued that the constitutivist version of hinge epistemology, which countenances as hinges only very general propositions that are presupposed by all empirical inquiries, isn’t open to the charge of condoning epistemic relativism. The second one is coeval with my monograph Moore and Wittgenstein. Yet, it represents the most sustained defense, to date, of the view that Wittgenstein’s ideas in OC do not lend themselves to relativistic interpretations. In fact, I claim that Wittgenstein put forward three powerful anti-skeptical strategies. That is, either claiming that reasons can be advanced to prefer one system of hinges over an alternative and incompatible one; or that different and incompatible hinges may be insulated within contexts—like the religious one—so that they do not leach through to infect shared epistemic practices; or finally, that we should revise our translations to reestablish accord between parties, rather than give in to the idea that they are holding different and incompatible hinges. In closing, I respond to objections raised by Kusch (2013).

The part ends with a chapter titled Rituals, philosophy, science and progress. Wittgenstein on Frazer, which develops a theme already adumbrated in the previous chapter. Namely, that Wittgenstein’s views concerning magic, and alternative methods of inquiry present in different cultures, should be taken as a testament to his opposition to scientism, rather than science itself. Thus, they should not be taken to support a form of epistemic relativism.

My hope is that bringing together these papers and making them collectively available to a wider audience will further enhance the already established presence and relevance of Wittgenstein’s thought into mainstream 21st century epistemology. I also hope it will show that, when done properly, philosophy and its history can complement and enhance one another.

2. Extended Rationality. A Hinge Epistemology

⁴

It is natural to think that justifications stem from a system of assumptions. Take, for instance, the mathematical case. Theorems—that is, justified mathematical propositions—are obtained through proofs, given certain axioms. Indeed, different sets of axioms constitute different theories, which give rise to different sets of justified mathematical propositions. However, no matter how many sets of axioms are possible, and no matter whether the propositions eventually justified are different, the former are clearly necessary to generate proofs and therefore warrants or justifications⁵ for certain less basic mathematical propositions.

Take a more humdrum case. You see a ball roll between two poles.⁶ You form the belief that a goal has just been scored. Yet, clearly, that belief is justified only insofar as it is assumed that a football match is being played and this, in turn, justifies us in inferring that supporters of the team whose player sent the ball between the poles will be cheering. If it were a different game, whose point is actually that of letting the ball roll between the poles in one’s mid-field, while players of the other team should prevent that from happening, you would not be justified either in believing that a goal has just been scored, or in inferring that supporters of the team whose player sent the ball between the poles will be rejoicing.

Many further interesting examples can be found in Wittgenstein’s OC. For instance, he noticed that geological beliefs about the specific age of the Earth could only be justified by taking for granted that the Earth had existed for a very long time. Only that way could fossils and other evidence be brought to bear on the issue of the specific age of the Earth.⁷ To see why, consider the hypothesis that the Earth, with all its fossils, had just been created five minutes ago. We would still have those fossils, yet they could not be taken to prove anything about the specific age of the Earth. If a specific belief about the age of the Earth can be justified at all, it is only thanks to those fossils and the collateral general assumption regarding the long existence of the Earth.

Wittgenstein made a similar point concerning what we regard as evidence in favor of a specific historical event.⁸ For instance, we think that our belief that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815 is justified thanks to documents and testimonies to that effect. However, those very documents and pieces of testimony would not justify that belief at all, if the Earth had been created just a few minutes ago with all those documents and putative testimonies. For the fact that an event took place in 1815—that is, over two centuries ago—presupposes that the Earth has existed for a very long time. Therefore, to possess a justification for specific historical and geological propositions it appears that we must take it for granted that the Earth has existed for a very long time, so that everything we regard as evidence in favor of specific historical or geological propositions can actually play that role. If that assumption were not in place, those very fossils, documents, and putative testimonies would be no evidence whatsoever in favor of those specific historical or geological propositions. Wittgenstein called these presuppositions, which make it possible for us to have justifications for ordinary empirical propositions, hinges—whence the idea of naming this approach hinge epistemology. Here are the relevant passages:

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system [of assumptions]. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument.

That is to say, the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn.

That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.

But it isn’t that the situation is like this: We just can’t investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put. (OC 105, 341–43)

Yet, the main bulk of Extended Rationality does not deal with the case of beliefs about the distant past and their characteristic presuppositions regarding the Earth’s long existence. Rather, it concerns the structure of perceptual justification. That is, the kind of justification we have, based on current sense experience, for propositions about mid-size objects in our environment, which are the content of our beliefs. Examples of this kind of proposition are: Here is my hand, based on seeing one in front of one’s nose; Here is a PC, based on watching the screen while typing on the keyboard; and so on. The claim at the heart of Extended Rationality is that, when specific empirical beliefs are at stake, perceptual justification is only possible based on a system of assumptions.⁹ That is to say, it is not enough merely to have a certain type of experience—hand-like or PC-like—to justify the corresponding empirical proposition, Here is a hand or Here is a PC. Rather, we need one or more general assumptions that allow us—no matter how defeasibly that might be—to bring those experiences to bear on a world populated by physical objects. Why so? The reason is, roughly, that experience by itself underdetermines the propositions that could legitimately be taken to be justified by it.

