• Paralogism
    17
    Disclaimer: I'm not well-read in philosophy or epistemology, and haven't studied the subject formally at all. If this argument is actually widely known and not original, I'd appreciate that being brought to my attention, and apologies in advance if I communicate my ideas poorly.

    The argument attempts to prove a form of academic skepticism. It doesn't try to truly prove that knowledge is impossible but relies on the strategy outlined here in the SEP:

    One way of understanding the so-called problem of the “Cartesian Circle” illustrates the Pyrrhonian point: Descartes is relying throughout the Meditations on his power of reasoning to remove the skeptical doubts that he raises, but to do so requires that he exempt at least some of the propositions obtained through reasoning from the doubts that he raised in the “First Meditation” about the epistemic reliability of our faculties. A possible Cartesian reply could be as simple as paraphrasing Luther: Here I stand, as a philosopher with confidence in reason, and as such I can do no other.

    In other words, I am only trying to show that, according to our epistemological framework, nothing can be proven. I am not claiming that we can, in some non-contradictory manner, reliably know that we cannot know anything.

    The argument itself is very much like vanilla Cartesian skepticism: you could be mistaken about anything! Even if you have a clever argument for why fallibility doesn't imply doubt, for why our axioms are irrefutable, that skepticism presupposes them or that it isn't even a coherent statement to doubt them, you could be mistaken in your reasoning.

    Yes, I know what you're thinking, that we have to examine the skeptical argument and not just assume it - but it doesn't seem to me that one needs to 'break it down' at all, or try to define what it really means to claim something is mistaken. In fact, my whole argument fails if you do. I've never heard a philosopher claim that all the conclusions in his paper are infallible and that to dispute them would be insanity (how could a true infallible belief even be disputed?). So it seems like everybody accepts that our reasoning is inherently fallible. Even if you believe that some statements or axioms are infallible, your argument for why they are surely isn't.

    Another way to examine it: assume one of two possibilities, the first being that your reasoning for how we can evade the problem of skepticism is valid, and the second that it is not valid. How do you tell the difference? We cannot even verify our seemingly infallible sensations, since our reasoning for why they are infallible is subject to error (I'm not saying that we can't have direct infallible contact with qualia, only that the rational mind has no epistemic access to it).

    Dialectically, this takes the form of the skeptic responding to every argument by saying 'but you could be mistaken, how do you know that you aren't'. And if his opponent argues for why that isn't a good objection, the skeptic can say the same in response to that reasoning, and so on ad infinitum. What kind of meta-argument could put it to rest? As I said, it is a commonsense idea - everyone must accept that our cognition is fallible - so the skeptic's own premise doesn't have to undergo the same cross-examination. If we parrot his own response back at him, he shrugs his shoulders and says, "Yeah, I guess so. I could be wrong." It simply isn't a defeater for skepticism of this sort.

    So, that's basically it. As I said, I'm looking for more on this if something exists. The argument seems intuitively very hard to escape, and seems just a little too easy, so it's possible that I'm missing something critical that will make me feel stupid when I realize it. Right now the only counters I can see would be showing why one cannot hold this sort of commonsense premise, or to accept the whole argument but argue that it isn't even relevant for building an epistemology (not sure how, but there are all sorts of far-out philosophical positions, so I'm holding out hope that there are things I haven't even thought of yet).
  • Fine Doubter
    200
    Peirce pointed out the pre-existing fact that things are in relation to the beholder while separate from him; Arthur Young points out that things are projective, i.e objective and subjective (outside us and inside us) at the same time. Etienne Gilson's Methodical Realism goes through the explanations. Robert Nozik uses logic to demonstrate why there is something rather than nothing (this does not bear on his politics which are his weakest area).

    Physicists and biologists enthuse about the Goldilocks effect. Then what about intersubjectivity, in which Ludwig is not fooled about the "beetle"!

    What about the evidence of your own experience as a child? Stop saying the under 18s aren't entitled to testify. That includes your own young self.
  • Paralogism
    17
    I'm afraid I don't see the point you're making? Logic is not immune to my argument.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I am not entirely clear about what you are claiming. You say that you are not trying to prove that knowledge is impossible or that we can "reliably know that we cannot know anything". Your point, rather, is that we could be mistaken about anything.

