sign in sign up
<<
Home , Eliminative materialism, Paul Churchland, Reductio ad absurdum

Beyond the Limits of Disagreement: Sense and Self-Reference

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the College of Arts and of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Luke T. Elmore

August 2019

© 2019 Luke T Elmore. All Rights Reserved. 2

This thesis titled

Beyond the Limits of Disagreement: Sense and Self-Reference

by

LUKE T. ELMORE

has been approved for

the Department of

and the College of Arts and Sciences by

Yoichi Ishida

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Florenz Plassmann

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

3

ABSTRACT

Elmore, Luke T., M.A., August 2019, Philosophy

Beyond the Limits of Disagreement: Sense and Self-Reference

Director of Thesis: Yoichi Ishida

In this thesis I develop the skeptical problem of sense and show that two attempts to address this problem either self-defeat or are self-referentially inconsistent. The skeptical problem of sense is developed by reconstructing and analyzing the disagreement over mental content between and Lynne Baker. The first response to the skeptical problem of sense is developed from Donald Davidson’s attack on the scheme-content distinction. The second response is developed from Robert

Fogelin and Danièle Moyal-Sharrock’s Wittgensteinian of disagreement.

4

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ...... 3 1. Introduction ...... 5 2. Mental Content: A Deep Disagreement ...... 7 2.1 Eliminativism versus Realism About Mental Content ...... 7 2.2 The Disagreement Over Mental Content ...... 11 2.3 An Asymmetry ...... 13 2.4 The Skeptical Problem of Sense...... 14 3. Davidson’s Problem ...... 16 3.1 The Unintelligibility of Scheme and Content ...... 16 3.2 Davidson’s Self-Referential Reductio ...... 18 3.3 The Persistence of the Skeptical Problem ...... 20 4. Hinges and the Game of Doubt ...... 22 4.1 Pseudo-Propositions and Nonsense ...... 22 4.2 The Hinge- ...... 24 4.3 Looking Beyond the Game of Doubt ...... 27 5. Conclusion ...... 31 References ...... 33

5

1. INTRODUCTION

When we encounter someone with a radically different worldview than our own, his view may seem so fundamentally dissimilar that we think of the other as stupid or mad. Despite this, our disagreement with the other appears to be regulated by a shared network of discursive norms. Thus, if we make an assertion, we try to justify it to the satisfaction of our peer without assuming him mad. And we expect the same courtesy from the other. But sometimes our disagreement runs aground to a degree that we become unsure whether our disagreement can meet discursive norms at all.

In this thesis, I aim to explore a case of deep disagreement that may not be able to meet discursive norms. The case is the debate over mental content between Paul

Churchland and Lynne Baker, which is so intractable that the parties disagree about what is even going on. As I show in Section 2, this case illustrates a more general problem: If an interlocutor can see things so differently that she rejects the way we understand what is going on in our conversation, how do or could we reconcile her rejection of our with our assumption that she is a rational interlocutor who makes meaningful assertions? I will call this the skeptical problem of sense because the problem generates about whether our deep disagreement with someone involves meaningful assertions at all. This problem is illustrated by the Churchland/Baker disagreement where Baker questions whether Churchland is actually asserting anything.

In Sections 3 and 4, I present two theories about deep disagreements that may avoid the skeptical problem, but I argue that each theory faces a problem of either self- 6 defeating or self-referentially inconsistent in a sense to be explained. Thus, the skeptical problem persists.

7

2. MENTAL CONTENT: A DEEP DISAGREEMENT

Let us begin with Churchland’s and Baker’s disagreement about mental content.

My aim is not to resolve this dispute; rather, it is to use it as an example to develop the central problem of the paper.

2.1 Eliminativism versus Realism About Mental Content

In his paper, “Eliminative and the Propositional Attitudes,” Paul

Churchland defends , according to which ascriptions of mental content (beliefs, meanings, etc.) are unnecessary to explain human . Thus, eliminative materialism recommends that we discard ascriptions of mental content. By contrast, the realist about mental content holds that such ascriptions are indispensable, and Churchland considers an interesting charge that may be advanced by the realist.

According to Churchland, this charge:

proceeds by pointing out that the statement of eliminative materialism is

just a meaningless string of marks or noises, unless that string is the

expression of a certain and a certain intention to communicate, and a

of the grammar of the language, and so forth. (1981, 89;

original emphasis)

The charge is that to state eliminative materialism, the eliminative materialist must presuppose beliefs, meaning, and other mental states. Without this presupposition, eliminative materialism is meaningless. Churchland regards the charge as taking for granted a “certain theory of meaning, one that presupposes the integrity of [folk ]” (1981, 89). With this assumed theory of meaning, the content realist can 8 point out that, were the eliminative materialist right, any statement whatsoever would be

“a meaningless string of marks or noises” (1981, 89). This is because the eliminative materialist rejects in stating his theory, entailing that he also rejects the content realist’s theory of meaning. Since the content realist holds that making any meaningful statement implies a tacit acceptance of her theory, by rejecting folk psychology, the eliminative materialist will end up rejecting what must be assumed in order to mean anything.

