Abstract
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.
Change history
06 April 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04132-3
References
Bassols, A. T. (2010). Wittgenstein and the myth of hinge propositions. In J. Padilla Gálvez & E. Lemaire (Eds.), Wittgenstein: Issues and debates (pp. 83–116). Paris: De Gruyter.
Brown, J. (2004). Wright on transmission failure. Analysis, 64(1), 57–67.
Casullo, A. (2003). A priori justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chandler, J. (2013). Transmission failure, AGM-style. Erkenntnis, 78(2), 383–98.
Coliva, A. (2012). Varieties of failure (of warrant transmission: What else?!). Synthese, 189(2), 235–54.
Coliva, A. (2015). Extended rationality: A hinge epistemology. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Coliva, A. (2016). Which hinge epistemology? International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 6(2–3), 79–96.
Fumerton, R. (2016). The prospects for traditional internalism. In B. Coppenger & M. Bergmann (Eds.), Intellectual assurance (pp. 239–257). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hempel, C. G. (1964). On the nature of mathematical truth. In P. Benacerraf & H. Putnam (Eds.), Philosophy of mathematics (pp. 366–381). Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.
Koreň, L. (2015). Hinge commitments vis-À-vis the transmission problem. Synthese, 192(8), 2513–34.
Moretti, L. (2012). Wright, Okasha and Chandler on transmission failure. Synthese, 184(3), 217–34.
Moretti, L. (2014). The dogmatist, Moore’s proof and transmission failure. Analysis, 74(3), 382–89.
Moretti, L., & Piazza, T. (2013). When warrant transmits and when it doesn’t: Towards a general framework. Synthese, 190(13), 2481–503.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2004). Understanding Wittgenstein’s on certainty. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2016). The animal in epistemology. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 6(2–3), 97–119.
Neta, R. (2007). Fixing the transmission: The new Mooreans. In S. Nuccetelli & G. Seay (Eds.), Themes from G. E. Moore: New essays in epistemology and ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Orr, D. J. (1989). Did Wittgenstein have a theory of hinge propositions? Philosophical Investigations, 12(2), 134–53.
Pritchard, D. (2005). Wittgenstein’s on certainty and contemporary anti-scepticism. In D. Moyal-Sharrock & W. H. Brenner (Eds.), Readings of Wittgenstein’s on certainty. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Pritchard, D. (2012). Wittgenstein and the groundlessness of our believing. Synthese, 189(2), 255–72.
Pritchard, D. (2016). Epistemic angst. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Pryor, J. (2004). What’s wrong with Moore’s argument? Philosophical Issues, 14(1), 349–78.
Schönbaumsfeld, G. (2016). Hinge propositions’ and the ‘logical’ exclusion of doubt. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 6(2–3), 165–81.
Silins, N. (2005). Transmission failure failure. Philosophical Studies, 126(1), 71–102.
Smith, M. J. (2009). Transmission failure explained. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 79(1), 164–89.
Stroll, A. (2005). Why on certainty matters. In D. Moyal-Sharrock & W. H. Brenner (Eds.), Investigating on certainty: Essays on Wittgenstain’s last work (pp. 33–46). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tucker, C. (2010). When transmission fails. Philosophical Review, 119(4), 497–529.
Williams, M. (1991). Unnatural doubts: Epistemological realism and the basis of scepticism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On certainty. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wright, C. (1985). Facts and certainty. Proceedings of the British Academy, 71, 429–72.
Wright, C. (2002). (Anti-)sceptics simple and subtle: G. E. Moore and John Mcdowell. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65(2), 330–48.
Wright, C. (2004). Intuition, entitlement and the epistemology of logical laws. Dialectica, 58(1), 155–75.
Wright, C. (2014). On epistemic entitlement (II): Welfare state epistemology. In D. Dodd & E. Zardini (Eds.), Scepticism and perceptual justification (pp. 213–247). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, C., & Davies, M. (2004). On epistemic entitlement. Aristotelian Society Supplementary, 78, 167–245.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jean-Baptiste Rauzy, Grégoire Lefftz, Guillaume Dechauffour and J. Adam Carter. I am grateful to three anonymous referees from Synthese for comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The original online version of this article was revised due to a retrospective Open Access order.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Zhang, X. Closure, deduction and hinge commitments. Synthese 198 (Suppl 15), 3533–3551 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1679-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1679-x
Keywords
- Skepticism
- Closure
- Deduction
- Hinge commitment
- Wittgenstein
- Epistemic revision
- Cartesian doubt