    But isn't that precisely what Descartes found he could deny when he found that he could not be mistaken about his own existence?

    I mean, if we actually test the thesis that we could be mistaken about anything, it does seem to fail - for surely I could not be mistaken in thinking I exist?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    The thought "I exist" will always be true, whenever and wherever it occurs. So that thought, at least, can't be mistaken.
  • Paralogism
    17
    The only way that conclusion could be made is through the use of logic, which this argument aims to undermine. It does try to show that knowledge is impossible, but only according to our fallible framework of comprehension.

    So yes, as I said, you could argue that I could equally be mistaken about this thesis, but that isn't even relevant to it.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    In other words, I am only trying to show that, according to our epistemological framework, nothing can be proven . . . the argument itself is very much like vanilla Cartesian skepticism: you could be mistaken about anything!Paralogism

    Insofar as empirical claims go, the above is one of the cores of science methodology. We can't prove empirical claims. Any empirical claim must be open to revision.

    A well-accepted codification of this idea is Karl Popper's falsificationism.

    What you're saying is also reasonably well accepted, by philosophers, at least, with respect to logic and philosophy of mathematics. The whole notion of proof that stems from those fields hinges on the system we're working within--the definitions, axioms, etc. of the system we've set up, where it's realized that at least partially incompatible systems are possible.

    There's no real codification of this a la Popper's falsificationism, but a good book that talks about the relativity of logical systems is Susan Haack's Deviant Logic / Fuzzy Logic, and a good book that reflects these ideas more specifically for mathematics is Reuben Hersh's What Is Mathematics, Really?

    None of this is seen as a liability, by the way. Rather, the need for proof/certainty is more often seen as a misplaced concern. And it doesn't undermine knowledge. Knowledge need not be certain or proven (after all, given that falsificationism is a defining characteristic of the sciences and always has been, the idea of scientific knowledge wouldn't even make any sense if we thought that knowledge had to be certain).
  • Paralogism
    17
    Most philosophers do not accept radical skepticism. I'm sure that they do accept that all ideas are fallible, but what I'm arguing here is that that undermines any basis for claiming that fallibility doesn't imply doubt.

    Falsification is useful as a heuristic, but can't provide a workable epistemology. We may be able to try to falsify our beliefs to bring them closer to the truth, but there's no way of evaluating our absolute proximity from it. It's a process, not any sort of justification.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    How is this not simply a matter of you having the misplaced concern--focusing on proof/certainty?

    (I would have responded sooner if you'd tagged me in your reply, by the way. If you don't tag me and I don't happen to be on the board, I might never see the reply.)
  • Paralogism
    17


    Sorry, I'm new to this board. How is my concern misplaced?
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    Think about it this way: why worry about/focus on certainty or proof?

    Also, isn't "P, a proposition about x, is certain or has been proved, otherwise we can know nothing about x" a false dichotomy?
  • Paralogism
    17


    Think about it this way: why worry about/focus on certainty or proof?

    Because saying something is 'probably' true already presupposes certain claims about the nature of knowledge.

    Also, isn't "P, a proposition about x, is certain or has been proved, otherwise we can know nothing about x" a false dichotomy?

    Is it? Can you show another alternative?
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Is it? Can you show another alternative?Paralogism

    Sure, first re alternatives, how have you parsed scientific claims to this point? For example, take claims like "Feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight," or "Brown recluse spiders are usually between 6 and 20 millimetres (0.24 and 0.79 in), but may grow larger." What have you taken these sorts of claims to be?
  • Paralogism
    17


    I don't really understand what you're asking (remember that I'm not well-read). I do think that those statements presuppose important claims like 'my senses and reasoning are reliable'.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    So scientific statements like those (1) are not asserting certainty or proof, and (2) are not saying "we know nothing about this."

    But they're knowledge claims, no? We say that we know that feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight, for example.

