“A piece of wisdom about doubt”: Akeel Bilgrami on hinge propositions.
The arena in which Akeel Bilgrami and Crispin Wright (1985) debate is
epistemology, particularly the role granted to ‘hinge propositions’. First I will
outline their approaches. Thereupon, I will put forward my thoughts regarding
the propositions Wittgenstein explores in On Certainty.
I. The sceptical challenge regarding the external world is the following:
Perceptual knowledge depends (conceptually) on a more basic knowledge: the
subject has to know and has to be able to justify that his perceptual experience
is immune to any possible form of deception.
On behalf of G. E. Moore, James Pryor responds: If I have a given perceptual
experience that p is the case, I have prima facie an immediate justification that I
know that p. Such immediacy counters one of the sceptical premises while the
notion of prima facie concedes the other: p is defeasible only if positive
empirical evidence proves that the subject is deceived.
From a pragmatist approach, Bilgrami holds that it is possible to deal with the
sceptic in another way, but previously makes three critical observations to the
Pryor-Moore reading on the issue.
First, to accept the terms of the challenge is to accept that there is a difference
between the perceptual belief and the experience that justifies it. This enables
questioning the transit from one to the other and, consequently, questioning all
beliefs regarding the external world.
Second, the reading does not account for the fact that the prima facie qualifier
as used by Pryor in a fallibilist vein, implies a positive presumption in favour of
p, which would only be defeated if there is positive empirical evidence that the
person is being deceived.
Third, the reading does not consider that the terms that have been conceded
can actually be uncoupled from the more general idea (what is at stake is the
class of beliefs concerning the external world) of positive presumption.
Bilgrami, instead, rejects the distinction between experiences and perceptual
beliefs, he focuses on the objective of the doubt (the perceptual beliefs
themselves) and exploits Pryor’s insight of positive presumption in favour of an
anti-Cartesian epistemology:
(1) There is a positive presumption that our perceptual beliefs are true unless
there is (positive) counter empirical evidence against them.
Bilgrami talks neither of experiences nor of a justification on the basis of these
experiences (at least not at the outset). Doing so would be engaging in the
sceptic game. He only says that perceptual beliefs are true. He inverts the
terms of the challenge. Rather than having the subject justify his beliefs, he has
the challenger justify his doubts. Accordingly, Bilgrami derives a more general
principle from (1):
(2) We need positive empirical evidence to the contrary before we give up on
something in the name of doubt.
1
Now, while not straying from the epistemological tradition, the principle admits
an additional generalization. Rather than restricting it to perceptual beliefs, it
can encompass all beliefs of which we are certain for the length of our inquiry.
Once the distinction between true beliefs and beliefs we hold with some
uncertainty (hypotheses) has been made, the idea is that nobody would doubt
things like, for instance, that the Earth is round. Therefore:
(3) A contemporary inquirer will refuse to doubt those beliefs of which he is
certain unless someone produce specific positive evidence to the contrary.
It so happens that (3) agrees with (or is derived from) the pragmatist slogan that
confronts the philosophical tradition, i.e., “Nothing makes a difference to
epistemology which does not make a difference to inquiry”. It falls together with
it because although the slogan does not mention doubt, it certainly rejects the
logical possibility of dream, deceit or radical illusion scenarios by denying that
they would introduce change in the inquiry. But Pryor rejects it too; he stipulates
that only empirical evidence can prima facie defeat the justification, hence
precluding all a priori speculation. Thus , to all those who endorse that such
scenarios “produce a difference” in epistemology, Bilgrami replies that principles
(1), (2) and (3) reject, as does the slogan, that a speculation like those of the
first two Cartesian Meditations should be understood as a form of inquiry. (I skip
presenting Crispin Wright’s article.)
Bilgrami’s interest lies in comparing Wittgenstein’s conclusions with the
pragmatist proposal he intends to outline. If Wright is correct, the analogy with
the elections would touch on the crux of Wittgenstein’s response to the sceptic:
type (iii) propositions (There is an election going on) provide an institutional
frame that enables seeing proposition (i) (Mark with an X) as evidence of (ii)
(James has just voted). In the same manner, proposition (iii) (The material world
exists) enables the passage of (i) (I experience my hand) to (ii) (I have a hand)
and there emerges the conventional status of Wittgenstein’s response to the
sceptic. Wright quotes Wittgenstein’s characterization of type (iii) propositions
as follows:
“That is to say, 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.”
“That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that
certain things are in deed not doubted.”
“But it isn’t that the situation is like this: We just can’t investigate everything,
and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want
the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.” (oc: 341-344).
