Hinge Epistemology

[@KaneB]

Moore's argument against skepticism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n2jdpWCqer6jpbc

[@chluff]

so you're saying that people who doubt the existence of the external world are unhinged?

[@squeaksquawk4255]

How does this video only have 6k views? It's well put together, and highly informative. I've actually found myself considering my hinge commitments at various points in my day-to-day life, so I'd say this video, and the rest of this channel, has made a real-world impact on my life. This channel is criminally underrated.

[@TheoEvian]

Because it is well put together and highly informative. It is not clickbait nor does it have algorythm-optimised graphics etc.

[@macattack1958]

If you view the hinge epistemology from W's philosophy it seems to me to be a "proof" against realism and skepticism (academic or Pyrrhonian). I think he is trying to take into account conflict among clearly rational people who nonetheless disagree radically; one can see his pessimism in On Certainty where he says at some point we call others fools and heretics when we disagree enough and treat each other that way even in the modern period. Even though all parties are rational there is no way to resolve their disputes other than through violence, propaganda, indoctrination, and manipulation. His claim seems to be that the struggle which we associate with other periods of time (like during the wars of religion) will not go away with religion going away even if religion was the cause of those wars. W was a mystic for much of his career and he would regularly engage with his friend Anscombe who was a devout Catholic on matters of religion. I dont think W even became Catholic but he had a very clear interest in religion and the divine. His works on ethics show a similar view. One can further see his pessimism regarding reason in his review of decline of the west by Oscar Spengler in his diary; he seems quite favorable to the theses.

[@nickm3694]

For a sec, I thought this video was titled "hinge etymology" and was wondering how someone could make a 41 minute video about the word "hinge", lol

[@SamuelHulick]

lol

[@InventiveHarvest]

I keep going back and forth on hinge beliefs.

[@dominiks5068]

"uber hinge" is my new favourite philosophical term

[@СергейМакеев-ж2н]

Is believing "I AM radically and fundamentally in error" really as bad as Pritchard says it is? I mean, it's sort of like "the preface paradox". I know some of these beliefs are wrong. Perhaps I even know that *most* of them are wrong. But that doesn't give me a reason to switch to believing the opposite of any particular one of them. _Right now_ I have more reasons to believe that I do have hands, than reasons to believe that I don't.

[@KaneB]

Yeah, I think this is a problem with Pritchard's account. Suppose I accept that I am radically and fundamentally in error. Why would this lead me to give up any of my beliefs? There must be some sort of inference going on here. So something like: "Given that I am radically and fundamentally in error, most of my beliefs are incorrect. Given that most of my beliefs are incorrect, probably this particular belief (say, the belief that I have hands) is incorrect." But if I'm radically and fundamentally in error, then I can't trust this inference either. At least by my own lights, this can't be a reason to give up any particular belief. It can't be a reason to give up any particular practice. It can't even be a reason to give up engaging in inquiry.

[@icaruscell3080]

This is so timely! I was actually just reading and emailing with Pritchard about his book Epistemic Angst, thanks for another perspective on the issue!

[@hoagie911]

The idea that "I have hands" is truly a hinge commitment is farcical, because as you point it can be false, and we can and do find out it is false. If hinges need to remain in place for epistemic reasoning to begin, then they should be more sturdy than that. The hand-wavy "ordinary circumstances" clause serves to cover up the actual philosophical underpinnings. The real underlying hinge is more along the lines of "I can trust my memories, senses and reasoning". From this it is possible to reason and thus know whether or not you have hands. But once you understand this as the hinge, we can also find places where we ought to call this into question, as many studies in psychology have shown. So we would have to shave our hinge down even further to some sort of conditional statement, which always preserves just enough certainty in your faculties to allow us to do any reasoning at all. And even then we see examples in the world where people are so disconnected from reality that they cannot perform basic reasoning about where or who they are. This search for a solid hinge is fruitless but informative. It seems that possible hinge beliefs can always be legitimately doubted by looking at scenarios in the real world, without having to appeal to phosphor thought experiments. So rather than presume hinges, we should just about that we always make assumptions about things when reasoning, and that if they are called into question, we can do our best to justify them by fallung back on other assumptions which aren't currently being questioned. What the skeptic thought experiments show is that this regress can never be enough to rule out some possibilities, but so what? What's wrong with living with the provisio that some radical possibilities aren't true? What's wrong with what we call "knowledge" coming with provisos? Outside of philosophy we use these all the times; we say we "know" the electron exists, but this is only on the proviso that our understanding of the microscopic world is roughly write, and we can imagine reasonable scenarios where that is not the case.

