‘Hinge Propositions’ and

Radical Skepticism
Nicola CLAUDIO SALVATORE

Introduction
In this paper, I present and discuss an anti-skeptical strategy influenced by
Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘hinge propositions’. I argue that this account
represents a viable solution—or, perhaps better, dissolution—of Cartesian-
style skeptical arguments.
To defend this claim, I will first present Cartesian skepticism and his
implications; then, I will briefly sketch G.E. Moore anti-skeptical strategy
and Wittgenstein’s main criticisms against Moore’s use of the expression
‘to know’ and ‘to doubt. I will finally present Wittgenstein’s notion of
‘hinges’ and its anti-skeptical consequences.

1. The Cartesian Skeptical Paradox

The feature of Cartesian-style arguments is that we cannot know some
empirical propositions (such as “I have a body”, or “There are external
objects”), as we may be dreaming, hallucinating, deceived by a demon, or
be “brains-in-the-vat” (BIVs—i.e., disembodied brains floating in a vat
connected to supercomputers). Therefore, as we are unable to refute these
skeptical hypotheses, we are also unable to know propositions that we
would otherwise accept as being true if we could rule-out these scenarios.
Let’s take a skeptical hypothesis, SH, such as the BIV hypothesis
mentioned above, and M, an empirical proposition like “I have a body”
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that would entail the falsity of a skeptical hypothesis. We can then state the
structure of Cartesian skeptical arguments as follows:
(S1) I do not know not-SH.
(S2) If I do not know not-SH, then I do not know M.
(SC) I do not know M.

Doubtful Certainties. Language-Games, Forms of Life, Relativism, (Eds. Jesús PADILLA

GÁLVEZ, Margit GAFFAL), Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2012, 53-61.
 54 Doubtful Certainties. Language-Games, Forms of Life, Relativism

Considering that we can repeat this argument for each and every of
our empirical knowledge claims, the radical skeptical consequence that we
can draw from this and similar arguments is that our knowledge is
impossible. A way of dealing with “Cartesian style” skepticism is to deny
the premise S1) of the skeptical argument, thus affirming contra the
skeptic that we can know the falsity of the relevant skeptical hypothesis.
For instance, in his “A Defence of Common Sense”1 and “Proof of the
External World”2, G. E. Moore famously argued that we can have
knowledge of the “commonsense view of the world”, that is of
propositions such as “I have a body”, “There are external objects” or “The
earth existed long before my birth” and that this knowledge would offer a
direct response against skeptical worries.
Wittgenstein wrote the 676 anti-skeptical remarks published
posthumously as On Certainty3 under the influence of both DCS and PEW,
and of the conversations he had about these papers with his pupil and
friend Norman Malcolm. As I’ve briefly mentioned, Moore’s affirmation
that he knows for certain the “obvious truisms” of commonsense is pivotal
in his anti-skeptical strategy; his knowledge-claims would allow him to
refute the skeptic.
But, argues Wittgenstein, to say that we simply “know” Moore-style
propositions would be somewhat misleading. First, because in order to say
“I know” one should be able, at least in principle, to produce evidence
and/or to offer compelling grounds for his beliefs. This is to say, the
“language game” of knowledge involves and presupposes the ability to
give reasons, justifications and evidence. Now this seems highly
problematic in the case of Moore-style propositions.
This is because, argues Wittgenstein,4 Moore’s grounds aren’t
stronger than what they are supposed to justify. Just imagine, for instance,
than one attempted to legitimate one’s claim to know that p by using the
evidence that one has for p (for example, what one sees, what one has been
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told about p and so on). Now, if the evidence we adduce to support p is less
secure than p itself, then this same evidence would be unable to support p.