Were the function of the so-called “hinge propositions” what is mentioned in the
quotations above, then Bilgrami’s project of taking the Pryor-Moore strategy to a
more general epistemological level includes something very close to it. In his
proposal, there are propositions that we are certain of and that do not require
any justification, and propositions (speculations, hypotheses) that scientific
inquiry considers as to be investigated. It is only regarding the latter that the
need for justification arises. While the inquiry takes place, we can not doubt the
propositions of which we are certain. They provide the standard with regard to
which the inquiry is carried out; they enable an evaluation of the consequences
2
of our inquiry. And it is natural that what function as a standard in an inquiry will
not be subject to doubt, at least while the inquiry is ongoing.
Now, on behalf of Wittgenstein, Wright claims that such propositions are not to
be questioned even in the event of positive empirical evidence against them.
They are not to be questioned because the evidence is not relevant, as he says,
hinge propositions do not establish “facts”. Thus Wright insists that we can get
rid of an institution or practice, but not because a doubt from a said source is
able to eliminate them.
For Bilgrami, on the contrary, the propositions that we are certain of are only
immune to a priori scenarios (logical or metaphysical possibilities) but cease to
be so when empirical evidence comes into play. Their institutional role does not
exempt them. Unlike Wright, Bilgrami holds that hinge propositions are
empirical and, as such, belong to the fact discourse. Unlike Wright, he
understands that they are not restricted to expressions of the type “There’s a
material world” (iii) or “This is my hand” (ii) but that they encompass “all beliefs
we hold with certainty”. Again, unlike Wright, he rules out type (i) propositions
from his epistemological outlook.
This way, Bilgrami confronts both the relativist and the sceptic with principle (1),
by denying that it is legitimate to say that we can never be certain of the truth of
any given empirical belief. With principles (2) and (3), he rescues from On
Certainty the idea that hinge propositions are not subject to doubt, at least while
scientific inquiry is ongoing. With (1) and (3), he insists on something he has
pointed out before: that truth is the goal of the inquiry. Meanwhile, principle (2),
“a piece of wisdom about doubt”, enables him to invert the terms of the sceptical
argument thus forcing the challenger to justify his doubts about perceptual
beliefs. Bilgrami is only willing to consider experience if specific evidence of
deception is submitted. Only then might type (i) propositions be introduced.
Interestingly enough, his three principles enhance the pragmatist slogan making
it more significant.
II. In On Certainty Wittgenstein discusses those propositions whose truth Moore
claims to know, i. e., that there are objects; that this is my hand; that the Earth
exists since long before I was born. But,
“When Moore says he knows such and such, he is really enumerating a lot
of empirical propositions which we affirm without special testing;
propositions, that is, which have a logical peculiar role in the system of our
empirical propositions.” (136) (my underlining).
What is their peculiar role? That we take them for granted without asking why
we do so. We hold them to be unquestionable, literally ‘doubt-free’, although we
do not have good reasons in their support. We do not test them nor mention the
word “perhaps”. We do not learn them explicitly or arrive at them by means of
an inquiry. No one ever taught us that our hands do not disappear when we
sleep or that this mountain was right there years before our birth. The child
brings in this information (he “swallows it down” says Wittgenstein more
eloquently) along with the rest of the things he learns (143).
“I do not explicitly learn the propositions that stand fast for me. I can discover
them subsequently like the axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not
3
fixed in the sense that anything holds it fast, but the movement around it
determines its immobility.” (152)
Tacitly, implicitly, we bring in a web of propositions that is beyond all reasonable
doubt, a system that gives us the certainty and confidence on which our
linguistic and non-linguistic practice rests. The system allows us to act and also
to think (411). It constitutes our world-picture, our frame of reference, our way of
life. Yet that set of convictions or “fundamental attitudes” (238) –though it is
beyond what is justified or unjustified (justification has an end 192)– is not,
philosophically speaking, a legitimate epistemic base. Rather, “one might say
almost that these foundation-walls are carried by the whole house” (248); (253;
166).
“I should like to say: Moore dos not know what he asserts he knows, but it
stands fast for him, as also for me; regarding it as absolutely solid is part of
our method of doubt an enquiry. “ (151)
Moore seems to have overlooked how highly specialised the use of the
expression “I know” is. He does not distinguish the philosophical use from the
everyday one (638), the distance from error to madness (155), the abyss
between reasonable doubt and nonsense (115; 221). He fails to notice the
difference in category between knowledge [Wissen] and certainty [Sicherheit or
Gewiβheit]. Consequently, he uses the expression “I know” in a context in which
it does not belong to.
