A taxonomy of hinges?

Metaphysics & Epistemology
143

Haven’t we been through this? It is the scope of science that carries over. Scientific investigations are of the World. Die Welt.

As I pointed out, science is not the only place where things are not doubted. So why does he single out scientific investigations? Your response is to ignore that, as if he could just as well have said bowel movements. That is far more laxness of interpretation than I am comfortable with.

It has no utility for your taxonomy of hinges. You want to push ahead as if the question of what is or is not a hinge has been settled. Unfortunately there is, so to speak, no hinge on which the project can turn.

144

Because one of the side quests is the problem of induction, although not in those words.

This is repetitive and yawnsome, while distracting from the purpose of this thread.

145

Wittgenstein gives several examples of non-scientific hinges, such as that he has two hands, that his name is L.W., that he is writing OC passages, that he has never been on the moon, that he understands English, etc.

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146

Witt’s examples of hinge propositions range cover the entire spectrum of human life. “Here is a hand,” “the earth has existed for a long time,” “I have never been far from the earth’s surface,” “objects don’t vanish when I stop looking at them.” These aren’t scientific propositions. They’re certainties embedded in our form of life, in how we engage with the world at the most basic level. Some of Witt’s most important examples are about ordinary bodily existence, about memory, about the continuity of experience, about trusting that other people exist. None of that is science.

Science is only a small part of the picture. The hinge concept is about the conditions of intelligibility for any language-game, not just scientific ones. Everyday life, moral reasoning, aesthetic judgment, social interaction, all of these depend on things that stand fast without being justified. Limiting hinges to science domesticates the concept and strips it of the radical depth that makes OC so important.

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147

This is a classic example of not being about to see the forest for the trees. Science is at the center of our system of knowledge. Without science what would our system of knowledge look like?

  1. All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a
    system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our
    arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the
    point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.

There is a clear example of this at 108:

  1. “But is there then no objective truth? Isn’t it true, or false, that someone has been on the
    moon?” If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the
    moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our
    > whole system of physics forbids us to believe it. For this demands answers to the questions “How
    > did he overcome the force of gravity?” “How could he live without an atmosphere?” and a thousand
    others which could not be answered. But suppose that instead of all these answers we met the reply:
    “We don’t know how one gets to the moon, but those who get there know at once that they are there;
    and even you can’t explain everything.” We should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from
    someone who said this.

It should be noted that the fact that no one had been on the moon was supported by our science.

The Copernican Revolution changed our perspective, thinking, and beliefs about our place in the universe. Relativity displaced us once again, not only from our place in the solar system, it required a change in our concept of place.

At OC 305 he says:

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

This refers back to:

  1. It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were
    hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid;
    and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became
    fluid.
  2. The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I
    distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself;
    though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other.

And:

  1. 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.

We see here that it is not just a matter of change in our understanding of the universe. Change in science brings with it a change in our way of thinking, our conception.

148

Science isn’t at the center of knowledge. It’s a composite practice that draws on several more fundamental justificatory routes. A scientist uses sensory experience in observation, logic in constructing and testing hypotheses, testimony in relying on the published work of other researchers, and linguistic training in using the specialized vocabulary of the field correctly. Science isn’t a foundational route of justification. It’s a practice built out of routes that are more basic than it is.

And if anything is at the center of what we actually know, it’s testimony, not science. Most of what any of us counts as knowledge came through testimony. I didn’t verify the speed of light myself. I didn’t personally confirm that DNA has a double helix structure. I accepted these on the testimony of people whose expertise gave their claims credibility. Even working scientists rely on testimony constantly, trusting the results of other labs, building on published findings, accepting the reliability of instruments they didn’t build or calibrate themselves. Testimony is the route through which most of our knowledge, including our scientific knowledge, actually reaches us.

But more importantly, the claim that hinges are primarily scientific misses the depth of what Witt is doing in OC. His examples of hinges range across the whole of human life (examples have been already stated in many posts). These aren’t scientific propositions. They’re basic certainties embedded in everyday life.

The riverbed isn’t made of science. It extends far deeper than any scientific framework. Reducing hinges to sciece misses the point of OC.

