In this paper, I argue that hinge propositions are ways of acting that constitute abilities or skills. My starting point is Moyal-Sharrock's account of hinge propositions. However, Moyal-Sharrock's account leaves gaps to be filled, as it does not offer a unified explanation of the origin of our ungrounded grounds. Her account also lacks resources to respond to the issue of demarcation, since it does not provide a criterion for distinguishing ways of acting that can legitimately fulfill the role (...) of ungrounded grounds from those that cannot. Without an answer to this issue, the relativistic threat is serious. I then propose that by narrowing the ways of acting to those that are constitutive of abilities, we can deal with the relativistic threat. I provide an ecological approach to abilities through which I explain why abilities are reality-soaked and therefore why the ways of acting that constitute them are legitimate ungrounded grounds. Based on that approach, I provide an answer to the issue of demarcation that defuses the relativistic threat. (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend a communitarian perspective on the so-called “hinge propositions” (hinges, for short). Accordingly, I will argue that hinges play a normative role, in the sense that, among other things, they govern the mechanisms of social inclusion/exclusion. In particular, I will examine the so-called “religious hinges”; and I will argue that such hinges, being the product of mere indoctrination, are particularly effective in shaping boundaries among communities. Finally, with the help of Peter Munz's theory of (...) altruism, I will attempt to explain why religious hinges play the role they do. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce has commonly been interpreted as a proponent of an epistemic theory of truth. Such a theory has the apparent advantage of directly undercutting radical skepticism, but the disadvantage of implausibly entailing that there are no truths concerning irretrievably lost facts. Recently Andrew Howat has defended Peirce’s epistemic constraint on truth by recasting Peirce’s claim that all truths would be believed following sufficient inquiry, not as constitutive of truth, but as a Wittgensteinian hinge proposition. I begin (...) with a twofold historical reply to Howat: first, Peirce can at least plausibly be read as claiming that the claim in question is analytic of the concept <truth>; and second, while Peirce did think we must accept without evidence the further claim that there are any truths (so characterized), he regarded this further claim not as a Wittgensteinian hinge but as a reasonable hope. I then substantively defend the latter Peircean proposal, arguing that hopes, as against beliefs, are chiefly warranted pragmatically, and so can be warranted even to a sufficient level to render them properly action-guiding in cases where belief in the same proposition would remain unjustified. I conclude by suggesting, first, that this proposal is superior to Wittgenstein’s own epistemology in evading psychologism, and second, that it attractively vindicates the reasonableness of inquiry on Peircean grounds that don’t require an appeal to an implausible epistemic theory of truth. (shrink)

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 of our belief-like attitudes and are rationally revisable in virtue of our overarching commitment to avoid systematic deception in our epistemic practices. (shrink)

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 a subject knows that he is sitting in a room, and the fact that the subject’s sitting in a room entails his bodily existence, it does not follow that the subject also knows that he is not an envatted brain. This paper rejects Pritchard’s non-belief reading of hinge commitments. I start by showing that the non-belief reading fails to solve the skeptical paradox because the reasons that Pritchard uses to support the non-belief reading do not exempt hinge propositions from closure principles. I then proceed to argue that the non-belief reading is false as it claims that hinge commitments, unlike ordinary beliefs, are rationally unresponsive—with the help of a scenario in which a subject’s experience is internally chaotic, we can safely conclude that the hinge commitment that one is not systematically mistaken about the world is equally responsive to one’s evidential situations. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a potential problem with Sosa’s theory of default assumption, viz., the alleged incompatibility of this theory with the closure principle. Given the similarity between the notion of default assumption and Wittgenstein’s notion of hinge commitment, I suggest that two influential hinge epistemologies including Wright’s entitlement theory and Pritchard’s non-belief theory provide resources for possible solutions to the problem. I argue that default assumption should be classified as acceptance and hence as a non-doxastic propositional attitude. (...) Sosa’s theory can deal with the apparent incompatibility with the closure principle by adopting the solution of the non-belief theory, while also avoiding problems affecting the latter view. (shrink)

The young Edmund Husserl stressed that the success of his philosophy hinged upon his ability to determine the subject and the predicate of impersonal propositions and their expressions, such as ‘It is raining’. This essay accordingly investigates the tenability of Husserl’s early thought, by executing the first study of his analysis of impersonal propositions from the late 1890s. This examination reshapes our understanding of the inception of phenomenology in two ways. First, Husserl pinpoints the subject by outlining why impersonal expressions (...) are employed during communication. This contravenes interpretations of the early Husserl as uninterested in intersubjectivity. Second, by studying how Husserl determines the predicate by investigating existential propositions, I show that Husserl, in the late 1890s, came to his final view on the concept of being. (shrink)

