Prologue

From the very beginning of hinge epistemology, its advocates have noted certain similarities between Wittgenstein's thought and that of Hume. They have also, however, accused Hume of ultimately remaining too sceptical and too metaphysical to be enlisted to the cause (see, for example, Moyal-Sharrock 2017:153). I have defended Hume against the second charge elsewhere (Sandis 2019). Here, I wish to focus on his epistemology and, more particularly, his account of justification. I shall argue that Hume's account of how justification comes to an end is proto-Wittgenstein in numerous respects. It is anti-sceptical without being rationalistic; it is accompanied by an account of how explanation comes to an end that places human practices and the animal behaviour that they grow from at its centre; it is an early form of hinge epistemology. The first part of this essay is devoted to showing the Hume is a hinge epistemologist. The second half considers what kind of hinge epistemologist he is. The third and final part looks at what contemporary hinge epistemologists can learn from Hume.

Scepticism about Hume

The consensus among hinge epistemologists appears to be that Hume was the kind of sceptic that Wittgenstein was arguing against viz. one who, as Danièle Moyal-Sharrock puts it, ‘takes the mere articulation of doubt for doubt’ (Moyal-Sharrock 2016:100). Moyal-Sharrock continues:

In a similar vein, Annalisa Coliva maintains that while ‘[t]he affinities between Wittgenstein and Hume are clear’ (2010, 154) and Hume ‘offered the first seeds to try to escape’ scepticism, he fails to avoid a ‘skeptical outcome’ (Coliva 2020, 7; see also Coliva 2010, 187). She argues:

Hinge epistemology is a new branch of philosophy inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein's view in On Certainty that ‘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’ (OC 341). Hinge epistemology is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting areas of epistemology and Wittgenstein studies. Connecting these two fields brings a revived energy to both, opening them up to fresh developments. The first collection on the topic, Hinge Epistemolog y (Brill, 2016), edited by Annalisa Coliva and Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, served as a general introduction. The volume you hold in your hands (or which appears on your screen) extends hinge epistemology in the following two ways:

• (i) Fastening the hinges: In the opening chapters of the book, proponents of the three major perspectives on the nature of hinge certainties strengthen their views, often by virtue of response to one another. These are followed by chapters presenting new voices and challenges within hinge epistemology.

• (ii) Opening the door: The second half of the book explores new applications and directions of hinge epistemology, particularly as it relates to the philosophy of mind, society, ethics and the history of ideas.

Fastening the Hinges

The volume begins with Danièle Moyal-Sharrock's ‘Wittgenstein's Hinge Certainty’ (Chapter One). The aim of this chapter is to clarify how Moyal-Sharrock's own view of Wittgenstein's hinge epistemology differs from those of Annalisa Coliva and Duncan Pritchard. All three have been enthusiastically engaged with On Certainty for many years. Their understanding of On Certainty has been very close in many ways, but differing in others.

Moyal-Sharrock's chapter is followed by Duncan Pritchard's ‘Exploring Quasi-Fideism’ (Chapter Two). Quasi-fideism offers a distinctive account of the epistemology of religious conviction, one that draws upon the materials provided by a Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology. In this chapter, an overview of quasi-fideism is offered, including how it relates to hinge epistemology. A generic form of quasi-fideism is distinguished from one explicitly modelled along the lines of the non-belief hinge epistemology that Pritchard advocates. Some of the main objections that have been posed for the position are then considered.

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, there is a moral difference between doing something and allowing it to occur. Its defenders and critics both assume the existence of an ontological difference that the purported moral difference is said to supervene upon. This difference – between so-called positive acts of doing and negative acts of not-doing – was famously introduced by Gilbert Ryle, who argued that the latter (which include neglect) were not really actions at all. He is opposed by Davidsonians who, by contrast, maintain that negative act tokens are just positive acts under negative characterisations. In this chapter, I argue that both the moral and the metaphysical debates rest on the mistaken belief that actions and/or their characterisations can be neatly divided into those that are positive and those that are negative. I use a wide range of examples to demonstrate how all action contains inaction, and vice versa. Moreover, ontological perceptions of what is positive and what is negative cannot be neatly separated from evaluative ones. None of this entails that there can never be any moral difference between doing x and allowing x to happen. But it is not one that can be captured by any principle, not least because any given instance of doing x will involve the not-doing of some other thing (a, b, or c …), and any case of of allowing x to happen will be inseparable from doing some such other thing, where the doing of a involved in allowing x may be morally worse than the allowing of a which occurs in doing x. I conclude that the Bhagavad Gita is right in proclaiming that the ability to reliably perceive one’s action in inaction, and vice versa, eludes us.

