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  1. Not enough’: Certainty and Doubt in Exploring the Grammar of ‘Woman.Camilla Kronqvist - 2024 - Wittgenstein-Studien 15 (1):125-143.
    Danièle Moyal-Sharrock and Constantine Sandis have suggested that our sense of being ‘women’ (and ‘men’) can be elucidated by thinking of it as an animal certainty. The suggestion is helpful in resisting the notion that ‘being woman’ can be modelled either on the idea of indubitable first-person knowledge of one’s inner self or of a third person’s unquestionable knowledge of one’s body. One’s being woman is manifested in one’s ways of acting and reacting; it constitutes a mode of being, which (...)
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  • Common Knowledge and Hinge Epistemology.Michael Wilby - 2024 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 32 (1).
    Common knowledge is ubiquitous in our lives and yet there remains considerable uncertainty about how to model or understand it. Standard analyses of common knowledge end up being challenged by either regress or circularity which then give rise to well-known paradoxes of practical reasoning, such as the Two Generals’ Paradox. This paper argues that the nature and utility of common knowledge can be illuminated by appeal to Wittgenstein’s Hinge Epistemology. It is argued that those things that we standardly think of (...)
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  • Moderatism and Truth.Santiago Echeverri - 2023 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 53 (3):271-287.
    According to MODERATISM, perceptual justification requires that one independently takes for granted propositional hinges like <There is an external world>, <I am not a brain in a vat (BIV)>, and so on. This view faces the truth problem: to offer an account of truth for hinges that is not threatened by skepticism. Annalisa Coliva has tried to solve the truth problem by combining the claim that external world propositions have a substantive truth property like correspondence with the claim that hinges (...)
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  • How Can Constitutivism Account for the Persistence of Deep Disagreements?Enrico Galli - forthcoming - Social Epistemology.
    Exploring the metaphysics of deep disagreements, Ranalli identifies several essential features shared by all such disputes. These very features constitute a set of adequacy conditions that any satisfactory theory of deep disagreements must meet. The paper explains how Coliva’s Wittgensteinian hinge theory can satisfy Ranalli’s persistence desideratum. According to this condition, any appropriate theory must explain why deep disagreements tend to be persistent and thus unresolved without presupposing that they are rationally irresolvable. First, the work critically discusses how Coliva utilizes (...)
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  • The Methodologically Flawed Discussion about Deep Disagreement.Guido Melchior - forthcoming - Episteme.
    Questions surrounding deep disagreement have gained significant attention in recent years. One of the central debates is metaphysical, focusing on the features that make a disagreement deep. Proposals for what makes disagreements deep include theories about hinge propositions and first epistemic principles. In this paper, I criticize this metaphysical discussion by arguing that it is methodologically flawed. Deep disagreement is a technical or semi-technical term, but the metaphysical discussion mistakenly treats it as a common-sense concept to be analyzed and captured (...)
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  • Beyond Authority: Hinge Constitutivism about Epistemic Normativity.Luca Zanetti - 2023 - Philosophia 51 (4):2261-2283.
    According to constitutivism, we can justify the authority of aims and norms on the ground that they are inescapable. Constitutivist views divide between ambitious and modest ones. According to ambitious constitutivism, the inescapability of aims grounds their unconditional authority, whereas according to modest constitutivism, the inescapability of aims only grounds their conditional authority. Either way, both forms of constitutivism share the assumption that inescapability grounds authority, which in turn presupposes that at the foundation of normativity we find aims and norms (...)
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  • Recent Work on Skepticism in Epistemology.Chris Ranalli - 2023 - American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (3):257-273.
    This paper critically surveys 20 years of recent work on radical skepticism. It focuses on three key issues. First, it starts by exploring how philosophers have recently challenged our understanding of radical skeptical arguments. It then unpacks and critically evaluates some influential reactions to radical skepticism: structuralism, knowledge-first epistemology, epistemological disjunctivism, and hinge epistemology. Third, it explores some novel developments of pragmatism, like pragmatic skepticism, gauges its anti-skeptical import, and reflects on the ways in which radical skeptical epistemology and ethics (...)
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  • Some concerns about the idea of basic moral certainty: A critical response to Samuel Laves.Jordi Fairhurst - 2023 - Philosophical Investigations 47 (1):119-136.