Philosophical literature has focused on the concept of trust, but often considers distrust merely as an afterthought. Distrust however, because of its pervasive role in our everyday lives, can be quite damaging. Thus, understanding the rationality of distrust is crucial for understanding our testimonial practices. In this paper I analyze whether it is rational or irrational to distrust an informant on the basis of identity bias. My aim is to show that distrust is irrational when based on negative identity bias. (...) First, I adopt Annalisa Coliva’s account of social hinge epistemology where it is rationally required to assume certain basic presuppositions, such that people are generally reliable informants, to obtain propositional justification and participate in the testimonial practice. Secondly, I show how distrust based on negative identity bias can spread across other domains of interaction and jeopardize the testimonial practice as we fail to assume that people are generally reliable informants. Thirdly, I argue that considering bias as a defeater is beneficial to maintain the claim that bias-based distrust is irrational, as it prevents the acquisition of propositional justification. Finally, I show that distrust is rational when based on evidence and reason that the speaker is not reliable or sincere. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is well-known for her insistence that there are absolutely prohibited actions, though she is somewhat obscure about why this is so. Nonetheless, I contend in this paper that Anscombe is more concerned with the epistemology of absolute prohibitions, and that her thought on connatural moral knowledge - which resembles moral intuition - is key to understanding her thought on moral prohibitions. I shall identify key features of Anscombe's moral epistemology before turning to investigate its sources, examining the roots (...) of connaturality in Aquinas and comparing it with rationalist ethical intuitionism, which Anscombe differs from in rejecting "good" as a simple, non-natural property. I then develop a two-stage argument about absolute prohibition: The first will be loosely Thomistic, while the second will suggest how Anscombe's absolute prohibitions can be seen as a continuation of Wittgenstein's anti-scepticism in On Certainty. I develop an account of absolute prohibitions as a form of Wittgensteinian hinge proposition - they are not the conclusions of deductive arguments, but the foundations for intelligibility in action. (shrink)

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 (...) rationally irresolvable disagreement, since this notion can be more clearly defined than deep disagreement and captures the basic intuitions underlying deep disagreement. I will first motivate this project by critically assessing the current debate about deep disagreement. I then detail the notions of rationality and resolvable disagreement which are crucial for a suitable theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement before sketching various instances of rationally irresolvable disagreement. Finally, I argue for replacing theories of deep disagreement with theories of rationally irresolvable disagreement, an approach that has significant advantages over existing theories of deep disagreement which focus on hinge propositions or fundamental epistemic principles. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that hinge propositions are ways of acting that constitute abilities or skills. My starting point is Moyal-Sharrock's account of hinge propositions. However, Moyal-Sharrock's account leaves gaps to be filled, as it does not offer a unified explanation of the origin of our ungrounded grounds. Her account also lacks resources to respond to the issue of demarcation, since it does not provide a criterion for distinguishing ways of acting that can legitimately fulfill the role (...) of ungrounded grounds from those that cannot. Without an answer to this issue, the relativistic threat is serious. I then propose that by narrowing the ways of acting to those that are constitutive of abilities, we can deal with the relativistic threat. I provide an ecological approach to abilities through which I explain why abilities are reality-soaked and therefore why the ways of acting that constitute them are legitimate ungrounded grounds. Based on that approach, I provide an answer to the issue of demarcation that defuses the relativistic threat. (shrink)

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 by our pre-theoretical intuitions. Since the literature on deep disagreement is subject to this fundamental confusion and deep disagreement is not a helpful umbrella term either, I propose eliminating the notion of deep disagreement from the philosophical discourse. Instead of analyzing the nature of deep disagreement, we should develop theories about different forms of disagreement, including disagreement about hinge propositions and disagreement about epistemic principles, and, in particular, a theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the possibility of reading Wittgenstein’s understanding of religious belief with Tillich’s concept of existential/religious doubt, especially as developed in his Dynamics of Faith. I argue, first, that Wittgenstein’s understanding of religious belief as a deep certainty of a grammatical remark is not the same as his understanding of hinge-certainty of “hinge propositions”, and that the relevant difference is that Wittgenstein leaves room for the possibility of doubt in the former but not in the (...) latter. Second, I argue that Tillich’s concept of dynamic faith by which Tillich explicates the role of doubt internal to religious believing can enrich the Wittgensteinian conception of religious belief. Despite the notable differences between Wittgenstein’s thoughts and Tillich’s overall system of theology, Tillich’s treatment of the concept of “faith” signals a possibility of a more positive way of relating Wittgenstein’s grammatical investigation and Tillich’s mature understanding of philosophical theology. At the end of the essay, responding to D. Z. Phillips’ negative assessment of Tillich’s theology in the name of Wittgenstein, I suggest what such positive way of relating the two might look like. (shrink)

My aims are exegetical rather than critical: I offer a systematic account of Hursthouse's ethical naturalism with an emphasis on the normative authority of the four ends, and try to correct some misconceptions found in the literature. Specifically, I argue that the four ends function akin to Wittgensteinian hinge-propositions for our practice of ethical reasoning and as such form part of a description of the logical grammar of said practice.

