Gettier does not overturn JTB; it signals the need to make explicit features of justification that the classical formulation left implicit.
— Sam26

From what I can tell, the Ten Coins situation does not have “features” at all, to even make explicit.

It is a standing within a practice, fixed by public criteria that settle what counts as competent support in the context.
— Sam26

This case doesn’t even have any criteria, or mechanics, or judgments (what you might call “linguistic training”) for the relation between coins and jobs. It is obviously philosophy trying to shoehorn formal logic onto a situation without any viable alternative. The fact that it is an imagined world actually does not matter. Wittgenstein creates simple situations (like picking a color of flower) but it is to show the consequences of imposing forced criteria by contrasting that with what we would need of a wider context of criteria and mechanics (even imagined) for a situation. Now the criteria for justification are all well and good, but this doesn’t even get off the ground; it just seems like a lot of work to say correlation is not causation. — Antony Nickles

The Ten Coins case is thin, and that is part of the point. Gettier creates a situation where the justification is basically a detachable bit of formal support that can be preserved while the world shifts underneath it. That’s exactly why I say Gettier is trading on an impoverished picture of justification: the case is set up so that there are no real practice-level mechanics for what counts as competent justification, no standards for error and correction, and no disciplined way to track mistakes. It isn’t exposing a flaw in JTB, it’s exposing what happens when we treat justification as some free-floating relation between propositions rather than as objective justification inside the practice of epistemology.

That also answers your “correlation is not causation” point. The moral isn’t merely “don’t confuse correlation and causation.” The moral is that the classical JTB slogan can be misread as if J were satisfied by any arguable support, even if the support is structurally incapable of carrying the conclusion across relevant mistake-conditions. I claim that once you make objective justification explicit as practice-governed, with defeater sensitivity and correction built into it, the Ten Coins style justification is revealed as too thin to count as knowledge. I’m not doing extra work to rescue JTB from Gettier. I’m saying Gettier only lands if we let justification be that thin in the first place.

I claim that once you make objective justification explicit as practice-governed, with defeater sensitivity and correction built into it, the Ten Coins style justification is revealed as too thin to count as knowledge. I’m not doing extra work to rescue JTB from Gettier. I’m saying Gettier only lands if we let justification be that thin in the first place. — Sam26

This is exactly right. Your effort is towards laying out a conception of justification that is recognizable and plausible, and supported by practice; the Gettier cases aren't compatible with such a robust conception.

I never thought Gettier had something important to say about JTB, but it took a while to figure out exactly how the problem manifested itself.

I've read your paper. It's a real advance on the topic, and should certainly be published. Where are you thinking of sending it?

A couple of comments:

- I noticed that the term "practice" is used a bit equivocally. Sometimes you're talking about our entire practice of epistemic justification, while other times you seem to be referring to more limited, specific practices or sub-disciplines. It matters because the former can't be queried for further justification, whereas the latter can. Perhaps devote a paragraph to this, showing why someone who asks for justification of how science is done, for instance, isn't slipping into the demand for absolute justification? A sub-practice can be questioned at its roots, from a standpoint that remains within the practice of epistemic justificaion. An entire discipline can be found to have a questionable "grammar." I think you agree with this?

- " . . . our practices of justification are complex and that the stability of knowledge depends on more than the production of arguments. When we recognize this, we are less tempted to treat disagreement as evidence of irrationality, and more able to locate what is actually at issue." This is a very important point. I'd like to see more about it. The ethics of doing philosophy are worth calling out whenever possible.

Quite apart from your paper, you’ve caused me to think more about the particular use of “grammar” here and elsewhere in Witt-related phil. I believe there are some important issues to understand about how the term functions – broadly, the degree to which it must remain metaphorical -- but I’ll save them for a possible OP of my own. I don’t think they affect the cogency of what you’re saying here.

I’ll keep following the thread with interest. Nice work!

The paper needs some revisions, but I think it could be submitted to...

1) Episteme (Cambridge), which is a general epistemology journal.

2) Synthese (Springer), which is another good match.

3) Ergo (Open Access, no author fees)

Your comment about "practice" is something I've been thinking about, so it's something to consider.

If you want one line: objective justification governs responsibility and standing, truth governs success, and my claim is that we can have real knowledge without infallibility because our practice of justification aims at disciplined, defeater-resistant stability, while still understanding that “how things are” can definitely surprise us. — Sam26

Nicely stated. I think this answers the question quite well.

This is why I call (and others) hinge certainty arational. It’s not that a hinge is sacred or immune by decree. It’s that hinges typically aren’t the kind of things that are decided by the ordinary routes of objective justification. When they genuinely change, it’s less like refuting a claim and more like adopting a new framework. — Sam26

I see what you are getting at, but I'm inclined to characterize "framework adoption" as a rational achievement in its own right, even if not one that proceeds directly from refutation or evidential accumulation. My worry is that this understates the capacity of reason for meta-level self-appropriation and horizon-shift.

With regard to hinges, I take it we agree that inquiry always proceeds from what stands fast; the remaining question for me is whether what stands fast is merely an arational background, or is meta-rational in the sense that the subject can come to reflectively understand why such commitments are unavoidable given the structure of knowing. If the latter, then such background hinges can themselves be appropriated into the game of giving and asking for reasons.

With regard to hinges, I take it we agree that inquiry always proceeds from what stands fast; the remaining question for me is whether what stands fast is merely an arational background, or is meta-rational in the sense that the subject can come to reflectively understand why such commitments are unavoidable given the structure of knowing. If the latter, then such background hinges can themselves be appropriated into the game of giving and asking for reasons. — Esse Quam Videri

.