    Pleasants has developed the idea of basic moral certainties. Analogous to Wittgenstein's basic empirical certainties, they are best described as universal moral certainties which are natural and nonpropositional, and show unreflectively in the way we act. A clear-cut example is the wrongness of killing innocent human beings. Philosophers have levelled three damaging criticisms against Pleasants' proposal by (i) offering counterexamples to his proposed example of moral certainty, (ii) highlighting some disanalogies between moral certainties and Wittgenstein's basic empirical certainties and, lastly, (...)
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  • A Hybrid Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse.Drew Johnson - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Connecticut
    What is it that we are doing when we make ethical claims and judgments, such as the claim that we morally ought to assist refugees? This dissertation introduces and defends a novel theory of ethical thought and discourse. I begin by identifying the surface features of ethical thought and discourse to be explained, including the realist and cognitivist (i.e. belief-like) appearance of ethical judgments, and the apparent close connection between making a sincere ethical judgment and being motivated to act on (...)
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  • Rationally irresolvable disagreement.Guido Melchior - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (4):1277-1304.
    The discussion about deep disagreement has gained significant momentum in the last several years. This discussion often relies on the intuition that deep disagreement is, in some sense, rationally irresolvable. In this paper, I will provide a theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement. Such a theory is interesting in its own right, since it conflicts with the view that rational attitudes and procedures are paradigmatic tools for resolving disagreement. Moreover, I will suggest replacing discussions about deep disagreement with an analysis of (...)
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  • Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion: Interpreting Human Nature and the Mind.Robert Vinten (ed.) - 2023 - London: Bloomsbury Academic.
    Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks (...)
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  • (1 other version)Deep Disagreement (Part 1): Theories of Deep Disagreement.Chris Ranalli & Thirza Lagewaard - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (12):e12886.
    Some disagreements concern our most fundamental beliefs, principles, values, or worldviews, such as those about the existence of God, society and politics, or the trustworthiness of science. These are ‘deep disagreements’. But what exactly are deep disagreements? This paper critically overviews theories of deep disagreement. It does three things. First, it explains the differences between deep and other kinds of disagreement, including peer, persistent, and widespread disagreement. Second, it critically overviews two mainstream theories of deep disagreement, the Wittgensteinian account and (...)
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  • Framing the Epistemic Schism of Statistical Mechanics.Javier Anta - 2021 - Proceedings of the X Conference of the Spanish Society of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science.
    In this talk I present the main results from Anta (2021), namely, that the theoretical division between Boltzmannian and Gibbsian statistical mechanics should be understood as a separation in the epistemic capabilities of this physical discipline. In particular, while from the Boltzmannian framework one can generate powerful explanations of thermal processes by appealing to their microdynamics, from the Gibbsian framework one can predict observable values in a computationally effective way. Finally, I argue that this statistical mechanical schism contradicts the Hempelian (...)
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  • Moral hinges and steadfastness.Chris Ranalli - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 52 (3-4):379-401.
    Epistemic rationality seems to permit a more steadfast response to disagreements over our fundamental convictions than it does for our ordinary beliefs. Why is this? This essay explores three answers to this question: web-of-belief conservatism, moral encroachment, and hinge theories, and argues that hinge theories do a better job than the alternatives at vindicating the intuition that there is a rationally permissible asymmetry in our responses to disagreements over ordinary beliefs and fundamental convictions. The essay also shows how hinge theorists (...)
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  • Can Hinge Epistemology Close the Door on Epistemic Relativism?Oscar A. Piedrahita - 2021 - Synthese (1-2):1-27.
    I argue that a standard formulation of hinge epistemology is host to epistemic relativism and show that two leading hinge approaches (Coliva’s acceptance account and Pritchard’s nondoxastic account) are vulnerable to a form of incommensurability that leads to relativism. Building on both accounts, I introduce a new, minimally epistemic conception of hinges that avoids epistemic relativism and rationally resolves hinge disagreements. According to my proposed account, putative cases of epistemic incommensurability are rationally resolvable: hinges are propositions that are the objects (...)
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  • (1 other version)Deep disagreement and hinge epistemology.Chris Ranalli - 2020 - Synthese 197 (11):4975-5007.
    This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general ‘presuppositions’ of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreements over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis (...)
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  • Deep Disagreement, Hinge Commitments, and Intellectual Humility.Drew Johnson - 2022 - Episteme 19 (3):353-372.