Churchland charges that the anti-eliminativist argument is question-begging and illustrates this with a dialogue. In this dialogue a vitalist is made to critique his anti- vitalist interlocuter (1981, 89). The vitalist’s argument has a familiar character, where he contends that the anti-vitalist’s position is inexpressible. After all, if no one has vital spirit, then “the [anti-vitalist] does not have vital spirit and must be dead” (1981, 89), entailing that “his [anti-vitalist] statement is a meaningless string of noises” (1981, 90).

Churchland finds that the “question-begging of this argument does not . . . require elaboration” (1981, 90).

In response to the hypothetical exchange, the content realist Lynne Baker identifies a disanalogy. Baker contends that the pro-vitalist argument runs amok in construing the anti-vitalist as dead. This is because “if antivitalism is true, then the lack of a vital spirit is irrelevant to death; if it is false, then the antivitalist, who mistakenly denies , has a vital spirit and is not dead” (1987, 139). This error “has no echo” in the disagreement between the eliminativist materialist and content realist, as the realist argument assumes “that eliminative materialism is true” and merely “challenges the 9 eliminative materialist to show how there can be assertion without belief or other states with content” (1987, 139).

For Baker, any assertion of eliminative materialism “lapses into pragmatic incoherence because the thesis undermines the of assertibility” (1987, 138). All the eliminativist would need to do is to offer an account of assertion without mental states. But Baker says: “the argument against eliminative materialism makes the minimal assumption that language can be meaningful only if it is possible that someone mean something” (1987, 140). As such “only to a minimal extent is a particular theory of meaning assumed; issues that divide [semantic] theorists . . . are wholly irrelevant to the argument” (1987, 139). Thus, while Baker is open to revising her views should an eliminativist succeed in formulating a non-folk theory of expression, it is not clear she would ever concede that an attempted eliminative theory has hit its mark. This reluctance is emphasized by Baker’s contention that while “history is full of received views that turn out to be false” and “the superseding theories make it intelligible why people said (false) things,” in the case of denying the “common-sense conception [of meaning], it would be a mystery why anybody would ever say (false) things” (1987, 140). This is because it would no longer be appropriate to say that anyone ever thought anything. Consider, to use Baker’s example, someone running inside and claiming: “I ran inside because I thought I heard the phone ring” (1987, 140), where the belief that the phone rang turns out false. This common-sense explanation is not allowed on the eliminative model, because there are no thoughts. But for Baker, the view that “language can be meaningful only if it is possible that someone mean something” is a “near-platitude” (1987, 140). 10

Thus, she is incredulous about any proposal aimed at discarding the common-sense scheme.

Baker’s incredulousness raises an interesting issue. On the one hand, she wants to frame the realist as making a demand for an actual eliminativist theory, but her position is that eliminative materialism is inexpressible due to its pragmatic incoherence. To make better sense of this situation, we ought to consider what it means for a statement or theory to be pragmatically incoherent. To this end, we can appropriate Andrew Cling’s analysis of Baker’s concept of pragmatic incoherence. While “what Baker calls ‘pragmatic incoherence’ is not explained” (Cling 1989, 62), nonetheless her seems to be that there is a conflict between the expression of eliminative materialism, and at least one true statement about what the eliminativist must be doing when the theory is asserted

(Cling 1989, 62). For Cling, the notion of what one must be doing in the act of asserting can be clarified with his theory of presuppositions (1989, 56). According to Cling, the assertion of any theory involves presuppositions, which are statements tacitly assumed true by the act of asserting a theory. The asserted theory must be consistent with its presuppositions, lest a be generated (1989, 56–57). Thus, we can construe

Baker’s anti-eliminativist argument as alleging that a contradiction obtains between the eliminativist theory and certain of its presuppositions (1989, 57).

This formulation of Baker’s argument highlights its fault. According to Cling,

Baker seems to assume at least one statement explicitly denied by the eliminativist (Cling

1989, 65), and the statement says that: “eliminative materialism, like any theory, has been meaningfully asserted only if it has been produced by certain beliefs and 11 intentions”(1989, 61). Of course, Baker never outright endorses this statement as an explicit premise, but Cling’s view is that the argument he reconstructs “best illuminates these self-referential objections” (1989, 62). As such, Baker’s aforementioned claim that her argument makes a minimal assumption is unsatisfactory. In Cling’s view, Baker needs to add that “the argument from meaningful assertion also assumes that persons can mean something by the language they use only if they have beliefs” (Cling 1989, 66).