“For when Moore says ‘I know that that’s….’ I want to reply ‘you don’t know
anything!’ –and yet I would not say that to anyone who was speaking without
philosophical intention. That is, I feel (rightly?) that these two mean
something different. (407)
“I, L. W., believe, am sure, that my friend hasn’t sawdust in his body or his
head, even though I have no direct evidence of my sense to the contrary. I
am sure, by reason of what has been said to me, of what I have read, and of
my experience. To have doubts about it would seem to me madness–of
course, this is also in agreement with other people; but I agree with them.
(281)
“But why am I so certain that this is my hand? Doesn’t the whole languagegame rest on this kind of certainty [Sicherheit]? Or: isn’t this ‘certainty’
already presupposed in the language-game? Namely by virtue of the fact
that one is not playing the game, or is playing wrong, if one does not
recognize objects with certainty.” (446)
What I know I do not tell myself. I can be certain [gewiβ] of what I say and do, I
can be completely sure [Sicherheit], but both things are subjective (174; 245).
To the contrary, “What is a telling ground for something is not anything I
decide.” (271)
“There are countless general empirical propositions that count as certain
[gewiβ] for us.” “One such is that if someone’s arm is cut off it will not grow
again. Another, if someone’s head is cut off he is dead and will never live
again.” (273-4). [However],
“’Knowledge’ [Wissen] and ‘certainty’ [Sicherheit] belong to different
categories. [..] What interests us now is not being sure [Sichersein] but
knowledge. That is, we are interested in the fact that about certain empirical
propositions no doubt can exist if making judgments is to be possible at all.
Or again: I am inclined to believe that not everything that has the form of an
empirical proposition is one.” (308)
4
“It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical
propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical
propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered
with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid.”
(96)
The traits of such propositions appear to be the following: i) the lack of doubt as
the possibility condition of judgments –which implies that specific reasons are
needed to doubt (458; 509); ii) the fact that no reasonable person would even
dream to question; iii) that they function as norms of description rather than
factual propositions (401-2) –even when the limits are not clear (319) and the
relationship might be altered with the passage of time (336); iv) that they are the
basis of our action and our thought: we act and think according to them (411;
476; 510-1).
Now, those traits do not apply to knowledge, which is also a system (410). A
system containing speculations and hypotheses and having its own rules. If I
claim to know something, it makes sense that others ask me how I know it (550;
588) and then I reply because such and such. Since I can make a mistake, I
have to give good reasons (333), grounds for my claim (484; 504; 574). I have
to be able to show the evidence I have or as in mathematics to offer a proof.
Those are, in my opinion, the criteria that justify saying that a person knows
what he claims to know. However, “I cannot say that I have good grounds for
the opinion that cats do not grow on trees or that I had a father and a mother”
(281). There lies, I believe, the difference in category between knowledge and
certainty, two differents language-games.
“Certainty [Gewiβheit] is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how
things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.”
(30)
Moore did not distinguish reasonable from unreasonable doubt, and likewise, he
confused error and madness, which seems to have led him to seriously get
engaged in the sceptic debate. (Something I understand Wittgenstein avoids
doing in On Certainty.) If I doubt whether this is actually my hand, “how could I
avoid doubting whether the word ‘hand’ has any meaning”? (370)
“The argument ‘I may be dreaming’ is senseless for this reason: if I am
dreaming, this remark is being dreamed as well –and indeed it is also being
dreamed that these words have any meaning. “ (383)
Let us suppose that I were sure that a given event took place on a certain year
and then I realize, by reading a well-known book, that I was mistaken “I should
alter my opinion, and this would not mean I lost all faith in judging” (66-7, my
italics). But if I claim, with the same conviction, that my name is J.V., that I have
three children, that I live in Buenos Aires, and it turns out that what I say is
wrong… “I should not call this a mistake, but rather a mental disturbance,
perhaps a transient one” (71).
But then how could I trust any other judgment of mine? (490). The point here is
that I cannot free myself from them “without toppling all other judgment with it”
(419; 492; 494).
“One says ‘I know’ when one is ready to give compelling grounds. ‘I know’
relates to a possibility of demonstrating the truth. [..] But if what he believes
5
is of such a kind that the grounds that he can give are no surer than his
assertion, then he cannot say that he knows what he believes.” (243, my
underlining)
This, as I see it, is the reason why Wittgenstein rejects type i) experiential
propositions in response to scepticism regarding the external world. Why should
seeing my hands have to count as stronger evidence than saying I have them?
