And I think mine the more standard response. — Banno

I don't think so.

The Orthodox domination of the secondary literature on private language was largely ended by Saul Kripke’s account of Wittgenstein’s treatment of rules and private language, in which Wittgenstein appears as a sceptic concerning meaning... Kripke’s Wittgenstein, real or fictional, has become a philosopher in his own right, and for many people, it is not an issue whether the historical Wittgenstein’s original ideas about private language are faithfully captured in this version. — SEP

FIne. Perhaps he did not do violence, so much as changed the subject.

FIne. Perhaps he did not do violence, so much as changed the subject. — Banno

I don't think he changed the subject. Had Kripke discussed it with Witt, I think Witt would have laughed and said, "How about that?"

More likely he would have reached for that poker...

Ahhh! :lol:

:wink:

Part of Wittgenstein's response might have been an admonition to look - that despite the apparent problem, "and yet language works!"


Like my answer to implies, there is a way of understanding a rule that is shown in following or going against it, in specific cases. It's what we do.

:up:

Meh. Moyal-Sharrock tries something like this, taking "belief" to mean "trust" alone. — Banno

Where did I say that?

Ok, if belief is not about either truth or trust, you've lost me.

I don't think anything I can say will convince you. I've explained it six ways to Sunday. For example, I don't know how many times I've said that hinge beliefs are considered true, but you're locked into one view of truth as if that' the only way we can use the word.

I don't know how many times I've said that hinge beliefs are considered true — Sam26

Well,

Let me explain it one more time why hinges aren’t propositionally true. — Sam26

Hinges, hinge beliefs and hinge propositions...

From the perspective of the Patristics, or say, Thomism, Wittgenstein is simply deluded about the nature of truth, knowledge, and justification — Count Timothy von Icarus

@Sam26 suggested to me that "I don't want this thread to become an argument about the existence of God, and whether belief in God is a hinge."

However, it does seem that Pope Pius X did establish what Wittgenstein would call a hinge proposition about Thomism.

In the 1914 motu proprio Doctoris Angelici, Pope Pius X cautioned that the teachings of the Church cannot be understood without the basic philosophical underpinnings of Thomas's major theses:

The capital theses in the philosophy of St. Thomas are not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the whole science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church. (Wikipedia - Thomism)

===============================================================================

For, leaving aside the proper interpretation of Wittgenstein, to say that "God exists" and "God does not exist" can both be simultaneously "tautologically true" obviously requires a view of truth that is likely to differ fundamentally (i.e. in terms of bedrock understanding) from most historical views, under which claims that something is simultaneously both true and not-true, without qualification, is absurd and "senseless." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, the Law of Non-Contradiction states that a proposition cannot be both true and false at the same time.

However, Wittgenstein's hinge propositions are neither true nor false.

There are many definition of "truth", but for me the most informative definition of truth is the correspondence between a proposition in language and a fact in the world.

Wittgenstein's hinge proposition is a foundation of the language of which it is a part, regardless of any correspondence between the hinge proposition and a fact in the world.

Therefore, the fact that the same hinge proposition may have different meanings in different language games does not break the LNC.

It isn’t independent of any world. On the contrary, it is the product of practical discursive engagement with others and with material circumstances in the actual world in which we live. — Joshs

The hinge proposition

You are conflating two different types of propositions within the language game. There is the hinge proposition and there is the ordinary proposition.

You are right that the ordinary proposition is the product of practical discursive engagement with others, but the hinge proposition is a different thing altogether.

This is why Wittgenstein critiques Moore's "here is one hand". The whole point of Wittgenstein's hinge proposition is that is not the product of practical discursive engagement with others.

"Here is one hand" is the hinge proposition that is a foundation of the language within which it is a part.

"Here is one hand that is slightly larger than the other and is wearing a yellow glove" is the ordinary proposition that does engage with the world.

The actual existence of God is sort of besides to point IMO. The point would be that people have often held conceptions of truth that would invalidate Wittgenstein's conclusions. Hence, Wittgenstein would need to prove that his presuppositions about truth must hold for everyone for his epistemic conclusions to be universal. Yet as far as I can recall he doesn't really take these on, he just assumes the core premises as obvious (see below).