Background

Ludwig Wittgenstein came to Cambridge in 1912 in order to study under the supervision of Bertrand Russell. It was the beginning of seven years of intensive and single-minded research in logic and philosophy which resulted in the only book Wittgenstein published in his lifetime, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It is not to the present purpose to investigate the wide range of philosophical views embodied in that work, but rather to examine the conception of philosophy propounded in it. In order to do so, some appreciation of Wittgenstein's intellectual background and the problem-setting context of his work is necessary. For a twenty-three-year-old research student of philosophy, Wittgenstein in 1912 was remarkably ill-read in the history of the subject. His intellectual milieu was that of a highly cultured and sophisticated member of the Viennese intelligentsia. His training was, however, scientific. In 1906 he had begun studying engineering in the Technische Hochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg, and in 1908 he came to Manchester to pursue research in aeronautics. In the course of research into the design of a jet-reaction propeller he was led from dynamics to pure mathematics, and from there to logical and philosophical investigations into the foundations of mathematics. He apparently read Russell's Principles of Mathematics and was greatly impressed by this imposing work which had, significantly, germinated in theoretical problems in dynamics. It was probably the appendix to the Principles of Mathematics which led Wittgenstein first to read the works of Frege, and then to visit him. On Frege's advice he returned to England to study under Russell.

Wittgenstein, like any well-educated Viennese at the turn of the century, had read Schopenhauer in his teens. He is reported to have been greatly impressed, and he told von Wright that his first philosophy was a Schopenhauerian epistemological idealism. It was not, however, a Schopenhauerian interest which brought him to philosophical investigation. Although Schopenhauer's influence upon the later sections of the Tractatus is profound, it is clear from Wittgenstein's correspondence with Russell, from the 1913 and 1914 notes on logic and from the three remaining philosophical notebooks covering the periods from 22 August 1914 to 22 June 1915, and from 15 April 1916 to 10 January 1917, that the driving force behind his investigations was logic and its metaphysical implications.

The Picture Theory of Meaning

On 29 September 1914 Wittgenstein, in his notebook, referred to the fact that in law courts in Paris a motor car accident is represented by a model employing toy cars and figures. It struck him that there is not merely an analogy between the way such a model represents the facts of the accident and the way a proposition represents a situation, but rather that a model, a picture, a proposition are severally special cases of representation and must share certain common features in virtue of which they can represent whatever it is that they represent. In all such cases the representation must, in some way, be co-ordinated with what it represents. Yet, it may represent falsely, for things may not be related as it represents them as being. Rather, as in the model, ‘a world is as it were put together experimentally’ (NB, p. 7). The representation can be true or false, but it must have a sense independently of its truth or falsehood, it must represent a possible configuration of things even if not an actual one.

From this seed grew the famous picture theory of meaning for which the Tractatus is best known. It is important, however, not to exaggerate the importance of the new idea that a proposition is a picture, a logical picture, of a situation. A great many of the ingredients of the Tractatus conception of meaning and representation had occurred to Wittgenstein well before this idea crossed his mind. It enabled him to weld together into a unified whole the thoughts which he had been developing since 1912, as well as leading to what seemed to be fresh insights. I shall try to give a brief sketch of the central points of the picture theory.

First, bear in mind some of the antecedent commitments. The most fundamental was the idea of the bipolarity of the proposition. This had occurred to Wittgenstein very early. While he had never thought Frege right in saying that propositions refer to truth-values, he did originally think that a proposition refers to a fact (has a fact as its Bedeutung or meaning).

The structure of this book can best be captured by means of a theatrical metaphor. The book has, as it were a central drama, a set, and a back-cloth. The subject with which I am primarily concerned, the drama which is enacted throughout the book, is Wittgenstein's metaphysics of experience. This Kantian term of art is chosen advisedly, for one of the leitmotifs consists in exploring the Kantian affinities of Wittgenstein's philosophy in general, both in the Tmctatus and in the post-1929 works. Wittgenstein's metaphysics of experience can be seen as consisting of a triad of problems, two of which are examined comprehensively. These are: self-consciousness, our knowledge of other minds, and our knowledge of objects. The secondary concern of the book, the set upon which the main drama takes place, is Wittgenstein's general conception of philosophy. This theme is intended to illuminate, and be illuminated by, the examination of Wittgenstein's metaphysics of experience. For the latter, particularly in Wittgenstein's later work, is an exemplification of his conception of the task, process, and result of philosophical investigation. As my work progressed, it became increasingly clear that the back-cloth against which the two main subjects had to be seen could not be wholly neglected. The back-cloth consists of the development of his semantic theories from the strict realism of the Tractatus to the constructivistinspired conventionalism of the Philosophical Investigations. I have explored this most difficult subject only so far as seemed to me necessary in order to grasp the nature of Wittgenstein's metaphysics of experience, his general contribution to epistemology, and his conception of philosophy. So the back-cloth is, as is customary in stage design, uneven. In parts it is filled in with colourful detail, at other points it is rough and ready.