(250) Why should I trust present evidence if I cannot trust any other one? (302).
In my reading, unlike in Wright’s, Wittgenstein did not in the least admire
Moore’s articles on the topic.
“One might simply say ‘O, rubbish!’ to someone who wanted to make
objections to the propositions that are beyond doubt. That is, not reply to him
but admonish him“ (495).
“The queer thing is that even though I find it quite correct for someone to say
‘Rubbish!’ and so brush aside the attempt to confuse him with doubts at
bedrock, –nevertheless, I hold it to be incorrect if he seeks to defend himself
(using, e.g., the words ‘I know’)”. (498); (521)
Now for me the most problematic issue in On Certainty is the following: Are the
hinge propositions true? If I say, for instance, “The standard meter in Paris is
one meter long” (PI: §50), is it true? Doubtfully so, because if something acts as
a rule or standard measure it seems pointless to attribute a truth value to it.
However, had I said the Paris standard meter is ten meters long, wouldn’t I
have made a false statement? On one hand Wittgenstein says:
“But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its
correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it
is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and
false.” (94).
“Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end –but the
end is not certain propositions’ striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a
kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the
language-game. (204)
“If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.
(205)
But on the other hand, he also says:
“The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of
reference.” (83)
“If someone asked us ‘but is that true?’ we might say ‘yes’ to him; and if he
demanded grounds we might say ‘I can’t give you any grounds, but if you
learn more you too will think the same’.
If this didn’t come about, that would mean that he couldn’t for example learn
history.” (206)
“In general I take as true what is found in text-books, of geography for
example. Why? I say: All these facts have been confirmed a hundred times
over. But how do I know that? What is my evidence for it? I have a worldpicture. Is it true of false? Above all it is the substratum of all my enquiring
and asserting. The propositions describing it are not all equally subject to
testing.” (162; my underlining).
”To say of a man, in Moore’s sense, that he knows something; that what he
says is therefore unconditionally the truth, seems wrong to me. –It is the
truth only inasmuch as it is an unmoving foundation of his language-games
(403).
6
I hesitate between saying that hinge propositions (which are not part of our
knowledge system) lack truth value and saying that we treat them as true while
recognizing that “the same proposition may get treated at one time as
something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing.” (98). But I
hesitate because, isn’t a proposition true or false when we consider it to be
empirical and doesn’t it cease to have these values when we treat it as a rule or
as a grammatical proposition?
Everywhere Wittgenstein draws the grammatical-empirical division and offers
keys to differentiate them: a proposition is grammatical when it is very difficult to
imagine counter evidence for it or when the evidence we can get is not more
steadfast than the proposition we wish to validate. On the contrary, when we
deny an empirical proposition we give way to another empirical proposition, and
we understand both of them. But what is the outcome of denying a hinge
proposition? What would be like for it to be otherwise?
Yet again, it makes sense to say that I know p when it also makes sense for
somebody else to say he does not know p. Therefore, we talk of knowledge
when doubt is an intelligible possibility.
For this reason I do not see that the notion of “true belief” (which brings along
analyticity issues) can easily be placed in the realm of certainties [Gewiβheit].
I am more inclined to say that we rather take them as true in our daily lives and
during our inquiries.
Finally, unlike Wright, I consider that the scope of our system of reference, our
Weltbild, greatly exceeds examples of the type “This is my hand” or “There are
objects.” I also believe that there are degrees among the propositions we take
for granted or would find very hard to give up.
At any rate, what is called the background or bedrock level includes, in my
opinion, 1) the so called “avowals” (“My head aches”, “Mi name is J.V.”, “I’m
waiting for X”); 2) propositions about colours (“This colour is green”), and 3)
several propositions mentioned in On Certainty: “I have never been in the
moon”, “My body has never disappeared and reappeared again after an
interval”, “I have flown from America to England in the last few days”, “Now I am
sitting at a table and writing”. And also, “The sun is not a hole in the vault of
heaven”, “Water boils at circa 100° C” (though maybe at another level).
The four traits attributed earlier to the hinge propositions apply to all the above
cases. However, I’d like to add an additional feature. It makes no sense to
doubt, to request for or give reasons for them. Faced with 1),2) and 3) no one in
his right senses would ask “How do you know?”, “Are you sure?”, “Do you have
evidence?”, “Can you prove it?“
I find it highly revealing that all of them are criterionless propositions. By this I
mean the following: Wittgenstein makes use of such questions to shed light
onto the piece of grammar he is interested in clarifying. And with them he
manages to establish the criteria of correctness of an alleged (in this case)
epistemic proposition. What is striking about hinges (as with avowals and
propositions about colours) is that those questions are totally out of place.
