Whatever.

this will take a longer post, I suppose. It’s a good question. You brought me to realise I had taken an approach I adopted from Searle into my reading of On Certainty.

Is that so hard? You must agree that something can be true and believed, true yet not believed, false yet believed, or false and not believed...

If I flip a coin and cover the result before we see it, it must be either heads or tails, even before I lift my hand.

If I flip a coin and cover the result before we see it, it must be either heads or tails, even before I lift my hand. — Banno

So have you sidetracked sufficiently from the original issue which was about the truth or falsity of events either yet to happen or yet to fail to happen?

Yeah, good point. The Bishop example I have been using is not from On Certainty, but from Searle in The construction of social reality. It's the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules.

So, doesn't a dualist proposition like "the human being consists of body and soul" set up the game? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, because it is not a constitutive rule.

that we don't know if some statement about the future is true or false does not make it neither true nor false. — Banno

I haven't claimed otherwise.

Yes. So let's go with a block universe — Banno

So you're suggesting that we ought posit eternalism just because it makes it easier to address issues regarding truth?

I rather like the block universe. — Banno

Others, perhaps @Janus, don't. If presentism or a growing block universe is the case then there are legitimate issues with claims about the past and/or future having a (realist) truth value, so it may be that you're all just talking past each other. It doesn't matter if your theory on truth is unproblematic given your background assumptions if you can't agree on those background assumptions.

And contrary to your suggestion above, I don't think it reasonable for those background assumptions to be decided by which best accounts for your theory on truth. Seems like putting the cart before the horse.

Yeah, good point. The Bishop example I have been using is not from On Certainty, but from Searle in The construction of social reality. It's the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules.

So, doesn't a dualist proposition like "the human being consists of body and soul" set up the game? — Metaphysician Undercover
No, because it is not a constitutive rule. — Banno

Finally, after thirty some pages, I get some indication as to the criteria for a hinge-proposition. You know that Searle's distinction has been highly criticized don't you?

Regardless, let's consider the proposition I mentioned, "the human being consists of body and soul". This is a statement of what it means to be a human being, and in particular it gives an indication of what a "soul" is. It says that the soul is a part of the human being which is other than the human being's body. Without acceptance and institutionalization of this proposition, the word "soul" has no referent or meaning at all, and it would be nonsense to speak about a soul. The proposition may have been better stated to form a proper rule, but it is clearly constitutive in the sense that it gives an indication of what a soul is, so that we can proceed to speak about a soul. Without such propositions we couldn't reasonably speak about souls because there would be nothing to indicate what a soul is.

Now, the point I made earlier in the thread. If the truth or falsity of hinge-propositions lies outside the game of epistemology, as a constitutive rule of that game, (their "truth" is dependent only on acceptance and institutionalization), then they are actually the most dubious.

Regardless, let's consider the proposition I mentioned, "the human being consists of body and soul". This is a statement of what it means to be a human being, and in particular it gives an indication of what a "soul" is. It says that the soul is a part of the human being which is other than the human being's body. Without acceptance and institutionalization of this proposition, the word "soul" has no referent or meaning at all, and it would be nonsense to speak about a soul. The proposition may have been better stated to form a proper rule, but it is clearly constitutive in the sense that it gives an indication of what a soul is, so that we can proceed to speak about a soul. Without such propositions we couldn't reasonably speak about souls because there would be nothing to indicate what a soul is.



I am not really responding to the thread, but rather to your thought.

I don't believe there is a separation between body & soul they are not parts of a whole. I agree with social construction of these notions, but on an epistemic level but not as ontically given. I am not sure how it works ontically, however I am of the opinion that matter can assume many states of existence, including that of life.

The statement was just an example, of a dualist proposition. I brought it up because I told apokrisis that dualism provides the best way for dealing with the epistemic cut. The way apokrisis proposed is that we accept that there is such a thing as the epistemic cut, then proceed to adopt principles which make the epistemic cut go away (bridge it). I find this self-contradicting, to assume the existence of a division, then hide that division behind vague principles, so that it appears that there is no such division.

