Logos and episteme
Youssef AGUISOUL
ABSTRACT: In hinge epistemology, our belief system has two levels: a non-fundamental level of ordinary beliefs and a fundamental level of hinges. This creates a problem concerning hinges. If beliefs require justification, then hinges, as the ground of the system, are unjustified and fail to qualify as genuine beliefs. If hinges are justified, they become ordinary beliefs rather than hinges. This is what I shall call the Hinge-Justification Problem (HJP). One common response is the “No-Justification Response”: hinges are unjustified. Some interpret them as “instinctive actions” rather than beliefs; others treat them as beliefs still, but only in a “minimal” sense. I raise challenges to these and sketch a novel response to HJP under what I call the “Justification Response”: hinges are justified. My proposal appeals to a lesser-known metaphor for hinges: “substrata.” Taking this idea seriously, I systematically connect hinge epistemology to D.M. Armstrong’s substratum theory of objects, and propose that ordinary beliefs are constituted by hinges and epistemic properties such as being justified, so that while ordinary beliefs are justified internally, hinges are justified externally.