2.2 The Disagreement Over Mental Content

The lopsidedness of the eliminativist-realist disagreement is clear. On the one hand, Baker finds eliminative materialism inexpressible, whereas both

Churchland and Cling find Baker’s argument question-begging. While Baker suggests she’d change her if an eliminativist were to successfully express his theory, her rejection of current attempts by eliminativists to express a theory calls this into question.

At the same time, Baker appears to think that the “common-sense conception”

(1987, 142) is not a theory that can be revised but is presupposed by the expression of any theory. Victor Reppert suggests that Baker avoids the term “folk psychology” because it suggests that the common-sense conception is a theory (Reppert 1992, 390).

According to Reppert, integral to the common-sense conception is the content ‘belief’, as beliefs are presupposed in the assertion of any theory (1992, 391). On this reading of

Baker’s position, Baker appears entitled to accuse eliminativists of begging the question against her. Reppert uproots this endless cycle of accusations by cautioning against attributions of question-begging in the eliminativist-realist disagreement, as such attributions hide a deep disagreement which seems to undergird the dispute (1992, 392). 12

He goes on to remark that this situation is “a deep disagreement about and methodology” and that “where there are deep differences of this sort, it is sometimes difficult to locate where dispute lies” (1992, 392).

The difficulty of locating the place of the dispute between Churchland and Baker is intensified by their mutual self-confidence. In much the same spirit that Baker holds the of her minimal assumption to be a near-platitude, Churchland says of folk psychology that “it is so obviously a theory that it must be held a major mystery why it has taken until the last half of the twentieth century for philosophers to realize it” (1981,

71). Thus, if we formulate Baker’s position with the aid of Reppert’s analysis, her position is that the common-sense conception is obviously non-revisable, whereas

Churchland’s view is that, so far as revisability is concerned, there is no common-sense conception. Rather, there is merely a bad theory that can be cleared away. Reppert aids this construal of Churchland by noting that “in order to get the eliminability result . . . one has to claim not only that our ‘folk’ conceptions . . . are employed in empirical-theoretic work, but that it is the only work they do” (1992, 391; original emphasis).

The disagreement between Churchland and Baker is so deep that it appears deadlocked. Regarding this deadlock, Baker says that: “arguments about the allegedly self-defeating character of anything are . . . frustrating to people on both sides of the issue. People on each side think that those on the other miss the point” (1987, 137). Baker finds herself frustrated because it seems her opponent misses the point, given that Baker

“ask[s] straightforward questions, which require answers but receive none” (1987, 137).

Apropos the inexpressibility argument, we can say that Baker is frustrated by the 13 eliminativist’s cavalier disrespect for the near-platitudinous requirement for meaningful expression. Conversely, Churchland is frustrated by the realist’s apparent blindness to the obvious that her specified conditions for meaningful expression take for granted a corrigible theory by framing beliefs as indispensable.

2.3 An Asymmetry

Suppose we want to figure out who is right in the eliminativist-realist debate. To form our own view of the debate, it is not sufficient to simply put ourselves in eliminativist or realist shoes, as neither perspective admits the other as reasonable. As uncertain onlookers to the debate, we will have to determine for ourselves which perspective is reasonable without agreeing with the self-perception of either party that their own perspective is incontestable. But, a problem creeps in for us as uncertain onlookers. This problem can be detailed by imagining the consequences of coming to decide that Baker’s position is correct, or that Churchland’s position is correct.

In the first case, let’s suppose we’ve come to agree with Baker. Because Baker’s position is that eliminative materialism is inexpressible, it implies that Churchland hasn’t expressed a theory. Thus, coming to agree with Baker will entail that we discover we were mistaken in thinking there was a debate about which we could have been rationally uncertain. This is because Churchland was never actually expressing a position that could be correct or incorrect. Yet, in wondering which party was correct, we were treating

Churchland as having advanced a theory.

In the second case, let’s suppose we’ve come to agree with Churchland that the commonsense conception of meaning is a theory and therefore logically doubtable. On 14 this view, Baker is confused in thinking that she is simply identifying what everyone necessarily takes for granted in making statements. In agreeing with Churchland, we will come to realize that Baker’s mistake is failing to see that she has taken for granted a doubtable theory that needs defending, and which cannot be employed as a criterion that dictates which theories are possible. Thus, in agreeing with Churchland, we find that there is no mistake we made in thinking a dispute between positions was taking place.

We simply came to realize which one was mistaken.

There’s a clear asymmetry between coming to side with Baker and coming to side with Churchland. In the former case, our prior self-image as uncertain onlookers to a conflict between positions turns out to be mistaken. But this mistake is not like believing eliminative materialism is true when in actuality it is false. Rather, in siding with Baker, our prior assumption that we are witnessing a debate turns out to be mistaken because it implies that the inexpressible has been expressed. On the other hand, siding with

Churchland does not undermine our assumption that we are witnessing a debate.