Actually, we would be puzzled if somebody posed them to us. No one has
reasons to doubt, justify or give grounds for what is affirmed in this class of
propositions.
In other contexts he poses different questions. What are the criteria for saying
that someone understands something or the criteria for saying that a proposition
is true? Or even what are the criteria for saying he could have proceeded
7
otherwise, i.e., that he could be held responsible?, Was he in a position to
choose? Had he options? Did it happen by chance?
As a final comment, I would like to say that although I consider Bilgrami’s
pragmatist project subtle and original I do not wish to delve into it now; rather I
would like to outline some similarities and differences between his project and
Wittgenstein’s On Certainty.
According to Bilgrami’s hinge propositions, a certain class of our beliefs 1) are
true and 2) amount to knowledge without 3) any need for justification, “since
without positive evidence to the contrary which might raise certain specific
doubts about them, there is no need to worry about justifying them”.
If I’m not mistaken, Wittgenstein could have accepted 1), denied 2) in its
philosophical use, reaffirmed 3) and agreed with Bilgrami to include type ii)
propositions among hinge propositions, namely:
“I will not doubt my perceptual beliefs that I have a hand, that I am sitting
with a pad and a pen, that there is a window in front of me, that there are
leafless trees outside, etc., unless someone gives me specific evidence of
deception” ( Bilgrami, p. 7)
I also believe that for both of them the core of such propositions is the absence
of doubt. For Bilgrami, however, hinge propositions are empirical, concerning
factual discourse while Wittgenstein, on the contrary, grants them a
grammatical status –that of norms of description, standards or rules.
It is true that when Wittgenstein refers to the grammatical-empirical relation with
recourse to the metaphor of the river and the river-bed (97-99), he does not
draw a sharp distinction, thus admitting that their roles could be interchanged.
But not simultaneously. If we use a proposition in a grammatical manner, we do
not use it empirically. This is made clear when he mentions the fluctuation
between criteria and symptoms (PI: 354). The sentence “Acid turns litmus paper
red” used to be considered a norm because that was the definition of being an
acid but later on that definition changed. In cases such as this one, Wittgenstein
talks of a “defining criterion” (he does so when he introduces the notion of
criterion in the Blue Book, in relation to the term “angina”) as opposed to what
would be an empirical concomitance, i.e. a symptom. But only in such cases
when they function as a norm and scientific terms are their domain, I believe
that criteria could be included in the sphere of hinge propositions.
Wittgenstein appears to recognise levels of revisability in our Weltbild. On one
hand, we have propositions that are almost impossible to give up without
“toppling all other judgments with it”. Then an avowal like “My head aches”
appears to be unshakeable. But I could feel pain in an arm that had just been
cut off, thus cancelling the corresponding avowal.
Or let’s take the case of “My name is X”. It is a constituent element of the
language game of proper names that people will not question their given name.
But if one day X finds out that she is a child of disappeared parents and
discovers her real name, then her former belief, firm until then as the axis of her
life, will have to be abandoned (not without having to throw away quite a few
other ones).
It is true that such an avowal is abandoned in the face of specific empirical
evidence. However, believing that I am a woman, that there are colours or that
the Earth exists since long before I was born, do not have the same degree of
revisability.
8
Both Bilgrami and Wittgenstein revert the terms of the sceptic argument. Or
rather, Bilgrami clearly does so while Wittgenstein, in my view, shows the
sceptic’s complaints to be senseless and does not try to persuade him with any
additional argumentation. (I do not endorse Kripke’s (1982) version and I do not
support those who hold that Wittgenstein attempts to refute scepticism
concerning other minds with the notion of criterion –in this case behavioural).
In my understanding, he holds that our relation with other minds and with the
external world is not a cognitive one. We do not have ‘opinions’ or ‘beliefs’ on
these matters. Knowledge is not at stake. Rather, it has to do with a
spontaneous “attitude” towards the world and other people (Zettel: 384).
As I see it, the most contentious point between both approaches lies in that
Bilgrami’s hinges are empirical, i.e., they belong to the fact-discourse, whereas
Wittgenstein’s hinges –and here I agree with Crispin Wright –are grammatical
norms. These different positions, I would suggest, might be explained by an
underlying disagreement in their respective ideas about language. If that is so, a
settlement between them might be very difficult to reach.
Julia Vergara
9