Oops, I guess I forgot to talk about the Problem of the Critereon last blog entry. I’m way too tired now, but it goes something like this:
Mysics and bigots, etc. lay claim to more knowledge than they actually have, and skeptics claim to know nothing or a lot less than they actually know. In other words, most people are in between these two extemes. But how can we determine, with certainty, that we have true knowledge?
There are only two options:
1. Either we take examples from the world and say “this is knowledge” (particularism).
OR
2. We use a method to determine in what cases we have knowledge (methodism).
Here’s the problem: both of these cases beg the question - they assume something as the groundwork and then go from there. For instance, in case 1, which is particularism, some examples are used arbitrarily as examples of true knowledge. So whether the knowledge is 2+2=4 or the statement “Unicorns exist”, both are equally true, since there is no method for determining which is true.
So it looks like case 2 is our solution! But wait! There is a method for determining if a statement is true, but where did this method come from, and how do we know it’s better than another method? The only answer is that we know the method yields good results. That is, it has worked to determine the validity of something before and has succeeded, based on the result. But this leads us back to particularism - how was is determined that the result, which validated the method used to arrive at that result, was true?
Here’s a metaphor Descartes used - there are apples in a barrel. Some apples are bad apples, but we must have a way of determining the good apple from the bad apples. So the first approach, particularism, would arbitrarily select the bad apples from the bunch, and would not justify why they are bad apples. And it wouldn’t need to, since this is the starting point of the philosophy of particularism: selecting sure examples of true knowledge.
On the other hand, suppose that we have a method for determing which apples are bad and which good. Using this method, we divide the apples. But how do we determine if the method works? We must look at the result, which is the apples, and we must know, independent of the method (since it has already sorted them), if the apples have been divided up into a group of bad apples and a group of good apples. In other words, this just leads back to particularism.
(Robert?) Chisholm, in his essay I had to read for Epistemology - The Problem of the Critereon - favors the particularist approach. It seems that if we want to attain anything better than skepticism we must just accept that particularism begs the question, but take a common sense view to things, which seems most reasonable, and what normal people do anyway. For instance, if I see a computer screen in front of me, chances are I am NOT mistaken. It is possible that my senses are deceiving me (i.e. Matrix-style), the skeptic would say. But as long as there is no reason not to doubt it, I should hold this as a true belief. This is what Chisholm would say, and I’d agree with him. The philosophy of common sense has a great appeal that has been rejected because of what philosophy has traditionally been - i.e. independent of culture and common sense, to arrive at a more certain view of truth. However, in this quest for a more certain view of truth, philosophers have constructed entire systems that duel it out in Academia, which society at large feels no effects from it.
Again, like I’ve already said in a previous post, something is wrong with philosophy today.
“The simple believe everything,
but the clever consider their steps.
The wise are cautious and turn away from evil,
but the fool throws off restraint and is careless.”
Proverbs 14:15-16
