It is not all that infrequent here at TSZ that some opponent of theism or ID makes a statement that makes me scratch my head and wonder how it is possible that they could make such a statement. This OP explores a recent example.
Cartesian scepticism, more impressed with Descartes’ argument for scepticism than his own reply, holds that we do not have any knowledge of any empirical proposition about anything beyond the contents of our own minds. The reason, roughly put, is that there is a legitimate doubt about all such propositions because there is no way to justifiably deny that our senses are being stimulated by some cause (an evil spirit, for example) which is radically different from the objects which we normally think affect our senses.
– A Companion to Epistemology, p. 457
Imagine my surprise when I found keiths (a self-identified “Cartesian Skeptic”) appealing to the senses.
The big difference between moral and factual judgments is that the former funnel down to a single “point of failure” — the conscience — while the latter do not. That doesn’t mean that the latter can’t be wrong, of course, but it does raise the bar for error.
…
Of course, even if you do all the things I listed in order to confirm that your monitor is there, you still don’t know (without the asterisk) that it’s there. The Cartesian demon might be fooling you, or you might be an envatted brain.
But at least your judgment depends on multiple sensory channels rather than on a single faculty like the conscience.
Is keiths assuming there’s only one demon and that demon can only stimulate one of his senses at a time?
Of course, noting the inconsistency of keiths, I felt compelled to speak up.
…what makes you think that multiple sensory channels is better than one, or better than a conscience?
While we still await a response from keiths (who always defends his claims) a good buddy of keiths, Richardthughes, took up the challenge.
consilience (The same reason science is better than the bible)
Wikipedia article on Consilience
The principle is based on the unity of knowledge; measuring the same result by several different methods should lead to the same answer.
[Patrick, if you need help with those links let me know. Don’t just claim that they do not exist.]
For a “Cartesian Skeptic”, how is it that multiple sensory channels is better than “a single faculty like the conscience”?
How does “consilience” come to the rescue of the Cartesian Skeptic? Consilience is based upon the unity of knowledge, and it would seem to me that there must be something that bring about this unity. How is the “consilience” of the senses brought about? Perhaps Richardthughes is just confused. Maybe keiths will come to the rescue of his wingman.
Mung,
Well, at least one thing you learned from the last time is that “Cartesianism” isn’t interchangeable with “Cartesian skepticism”.
Walto, take note.
Can you provide an instance of where I claimed that the two were interchangeable?
Care to address the OP?
Do you deny that you have self-identified as a Cartesian Skeptic?
Why do you therefore extol the virtues of the senses over the mind?
I would have thought that consilience is a part of pragmatism, whereas Cartesian skepticism has to do with truth.
Well, now you ought to know better. 🙂
Mung,
You confused “Cartesianism” with “Cartesian skepticism” in that OP:
You screwed it up, Mung. No one is surprised.
Now, do you think you can hold your bladder until I get around to responding to this OP?
Rather, I quoted from two different articles, and you took that to be confusion on my part.
You mean you intend to offer something that isn’t just a diversionary tactic from the real question?
That wasn’t the question. The implication of your accusation was that I claimed that the two were interchangeable.
Where did I claim that the two are interchangeable?
Your response was to link to an OP in which I never claimed the two are interchangeable.
Sometimes bluffing isn’t the best strategy.
Why should I trust my senses about what my bladder is telling me? Should I rely on the consilience of all my senses?
I already fell for that gambit once, when you claimed that you could demonstrate that Christianity is false. Never again.
keiths:
Mung:
No, you confused “Cartesianism” with “Cartesian skepticism”.
You actually thought that I couldn’t be a Cartesian skeptic because I deny the possibility of absolute certainty:
The article clearly says that it is the Cartesian who requires certainty, not the Cartesian skeptic, and that for the skeptic there “are always legitimate grounds for doubting” an empirical proposition.
Certainty is required by the Cartesian, not by the Cartesian skeptic. Obviously.
It’s quite a feat for you to read that article — and quote the relevant parts — while nevertheless managing to mangle the author’s point so badly.
Leave it to Mung.
Mung,
Regarding this OP, your mistake is simple: you’re failing to distinguish knowing from knowing* and treating the amalgamation as all-or-nothing.
Under Cartesian skepticism you might be perceiving the real world, or you might be perceiving a virtual world that is presented to you by the programmers of the simulation in which you reside (for one example).
If you are in the simulation, your perceptions are of the virtual world, not the real world. Nevertheless, it is still better to have accurate than inaccurate perceptions of the virtual world; after all, your well-being is very much dependent on what goes on in that world.
