Revisionism, Scepticism, and the Non-Belief Theory of Hinge Commitments
In: International Journal for the Study of SkepticismSearch for other papers by Chris Ranalli in
Current site
Google Scholar
In his recent work, Duncan Pritchard defends a novel Wittgensteinian response to the problem of radical scepticism. The response makes essential use of a form of non-epistemicism about the nature of hinge commitments. According to non-epistemicism, hinge commitments cannot be known or grounded in rational considerations, such as reasons and evidence. On Pritchard’s version of non-epistemicism, hinge commitments express propositions but cannot be believed. This is the non-belief theory of hinge commitments (NBT). One of the main reasons in favour of NBT over rival anti-sceptical Wittgensteinian views is that it has less theoretical costs and revisionary consequences than its rivals. In this paper, I argue that NBT fares at least as bad as its rivals in terms of its theoretical costs and revisionism. In particular, I argue that NBT is inconsistent with certain cases of philosophical disagreement; that it faces worries with mental-state scepticism; and that it faces difficulties in explaining how we can represent ourselves as committed to hinge commitments.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Ashton N. (2015). “Undercutting Underdetermination-Based Scepticism,” Theoria 81: 333–354.
-
Baker L. (1987). Saving Belief. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Berkeley G. (1996). Principles of Human Knowledge . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Berkeley G. (1998). Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Bernstein S. (forthcoming). “Causal Idealism” In Goldschmidt T. & Pearce K. (eds.), Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Boghossian P. (1990). “The Status of Content,” Philosophical Review 99: 157–184.
-
Bourget D. & Chalmers D. , (2014). “What do Philosophers Believe?” Philosophical Studies 170: 465–500.
-
Brueckner A. (1994). “The Structure of the Skeptical Argument,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54: 827–835.
-
Chalmers D. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Chalmers D. (2002). “Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?” In Gendler T. & Hawthorne J. (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, 145–200. Oxford University Press.
-
Chalmers D. (2010). “The Two-Dimensional Argument against Materialism.” In his The Character of Consciousness, 141–206. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Churchland P. (1981). “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes,” Journal of Philosophy 78: 67–90.
-
Churchland P. (1986). Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
-
Conway G.D. (1989). Wittgenstein on Foundations, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., Humanities Press.
-
Coliva A. (2010). Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense. Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Coliva A. (2013). “Hinges and Certainty. A Précis of Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense,” Philosophia 41: 1–12.
-
Coliva A. (2015a). Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology. Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Coliva A. (2015b). “How to Commit Moore’s Paradox,” Journal of Philosophy 112: 169–192.
-
Coliva A. & Moyal-Sharrock D. . (2016). “Introduction: Hinge Epistemology,” Hinge Epistemology, special issue of International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6: 73–78.
-
Conant J. (1998). “Wittgenstein on Meaning and Use,” Philosophical Investigations 21: 222–250.
-
Daly C. & Liggins D. (2016). “Is Ontological Revisionism Uncharitable?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46: 405–425.
-
Dennett D. (1988). “Quining Qualia.” In Marcel A. & Bisiach E. (eds.), Consciousness in Contemporary Science, 42–77. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
DeRose K. (1995). “Solving the Skeptical Problem,” Philosophical Review 104: 1–52.
-
DeRose K. (2009). The Case for Contextualism: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Descartes R. (1996). Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Trad. Cottingham. J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Dodd D. & Zardini E. (eds.). (2014). Scepticism and Perceptual Justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Feyerabend P. (1963). “Mental Events and the Brain,” Journal of Philosophy 40: 295–296.
-
Foster J . (1982). The Case for Idealism . London; Boston: Routledge and K. Paul.
-
Geirsson H. (2005). “Conceivability and Defeasible Modal Justification”, Philosophical Studies 122 (3): 279–304.
-
Green M. & Williams J. (eds.). (2007). Moore’s Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Hirsch E. (2005). “Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70: 67–97.
-
Hume D. (2000). Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by Norton D. & Norton M. . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
-
Kelly T. (2005). “Moorean Facts and Belief Revision, or Can the Skeptic Win?” Philosophical Perspectives 19: 179–209.
-
Kelly T. (2008). “Common sense as Evidence: Against Revisionary Ontology and Skepticism,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32: 53–78.
-
Korman D. (2009). “Eliminativism and the Challenge from Folk Belief,” Noûs 43: 242–264.
-
Kriegel U. (2013). “The Epistemological Challenge of Revisionary Metaphysics”, Philosophers’ Imprint 13/12: 1–30.
-
Mackie J.L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin.
-
McDowell J. (2009). “Wittgensteinian ‘Quietism’,” Common Knowledge 15: 365–372.
-
McGinn M. (2008) “Wittgenstein on Certainty,” In Greco J. (ed.), Oxford Handbook to Skepticism, 372–391. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
McGlynn A. (2014). “On Epistemic Alchemy.” In Dodd & Zardini (2014), 173–188.
-
Menzies P. (1998). “Possibility and Conceivability: A Response-Dependent Account of Their Connections,” European Review of Philosophy 3: 255–277.
-
Merricks T. (2001). Objects and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Merricks T. (forthcoming). “Do Ordinary Objects Exist: No.” In Barnes E. (ed.), Current Controversies in Metaphysics. Oxford: Routledge.
