• Sam26
    2.4k
    These things are not beliefs but intimate and inevitable elements of human experience.Janus

    I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. If you note the first sentence, it's beliefs about these things, hands, mountains, trees, etc. So we have primitive beliefs (animal beliefs) that are shown in our actions. I'm specifically referring to prelinguistic beliefs or nonlinguistic beliefs.
  • Janus
    14.5k
    I think 'beliefs' which carries the connotation of judgement is a less apt way of talking about the primordial (animal) features of human experience than 'elements'.
  • Sam26
    2.4k
    For me it seems misleading to refer to the background, consisting of those things which are necessarily involved in our everyday lives. like hands, feet, legs, arms, ears, eyes, mouths, hills, valleys, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, fish, clouds, sun, stars, moon, human technology in all its forms, architecture, music, painting, poetry, philosophy to name but a few in a list of countless numbers, as a system of beliefs.Janus

    You're completely misunderstanding what I'm saying. You're not even close.
  • Janus
    14.5k
    You're completely misunderstanding what I'm saying. You're not even close.Sam26

    OK, so what exactly am I misunderstanding?
  • FrancisRay
    316
    think your critique of Moore is a bit over the top.Sam26

    Perhaps you're right. I don't know him but am focusing on his argument about hands. If he cannot see the obvious flaws in this argument then I'm not tempted to read him.
  • Fooloso4
    4.8k
    The term 'hinge' occurs three times. The first:

    341. 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.

    Much of the discussion of hinges focuses on doubt and neglects the questions that we raise. He draws our attention to hinges not simply to address the problem of skepticism:

    342. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.

    The idea of hinges replace the ideas of foundationalism.

    343. 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.

    The "door" is our investigations. Rather than resting on foundations they turn on hinges.

    Wittgenstein only gives us one example of a hinge:

    655. The mathematical proposition has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of
    incontestability. I.e.: "Dispute about other things; this is immovable - it is a hinge on which your
    dispute can turn."

    The mathematical hinge is not pre-linguistic. Neither are others:

    298. 'We are quite sure of it' does not mean just that every single person is certain of it, but that we belong to a community which is bound together by science and education.

    142. It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and premises give one another mutual support.

    152. 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 fixed in the sense that
    anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility.

    It is the movement of the work of the community bound together by science and education by which our propositions, beliefs, and knowledge are held fast. The axis is not timeless or immutable, but change is not piecemeal.

    305. Here once more there is needed a step like the one taken in relativity theory.
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