    Why is it that some instances of disagreement appear to be so intractable? And what is the appropriate way to handle such disagreements, especially concerning matters about which there are important practical and political needs for us to come to a consensus? In this paper, I consider an explanation of the apparent intractability of deep disagreement offered by hinge epistemology. According to this explanation, at least some deep disagreements are rationally unresolvable because they concern ‘hinge’ commitments that are unresponsive to (...)
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  • Between Realism and Relativism: Moral Certainty as a Third Option.Samuel Laves - 2020 - Philosophical Forum 51 (3):297-313.
    This paper is an attempt to lay out a meta‐ethical position that is inspired by the framework of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. To achieve this goal, this paper is divided into two parts. First, I explore recent attempts to tie Wittgenstein's epistemology in On Certainty to moral epistemology. I argue that there can be a meaningful parallel drawn between the epistemic certainties discussed in On Certainty and what I consider to be moral certainties. These moral certainties are unjustified fundamental moral attitudes (...)
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  • What is Deep Disagreement?Chris Ranalli - 2018 - Topoi 40 (5):983-998.
    What is the nature of deep disagreement? In this paper, I consider two similar albeit seemingly rival answers to this question: the Wittgensteinian theory, according to which deep disagreements are disagreements over hinge propositions, and the fundamental epistemic principle theory, according to which deep disagreements are disagreements over fundamental epistemic principles. I assess these theories against a set of desiderata for a satisfactory theory of deep disagreement, and argue that while the fundamental epistemic principle theory does better than the Wittgensteinian (...)
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  • (1 other version)Deep disagreement and hinge epistemology.Chris Ranalli - 2018 - Synthese:1-33.
    This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general ‘presuppositions’ of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreements over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis (...)
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  • Closure, deduction and hinge commitments.Xiaoxing Zhang - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 15):3533-3551.
    Duncan Pritchard recently proposed a Wittgensteinian solution to closure-based skepticism. According to Wittgenstein, all epistemic systems assume certain truths. The notions that we are not disembodied brains, that the Earth has existed for a long time and that one’s name is such-and-such all function as “hinge commitments.” Pritchard views a hinge commitment as a positive propositional attitude that is not a belief. Because closure principles concern only knowledge-apt beliefs, they do not apply to hinge commitments. Thus, from the fact that (...)
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  • Revisionism, Scepticism, and the Non-Belief Theory of Hinge Commitments.Chris Ranalli - 2018 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 8 (2):96-130.
    In his recent work, Duncan Pritchard defends a novel Wittgensteinian response to the problem of radical scepticism. The response makes essential use of a form of non-epistemicism about the nature of hinge commitments. According to non-epistemicism, hinge commitments cannot be known or grounded in rational considerations, such as reasons and evidence. On Pritchard’s version of non-epistemicism, hinge commitments express propositions but cannot be believed. This is the non-belief theory of hinge commitments. One of the main reasons in favour of NBT (...)
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  • Forms of life: What use should we make of them?Elena Valeri - 2024 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 16 (2).
    Anna Boncompagni’s book Wittgenstein on Forms of Life (2022) – published in the CUP series “Elements in the Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein” – can be divided into two main parts: the first part, consisting of the Introduction and Sections 2 and 3, has a primarily critical-exegetical purpose; the second part coincides with Section 4, in which the author elaborates and briefly defends her own interpretative proposal on Wittgenstein’s use of the notion of forms of life, the pars destruens of w...
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  • On religious practices as multi-scale active inference: Certainties emerging from recurrent interactions within and across individuals and groups.Inês Hipólito & Casper Hesp - 2023 - In Robert Vinten (ed.), Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion: Interpreting Human Nature and the Mind. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 179-198.
    This chapter takes inspiration from Wittgenstein’s thinking to formulate a non-reductive toolbox for the study of religion associated with generative modelling, specifically as applied in complex adaptive systems theory. It converges on a communal perspective on religion as multiscale active inference that contrasts starkly with common ‘straw person’ perspectives on religion that reduce it to ‘erroneous’ theorising generated by the brain. In contrast, we argue, religious practices at the enculturated level of description involve implicit and explicit meanings, experienced both individually (...)
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  • Judgment and Practice in Reid and Wittgenstein.Patrick Rysiew - 2017 - European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 9 (2).
