A Dialogue:
Ivan- Nobody, I tell you, knows anything.
Vladimir- But you know that means that you yourself being a “body” do not know anything.
Ivan- So?
Vladimir- Therefore you don’t even know that you know nobody knows nothing.
Ivan- I am not saying that I know that nobody knows anything so, in fact, what I said stands because, nobody, including me, knows anything.
Vladimir- So what are you saying? That you believe that nobody knows anything?
Ivan- Yes of course. Now, like me, people believe that they know, but if you analyse what they say they know and how they came to know it, what you find is that they don’t know, just like me, but think they know, believe they know.
Vlad- You’re wrong mister and I can prove it.
Ivan- Try it.
Vlad- I was just fixing up some pasta. I now see some steam coming from the saucepan filled with water and therefore the water I had set, I know for sure, is boiling.
Ivan- How do you know, because in the past everytime you saw steam coming from the saucepan filled with water on a hot surface the water was boiling?
Vlad- Yes.
Ivan- But that was the case in the past. How do you know that this time it is in fact boiling?
Vlad- Hold on (goes over to the stove and looks inside the saucepan). I see the water bubbling.
Ivan- So, again how do you that the water is boiling?
Vlad- Because that is how boiling water looks like when it is…well, boiling.
Ivan- You see water bubbling, but that does not mean that the water must be by necessity boiling. Soda looks like water and it had bubble though it does not boil.
Vlad- Are you saying that it is soda? But I had set water to boil.
Ivan- Someone could’ve changed it while you were not looking.
Vlad- Fine! Fine!! Fine!!! How about this: I’ll put my hand inside the boiling water. Arrgh!!!
See…it is all reddish and the skin is falling off. That is hot water; I know that that is boiling water and here is the proof!!!
Ivan- That was unecessary really. That is actually acid, not boiling water. I did not know before but now that I saw what happened, I believe that this is acid. See, I did try to swap the water with some soda to make a point. I saw no sodas in the fridge and so I was checking in your pantry and saw this odd looking contained that said Caution Acid. But how could I know that it was indeed acid? Why, you might had already used the acid and refilled the contained with soda. So I took it and put it in the saucepan.
The moral of the story is that I don’t have to suspect that I don’t know anything. I believe in all directions. I believe that I know and I can believe that I don’t know. I may indeed know what I think I know, but there is always the possibility that I could be wrong…possibility, not probability. I may treat what I believe I know as a certain fact, but my actions on a belief do not make my believe absolutely certain, but demonstrate that they are certain for me.
Claims that nobody knows anything come from the standard of prescision we chose to measure our knowledge. Doubt, if pursued, can be introduced into any measure of knowledge we lay claim to. No logical necessity, no physical law stands against ouir ability to imagine possibilities and doubt. If the Total sceptic does not exists, it is not because it is an actual impossibility, for I could doubt to my hearts desire every bit of knowledge I, you or anybody lays claim to, if i really want to. The only consequence I wish to avoid is death. Life makes it necessary that I take my beliefs as knowledge, as certain, even, if under Humean scrutinity, my certainty and knowledge evaporates.
It might be that life carries on on faith, and that faith, religion, is but a development of a natural self-preservation. We live by faith and not by sight can be a motto for the entire species, this is true. But consider that there are differences as well between men. Let’s agree that the total sceptic is a beast that does not exists, or at the very least exists for a very short time before it dies of it’s own doubts. What you have left is the academic sceptic and the saint.
The difference between St Paul and Bertrand Russell is not that they had to take something on faith, but in how lasting their faith must be. For St Paul, what he takes on faith, is not alterable. In this, Ucci, he is a s extreme as the Total sceptic. Russell, or someone similar, say, a scientist, keeps many beliefs, but most are provisional. They are alterable by the observations he makes and how efficient his faith is in explaining what he experiences. Many things are kept for another day; many beliefs change and must change because even the universe, in some cases this beliefs exist, must also change. Some still hold on to the idea that the speed of light is 186,282.397 miles per second, as if this was always the case and forever will be, but some now question even this faith. Such is a staple of science, but not of religion. God does not go from eternal to finite and back to eternal, for the christian. same with omnipotence.
In the end religion is plaged by many propositions that are beyond the reach of empiricism. God is X and Y and Z by conceptual necessities, not because we’ve observed this or that to be the case. Worse, some claims of religion make it impossible for other claims to be impossible of being manifest and thus paradoxes develop. The academic adjust his beliefs at this point. The religious must ignore the observations or work the older belief into the new conditions by creating new scripture to account for the discrepancies. Rather than saying:“Well, maybe was not after all omnipotent” they have to say: “No, he is omnipotent but there is a heaven, in which, those who suffer now, will be rewarded”. Like the Total sceptic, the Total believer hides his head on the ground, ignores all evidence in front of him and continues to consider what is possible so that what he believes should not change.
Suspecting, as opposed to the sceptic, that I know everything and implying that everyone else knows everything, leaves his with no position to account for differences in what they say to know. One then says that he knows that the Purple Wombat is the creator and that he is a wicked little marsupial. The other that he knows Jesus Christ created everything and that he is goodness itself. Since their knowledge go against one another the academic rightfully knows that they can’t both know and that one simply believes that he does, or even both. From here, the Total sceptic offends both and declares knowledge impossible. And because in both cases the object in question is imprevious to thrid party verification, in this regard, no one knows anything.
If the Total believer tells me “I know everything”, then I must listen to what he says about the state of my own knowledge, which is implied, but because often he will disagree with what I know, he too, like “the total skeptic is properly ignored.”