149

[quote=“Sam26, post:148, topic:113”]
Science isn’t at the center of knowledge.[/quote]

What is it that differentiates our system from their’s that leads Wittgenstein to conclude that ours is superior (286)?

  1. What we believe depends on what we learn. We all believe that it isn’t possible to get to the
    moon; but there might be people who believe that that is possible and that it sometimes happens.
    We say: these people do not know a lot that we know. And, let them be never so sure of their belief -
    they are wrong and we know it.
    If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far.

It can’t be testimony. They too have their stories.

Right. You accept that there are others who know. There is a difference between what you accept based on testimony and what they know. If there wasn’t then there would be no difference between their expertise and your lack of expertise.

That ain’t the way it works. Science is falsifiable. Scientists do not simply trust the results of other labs. Results must be replicated if they are to be accepted. This is a major difference between science and pseudoscience.

The river-bed is made up of the propositions that describe our world-picture. Some are hardened and some are fluid, and with time some that are hardened become fluid and some that are fluid become hardened. This is a description of the history of science.

150

First 286 isn’t saying that science is what makes our system superior. He’s saying that what we believe depends on what we learn, and that our system of knowledge is richer than one that lacks what we know. But “what we know” isn’t reducible to science. It includes everything we’ve learned through all the routes of justification, viz., testimony, sensory experience, logic, linguistic training. The people who believe you can go to the moon don’t just lack our science. They lack our entire form of life. Reducing that to science reads into the passage something that isn’t there, which you seem to do a lot.

Second, the claim that scientists don’t rely on testimony is wrong as a description of everyday practice. Yes, science is falsifiable and replication matters. But the vast majority of published results are never replicated. Scientists routinely build on findings they haven’t personally verified, trust instruments they didn’t calibrate, and cite papers they’re taking on trust within a practice that gives that trust its force. That is testimony. And even replication depends on testimony, because the replicating scientist has to trust that the original methodology and data were accurately reported. Replication doesn’t eliminate testimony. It adds another layer.

Third, the claim that the riverbed is “a description of the history of science” is a serious misreading. Witt says the riverbed is made up of propositions that describe our world-picture. Our world-picture is not our science. It’s the entire inherited background of basic certainties within which we think, act, and ask questions. “I have two parents,” “my name is such and such,” “objects don’t vanish when I look away,” “other people exist.” None of these are scientific propositions. They’re features of our form of life that were in place long before science existed. Science can shift the riverbed, and the Copernican revolution is a good example. But the riverbed also includes moral certainties, social certainties, and the basic certainties of bodily existence and experiential continuity. Identifying the riverbed with the history of science takes one strand of what Witt is describing and treats it as the whole, and that’s part of your mistake. It’s like saying the ocean is made of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is real and it’s in the ocean, but the ocean is vastly more than the Gulf Stream.

The consistent pattern in these responses is to read OC through a philosophy of science lens that narrows the text to a fraction of what it’s actually doing. Witt is making claims about the conditions of intelligibility for any language-game, not just scientific ones. Until that wider scope is recognized, the depth of what OC is showing us will keep being missed.

151

Crucially, none of these quotes actually necessitate your contention.

While he does speak of the system of conviction, of the system of “confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis”, of the system of physics, of the system of our empirical propositions and judgements, of the system of propositions, and of the system of what is believed. But when he talks about our knowledge as a whole, he talks very specifically of the system of language games, not scientific investigation:

  1. Our knowledge forms an enormous system. And only within this system has a particular bit the value we give it.

  2. If I say “we assume that the earth has existed for many years past” (or something similar), then of course it sounds strange that we should assume such a thing. But in the entire system of our language-games it belongs to the foundations. The assumption, one might say, forms the basis of action, and therefore, naturally, of thought.

My bolding. He specifically says that such certainties belong within the entire system of our language-games; he never specifically says it belongs only to our scientific investigations.

In order to make your contention compatible with this we would have to conclude that language games and scientific investigation are the very same.

That’s not a reasonable step.

152

He gives one example at 286, and it is not that we have hands or parents or that objects do not vanish. They are as
aware of these things as we are. It is that we have not been to the moon. When thinking within our system at that time it was certain that no one has been on the moon because of our whole system of physics, gravity, atmosphere, and a thousand other things. (108) It is this which separates them from us.