Jennifer Windt’s Dreaming is an enormously rich and thorough book, developing illuminating connections between dreaming, the methodology of psychology, and various philosophical subfields. I’ll focus on two epistemological threads that run through the book. The first has to do with the status of certain assumptions about dreams. Windt argues that the assumptions that dreams involve experiences, and that dream reports are reliable — are methodologically necessary default assumptions, akin to Wittgensteinian hinge propositions. I’ll suggest that Windt is quietly pre-supposing (...) some sceptical assumptions, and that recent literature in epistemic externalism may bear in important ways on her arguments. The second thread involves the perennial sceptical worry that dreaming threatens ordinary knowledge. I’ll suggest again that Windt makes tacit sceptical assumptions one may wish to resist. (shrink)

The ways in which Wittgenstein was directly influenced by William James (by his early psychological work as well his later philosophy) have been thoroughly explored and charted by Russell B. Goodman. In particular, Goodman has drawn attention to the pragmatist resonances of the Wittgensteinian notion of hinge propositions as developedand articulated in the posthumously edited and published work, On Certainty. This paper attempts to extend Goodman’s observation, moving beyond his focus on James (specifically, James’s Pragmatism) as his pragmatist reference (...) point. It aims to articulate the affinity between Wittgenstein’s thought on the topic of certainty and that of the neglected pragmatist thinker, George Santayana. -/- The paper draws on Duncan Pritchard’s recent reading of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty in order to articulate the concept of certainty involved in the notion of hinge propositions. It identifies two important and related points of affinity between this Wittgensteinian line of thought on certainty and the line of thought on the same topic articulated in Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith. The paper argues, firstly, that, both lines of thought reflect a pragmatist concept of certainty, according to which our most fundamental certainties are not conceived as purely theoretical objects of belief or knowledge but rather as thearational presuppositions of beliefs and practical action. Secondly, it examines the way inwhich the pragmatist concept of certainty functions, for the two thinkers as a response to scepticism. It argues that although the two thinkers’ responses are very different, they are mutually compatible and, together, point towards the possibility of a distinctively pragmatist response to scepticism, which involves an anti-epistemological model of the intimate relation of the human self to the world. (shrink)

This book offers a defence of Wrightean epistemic entitlement, one of the most prominent approaches to hinge epistemology. It also systematically explores the connections between virtue epistemology and hinge epistemology. -/- According to hinge epistemology, any human belief set is built within and upon a framework of pre-evidential propositions – hinges – that cannot be justified. Epistemic entitlement argues that we are entitled to trust our hinges. But there remains a problem. Entitlement is inherently unconstrained and arbitrary: (...) We can be entitled to any hinge proposition under the right circumstances. In this book, the author argues that we need a non-arbitrariness clause that protects entitlement from defeat. This clause, he argues, is to require epistemic virtue. Virtuous cognitive dispositions provide the non-arbitrariness clause that protects entitlement from defeat. The epistemic character of the agent who holds a particular set of hinges tells us something about the hinges’ epistemic status. Conversely, epistemic virtues are cognitive dispositions and capacities that rely on hinge propositions – without trusting in some hinges, we would be unable to exercise our virtues. -/- Trust Responsibly will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on epistemology, Wittgenstein, and virtues. (shrink)

What is knowledge of persons, and what is knowing persons like? my answer combines Wittgenstein’s epistemology with levinas’s phenomenology. It says that our knowledge of persons is a hinge proposition for us. And it says that what this knowledge consists in is the experience that levinas calls ”the face to face’: direct and unmediated encounter between persons. As levinas says, for there to be persons at all there has, first, to be a relationship, language, and this same encounter: (...) ”the face to face’ comes first, the existence of individual persons only second. I explore some consequences of this conception for how we think about personhood, and also for how we read Descartes and Augustine. (shrink)

