[b]
This is an essay I wrote for a Third Year Philosophy course but also a part of my drift from a fairly rigid epistemology based on justified, true belief to the admission of the necessity for a certain epistomological faith and the grounding of knowledge in the ‘reasonable sure’ rather than the absolutely certain.
Summary - there is no absolute certainty and the quest for it is one heck of a waste of time
ie i don’t know if I’m even that gone on the debate on criteria of foundational knowledge any more!
(I’m generalizing a wee way beyond the essay there!!!)[/b]
Discuss Chrisholm’s treatment of Scepticism in general, and the “problem of the criterion” in particular.
I shall suppose, therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me.
(Descartes)
In the first chapter of his Theory of Knowledge Roderick Chrisholm sets out to deal with what he terms “The Sceptic’s Challenge” (1989 p. 1-6). Firstly he considers global scepticism: Descarte’s demon or the idea that we might be a brain in a vat or trapped in a virtual “Matrix” style world. He advances two counter arguments to this all-encompassing scepticism. Firstly arguments around perceptual illusion and other sceptical forays are usually presupposed on pretty advanced scientific knowledge. Nowhere is this clearer then with Hillary Putnam’s “Brain in a Vat” which requires a brain to be kept alive, interfaced with a computer and then fed with sufficiently detailed inputs to mimic an entire life experience. Can the sceptic be permitted to question that we know anything but then assume such sophisticated scientific know-how in building their case? Their grounds can certainly be questioned though Chrisholm admits that this is certainly not a complete refutation of scepticism.
Secondly he represents scepticism as a negative epistemology which questions the justification for beliefs but advances no actual beliefs of its own. It is almost parasitical on positive claims. “The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief.” according to Wittgenstein (1969 aphorism 160.)
Chisholm also shifts the burden of proof to the sceptic arguing that they can offer us no reasons for doubt:
… “Are there positive reasons for being skeptical about the possibility of succeeding in the epistemic enterprise?” The answer seems to be that there are no such reasons. (ibid p. 4).
Chrisholm’s method is to set global scepticism aside and examine ordinary beliefs routinely accepted as true or false to see if a general criterion for belief can be built from them and I think he has to be allowed this if we are to proceed. Whatever method you use if global scepticism is correct then the quest for knowledge comes to a full stop.
Chrisholm claims we must be permitted two assumptions to begin our inquiry. Firstly that we are rational beings with some idea about what it is for a belief to be justified. (ibid p. 5) Secondly that we can “provisionally withhold belief” in the justification of this first assumption and proceed as if it were true though it remains unjustified at this point. (ibid p.6) This withholding of judgement till the results are in is acknowledged by him as a potential weakness in his approach that will be pounced on by Kaplan (1991) as we shall see.
As soon as we begin questioning our everyday beliefs we immediately run into another form of scepticism; the criterion problem. This problem is an old and important one in philosophy as he points out. Following Chrisholm (1989 p.63) lets look at how it arises in Descartes’ Meditations as he answers one of his “learned objectors”; Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi objects to Descartes:
… why you did not make a simple and brief statement to the effect that you were regarding your previous knowledge as uncertain so that you could later single out what you found to be true. Why instead did you consider everything as false, which seems more like adopting a new prejudice than relinquishing an old one? (Quoted by Newman 2005)
Descartes replies with his famous representation of a person’s beliefs as a barrel of apples. Some apples are false and bad - some are good and true. As you don’t want the rotten apples to infect the good ones you must try to separate them. As he says:
Now the best way they can accomplish this is to reject all their beliefs together in one go, as if they were all uncertain and false. They can then go over each belief in turn and re-adopt only those which they recognize to be true and indubitable (Descartes 1996 p. 63 GSM II 324)
Apples, of course, can easily be separated by colour, shape, appearance of bad spots etc – but how do you do this with beliefs? You must come up with a mental sorting mechanism i.e. a belief to separate good ones from bad ones – but how do you know that this belief itself is sound? This circularity is the essence of the criterion problem.
There are three possible solutions for Chrisholm.
Firstly we can agree with the sceptic that it isn’t possible to continue; there is no way out of this circle.
The second approach is one he calls Methodism which begins with a criterion for belief and then tests it out on particular beliefs to refine it.
The third one as we have seen is his particularist method of examining every day beliefs to try and build criteria from them. Chrisholm (after C I Lewis see Kaplin 1991 p. 133) represents this as a process of drawing out what is implicit in our day to day beliefs and making it explicit.
For Chrisholm methodism starts too broadly and arbitrarily; a broad generalisation being surely the worst starting point for a careful epistemologist (ibid p. 67) For example Hume’s empiricism is a method which only accepts the immediate evidence of your senses and only certain narrow inferences beyond that. Chrisholm points out on page 69 that no matter how much Hume asserts that we have access only to certain sensations at any given moment – we know pretty well that we have hands and are sitting in a room and so on. He quotes G.E. Moore to the effect that if a theory implies that we don’t see a hand in front of us then “so much the worse for the theory.” (ibid) Particularism in starting in everyday beliefs makes less initial assumptions.
Mark Kaplan’s 1991 paper “Epistemology on Holiday” though comes up with a powerful thought experiment which appears devastating for Chrisholm. While you are waiting in a Doctors waiting room a man suddenly jumps up and accuses you of being a traitor to your country. When you demand an explanation he says that he doesn’t have to give any justification at this time as he is a devouted disciple of Chrisholms. You appeal to everyone else in the room. However, in a brilliantly Kafkaesque move, they are all busy reading the second issue of Chrisholm’s “Theory of Knowledge” and have taken to heart his idea that you can hold a belief to be temporarily justified while you examine it to find out criteria by which it can finally be found justified or unjustified.
Can Chrisholm be defended against this scary thought experiment?
I believe there are some counter arguments that might work. Firstly the pause we need to find a criterion for a belief holds only for as long as an arm chair examination of that belief would take. So within a minute or two of the accusation – well before the police arrive on the scene anyway it must be justified or withdrawn. Secondly an accusation of this nature seems to go well beyond beliefs such as I have two hands or that I’m typing this essay on a computer. I think the FBI and the likes would use a term like “intelligence grade information” i.e. knowing detailed movements of a suspect seems to go way beyond everyday background beliefs.
At this point it is tempting to go even further and say that actually Kaplan has no right to quite literally bring “the philosophy class” into the everyday world. But, of course, this is the very point he is trying to make! He thinks this is precisely what Chrisholm and other epistemologists do when they look for justification for ordinary beliefs. By Kaplan’s account all that is needed for a belief is simply to meet all “legitimate methodological challenges” (Kaplan 1991 p.152) I think we have to allow him his argumentative strategy but that Chrisholm can certainly use the defence of the everyday nature of the beliefs involved and the speed at which they could be justified as outlined above.
As argued previously Chrisholm’s suspension of global scepticism is necessary in order for him (or any “foundational” epistemology) to proceed at all. As far as the criterion problem is concerned his “proof of the pudding is in the eating” approach seems reasonable to me.
What ever approach is taken to this problem the starting point is always arbitrary and an epistemological “faith” is needed to set out (as Chrisholm himself puts it 1989 p.5).
Surely it is less of a leap of faith to build criteria upwards from everyday beliefs then to start with broad criteria which are refined by applying them to individual beliefs. I believe that Michael O Rourke (2005) is on to something in his contention that we must be allowed to cook our “pudding”; our criteria for justification without the sceptic challenging the legitimacy of each ingredient or step in the cooking process.
Once the pudding is cooked and the criteria are in then the dispute can begin