If we take ourselves to be onlookers to a debate, we are obviously assuming that there is a debate in the first place. But the asymmetry highlighted above raises a skeptical worry about our assumption.

2.4 The Skeptical Problem of Sense

Our ability to recognize a debate between positions depends on our assumption about the expressibility of statements, that is, our assumption about statements that do and do not make sense. However, as we saw in the asymmetry above, it’s possible for someone to have a different assumption about expressibility according to which the 15 debate we recognize is not a debate at all. This possibility leads to what I call the skeptical problem of sense: when we recognize a debate as onlookers, we cannot be certain that our own view of which statements are expressible is shared by all parties to the debate or that our own view about expressibility tilts us toward one position over the other. But we cannot straightforwardly justify our view about expressibility, for doing so demands at least some view about statements that have and do not have sense. In other words, there does not seem to be justification that is neutral to any view about expressibility. If so, we have to acknowledge that our view about expressibility might be wrong and that it’s possible for someone to have a view radically different from ours—so different that it renders the debate we recognize nonsensical.

In the following sections, I will discuss two possible responses to the skeptical problem of sense.

16

3. DAVIDSON’S PROBLEM

One response is to dissolve our skeptical problem of sense. The dissolution approach is developed by Donald Davidson in his criticism of conceptual schemes. As we will see, Davidson’s argument generates a problem where we have to admit that the argument is unintelligible or that the argument does not apply to itself when it should.

3.1 The Unintelligibility of Scheme and Content

Conceptual schemes, according to Davidson, are “ways of organizing ;

. . . systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation; . . . [or] points of view from which individuals, cultures, or periods survey the passing scene” (1973, 5). Built into Davidson’s characterization of conceptual schemes is the notion of content. If we say that schemes are best thought of as points of view, then those points of view are views of something. This something is the content fitted to or organized by a scheme. As Davidson puts it, content, if organized, can be thought of as “ (the universe, the world, nature)” and if fitted, can be thought of as “experience (the passing show, surface irritations, sensory promptings, , the given)” (1973, 14).

In Section 2.3, we characterized the eliminative materialist and the realist as having different perspectives about the expressibility of statements. This characterization can be recast in terms of the scheme-content distinction. We can say that people have different perspectives because they have different systems of categories—conceptual schemes—giving form to their sensations—contents. That is, what we referred to as perspectives about expressibility are like conceptual schemes. We can then see the skeptical problem of sense as concerning the impossibility of justifying our particular 17 conceptual scheme in ways that would be satisfactory to someone with a radically different conceptual scheme.

Davidson argues that the distinction between conceptual schemes and content is ultimately unintelligible. If his argument is successful, then the skeptical problem is based on a confused distinction, and the problem can thus be dissolved. Let us now consider Davidson’s argument.

Suppose that a conceptual scheme organizes content. The organized content is reality. This organizational relationship between a scheme and content enables us to have thoughts about the world. But Davidson argues that we cannot “attach a clear meaning to the notion of organizing a single object (the world, nature etc.) unless that object is understood to contain or consist in other objects” (1973, 14). Following Davidson, imagine receiving a command to arrange a closet (Davidson 1973, 14). We can only make sense of this command if there are objects in the closet. If the request is to arrange the closet itself—not objects contained within—we draw a blank. Similarly, according to

Davidson, we can’t say that our scheme organizes the world itself—where the world is a single object. If our scheme organizes the world, it must be organizing the objects within the world.

Now, our skeptical problem does not get off the ground unless it makes sense to talk about multiple conceptual schemes. That is, it must make sense to say that the objects within the world could be organized differently. Davidson’s position is that we cannot make sense of this claim. To see why, consider his discussion of translating a different language into ours thereby understanding another scheme from our own. In 18 some cases translation is difficult because the translated language “contain[s] simple predicates whose extensions are matched by no simple predicates, or even by any predicates at all, in [our] language” (1973, 14), but we can only recognize this difficulty of translation because there is “an common to the two languages, with that individuate the same objects” (1973, 14). That is, we can only identify difficulties of translation between languages because there is a “background of generally successful translation” (1973, 14). Now, for Davidson, speaking a particular language can be associated with having a particular scheme, where being able to translate another language into one’s own suggests that the translated language user belongs to the same scheme (1973, 6). In other words, we can only identify differences between our language and another if they share a scheme: being able to translate one language to another shows that they are part of the same scheme (1973, 6). Davidson’s discussion thus implies that it does not make sense to say that there can be more than one scheme that differently organizes the objects of the world.

