And I do not expect you to agree with me. This is, after all, philosophy. However I think we can both see that we're at the point where we basically believe or do not believe a proposition, and we're kind of at the part where we're just asserting our belief -- we have tried to show the other what we mean, but failed. — Moliere

Isn't there any way to discover which side is correct?

Meaning essentially that we can value both our intuition and our reasoning and may have a choice in how we respond to circumstances, given the luxury of time anyway. We may be forced to rely on intuition when time is in short supply.

Then you have the capability of choosing which is better. To me that is enough. Of course you have a preference for this or that. Preferences play a role in evaluating what is better or worse. But it's also not quite right to say that they are the same as mere opinion either -- we have elements of an art and principles by which said art is made, a history to draw from, and -- importantly -- reasons we can provide to others as to why this is better or worse than something. — Moliere

Interpretations aren't preferences, on this, we agree but nonetheless, interpretations are fundamentally arguments and not based on anything that can be used to as a premise for demonstrating an objective truth, would you disagree with that?

I don't know.

I tend to see philosophy as not having correct answers -- but there are good answers and bad answers.

I agree with the part about Wittgenstein -- he is kind of an ubermensch of philosophical value. Reading him, for myself, was like changing my thinking against my own will. That's a pretty good example of tablet-breaking.

The part that had me thinking from you was your last sentence. I'm not at all certain about ethical progress -- though the good, the beautiful, and the true do seem to have a certain familiarity with one another when it comes to meta- issues.

Tying this all back to intuitinism -- it seems to me that there is an "aha!" moment when we read philosophy. It's like when we are able to see both the duck and the rabbit, just to lead this back to hinge propositions. I couldn't give a straightforward answer to your question, @Banno because I just felt too ignorant to be able to affirm or deny your question, but I can see a certain amount of sense to it from my perspective which is broader, far away, and not as intimately connected to the details.

But I believe that good philosophy is like that @Terrapin Station. We can see how the hinge can be flipped, and we might have reasons why we believe it should be this way or that way -- but in the end there is no method for determining which one of us is correct. The best we can do is provide our reasons for why we are satisfied this way or that way, and at least check for things like consistency or undesirable consequences. But in the end every theory can "bite the bullet", so to speak.

Also, with philosophy the theories we're exploring are usually so totalizing that it can be hard to un-see what we're used to seeing. You see this a lot in ethics especially, where one normative theory re-interprets another normative theory into its own frame -- "Well, that's just basically a form of deontology/virtue ethics/consequentialism because...." -- but if we are sensitive to this totalizing habit then we can begin to sense how there are hinges beneath our big-picture views, and that there are differences that are subtle, but important.

I think I see our disagreement in that light @Terrapin Station -- though by all means we can of course continue to try to provide reasons which will allow us to refine our views and state them more carefully (which I think is a good benefit, even if we don't agree in the end)

Yep.

in the end there is no method for determining which one of us is correct. — Moliere

If we're making empirical claims, how about making empirical observations? In other words, how about if we check the facts?

Sure, I'd agree with that.

But I suspect the devil is in the details.

Yeah. Good point.

An alternative is to say that ethics is a matter of language use only. — frank

Not a matter of language use only; but certainly a matter of language use.

An alternative is to say that ethics is a matter of language use only.
— frank

Not a matter of language use only; but certainly a matter of language use. — Banno

Some portion of ethics can be discovered by taking your mashing machine apart.

(This is not meant seriously at all, I'm about to get theatrical in order to illustrate a point)

My intuition wants me to slap you in the face for making what I perceive to be a ridiculous statement.

Seriously though, I like the premise and it sounds like it should be true. However, it presents us with a problem. How do we know when we are intuiting something vs when we are just assuming things will work out? Now, I've had successes that have been based off of perceived intuition, only for it to backfire later and be wrong. What if our intuition tells us to do one thing and someone dies or gets hurt as a result? Do Dictators believe in the power of intuition and do they utilise it?

