Is Wittgenstein’s hinge concept a relativist system in the sense that different systems of hinge beliefs, such as scientific and religious beliefs, are different epistemic systems?
Paul Boghossian (cf. 2006: 69 ff) quotes paragraphs OC 608 to 612 to demonstrate Wittgenstein’s relativistic view of our scientific system in comparison to the tribal system of the Azande, a central African tribe. The Azande use a different logic and Wittgenstein asserts that we cannot convince them of our logic by arguing within the limits of this very logic. We tend to call the others fools and heretics (cf. OC 611) and, if reasons fail, try to persuade them (cf. OC 612). Boghossian, in his book (2006), does not agree and eventually rejects relativism. But what was really Wittgenstein’s position?
Annalisa Coliva (2010) distinguishes between factual and virtual relativism and holds that Wittgenstein has not adhered to any of them and thus was not a relativist. For factual relativism she demands that different world-pictures actually exist, while for virtual relativism they have just to be conceivable. But her examples against Wittgenstein’s relativistic stance are not fully convincing: can the inspection of animals’ interiors really be compared with a scientific method for measuring air humidity (cf. 2010: 8)? And are the concepts of pursuing final and efficient causes really belonging to the same epistemic system, if the first is based on a supposedly holy book and the second on evidence from empirical research? I am not convinced.
Duncan Pritchard argues that “Wittgenstein’s writings on knowledge and certainty seem to entail a form of epistemic relativism” (2011: 16). Later in that paper, he refers to the historical dispute between Cardinal Bellarmine and Galileo:
Even by his own lights, Cardinal Bellarmine does not think that accepting Galileo’s point of view requires him to reject wholesale the evidence of scripture; rather it just requires a re-evaluation of the epistemic support apparently offered to geocentrism by some elements of scripture. (2011: 20)
Is that really an argument against relativism? To my understanding, if one re-evaluates the epistemic support for one detail of a scripture-based epistemology to make it compatible with a scientific finding, his epistemology still remains scripture-based and the categorial difference to an evidence-based epistemology does not disappear.
I leave it with those two contributions and let Wittgenstein speak once more:
Catholics believe as well that in certain circumstances a wafer completely changes its nature, and at the same time that all evidence proves the contrary. And so if Moore said "I know that this is wine and not blood", Catholics would contradict him (OC 239).
Apparently, Wittgenstein considers the Catholic belief and Moore’s belief to be based on different epistemologies. With that I’d like to summarize my opinion, that a reading of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, which distinguishes between religious and scientific epistemologies and their appropriate hinge beliefs, can be interpreted as relativistic.