I can understand your thinking this given your claims about NDE and such. Replication does not add another layer, it tests to see whether the testimony can be verified and accepted.

What would our world-picture look like without science? How different is our world-picture from what it was a hundred or a thousand years ago? Do you think science has played only a minor part in those changes?

This is an interesting case. A quick peek at two of the founders of modern science and philosophy.

Descartes’ provisional morality from the Discourse on Method:

My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world.

It is provisional because the project of modern science, the conquest of nature, will change the order of the world.

Francis Bacon saw in science the ability for the “relief of man’s estate”.

Wittgenstein saw the limits of these promises. Instead of the solution being in changing the world, we must change ourselves.

To the contrary, your view of science is far too narrow.

153

It is not a matter of necessity but of changing the way we look at things.

Rather than go over this again I will let out disagreement on this stand.

Are you claiming that he was a foundationalist? If not then you must make a distinction between language games, which have a foundation, and our system of knowledge which does not.

154

I had assumed that you were equating science with hinge propositions. Since you do not seem swayed by (or did not address) the counter-examples I provided, I take it this is not your position. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems you are equating science with Wittgenstein’s use of the term ‘system’ in the text?

Given the taxonomical nature of the discussion, I have made a list of Wittgenstein’s references to ‘system’ in OC:

OC 102 - the system of convictions
OC 105 - the system in which all testing, confirmation, disconfirmation and hypothesis takes place
OC 108 - the system of physics
OC 126 - the system of my doubts
OC 134 - our system of assumption
OC 136 - the system of our empirical propositions
OC 137 - the system of our empirical judgments
OC 141 - a whole system of propositions (when we first begin to believe anything)
OC 142 - a system in which consequences and premises give one another mutual support
OC 144 - a system of what a child learns to believe
OC 185 - our whole system of evidence
OC 279 - our whole system of verification
OC 286 - our system of knowledge
OC 410 - the system of our knowledge
OC 411 - the entire system of our language games
OC 603 - a system of experiments/reports

Wittgenstein mentions several different ‘systems’ in OC, not only scientific ones. For example, the ‘entire system of our language games’ at OC 411. This system includes basic certainties (such as my name or my body) which are logically prior to science. Are you referring to all or only some of these uses when you equate ‘system’ with science in the text?

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155

I’m joining the party late, but I was attracted to your visual aid, so I’ll reply. Why is this trust grammatical? It seems empirical. That it’s indubitable seems to derive from its consistency over time. It has been learned and does not need to be relearned.

I cite from a Georgia case, explaining why I shouldn’t be held responsible for not notifying others of the dangers attendant with falling from high places:

“No danger is more commonly realized or risk appreciated, even by children, than that of falling; consciousness of the force of gravity results almost from animal instinct. Certainly a normal child nearly seven years of age—indeed any child old enough to be allowed at large—knows that if it steps or slips from a tree, a fence, or other elevated structure, it will fall to the ground and be hurt. It may be that some children, while realizing the danger, will disregard it out of a spirit of bravado, or because, to use the language of the Restatement of Torts, § 339, clause (c), of their ‘immature recklessness,’ but [a defendant] is not to be visited with responsibility for accidents due to this trait of children of the more venturesome type.”

So it might be said just as we trust the door to swing open, it too is a hinge belief that we should expect to fall from high places. This I agree with and don’t suggest I seriously doubt I will fall from a tree or the egg will crack over the edge of the bowl.

But on the moon the child floats up when he jumps. That’s not to suggest the absurd that I compute whether I’m on planet earth when I decide to do something, but it is to say that it’s likely I’ve learned high places lead to falls and the lesson has been clear and is no longer challenged. That couldn’t be what you mean by “hinge” belief though, just that it’s good and learned because that would mean it is grounded.

156

A taxonomy of hinges is Banno’s project. My contention is that what a hinge is has not been settled, either here or in the scholarly literature.

In order to get a clearer idea of what counts as a hinge I looked at where the term was explicitly used. Between the first two statements - 341 and 343 - about hinges we find:

  1. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in
    deed not doubted.

This is puzzling. Why single out scientific investigations? There are, after all, other things that are not doubted.