The relation of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to skepticism seems to be ambiguous, since he rejects radical skepticism but also highlights the groundlessness of our beliefs. In this paper, I am going to discuss Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions in this respect. Against the usual view, I will show that they do not function as a contextualist or foundationalist refutation of skepticism. What is more, they also do not confirm skepticism. In contrast, I will argue that following Wittgenstein skepticism is neither false (...) nor true, but still has a point, which can be elucidated with Stanley Cavell’s concept of a truth of skepticism. This concept roughly states that we can not know about the existence of the world and the others, but that we have to acknowledge them. With the help of Wittgenstein, I am going to clarify this position. The key idea is that the problem of skepticism can be understood as a metaphorical way of presenting the finiteness of the human condition and that vertiginous skeptical irritations lead to an adequate human self-understanding in this respect. (shrink)

This thesis develops an account of ethics called the Linguistic Perspective, which is realist in a practical, non-theoretical sense, and is rooted Wittgenstein’s 'On Certainty'. On this account, normativity is intrinsic to human action and language; the norms of ethics are the logical limits of the most basic, unassailable concepts that practical reasoning requires for intelligibility. Part I lays the groundwork for this account by developing a Tractarian Reading of 'On Certainty'. Here, I contend that 'On Certainty' is primarily concerned (...) with the logical requirements and limits of language, and like the 'Tractatus' it develops these concerns in a realist direction. 'On Certainty', I argue, does so by advancing three key claims about logic: Everything descriptive of a language-game is part of logic; the boundary between logical and empirical propositions is not sharp; logic is founded on action. I investigate these claims, with particular emphasis on how natural human reactions provide logical conditions for the possibility of language. Hinge propositions, I argue, are rooted in these reactions; they point us to the limits of intelligibility of our concepts, though these limits are vague and inarticulable. In Part II, I discuss the practical syllogism and its validity. I argue that practical reasoning is distinct from theoretical reasoning and embodies a different standard of logical validity for inference. This standard is not strict and narrow, but creative and wide open; furthermore, it is an intrinsically ethical standard. Then, I advance my Linguistic Perspective on ethics, according to which human reactions provide the conditions for ethical normativity, just as they do for language. I argue that we can access ethical norms by reflecting on those linguistic concepts that are rooted in the most basic patterns of action, and by identifying the norms of behaviour that ensure the development of those concepts without contradiction. (shrink)

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 (...) have a deflationary truth property. I argue that the resulting view cannot offer a coherent characterization of ‘skeptical switch scenarios’ while providing an effective anti-skeptical strategy. In a more positive vein, I defend an approach that combines a correspondence conception of truth with epistemological disjunctivism. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the rationalist model of delusions. It begins by presenting John Campbell’s seminal proposal that delusions are caused top-down by pathological Wittgensteinian framework or hinge beliefs. After presenting Campbell’s rationalist account of delusions, the chapter raises and examines prominent objections by Tim Bayne & Elisabeth Pacherie as well as by Tim Thornton. The former make an important distinction between the aetiological top-down cognitive part and the epistemological rationalist framework part of Campbell’s account. The thesis that delusions are (...) caused top-down by pathological beliefs is not equivalent to the thesis that delusions are Wittgensteinian framework certainties. This chapter endorses this distinction. While the arguments against the top-down aspect are found to be more convincing – which motivates popular two-factor theories – the rationalist framework model of delusions is defended as an epistemologically promising account of delusion. Finally, this chapter examines a range of developments that have been made taking Campbell’s rationalism as a starting point. Most prominently the section examines Eilan’s early development of rationalism and Rhodes and Gipps’ proposal that delusions are not framework propositions but a product of their absence. (shrink)

Epistemic conservatism maintains that some beliefs are immediately justified simply because they are believed. The intuitive implausibility of this claim sets the burden of proof against it. Some epistemic conservatives have sought to lessen this burden by limiting its scope, but I show that they cannot remove it entirely. The only hope for epistemic conservativism is to appeal to its theoretical fruit. However, such a defense is undercut by the introduction of phenomenal conservatism, which accomplishes the same work from a (...) more intuitive starting point. Thus, if one opts for conservatism, better to choose the phenomenal kind. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 6, Issue 2-3, pp 120 - 142 This paper aims to contribute to the debate over epistemic versus non-epistemic readings of the ‘hinges’ in Wittgenstein’s _On Certainty_. I follow Marie McGinn’s and Daniele Moyal-Sharrock’s lead in developing an analogy between mathematical sentences and certainties, and using the former as a model for the latter. However, I disagree with McGinn’s and Moyal-Sharrock’s interpretations concerning Wittgenstein’s views of both relata. I argue that mathematical sentences as well as certainties are (...) true and are propositions; that some of them can be epistemically justified; that in some senses they are not prior to empirical knowledge; that they are not ineffable; and that their primary function is epistemic as much as it is semantic. (shrink)

