Severin Schroeder: "Farewell to Hinge Propositions"

According to a widespread interpretation, in On Certainty Wittgenstein discovered the important category of ‘hinge propositions’, which appear to be empirical claims, but are in fact grammatical propositions that because of their fundamental role in our language must be exempt from all doubt.  Against that view, I shall argue that hinge propositions are not the anti-sceptical panacea as which they have been presented.  In spite of their certainty, they are fallible empirical propositions.  Moreover, to regard them as the basis of our language game is at best a metonymy, if not a category mistake.  What is fundamental to our language game are no specific propositions (such as ‘Here is a hand’ or ‘The earth has existed for many years before my birth’), but the standards of rationality that make us regard such propositions as certain, at least under normal circumstances.  Those standards of rationality can indeed be expressed in (something like) grammatical propositions, which, however, are not those Moorean truisms themselves, but explanations of the circumstances that make them truisms.  They are of the form ‘Under such circumstances … it is reasonable to assume that …’ or ‘This … counts as good evidence for … ’.