    Is that not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point?
  • Paralogism
    17


    Here is another way of formulating the problem: suppose that most of the observers in existence are simulated by some malevolent AI (i.e. Cartesian demon). Any rational observer will quickly come to the conclusion that they are being simulated, but the AI does not want this to happen. It alters their logic so that they come to conclude, incorrectly, that they are most likely not simulated. That's regular Cartesian skepticism. However, this thought experiment relies itself on a whole slew of premises which could potentially be used to show that it is self-refuting.

    The argument here is that one does not need to state the premises in logical terms. We simply take a commonsense scenario (as common sense is accepted as true when we reject radical skepticism) and use it to undermine everything else. Of course, we're not supposing that any particular scenario like the AI or demon is true - rather, we must accept that all situations in which massive error is attributed to ourselves, such that we incorrectly assume our own rationality, are no more improbable than situations in which we are rational enough to apprehend reality.

    So scientific statements like those (1) are not asserting certainty or proof, and (2) are not saying "we know nothing about this."

    But they're knowledge claims, no? We say that we know that feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight, for example.

    Is that not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point?

    That isn't an epistemological claim. The phrase 'I know' is being used colloquially, in the context of common sense. You have to first build up a whole epistemology to assert that the scientific method and our perceptions are generally accurate.
  • sime
    1.1k
    What are permissible criteria for either defining or testing a mistake in the reasoning process?

    Logically speaking, mustn't such criteria be considered as being at least partially-independent of the reasoning process, as for example when we consult a calculator?

    So if you acknowledge the possibility that your reasoning could be mistaken, then haven't you already begged the existence of at least a partially independent world ?
  • Paralogism
    17


    What are permissible criteria for either defining or testing a mistake in the reasoning process?

    Well, I suppose if one can't coherently suggest that something might be wrong or mistaken. I'm not sure what that could be. You say 'logically speaking', but even the laws of logic can't be assumed against the commonsense argument.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Here is another way of formulating the problem:Paralogism

    I don't want to move away from what I was asking you yet.

    Could you answer the question I ask you here first (bolded in the copy-pasted text below):

    So scientific statements like those (1) are not asserting certainty or proof, and (2) are not saying "we know nothing about this."

    But they're knowledge claims, no? We say that we know that feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight, for example.

    Is that not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point?
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    That isn't an epistemological claim. The phrase 'I know' is being used colloquially, in the context of common sense. You have to first build up a whole epistemology to assert that the scientific method and our perceptions are generally accurate.Paralogism

    Re this by the way, you're claiming that when we say we have scientific knowledge of something, we're not making an epistemological claim?

    So science doesn't claim to be knowledge in any epistemological sense. You're seriously claiming that?

    At any rate, I still want you to answer if what I described is not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point. And if it's not, we need to figure out just what the heck you believe we've been doing via scientific claims.
  • Paralogism
    17
    If global skepticism holds, then we have no more reason to believe in scientific claims than any other type of claim. An assertion about feldspars would be based on faith.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    If global skepticism holds, then we have no more reason to believe in scientific claims than any other type of claim. An assertion about feldspars would be based on faith.Paralogism

    Again, the question is about what you understand scientific claims to be. The ultimate aim of this is to explain why certainty/proof or nothing is a false dichotomy.

    So your understanding of scientific claims has been that they're faith claims?
  • Paralogism
    17


    Not within its own epistemic framework, but they still aren't able to ultimately justify themselves. I'm not knowledgeable enough to give my opinion on just what it is they *are* within that framework, so why don't you tell me what you think?
  • sime
    1.1k
    Well, I suppose if one can't coherently suggest that something might be wrong or mistaken. I'm not sure what that could be. You say 'logically speaking', but even the laws of logic can't be assumed against the commonsense argument.Paralogism

    Formality makes no difference here. The soundness of an argument refers to external validation.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    I'm not knowledgeable enough to give my opinion on just what it is they *are* within that frameworkParalogism

    I explained this already. They're knowledge claims. Knowledge doesn't imply certainty or proof.

