I need to be blunt here because you've walked into a contradiction and you're not seeing it.

Your stance in this thread has been read Witt on his own terms, don't extend his concepts beyond how he uses them, pay attention what he says. You've held me to that standard over and over. Every time I point to the wider functional role that OC is describing, you try to pull me back to the three passages where "hinge" literally appears and say I'm overreading.

But look at what you're doing with "scientific investigations."

Witt says at OC 342, "it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted." That's a remark about the logic of investigation, the activity of testing, checking, verifying, revising. It's not a remark about culture, worldview, or the general shape of modern life.

You've taken that phrase and expanded it into our system is inextricably scientific, our framework is scientific, our world-picture is scientific, our judgments are based on science, and our community is bound by science. You've turned Witt's remark about how inquiry works into an overarching claim about the character of our entire form of life. And you did it while citing OC 298, which says we're bound together by "science and education," as if that settles the question. But 298 doesn't say our system is scientific. It says science and education bind the community. Education is right there in the sentence. Are you going to say our system is "inextricably educational" too? The sentence is describing what holds a community together, not defining the nature of every proposition in the system.

Now think about what your position. You've taken a term Witt uses in a specific context, removed it, expanded it to cover far more than the original passage warrants, and then insisted the text supports your broader reading. That's exactly what you accuse me of doing with "hinge." Exactly. The only difference is that when I do it, you call it bad method, and when you do it, you call it reading Witt on his own terms.


Let's look at your citations again.
OC 141: "When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions." Nothing about science. A system of propositions.

OC 144: "The child learns to believe a host of things… bit by bit there forms a system… some things stand unshakably fast and some are more or less liable to shift." Nothing about science. A child acquiring a system through training. The hinge structure is already there, things standing fast while others shift, before any scientific content enters the picture.

OC 279: "It is quite sure that motor cars don't grow out of the earth. We feel as sure of it as of anything that we could know. But this is 'something that a human being acquires by means of observation and instruction.' I intentionally do not say 'learns.'" Observation and instruction. Not scientific investigation. And Witt deliberately avoids the word "learns" to mark that it isn't the acquisition of knowledge through inquiry. It's something more basic.

OC 247: "What would it be like to doubt now whether I have two hands? Why can't I imagine this at all? What would I believe if I didn't believe that? So far I have no system at all within which this doubt might exist." An everyday certainty. No science. The system here is whatever makes it unintelligible to doubt that I have two hands.

These are your citations, and not one of them say what you need them to say. They describe a system that forms through training, observation, instruction, and living. Science is part of what eventually fills that system, but the system's structure, its hinge structure, isn't itself scientific.

And OC 286, which you passed by quickly, "If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far." If the system just is science, then a society without science has no system. But Witt says they do have one. It's poorer, but it's a system. Which means "system" is not identical with "scientific." There are systems, and ours happens to be heavily shaped by science, and theirs by something else. The hinge structure belongs to the system as such, not to the scientific content.

Finally, you've applied a strict standard to my reading of hinges, viz., don't go beyond what Witt explicitly says. And you've applied a loose standard to your own reading of "scientific investigations" and inflated it to cover the entire framework. That's not a consistent method. If you want to hold me to the text, hold yourself to the text. And if you read the text honestly, it doesn't support the claim that hinges belong exclusively to scientific investigations. It supports the claim I've been making, hinges are what stand fast within a system so that doubt and inquiry can function, and the structure shows up everywhere, in science, in everyday certainty, in training, in the things a child absorbs before it ever hears the word "science."

You left out the italicises "I", — Banno

In the e-copy I am using it is not italicized, but even if it were what difference does it make?

and ignore that he immediately qualifies that comment. — Banno

I left it out because it is not relevant to the point that it is not a hinge.

You have been getting pushback for claiming that hinges are only about scientific investigations. — Banno

I made the connection between:

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

and

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

How do you understanding what he means when he uses the phrase "that is to say' in both cases?

As I understand it the second statement clarifies the first. They are making the same point in different words. When he says certain propositions that are exempt from doubt are like hinges he is saying that these propositions belong to our scientific investigations.

For thinking the forest is only oaks. ↪Sam26 has explained this. — Banno

The problem is more like this: someone points to a tree and says that it is an oak and you point to some other trees and call them oak. After all they all have certain characteristics in common.

The "system" includes all language, the many games we play and things we do with it; from reading a train timetable to traveling to the moon in a dream, from calling for a block to multiplying 12 by 12. — Banno

When he says:

410. Our knowledge forms an enormous system. And only within this system has a particular bit the value we give it.

He is not talking about knowledge of train schedules or dreams or calling for blocks.

Excellent.

He is not talking about knowledge of train schedules or dreams or calling for blocks. — Fooloso4

Yes, he is. Look and see.

It's not that what is being said doesn't apply to scientific investigation, but that it doesn't apply only to scientific investigation. We have to hold some things as indubitable in order to consult a train timetable, or to find our way home, or to recognise a friend, and so on. And this is also so in the laboratory.

Is it a hinge or "
hinge-like
— Sam26
? — Fooloso4

You're right that "I am called L.W." is personal. If it turns out nobody is called L.W., arithmetic still works, physics still holds. I'll drop "hinge-like" because it muddied my point.