So, what exactly is intuition and how are we defining that?

Meaning essentially that we can value both our intuition and our reasoning and may have a choice in how we respond to circumstances, given the luxury of time anyway. We may be forced to rely on intuition when time is in short supply. — praxis

I don't think we can ever use reasoning without also using intuition. In those cases where we have we can certainly use inducution and deduction and check and recheck our assumptions and so on. However in the microsteps of reasoning there is always intuition. About semantics: the scope of our words in the reasoning, in variaous qualia ('there, I have checked enough' 'I would have noticed if there was a flawed step' 'my memories of earlier steps in the reasoning is correct' 'this is not an assumption built into grammar, but the way things are' and so on), given paradigmantic biases, our assessment that we are being 'open minded' and not biased in other ways, that our premises make sense, that our logical steps are logical and so on. IOW what on paper might look like some purely logical provess, purely reasoned process, when lived in the creation of it and in the rechecking of it thare are tiny, not so tiny and background assessments and conclusions that are based on intuition.

I'm far more familiar with Moore than Witgenstein, but one issue here is whether Wittgenstein's view is a kind of Relativism - that there are lots of different language games and nothing beyond them which makes one the correct (or at least more accurate) game. There is a lot of controversy over whether Wittgenstein should be taken to mean this view, but it certainly is not a view compatible with Moore's ethics. True, Moore did hold that ethical claims were not provable by inferences from other propositions. He also often argued for ethical claims by appeal to intuition. There is some parallel here with hinge propositions.

But he also held that there were truths in ethics and would not have accepted that his ethical claims were just one language game amongst others in a relativistic sense. He also made use of thought experiment to convince others of his ethical claims, and I don't think Wittgenstein would have attempted this for what he regarded hinge propositions.

PA

I do not think that Wittgenstein's hinge propositions are intuitions. They are what stands firm and around which other things are taken to be known. They are not grounded in intuitions but are accepted within a system of claims, beliefs, and practices.

I also do not think that Wittgenstein regarded Moore's "here is a hand" and such as hinge propositions. Nothing hangs from or turns on them. They are examples of when language goes on holiday.

It is difficult to say to what extent Wittgenstein's views toward ethics changed after the Tractatus because it is not something he said much about, which is perhaps indicative of his having not changed his mind. In the 1929 Lecture on Ethics he maintains the inclusion of aesthetics. Two points follow: First, ethics is not a matter of language games, there are no ethical hinge propositions. Second, if one holds that moral intuition is based on self-evident propositions then Wittgenstein's view is not that of moral intuition. Ethics/aesthetics, as he claimed in the Tractatus, are transcendental. I take this to mean both transcendent, that is, beyond the limits of the world, and transcendental in the sense of the condition for the possibility of moral/aesthetic awareness, experience, and understanding.

With regard to moral intuition, I think it promises too much and disregards what seems to be the more likely basis on which we may form moral intuitions. Many today may hold it as self-evident that slavery is wrong, but if so then were slave owners blind to what is self-evident or did the choose to ignore it? Or closer to home, are the disagreements today over abortion and equal rights based on the failure of one side to see what it self-evidently true? Any answer to that question will have each side claiming the blindness of the other.

And this brings us back to hinge propositions. Moral judgment and deliberation are based on certain things that are, like hinge propositions, not brought into questions but are accepted. This does not mean that they cannot be brought into question. Sometimes they are. But if and when they are it is always in relation to other things that are not at the same time questioned.

If this sounds like a form of relativism that is because it is. Wittgenstein says in On Certainty:

140. We do not learn the practice of making empirical judgments by learning rules: we are taught
judgments and their connexion with other judgments. A totality of judgments is made plausible to
us.

141. When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a
whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.)

142. It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and
premises give one another mutual support.

152. I do not explicitly learn the propositions that stand fast for me. I can discover them
subsequently like the axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not fixed in the sense that
anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility.

305. Here once more there is needed a step like the one taken in relativity theory.