3.2 Davidson’s Self-Referential Reductio

Davidson’s argument can be presented as a reductio ad absurdum against the scheme-content distinction. It begins by assuming that the intelligibility of the scheme- content distinction implies that we can make sense of there being different conceptual schemes. With the assumption that a conceptual scheme is like a language, Davidson shows that whenever we can identify a language as being different from our own, the language shares the same basic scheme as ours. In other words, we cannot identify ways of thinking so different from ours that they belong to a different scheme. Thus, the 19 scheme-content distinction is unintelligible. As Davidson puts it: “if we cannot intelligibly say that schemes are different, neither can we intelligibly say that they are one” (1973, 20).

Davidson’s reductio might seem promising for resolving our skeptical problem of sense, because it suggests that we cannot meaningfully say that people have different perspectives about expressibility. This is not to say that everyone has the same perspective, as Davidson notes that his argument recommends giving up any talk of schemes (1973, 20). If Davidson is right, then we cannot make sense of saying that our views about which statements are expressible could be systematically false. Similarly, we cannot make sense of construing another person as having a different view about expressibility. To sort out our disagreement with someone, we just have to proceed by assuming “general agreement on beliefs”—the assumption that Davidson thinks is necessary to interpret another’s words or thoughts—and figure out where our marginal lies.

Thus, we might appeal to Davidson’s reductio to dissolve our skeptical problem of sense. But there are two issues with doing so. First, Davidson’s reductio generates a paradox. As notes: “to say that it is impossible to do ‘p’ . . . involves a ‘p’ which is unintelligible” (1994, 299). If a key element of an argument is a term or proposition p, but the argument shows that p is unintelligible, then a paradox is generated. The argument implies the unintelligibility of terms or propositions essential to its expression and success. Thus, if Davidson’s argument is successful, its key terms are not intelligible. For example, Davidson argues that we cannot make sense of asserting 20 that our thinking is made possible by a scheme. But, the development of his argument requires that we treat the statement “our thinking is made possible by a scheme” as intelligible. Now suppose we are convinced by Davidson’s argument. Looking back at the earlier assumption of the argument, we can no longer make sense of assigning it a truth-value, for it is inexpressible. Thus, if we become convinced by the argument, we realize that we were mistaken in thinking there was an argument to be convinced by. We may come to agree with Davidson that our statement is inexpressible, but we cannot consistently maintain that we became convinced by his argument.

Second, Davidson’s argument reproduces our problem. This is because Davidson wants to show that we are confused if we construe some statements as expressible. Thus, if we disagree with Davidson, he will regard us in the same light that Baker regards

Churchland. Davidson will charge us with trying to express the inexpressible. Unique to this case, we can complain that he either has no argument against our view or is inconsistent with his own claim about which statements are inexpressible. In the former case, he is simply failing to recognize that he has taken a perspective for granted. In the latter case, we can complain that he is not taking his own perspective seriously. He is wielding it against us, but inconsistently exempting himself from it.

3.3 The Persistence of the Skeptical Problem

To recognize two parties as having a debate, we have to have some perspective on the expressibility of statements. But the skeptical problem arises because we cannot be neutral to any perspective in order to justify our own perspective. How can we be sure that our perspective is correct? It looks as if we must at some point stop pursuing the 21 justificatory game the skeptic tempts us with. To see why, suppose that we have a conversation with the hypothetical, dialetheist Davidson, who holds that it is possible to accept the unintelligibility of perspectives based on his reductio even though doing so implies that the talk of perspectives is intelligible. How do we critique his view without begging the question against him? He admits the intelligibility of perspectives and does not admit the intelligibility of perspectives. What can we say against this if not that it is inadmissible to reason in this manner because it is incoherent?

We can generalize the issue. Some statements or theories strike us as inexpressible. We can explain the inexpressibility of a statement or theory by pointing out that it is incoherent, it violates a necessary assumption for thinking, and so on. But we can either say that the statement appears inexpressible to us or that it is inexpressible simpliciter. The former claim will not convince our interlocutor who demands a justification for the latter claim. But it seems that at some point we will have to stop justifying our perspective as it is impossible to relax every assumption about expressibility.

22

4. HINGES AND THE GAME OF DOUBT

Based on our discussion of Davidson, our ultimate response to the skeptical problem of sense will be to stop justifying our own perspective about expressibility. This response would not satisfy the skeptic, but there is a philosophical literature about disagreement inspired by the later Wittgenstein that shows how we might justify, to the skeptic, our refusal to justify ourselves. I will now discuss this response but will show that it will ultimately face the same self-referential problem as described above.