The example from noesis is probably better than the examples from the relationship between God and truth, but I would imagine not everyone is particularly familiar with the concept.

There are many definition of "truth", but for me the most informative definition of truth is the correspondence between a proposition in language and a fact in the world.

Wittgenstein's hinge proposition is a foundation of the language of which it is a part, regardless of any correspondence between the hinge proposition and a fact in the world.

Therefore, the fact that the same hinge proposition may have different meanings in different language games does not break the LNC.

Wouldn't this solution require the two assumptions that:

"Truth is primarily about (linguistic) propositions," and;
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system."?

But these are oft contested claims. For example, I would argue that it was true that the Moon orbited the Earth in 65 million BC. No languages existed then, yet this was still true. And further, I'd say that the truth of things (ontological truth) is the measure of the truth of the human intellect (the intellect's adequacy to being), rather than a human language being the measure of truth. I would imagine that I am in the vast majority today and historically in holding a position that is something like this. Which doesn't mean that we're correct, only that the conception that truth is actually about language needs to be justified.

Second, I'd also defend a notion of sense knowledge. Other animals also possess sense knowledge. Yet sense knowledge is obviously not linguistic. So either it isn't really knowledge, or not all knowledge is linguistic. Likewise, one can know how to ride a bike," and yet this knowledge is neither propositional nor linguistic, and its truth is signified in successfully riding a bike (whereas linguistic utterances would be signs of truth in the intellect). If all truth and knowledge were linguistic those with severe aphasia would cease to know anything, yet they seem to still know many things.

Demonstration? Were is the "demonstration" that this text is in English? Where is the "demonstration" that this is a hand?

"This is a hand" or "we have bodies" are general assumptions that most have held throughout human history. Whereas:

"Noesis is impossible."
"Truth is strictly a property of propositions,"
"Judgement is only proper to discursive reason, not to simple (reflexive) understanding,"
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system," ...
and the like, are hotly contested philosophical issues. Indeed, Wittgenstein's presuppositions here are the fringe position in the broader history of philosophy. Yet, if noesis is possible for man, if the Thomists are right about the nature of truth, etc., then Wittgenstein's conclusions would not hold up.

Can he just presuppose these controversial claims as the "rules of doing epistemology?" If they are the "rules of epistemology," then why did most philosophers for most of history think Wittgenstein was wrong about noesis and the nature of our access to truth, or of truth itself?

The view that different things could be "true for different people" based on different hinges is far more akin to the popularity of "we do not have bodies" or "other minds do not exist." That is, it is a radical conclusion. But if one is going to draw a radical conclusion from controversial premises, will it do to simply claim that the premises are beyond demonstration (and thus presumably beyond repute)?

It reminds me a bit of the late-Hegelian position that "because the system is presuppositionless it is infallible."

You are conflating two different types of propositions within the language game. There is the hinge proposition and there is the ordinary proposition.

You are right that the ordinary proposition is the product of practical discursive engagement with others, but the hinge proposition is a different thing altogether.

This is why Wittgenstein critiques Moore's "here is one hand". The whole point of Wittgenstein's hinge proposition is that is not the product of practical discursive engagement with others — RussellA

Where do hinge propositions come from, and where do empirical propositions come from? If only empirical propositions are the product of discursive engagement with others, then how do we learn hinge propositions? From within the solitary imagination of the individual mind? Are we not brought up to see the world a certain way? And can we not be brought to look at the world in a different way?

92. However, we can ask: May someone have telling grounds for believing that the earth has only existed for a short time, say since his own birth? - Suppose he had always been told that, - would he have any good reason to doubt it? Men have believed that they could make the rain; why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him? And if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way.

If empirical propositions are formed through contact with the world and with others, what does it say about this world we are in contact with that it appears to us already interpreted through our hinge propositions? And what does it say about hinge propositions that we are brought up with them through cultural discursive transmission, and that they can be altered through practical discursive persuasion? Perhaps hinge and ordinary propositions are not two sharply distinguishable entities , but more or less fluid, more or less hardened aspects of the same practical discursive processes. Cannot hinge propositions be likened to Kuhnian scientific paradigms? How do we arrive at a new paradigm if not via contact with the world?

95. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules.
96. It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became
fluid.
97. The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.
98. But if someone were to say "So logic too is an empirical science" he would be wrong. Yet this is right: the same proposition may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing.

The point would be that people have often held conceptions of truth that would invalidate Wittgenstein's conclusions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Conceptions of truth don't invalidate Wittgenstein's conclusion.

Wittgenstein proposed that "here is one hand" is a hinge proposition. A hinge proposition is a foundation of the language game within which it is a part. This makes sense, in that "god exists" is a hinge proposition of the Christian language game and "god doesn't exist" is a hinge proposition in the Atheist language game.

As I see it, for Wittgenstein, within a language are hinge propositions and ordinary propositions, and these are different things. IE, not every proposition within a language is a hinge proposition.

There are many definitions of truth. For example, see SEP article on Truth. However, I find the most informative definition to be when a proposition in language corresponds with a fact in the world then that proposition is true.

The hinge proposition "here is one hand" does not engage with the world, and is therefore neither true nor false, whereas the ordinary proposition "the cat sat on the mat playing with the mouse" does engage with the world, and can therefore be either true or false.

Wittgenstein's main conclusion is that "here is one hand" is a hinge proposition. A hinge proposition is a foundation of the language within which it is a part. It is not a demonstration of the existence of the world.

I agree that the hinge proposition "here is one hand" is neither a tautology, axiom or truism. It is the foundation of the language of which it a part, and allows the rest of the language to take place.

In a different language game, "this is a mountain" could be a hinge proposition allowing the rest of the language to take place. Discussion could then be had about mountaineers, snow falling on the mountain tops, the difficulties of skiers, which ski lodge to visit and the best flights for the skier to use from their home country. It would include the truth or falsity of propositions such as "Italy is the best country to visit for the serious skier". But it wouldn't include the truth or falsity of the proposition "this is a mountain".

Being neither true nor false, the hinge proposition cannot be invalidated by conceptions of truth or falsity.

But if noesis is possible his entire analysis is wrong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why?

Noesis seems to be the real content of consciousness. For example, the consciousness of the thought that here is one hand.

Wittgenstein's conclusion is that "here is one hand" is a hinge proposition within a language game.

It is the case, however, that Wittgenstein was of the general opinion that thinking and language were the same.

Notebooks 1914-16 - Now it is becoming clear why I thought that thinking and language were the same. For thinking is a kind of language. For a thought too is, of course, a logical picture of the proposition, and therefore it just is a kind of proposition.

Language would be of no use if the meaning of the words couldn't be thought about. Even though "here is one hand" is a hinge proposition, the meaning of the words can still be thought about.

The hinge proposition "here is one hand" doesn't negate the consciousness of thought that here is one hand.

Perhaps hinge and ordinary propositions are not two sharply distinguishable entities , but more or less fluid, more or less hardened aspects of the same practical discursive processes. — Joshs

I would agree with that. Sometimes an atheist finds god and sometimes a religious person loses their faith.

Both could come from a discursive engagement with the world. But as different people engage in different ways with the world, some propositions may be hardened into ordinary propositions and some hardened into hinge propositions

For example, it could be accident of birth, in that 93% of the population of Saudis Arabia is Muslim and 2% in South Africa. It could be innate within a person's character. It could be the teaching that they have had. It could be peer pressure. It could be particular life experiences.

Even though there may be a state of flux in a societies hinge proposition, it is still a useful concept and perhaps informative in explaining the undoubted gulf between Christian and atheist, liberal and conservative and Indirect and Direct Realist.

The term "noesis" has been revived by modern thinkers in a number of ways that are quite different from the term's historical meaning, so perhaps that is a source of confusion here. I mean noesis as in "the direct, non-linguistic, non-discursive, reflexive grasp of truth by the intellect" (e.g. as detailed here https://theses.gla.ac.uk/2741/ for instance). I think it's fairly obvious that Wittgenstein doesn't think such a faculty exists, and that if it did, the entire theory of hinge proposition wouldn't be required. What makes things intelligible, on the view of most accounts featuring a faculty of noesis, is the intelligibility present in things, which is grasped by the mind, not things' place in a language game for instance. Likewise, truth in these theories if often framed in terms of identity instead of correspondence (e.g. Plotinus and the reception of Aristotle in Islam). That's a substantial difference that emerges from these different premises.

