The text makes a distinction of kind on the basis of that criteria.
Is that to say that the given examples of difference are not what they appear to be?
Which given examples?
Meeting the train, how ‘A’ and ‘B’ are pronounced, the colour of blood?
Still not following you.
I read §342 and §343 as a somewhat parenthetic dismissal of naive pragmatism - that these are not mere assumptions…
The ones immediately following the hinge remark. The other kinds of “not doubting” that are seen as different from the hinge propositions.
I’m going to have to leave this. I can’t make sense of it. Which hinge remarks?
The ones we have been talking about starting from 341.
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That was where the word “hinge” first appeared.
To be more specific regarding doubt:
- The propositions of mathematics might be said to be fossilized. – The proposition “I am called . . .” is not. But it too is regarded as incontrovertible by those who, like myself, have overwhelming evidence for it. And this not out of thoughtlessness. For, the evidence’s being overwhelming consists precisely in the fact that we do not need to give way before any contrary evidence. And so we have here a buttress similar to the one that makes the propositions of mathematics incontrovertible. — OC 657
@Paine … What is it you are saying here? Is it in defence of your “I think it would be a mistake to describe her position as “non-propositional” or have you accepted my explanation? Have we moved on, and are we now discussing if “blood is red” is a hinge proposition? Or is your comment directed at my use of constitutive definitions? Or are we back to discussing the nature of scientific investigation?
This whole approach is based in a misrepresentation of human behaviour. Some things are doubted and some are not, that is clear. Of the things which we do not doubt, the reason why we do not doubt them, is not that they are certainties, but that they are habitual. The propositions that we accept without doubt are not accepted because we are certain of them, but because we have formed a habit of accepting them.
Furthermore, it is fundamentally unhealthy to develop an attitude of certitude toward the things which are done by habit, and therefore designate them as indubitable. This is overwhelmingly demonstrated by the existence of what is known as “bad habits”. Habits must be doubted or we will never know whether they are bad or good. This attitude, that things which are carried out by habit, and therefore not doubted because they are habitual, are actually indubitable certainties, promotes unnecessary risk and danger.
Therefore it is incumbent on us to reject this idea of “hinges” which represent some form of certainty, as an illness to philosophical thought. To think that just because we carry out an activity habitually, we are therefore certain about what we are doing, is an attitude which propagates in a very unhealthy direction. This was shown by Socrates.
Yet the account of his trial and execution seems to show that there were things that he did not doubt at all. His decisions were based on them.
I don’t know that Socrates (or Plato) would have said that his mission was indubitable, however.
You are confusing two different things. We hold habits fast, except when we decide to change our stance and bring them in to question. It’s just that you can’t both rely on them and doubt them at the same time.
Being a hinge or even being grammatical (W’s sense) or empirical are places in language games.
I accept that this radically undermines the traditional conception of the a priori. I find it quite easy to believe that this is what Wittgenstein intended.
Exactly. But it involves a radically unconventional stance, and it takes a bit of getting used to.
Are you saying that Socrates did not doubt the finality of death? Clearly this is wrong.
There seems to be some confusion of the issue here. There is a difference between whether something is doubted, and whether it ought to be doubted. That we do not doubt something does not imply that it is indubitable, or that it ought not be doubted.
Socrates argued the general principle that everything ought to be doubted. And he showed how doing things in an habitual way tended to remove one’s inclination to doubt. That is exactly what habit is, to act without deliberation (doubt). The result, Socrates showed was that the people who do things in an habitual way claimed to have certainty about what they were doing, because they could do it, but they could not justify this claim.
This is the fundamental misunderstanding of human behaviour which I am talking about. We do, in fact, rely on things and doubt them at the very same time. This is known as proceeding with caution. Due to the nature of the changing world we live in, we must act without certainty.
And procedure (action), requires that we rely on things. Often, when we proceed we are not certain that the things relied on will produce success. At the basic level, this starts with trial and error, and as success is obtained and demonstrated, the degree of doubt is reduced. As the degree of doubt is reduced we lower our guard against mistake. Notice that we start from high doubt and progressively reduce the doubt. We do not start from a foundation of indubitible hinges.
When the act becomes a habit, it is because the basic things which are relied on for the activity, have proven to be very successful. But this success does not imply that mistake is impossible (certainty). That is the problem of induction discussed by Hume. Therefore, even after a habit has proven itself to be very successful at producing the desired effect, we cannot designate the things relied upon for that habit are “certainties” which ought not be doubted. Doing this would completely remove our guard against mistake, as superfluous, thereby leaving us in an unnecessarily dangerous situation. This is known as being “careless”.
The lesson therefore, is that to assume the existence of hinges which are beyond doubt, and to proceed in actions as if the hinges are beyond doubt, is to be careless. What Wittgenstein demonstrates very clearly is that ambiguity inheres within every language game, from the most basic moves. So to act as if there is no ambiguity, therefore certainty, in some propositions, is to act carelessly.
