By contrast , the language game underlying the statement ‘water boils at 100 degrees’ cannot remain intact if this fact is questioned. — Joshs

You are neglecting the qualification "at sea level". That qualification indicates two essential conditions, temperature and pressure. So, the statement "water boils at 100 degrees" is in fact doubted by the addition of that qualification. However, the language game remains intact, only slightly changed by that doubt. If however, as in my example, it turns out that water boiling is completely a feature of external pressure, and internal temperature was just a ruse, then we'd want to rid ourselves of that language game, as being a faulty representation.

Wiitgenstein uses the word ‘doubt’ to indicate a situation where some particular feature within a language game is put into question, while leaving the game intact. This is why he says that some beliefs must be left certain in order to doubt anything. We can’t doubt the geocentric model by switching to a heliocentric model unless the two models have features that can be incorporated under the same language game. — Joshs

Obviously, I do not accept the common interpretation of how Wittgenstein portrays "doubt". I believe that we can and do doubt foundational rules. And, I also believe that the foundational aspects of the geocentric model were doubted, and this doubt is what allowed it to be replaced by the heliocentric. So I think it is very clear that we do doubt foundational aspects, and completely destroy important conceptual structures, even though vestiges of the old may still remain in our language games ("the sun rises", "the sun sets"). These vestiges become metaphors, so sometimes instead of ridding ourselves of the faulty language game, we allow it to remain in the form of metaphor.

While it's true that many of our convictions are hinges (basic beliefs), I wouldn't use "system of convictions," and Witt never used this wording — Sam26

How exact do you need the wording to be? He said my convictions form a system.

102. Might I not believe that once, without knowing it, perhaps is a state of unconsciousness, I was taken far away from the earth - that other people even know this, but do not mention it to me? But this would not fit into the rest of my convictions at all. Not that I could describe the system of these convictions. Yet my convictions do form a system, a structure.

Good one Josh, I stand corrected.

:up:

That makes sense. I think that, aside from difficulties from outside "Wittgenstein space," though, there is invariably the difficulty that people read the book in very different ways.

suggests that Wittgenstein had the contestable view that knowledge is the very same as belie

I agree, it might suggest this if I had only written the quoted part and not clarified in the next paragraphs. Nowhere though do I suggest that the problem is that "not all beliefs are true and justified," but rather that belief does not imply identity between the intellect and what is known, and does not capture what is meant by many uses of "to know" (e.g. sensing as knowledge, to "know how to ride a bike," or the original example of "carnal knowledge,")

But one must surely believe what one knows? "I know it's raining, but I don't believe it!" is ironic? A play on our expectations?

People speak this way without irony all the time. "So you believe you could have fixed the problem?"

"No, I know I could fix it."

People often get offended when their knowledge is impugned as mere belief/opinion.

Of course one affirms what one knows. So yes, it wouldn't make sense to essentially affirm and deny the same thing. Generally, the distinction involves understanding, a grasp of the thing known, as opposed to merely holding a justified opinion that also happens to be true.

For instance, does one "know Jimmy Carter," if one affirms some justified beliefs about the man but has never met him? Certainly one doesn't "know how to fix a car" or "train a horse," or "know horses" through merely holding justified true opinions about them, and the same goes for "knowing what coffee tastes like." And we might question if one "knows justice" or "what is just" by being able to affirm informed, true opinions about just action.

English is hardly unique in its many senses of the word to know. Attic Greek, for instance, offered up distinctions between sophia, gnosis, techne, episteme, phronesis, and doxa. And no doubt, there is plenty of analytic thought, particularly more recently, that pays particularly close attention to the distinction between "knowing that" and "knowing how" (and even "knowing why").

The question is which sort of knowledge is paradigmatic of knowledge in its fullest sense (or maybe none and we have a sui generis plurality?) In general, justified true belief has, in part because of the particular philosophy of language and rationality in vouge, tended to focus on the justified/informed affirmation of true propositions.

However, it seems fair to question if the horse tamer and the horse researcher, who both read on and spend their lives with horses, might know horses in a way that someone who has simply read some books on them (and so holds justified, true beliefs) does not. I suppose the philosophy of perception/imagination is relevant here too.

A big issue in OC is precisely what comes up when all knowledge is demonstrative knowledge. This problem is an old one. In this case, an infinite regress of (circular) syllogisms would be required.

Anyhow, hinge propositions obviously aren't arbitrary. Why do disparate cultures share so many, e.g. "we have bodies," and "there are corporeal objects?" A shared human "form of life," perhaps. However, that term is quite ambiguous. One might suspect that such propositions are accepted rather because they involve non-demonstrative knowledge.

But then the knowledge is in some sense prior to and constitutive of the language.

"So you believe you could have fixed the problem?"

"No, I know I could fix it." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you saying that our fixer knows they can, but doesn't believe they can? The point here to work through the various ways in which "I know" is used? it would be prejudicial to supose that any was paradigmatic.

Are you saying that our fixer knows they can, but doesn't believe they can?

Perhaps, depending on how "belief" is defined. If belief is just something like "the affirmation of a proposition," then one would always believe what one knows (although we might say that it is things/principles that are primarily known, not propositions).

This doesn't suggest that knowing is a form of believing though. Whenever one is running, one is also breathing, but running doesn't consist in breathing. Similarly, swimming entails but does not consist in not drowning. In the same way, belief might go along with knowledge without being what knowledge consists in.

The point here to work through the various ways in which "I know" is used? it would be prejudicial to supose that any was paradigmatic.

Sure. It would be equally prejudicial to suppose they are all unrelated as well though. Are they related? I should think so.

I think this thread has run its course.

I'll continue to work on the book and maybe get back to post some of it sometime.