4.1 Pseudo-Propositions and Nonsense

Let us begin with ’s notion of deep disagreements.1 Deep disagreements are disagreements that are intractable, and they are intractable because they are “generated by conflicts between framework propositions” (1985, 5). Framework propositions always lie in the background and are taken as a precondition for the possibility of any disagreement. That is, framework propositions are not themselves the object of disagreement. One might think that deep disagreements can be resolved by

“surface[ing] these background propositions and then discuss[ing] them directly” (1985,

5). But Fogelin argues that framework propositions are never present in isolation. They are instead bound together as “a whole system of mutually supporting propositions (and , models, styles of acting and thinking)” (1985, 6). All these ingredients are taken by Fogelin to constitute a form of life, and for this reason, Fogelin maintains that deep disagreements are never rationally resolvable (1985, 6).

1 Reppert also uses the phrase ‘deep disagreement’ but there is no clear overlap between his notion and Fogelin’s. 23

Fogelin takes himself to simply be advancing Wittgenstein’s claim about deep disagreements: “My thesis, or rather Wittgenstein’s thesis, is that deep disagreements cannot be resolved through the use of argument, for they undercut the conditions essential to arguing” (1985, 5). Fogelin appears to view rational procedures of resolution, criteria of their success, and all the rest as bound up within some form of life, which therefore becomes the source of our unexamined assumptions. When an interlocutor fails to relevantly share our form of life, we find ourselves incapable of rationally resolving the disagreement we’ve stepped into. Moreover, we will never find success in bringing our form of life to the forefront of disagreement in order to rationally defend it, for it is itself the source of our very possibility to rationally engage. We cannot remove ourselves from it, no more than we can continue any rational enterprise while making no assumptions.

But there is a constructive debate in the literature about whether what Fogelin calls framework propositions are propositions at all. As it turns out, the main point of disagreement Danièle Moyal-Sharrock has with Fogelin is with construing what he calls

‘framework propositions’ and she calls ‘hinge propositions’ as actually being propositional at all. For Moyal-Sharrock, hinge propositions are “propositions exempt from doubt that are…like hinges on which our questions and our doubts turn” (Moyal-

Sharrock 2003, 129). In short, they are the beliefs and commitments prerequisite for any knowing or rational conduct. Precisely for this reason, no hinge proposition will feature as the content of whatever language game it grounds. But because of the role hinge propositions play, they actually aren’t propositions at all. As Moyal-Sharrock puts it:

“hinges articulate not objects of sense, but bounds of sense” (2003, 132; original 24 emphasis). This is because hinges, considered as the prerequisites of a knowing engagement, cannot simultaneously be the content of that engagement. The insight behind the unthinkability of hinges is that, so far as we can bring a hinge to the fore and formulate it as a proposition, it becomes possible to doubt. But the essential feature of hinges is their immunity from doubt, not as a matter of , but from “our not viewing them as propositions at all” (2003, 132). Hinges thus “stand outside our language-games” and have a status of “logical unsayability” (2003, 134; original emphasis). For this reason, strictly speaking, “all hinges are nonsense. Indeed, hinges have no sense; they enable sense” (2003, 134; original emphasis).

4.2 The Hinge-Theory

The skeptic would now ask: if hinges are logically unsayable, how can they be talked about—even to say that they are unsayable? Accepting an uncontroversial construal of thinking and disagreement can motivate positing hinges, despite their paradoxical character. Thinking is here construed such that whenever thinking takes place, the thinker is making assumptions. Built into this image of assumption-making is that even if a thinker makes an assumption explicit, in order to express that former assumption and reason about it, the thinker must make yet more assumptions. This image of thinking is poignantly expressed by the old adage “you must always start from somewhere”.

Now consider our thinker’s disagreement with an interlocutor. If the interlocutor points out that our thinker has made an assumption, she can demand a justification for it and may iterate this demand endlessly. To satisfy each demand, our thinker will suspend 25 commitment to the assumption for which justification is wanted, lest our thinker just reassert it. Now, imagine the interlocutor says, “You are assuming that the statements you take yourself to be expressing are actually expressible. How do you justify this assumption?” Our thinker is now in trouble. How does he suspend this assumption and justify it non-circularly? If our thinker cannot assume that he can express anything, then he cannot assume that it is possible for him to argue for the assumption in question. This situation is evocative of Wittgenstein’s remark that: “if what [one] 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” (1975, 243). Can our thinker know what it is impossible for him to non-circularly give any grounds for? Certainly not, if to claim knowledge requires meeting demands for justification.

Our thinker cannot satisfy the interlocutor’s demands and so cannot continue playing the interlocutor’s game when some assumptions are interrogated. The game of disagreement is itself a game of doubting. But if so, disagreement is only possible if it leaves some assumptions unperturbed. This is perhaps what Wittgenstein means when he says: “The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty” (1975, 115).

