Sam's account in the post immediately before the one here quoted answers your scepticism...or at least points to the answer found in OC.I think that you have grossly inflated the significance of what is nothing more than a statement of the obvious. — Fooloso4
This is the only example of a hinge proposition that is given. — Fooloso4
Sam's account in the post immediately before the one here quoted answers your scepticism...or at least points to the answer found in OC. — Banno
my claim is not that it is the only example of a hinge proposition. — Fooloso4
340. We know, with the same certainty with which we believe any mathematical proposition, how the letters A and B are pronounced, what the colour of human blood is called, that other human beings have blood and call it "blood".
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.
"The Earth revolves around the Sun" is a hinge proposition. — Fooloso4
What makes something a hinge is not what people accept as true or false, which are epistemological ideas, but they are concepts that lie outside our epistemological concepts of true and false, and what it means to know. — Sam26
I have more than a passing acquaintance with this text. — Fooloso4
Hinge concepts are indubitable. That is, they are not to be subject to doubt; hence, they are "outside our epistemological concepts of true and false"... I don't think Sam is overdoing it here. That 12x12=144 is not subject to doubt; it could not be false, and hence is outside our considerations of true and false... that's how I am reading Sam, and I think WItti thought along similar lines. — Banno
A bit of personal information before I go: I have more than a passing acquaintance with this text. I did my dissertation on Wittgenstein. It is gratifying to see that in the years since I presented a new generation of scholars have come to see things as I do. — Fooloso4
Hinge concepts are indubitable. That is, they are not to be subject to doubt; hence, they are "outside our epistemological concepts of true and false". — Banno
If I ask how you know it's true, or how do you know it's false we are back to Moore's mistake. — Sam26
Hinge-propositions are what support our language of epistemology. They provide the foundation to epistemology. — Sam26
248: "And one might almost say that these foundation-walls are carried by the whole house." — Fooloso4
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. — Fooloso4
Wittgenstein is challenging the first premise in the above argument; more specifically, he is challenging Moore's claim that he has knowledge of his hands. — Sam26
We do not question their truth we accept it. — Fooloso4
Wittgenstein found Moore's common sense approach as a reply to the sceptic interesting, as it had similarities with his own nascent thoughts about hinge propositions. However he disagreed with Moore's use of the word "know". — RussellA
Moore could have said "here is one hand", meaning that ontologically in the world there is an object "one hand". For Wittgenstein, "here is one hand" is a fact in the world, it is not an interpretation, it has no truth value right or wrong, is therefore not open to doubt, is therefore not open to the sceptic and therefore a hinge proposition. — RussellA
I've been pointing out that these basic mathematical propositions are hinges, so that generally we don't say that they're true or false, except in particular contexts. — Sam26
Wittgenstein isn't saying that "here is one hand" is a fact in the world. Do you see somewhere where he says that? — Sam26
Is there somewhere in the text where Witt states that hinge propositions, or indubitable propositions, are neither true nor false? — Luke
Wittgenstein points out that one of the ways we can see how unclear the sense of Moore's proposition is, is to point out its negation. I think we can do this generally with all hinge-propositions, which is why I said to consider its negation. It's false that 2+2=4. — Sam26
Is there somewhere in the text where Witt states that hinge propositions, or indubitable propositions, are neither true nor false?
— Luke
No, but I think it follows from his ideas. — Sam26
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