Calling hinges arational doesn’t mean they’re irrational, blind, or immune to ideas. It means they don’t operate as moves in our justificatory practices. In chess, the rule bishops move diagonally isn’t something you conclude from evidence or defend against objections inside the game. It’s what makes the game playable. You can explain it, even justify why we adopt it, but none of that turns the rule into a move you play on the board.

The sense of arational I’m using, viz., is that hinges are arational because they are conditions of intelligibility for ordinary epistemic assessment, not candidates for it. You can give a perfectly rational, clarifying account about why they have to be in place, but the hinge itself isn’t “supported by reasons” in the same way that an empirical claim is, because reasons already presuppose the background that makes support, defeat, check, and correction doable.

I’m not denying meta-level understanding. I’m saying the meta-level understanding changes what kind of thing you’re doing, i.e., explaining the rules of the game, not making another move within the epistemic framework (here I mean within the framework I've constructed in the paper).

I’m not denying meta-level understanding. I’m saying the meta-level understanding changes what kind of thing you’re doing, i.e., explaining the rules of the game, not making another move within the epistemic framework (here I mean within the framework I've constructed in the paper). — Sam26

In my opinion, this is where the chess analogy breaks down. Whereas in chess there is a clear separation between playing the game and explaining the rules, I don’t think this distinction holds for rational inquiry. To explain and justify the rules of rational inquiry is not to step outside of the game, but to deepen one’s understanding of the game itself, since inquiry includes the capacity for self-reflection on its own conditions. To place meta-level reflection entirely outside of epistemic normativity is to acquiesce to conventionalism. The claim that hinges can be appropriated by reason as necessary conditions of inquiry is not a claim about how we happen to play the game, but about what must be the case for judgment, error, and correction to be possible at all, and that is much something stronger than the chess analogy suggests.

I’m not denying meta-level understanding. I’m saying the meta-level understanding changes what kind of thing you’re doing, i.e., explaining the rules of the game, not making another move within the epistemic framework (here I mean within the framework I've constructed in the paper).
— Sam26

In my opinion, this is where the chess analogy breaks down. Whereas in chess there is a clear separation between playing the game and explaining the rules, I don’t think this distinction holds for rational inquiry. To explain and justify the rules of rational inquiry is not to step outside of the game, but to deepen one’s understanding of the game itself, since inquiry includes the capacity for self-reflection on its own conditions. To place meta-level reflection entirely outside of epistemic normativity is to acquiesce to conventionalism. The claim that hinges can be appropriated by reason as necessary conditions of inquiry is not a claim about how we happen to play the game, but about what must be the case for judgment, error, and correction to be possible at all, and that is much something stronger than the chess analogy suggests. — Esse Quam Videri

I don’t think the chess analogy breaks down; I think it exposes the exact pressure point, viz., what counts as staying in the same game.

Inquiry does include self-reflection, but self-reflection doesn’t automatically remain within the same normativity. In chess, you reflect while you play, and you can revise your strategy, you can even decide to adopt a different opening. None of that touches the rules. Once you start asking what has to be in place for terms like move, illegal, mistake, and correction to apply at all, you’re not improving your play within the game. You’re spelling out the background rules that make what counts as a move in the first place. That’s not a conventionalist retreat, it’s a category distinction, which are the standards that govern ordinary epistemic claims, and they're not the same as the standards that govern clarifications of the conditions of those standards.

The worry about “acquiescing to conventionalism” only has standing if “outside the game” means “arbitrary social choice.” But that’s not what I mean. A hinge can be arational in role and still non optional. The point of the hinge diagnosis is precisely that these commitments are not mere conventions we could swap out at will, they are what gives judgment, error, and correction their force. A transcendental claim like “these are necessary conditions of inquiry” may be true in a structural sense, but it still doesn’t follow that the hinge has been appropriated into the ordinary space of reasons as a claim supported by evidence, alternatives, and defeaters. It has been explained as a condition of that inquiry.

I’d put it this way: meta reflection can deepen inquiry, but it can do so in two different modes. One mode stays inside the practice and improves our assessments, better evidence, sharper defeater handling, more precise concepts. The other mode articulates the background conditions without which assessment can’t gain a foothold. That second mode is not conventionalism, it’s not “how we happen to play,” but neither is it ordinary epistemic justification. It’s an explanation of possibility conditions, not a move competing with other moves.

— We’re mostly on the same page here. I think the only remaining divergence concerns whether meta-reflection counts as part of the game of rational inquiry itself. I agree that hinges are not subject to the same standards of correction as empirical claims, but I maintain that their articulation and defense still belong to rational inquiry as such, of which empirical inquiry is only a subset.

One way to highlight the issue might be to ask: Can a game be improved? If so, what criteria should be used? Are there ways of evaluating a "better game" outside the rules of a particular game? This is the "rational vs empirical" issue.

—That’s a nice way of putting pressure on the issue, and I think it helps clarify what’s at stake.

From within a game, “better” is defined by the rules already in place (better play, fewer mistakes, more elegant strategies). But there is also a broader sense in which a game can be evaluated as a game: whether it is coherent, playable, learnable, or capable of sustaining meaningful distinctions like success and failure. That second kind of evaluation does not proceed by making another move under the existing rules; it reflects on the conditions that make any such rule-governed activity possible or worthwhile.