    Why do you think that claims "need to (ultimately) justify themselves"?
  • Paralogism
    17
    I'm trying to download this article from JSTOR because I think it deals with what I'm talking about, but it insists that I have to pay $15 despite claiming that I have 'six free articles' for registering an account. Is there a way to avoid paying or do I have no choice?

    EDIT: Got it through Sci-Hub.



    What does external validation mean and how is it relevant?



    I explained this already. They're knowledge claims. Knowledge doesn't imply certainty or proof.

    No, but it requires justification, which I'm arguing is incompatible with fallibility.

    Why do you think that claims "need to (ultimately) justify themselves"?

    They need to be justified, period. I didn't say that claims in general need to be able to justify themselves (that would be circular), I said that scientific claims rest upon an underlying epistemic framework that itself needs justification.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I don't know what you're arguing. So you think that the belief "I exist" can be false?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    You're just stating that no belief can be known with certainty - that about any belief we can raise a doubt about its truth, yes? But that's false.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    We can talk about the Feldman paper, although it's a lot to go into, and I don't agree with much of it, including that I think the premise is rather incoherent. If you know something there's no need to "know that you know," anymore than if you're running, say, you need to "run that you run." "Knowing that you know," among other things, seems to suggest that there is, or needs to be, something certain about knowledge, and as I've expressed a few times, that is a mistake.

    On my view, by the way, both justification and truth are subjective, although particularly with truth, it takes a while to explain why I think that. Again, it's a lot to get into, in the sense of needing to talk about a bunch of different issues to get there.

    On my view you can know, at time T1, that P, where either some other person at time T1, or where yourself at time T2, declare(s) P to be false. (At time T1, however, you'd of course assign "true" to P.)
  • Paralogism
    17
    On second thought, this is Pyrrhonism, not Academic skepticism. It does point towards a simple 'suspension of all beliefs' rather than any true declaration of doubt.

    Although this commonsense approach is intended to use as few suppositions as possible, it does make some. Even though we can only declare a sensation to be 'directly experienced' through the use of some kind of assertion (which seem inherently fallible), qualia seems to be quite a different thing than belief. So I might be presupposing, incorrectly, that qualia is in some way subject to 'mistakeness'. I don't know; either view looks hard to parse.

    The only approach I've uncovered that seems to have a chance at actually refuting this might be Duncan Pritchard's claim that underdetermination - which is essentially my core supposition - is false, or somehow inapplicable (in his words: a contentious philosophical claim masquerading as common sense). So I guess I have one promising avenue to explore, at least, even if underdetermination feels basically true to me.

    Thanks to everybody who responded.



    If you know something there's no need to "know that you know," anymore than if you're running, say, you need to "run that you run." "Knowing that you know," among other things, seems to suggest that there is, or needs to be, something certain about knowledge, and as I've expressed a few times, that is a mistake.

    A big problem with philosophy is that it very easily becomes a meaningless semantic game. When I talk about 'knowing that one knows', I'm not asserting that it is possible to know something yet not know that I know it. Rather, the statement is used to highlight the infinite regress of justification which fallibilism creates (how do you know A, and how do you know your explanation for why A is true, etc). The incoherence is the point.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Rather, the statement is used to highlight the infinite regress of justification which fallibilism creates (how do you know A, and how do you know your explanation for why A is true, etc). The incoherence is the point.Paralogism

    There's no infinite regress, though.

    If you ask me, for example, how I know that I have orange juice in the refrigerator, I can say things like, "Because I put it in the refrigerator yesterday and I only drank one glass," or "Because I'm looking at it right now." Those are the sorts of things that fuel knowing something. It's nonsensical to add another "know" to that, a la "how do I know that I know that."

    So there's no regress. There's just the evidence (which can be empirical, logical, intuitive, etc.) for what is known.

    What some people do is express a concern for certainty, though. "How can you be certain that you have orange juice in your refrigerator?" There's no need to worry about certainty, though. That's a neurotic red herring. Knowledge need not be certain to be knowledge. Again, the whole nut of scientific knowledge, for example, is that it's NOT certain. If it were certain, if it were not open to revision, it wouldn't be science in the first place.
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