I don't believe there is a separation between body & soul they are not parts of a whole. I agree with social construction of these notions, but on an epistemic level but not as ontically given. — Cavacava

I don't quite see what you are saying here. Are you saying that you agree with the division between body and soul, to the extent that it is useful for social institutions, and epistemology, but you do not agree that this division is a true, or real one. Isn't that a form of hypocrisy, to allow that a principle which you do not believe to be true, should be fundamental to epistemology and social institutions?

Your position seems to be the opposite of Pattee's. He seems to propose that the division is real, that is his premise. But he thinks the way to deal with it, is to make it vanish behind vague principles.

So, your opinion is that the division is not real, but it should be maintained in principle. Pattee's and I assume apokrisis' position is that the division is real but we should adopt principles which close it.

Dualism allows that the division is real, and assumes principles which support the reality of the division. This is why dualism is the only existing metaphysics which deals with the epistemic cut in a logically consistent way. The alternative would be a position like Banno's, and perhaps StreetlightX's, which would be to deny the division altogether, making this "epistemic cut" something completely meaningless. However, since the foundations of our language (the hinge-propositions) are based in the dualist metaphysics, Banno's course is extremely difficult. We haven't a way to say what Banno wants to say, because our language is firmly rooted in dualist ontology.

No, because it is not a constitutive rule. — Banno

I've always found the idea of hinge-propositions difficult. I share some of 's doubts but let me ask some different questions.

Supposedly, hinge propositions do not need to be supported by any non-question begging reasons because they 'operate outside of the game'. They are something like the rules of the game, and you make the analogy with the rules of a game of chess. You include G.E Moore's 'here is a hand' as a hinge-proposition and you deny that Dualism is a hinge-proposition. What is the game that 'here is a hand' is a rule for?

Further, you say Dualism can't be a hinge-proposition because it isn't a 'constitutive rule'. Well, doesn't it depend which game you are playing what the constitutive rules are? 'Knights move in L shapes' is a constitutive rule of chess, but it isn't constitutive of Sid Meier's Civilization, where knights can move in any shape within a fixed range of tiles, and then there's Monopoly, which doesn't have knights. Why can't Dualism be a constitutive rule for some game or other? I suppose this is related to the fact that I'm not sure what game 'Here is a hand' is a rule for, or what is meant by 'constitutive rule'.

Best,
PA.

"...but you do not agree that this division is a true, or real one."

This assumes that what is real or true is out there, and I don't agree . Reality is what we make of it, a construction...which is manifest to us which enables our understanding of the world. We don't have any independent access to what is in the great outdoors because it must be thought and we are habituated to think in certain ways based on the social constructions which comprise the context where we find our self.

I think purpose of ontology is to explain why what appears, appears as it appears, and that what appears is a body, not a soul, but I don't think that this description, in itself is sufficient to explain the vitality of life or human thought. I think the indivisibility of the body/soul must be posited to explain human reality.

Now, the point I made earlier in the thread. If the truth or falsity of hinge-propositions lies outside the game of epistemology, as a constitutive rule of that game, (their "truth" is dependent only on acceptance and institutionalization), then they are actually the most dubious. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your challenge to set out criteria of hinge propositions had me go back to OC; and what I found was unsatisfactory. Several details have me re-thinking the argument.

I guess that's why your damned niggling is valuable, so thanks!

The basic insight of OC remains: doubt only makes sense agains a background of certainty. But OC is incomplete, and muddled. It's clear that within that text there are superficially contradictory threads. These can be made to cohere, I believe, by reference to the private language argument, which was oddly left out of OC, together with Searle's discussion of constitutive rules and Davidson's thoughts on conceptual schemes. Feyerabend fits int here somewhere, too.

So I have two tasks: exegesis, in re-reading OC to see what is Wittgenstein's and what is Banno's; and expounding on what Sam has called hinge propositions.

For the sake of staying on the topic of the thread, I still remain unconvinced by @Sam26's account of hinge propositions as somehow caused; but remain open to it.

Why can't Dualism be a constitutive rule for some game or other? — PossibleAaran

Constitutive rules can be written as "X counts as Y"

So "a diagonal move of any length counts as a move for a bishop in chess".

"Here is a hand" can be read as constitutive in that it is setting out what counts as a hand.