    This paper considers the views of two figures whose work falls on either side of the heyday of American pragmatism, Thomas Reid (1710-96) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). The broad similarities between Reid’s and (the later) Wittgenstein’s views, and in particular their epistemological views, has been well documented. Here, I argue that such similarities extend to the relation in their work between common sense and the presence of elements in their thought that can be considered pragmatist in some important respect. Beginning (...)
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  • Book symposium: Nuno venturinha. Description of situations: An essay in contextualist epistemology.Nuno Venturinha, Marcelo Carvalho, Marcos Silva, João V. G. Cuter & Darlei Dall’Agnol - 2020 - Manuscrito 43 (3):164-258.
    This book symposium comprises a précis of Nuno Venturinha’s Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology together with four critical commentaries on different aspects of the book by Marcelo Carvalho, João Vergílio Gallerani Cuter, Marcos Silva and Darlei Dall’Agnol, and the author’s replies.
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  • The Epistemic Benefits of Worldview Disagreement.Kirk Lougheed - 2021 - Social Epistemology 35 (1):85-98.
    In my recent book, The Epistemic Benefits of Disagreement, I develop a defense of non-conciliationism, but one that only applies in research contexts: Epistemic benefits are more likely in the offing if inquirers stick to their guns in the face of disagreement. I aim to expand my original account by examining its implications for non-inquiry beliefs. I’m particularly interested in broader worldview disagreements. I want to examine how inquirers should react upon discovering that they disagree about the truth value of (...)
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  • The Indispensability of Knowledge.Michael Williams - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (5):1691-1697.
    Nuno Venturinha holds that the contextualist epistemology adumbrated in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty--the most powerful response to philosophical skepticism yet developed-- falls short of providing a complete answer to Cartesian radical skepticism about knowledge of the external world. I argue that Venturinha underestimates the range and complexity of Wittgenstein’s epistemological. He does so because he reads Wittgenstein along the lines of so-called ‘hinge epistemology’. Hinge epistemology indeed fails as a diagnosis of skepticism. But it also fails as a reading of Wittgenstein. (...)
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  • A Comfortable Sureness: Knowledge, Animality and Conceptual Investigations in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty.Luigi Perissinotto - 2022 - Topoi 41 (5):1013-1021.
    This essay analyses some remarks of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in which Wittgenstein compares human behaviour to that of animals and says he wants to consider man as an animal. The essay’s main purpose is to show that these remarks are essentially understood as part and parcel of what Wittgenstein calls “conceptual investigations” and that, consequently, they give little support to On Certainty’s naturalistic interpretations. A second purpose of the essay is to show that Wittgenstein does not intend to combat the (...)
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  • Metatheories of disagreement: Introduction.Péter Hartl & Ákos Gyarmathy - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 52 (3-4):337-347.
    This article introduces Metaphilosophy's special issue on metatheories of disagreement, with the aim of promoting discussion on the nature of disagreement on a metatheoretical level. The contributions to this issue cover the following key topics related to disagreement: faultless disagreement, metaontological disagreement, metalinguistic disagreement, responses to peer disagreement in philosophy, hinge epistemology and deep disagreement, disagreement asymmetry, factual and nonfactual disagreement, and defining disagreement or verbal dispute. This introduction also provides general background on four major topics in order to contextualize (...)
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  • The Difficulties with Groundlessness.Keith Dromm - 2018 - Philosophical Investigations 41 (4):418-435.
    In On Certainty, §166, Wittgenstein mentions the difficulty of realizing the “groundlessness of our believing.” In the course of reviewing what makes this realization so difficult, I examine a certain way of understanding one of Wittgenstein's techniques for getting us to realize it, his use of the “hinge” metaphor. It implies that hinge-propositions possess that status inherently; for some commentators, this is because of their connection to instinctive and habitual behaviours. I offer an alternative interpretation of the remarks that have (...)
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  • Précis of Description of Situations.Nuno Venturinha - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (5):1683-1690.
    This précis articulates the main themes of my book Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology.
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  • Seeing Trees: Investigating Poetics of Place‐Based, Aesthetic Environmental Education with Heidegger and Wittgenstein.Jeffrey A. Stickney - 2020 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 54 (5):1278-1305.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 54, Issue 5, Page 1278-1305, October 2020.
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