Deep Disagreement and Hinge Epistemology (original) (raw)

This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general presuppositions of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreement over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis that such disagreements are rationally irresolvable, and ask whether the Wittgensteinian account of deep disagreement—according to which such disagreements are disagreements over hinge commitments—provides adequate support for pessimism. I argue that while most versions of hinge epistemology support pessimism about deep disagreement, at least one variety of hinge epistemology, the entitlement theory, does not.