Translating this back to inquiry: empirical inquiry evaluates claims within an established framework of evidence and correction, while rational (or transcendental) inquiry evaluates the framework itself in terms of whether it can support judgment, error, and correction at all. The point of contention isn’t whether these evaluations use the same criteria—they clearly don’t—but whether the latter counts as part of rational inquiry as such or must be classified as merely explanatory and outside epistemic normativity altogether. That’s where the rational vs. empirical distinction really bites, and where reasonable disagreement can persist without anyone talking past anyone else.

Yes, you understand my point exactly. Sticking with actual games, there are cases where game rules have in fact been changed to improve the game, or at least change it in a way that pleases its players better. (Money in Free Parking, in "Monopoly"!). Could a game like chess -- our chosen analogy -- be improved through rule changes? I frankly have no idea, but the point is that the question isn't incoherent or meaningless. It's perfectly possible to inquire of chess players, and by extension of the game of chess itself, whether improvement is possible. And if we do that, we aren't asking whether there's a way to make the bishop move "better" along the diagonal. The criteria for "better" are outside any particular rule. We might ask, Should there be only 7 pawns? That would change the rules, not clarify them.

How might we try to answer? What would this "should" mean? This is where it gets interesting, and moves us into the whole issue of rational inquiry. There are surely aspects of entire games that can be evaluated in terms of cleverness, enjoyment, a kind of artistic unity. Where do those criteria come from? That's unclear, but we know they aren't internal to any game as such. There is no rule in chess that specifies how to increase enjoyment, or even whether enjoyment is part of the game.

So the person who claims that the chess analogy holds for empirical inquiry appears to be saying that all these extra-chess questions can't be asked. We're urged to see the empirical practice of seeking justifications as the game, or the same as rational inquiry, such that to ask for reasons why we perform the practice as we do is to "ask for reasons for being reasonable," which is incoherent.

Now I'm not saying this is wrong. @Sam26 makes a strong argument for how hinges operate in our epistemic practices, and I think we all agree that justification must stop somewhere, otherwise we do fall into incoherence. But what I am saying is that I don't think the (literal) game analogy shows us the right picture of what is going on. We need a better image or explanation for the shape of epistemic practice that would make clear why it is identical with rational practice itself. A game analogy doesn't show this -- unless you really do believe that to ask "Could chess be improved?" is a meaningless question.

Yes, I think this gets exactly to the heart of the matter, and it helps show why the game analogy is doing double duty in a way that may ultimately mislead.

As you say, the question *“Could chess be improved?”* is not incoherent, even though it is not a question that can be answered by making better moves under the existing rules. It invokes criteria—playability, depth, elegance, enjoyment—that are not internal to the rules of chess as such. Those criteria are not arbitrary, but neither are they codified by the game itself. They arise from a broader rational perspective on what a game is for and what makes it successful as a game.

That’s the sense in which I think the analogy breaks down when it is applied to inquiry. Empirical inquiry clearly functions like a game in some respects: it has rules, stopping points, standards of correction, and conditions under which “this counts as a mistake” or “that counts as evidence.” But rational inquiry *as such* seems to include the capacity to step back and ask whether those rules and stopping points are doing the job they are supposed to do—namely, making judgment, error, and correction intelligible in the first place.

So the issue isn’t whether justification must stop somewhere—we all agree that it must. The issue is whether asking *why* it stops where it does, or whether it could stop differently under changed conditions, is still part of rational inquiry or already a category mistake. The chess analogy suggests the latter; the phenomenon of evaluating and even revising games suggests the former.

That’s why I’m inclined to say that empirical justificatory practice is a *subset* of rational inquiry, not identical with it. Rational inquiry includes both playing the game well and understanding what makes the game playable, meaningful, or worth playing at all. If that’s right, then asking whether the “rules” of inquiry could be improved or reconfigured isn’t asking for reasons for being reasonable; it’s exercising reason at a higher level of reflection.

At that point, I think we’ve identified a genuine philosophical fork rather than a confusion: whether rational practice just *is* the empirical game with its hinges, or whether the empirical game is one expression of a broader rational capacity that can also reflect on its own conditions. The chess analogy, by itself, can’t decide that question—and that’s exactly why your example is so helpful.

That's how I see it, thanks for the elaboration.

That said, I'd love to hear from @Sam26 at this point. It's a somewhat complex question and surely one that Wittgensteinians have asked, and perhaps answered, before. I know similar questions have been raised in the context of scientific practice.

At that point, I think we’ve identified a genuine philosophical fork rather than a confusion: whether rational practice just *is* the empirical game with its hinges, or whether the empirical game is one expression of a broader rational capacity that can also reflect on its own conditions — Esse Quam Videri

I'd love to hear from Sam26 at this point. It's a somewhat complex question and surely one that Wittgensteinians have asked, and perhaps answered, before. I know similar questions have been raised in the context of scientific practice — J

Yes, this is where Sam26 can choose to collapse Wittgenstein’s project into a meta-rational ‘space of reasons’ framework like that offered by John Mcdowell, or show such a move to amount to a grammatical confusion from Wittgenstein’s vantage.

Yes, this is where Sam26 can choose to collapse Wittgenstein’s project into a meta-rational ‘space of reasons’ framework like that offered by John Mcdowell, or show such a move to amount to a grammatical confusion from Wittgenstein’s vantage. — Joshs

Right -- essentially the two options that @Esse Quam Videri laid out. But I'll emphasize again, we can be unsure which option we like better, while separately maintaining that the game analogy is doing more harm than good at this point. In other words, I don't think @Sam26 needs to abandon any ground, necessarily, just abandon the metaphor. Which, given its prevalence in Witt-related phil, may be difficult.