Have you dropped this question? We agreed that “here is a hand” is a scientific statement, but you did not respond to the rest of my response:
I accept your explanation. However characterized, she is using “hinge” as a function in all language games. If she had phrased the matter of what permits the experience of certainty without that word, then her view is perhaps reflected in statements like:
But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness: nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. — OC 94
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. — OC 152
What I object to is that her generalizing of “hinge” is at the expense of its meaning at the three times it appears in the text. For this reason, her position is not a helpful comparison to Wright and Coliva who do attend to the actual use during those three times.
My problem is with the definitions. To have a taxonomy requires a shared criteria. We do not seem to have gotten that far.
On the contrary, as you know, Socrates was quite certain that death was not final. He was also certain, he says in the Apology, that no harm can come to a good person. He also is in no doubt that he should obey the laws of Athens.
His mission is complicated. You are quite right that he demonstrated to various people that they did not know what they thought they knew, and that his mission started in a doubt about the meaning of the oracle. But he seems to have been quite certain that the oracle was true and important, if only he could understand it. He also became quite certain that it was his duty to annoy the Athenians out of their complacency. My point is that his belief that the unexamined life is not worth living mixes doubt in a context of certainties. Which is exactly what Wittgenstein is saying must be the case.
Yes. I am sorry I was not clearer. Your post, I think develops the theme - the mixture of doubt and certainty in a slightly different way.
Yes, that’s true enough. We need to balance risks and benefits all the time. But that process takes place in a framework which articulates the process.
Yes. But we learn about that process and build from the starting-point that we absorb from our environment. The background needed for doubt to be meaningful is held as certain, but can be brought into question, as and when circumstances change.
I agree. I’m just pointing out that we don’t, as Descartes proposed, ever doubt everything at the same time. We doubt things as and when questions arise, on the basis of the understanding we have learnt about evidence and certainty.
No, we didn’t:
And you replied in agreement… would you now equate empirical and scientific in a way that would count any statement about the stuff around us as scientific? But that amounts to dropping a distinction between the scientific enterprise as such and any discussion of our surrounds. Science has its own characteristics, and while what those characteristics are may be debatable, we might do well to hang on to the differentiation of science from other activities.
Moore may have taken “Here is a hand” as evidential; but Wittgenstein undermined that. In the account I have on offer, “Here is a hand” will work for Moore if it takes on the role of an ostensive constitutive definition: this counts as a hand; and if you grant me that, you grant me the rest…
And if someone will not so grant, then it’s not so much that they are denying an external world as that they are choosing to play a certain sort of language game, at odds with our usual performances; and at the least it is over to them to explain themselves.
I doubt she would agree. As I said, I’ll not defend her position at length. Others might.
Our criteria, if you like, is what is it about some sentences that they are indubitable? And one suggestion is that its not something in the sentence itself, but in the place it takes in the game that renders it beyond doubt. So we might now ask if this is sufficient, and if there are other ways in which a sentence may be rendered outside of doubt.
That was a typo.
No. As I said on the old forum:
Science is epistemic, theoretical, explanatory, rational, propositional, evidential.
The first part is obvious. The second part misses the point. What Wittgenstein says is:
- If you do know that here is one hand, we’ll grant you all the rest.
The skeptic would deny that she knows it is a hand. If she doubts the existence of an external world why would she know or grant that this is a hand?
According to the editor’s preface:
The first of these [Here is a hand] comes in Moore’s ‘Proof of the External World’.
Does it?
Do you know that the bishop stays on its own color, or is that something you decide to do?
There is a reversal in intentionality between “Here is a hand” and “This counts as a hand”.
That’s why I dropped the word “know”.
Proof of an External World. Indeed. Wittgenstein gave cause to doubt Moore’s use of “know” here. I think what I’ve said further explains why we don’t know that this is a hand, and yet how we count it as true.
Full version: https://gwern.net/doc/philosophy/epistemology/1939-moore.pdf
I wouldn’t say that Socrates claimed to be certain about any of these things which you say he was. I think you are making that up. Remember, for Socrates “knowledge” does not imply certainty. This is revealed in The Theaetetus. That Socrates believed the oracle to be important, and wanted to follow it, in no way implies that he was certain about it. Something can come to me in a dream, and I can believe that it is what I ought to do, and I might even proceed in that way, but I would never claim that I am certain that it is the right thing to do.
There is no ”context of certainties” for Socrates, that is his pivotal point. You are fabricating “certainties” where they are unjustified and unwarranted.
This claim is completely untenable. For something to have meaning to a person, does not require that the person is certain of the meaning. The fact is that we are rarely, if ever, certain of the meaning. This is very obvious, as we commonly doubt meaning, and usually cannot recount exactly what the meaning of any occurrence actually is. Therefore meaning does not require certainty, and it is blatantly false to assert that a background of certainty is required for doubt to be meaningful. Doubt and meaning coexist without any need for certainty.
This is not at all relevant. Doubting something is a mental activity, a sort of deliberation. It would be ridiculous to think that one could deliberate about everything all at once.
The important point, relative to the proposal of “hinges”, is that no point of certainty, no hinge, is required within this process of doubting. The requirement of certainty is a false representation of human understanding. And as I said above, one can proceed with an attitude of certitude, and this often facilitates efficiency, but ultimately it is a careless and dangerous attitude which needs to be brought into check through doubt.