1
Moore, 1925, henceforth DCS.
2
Moore, 1939, henceforth PEW.
3
Wittgenstein, 1969, henceforth OC.
4
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 245.
 ‘Hinge Propositions’ and Radical Skepticism 55

But if it would be somewhat odd to claim that we simply ‘know’

Moore-style propositions, still, argues Wittgenstein, they cannot be object
of doubt. If someone is holding seriously a denial of a Moore style
proposition, for instance by saying that she has no body, we would not
investigate the truth-value of her affirmations, but her ability to understand
the language she is using or her sanity; for a similar false belief would
more likely be the result of a sensorial or mental disturbance.5
Also, for Wittgenstein doubts must be based on grounds: that is, they
are internal to a precise practice and must be in a way or another justified.
If they don’t, they are constitutively empty. Wittgenstein gives the
example6 of a pupil that constantly interrupts a lesson questioning about
the existence of things, or of the meaning of words. His doubts will lack
any sense, and at most it will lead to a sort of epistemic paralysis; he will
just be unable to learn the skill/subject we are trying to teach him.7
More generally, for Wittgenstein any proper epistemic inquiry
presupposes that we take something for granted; if we start doubting
everything, there will be no knowledge at all. As he remarks at one point:
“If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of
your words either […] If you tried to doubt everything you would not get
as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes
certainty.”8
Not knowable or doubtable, Wittgenstein calls Moore-style
propositions “hinges”9; just apparently empirical contingent claims which
on closer inspection perform a different, more basic role in our epistemic
practices.

2. Hinges as Rules of Grammar

Throughout OC, Wittgenstein compares Moore-style propositions to norms
of representations or ‘rules of grammar’.10 Very generally, in the second
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5
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 526.
6
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 310.
7
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 315.
8
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 114-115.
9
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 341-343.
10
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 36, 53,95, 167.
 56 Doubtful Certainties. Language-Games, Forms of Life, Relativism

phase of his thought Wittgenstein calls ‘‘rules of grammar’’ the conditions,

the method, necessary for comparing a proposition with reality.11
To understand this point, just consider the following propositions:
i) What is red must be colored
ii) Nothing can be red and green all over
iii) All bachelors are unmarried
iv) A proposition is either true or false
v) 12×12=144
Despite their differences, all these share common features that I will
consider in turn.
First, they are all normative, for they delimit what makes sense to
say, for instance licensing and prohibiting inferences. Just consider i): if p
is called red, is correctly characterized as ‘colored’; to say that it is red and
to deny that it is colored would be a misuse of language, that is a move
excluded from a language-game. Similarly ii), even if it looks as a
description of the physics of color, is a rule that we use to exclude the
description of an object as being red and green all over. iii): apparently an
empirical description, is not meant to make a true statement of fact about
bachelors but rather to explain the meaning of the word “bachelor”. iv)
looks like a description, a generalization about propositions as ‘All lions
are carnivorous ‘ is a generalization about lions. But things are somewhat
different, for we use iv) to define what may be correctly called ‘a
proposition’ in logical reasoning; also, it does not exclude a third
possibility but rather exclude as meaningless the phrase ‘a proposition
which is neither true nor false’.
Finally12, we call v) a true arithmetical proposition, and more
generally we also speak of ‘true’ or ‘false’ equations (2+2= 4 true, 2+2= 5
false). But this is somewhat misleading and can lead us considering
arithmetical propositions as descriptions of state of affairs that do or do not
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obtain. On the contrary, for Wittgenstein mathematical necessary truths are

not descriptive but normative; for instance, v) licenses and prohibits

11
Wittgenstein, 1974, PG, 88.
12
In the following, I will just sketch some uncontroversial aspects of Wittgenstein’s
philosophy of mathematics, in order to cast more light on his conception of ‘‘rules of
grammar’’. A punctual reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s views on the matter and of the
debate they originated would fall beyond the scope of this essay.
 ‘Hinge Propositions’ and Radical Skepticism 57