How do we ensure agents formulating legal statements are not systematically in error? In this paper I assume that the success of legal statements follows from the fact that propositions expressed by legal statements adequately represent legal reality. I argue that the content of legal statements hinges implicetly on the sources of law and methods in which we attribute meaning to these sources. In this regard, I identify the primary obstacle to the success of actions that consist of asserting legal (...) statements as a systematic failure to refer to the proper method of interpretation by the agents formulating these statements. The paper explores several solutions to this challenge, focusing on the solution explaining the success in referring to the proper method of interpretation in virtue of meta-interpretive considerations. Subsequently, the paper discusses a challenge to this solution following from the claim that there are many different theories of meta-interpretation, and there is no fact (neither natural, nor conventional or intentional, anchored in the collective consciousness of society), determining that one of them is more accurate than the other ones. Given all the intricacies, this study focuses on exploring a coherent framework for understanding how different interpretive methods and meta-interpretative theories can be evaluated and applied in legal practice. It seeks to articulate a model that accommodates the diversity of interpretations while striving for a reasoned consensus on how legal texts should be understood and applied. (shrink)

Remarks in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty present a view according to which all knowledge rests on commitments to things we do not know. In his usual manner, Wittgenstein does not present a clearly defined set of premises designed to support this view. Instead, the reasons emerge along with the view through a series of often cryptic remarks. But this does not prevent us from critically assessing the position (or positions) one finds in the work. This paper attempts to do that in (...) the form of a philosophical dialogue. The challenges to Wittgenstein’s view raised here center on: the extent to which hinge commitments can plausibly be regarded as rules of a language-game rather than rationally assessable propositions, mutual support versus bottom up notions of justification, the subject and context relativity of hinge commitments, the difference between justification and persuasion, whether propositions of the form p is hinge are themselves hinge, and the general viability of Wittgenstein’s view as an alternative to epistemological skepticism and Moorean anti-skepticism. (shrink)

Elijah Chudnoff’s case for irreducible cognitive phenomenology hinges on seeming to see the truth of a mathematical proposition (Chudnoff 2015). In the following, I develop an augmented version of Chudnoff’s case, not based on seeming to see, or intuition, but based on being in a state with presentational phenomenology of high-level content. In contrast to other cases for cognitive phenomenology, those based on Strawson’s case (Strawson 2011), I argue that the case presented here is able to withstand counterarguments, which (...) attempt to reduce cognitive phenomenology to sensory phenomenology. To support my argument, I present findings from Bowden and Jung-Beeman’s experiments with the Aha! Experience (Bowden & Jung-Beeman 2004), and argue that the Aha! Experience is a species of the experience of understanding presented here. I interpret the results of these experiments to provide further evidence for irreducible cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

Jakob Ohlhorst | : This paper introduces the concept of tragic self-deception. Taking the basic notion that self-deception is motivated belief against better evidence, I argue that there are extreme cases of self-deception even when the contrary evidence is compelling. These I call cases of tragic self-deception. Such strong evidence could be argued to exclude the possibility of self-deception; it would be a delusion instead. To sidestep this conclusion, I introduce the Wittgensteinian concept of certainties or hinges: acceptances that are (...) beyond evidential justification. One particular type of certainties—iHinges, which are adopted for motivational reasons—explain the phenomenon of tragic self-deception: they warrant the subject’s dismissal of the evidence without loss of rationality from the subject’s point of view. Subsequently, I deal with some objections that can be raised against this account of self-deception. | : Cet article présente le concept d’auto-illusion tragique. En prenant la notion de base selon laquelle l’auto-illusion consiste en une croyance motivée à l’encontre de meilleures preuves, je soutiens qu’il existe des cas extrêmes d’auto-illusion qui persistent même face à des preuves contradictoires incontestables. J’appelle ces cas : auto-illusion tragique. On pourrait soutenir que des preuves d’une telle force excluent la possibilité d’auto-illusion et qu’il s’agirait plutôt de délire. Afin d’éviter cette conclusion, j’introduis le concept wittgensteinien de certitudes ou de propositions charnières : des admissions qui se situent au-delà d’une justification de nature probante. Un type de certitudes en particulier – iHinges, qui sont adoptées pour des raisons d’ordre motivationnel – rend compte du phénomène d’auto-illusion tragique. Ces certitudes justifient que le sujet rejette la preuve sans que cela implique, de son propre point de vue, une perte de rationalité. Subséquemment, je traite de certaines objections qui peuvent être soulevées contre cette explication de l’auto-illusion. (shrink)