I'll reply soon.

:up: I'll look forward to it.

es, you understand my point exactly. Sticking with actual games, there are cases where game rules have in fact been changed to improve the game, or at least change it in a way that pleases its players better. (Money in Free Parking, in "Monopoly"!). Could a game like chess -- our chosen analogy -- be improved through rule changes? I frankly have no idea, but the point is that the question isn't incoherent or meaningless. It's perfectly possible to inquire of chess players, and by extension of the game of chess itself, whether improvement is possible. And if we do that, we aren't asking whether there's a way to make the bishop move "better" along the diagonal. The criteria for "better" are outside any particular rule. We might ask, Should there be only 7 pawns? That would change the rules, not clarify them.

How might we try to answer? What would this "should" mean? This is where it gets interesting, and moves us into the whole issue of rational inquiry. There are surely aspects of entire games that can be evaluated in terms of cleverness, enjoyment, a kind of artistic unity. Where do those criteria come from? That's unclear, but we know they aren't internal to any game as such. There is no rule in chess that specifies how to increase enjoyment, or even whether enjoyment is part of the game.

So the person who claims that the chess analogy holds for empirical inquiry appears to be saying that all these extra-chess questions can't be asked. We're urged to see the empirical practice of seeking justifications as the game, or the same as rational inquiry, such that to ask for reasons why we perform the practice as we do is to "ask for reasons for being reasonable," which is incoherent.

Now I'm not saying this is wrong. Sam26 makes a strong argument for how hinges operate in our epistemic practices, and I think we all agree that justification must stop somewhere, otherwise we do fall into incoherence. But what I am saying is that I don't think the (literal) game analogy shows us the right picture of what is going on. We need a better image or explanation for the shape of epistemic practice that would make clear why it is identical with rational practice itself. A game analogy doesn't show this -- unless you really do believe that to ask "Could chess be improved?" is a meaningless question. — J

I agree that the question “Could chess be improved?” isn’t meaningless, and I’m not committed to the view that every extra-game question is nonsense (some are some aren't). The misunderstanding is where that point is misunderstood, as if hinge talk were meant to forbid reflection or redesign.

First, it helps to clarify types of hinges. Some are what I’d call foundational hinges; they can shift over time as a framework changes. Others are bedrock hinges, the sort that don't show up as a candidate for epistemic assessment at all, for example: I am an object among objects, objects persist, there is a world in which checking and correction make sense. When these change, it’s not like discovering a counterexample. It’s more like losing the stage on which counterexamples could even count as counterexamples. That difference is significant because your “could the rules be improved?” question is mainly about the first kind, the revisable, upper-level foundational hinges.

Second, even in literal games, rules can change, but note how they change: you can redesign chess, or create variants, but for any given game the rules stand fast while you’re playing. They aren’t propositions being assessed move by move, they are what make it possible for a move to be legal or illegal. And when someone says, “we should change the rules,” it’s often not clear what “improvement” even means without importing standards that aren’t internal to chess at all, enjoyment, fairness, aesthetic unity, and so on. That doesn’t make the question incoherent. It just shows that redesign and rule following are different activities.

Now bring that back to epistemic practice. The question “can our justificatory practices be improved?” is not only coherent, it’s exactly what I’m doing when I make standards explicit and introduce guardrails. That’s improvement inside an epistemic practice - refining what counts as evidence, tightening defeater sensitivity, clarifying error-signals. But hinge talk is aimed at a narrower point. It’s about what must remain in place for any practice of error and correction to be intelligible. If someone proposes a redesign that still preserves the possibility of settling anything, fine. But if the proposal is effectively: “treat every check as suspect in principle, and every standard as illegitimate unless justified by a further standard,” then the redesign isn’t more reflective, it removes the very success conditions of epistemic inquiry. That’s not a prohibition. It’s a diagnosis of self-undermining.

So I’m not saying the extra-game question “could we improve this?” is meaningless. I’m saying: some hinges are revisable and are exactly where improvement debates live, while bedrock hinges are what make the debate possible in the first place.

The question “can our justificatory practices be improved?” is not only coherent, it’s exactly what I’m doing when I make standards explicit and introduce guardrails. — Sam26

Yes.

I’m not denying meta-level understanding. I’m saying the meta-level understanding changes what kind of thing you’re doing, i.e., explaining the rules of the game, not making another move within the epistemic framework — Sam26

In my opinion, this is where the chess analogy breaks down. Whereas in chess there is a clear separation between playing the game and explaining the rules, I don’t think this distinction holds for rational inquiry. — Esse Quam Videri

even in literal games, rules can change, but note how they change: you can redesign chess, or create variants, but for any given game the rules stand fast while you’re playing. They aren’t propositions being assessed move by move, they are what make it possible for a move to be legal or illegal. And when someone says, “we should change the rules,” it’s often not clear what “improvement” even means without importing standards that aren’t internal to chess at all, enjoyment, fairness, aesthetic unity, and so on. That doesn’t make the question incoherent. It just shows that redesign and rule following are different activities. — Sam26

If we group these quotes together, I think we get a good picture of the issue. It reinforces my notion that there's nothing wrong with the case you make in your paper. The question of whether a game is a good analogy or metaphor is quite separate from the question of whether you've provided a more perspicacious understanding of JTB. I believe you have.

