I stand by my observation that you’re confused about what hinges are and how they function. Your interpretation is much different from anything I’ve encountered. That in itself doesn’t make you wrong, but it shows that the burden of proof is on you. Obviously not everything you’re asserting is incorrect, but what you’re claiming about hinges and the picture Witt is presenting seems way off the mark.
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I do what I have always done since beginning to read Wittgenstein and being dismayed at finding little or no agreement in the secondary literature. I read Wittgenstein.
It is far easier to impose an interpretation on the text, whether one taken from Moyal-Sharrock and others who are in general agreement with her or elsewhere or some combination of secondary sources.
As he says in the preface to the Philosophical Investigations:
I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking.
Interpreting him is an exercise in thinking. Rather than attempting to smooth things out so to render the text unproblematic, it requires seeing where the text leads us when we encounter something that seems at face value wrong. Where the text leads, however, is not a straight line. We must connect the dots. Those dots are primarily in the text itself, but sometimes require looking at the larger picture.
Sam is right, you misunderstand the text.
(Trying “copy quote…”. Not sure if it brings the link with it; bringing the comment back to this thread.)
It’d be nice to get back to the topic.
While @Sam26 might think the mentioned metaphors interchangeable, I’m thinking that they do differ; hence this thread. Going back to the OP,
- Hinges remain fixed
- River beds change, albeit slowly
- Bedrock involves the summary dismissal of doubt as the spade is turned
- Scaffolding remains in place while we give our constructs form, and then is removed, so that the construct stands on its own
- Axis are not held fast, but are that around which other things turn.
We might consider a hinge as smaller than a river bed or bedrock; roughly, a hinge might apply within an individual game (think of “A bishop moves diagonally”) while a river bed would hold firm across many games but might be varied in others (perhaps F=ma) and bedrock holds firm for all games (perhaps think of “energy is neither created nor destroyed”).
Scaffolding and Axis differ somewhat form these others. The scaffold is the ladder that we climb and then discard; once we see the structure it serves no further purpose.
Axis need not be firm in the way of a river bed or bedrock, but more a family resemblance, an indefinable centre understood from the samples in its orbit.
Yes, the thread should probably have been called “A taxonomy of certainties”.
The following was my answer to the of mixing metaphors question:
You’re right that the metaphors aren’t interchangeable. But I don’t think they’re giving us different pictures so much as different viewing angles on the same structural insight. The riverbed captures the relationship between what moves and what holds still and allows for gradual change. The scaffolding captures the enabling function. The axis captures the fixed point around which inquiry revolves. The hinge captures the fixed/moving relationship. Foundation and bedrock capture depth. So, they emphasize different things, stability, enabling, depth, the relationship between fixed and moving, but they converge around a single idea, viz., something stands fast, and it’s not part of our epistemic language. It makes epistemic language possible.
I don’t think hinge and foundation are incompatible. A hinge is what has to stay fixed for the door to swing. A foundation is what has to be in place for the building to stand. Both describe something that enables activity without participating in it. The metaphors come from different domains but they’re picking out the same structural role.
On your reading of hinges as propositions protected from questioning in a given context - I think that’s a bit too narrow. It captures something about how hinges function locally, within specific language games. But when Witt introduces the hinge metaphor in OC 341-343, he’s not talking about debate conventions. He’s talking about what has to stand fast for questioning to be possible. That’s not context-dependent protection. It’s the precondition of the practice.
Your boiling water example actually illustrates this well. The decision not to abandon the generalization and instead look for additional variables, that’s a hinge commitment in action. The framework holds fast and inquiry adjusts around it. That’s exactly how hinges function as foundations.
I think the riverbed metaphor handles this naturally. The water flows, the riverbed holds, and the riverbed itself sits in a wider landscape. Some hinges are local and can shift over time. Others, such as object persistence, experiential continuity, are bedrock in a way that “no one has been to the moon” never was. That’s not mixing metaphors. It’s recognizing that not all hinges sit at the same depth.
This was my response to Ludwig.
Well, that settles it!
Sam makes a lot of claims based on what he assumes a hinge is, but ignores what the text specifically says about hinges, starting with their being propositions.
Sam claims that when Wittgenstein says:
… 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.
he does not mean specific questions and doubts turning on a particular hinge. While it is true that in this statement
Wittgenstein is talking generally about the way hinges function, however, if this is the way hinges function then we should be able to apply it to particular cases. We must look to particular cases in order to determine whether what is claimed to be hinge functions in this way, that is, how it differs from those things that we simply do not doubt. Or to put it differently, how does this proposition function in our language-games? On what occasion in the course of our lives might we say “this is a hand”? Of course, Moore says it, but when in our everyday life might we say this? We can invent some cases, but having to do so shows that none of our questions and doubts turn on this alleged hinge.
Trouble is, reading “what the text specifically says”, as quoted and presented here, does not actually support your argument.
You will disagree. Meh.
You are focused on what the metaphors have in common. That’s fine.
But also, how do they differ?
They do differ, permanence, depth, enabling function, susceptibility to change. No single one captures the full picture, which is why Witt uses several rather than settling on one. The solution isn’t to pick a favorite and discard the others. It’s to see what each one illuminates and where each one reaches its limit. In a way, it’s similar to family resemblances, no one resemblance captures the full picture.