One type of argument to sceptical paradox proceeds by making a case that a certain kind of metaphysically “heavyweight or “cornerstone” proposition is beyond all possible evidence and hence may not be known or justifiably believed. Crispin Wright has argued that we can concede that our acceptance of these propositions is evidentially risky and still remain rationally entitled to those of our ordinary knowledge claims that are seemingly threatened by that concession. A problem for Wright’s proposal is the so-called (...) Leaching worry: if we are merely rationally entitled to accept the cornerstones without evidence, how can we achieve evidence-based knowledge of the multitude of quotidian propositions that we think we know, which require the cornerstones to be true? This paper presents a rigorous, novel explication of this worry within a Bayesian framework, and offers the Entitlement theorist two distinct responses. (shrink)

Aristotle first investigated different modes, or ways of being. Unfortunately, in the modern literature the discussion of this concept has been largely neglected. Only recently, the interest towards the concept of ways increased. Usually, it is explored in connection with the existence of universals and particulars. The approach we are going to follow in this chapter is different. It discusses Wittgenstein’s conception of higher ontological levels as ways of arranging elements of lower ontological levels. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed his (...) ontology of ways (Art und Weise) in six steps: (i) Constructing states of affairs out of objects; (ii) Constructing propositions out of states of affairs; (iii) Constructing propositional signs; (iv) Constructing thoughts with the help of propositional signs; (v) Constructing truth / falsity; (vi) Constructing works of art. In Philosophical Investigations he added further five ways of producing new ontological levels: (vii) the meaning of a proposition is the way in which it is verified; (viii) the child gets command on language/calculus in the way it replicates demonstrations of the teacher; (ix) the products of mind are ways of doing something; (x) an action is a way of carrying out the instructions for acting. (shrink)

Political epistemology is the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology. This paper develops a political 'hinge' epistemology. Political hinge epistemology draws on the idea that all belief systems have fundamental presuppositions which play a role in the determination of reasons for belief and other attitudes. It uses this core idea to understand and tackle political epistemological challenges, like political disagreement, polarization, political testimony, political belief, ideology, and biases, among other possibilities. I respond to two challenges facing the development (...) of a political hinge epistemology. The first is about nature and demarcation of political hinges, while the second is about rational deliberation over political hinges. I then use political hinge epistemology to analyze ideology, dealing with the challenge of how an agent's ideology 'masks' or distorts their understanding of social reality, along with the challenge of how ideology critique can change the beliefs of agents who adhere to dominant ideologies, if agents only have their own or the competing ideology to rely on (see Haslanger 2017). I then explore how political hinge epistemology might be extended to further our understanding of political belief polarization. (shrink)

This paper argues that attitudinal objects, entities of the sort of John's judgment, John's thought, and John's claim, should play the role of propositions, as the cognitive products of cognitive acts, not the acts themselves.

Epistemologists have begun paying attention to the phenomenon of _core cognition_ from developmental psychology. Core cognition posits innate automatic cognitive modules that enable children to quickly grasp and learn certain concepts. A key element of core cognition is sometimes named _core knowledge_ because it encodes the constraints, parameters, and concepts that are required for core cognition modules to function. Until now, no successful epistemological account of it has been presented, and it is difficult to integrate into standard accounts of epistemology (...) given that it is only implicitly believed, not accessible to explicit cognitive processing, and innate. In this paper I propose an account of the epistemology of core cognition, focussing on the epistemic status of this core knowledge. I argue that, rather than being knowledge, or some ordinary justified belief, it consists of Wittgensteinian _hinge certainties_. These are the implicit presupposition that we need for our epistemology to function. I illustrate the argument with the core cognition of causality. Finally, I propose that even though core knowledge consists of unjustified hinges, we are epistemically entitled to trust them to be accurate. (shrink)

I argue against the interpretation of propositions as intentions and proof-objects as fulfillments proposed by Heyting and defended by Tieszen and van Atten. The idea is already a frequent target of criticisms regarding the incompatibility of Brouwer’s and Husserl’s positions, mainly by Rosado Haddock and Hill. I raise a stronger objection in this paper. My claim is that even if we grant that the incompatibility can be properly dealt with, as van Atten believes it can, two fundamental issues indicate that (...) the interpretation is unsustainable regardless: (1) it is hard to determine, without appealing to propositional intentions on pain of circularity, what intention a proof-object should be understood as a fulfillment of; (2) due to a difficult fulfillment dilemma, it is unclear, at best, what the object of an intention corresponding to a proposition is. (shrink)