How would "the human being consists of body and soul" be written as a constitutive rule?

"A human being counts as a body and a soul" or "A body and a soul counts as a human being"?

DO they work? Perhaps.

"Here is a hand" can be read as constitutive in that it is setting out what counts as a hand. — Banno

That's not what Moore was doing though. "Here is a hand" was one of the premises he tried to use to prove that there is an external world.

That's right; OC is a critique of Moore.

The basic insight of OC remains valuable: doubt only makes sense agains a background of certainty. — Banno

So what Peirce said over 50 years before. :)

Or to be more precise, we must begin where we first find ourselves - thrust into the middle of rational inquiry with some presumed background of understanding.

Certainty about those background beliefs then achieves the status of truth at the limit of rational inquiry. Truth is about opinion becoming fixed because doubt proves not to make a difference to what we feel most inclined to believe.

This is true anti-foundationalism. Instead of truth being what a mind knows about a world, it is the world as it must, in the limit, become known to the mind by "scientific reason" - a method of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation. And not just some individual mind, but a collective or communal mind.

The linguistic mind is defined at a socio-cultural level.

Certainty about those background beliefs then achieves the status of truth at the limit of rational inquiry. Truth is about opinion becoming fixed because doubt proves not to make a difference to what we feel most inclined to believe. — apokrisis

Truth is not a type of belief.

Truth is not a type of belief. — Banno

Amusing.

To continue, the difference between a Peircean and Wittgensteinian epistemology - or at least Banno's understanding of one - looks to hinge on two key issues.

First, Banno is concerned to make truth a property of propositions. So this is the philosophy of language view that reality is some totality of statements. For all practical purposes - ie: the pragmatism that eschews mysticism and unwarranted skepticism - existence or experience reduces to a collection of all that is stateable or sayable.

This stance in itself conflates all forms of language, confusing the difference between the strict and explicit grammars that constitute "logical speech" with the much looser and socially-oriented language that we use in ordinary, not explicitly metaphysical, everyday speech.

Peirce then makes truth a property of semiosis. This is a general method of reasoning that goes even beyond language. Animal brains and animal bodies reason semiotically - they are in a pragmatic sign relation with their world. Human language - both social and logical - are then merely the same semiotic game being played out at higher levels of development.

So Banno wants to deal with a reality imagined as some totality of true statements. And this seems to be what hinge propositions is about. For the door to swing, it must be anchored to something background that doesn't. To keep the linguistic turn going, that background also needs to be understood as some collection of propositions. It becomes propositions all the way down - even if we understand the practical impossibility of cashing out all that background supposition as confirmed true fact.

Peirce, on the other hand, takes the evolutionary approach as revealed by biological and psychological science. He sees the continuity of semiosis that underlies the development of the mind. If there is a hinge that gets swung on, it is the way that logical claims get hung on the bedrock certainty of our general perceptual living in a world. It is the animal level of cognition, the modelling of a biological self in pragmatic interaction with an environment, that is the anchor of our epistemology. We start from that as our primal facts.

So Banno's Wittgenstein has a problem that there is no proper cut-off. If it is propositions all the way down, then any kind of primal certainty has no starting point. But the Peircean view distinguishes grades of semiosis. So a lower grade can be the bedrock for a higher grade. There is an underlying continuity of course, but also a natural cut-off point. And waving his mitts about, that was what Moore would have been hoping to demonstrate.

Then a second key point of difference is that Peirce introduces a further category of epistemology - the vague.

Banno's Wittgenstein is committed to an epistemology of the statable or sayable. And especially when formulated in the language of logic, this is a presumption that only the crisp or definite - the counterfactual - gains admittance to the party.

Now the demand that statements be crisp is an excellent pragmatic maxim. It is the right goal. It is really useful - if you want to analyse reality into some set of answerable facts - for the laws of thought to apply.

However, it is the ideal. And vagueness is then the more primal or foundational condition. Peircean semiotics recognises and builds on that fact. Banno's Wittgenstein can't admit to it as otherwise the whole pretence of a philosophy of language derived theory of truth falls flat like a house of cards.