The third time the term is used is with mathematical propositions at 655. This is followed by:

  1. And one can not say that of the propositions that I am called L.W. Nor of the proposition that
    such-and-such people have calculated such-and-such a problem correctly.

He makes a distinction between propositions which are not doubted and a hinge.

In addition, he says that hinges are something on which our questions and doubts turn. (341) In order to determine what is a hinge then we have to look at what if anything turns around the hinge.

“I am called …” is not doubted but he says it is not a hinge. (657) Why not? Because the questions we raise and our doubts do not turn on whether that is someone’s name. We can, however, say that they do turn on the propositions of science. They have a pivotal place in our system of knowledge.

Can we say that about other propositions? Our questions and doubt do not turn on the proposition that we have two hands. Where there are not questions or doubts there are not hinges.

157

The difference between our system of knowledge (410) and our system of language-games (411) is the difference between knowing and assuming.

158

You’re making my point for me here. You say that both cultures share the certainty that they have hands, that objects don’t vanish, that parents exist. Those are hinges, and they have nothing to do with science. The fact that what differentiates the two cultures in this particular example is scientific knowledge doesn’t show your point that hinges are scientific. It shows the opposite. The shared hinges are the non-scientific ones. The scientific content is what varies. The hinges both cultures share, hands, objects, parents, have nothing to do with science. What differs between the cultures is the scientific content, not the bedrock

“Replication does not add another layer, it tests to see whether the testimony can be verified and accepted.”

Think about what replication actually involves. The replicating scientist reads a paper, trusts that the methodology was accurately reported, trusts that the data wasn’t fabricated, trusts that the instruments described were the ones used, and attempts to reproduce the result using equipment built and calibrated by other people whose work they also take on trust. Every step of that process is saturated with testimony. Replication doesn’t stand outside testimony as an independent check. It operates within a web of testimony at every level.

“I can understand your thinking this given your claims about NDE and such.”

This is irrelevant to the argument.

“What would our world-picture look like without science? How different is our world-picture from what it was a hundred or a thousand years ago? Do you think science has played only a minor part in those changes?”

I’ve never said science plays only a minor part. But reshaping the riverbed isn’t the same as being the riverbed. A thousand years ago our world-picture was different, but it was still a world-picture with hinges. People acted with the certainty that the ground would hold, that other people existed, that their children were their children, that the past was real. Those certainties aren’t scientific and they haven’t changed with science.

“Descartes’ provisional morality… It is provisional because the project of modern science, the conquest of nature, will change the order of the world.”

This is revealing because it exposes the assumption driving your reading. You’re treating moral certainties as placeholders waiting to be replaced by scientific progress. But that’s Descartes’s view, not Witt’s. Witt would say moral certainties function as hinges within our form of life the same way any other certainties do. They stand fast not because science hasn’t gotten around to replacing them, but because they’re part of the inherited background within which we live and act.

“To the contrary, your view of science is far too narrow.”

I have said that science is a composite practice built on more fundamental routes of justification like testimony, sensory experience, and logic. That’s not a narrow view of science. It’s a view of science that sits within our practices of justification. But the main point isn’t about science at all. It’s about the scope of hinges. And OC 342 is instructive here. It says it belongs to the logic of “our scientific investigations” that certain things are not doubted. That’s Witt saying science presupposes hinges, not that hinges are science. You have the dependency backwards. OC 94 says, “the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.” That’s our form of life, not our science. OC 204 is saying giving grounds comes to an end, and what lies at the bottom is “our acting.” Our acting, not our science. OC 253 also says, “At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.” Not scientifically founded. Not founded at all. The text points consistently to something deeper and wider than science.

159

I would be making your point for you if those things were hinges, but I do not think they are.

It does. The questions that we raise and our doubts, in this case whether we have been to the moon, depends on the fact these propositions are not doubted. (341)

But she doesn’t. The methodology is not simply trusted. It is one of the things that may be in question. If the results cannot be replicated it may suspected that the data was fabricated. It happens.

This begs the question. Repeating a list of things you think are hinges does not help resolve our differences as to what counts as a hinge.

Perhaps I did not make myself clear. The point was to show the extent and limits of science. Descartes thought that science frees us. We no longer have to master ourselves because we can master the world. I followed this by saying:

He is saying no such thing. He is saying that there are hinges that belong to our scientific investigations. That is quite different than saying science presupposes hinges.