Propositions play a central role in contemporary semantics. On the Russellian account, propositions are structured entities containing particulars, properties and relations. This contrasts sharply with the sets-of-possible-worlds view of propositions. I’ll discuss how to extend the sets-of-worlds view to accommodate fine-grained hyperintensional contents. When this is done in a satisfactory way, I’ll argue, it makes heavy use of entities very much like Russellian tuples. The two notions of proposition become inter-definable and inter-substitutable: they are not genuinely distinct accounts of (...) how propositions represent what they represent. Semantic theorists may move freely between the two conceptions of what propositions are. Nevertheless, the two approaches give different accounts of the metaphysical nature of propositions. I argue that the sets-of-worlds view provides an adequate account of the nature of propositions, whereas the Russellian view cannot. (shrink)

This is a critical commentary on Pritchard's book Epistemic Angst. In Section 2, I present the closure-based radical skeptical paradox. Then in Section 3, I sketch Pritchard’s undercutting response to this paradox. Finally, in Section 4, I put forward two concerns about Pritchard’s response and I also propose a reading of hinge commitments, the ability reading, that might put some pressure on Pritchard’s own reading of these commitments.

Propositions are the things we believe, intend, desire, and so on, but discussions are often less precise than they could be and an important driver of this deficiency has been a focus on the objects but a neglect of the attitudinal relations we bear to them. In what follows, we will offer some thoughts on what it means for a proposition to be the object of an attitude and we will argue that an important part of the story lies (...) with the attitude relations rather than the propositions. As we will see there are infinitely many relations we might bear to a proposition, but the propositional attitude relations are special amongst them. Accounting for what makes them special will be an important component in the discussion that follows. We will argue that once one appreciates certain facts about propositional attitude relations, various claims that metaphysicians often make regarding propositions themselves begin to look undermotivated. In fact, many views on the metaphysical nature of propositions come to look like plausible candidates for being that to which our propositional attitudes relate us. As will emerge, we will see that the principle role of propositions in the theory of mind is simply to keep track of how our attitudinal states represent things as being. But, we argue, in order to do this work, very few constraints must be placed on the nature of propositions themselves. In particular, contra much of the recent work on the metaphysics of propositions, they need not represent nor must they be structured. In light of these observations, we conclude by sketching our own favored minimalist view of propositions. (shrink)

This paper explores how hinge epistemology might fruitfully be applied not only to the problem of radical skepticism, but also to certain domain specific skepticisms, and in particular, moral skepticism. The paper explains the idea of a domain specific skepticism, and how domain specific skepticisms contrast with radical skepticism. I argue that a domain specific skeptical problem can be resolved in just the same way as radical skepticism, if there are hinge commitments within that domain. I then suggest (...) that there are hinge commitments in the moral domain, and use this to address a moral skeptical problem due to our apparent inability to know moral nihilism to be false. (shrink)

// tl;dr A Proposition is a Way of Thinking // -/- This chapter is about type-theoretic approaches to propositional content. Type-theoretic approaches to propositional content originate with Hintikka, Stalnaker, and Lewis, and involve treating attitude environments (e.g. "Nate thinks") as universal quantifiers over domains of "doxastic possibilities" -- ways things could be, given what the subject thinks. -/- This chapter introduces and motivates a line of a type-theoretic theorizing about content that is an outgrowth of the recent literature on (...) epistemic modality, according to which contentful thought is broadly "informational" in its nature and import. The general idea here is that an object of thought is not a way *the world* could be, but rather a way *one's perspective* could be (with respect to a relevant representational question). I will spend the middle part of this chapter motivating and developing a version of this strategy that is, I’ll argue, well-suited to explaining clear phenomena concerning the attribution of perspectival attitudes -- in particular, attitudes towards loosely information-sensitive propositions -- with which extant approaches struggle. My overarching goal here will be to motivate a distinctive version of the "informational" approach -- the "Flexible Types" approach, which is based on the theory proposed in Charlow (2020). According to the Flexible Types approach, propositional attitude verbs are quantifiers over sets of possibilities, but a possibility is a type-flexible notion -- sometimes a possible world, sometimes a perspective, sometimes a set of possible worlds, sometimes a set of perspectives. -/- After introducing the Flexible Types approach, this chapter circles back to more traditional concerns for the analysis of propositions as types of possibilities -- Frege's Puzzle and the problem of Logical Omniscience. Here too the Flexible Types approach bears fruit. Although there are certainly significant differences -- I note some in the concluding section -- the gist of this theory is Hinitkkan or Lewisian in spirit (if not quite in letter). We can make progress on addressing the challenges for the analysis of propositional content in terms of types of possibilities, through empirically driven refinement of our notion of what kind of thing a "doxastic possibility" is. (shrink)