-
Metzinger T. (2003). Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
-
Metzinger T. (2011). “The No-Self Alternative.” In Gallagher S. (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the Self, 280–294. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Minar E. (2005). “On Wittgenstein’s Response to Scepticism: The Opening of On Certainty.” In Moyal-Sharrock D. & Brenner W.H. (eds.), Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Moore G.E. (1925). “A Defence of Common Sense.” In Muirhead J. (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy (2nd series), 191–224. London: Allen & Unwin.
-
Moore G.E. (1939). “Proof of an External World,” Proceedings of the British Academy 25: 273–300.
-
Moore G.E. (1993a). “Moore’s Paradox.” In Baldwin T. (ed.), G.E. Moore: Selected Writings, 207–212. London: Routledge.
-
Moore G.E. (1993b). “Refutation of Idealism.” In Baldwin T. (ed.), G.E. Moore: Selected Writings, 23–43. London: Routledge.
-
Moyal-Sharrock D. (2004). Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Moyal-Sharrock D. (2013). “On Coliva’s Judgmental Hinges,” Philosophia 41: 13–25.
-
Moyal-Sharrock D. (2016). “The Animal in Epistemology,” International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6: 97–119.
-
Pearce K. (forthcoming). “Mereological Idealism.” In Goldschmidt T. & Pearce K. (eds.), Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Pereboom D. (2001). Living Without Free Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Phillips D. (2005). “The Case of the Missing Propositions.” In Moyal-Sharrock D. & Brenner W. (eds.), Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, 16–29. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Prichard D. (2005). Epistemic Luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Prichard D. (2011). “Wittgenstein on Scepticism.” In McGinn M. & Kuusela O. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, 521–547. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Prichard D. (2012). “Wittgenstein and the Groundlessness of our Believing,” Synthese 189: 255–272.
-
Prichard D. (2014). “Entitlement and the Groundlessness of Our Believing.” In Dodd & Zardini (2014), 190–211.
-
Prichard D. (2016a). Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundless of our Believing. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Prichard D. (2016b). “The Sources of Scepticism,” Hinge Epistemology, special issue of International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6: 131–155.
-
Prichard D. (forthcoming). “Epistemic Angst,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
-
Rey G. (1983). “A Reason for Doubting the Existence of Consciousness.” In Davidson R. , Schwartz G. & Shapiro D. (eds.), Consciousness and Self-Regulation, 1–39. New York: Springer.
-
Salvatore N. (2016). “Wittgenstein: Epistemology,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy <http://www.iep.utm.edu/witt-epi/>.
-
Schroeder M. (2008). Being For: Evaluating the Semantic Program of Expressivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Stoneham T. (2002). Berkeley’s World: An Examination of the Three Dialogues. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
-
Stroll A. (1994). Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Stroud B. (1984). The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Thomasson A. (2007). Ordinary Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Thomasson A. (2015). Ontology Made Easy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Unger P. (1975). Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Unger P. (1979). “Why There Are No People,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4: 177–222.
-
Vaidya A. (2007). “The Epistemology of Modality,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Zalta E. (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/modality-epistemology/>.
-
van Inwagen P. (2014). Existence: Essays in Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Virvidakis S. (2008). “Varieties of Quietism,” Philosophical Inquiry 30: 157–175.
-
Wegner D. (2002). The Illusion of Conscious Will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
-
Wittgenstein L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by Ogden. C.K. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
-
Wittgenstein L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
-
Wittgenstein L. (1969). On Certainty . Edited by Anscombe G. & Wright G. . New York: Harper Torchbooks.
-
Williams J. (2015). “Moore’s Paradox in Thought: A Critical Survey,” Philosophy Compass 10: 24–37.
-
Williams M. (1991). Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism. Oxford: Blackwell.
-
Williamson T. (2000). Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Wright C. (1985). “Facts and Certainty,” Proceedings of the British Academy 71: 429–472.
-
Wright C. (2004a). “Warrant for Nothing (and Foundations for Free)?” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78: 167–212.
-
Wright C. (2004b). “Wittgensteinian Certainties.” In McManus D. (ed.), Wittgenstein and Scepticism, 22–55. London: Routledge.
-
Wright C. (2014). “On Epistemic Entitlement (II): Welfare State Epistemology.” In Dodd & Zardini (2014), 214–245.
-
Yablo S. (1993). “Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53: 1–42.
-
Zangwill N. (1992). “Quietism,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 17: 160–176.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 734 | 107 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 286 | 12 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 71 | 17 | 1 |
Revisionism, Scepticism, and the Non-Belief Theory of Hinge Commitments
In: International Journal for the Study of SkepticismSearch for other papers by Chris Ranalli in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
In his recent work, Duncan Pritchard defends a novel Wittgensteinian response to the problem of radical scepticism. The response makes essential use of a form of non-epistemicism about the nature of hinge commitments. According to non-epistemicism, hinge commitments cannot be known or grounded in rational considerations, such as reasons and evidence. On Pritchard’s version of non-epistemicism, hinge commitments express propositions but cannot be believed. This is the non-belief theory of hinge commitments (NBT). One of the main reasons in favour of NBT over rival anti-sceptical Wittgensteinian views is that it has less theoretical costs and revisionary consequences than its rivals. In this paper, I argue that NBT fares at least as bad as its rivals in terms of its theoretical costs and revisionism. In particular, I argue that NBT is inconsistent with certain cases of philosophical disagreement; that it faces worries with mental-state scepticism; and that it faces difficulties in explaining how we can represent ourselves as committed to hinge commitments.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 734 | 107 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 286 | 12 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 71 | 17 | 1 |