Right. We disagree as to what the inherited background is.
See above whether it is true or false that we have been to the moon. It was our inherited background that told us we had not. We learn about gravity and the atmosphere. These are things that are not in the inherited background of those who as that time believed it was possible to get to the moon.

I think we might disagree as to what a form of life is. Apparently you take it to mean the form of life of the human species. I think Wittgenstein means not just the singular human form of life, but human forms of life. The life of hunter-gathers, of agricultural communities, and advanced scientific communities such as our own.

I agree.

Again, I agree.

Rather than an edifice built on foundations our system is:

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. (152)

160

A hinge is something on which our questions and doubts turn. (341) What are the questions and doubts on which our not doubting that the ground will hold or that other people exist turn?

161

I think this question reveals a misunderstanding of what a hinge is. You’re reading OC 341 as though hinges are propositions that specific questions and doubts turn on, like a particular door turning on a particular hinge. But that’s not what Witt is saying. He’s saying our questions and doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt. “Depend on” means presuppose, not “turn on” in the sense of specific doubts being resolved by appeal to specific hinges.

Nothing turns on the ground holding or other people existing because these are what the entire activity of questioning presupposes. If the ground didn’t hold, no questions about anything would arise because there would be no stable world from which questions could be posed. If other people didn’t exist, there would be no language games at all, because language games require shared linguistic practices. These certainties don’t have specific doubts turning on them because they’re so deep that doubting them would collapse inquiry. It would dissolve the framework within which inquiry operates. They’re not hinges for particular doors. They’re the wall the hinges are mounted in.

Asking “what questions and doubts turn on the ground holding?” is like asking at a building site “what holds up the bedrock?” The answer is nothing, and that’s not a deficiency. That’s what makes it bedrock. If something held it up, it wouldn’t be bedrock. It would be another floor. The whole point of bedrock is that it’s where support ends. Your question presupposes that everything functioning as a hinge must earn its place by having specific questions and doubts turning on it. But that’s like presupposing that everything in a building must be held up by something beneath it. Bedrock is where that demand gives out. OC 204 “Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; but the end is not certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true… it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game.” The ground holding, other people existing, objects persisting, these are part of our acting that lies at the bottom.

OC 342 follows 341 “it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.” Not because someone decided not to doubt them, but because doubting them would remove the conditions under which doubting has any sense. And OC 7 says, “My life shows that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so on.” These are Witt’s own examples of the kind of certainty he’s investigating throughout OC. If the existence of chairs and doors isn’t a hinge, then Witt is citing non-hinges to illustrate hinge certainty, which makes no sense of the text.

Your reading restricts hinges to propositions that do specific work within scientific reasoning, propositions that specific scientific questions depend on. But that turns hinges into something epistemic, something that does justificatory work within a practice. Witt’s whole point is that hinges are non-epistemic. They don’t do justificatory work. They make justificatory work possible. The moment you ask, “what questions and doubts turn on this,” you’ve already moved hinges into the space of justification, and that’s exactly where Witt says they don’t belong.

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162

What does presuppose mean in this context? What work would a hinge do if specific questions and doubts did not turn on specific hinges?

You are confusing facts and propositions. That the ground will hold or other people exist is a fact. A hinge is a proposition. I know that throws your whole interpretation off but it is what he says:

  1. 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.

Now you are confusing the questions and doubts with the hinges on which they turn.

[quote=“Sam26, post:161, topic:113”]
Not because someone decided not to doubt them, but because doubting them would remove the conditions under which doubting has any sense.

The consequence of doubting them is not the reason for not doubting them.

No. He is citing chairs and doors as things we do not doubt, but not to illustrate hinge certainty.

Right!

No. That is your whole point.

No. He is not citing chairs and doors to illustrate hinge certainty but as things we do not doubt:

  1. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books,
    sit in armchairs, etc.,etc

The hinges are not justified. What hangs and turns on them is justified by the hinge:

  1. And it would be just the same if the pupil cast doubt on the uniformity of nature, that is to say on the justification of inductive arguments.

The uniformity of nature is a hinge.