Wittgenstein is almost unique among philosophers in having produced two complete philosophies, the later containing substantial criticism and repudiation of the earlier. The controversy over the degree of change and the degree of constancy will doubtless rage for many years to come. With respect to the subjects with which I am concerned in this book I have tried to plot both transformation and continuity. It is certainly impossible to understand Wittgenstein's later concern with and refutation of solipsism and idealism without seeing its roots in his fascination with Schopenhauer in the Notebooks 1914-16 and the ‘methodological solipsism’ of the Philosophische Bemerkungen.

The Origins of the Idea

In Chapter V it was noted that in the Philosophical Remarks, during Wittgenstein's brief verificationist phase, he distinguished between ‘genuine propositions’ and ‘hypotheses'. Genuine propositions, he argued, are sense-datum statements that are immediately and conclusively verified by reference to current experiences, compared directly with reality for their truth. Hypotheses (e.g. statements about material objects, the past or future, laws of nature) are not propositions in this sense, but quite different kinds of grammatical structures. They are not conclusively verifiable at all, not compared directly with reality for their truth. They are supported by evidence, viz. ‘symptoms', although no accumulation of such evidential support will render a hypothesis certain. So it makes no sense to talk of a hypothesis as certain. Symptoms stand to the hypothesis they support as points on a curve to a curve. The symptoms/hypothesis relation is grammatical not empirical (inductive). For that certain symptoms probabilify a hypothesis partially determines the meaning of the hypothesis. Since any set of symptoms falls short of entailing the hypothesis, the evidential support it gives is defeasible. For addition of further genuine propositions to the set of symptoms for a given hypothesis may undermine the plausibility of the hypothesis.

We saw that Wittgenstein rapidly abandoned this conception. He came to think that what he had conceived of as ‘genuine propositions’ are not compared with reality for truth and falsehood. There is no verification of i have toothache’ or ‘A looks red to me', and the role of such expressions is not to describe how things are. Such ‘propositions', far from being known with certainty, cannot be said to be known at all. Similarly, propositions such as ‘This poppy is red', ‘The book is on the table’ cannot be said to be hypotheses if that means that they are at best merely probable or that they cannot be conclusively verified. It only makes sense to talk of something's being probable where it also makes sense for it to be certain.

As the symptom/hypothesis relation disappears from Wittgenstein's writings in 1932/33 we find the first occurrences of the term ‘criterion'. It crops up initially in contexts in which emphasis is being given to verification. A statement gets its sense, Wittgenstein argued at this stage, from its verification (AWL, p. 17).

In the course of the fifteen years since I wrote Insight and Illusion I have continued to study and write about the philosophy of Wittgenstein. During this period many further volumes culled from his voluminous Nachlass, as well as lecture notes taken by his students, have been published and, indeed, the whole of the Nachlass has been made available in xerox. This extensive material illuminates countless aspects of his better known works, in particular the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, and the results of researches into it were incorporated in two volumes I wrote together with Dr G. P. Baker on the Philosophical Investigations, viz. Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (1980) and Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (1985). As I struggled to understand the thoughts of ‘the first philosopher of the age’ I came to recognize that on many issues I had previously misunderstood him, sometimes as a result of reading his works through the spectacles of Oxford philosophy and its preoccupations in the 1960s. When I was offered the opportunity to produce a revised second edition of Insight and Illusion, I welcomed the chance to correct, in the light of this subsequent research, the distorted picture I had earlier sketched. For not all struck me as hopeless, and it seemed worthwhile to set the record as straight as I could. This did, however, mean that I was committed to very extensive rewriting.

In the Preface to the first edition I compared the structure of the book to the elements of a theatrical production, with a central drama, a set, and a back-cloth. Surveying the production afresh, it did not seem as flawed as Hamlet without the Prince, but the back-cloth, which consisted of a sketchy presentation of Wittgenstein's conception of meaning, looked more like Piccadilly Circus in the rush-hour than Elsinore Castle. I had been much impressed with the idea that it is illuminating to view the Tractatus as a paradigm of realism or truthconditional semantics, and the Investigations as informed by a wholly different approach to meaning inspired by constructivism or intuitionism in mathematics, namely anti-realism or assertion-conditions semantics.