As to games . . . If a game is something whose rules can be questioned and/or improved (from a standpoint outside the game, of course), then it is not a good analogy for a practice governed by "bedrock hinges." I think all three of us would agree with this. Improvement or inquiry outside a set of rules is presumably governed by a further set of rules; otherwise the idea of "improvement" would be hard to explain. So I think you want to avoid suggesting that our ordinary epistemic practice is like a game with rules. Up to a point -- the point of foundational hinges -- it is; we usually play within those rules. But we can readily move to a different level at which the idea of improvement can't get a grip, since we'd be asking for "reasons to improve" that put into question what it would mean to improve. We've struck a bedrock hinge. But there is no literal game like that; the analogy does break down at that level. If chess were such a game, for instance, we'd be forced to say that a suggestion to improve chess can't be made because "improvement" only has meaning within the rules of chess.

So the main point I would press you on is the final, bolded sentence in your quote above. Why is redesign not a rule-following activity? It doesn't follow (all of) the rules of the practice being redesigned, but surely there are rules nonetheless, even for using concepts like enjoyment, fairness, aesthetic unity, et al. Again, think of your own paper: In the name of a set of rules you carefully employ (and could no doubt explain if asked), you offer changes to the (subset of) rules that seemed to characterize JTB. But this "redesign" of JTB absolutely is a rule-following activity. If it weren't, we readers would get pretty impatient with you! If someone challenged you to lay out your justification for the improvements, you'd do it. You'd strongly resist the idea that such a challenge was incoherent, that it called into question the very idea of justification.

In a sentence, then: There is no game whose rules cannot be candidates for improvement; therefore rational discourse as a whole is not a game.

The question “can our justificatory practices be improved?” is not only coherent, it’s exactly what I’m doing when I make standards explicit and introduce guardrails. That’s improvement inside an epistemic practice - refining what counts as evidence, tightening defeater sensitivity, clarifying error-signals. But hinge talk is aimed at a narrower point. It’s about what must remain in place for any practice of error and correction to be intelligible. If someone proposes a redesign that still preserves the possibility of settling anything, fine. But if the proposal is effectively: “treat every check as suspect in principle, and every standard as illegitimate unless justified by a further standard,” then the redesign isn’t more reflective, it removes the very success conditions of epistemic inquiry. That’s not a prohibition. It’s a diagnosis of self-undermining.

So I’m not saying the extra-game question “could we improve this?” is meaningless. I’m saying: some hinges are revisable and are exactly where improvement debates live, while bedrock hinges are what make the debate possible in the first place — Sam26

I agree with the overall direction of your response, but it seems to over-intellectualize in places, explaining where it only needs to describe. Rather than having to decide which questions are “allowed” or “forbidden,” to map hinges once and for all, to discard a bad analogy in favor of the right one, we need only look at how words like reason, doubt, improvement, and justification are actually used in our lives. There is no answer in advance to whether the question “Could our epistemic practices be improved?” is coherent. Sometimes it is coherent, sometimes it is idle, sometimes it is revolutionary, sometimes it is nonsense, and which it is depends entirely on the language-game being played. In actual life, rules are sometimes followed blindly, sometimes revised, sometimes ignored, sometimes negotiated. There is no sharp line between playing a game and redesigning it; there are just different activities with different criteria.

The question “can our justificatory practices be improved?” is not only coherent, it’s exactly what I’m doing when I make standards explicit and introduce guardrails.
— Sam26

Yes.

I’m not denying meta-level understanding. I’m saying the meta-level understanding changes what kind of thing you’re doing, i.e., explaining the rules of the game, not making another move within the epistemic framework
— Sam26

In my opinion, this is where the chess analogy breaks down. Whereas in chess there is a clear separation between playing the game and explaining the rules, I don’t think this distinction holds for rational inquiry.
— Esse Quam Videri

even in literal games, rules can change, but note how they change: you can redesign chess, or create variants, but for any given game the rules stand fast while you’re playing. They aren’t propositions being assessed move by move, they are what make it possible for a move to be legal or illegal. And when someone says, “we should change the rules,” it’s often not clear what “improvement” even means without importing standards that aren’t internal to chess at all, enjoyment, fairness, aesthetic unity, and so on. That doesn’t make the question incoherent. It just shows that redesign and rule following are different activities.
— Sam26

If we group these quotes together, I think we get a good picture of the issue. It reinforces my notion that there's nothing wrong with the case you make in your paper. The question of whether a game is a good analogy or metaphor is quite separate from the question of whether you've provided a more perspicacious understanding of JTB. I believe you have.

As to games . . . If a game is something whose rules can be questioned and/or improved (from a standpoint outside the game, of course), then it is not a good analogy for a practice governed by "bedrock hinges." I think all three of us would agree with this. Improvement or inquiry outside a set of rules is presumably governed by a further set of rules; otherwise the idea of "improvement" would be hard to explain. So I think you want to avoid suggesting that our ordinary epistemic practice is like a game with rules. Up to a point -- the point of foundational hinges -- it is; we usually play within those rules. But we can readily move to a different level at which the idea of improvement can't get a grip, since we'd be asking for "reasons to improve" that put into question what it would mean to improve. We've struck a bedrock hinge. But there is no literal game like that; the analogy does break down at that level. If chess were such a game, for instance, we'd be forced to say that a suggestion to improve chess can't be made because "improvement" only has meaning within the rules of chess.