For example, starvation is unpleasant in a virtual world. Even if you somehow knew that the food was virtual, that wouldn’t make your hunger go away. Virtual worlds still matter to their inhabitants.
The upshot is that at least two kinds of misperception are possible in a Cartesian scenario: one in which the sensory information is interpreted incorrectly, so that even the virtual world is perceived incorrectly; and one in which the virtual world is perceived correctly but the real world, being largely decoupled from it, is not.
Ideally, there would be no misperceptions at all, but the latter kind is preferable, because such misperceptions don’t interfere with our pursuit of goals within the virtual world.
With all of that in mind, reread my comment from earlier today:
Here’s another exchange with William that illustrates his problem:
William:
keiths:
How do you know you’re not just dreaming those? Furthermore, a number of us are still waiting for you to unpack ‘know*’ in some way that doesn’t just mean ‘unless I’m wrong.’
Okay – the bit that’s for me:
“…what makes you think that multiple sensory channels is better than one, or better than a conscience?
While we still await a response from keiths (who always defends his claims) a good buddy of keiths, Richardthughes, took up the challenge.
consilience (The same reason science is better than the bible)
Wikipedia article on Consilience
The principle is based on the unity of knowledge; measuring the same result by several different methods should lead to the same answer.”
Let’s imagine a robot, Mungbot, who is like us but a bit easier to describe the internal workings of.
His eyes see flames
His ears hear crackling
His nose smells smoke
His skin feels heat being radiated
His memory banks give the following associated with “fire” for each of these senses:
eyes 90%, ears 60%, nose 70%, skin 55%
His cognitive faculties, rightly or wrongly, uses Bayes’ theorem to work out if there is a fire. (please note cognition is downstream from sensory input)
What odds does Mungbot think there is a fire, RealMung?
it amazes and amuses me how those who purport to use “information theory” can’t understand how to use it to reduce uncertainty.
Richardthughes,
Good post. I do think it’s incumbent on those who claim that, e.g., our evidence of value is our emotional responses to various propositions to explain how justification may be increased or may fail. Everett Hall made the following remarks on that subject in his book Our Knowledge of Fact and Value:
[I’ve just given the outlines here–there’s more detail in the book.]
You might still be waiting. I’ve given up hope.
Plus bref: fairness!
ETA, it’s not an exclusively human trait.
Fairness “falls out of” game theory. It’s just a good long term strategy.
Societies that promote good long range strategies last longer than ones that don’t. Selection at work.
I’ve never personally met anyone who was argued into being a good or fair person. I’ve met a lot of good people who seemed to want a rationale. But reason seems to be after the fact.
http://phys.org/news/2011-05-robots-evolution-altruism.html
walto:
KN:
Says KN, who on June 12th wrote this:
So not only did you understand the distinction, you agreed with it!
keiths,
When I wrote:
All that means is that no item of empirical knowledge is an item in all possible worlds. But whoever thought it was?
To the best of my understanding, the philosophers who have held that something must be true in all possible worlds in order to count as knowledge are those who have equated knowledge with certainty. (Descartes, Locke).
I myself think (based on my reading of C. I. Lewis and Wittgenstein) that knowledge and certainty are best regarded as contraries. I would be happier talking about ‘pragmatic certitude’ or ‘perceptual faith’ than ‘certainty.’
My primordial awareness of my own embodied perspective in the world, and that I share this perspective with other subjects who are also embodied, some in ways similar to mine and others that are quite different, is not an assertion about the actual world or any or all possible worlds that one could endorse or deny. It is the transcendental background or framework in terms of which any endorsement or denial of any assertion makes any sense at all.
It is not a claim about the world but a part of what Heidegger called the worldliness of the world — how the world-hood of the world is correlated with intentional acts that take worldly objects as their content.
There is nothing in my view to support the idea that there is a meaningful distinction between “knowledge” and “knowledge*”.
In previous exchanges, keiths seems to have asserted that skepticism about the external world follows from
(1) We can conceive of a possible world, W1, at which all subjective takings (how things are taken to be) are both (i) identical in phenomenal content to takings in the actual world (“our” takings) and (ii) systematically misrepresenting the causes of those takings. (If all experiences are always caused by an evil genius, but none of those experiences are of an evil genius — since they are experiences of tables and trees and dogs and cats — then none of those experiences are representings of the evil genius.) In other words, for the inhabitants of W1, phenomenal content and representational content have come apart globally. (The class of all worlds at which there is a global disconnect between phenomenal content and representational content can be designated ‘deceptive worlds’.)
(2) We have no epistemic resources for determining whether or not the actual world belongs to the class of deceptive worlds.
