Abstract

Two Types of Reasonableness Abstract: In the compendium of notes entitled On Certainty, Ludwig von Wittgenstein suggests that the epistemological condition of humanity rests, at bottom, on commitments which are “exempt from doubt.” Wittgenstein here affirms the dialectic whereby, insofar as one desires either certainty or rational basis for one’s beliefs, one must accept that skepticism wins the day. Wittgenstein travels the full length of entailments stemming from Kant’s Transcendental Revolution, where Kant rightly codified that the sphere of human experience is such that the Absolute is always and necessarily inaccessible, to its natural end. More basically, Wittgenstein recognizes that we are unable to rationally ground our beliefs, as the skeptic suggests, but he also recognizes that it is outside of our capacity to doubt some beliefs, as Kant also recognized. However, where Kant proposed that the uniformity of our experience provides us with transcendent evidence for believing that the Absolute at least probably parallels our experiences, Wittgenstein preserves our isolation from the Absolute and suggests that the uniformity of our experiences and the seeming coherence of our logical structures rests on commitments to unfounded, but necessary, ‘hinge’ commitments. Here Wittgenstein employs a metaphor in which the greater set of our seemingly rational beliefs make up a door attached to and resting on a set of commitments that make up a hinge allowing the door to turn so exemplifying our ability to actually exercise and hold those beliefs. Wittgenstein claims that these commitments are arational and unempirical. The idea being that we do not deduce our hinge commitments from our beliefs, but rather we recognize that our holding of beliefs or, more dialectically appropriately, doubts requires that we have some framework within which they are coherent.

Consider the idea that our faculties are somehow mistaken, i.e. that we fundamentally misconstrue the world as it is because of the way our brains and sensory apparati are formatted. Wittgenstein’s suggestion is that the idea that we might somehow transcend our epistemic and metaphysical position to take some sort of God’s eye, objective criticism of our faculties in relation to the Absolute is preposterous. We are trapped within a framework. Our critical analysis only exists insofar as it rests on a commitment to the persistence of regular rationality. In order to consider whether our rational faculties are such that they might give us a reliable or accurate view of reality, we must first accept that our rational faculties are reliable or accurate. This is the hinge upon which the criticism and the doubt must necessarily hang. Duncan Pritchard places some constraints on how we can conceive of hinge commitments focused on ensuring that we are not deducing or deriving our commitments from seemingly rationally held beliefs. If such a deduction were the case, then the commitments would not be arational and would so not qualify. I will argue that Pritchard’s constraints are both necessary for a proper conception of hinge commitments, but also potentially accounted for by a proper consideration of two types of reasonableness where entailment is distinguished from recognition of commitment.

Argument Structure: I’ll lay out Pritchard’s and probably Crispin Wright’s conceptions of hinge commitments, show how Pritchard thinks his constraints work, and then suggest that marking a difference between rational deduction and the recognition of commitment might appease his constraints.

Motivation: If hinge commitments are an appropriate way to characterize the way in which the foundation for our beliefs is made up, then understanding the nature of hinge commitments is as important an epistemological consideration as one might come upon.

Other Works: Outside of Pritchard, his critics, Wright, and Wittgenstein I may look at Descartes for a better characterization of how the doubt to belief relationship is supposed to work and, if I have difficulty parsing what exactly is at stake, I’ll probably pull out Meillassoux’s After Finitude because, even though he disagrees with Wittgenstein, he’s got an excellent handle on the narrative interplay of epistemic ideas.

Bibliography: Koren, Ladislav. Hinge commitments vis-à-vis the transmission problem, Synthese. 2015 Pritchard, Duncan. Epistemic Angst, Princeton Press. 2016 Pritchard, Duncan. Is 'God Exists' a 'Hinge Proposition' of Religious Belief?, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jun., 2000), pp. 129-140 Pritchard, Duncan. Wittgenstein on groundlessness of our believing, Synthese. 2012 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty, Harper Collins. 1969 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Blue and Brown Books, Harper Collins. 1969 Wright, C. Warrant for nothing (and foundations for free)?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol.78, 167–212. 2004