So again, with hinge propositions, the actual backdrop of belief to which particular propositions are hinged, is usually unanalysed. It is just a congealed mass of ecologically-valid belief or habit so far as our language use is concerned. It is our biological self - the animal self that knows and believes the ecological truth of its world.

Now we can get stuck into that congealed mass and analyse it propositionally. We can break it down linguistically. But it isn't already a collection of facts just waiting to be found. And being knowledge of a constitutionally vaguer kind, much of what it might have to say is going to elude any saying in being ... essentially vaguer. It will just resist full analysis. Although, again, there is no harm in doing our best.

So we can have truth as a property of logical propositions - certain formulas of words.

We can have truth as the report of commonsense experience - the beliefs that seem rooted in our ecologically-validated perceptions.

Or we can have truth in the Peircean sense as the common limit on a process of rational inquiry. We can have truth as the pragmatic fruit of semiosis - an understanding of epistemic mechanism that spans all the natural levels of "knowing", and also distinguishes these levels in terms of their being rooted in a foundational vagueness, and aspiring to an ideal of generality and counterfactual definiteness.

A sort of summary
Here's the grammar I am using, just to be clear.

Truth is fundamental; "There is a hand" is true just in the case that there is a hand.

Statements are the sort of thing that can be true or false.

Belief is an attitude towards statements. We can believe things that are true, or things that are false. We can disbelieve things that are true, or things that are false.

Certainty is the subject of inquiry in this thread. As a first point, certainty is an attitude towards statements such that that they are indubitable.

Sam has apparently posited that they are indubitable because our belief in them is caused by the interaction of our mind, brain and the world. My objection is that it is not at all apparent how a causal chain moves from what is the case to an attitude of certainty.

The exemplar I have provided for a certainty is the constitutive rule. It makes no sense to doubt a constitutive rule within the context of the game it helps create.

The puzzle I have at the moment is: are there other examples of certainties? OC is not much help here as Wittgenstein's examples shift around.

I think the Moon example he uses, one that we would no longer accept, must serve as an exemplar.

Or we could play with Apo, who as always wants to drag Peirce in. I will read his post later, as we have run out of cat litter. O:)

I had a quick read, @apokrisis. It's not propositions all the way down. "Here is a hand" shows the hand.

Again, you play with straw.

Or we can have truth in the Peircean sense as the common limit on a process of rational inquiry. — apokrisis

Truth as belief.

First, it seems that there are beliefs that arise apart from language — Sam26

How does it seem like this? Care to offer an example? Perhaps this is nitpicking, but in the feeble examples I can imagine, it usually seems more suitable to say "he/it thinks..." rather than "he/it believes..." That is, the "belief" seems short-term or fleeting.

Instead of there being non-linguistic beliefs, could it just be that we apply statements of belief to the non-linguistic behaviours of others in an attempt to explain those behaviours?

For if there are no beliefs and no thoughts prior to the formation of linguistics (language), what would be the springboard of language? How does one get from a mind of no thoughts and no beliefs, to a mind that is able to express one's thoughts linguistically? — Sam26

Perhaps language just evolved from scratch, like life. It's similar to asking how did we get from the absence of life to the presence of life unless there was some mystical dormant life force (where the dormant life force is analogous to your non-linguistic belief).

How are beliefs causally formed? It seems to be the case that beliefs arise causally within the mind based on the interactions between our sensory experiences and the world around us. — Sam26

This seems to apply equally to linguistic beliefs, including those beliefs that we learn in school and which are taught to us by others. What about instincts and natural physical/bodily reflexes - do you consider these to be a kind of non-linguistic belief? Is there a way to distinguish these just by observing behaviour?

To be fair though, Wittgenstein presents his view of belief, similar to yours, in Part II of his Investigations:

This is how I think of it: Believing is a state of mind. It has duration; and that independently of the duration of its expression in a sentence, for example. So it is a kind of disposition of the believing person. This is shewn me in the case of someone else by his behaviour; and by his words. And under this head, by the expression "I believe . . .' as well as by the simple assertion. — Wittgenstein

Although I still maintain my suspicions about your non-linguistic beliefs and causal theory.