So the main point I would press you on is the final, bolded sentence in your quote above. Why is redesign not a rule-following activity? It doesn't follow (all of) the rules of the practice being redesigned, but surely there are rules nonetheless, even for using concepts like enjoyment, fairness, aesthetic unity, et al. Again, think of your own paper: In the name of a set of rules you carefully employ (and could no doubt explain if asked), you offer changes to the (subset of) rules that seemed to characterize JTB. But this "redesign" of JTB absolutely is a rule-following activity. If it weren't, we readers would get pretty impatient with you! If someone challenged you to lay out your justification for the improvements, you'd do it. You'd strongly resist the idea that such a challenge was incoherent, that it called into question the very idea of justification.

In a sentence, then: There is no game whose rules cannot be candidates for improvement; therefore rational discourse as a whole is not a game. — J

You’re mixing three different things and then acting as though the mix refutes my point. It doesn’t.

I would say Redesign is rule-following is a dodge.
Of course, redesign has norms, consistency, coherence, non-contradiction, etc. I didn't deny that. The point is whether redesign is rule-following in the same sense as the practice being redesigned. It's not. When you change chess you may use things like good game design, but you aren't making another legal chess move. You’ve shifted your activities. Saying “there are still rules” doesn’t answer the point, it changes the subject. If your objection is merely “there are norms at the meta-level,” then congratulations, everybody agrees, and nothing I said changes.

Second, you’re equivocating on “inside rational discourse.”
You keep saying, “rational inquiry includes self-reflection, so meta-level reflection is still inside inquiry.” Fine, but that’s just a slogan unless you say what makes it the same kind of inquiry. Here’s the problem as I see it. If every rule is always a candidate for improvement by demanding a further justification, you’ve just built another infinite escalation. At some point, you either stop, or you pretend you don’t stop while relying on what you refuse to acknowledge. That’s exactly what hinge talk is diagnosing. Not “don’t reflect,” but you can’t keep demanding a justification for the conditions of justification without smuggling those conditions in again.

Your JTB point is a category mistake. My paper redesigns JTB only at the level of how we handle justification in practice. That's all within the space of epistemic assessment. It isn’t an attempt to justify the possibility of justification from nowhere. So, your line “you’d strongly resist the idea that such a challenge was incoherent” misses the mark. I resist some challenges as incoherent, specifically those that cancel the very criteria by which the challenge could be evaluated. That’s not being evasive. That’s basic logic.

Now the sentence that really gives the game away is the following:

“There is no game whose rules cannot be candidates for improvement; therefore rational discourse as a whole is not a game.”

It's just assertion, and it’s wrong in an im0portant sense. The hinge point isn't “no rules can ever be discussed.” It’s that the norms that make discussion, mistake, correction, and improvement intelligible cannot all be put on trial at once without emptying those words of useful content. You can always say you’re challenging everything. But if you’re still using better, worse, reason, defeat, and correction as if they have some traction, then you’re relying on what you claim to suspend.

So no, the chess analogy isn’t claiming rational discourse is literally a game. It’s forcing a distinction you keep trying to blur, viz. that clarifying the conditions of intelligibility isn't the same thing as arguing for a claim within those conditions or parameters. You can have meta-level norms without turning bedrock conditions into ordinary premises. And pretending otherwise is exactly how the issue of global doubt and endless “improvement” talk becomes performative rather than really answerable.

what I’m doing when I make standards explicit and introduce guardrails. That’s improvement inside an epistemic practice - refining what counts as evidence, tightening defeater sensitivity, clarifying error-signals. But hinge talk is aimed at a narrower point. It’s about what must remain in place for any practice of error and correction to be intelligible. If someone proposes a redesign that still preserves the possibility of settling anything, fine. But if the proposal is effectively: “treat every check as suspect in principle, and every standard as illegitimate unless justified by a further standard,” then the redesign isn’t more reflective, it removes the very success conditions of epistemic inquiry. That’s not a prohibition. It’s a diagnosis of self-undermining.

So I’m not saying the extra-game question “could we improve this?” is meaningless. I’m saying: some hinges are revisable and are exactly where improvement debates live, while bedrock hinges are what make the debate possible in the first place
— Sam26

I agree with the overall direction of your response, but it seems to over-intellectualize in places, explaining where it only needs to describe. Rather than having to decide which questions are “allowed” or “forbidden,” to map hinges once and for all, to discard a bad analogy in favor of the right one, we need only look at how words like reason, doubt, improvement, and justification are actually used in our lives. There is no answer in advance to whether the question “Could our epistemic practices be improved?” is coherent. Sometimes it is coherent, sometimes it is idle, sometimes it is revolutionary, sometimes it is nonsense, and which it is depends entirely on the language-game being played. In actual life, rules are sometimes followed blindly, sometimes revised, sometimes ignored, sometimes negotiated. There is no sharp line between playing a game and redesigning it; there are just different activities with different criteria. — Joshs

Sure, we should look at how words like reason, doubt, improvement, and justification actually get used. But I think you’re using that point to dodge the problem.

Nobody here is trying to be the language police, deciding in advance what questions are allowed. The issue is simpler, viz., some moves stop functioning as doubt because they wipe out what would count as checking or settling anything. If you say, “Every check is suspect, every standard is illegitimate unless it’s justified by a further standard,” then you haven’t made inquiry deeper, you’ve taken away the ground where inquiry happens. At that point doubt becomes a posture, not an activity with any conditions of success.

And yes, in real life rules get followed, revised, ignored, negotiated, all of that. Fine. But revision still has to leave us with a difference between “we got it right” and “we got it wrong,” otherwise the idea of improvement doesn’t even have a target. That’s the hinge point. It’s not “mapping everything once and for all.” It’s just noticing that some philosophical questions keep the vocabulary of inquiry while canceling the thing that gives that vocabulary meaning.