Just for one concrete example, Aristotle deals with a very similar set of questions in the Posterior Analytics. But he comes to a radically different conclusion about the nature of truth and human knowledge. I don't think either Wittgenstein or Aristotle's analysis is inconsistent or in error, at least not in particularly problematic ways for their main conclusions. Both were great logicians. However, their starting assumptions differ.



Again, I agree that Wittgenstein's conclusions seem to be true given his starting assumptions (or a view similar to them, e.g. the modern analytic view of "correspondence truth" you begin from). You seem to agree with his starting assumptions. Fair enough. But are his starting assumptions (e.g. that truth is primarily about language and statements, that "truth only takes place within language games") unimpeachable?

I don't think they are, and I don't think his conclusions hold if you don't grant him this and other premises. But my point is that people with different hinge propositions will clearly not grant Wittgenstein the premises he presupposes in his analysis, as evidenced by the fact that they are historically unpopular positions (and really, relatively recent developments which never supplanted the dominance of a view that holds to a sort of ontological truth in "physical things").

So, I don't see how the fact that "Wittgenstein's conclusions hold up if we make similar assumptions to him," says much on this particular issue. I'd agree with that. But for the conclusions to apply to epistemology tout court, they need to either rely on uncontroversial premises (they don't) or the premises need to be demonstrated (they aren't).

I'll just refer back to the quote I shared earlier, from a quite influential thinker/authority from an earlier epoch:

...neither are all things unutterable nor all utterable; neither all unknowable nor all knowable. But the knowable belongs to one order, and the utterable to another; just as it is one thing to speak and another thing to know.

Saint John of Damascus - An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith

There are obviously different assumptions about the role of language in "knowing" and "truth" here. For the Damascene, one can know what is unutterable.

...assumptions... — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is something odd about the claim that we assume that this sentence is in English. Hinge propositions are not mere assumptions. Suggesting that they are looks like shoehorning new ideas into old conceptual apparatus.

I don't understand the relevance of the example. That certain text is written in a given language isn't the sort of thing that would be a hinge proposition, nor would it be an assumption that is relevant to Wittgenstein's conclusions (nor would it be controversial).

Unless you think:

"Noesis is impossible."
"Truth is strictly a property of propositions,"
"Judgement is only proper to discursive reason, not to simple (reflexive) understanding,"
"Everything and anything is only intelligible and true or false as respects its context in a language or some belief system," ... etc.

Are as obvious as the fact that this post is written in English or that you have hands? What's the idea, that somehow these presuppositions are necessary for language? But that seems obviously false, because they weren't positions held through most of the history of philosophy.

That certain text is written in a given language isn't the sort of thing that would be a hinge proposition, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, yes it is. That this sentence is in English is something you cannot doubt, in the act of reading it. It's a neat example of

341. 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. — OC

"This is in English" is exempted from doubt by our reading it. To doubt that it is a statement of English one would have to supose that it does not say that it is in English.

You do not get a choice as to whether to see it as in English or not.

Now to be sure, there might be a language in which the sentence "This is in English" meant what in English we mean by "The cat is on the mat". If this were so, and you were familiar with that language, you might justifiably wonder whether the marks "This is in English" ment that the sentence was in English or that the cat was on the mat. But that would be to doubt what you were reading. If you take the sentence as saying that it is in English, then you cannot also doubt that it is in English. And if you take it as saying that the cat is on the mat, then you will cast into doubt the whole of this post, along with the rest of the forums and a large part of what you know. If that is what you want to do, then there is not much point in continuing this discussion.

Hence,

343. 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.

Notice that "we are forced to rest content with assumption"; we are not offered a choice here, such as that there is only one line through a given point that is parallel to another line, or that If A is true then ~A must be false. If we are to deal in euclidean Geometry, we are forced to accept the Parallel Postulate; and if we would deal in classical logic, we are forced to assume the excluded middle.