Compare this with the case of A goal has just been scored. We take the experience of seeing a ball roll between two poles to justify that proposition only thanks to already taking for granted that a football match is being played. However, as we saw, that very experience could be just the same if a different game were being played. If so, however, a different proposition (or set thereof) would be justified. Going back to the case of a hand-like experience: just by itself it could equally justify Here is a hand, I am hallucinating having a hand; I am a BIV (a brain in a vat) who is having a hand-like experience, and so on. Hence, taking that experience to partly justify Here’s a hand, rather than any proposition compatible with that very experience, depends on already taking for granted that we are interacting with a world populated by physical objects, that our sense organs mostly work correctly (and, possibly, some other propositions, for example I am cognitively lucid and not a victim of massive perceptual and cognitive deception).

Notice, moreover, that the general propositions I claim must be assumed for our experiences to bear legitimately onto other propositions about mid-size objects in our environment, so that the latter are justified, are not needed to give us an indefeasible justification for these more specific empirical propositions. Ceteris paribus—that is, given those very assumptions and experiences—we could still be facing papier-mâché hands, for instance. What we need those assumptions for is to be able to overcome what one might call our cognitive locality. Namely, we need them in order justifiably to go beyond our experiences and to bring them to bear on a universe populated by physical objects, whose precise identity and properties can, of course, still escape us in certain circumstances, rather than take them to be caused by appropriate neurological stimulations. To be more precise: if a certain kind of evidence e, like a perceptual experience, is compatible with mutually incompatible kinds of propositions, namely propositions about mid-size physical objects (P) or about BIVs being stimulated so as to have those experiences, absent any causal interaction with the relevant physical objects (Q), in order for e to accrue to a justification for propositions of kind P rather than Q, some extra condition has to be met. It is only in this way that we will have a justification for propositions of kind P and will be within our rights in taking a given experience, which is a mind-dependent kind of evidence, to bear on propositions about mind-independent objects.

Hence, to repeat, the claim at the heart of Extended Rationality is that perceptual justification can take place only thanks to a system of very general assumptions, such as There is an external world, My sense organs work mostly reliably, I am not a victim of massive perceptual and cognitive deception, and so on. A problem as old as the very history of epistemology—epitomized by Agrippa’s trilemma—concerns the epistemic status of these assumptions. In the quest for justification, each horn of this trilemma is thought to be problematical: either we end up providing circular justifications; or we embark on an infinite regress; or else, we stop with unjustifiable and therefore a-rational and arbitrary assumptions.

Suppose we hold that each assumption, in its turn, needs to be warranted, in order for it to generate perceptual justification, together with the appropriate kind of experience. For, one may think, it is only if these assumptions are justified that our ordinary empirical beliefs based on them will rest on a secure base and will therefore be justified in their turn. Consider the football case: it is only if I am independently justified in believing that a football match is being played that my experience of seeing a ball roll between two poles provides a justification for A goal has just been scored. I think that in this case there is no dispute. For it is indeed very easy to see how that assumption can be independently justified, for instance: I know that I paid for a ticket to the football match between teams A and B in the stadium where I am now sitting, watching the game.

Yet, as soon as we move away from the football example, things become much more complicated. Consider the historical case and the very general proposition that the Earth has existed for a very long time before our birth. One might think that that proposition is justified by a lot of our specific historical beliefs based, in their turn, on testimonies, both personal and documentary, often recorded in academic texts. However, as we saw before, those testimonies and documents could be just the same and yet have appeared and been recorded in academic books only a few minutes back. Therefore, clearly, it is not to be expected that a justification for such a general proposition could be obtained by inferring to it starting with premises that are justified just if that very proposition is taken for granted. That kind of justification would ultimately be circular, and it would be no justification at all.

Nor is it to be expected that justification for it could ensue from coherence between it and our further beliefs. Justifications are epistemic goods—to put it in most general terms—that should speak to the truth of what they are supposed to justify. Yet, starting with the same evidence—apparent testimonies, documents, and academic records–we could just as well produce a different and yet entirely coherent system of propositions. In that system the general assumption is that the Earth has just been created replete with everything we find in it and the corresponding specific empirical propositions are like It looks as if Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo about three centuries ago. Nothing makes the first system of beliefs more likely to be true than the second one. If we think otherwise, it is either because we are more used to it and therefore think that it is epistemically kosher; or else it is because we consider its specific beliefs justified and think that this, in turn, gives us a justification for its basic presuppositions. However, in the former case, we would conflate our willingness to endorse a given system of beliefs with proof of its truth and, in the latter, we would try to provide a circular justification for its basic assumptions, starting from beliefs that are justified only insofar as those very assumptions are taken for granted.

Another possibility is to think that we have a priori justification for The Earth has existed for a very long time. Where would it come from, though? Intuition is an appealing answer, but only momentarily, because one then faces the problem of explaining its nature and workings. This remains one of the philosophically most arduous tasks.¹⁰ Perhaps we have some kind of a priori yet inferential justification, coming from reflection on the very meaning of the terms involved. Notice, however, that this would immediately be hostage to the theory of meaning we are prepared to subscribe to. For it is only on the basis of some inferential-role semantics, which take either a holistic or a molecularist form, that we can sensibly claim that, for instance, it is constitutive of the meaning of Earth that it has existed for a very long time. Yet, a direct reference theorist could simply say that Earth refers to the planet we are all living on now, whether it has existed for a very long time or only for five minutes, and that this is the meaning of Earth.

Faced with this kind of difficulty—to repeat, distrust in justifications for general assumptions, stemming from specific beliefs that would be justified only by already taking them for granted; as well as in coherence theories