So far it seems we have an argument for claiming that some assumptions are necessary for the possibility of having a disagreement. This would presumably be an argument for hinges, considered as the assumptions that we cannot claim to know but which enable thinking and disagreement. The problem with straightforwardly saying that there are such hinges is that, if we are expressing the proposition ‘there are hinges’, then 26 this proposition is subject to doubt, and so it looks like hinges are indirectly subject to doubt because the hinge theory is doubtable.

Return now to the image we’ve offered of disagreement, where a claim is permitted to stand just in case it is justified. In order to justify our claim, we must suspend any presumption of its correctness. But if we are right that hinges are necessary for disagreement, then we must take hinges for granted in the course of making our case.

If our theory about the necessity of hinges is right, then it is literally impossible to suspend commitment to what our theory posits as necessary in the course of defending it.

Thus, our image of disagreement is incompatible with the hinge theory. This means that taking our theory as correct is itself a hinge for the possibility of playing the game of disagreement.

That our hinge-theory is itself an unjustifiable hinge might be a reason to reject our theory. But is this reason enough to reject the theory? If we can reject our theory, then we didn’t seriously endorse it to begin with. After all, the theory demands that its correctness is prerequisite for doubt and disagreement. But this means that if we accept our theory, the skeptic begs the question against us by expecting that we justify it, as the theory’s correctness implies its unjustifiability. For if the hinge-theory is correct, its correctness cannot be doubted. It only makes sense for us to doubt our hinge-theory if we didn’t accept it to begin with.

The problem for us is making sense of how we assert our theory. If our theory is true, then it is a hinge that our theory is true. But recall Moyal-Sharrock’s view that 27 hinges are nonsense. They are nonsense because they aren’t propositional. That is, we cannot express a hinge.

4.3 Looking Beyond the Game of Doubt

The result that our theory is inexpressible is troublesome. It looks like we’ll have to accept a pyrrhic victory by biting the same bullet as the dialetheist Davidson: we inconsistently assert our hinge theory while also accepting that it is inexpressible. Or we take seriously our theory’s inexpressibility, in which case we have no theory. And if we give up our theory, we have no response to the skeptic.

Before we accept our dilemma, we should make a pass at softening the charge of inexpressibility. We can attempt this by thinking more about what hinges are supposed to be. They are meant as bedrock against the acidity of doubt. Ideally, they would have this status by being indubitable, but it is this immunity from doubt that generates our crisis of expressibility. But it is not as if hinges are posited simply for their employment against skepticism. They offer a particular way of thinking about the source of ratiocination which is thought to have advantages against assuming the primacy of the game of doubt.

The demerit of the game of doubt is that it never allows itself indubitable grounds.

Any theory that explains why we are justified in doubting any proposition must itself be suspended by the interlocutor who defends it in the game of doubt. Take our attitude that every proposition is doubtable and ought to be justified if asserted. The motivating assumptions for the primacy of the game of doubt must be defendable by the standards of our game. But, paradoxically, we must therefore suspend our commitment to the 28 motivating assumptions of the game itself in order to satisfy its own standards. The game appears to eat its own tail.

The skeptic might defend the game of doubt by applying it to our own of its reflexivity, thereby asking us to defend our charge. But, if we are calling into question the legitimacy of the game of doubt itself, then—by its own standards—the skeptic cannot assume the appropriateness of his demand that we play his game. The skeptic can have no consistent complaint against us if we simply refuse to play. By the standards of our hinge-theory, the insistence that we are always subject to the standards of the game of doubt is itself a hinge. It is an assumption for the skeptic, but the skeptic cannot consistently understand himself as subject to the game’s standards while suspending commitment to the claim that one is always subject to the game’s standards.

That is, the assumption is a hinge because it cannot consistently be doubted and then justified within the game of doubt.

Unfortunately, we cannot consistently demand that the skeptic sees himself as taking for granted a hinge. We would be inconsistent toward our own theory in expecting an interlocutor to actually see what he is taking for granted. As Moyal-Sharrock reminds us: “Our objective certainty is not a coming-to-see kind of certainty; it is not of the order of knowing, justification, reason, or reflection” (2003, 137; original emphasis).

With Moyal-Sharrock’s reminder that hinges are apart from the order of reason, we now return to the that our hinge theory self-reflexively entails its own inexpressibility. The skeptic cannot use this reflexivity as a reason to undermine our adherence to the theory, so long as we refuse to play his game. But despite our refusal to 29 play we are apt to wonder whether we can actually believe this theory in light of its inexpressibility.

Perhaps we can describe our commitment to the hinge theory in terms other than believing. For example, Moyal-Sharrock says that if the theory is a hinge, then our acceptance of it “manifests itself nonconceptually” (Moyal-Sharrock 2003, 137; original emphasis). We can say that hinges “only show themselves”, where showing “has to do with acting” (Moyal-Sharrock 2003, 136; original emphasis). Moyal-Sharrock takes this notion of showing to be Wittgenstein’s, and quotes from his On Certainty to clarify:

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 (quoted in Moyal-Sharrock 2003, 136).