I’m not saying, “it never makes sense to ask whether our practices can improve.” I’m saying: improvement talk is meaningful when it still leaves room for correction. But when the improvement proposal is really “nothing can ever settle anything,” then it’s not meaningful, it’s self-defeating.

I’m not saying, “it never makes sense to ask whether our practices can improve.” I’m saying: improvement talk is meaningful when it still leaves room for correction. But when the improvement proposal is really “nothing can ever settle anything,” then it’s not meaningful, it’s self-defeating. — Sam26

But is this comparable to saying “improvement talk is meaningful when we notice how the word is actually being used in a current context. A word loses its meaning when we move from noticing its use to nailing down its definition as ‘correction’ or ‘self-defeating’”?
From Wittgenstein’s vantage, improvement talk is meaningful when we can see how the word “improve” is actually doing work in a particular practice. That work might involve correction, but it need not be defined in advance as correction. Sometimes “improvement” means greater reliability, sometimes greater elegance, sometimes broader applicability, sometimes simply “this now goes on more smoothly.” What makes it meaningful is not that it satisfies a condition like “leaves room for correction,” but that we can recognize the role it plays in what people are actually doing.

The problem with defining improvement as correction and “nothing can ever settle anything,” as self-defeating is that nailing down the meaning of a word by offering a general criterion for its legitimate use isnt ‘wrong’ or self-defeating. Rather, it freezes a flexible, practice-bound grammar into an empty phrase drained of connection to actual use . It’s like repeating the same word over and over again. until it loses its original context-based sense.

One way to address of the “why stop?” question is to notice a structural pattern that shows up outside epistemology too. Gödel showed that in any formal system strong enough to do arithmetic, there are truths the system can’t settle using only its own internal rules. You can settle a particular undecidable claim only by stepping out of the framework's standpoint, i.e., going meta, adding axioms, thereby widening the framework. But then the same limitation shows up again at the new level. The demand for total closure keeps moving.

I think something structurally similar is happening in the hinge discussion. Ordinary inquiry works because some things stand fast: not because we proved them in the ordinary way, but because they are what make correction intelligible. When someone asks for reasons for everything at once, they’re not just asking for a better justification inside the practice, they’re shifting to a meta demand for a standpoint that can validate the whole practice without presupposing it. You can do meta clarification, and sometimes you should, but you don’t get a final, once-and-for-all foundation that stops the question forever. Like Gödel, the attempt to force total closure tends to generate an endless “one more level” move.

The point, of course, isn’t “don’t ask meta questions.” it’s distinguish between meta work that improves our ability to detect error inside epistemic inquiry, and meta demands that try to secure inquiry from outside, by a standard that can’t itself be justified without reintroducing the very background it’s trying to suspend.

From a Wittgensteinian view, I agree with the method, viz., look at use. But “look at use” doesn’t mean every use is equally in order or valid, or that we can’t diagnose when a word has lost its grip.

In the actual language-games where we talk about improving inquiry, “improve” is tied to things like learning, avoiding mistakes, tracking error, increasing reliability, making progress, even if the metric shifts from case to case. If someone usesimprove while also insisting that nothing could ever count as settling, correcting, or learning anything, then the word is no longer doing the work it normally does. That’s exactly the kind of grammatical diagnosis Wittgenstein makes, not a stipulative definition, but an observation that the proposed use has detached from the practice that gives it sense.

My point isn’t “here’s the essence of improve.” It’s that in our epistemic practices, improve has a role, and that role presupposes some intelligible notion of getting things right versus wrong. If you cancel that, you haven’t extended the grammar, you’ve broken it.

In the actual language-games where we talk about improving inquiry, “improve” is tied to things like learning, avoiding mistakes, tracking error, increasing reliability, making progress, even if the metric shifts from case to case. If someone uses improve while also insisting that nothing could ever count as settling, correcting, or learning anything, then the word is no longer doing the work it normally does — Sam26

Wittgenstein contrasts situations where words are
doing something with those where language goes on holiday, sits idle, like when we look to consult prior criteria to explain the meaning of current word use. You want to contrast situations where words work normally with those where they no longer do the work they ‘normally do’. Wittgenstein would respond that normativity doesn’t function by reference to any prior categories but is re-established creatively in each use.

We can’t appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, and if there were they wouldnt thereby legitimately bind us. Any regularities in what practitioners have previously done does not thereby have any authority to bind subsequent performances to the same regularities. Wittgenstein’s paradoxes about rule following block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule, since no rule can specify its correct application to future instances.

Wittgenstein’s contrast between words “doing work” and language “going on holiday” isn’t a contrast between normal uses that conform to prior norms and abnormal uses that violate them. It’s a contrast between use that is embedded in an ongoing practice and use that has been detached from any practical bearings and is now being propped up by abstract criteria. The holiday begins when we stop looking at what people are actually doing with words and start asking what must be in place, in general, for those words to count as meaningful.

That’s why Wittgenstein is so suspicious of appeals to prior criteria. When we try to explain the meaning of a present utterance by consulting a pre-existing standard, like “what ‘improve’ really requires,” “what doubt must presuppose,” “what inquiry needs in order to count as inquiry”, we are no longer describing use; we are trying to ground it. And for Wittgenstein, that grounding move is exactly what causes language to lose its grip.

You want to distinguish situations where words do the work they “normally do” from situations where they no longer do that work. But Wittgenstein would ask: normally by reference to what? If “normal use” is fixed by a prior role that the word must continue to play, such as tracking error, preserving right/wrong, or settling questions, then normativity has already been relocated from practice to an abstract template. The grammar has been reified.