Fooloso4, you’re asking what specific questions and doubts turn on “here is a hand” and concluding that because we can’t readily point to everyday occasions for saying it, it’s not functioning as a hinge. But that’s backwards. The reason we never say “here is a hand” in ordinary life is precisely because it’s a hinge. It never surfaces because it never comes into question. The absence of occasions for saying it isn’t evidence against its being a hinge. It’s the result of being one.
Your criterion treats hinges as though they do localized work, supporting specific doubts and questions the way a premise supports a conclusion. But the deepest hinges don’t work that way. They make the entire practice of questioning possible (This you don’t seem to see). Asking what specific doubts turn on “here is a hand” is like asking what specific weight the foundation holds at a particular point in a building. The foundation holds the entire structure.
You also distinguish between hinges and “things we simply do not doubt,” as if these are separate categories. But what’s the difference supposed to be? If something is universally presupposed, never comes into question, and can’t intelligibly be doubted, on what grounds is it not a hinge? You need to say what would make something a hinge based on that interpretation, because your criterion seems to rule out the propositions Witt himself cites. OC 7 mentions chairs and doors. OC 35 mentions physical objects. If your test excludes these, the problem is with the test.
Don’t be like others who can’t admit when they’re wrong.
Yep - hence the idea of a taxonomy.
I’d really like an analysis of the various certainties in terms of their logical structure.
Are you referring to the four uses of certainty?
Banno, if you cannot provide specifics as to why what the text says does not support my argument you need to provide specifics. Otherwise it is just more evasive empty bluster.
I, and others, have. But curiously you seem unable to recognise them as such. Enough, this is off topic, time to move on.
More generally than that.
In truth I’ve gotten more from Claude than from the conversation here. Set the task, it provided a short essay giving just such a taxonomy. It’s not quite what I have in mind, but it’s quite extensive and expansive. Bloody annoying, actually.
Happy to share it, but not sure if there is a facility to upload docs in Discourse.
What it hasn’t provided, yet I think might be doable, is relating the various certainties to a place in first-order logic; that’s more what I’m working through at present - a more formal view.
I think Witt resists formal characterization, which is part of the point. But if you had to make it formal, the closest description would be that he’s doing descriptive grammar of epistemic practices, showing how words like know, doubt, and certain function and how philosophical problems arise when they’re removed from the language games that give them sense. But that doesn’t fully capture OC, because in OC he’s doing something more than grammar. He’s uncovering a structural feature of epistemic practices (I think it’s similar to what Godel did in math), i.e., that they rest on something non-epistemic. That’s a substantial philosophical claim, not just a grammatical observation. A purely therapeutic reading where Witt only dissolves confusions can’t account for OC, because the hinge concept looks an awful lot like a positive philosophical contribution. Which is exactly what my thread is treating it as.
This is probably why some philosophers refer to OC as the 3rd Wittgenstein (early, late, and OC).
Well, now it is in question. If it is a hinge then you should be able to say what turns on it.
It is not hinges but rather some things not being called into doubt that make the practice possible.
There is a clear example at 655-657:
- The mathematical proposition has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of
incontestability. I.e.: “Dispute about other things; this is immovable - it is a hinge on which your
dispute can turn.” - 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. - 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.
Once again, a hinge is a proposition that is exempt from doubts and on which the questions we raise and our doubts turn. (341)
OC 7 does mention chairs and doors but does not say anything about hinges. Chairs and doors and not propositions, and neither is sitting on chairs or opening and closing doors.
You mean where he says:
“There are physical objects” is nonsense. Is it supposed to be an empirical proposition?
Then move on already. You keep coming back to it.
Some progress has been made though. You have moved away from the a taxonomy of hinges.
Wittgenstein singles out scientific investigations to prove his point precisely because they represent the most skeptical and rigorous form of human enquiry. His argument is that even these activities require that certain things are “in deed not doubted” (342), and are “exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn” (341). He is not discussing the specific content of scientific investigations at 342, but rather their underlying logic. This is analogous to, or perhaps identical with, the logic of grammar.
He is not making a distinction here between indubitable propositions and hinges. His point relates to 308:
308. … I am inclined to believe that not everything that has the form of an empirical proposition is one.
While mathematical propositions are incontestable, they are not empirical. Wittgenstein’s hinges typically have the appearance of empirical propositions, but they function more like incontrovertible mathematical propositions. As he says in the very next passage (my emphasis):
- 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.
It is not the fossilization, but the incontrovertibility of “I am called…” that makes it a hinge, just as the incontrovertibility of mathematical propositions makes them hinges.
The logic Wittgenstein refers to at 342 isn’t the content of science, but the structure of inquiry itself. To test a hypothesis about a virus, a scientist must treat the existence of their hands, the reliability of their eyes, and the reality of the floor beneath them as fixed. These are not scientific conclusions; they are the grammatical requirements for the scientific game to even begin.
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I agree. That is how scientific investigations work. An hypothesis (proposition) is formed to address questions. The hypothesis is not simply accepted, it is doubted, that is, tested. If, as the result of testing, observation, and experimentation, it is no longer doubted it is regarded as true and correct and functions as a hinge. This is greatly simplified but close enough to see the connection between scientific investigations and hinges. Contrary to what is often assumed, hinges are established late in the game not a condition to play. That is not to say that hands and eyes and floors are not necessary, but that they are not propositions.