But here's the real point again. OC isn't only about what holds fast for the system as a whole. It's also about what holds fast for each of us within a form of life. "If someone said to me that he doubted whether he had a body I should take him to be a half-wit (OC 257)." That's not a proposition belonging to scientific investigations. It's a proposition where doubt signals a breakdown in the person, not a gap in the system. And Witt treats these cases with the same seriousness as the ones you want to call hinges.

if "I am called L.W." isn't a hinge, and "I have a body" isn't a hinge, and all the cases where doubt has no foothold in ordinary life aren't hinges, then what is most of OC about? You've narrowed "hinge" to where the bulk of the book falls somewhere outside OC. I don't think that's a well thought through reading of a text whose central point is precisely the structure of what stands fast and what doesn't.

That's a remark about the logic of investigation, the activity of testing, checking, verifying, revising. It's not a remark about culture, worldview, or the general shape of modern life. — Sam26

Science is not only about certain activities such as testing. Science forms a body of knowledge. It is from within that body of knowledge that the logic of our investigations functions. It is also from within that body of knowledge that we make judgments. The judgments we make today are different from the judgments societies made in the past and judgment made by societies that are not scientifically advanced.

You've turned Witt's remark about how inquiry works into an overarching claim about the character of our entire form of life. — Sam26

I am taking what Wittgenstein said in his writings from the early Notebooks to On Certainty and others. It is not piecemeal or statements taken out of context. It is the background against which I understand what he is saying in the passages under discussions.

Education is right there in the sentence. Are you going to say our system is "inextricably educational" too? — Sam26

In so far as science is critical part of our education, yes.

Now think about what your position. You've taken a term Witt uses in a specific context, removed it, expanded it to cover far more than the original passage warrants, and then insisted the text supports your broader reading. That's exactly what you accuse me of doing with "hinge." Exactly. The only difference is that when I do it, you call it bad method, and when you do it, you call it reading Witt on his own terms. — Sam26

There is a major difference. The meaning of the term 'hinge' is contested by scholars. The same level of controversy does not occur with regard to the term science.

They describe a system that forms through training, observation, instruction, and living. Science is part of what eventually fills that system, but the system's structure, its hinge structure, isn't itself scientific. — Sam26

You beg the question. You assign a central role to hinges, but there is little or no agreement about this.

If the system just is science ... — Sam26

I have not claimed that the system is just science.

Which means "system" is not identical with "scientific." — Sam26

I agree.

And you've applied a loose standard to your own reading of "scientific investigations" — Sam26

The following might give you some idea of the scope of what Wittgenstein means by scientific investigations:

Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves.

(Culture and Value)

It is not just that our scientific investigations make progress, but that progress is the form of our civilization. Its structure becomes more and more complicated

Another nuanced argument by Banno.

We have to hold some things as indubitable ... — Banno

One again, Wittgenstein identifies things that are indubitable but are not hinges. The importance of some things not being doubted has a long history going back at least to Plato. We find it in the divided line from the Republic. The Greek term is 'pistis'. There is no single word for word translation but trust comes close. It has both an epistemological and an ontological dimension.

Another nuanced argument by Banno. — Fooloso4

Thank you. One responds appropriately to one's interlocutors. How one might read On Certainty and not notice Wittgenstein's quite intentionally wide ranging choice of examples, in accord with his own exhortation, is beyond my keen.

One again, Wittgenstein identifies things that are indubitable but are not hinges. — Fooloso4

Arguably, yes, and this is were I may to some degree differ in interpretation from @Sam26. The sequence for me looks something like a beginning with Moore’s claim and epistemic classification, then a consideration of hinge propositions before moving on to rules, world-picture, and animal certainty before more or less settling back to use and practice.

What I take issue with is your

There is not textual support or evidence that Wittgenstein uses the term 'hinge' to mean anything other than these incontrovertible propositions that belong to scientific investigations. — Fooloso4

Which is just plain wrong, as any who read the text will see. The use of "hinge", as Sam has so patiently been explaining, is a part of a wider discussion of various indubitable propositions in various contexts.

So sure,

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

yes; but not only to our scientific investigations, but also to our use of "This is a hand", “My name is L. W.”, “That is a tree”, “I am sitting at a table writing” and so on.

May as well let this rest.

A mathematical proposition like 12x12=144 is a hinge in the strongest sense (my bedrock sense) because its internal to the system. — Sam26

This doesn't really make sense to me. If 12x12=144 is a hinge, then isn't 10x10=100 a hinge, and 2x2=4 a hinge, and any other equation? So, wouldn't any, and every, mathematical statement internal to the system, be a hinge? And if every mathematical statement is a hinge, then "hinge" serves no purpose in this context of mathematics.

Or is it the case that mathematics itself is the hinge, in its entirety as a hinge discipline, or something like that? The problem with this perspective is that some parts actually change over time. And it's not a matter of just some fringe parts changing, the very fundamentals (what you might think would be hinges) like what qualifies as a number, change.

So in reference to the discussion on scientific investigations, I'll refer you to Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts. If this theory is true, then the idea of hinge propositions is faulty. The entire system must be equally doubted by the skeptic, because the entire system ties together as a cohesive unit. It is not the case that some propositions of a system are doubtable and others ought not be doubted. The skeptic cannot distinguish what is doubtable from what is not doubtable, without doubting them.