For Wittgenstein, normativity is not preserved by fidelity to an inherited function; it’s re-established in each concrete use. A word works when it finds its place in an activity, when it guides what comes next, when it makes sense of responses, corrections, expectations here. When it stops doing that, we don’t discover that it has violated its essence; we notice that it no longer connects to anything fresh that we are in the midst of enacting.

Language goes on holiday not because it fails to meet the standards it “normally” must meet, but because we are asking it to do something without knowing what would count as success or failure in this fresh, actual case. The holiday consists in treating meaning as something backed by criteria rather than something enacted in use.

Outside of situations where language goes on holiday, we always already find ourselves in situations where our language is characterized by being immersed in normative
usefulness. We don’t have worry about having to do anything special in order to gain purchase of normative meaning. For Wittgenstein, outside of the special, strained cases where language “goes on holiday,” we do not first confront a neutral field of sounds and then somehow add normativity to them. We always already find ourselves inside practices where words are at work, where they guide action, invite correction, elicit agreement or disagreement, and make sense without any special philosophical underwriting. Normative usefulness is not something we have to secure; it is the background against which speaking at all is possible.

Your worry is ‘what if justification, as traditionally understood, leaves out something essential, namely, the practical grasp of standards that makes justification possible at all?’ And your proposed remedy is: make that implicit understanding explicit, so that our epistemology rests on firmer ground. But for Wittgenstein, this is exactly the kind of move that creates philosophical problems rather than resolving them.

The reason is that nothing is missing. There is no gap between justification and the practical grasp of standards that needs to be filled, named, or strengthened. That grasp is not an ingredient inside justification; it is the background condition of our being able to speak of justification at all. Trying to “add” it, even under the banner of explication rather than supplementation, reintroduces the picture that something was absent or unsecured.

I don’t buy your reading of Wittgenstein. It takes his rule following comments and turns them into a kind of norm skepticism, as if Witt were saying there are no binding standards in a practice, only “creative re establishment” in each use case. That’s not what he’s doing.

Wittgenstein’s point isn’t that practices don't have any authority to correct us. His point is that the authority doesn’t come from some interpretation behind the rule, like rails laid in advance. It comes from how we’re trained, how we correct, what counts as getting it right, and how we actually go on together. If you deny that any regularities or shared expectations can bind, you don’t get a deeper Wittgenstein, you get the complete collapse of rule following, which is precisely the kind of picture Wittgenstein is fighting against.

Also, the “language on holiday” move is being misapplied. The holiday isn’t “making a general remark about what must be in place for doubt or inquiry to make sense.” Moreover, On Certainty is full of exactly that kind of diagnosis. The holiday is when words are detached from their practical moorings and kept afloat by a philosophical picture that can’t be cashed out in the activity. So, saying “a doubt misfires if it cancels the conditions of checking and correction” isn’t grounding meaning in an abstract template, it’s describing what makes the words doubt, check, settle, and improve do any work in the first place.

Finally, “normativity is re established in each use” sounds attractive, but if you take it seriously it wipes out the very distinctions that make language games possible. A word works when it can guide what comes next and make sense of responses, challenges, and correction. That requires more than fresh enactment. It requires a stable practice for the notions of success and failure to have application.

I’m not appealing to “prior criteria” in the sense of a metaphysical essence of improve or doubt. I’m appealing to the ordinary fact that in inquiry, improvement talk is answerable to how the practice handles error, correction, and learning. If someone insists that nothing could ever count as settling anything, that isn’t a daring new use that “creatively re establishes” normativity. It’s a use that removes the success conditions of the very activity it’s pretending to describe. That’s exactly what Wittgenstein calls out, not something he licenses.

I don’t buy your reading of Wittgenstein. It takes his rule following comments and turns them into a kind of norm skepticism, as if Witt were saying there are no binding standards in a practice, only “creative re establishment” in each use case. That’s not what he’s doing.

Wittgenstein’s point isn’t that practices don't have any authority to correct us. His point is that the authority doesn’t come from some interpretation behind the rule, like rails laid in advance. It comes from how we’re trained, how we correct, what counts as getting it right, and how we actually go on together. If you deny that any regularities or shared expectations can bind, you don’t get a deeper Wittgenstein, you get the complete collapse of rule following, which is precisely the kind of picture Wittgenstein is fighting against. — Sam26

It isnt a skepticism. It avoids skepticism by showing that, as you say, ‘authority doesn’t come from some interpretation behind the rule, like rails laid in advance’. But how we’re trained, how we correct, what counts as getting it right, and how we actually go on together can’t then be conceived as behind us either. It comes from the always novel way in which a history of previous practices, regularities and rule following expectations are made meaningful by being changed by current use. What is actually meant in using a word or following a practice occurs into what is implied and expected. What emerges is neither just the same practice as before nor a different practice, but something more intimately tied to context. Norms continue to be the same differently.

A word works when it can guide what comes next and make sense of responses, challenges, and correction. That requires more than fresh enactment. It requires a stable practice for the notions of success and failure to have application — Sam26

A word always already works as long as we don’t treat it as simply referencing a previous meaning. It doesnt require any theoretical or philosophical help from us , and to think it does is to fall back into the desire for an external grounding that Wittgenstein equated with language going on holiday. We dont impose a stable practice on a neutral terrain that is originally lacking it. We already find ourselves thrown into the midst of stable practices and forms of life.