[@warrendriscoll350]

It's just better to visualize facts in the world as an interrelated graph of facts. Hinge commitments is just axioms reinvented. But really, the axiomatic fact you start analysing from depends on your choice of root node in a graph that you think is a tree.

[@caltissue141]

I found this quite interesting. As a lay person, it seems to me that entertaining the skeptical response to hinge epistemology puts the hinge commitment back into a rational framework, where it doesn't belong. It seems like there's a difference between simply naming a hinge commitment, and saying hinge commitments can be justified. I thought the point was that they can't be? For instance, I think you could accurately say the creationist's commitment to the bible is a hinge commitment, if you're not concerned with a hinge commitment's truth value. The uber-hinge seems like a rationalization of hinge commitments, which seems to miss the point. Some beliefs are operative rather than justified, and while some of our operative beliefs may be open to rational doubt, like whether the words in a book are all true, not all of them are. That's what I got from your explanation anyway.

[@funktorial]

I think it's really interesting to compare how debates about the structure of justification manifest in different flavors of normative judgments. Just as we can seek epistemic justification, we can see ethical justification: we can be called to give reasons for actions just as well as beliefs. From this point of view, the hinge epistemologist in the vein of Pritchard seems really similar to a deontologist in the vein of Kant: both seek to give principles to justify normative judgments (say, whether something is rational to believe or whether something is good to do) and to do this, both appeal to principles which cannot be doubted or questioned without the enterprise of engaging in that kind of normative judgment falling apart. And so, the Uber Hinge commitment/universal rational evaluation seems quite similar to Kant's categorical imperative: to resolve a worry about mere conditional justifications, they appeal to some universal, unconditional principle from which, they think, other justifying principles must flow as 'reformulations' or alternative expressions.

[@mrosskne]

The idea that there's some "more real" layer of reality that we can't access with our senses is both dumb and irrelevant. If I can't prove that any such reality exists, then it doesn't. Even if it does exist, it has no effect on anything I can sense, by definition. Therefore, whatever I can sense is real.

[@RalphBrooker-gn9iv]

In my opinion On Certainty is the hardest Wittgenstein text.

[@charlieyoutube5792]

Great content! Love your energy and the use of humour to explain the theory. Exited to see what's next:)

[@KaneB]

Thanks!

[@pinecone421]

i would really appreciate if you could drop a citation on the bottom of some of the slides or in the description. sometimes it's hard to hear who exactly you're referencing if ever never heard their name before.

[@whatsinaname691]

This is about primarily about Duncan Pritchard and his work on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work ‘On Certainty’ Pritchard has multiple interviews on KZbin about the theory and its implications for skepticism and belief in God

[@KaneB]

In addition to Pritchard, I think I also mention Daniele Moyal-Sharrock at some point.

[@pinecone421]

@@KaneB thank you Dr. B

[@PieDime]

Do you have any thoughts on Gödel's incompleteness theorems or perhaps its implications.