The Parallel Postulate is constitutive of Euclidean Geometry, and Excluded Middle is constitutive of classical logic.

A proposition is not a hinge in any absolute sense, but just in virtue of the role it takes on in a language game. So the same proposition may be a hinge in one game but not in another.

If you take the sentence as saying that it is in English, then you cannot also doubt that it is in English. — Banno

If you assume p, you can't simultaneously doubt p.

Yep.

But if you cannot reasonably doubt P, does it follow that you choose to assume P?

There is a difference between an assumption and a hinge proposition, not captured in Tim's recount. Perhaps the difference is a bit subtle, and perhaps one might just say that to assume is to exempt from doubt - but this would be to agree with Wittgenstein rather than to point out some error of his.

I've never had the impression that people can choose hinge propositions. I know someone earlier mentioned the rules of chess, where you can't play the game without assuming them. In the context of the game, you can't doubt them without exiting as a player. But life isn't a game one can exit. You don't have a choice.

Maybe you could be confronted with something new, as when the Zulu man is shown a map, and grasps long range distances as he'd never done before. The way he sees space has been altered. But he can't go back to the way it was before.

So I'd say hinges are too bound up in living as a human to doubt them. Is that how you see it?

No need to use a Zulu when we can use Wittgenstein himself. He took "Folk have never been to the Moon" as a hinge, it seems...

106. Suppose some adult had told a child that he had been on the moon. The child tells me the story, and I say it was only a joke, the man hadn't been on the moon; no one has ever been on the moon; the moon is a long way off and it is impossible to climb up there or fly there. - If now the child insists, saying perhaps there is a way of getting there which I don't know, etc. what reply could I make to him? What reply could I make to the adults of a tribe who believe that people sometimes go to the moon (perhaps that is how they interpret their dreams), and who indeed grant that there are no ordinary means of climbing up to it or flying there? - But a child will not ordinarily stick to such a belief and will soon be convinced by what we tell him seriously.
107. Isn't this altogether like the way one can instruct a child to believe in a God, or that none exists, and it will accordingly be able to produce apparently telling grounds for the one or the other?
108. "But is there then no objective truth? Isn't it true, or false, that someone has been on the moon?" If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our whole system of physics forbids us to believe it. For this demands answers to the questions "How did he overcome the force of gravity?" "How could he live without an atmosphere?" and a thousand others which could not be answered. But suppose that instead of all these answers we met the reply: "We don't know how one gets to the moon, but those who get there know at once that they are there; and even you can't explain everything." We should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from someone who said this.

but then...

97. The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.

Again, being a hinge proposition is a role taken on within a language game, rather than a property of certain propositions in all cases.

This is part of how hinge propositions differ from supposed necessary or a priori propositions.

This by way of agreeing that hinges are too bound up in living as a human to doubt them.

Cool quote.

If he had lived to do a second edition, he might have re-phrased this bit.

See this OP: and the idea:

If I have a conscious thought/belief that I am seeing something, could that thought/belief be doubted? — Kranky

It makes no sense, as one is having a thought, to also doubt that one is having that thought. Doubt has no place here.

But what language an archeological text is written in is an empirical question, no? It's only obvious if you know the language in question, otherwise it's something you can discover. I know Latin well enough that I can identify a Latin text, maybe, but it is by no means obvious. I might need a book, Italian can be pretty close. "This is in Latin" is definitely something I might be mistaken about.

Anyhow, I still don't see the relevance of the example. Are you claiming that Wittgenstein's epistemic presuppositions are "just seen" and essentially unimpeachable, beyond analysis, and beyond repute?

If this is so, why did most philosophers for most of history not accept such presuppositions? And if if Wittgenstein's presuppositions only appear relatively recently, how are the conclusions he draws for them "absolute" such that they apply to all epistemology and not just people making the same assumptions?

To be honest, "I am right about these contentious premises because it is impossible to think otherwise because it is the very prerequisite for thinking/language" strikes me as very much the same sort of thing the empiricists lampooned the rationalists for when they claimed thought was impossible to challenge their conclusions because it is impossible to think without their "innate ideas."