Friday, October 12, 2018
When the Walls Come Tumbling Down
Descartes realizes that some of the beliefs he thought were true turned out to be false. In the pursuit of knowledge he seeks to tear down his previous beliefs and build them up again upon a firm foundation. In other words, he is engaged in a foundational project, searching for a class of beliefs that themselves are not in need of justification in order to justify his other beliefs. But is this quest a misguided one? Do such beliefs exist? If not, does that mean that knowledge is impossible? Or is there some other way to justify our beliefs?
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Descartes is right in believing that a consistent foundation is necessary in order to continue his argument, however, such a strong and convenient base does not exist and, in the cases where it gets close to, it is never perfect (can’t be fully proven). When trying to justify any one of our beliefs, from scientific to religious, there is always something that it roots from: a firm idea isn’t created off of speculation alone. As an example, I wholeheartedly believe that I am tired right now and, the reason that I think this is true is because I trust my senses, and I know what it feels like to be tired. Whether unconscious or not, everyone has a reason for believing something: some reasons are just more thought out or methodical than others. Descartes rightly sees this and searches for a way to build up the same arguments step by step, proving each point along the way in the hopes of creating a perfect argument. However, this is where he goes wrong. Descartes, in an attempt to justify his entire argument, thinking that what he says will apply to all else, falls into his own trap of assumption. Before explaining what I mean by this, I will create a simple scenario with two people who hold different beliefs. The first person is an atheist that believes that, although we haven’t proved it yet, the creation of the universe is scientific, and is due to the big bang (and we just haven’t found all the facts yet). On the other hand, the second person is religious and believes that, although it can’t be scientifically proven, we already know what created the universe: God. Now, for the purpose of relating the scenario to our case, let’s say that these two beliefs, one scientific and one religious, are foundational beliefs. Even though these two beliefs come from completely different angles, neither can be ‘proven’ through hard fact, since they are both at the base of the two people’s ideals. It is for this reason that neither the scientific approach, nor the religious approach, is any more valid than the other (since they both rely on something that we ‘just don’t know [yet]’). How this relates to Descartes assumption is that: Descartes assumes, but never really proves, that there is a perfect base. This is seen when Descartes starts to argue for the existence of God, but falls into the trap of using a conclusion as reasoning. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that Descartes is wrong in believing that a good God exists, it is the same as thinking that the universe was created scientifically, but it just hasn’t discovered yet. It is for this reason that I believe that arguments can be somewhat proven, but only if two peoples foundational beliefs align: there is no one foundation that explains everything therefore a perfect argument is impossible. [or, at least, that’s just what I believe]
ReplyDeleteFoundationalism and skepticism are both misguided quests—both systems of belief are either unpractical and illogical.
ReplyDeleteLet’s begin with skepticism. The main problem with skepticism is the notion that all science henceforth discovered must be proven not beyond reasonable doubt but instead as completely undoubtable, which is ridiculous. The reason is that this notion disregards probability as a domain we weigh when comparing two different things, whether claims regarding what is true or options we must weigh. If, for example, I were to flip a coin in front of you right now, you would justly think that it would either land heads or tails. This comes from two observations I make. When I predict the future I obviously make assumptions based firstly from my general observations and theories of other similar things (for example I’ve seen things fall to the ground so when I flip a coin it too will fall), and secondly my specific data driven observations about that specific thing (so the past 100 times I’ve flipped a coin I’ve seen it land either heads or tails). It is from these two observations, general pattern recognition and specific data collection, that we determine the outcomes of events like flipping a coin or even theories of knowledge like skepticism. It is for this reason that I predict when I flip a coin it will either land on heads or tails; from past observations and specific data I’ve collected I can conclude that flipping a coin will most probably result in either heads or tails instead of spontaneously turning into a cat or some other odd occurrence. In this sense we can make a probabilistic argument and say that the most true theories of knowledge, or those beliefs which approach knowledge, are the ones that are most likely true. The world seems to have some order including fundamental laws that don’t change day to day, and our current theories of science seem to estimate these relatively well, so there is a sense in which we can say science is the closest thing to knowledge we have. This counters skepticism in two ways.
First, as a functioning theory of the world, science seems to predict outcomes with higher probabilities than skepticism, which would say either that everything happens chaotically without order or that we cannot accurately determine outcomes with our current flawed understanding. Given that science predicts the future and outcomes of natural phenomena better than any other theory, we have to currently accept it as knowledge or truth.
Second, if we do not accept science but still say that there is some order to the world, the best way to obtain knowledge of the world is not to sulk in despair knowing that we might not know anything, and instead actively participate in trying to either prove scientific theories wrong or contribute to scientific theories.
As a brief third aside point as to why skepticism is wrong, we need look no further than Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor tells us that among two conflicting interpretations about the world we must look to which theory makes less assumptions, and the theory that what appears to be reality is really just an illusion makes one more assumption that the theory that what appears to be reality is reality.
Zayne, I think you forgot to talk about skepticism because of a word limit or something like that. I figured I should help you out:
DeleteNow concisely to foundationalism. Foundationalism a wrong belief system primarily because it too makes the assumption that foundational beliefs must be 100% undoubtable. For this reason, we can cross apply my three arguments for why skepticism is wrong, and find that foundationalism must also be wrong. A more unique rebuttal however, is that one simply cannot extrapolate from a few undoubtable facts to an accurate system of the world. I stated this in my previous blog comment, but Descartes does not get from the fact that he exists to the fact that science theory is knowledge, since the clear and distinct rule is contradictory at worse and ambiguous at best. Furthermore, my specific endorsement of science as a basis for knowledge is not based on the assumption that science is foundationally solid and 100% undoubtable, but rather that science is the most practical system we currently have as a basis for knowledge. It is for this reason that foundationalism, while not as lost a cause as skepticism, is an unnecessary burden to operating with knowledge in the world.
Since we have practical knowledge from science and none from both skepticism and foundationalism, neither of these two systems are effective theories regarding knowledge.
Epistemic foundationalism is a worthwhile pursuit because it has the potential to solve for the infectious nature of false ideas. To understand this, consider the idea we discussed in class of a piece of bad fruit in a fruit basket. Without inspecting each piece of fruit, it is impossible to know which piece of fruit is rotten. Without this knowledge, the single bad piece of fruit has the potential to infect all of the other pieces of fruit and ruin the whole basket. So many of our ideas are connected to and depend upon one another. As such, it is dangerous to allow the single piece of fruit to infect the whole basket. Consider, for example, the belief that you are ill. You trust the doctors to inform you of your illness but without doubting their knowledge of medicine and anatomy, it is highly possible that they are incorrect. In an extreme scenario, perhaps they are controlled by Evil Genius who wishes to harm you. However, with foundationalism, we can slowly begin to trust their judgement. Beginning with what we do know, that we doubt and therefore think, we can disprove notions of malice and gain a better understanding of what we can believe. Even if Descartes’ foundationalism is flawed, see example of Cartesian Circle, he still advocates for a very prudent path of doubting everything so as to prove anything.
ReplyDelete