[@KaneB]

My thought is that a good rule of thumb is "don't listen to people who express thoughts about Godel's incompleteness theorems and their implications"

[@martinbennett2228]

The argument I would put forward is that there are fundamental axioms or possibly tenets that have to be adopted in order to participate in a discussion. The most fundamental being that there is an external physical reality that is consistent across everything we can possibly encounter; alongside this would be some basic propositions of logic and also (physical) causality. The point being that although it is possible to deny these axiomatic assumptions, to do so is the end of discussion; actually, there would not even be a language to provide the vehicle for discussion. I suppose that you would categorise this view as a version of a 'hinge' theory, but as you presented the argument, I immediately saw that a fundamental commitment to 'God' could be claimed to be a fundamental 'hinge', but my argument would discount this. Even in the Hobbesian case that 'God' is part of external physical reality, a commitment to 'God' would not be fundamental because 'God' would be contingent on the axiomatic assumption of external physical reality. Quite commonly people to tend to adopt a conscious or more often an unconscious commitment to dualism, which I guess could include a commitment to some claim of a deity, but this would not be able to avoid profound incoherence.

[@clashmanthethird]

Why are those specific axiom the fundamental ones? Why would the discussion have to end if I denied an external physical world? If I were an idealist who believed that the external world was non-physical, I would still have all the common ground that's required for discussion.

[@martinbennett2228]

@@clashmanthethird In what sense would your non-physical external world be external? What would be the referents for a language with which a discussion could proceed? The problem with absolute idealism is that it cannot be distinguished from solipsism, so I am not sure how you would know that you are not on your own.

[@clashmanthethird]

@@martinbennett2228 I wasn't arguing in favor of absolute idealism, or idealism in general. I was just questioning why those specific axioms were fundamentally required for discussion to occur. It seems like discussion is still entirely possible without some of those axioms. Are you saying there are zero forms of idealism which claim there is an external but non-physical world, and this isn't up for discussion?

[@martinbennett2228]

@@clashmanthethird Outside some form of religious idealism, I think so, because language requires an external referent.

[@JumperDorian]

Hey can you record your voice a little louder? Your videos are on average a bit more quiet than other lecture style videos and podcasts and seems like an easy fix. Only one signal being used so you can probably turn it up quite a bit without getting any distortion

[@KaneB]

Unfortunately no, the input volume is already at maximum for both the computer in general and the recording software. Sometimes I forget to turn it up though so maybe that happened here.

[@JumperDorian]

@@KaneB nah it’s all of your videos. I know because I watch all of your videos at work lol. If I may ask what software are you using?

[@ostihpem]

Hinge epistemology = foundationalism. And of course you can doubt anything. Just take the claim: „X is false“, and X may be any belief such UH or whatever, ergo if you can think of it, you can formally claim it is false and therefore sow doubt. Is there good reason to doubt so radically? Of course. Agrippa‘s regress. We cannot justify anything completely. But if you have a chain of thought A

[@KaneB]

Yeah, I'd take hinge epistemology to be taking the foundationalist option with respect to the regress. However, the hinge epistemologist denies that basic beliefs have justification. Justification arises in the context of practices that presuppose those basic beliefs. I can perform an investigation, for instance, and thereby come to justify a belief by offering evidence and reasons for it. But to do this I must trust my reasoning capacity, so this very activity will manifest my commitment to something like the uber hinge. Or suppose that somebody raises an objection to something I believe, say a creationist who denies evolution by natural selection. I can explain why I accept contemporary evolutionary theory, and offer evidence in favour of it, and thereby I might justify my belief in evolutionary theory. By responding to the creationist's objection, I am taking it for granted that there is another person, that I can communicate with this other person, etc. So again, by performing a particular activity, I manifest a commitment to these hinges. Talk of justification is only meaningful in contexts like this, where certain hinges will already be in place. Notice that in these cases, D (representing the hinges) need not actually be part of our chain of thought. Indeed, most of the time it won't be. When I'm investigating things, I very rarely explicitly think the proposition, "my reasoning capacity is trustworthy"; when I'm talking to other people, I very rarely think the proposition, "there is another person."