inferences, in the sense that it licenses transformations of empirical

statements and at the same time excludes other inferences as invalid.
Following v)13 we can legitimate transform the statement ‘There were 12
books each on 12 shelves in the bookshop’ into ‘There were 144 books
into the bookshop’; also, v) excludes as illegitimate ‘There were 12 books
each on 12 shelves, so there were 1212 books in the bookshop’ (an
inference which is also excluded by the true inequation 12×12≠1212).
A second feature of the ‘rules of grammar’ is that they cannot be
confirmed or disconfirmed by reality; rather, they are ways to make sense
of reality. For instance, no one ever discovered that i), nor we came to
know that i) by, say, checking the color of any object that we call ‘red’; in
a similar fashion, ii) cannot possibly be disconfirmed by the existence of
something which is red and green all over. Likewise, we would not verify
iii) by investigating the marital status of people identified as bachelors, and
no ‘married bachelor’ would possibly disconfirm iii).
Similarly, even if we do perfectly speak of half truths, or rough or
approximate truths or of something being partly true or partly false, this
does not affect in any way iv), for the objects of such assertions are not cut
to the pattern required for logical inference and thus cannot confirm or
disconfirm iv).14 Finally, even if we can imagine a different arithmetic in
which v) can turn out to be wrong and v*) 12×12=1212 is correct, this
would not disconfirm v), for this v*) would simply not belong to the
practice we call arithmetic.
A third and important feature of Wittgenstein’s ‘rules of grammar’ is
that they are not propositions, namely they cannot be either true or false;
for their ‘negation’ is, more than false, senseless.
Just consider the following putative statements:
i*) p is red and is not colored
ii*) p is red and green all over
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iii*) Some bachelors are married

iv*) a proposition is neither true nor false
v*) 12×12=1212

13
This is a, slightly modified, example used by Hacker and Baker, 1985, 269.
14
Hacker and Baker, 1985, 265.
 58 Doubtful Certainties. Language-Games, Forms of Life, Relativism

Statements from i*) to v*) are nothing but nonsensical, even if

intelligible, combinations of signs.
Thus, the difference between ‘‘rules of grammar’’ and their
negations is not similar to the difference between true and false statements,
but between a rule of expression and a use of words/symbols which that
rule excludes as nonsensical.

3. Hinges, Knowledge and Understanding

To sum up, ‘rules of grammar’ have three features which make them
different from empirical knowledge claims. First, they are not descriptive
but normative; second, they cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by
reality but rather are ways to make sense of reality; finally, they are not
propositions as their negation is not false but senseless.
An important consequence of the distinction between empirical
propositions and ‘rules of grammar’ is that to claim that we ‘know’ a rule
would not only be improper but altogether misguided. As Wittgenstein
writes with regard to mathematical propositions15 once we ‘know’ that, for
instance, v) 12×12=144, we do not know anything about reality (I.e.
whether a state of affairs does or does not obtain); rather, we are
acquainted with a technique which can enable us to make sense of reality.
More generally, to ‘know’ a ‘rule of grammar’ consists in
understanding its meaning and the correct application for its use;
accordingly, to hold a denial of a rule would not display factual ignorance
but rather lack of understanding, for it would mean that we have not
understood or completely understood the rule at issue.
With this account of ‘rules of grammar’ in mind, we can go back to
Wittgenstein’s treatment of ‘hinges’ and their epistemic role. In a number
of entries of OC, Wittgenstein considers Moore-style propositions as “the
scaffolding of our thoughts”,16 “foundation-walls”,17 the “substratum of all
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our enquiring and asserting”.18 These ‘hinges’ are the basic rules which
enable us to make sense of reality, thus drawing a line between sense and
nonsense rather than between truth and falsity.

15
Wittgenstein, 1978, RFM, 356; Hacker and Baker, 1985, 290.
16
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 211.
17
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 248.
18
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 162.
 ‘Hinge Propositions’ and Radical Skepticism 59