Instead of talking about belief, we can say that a person’s hinges show themselves through that person’s actions. What is shown through action is what that person cannot give up without giving up the entire ratiocinative game. But the real import—for us—of our new construal of hinges is that, because our hinge-theory is itself a hinge, if we accept our theory, we will show that in our actions. We will be unable to play the game of doubt while acting like it is truly uncertain whether justification comes to an end and that the game of doubt is only playable because at some level people thoughtlessly act.

The problem with our theory is primarily that we call it a theory at all. It looks like our defense of ourselves against the skeptic implies that we are not taking our hinge- theory seriously enough for it to be a hinge. But if our theory simply is just a theory that 30 stands or falls in the game of doubt, it’ll prove unjustifiable. This complication is reminiscent of an Rorty suggests some philosophers deal with: “[philosophers who] decry the very notion of having a view [must avoid] having a view about having views” (1979, 371). To say that we’re offering a theory is apt to suggest that we’re affirming a complex of statements. Under this construal of the hinge theory, we cannot respond to the skeptical problem of sense in a way that meets the skeptic’s demand. Our only response would be to refuse to justify our hinges.

But if we construe our commitment to our hinges in terms other than belief, we could justify our refusal to justify our hinges. Hinges are not the sort of thing for which one can have justifications, for showing hinges through our actions is not the same as expressing a theory. As Rorty puts it: “[we] do not think that when we say something we must necessarily be expressing a view . . . We might just be saying something— participating in a conversation rather than contributing to an ” (1979, 371). While this approach might persuade us to disengage with the skeptic, it does not solve the original skeptical problem of sense. Rather, the problem persists while we refuse to justify our hinges.

31

5. CONCLUSION

The disagreement between Churchland and Baker is an example of a deep disagreement that generates the skeptical problem of sense. The problem has to do with how we can justify, to our interlocutor, that our assertions are meaningful or expressible when she claims that they are not. In this paper, I have discussed two responses to this problem and argued that the problem persists. The first response is to dissolve the skeptical problem by showing that it is unintelligible to say that an interlocutor in a disagreement has a different perspective about expressibility than ours. This approach was developed by associating perspectives with conceptual schemes, enabling us to apply

Davidson’s reductio ad absurdum against the scheme-content distinction to the skeptical problem. This approach was shown to be unsuccessful, as Davidson’s argument either entails its own inexpressibility or requires that the argument does not apply to itself when it should. This dilemma is the result of Davidson’s intention to argue for the unintelligibility of conceptual schemes and the scheme-content distinction generally. That is, the success of Davidson’s argument implies the unintelligibility of the key premises of the argument.

The second response to the skeptical problem appeals to the hinge theory. This theory posits that ratiocinative practices are always grounded by unjustifiable hinges that lie outside the scope of any ratiocinative practice. But this theory faces a problem similar to Davidson’s argument. This is because the hinge theory is self-referentially a hinge.

Since hinges are conditions of sense and are themselves nonsense, the hinge theory is either inexpressible or does not apply to itself when it should. Unique to the hinge theory, 32 we can try avoiding the dilemma by rejecting that we are actually offering a theory. We construe hinges as signified through how we act instead of how we believe. On this construal, there is no theory to face the dilemma. But, if we take seriously that we have no theory, we have nothing capable of resolving the skeptical problem. Instead, what we have is our own refusal to justify ourselves because the way we act is incompatible with a willingness to play the skeptic’s game forever. In the words of Wittgenstein: “Why do I not satisfy myself that I have two feet when I want to get up from a chair? There is no why. I simply don’t. This is how I act” (1975, 148).

33

REFERENCES

Baker, Lynne Rudder. 1987. Saving Belief: A Critique of . Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

Churchland, Paul M. 1981. “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes.”

Journal of Philosophy 78: 67–90.

Cling, Andrew D. 1989. “Eliminative Materialism and Self-Referential Inconsistency.”

Philosophical Studies 56: 53–75.

Davidson, Donald. 1973. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” Proceedings and

Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47: 5–20.

Fogelin, Robert J. 1985. “The of Deep Disagreements.” Informal Logic 7: 1–8.

Moyal-Sharrock, Danièle. 2003. “Logic in Action: Wittgenstein’s Logical

and the Impotence of Scepticism.” Philosophical Investigations 26: 125–148.

Putnam, Hilary. 1994. Words and Life. Edited by James Conant. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

Reppert, Victor. 1992. “Eliminative Materialism, Cognitive Suicide, and Begging the

Question.” 23: 378–392.

Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1975. On Certainty. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von

Wright. Translated by Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Thesis and Dissertation Services ! !