Reprinted in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Wadsworth 2015, 6th edition, eds Michael Rea and Louis Pojman. What is propositional faith? At a first approximation, we might answer that it is the psychological attitude picked out by standard uses of the English locution “S has faith that p,” where p takes declarative sentences as instances, as in “He has faith that they’ll win”. Although correct, this answer is not nearly as informative as we might like. Many people say that there (...) is a more informative answer. They say that, at the very least, propositional faith requires propositional belief. More precisely, they say that faith that p requires belief that p or that it must be partly constituted by belief that p. This view is common enough; call it the Common View. I have two main aims in this paper: (i) to exhibit the falsity of the Common View and the paucity of reasons for it, and (ii) to sketch a more accurate and comprehensive account of what propositional faith is. (shrink)

Propositions are often aligned with truth-conditions. The view is mistaken, since propositions discriminate where truth conditions do not. Propositions are hyperintensional: they are sensitive to necessarily equivalent differences. I investigate an alternative view on which propositions are truthmaker conditions, understood as sets of possible truthmakers. This requires making metaphysical sense of merely possible states of affairs. The theory that emerges illuminates the semantic phenomena of samesaying, subject matter, and aboutness.

According to propositional contingentism, it is contingent what propositions there are. This paper presents two ways of modeling contingency in what propositions there are using two classes of possible worlds models. The two classes of models are shown to be equivalent as models of contingency in what propositions there are, although they differ as to which other aspects of reality they represent. These constructions are based on recent work by Robert Stalnaker; the aim of this paper is to explain, expand, (...) and, in one aspect, correct Stalnaker's discussion. (shrink)

Propositional contingentism is the view that what propositions there are is a contingent matter—certain propositions ontologically depend on objects which themselves only contingently exist. Possible worlds are, loosely, complete ways the world could have been. That is to say, the ways in which everything in its totality could have been. Propositional contingentists make use of possible worlds frequently. However, a neglected, but important, question concerns whether there are any notions of worlds which are both theoretically adequate and consistent with propositional (...) contingentism. Some notion of a possible world is adequate if the systematic connection between, at least, possibility and truth at some possible world holds. Here, I argue that no adequate notion of a possible world is available to at least those who subscribe to one natural formulation of propositional contingentism. I also show that this result contrasts with a simple and adequate definition of a possible world available to the necessitist—those who hold that necessarily everything necessarily exists. (shrink)

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 rational considerations. This explanation, if correct, seems to have troubling implications for how we should respond to deep disagreement. If my position on a topic is not responsive to rational considerations, then what choice have I but to dogmatically hold to that position, and simply dismiss the views of those with whom I disagree? I address this problem by identifying an attitude of intellectual humility that is appropriate to have towards one's hinge commitments, and suggest that this attitude provides the basis for a non-rational, constructive way to resolve deep disagreement. (shrink)

According to Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Wittgenstein’s On Certainty presents a theory of hinges, and hinges have a role to play in a foundationalist epistemology (2013). Michael Williams (2005) and Annalisa Coliva (2013 ) have claimed that the hinges are not suitable to play such a role as they are not shared universally. Moyal-Sharrock has replied that a subset of the hinges is suitable to play such a role: the “universal” hinges. I argue that for Moyal-Sharrock’s reply to be sustained, she must (...) construe the set of universal hinges much more narrowly than she does currently. For instance, Moyal-Sharrock claims that “I have a brain” is a universal hinge, which consigns people who know nothing about brains to stand outside the bounds of sense. I also provide a novel way of thinking about the universal hinges, which I argue is better textually motivated than Moyal-Sharrock’s own way, and which provides a set of hinges more suitable to play a role in foundationalist epistemology. (shrink)

In a 2010 article Turri puts forward some powerful considerations which suggest that Williamson's view of knowledge as the most general factive mental state is false. Turri claims that this view is false since it is false that if S sees that p, then S knows that p. Turri argues that there are cases in which (A) S sees that p but (B) S does not know that p. In response I offer linguistic evidence to suppose that in propositional contexts (...) “see” does not have the sort of meaning (a purely perceptual meaning) which would sustain Turri's claims about the cases he offers (specifically, the (A) verdicts). (shrink)

To understand what non-propositional content is and whether there are any such contents, we first need to know what propositional content is. That issue will be the focus of the first section of this essay. In the second section, with an understanding of propositional content in hand, we will consider representations that fail to have propositional content. In contrast to recent literature, it will be argued that metaphysical considerations concerning what's represented, rather than linguistic considerations, are a more promising way (...) of establishing non-propositional contents. To keep the discussion containable, focus will be on representational mental states, though many of the considerations can be extended to other forms of representation. (shrink)