As with the denials of the grammatical rules we encountered before,

to deny or doubt Moore-style propositions would not show factual
ignorance but a systematic misunderstanding of the role they play in our
system of beliefs. For to take for granted ‘rules of grammar’ like “There
are external objects’ is a constitutive part of our practices of ‘arguing’ and
‘judging’:
“All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes
place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less
arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it
belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so
much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their
19
life”.
Accordingly, Moore-style propositions would define what rationality
is; to be rational epistemic agents would be, among other things, to think of
ourselves as embodied beings, interacting with external objects and so on.
This is why, as we have already seen, Wittgenstein considers Radical
skepticism more similar to a mental disturbance20 than to a, maybe wrong
but still sensible, philosophical position.
This account will have two promising anti-skeptical implications.
Recall the feature of Cartesian-style arguments:
(S1) I do not know not-SH.
(S2) If I do not know not-SH, then I do not know M.
(SC) I do not know M,
where not-SH can be an ‘hinge’ such as “I have a body’ or ‘There are
external objects’. This argument seems so compelling as long as we take
‘hinges’ as propositional beliefs, which can be either confirmed by
evidence or legitimately doubted once we run skeptical arguments. But as
we have seen, even if they resemble empirical contingent knowledge
claims ‘hinges’ are rules of grammar; accordingly, Cartesian-style
skepticism would be based on a conceptual error, namely on treating non-
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propositional rules as propositional beliefs.

A second and more important consequence of this account is that it
will not affect Closure. Recall our formulation of the Closure principle:

19
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 105, my italics.
20
Wittgenstein, 1969, OC, 526.
 60 Doubtful Certainties. Language-Games, Forms of Life, Relativism

If S knows that p, and S competently deduces from p that q, thereby

coming to believe that q on this basis while retaining her knowledge that p,
then S knows that q.
As has been pointed out by Duncan Pritchard,21 the crucial aspect of
this principle to notice is that it involves an agent forming a belief on the
basis of the relevant competent deduction; the idea behind Closure is in
fact that an agent can came to acquire new knowledge via the competent
deduction where this means that the belief in question is based on that
deduction. Accordingly, if we cannot rule out a skeptical scenario such as
the BIV one, we would be unable to know Moore-style propositions such
as ‘I have a body’ or “There are external object’ and thus, given Closure,
we would be unable to know anything at all.
But “hinges” are not the expressions of a propositional attitude such
as a belief in; rather, they are the expression of non-propositional rules.
Thus, the very fact that we, strictly speaking, do not know the denials of
skeptical scenarios would be then compatible with Closure; for hinges are
not beliefs, so they are not in the market for propositional knowledge.

Concluding Remarks
In this paper, I have argued that Wittgenstein’s “hinge propositions”
strategy, correctly understood and developed, can help us to dissolve
Cartesian skepticism as the result of a conceptual error.

References
Baker, G., Hacker P.M.S, 1985: Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar And
Necessity, Oxford, Blackwell.
Moore, G.E., 1925: ‘A defence of Commonsense’, Contemporary British
Philosophers (2nd series) (ed.) J.H. Muirhead, London, Allen and
Unwin.
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Moore, G.E., 1939: ‘Proof of an External world’, Proceedings of the

British academy, 25, 273-300.
Moyal-Sharrock, D., 2004: Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty,
London, Palgrave Macmillan.

21
Pritchard, forthcoming b, 14.
 ‘Hinge Propositions’ and Radical Skepticism 61

Pritchard, D.H., forthcoming a: Entitlement and the Groundlessness of our

believing, Contemporary Perspectives on Scepticism and Perceptual
Justification, (eds.) D. Dodd & E. Zardini. Oxford, Oxford UP.
Pritchard, D.H., forthcoming b: Wittgenstein and the Groundlessness of
our believing, Synthese.
Williamson, T., 2001: Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford
University Press;
Wittgenstein, L., 1958: Philosophical Investigations (PI), ed. G.E.M
Anscombe and R. Rhees. Oxford, Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L., 1969: On Certainty (OC), ed. G.E.M Anscombe and G.H.
von Wright. Oxford, Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L., 1974: Philosophical Grammar (PG), ed. R. Rhees.
Oxford, Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L., 1978: Remarks on the foundation of mathematics (RFM),
G.E.M Anscombe, R. Rhees and G.H. von Wright. Oxford,
Blackwell.

University of Edinburgh
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