[@ostihpem]

@@KaneB If the hinge epistemologist denies justification for his basic belief then it can be formally false (by logic) and we‘d end up instantly in Skepticism. Makes no sense to me. What could make at least sense to me - and so-called transcendental pragmatists have tried it - is to say: certain basic beliefs do not require further justification because the negation of those basic beliefs cannot be false because it’d be a contradiction. Like take the basic belief: there’s something. Its negation (there is nothing) is a contradiction alone by stating it.

[@dx7tnt]

As my lecturer Professor Richard Gaskin summed it up: "If you lose your hinges, you become unhinged"

[@thomaslodger7675]

Hey Kane B.! Is this is usually what is referred to as "assumptions have to be made before we do science" in the modern day

[@thierryorth5660]

Can you believe that I got an advertisement from the Hinge dating app before the video started? Truly not kidding.

[@kewtolstoi6927]

Imo the skeptic that Pritchard has in mind is no radical skeptic at all. To doubt stuff already presupposes lot of things, e. g. that you can be in error. The truly radical skeptic suspends judgement on all beliefs and therefore isn't committed to any. Why would she assume that there's something to doubt or to evaluate?

[@KaneB]

The hinge epistemologist would agree: the person who calls herself a skeptic is not actually a skeptic. Or rather, skepticism is in some way inert or perhaps even meaningless, so there is no such thing as genuine skepticism (as the philosopher intends the term). There is no coherent way of genuinely suspending judgment about everything, since any case of suspended judgment will presuppose will presuppose a background of affirmed beliefs.

[@kewtolstoi6927]

@@KaneB Is that your view or is that just what the hinge epistemologist would say? I always thought you would see the skeptic as winning the argument. In any case I would say that global skepticism maybe isn't best characterized by an active suspension of judgement (which arguably might require some presuppositions, not sure of that) but by absence of belief. The global skeptic simply isn't moved to belief. It's hard for me to see why this rather passive state would entail any kind of presupposition.

[@KaneB]

@@kewtolstoi6927 It's not my view. I think hinge epistemology is garbage. I'm just thinking about what could be said in its defense.

[@kewtolstoi6927]

@@KaneB Thanks for getting back to me! Care to expand on why you think it sucks?

[@KaneB]

@@kewtolstoi6927 Here are a few problems I have with it: (1.) The claim that skepticism as the philosopher conceives of it is either incoherent or meaningless will rest on a kind of pragmatist account of meaning that I see no reason to accept. The idea is supposed to be that acting in itself manifests a commitment to the hinges, so the question of justification simply can't arise with respect to the hinges. "Genuine skepticism" would therefore involve refraining from particular actions, say moving one's hands away when a knife is seen coming towards them. In my view, there is just no problem here: the mere fact that I act as if something were true, that I conform my actions to a particular picture of the world, does not commit me to believing that it really is true. Compare: when scientists send a probe to another planet, they might calculate the journey using Newtonian mechanics, but this is compatible with them holding the genuine belief that Newtonian mechanics was displaced by general relativity as an account of the genuine structure of the universe. More seriously, the issue that the skeptic draws attention to is that there are alternative models of the world that are empirically equivalent (say, "I am dreaming", "I am a Boltzmann brain", "I am being deceived by an evil demon"). If these alternative models are meaningless because they make no practical difference, *then so is the conventional model*. That is, the belief "I have hands" is just as inert as the belief "I am dreaming of hand-appearances". So the pragmatist constraint on meaning that is required to deal with external world skepticism ends up committing us to what if anything seems like a much more radical kind of meaning skepticism. (2.) Another point about skepticism and pragmatism. I think that skepticism actually does make a practical difference. I find that skepticism is a useful tool for alleviating anxiety. For instance, I sometimes suffer from social anxiety, but if I run through skeptical arguments before entering social situations, interacting with others becomes much easier. If it's all a dream, there's nothing to worry about! Similarly, I've heard people report that skepticism has helped alleviate fear of death. There's a long tradition, going back to the ancient Greek skeptics, of proposing skepticism as a tool to achieve ataraxia. Now granted, none of this involves refraining from engaging in everyday practices. If you throw a knife at my hand, I'll still move the hand. But why should that be the only kind of practical outcome that is relevant to meaning? I suspect that what's really being assumed here is not simply pragmatism, but verificationism, and I need not enumerate the problems with that. (3.) The hinge epistemologist claims that engaging in rational inquiry involves a commitment to hinges that make such inquiry possible. The assumption here is that rational inquiry is not self-destructive. But why on earth would we grant that from the outset? After all, it seems that this is exactly what the skeptic is arguing for: that the whole framework of giving reasons, giving evidence, engaging in investigation, etc. leads us to the view that there are no reasons for any belief and thus the framework undermines itself. As Wittgenstein himself once said in a different context, we kick the ladder away after we have climbed it.

