Wittgenstein on Hinges

Abstract

Wittgenstein’s On Certainty is often regarded as the sourcebook of contemporary hinge epistemology. However that may be, this essay argues that Wittgenstein himself was not a hinge epistemologist. He did feel the draw, but in the end, hinge propositions were not part of his considered view. Rather, they characterize one of the competing voices in his treatment of external world skepticism, the so-called voice of correctness (analogous to the Kripkean skeptical solution in the rule-following case), with the voice of temptation represented by Moore, as Wittgenstein understands him (analogous to a straight solution in the role-following case). To support this reading of the first-draft notes collected by the editors into OC, the argument extrapolates from readings of the Tractatus, the Philosophical Investigations, and the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, supplemented by new biographical and philological work by Brian Rogers on Wittgenstein’s final months.