"Here is a hand" when I hold up my hand

"3 times 4 is 12"

When could it make sense to doubt either? Only when "forgetfulness, oversight or illusion" play a part. (OC 265, OC 455) "Here is a hand" is as certain as arithmetic.

t's not propositions all the way down. "Here is a hand" shows the hand. — Banno

You might need to brush up on your reading skills. Demonstrating that your bedrock is your perceptual experience is demonstrating exactly that. Which becomes the problem for your position in which the world is some totality of propositional facts.

Especially once your transcendent world of truths are talked of as if reality were not temporal but an eternal block of events that have “already been actualised”.

You keep going on about truth being cashed out in meaningful actions. Well Peirce made the point that the act of measurement is the primal definition of a meaningful action.

Moore proposes he has hands? Well look. Flap, flap. There’s your inductive confirmation. We can all agree on that as evidence. That sure looks like a meaningful act of measurement.

The basic insight of OC remains: doubt only makes sense agains a background of certainty. But OC is incomplete, and muddled. — Banno

OC is muddled and incomplete, because the basic premise, that "doubt only makes sense against a background of certainty", is the opposite of reality, and therefore untenable. What is really the case is that certainty only makes sense against a background of doubt.

Certainty only follows justification, which follows doubt. It is only when we doubt, that we seek justification. And certainty is only derived from justification. So doubt is necessarily prior to certainty in all cases. This is very evident from the evolution of knowledge, we proceed from unknowing (doubt and uncertainty) toward knowing (certainty). Our lives are full of uncertainties and we only get a glimpse of what certainty is really like. The background is doubt and uncertainty, as when we are children, and from this emerges knowledge and certainty, but only in relation to specific things. To me, this is very intuitive, and I don't see why so many people insist on the very counter-intuitive stance, that doubt only makes sense from a background of certainty.

The exemplar I have provided for a certainty is the constitutive rule. It makes no sense to doubt a constitutive rule within the context of the game it helps create. — Banno

"Certainty" does not make any sense in this context. "Certainty" refers to things which cannot be doubted, because it is known beyond any doubt, that they must be true. This is the case with a self-evident truth.

Sure, it makes no sense to doubt the rules of a game, when one consents to play that game, but the unreasonableness of doubt here is due to one's commitment to the game, it is not due to any form of certainty. If I make a social commitment, whether it is a business deal with you, or any other social agreement, then it is unreasonable for me to doubt the rules that I have committed to, after the fact of having consented to the agreement. To renege is to be unreasonable. But this form of "unreasonable to doubt" does not constitute a certainty that the rules I've committed to are the best, correct, true, or any such thing. This form of "unreasonable to doubt" is not a form of certainty at all, it refers to commitment, or obligation..

Demonstrating that your bedrock is your perceptual experience is demonstrating exactly that. — apokrisis

That's another misunderstanding on your part, Apo. It's not based on perceptual experience per se. It's the participation in the shared language game that is pivotal. It's not an induction.

Our lives are full of uncertainties and we only get a glimpse of what certainty is really like. — Metaphysician Undercover

Really? Not over here. For Alice, maybe.

It's not based on perceptual experience per se. It's the participation in the shared language game that is pivotal. It's not an induction. — Banno

LOL. That would be why Moore on an LSD trip, shrieking here is one flipper, now here is another, is simply failing to share in a language game with his audience. It wouldn’t be a failure of a perceptual experience game.

Obviously, private includes self, but how can a language, even when translated into our own, speak to a notion, so the notion becomes a person, what does that mean, do you mean, that it speaks of the notion of having private thoughts, not that I understand what that is supposed to mean any better. It must be a very brief language then? Perhaps you are simply talking about a language of one`s private thoughts, if so why not just say that, at least it makes sense, when translated into English I mean. That language already exists, and it is already English. Sure, it may begin in raw emotion (emotion obviously has its source), a blank canvas, events, events come emotion, but so also do lineal exchanges. The language is different, sure, we rearrange the language of our thoughts such that we may best be understood. We may of course find ourselves adding or subtracting to that which we had understood to have been our thoughts, and when one`s mouth runs away from our selves it can cause considerable insecurity, finally even the feeling of hopelessness.