An Outline Of Existential Dependency Wittgenstein goes on to demonstrate that Moore's propositions/beliefs are hinge-propositions. It seems odd to me that you would suggest otherwise. — Sam26
Does he?
Where at in OC does he clearly call Moore's propositions "hinge propositions"?
By the way, I'm not judging either way whether or not Witt himself held that hinge propositions were beliefs. It seems that he would have. I'm bit baffled why you would think that I've suggested otherwise. I merely pointed out that I cannot remember any of his notes including "hinge beliefs"...
What I clearly remember is his description of bedrock beliefs, and talk of the spade turning up. This fed into his expression of not being able to get beneath language. If hinge propositions are bedrock, and the spade turns up here, then given that propositions are existentially dependent upon language, it would seem that we cannot get beneath propositions(language). He then goes on to further bolster this notion by pointing out how all examples are linguistic/propositional.
That's my down and dirty quick review of his overall thoughts on the matter.
Here's my critique...
An example of thought/belief is a report thereof. A report is not always equivalent to what's being reported upon. JTB is inherently incapable of drawing and maintaining the distinction between beliefs and reports thereof simply
because all knowledge claims accompanied by the act of justification are reports. JTB was originally meant to provide a useful outline for further discriminating between knowledge claims. The notion of belief is left sorely neglected. This is clear as JTB fails to draw and maintain the crucial distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief. One must believe a proposition... That's all the attention that was ever really paid to the belief aspect of JTB.
Witt was working on parsing this out, I believe. His talk of arational beliefs, and propositions falling outside the conventional notions, suggested that knew that some belief were not arrived at via rational/reasonable means such as argument, etc. I suspect he knew that not all belief were grounded upon other belief. There had to be an 'end' to justification. It seem that that would be at the beginning of thought and belief. However, because he delimited his own pursuits by staying within the bounds of language, he could not conceive that simple, rudimentary beliefs are not existentially dependent upon language.