[@Carbon_Crow]

In one of your videos, you discuss a debate over gravitational waves. (To be more specific, I believe the debate centered around the detectors: that either they *weren't* sensitive enough to detect GW, or they *were,* in which case they'd also have detected a lot of noise.) Which video is that?

[@KaneB]

How the hell did you find this video lol

[@KaneB]

Anyway, I discuss the gravitational wave case in my video on the experimenter's regress: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hajCmWuIfZWnosU

[@Carbon_Crow]

@@KaneB lmao I was watching your epistemology playlist. Apparently, KZbin shows unlisted videos on those playlists.

[@DigitalGnosis]

I obviously sort of buy all this, but I think the disconcerting thing Pritchard has called 'epistemic vertigo' is that there aren't really any criteria for what it would mean for something to be a legitimate hinge, there's no objective set of hinges or something and it leaves us seeing that beliefs can be structured and justified almost any way.

[@KaneB]

As I understand it, Pritchard isn't sympathetic to epistemic relativism. We can say what counts as a legitimate hinge; the issue is that the hinges are groundless. Normally, we are inclined to think that we have good reasons for all our beliefs: in practice, of course, giving reasons comes to an end, but if only we had more time and ingenuity we could in principle show that all our beliefs are justified. Epistemic vertigo results from the realization that this is impossible, that rational evaluation is necessarily local. The problem isn't posed by people like the creationist, who claims to have different hinges from us. She is simply mistaken on that point. Rather, I can reflect on my own beliefs, and see that some are groundless, and this conflicts with the drive I feel to provide grounds for them.

[@soggywater3772]

I guess he wasn’t a brain floating in space

[@JackTol]

Hey quick question, have you ever looked at or read the essay by Tom Clark titled “Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity”? I’d love to see a video covering the arguments, your opinion on the arguments being made in it, and go over the pitfalls of them also (if any). Tom Clark is a Naturalist i’m pretty sure. Anyway, i’m gonna watch this video now, just thought i’d ask! Thanks for all the great content!

[@KaneB]

Yeah, it's an interesting paper. I don't know if I'll ever cover. I'll probably talk about it if I ever revisit the personal identity series.

[@John-ir4id]

I define as 'real' anything that I have relation to and, through that relation, have given that thing a name and a definition. To use your example, I have 'hands' because I have a relation to appendages that I utilize and that I have given the name and the definition of 'hands'. While this does nothing to prove they exist as such beyond my mind, insofar as I utilize them and have given them a name and a definition, they exist to me and for me as my hands. TL;DR: Possession is 9/10ths of the law, be it human or natural. Anything I possess and can name and define is real, if only to me.

[@KaneB]

Reminds me of Ian Hacking on why he believes that there are electrons: "If you can spray them, then they're real" -- where we build electron guns that spray electrons.

[@John-ir4id]

@@KaneB I'm also partial to the notion of the Phaneron and the idea that we can only know anything of reality through our own senses. As far as I'm concerned, what is real is what I perceive and affect and what perceives and affects me. Anything more is speculation or a game of telephone.

[@yyzzyysszznn]

epic.....