Abstract
The paper addresses the issue of what epistemic anti-realism could possibly be in the context of “hinge epistemology.” According to this new epistemological trend, justification depends on evidence together with general background assumptions—for example, that there is an external world, that our sense organs are mostly reliable, that we are not the victims of persistent and lucid dreams, and so on. The paper then addresses two issues. First, whether these assumptions are arbitrary, as relativists would claim. Second, how we should conceive of their metaphysical status. It responds negatively to the first question and puts forward an anti-realist conception of hinges to respond to the latter. Central to the proposal is that the kind of truth that can be predicated of hinges is of a minimalist kind. The paper also explores the compatibility of minimalism about hinges’ truth and alethic pluralism.
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Notes
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Clearly, Wittgenstein objected to the very possibility of global Cartesian scepticism for reasons briefly alluded to in the main text. Against a wholesale scepticism of Humean descent, he did appeal to the idea that rational—that is, justified—doubts could only be local. If so, hinges would have to be taken for granted to be able to formulate them. For a discussion of Wittgenstein’s various anti-sceptical strategies, see Coliva (2010, chap. 3).
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On the notion of acceptance, see Coliva (2015, 33–39).
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I prefer to use the label “minimalist,” rather than “deflationary,” for reasons which will become apparent in the following.
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This is the well-known problem of the criterion.
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A Moorean argument would have roughly the following form:
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(I) Here is a hand.
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(II) If there is a hand here, there is an external world.
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(III) There is an external world.
Now, (I) would be justified on the basis of one’s on-going sensory experience. Yet, for that experience to be justifiably brought to bear on a belief about the existence of a specific physical object like a hand, (III) should already be taken for granted. Hence, whatever perceptual justification one could have for (I) could not be transmitted to (III), since prior justification for (III) would be needed in order to justifiably take (III) for granted and therefore for having a justification for (I) in the first place (Wright 1985). In Coliva (2015, chap. 3), I have proposed a different notion of transmission failure, which would depend merely on taking (III) for granted—without the need to have a justification for it—for (I) to be justified on the basis of one’s on-going experience. For present purposes, it is irrelevant which kind of transmission failure is taken to apply to a Moorean argument.
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For a philosophically informed discussion of work in contemporary cognitive psychology, see Burge (2010).
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I do not think that ultimately Wittgenstein was a relativist, but just an anti-realist. I have discussed this issue at length in Coliva (2010, 188–207).
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This would tally with Wittgenstein’s own understanding of “There are physical objects” as licensing talk about such a category of entities and of “A is a physical object” as being merely “a piece of instruction, which we give only to someone who doesn’t yet understand either what ‘A’ means, or what ‘physical object’ mean.” (1969, 36, cf. 35–37)
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It falls beyond the scope of this paper to argue for the stronger claim that we have more than simply a pragmatic reason. A line one might want to explore, in order to argue for that stronger claim, is that being inquirers and knowers is essential to our identity, if not nature. Thus, insofar as we want to maintain that identity, or even more strongly, in virtue of our own nature, we cannot but stick to these hinges.
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Coliva, A. (2018). What Anti-realism About Hinges Could Possibly Be. In: Kyriacou, C., McKenna, R. (eds) Metaepistemology. Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93369-6_12
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