Hence (3) we have no epistemic resources for determining whether or not phenomenal content and representational content have come apart globally.
There seems to be some connection between this and the knowledge/knowledge* distinction, though it is difficult to make out.
Perhaps the idea here is that “knowledge” is justified true belief that takes phenomenal content as a reliable guide to representational content, whereas “knowledge*” is justified true belief that takes phenomenal content ‘as is’, bracketing all representational purport?
I have trouble seeing how that could be right.
First, keiths’s argument for skepticism about the external world relies on a pretty demanding version of modal realism. On modal realism, all logically possible world are as real as the actual world. By contrast, some philosophers think that the actual world is the only world there is, and possible worlds are just a convenient device for making explicit the commitments embedded in our modal vocabulary. On the latter, more ‘pragmatist’ view, there’s no sense in which possible worlds are real, and hence there’s no threat of our being unable to determine whether we are living in a deceitful world.
So one worry is that keiths’s skepticism about reliability of the senses requires a metaphysics of possible worlds that strikes me as extravagant.
I also have a worry about the implications of keiths’s claim that phenomenal content and representational content can be teased apart. It seems to me that the role of representations is precisely this: to detect and track environmental regularities and irregularities just well enough for successful action.
If phenomenal content and representational content are globally severed, there’s no way to understand the relation between perceiving and acting. I see a bus coming at me, and I get out of the way, and it misses me — but how? Maybe God did it! Maybe I’m in the Matrix! Or I’m being tricked by Sauron! Who knows? All I’ve got to go on is a regular succession of phenomenal contents, and their ontological basis is epistemically opaque to me (and indeed to anyone).
This undermines every kind of realism, including scientific realism, and every ontology that depends on scientific realism, including physicalism.
One of the many features of keiths’s view that puzzles me is his insistence that one can both a phenomenalist in epistemology and a physicalist in ontology. I really do not think that makes sense. Phenomenalism in epistemology entails an instrumentalist interpretation of scientific theories, which in turn undermines any overly demanding metaphysics based on scientific theories.
Conversely, physicalism in metaphysics requires an epistemology that accounts for our knowledge of reality — which turn requires that one keep the door closed to the possibility of global disconnect between phenomenal content and representational content.
But since — as far as I can tell — the door is open only if one already accepts a form of modal realism that is both ontologically extravagant and unnecessary for explaining the semantics of modal vocabulary. And since we don’t need realism about possible worlds to understand the semantics of modal vocabulary, we don’t need to worry about possible worlds that undermine the relation between phenomenal content and representational content.
keiths,
Nice dodge, brenda,
KN,
First you said you understood my know/know* distinction and had no objections to it.
Then you said you had “given up hope” that I would explain it.
Which is it?
Do you understand the distinction, or not?
Do you object to it, or not?
I’m finding it difficult to keep up with your flip-flops on this topic.
We get it, Clancy. You know your own name unless you’re wrong about it because of one or more of an infinite number of defeaters that you can’t begin to enumerate, each of which has some probability of being true that you can’t begin to determine.
That’s what knowing* your own name means.
It’s an awesome theory….unless it isn’t. I express that by saying it (and you) are awesome*.
I do understand that no item of empirical knowledge is an item of empirical knowledge in every possible world, because of the logical possibility of deceptive worlds.
I do not understand why you think the know/know* distinction is worth making.
I do understand that you think that it is logically possible that phenomenal content is globally severed from representational content.
I do not understand why you think that this logical possibility warrants skepticism about the senses.
I do understand that you are committed to both phenomenalism in epistemology and to physicalism in ontology.
I do not understand how these are consistent.
I do understand that you endorse the following epistemic principle:
I think that is mistaken.
Rather, I think the following:
What we’re saying, when we affirm or deny that the actual world belongs to K, is the exact same thing as saying that we are justified (or not) in affirming or denying P. The possible worlds lingo is a restatement of what is warranted or not.
But that means that our inability to tell whether our world belongs to K cannot be a reason for affirming or denying P. The two assertions are semantically equivalent, which means that we cannot — on pain of tautology — use one as a reason for the other. It is logically possible that we are deceived, but that is no reason to believe that we are deceived.
This is just wrong. Take your example. It’s a virtual world. Starvation might actually be pleasant in that world. You assume without reason and against experience that virtual worlds must be like the real world.
Presumably keiths would say that since any virtual world could be indistinguishable from the real world, we could never tell if our world is real or virtual.
That’s trivially true.
For the life of me I cannot understand why keiths thinks that there are any entailments of a trivial truth. “If P, then P” does not entail Q.
KN,
What you now describe as “a trivial truth”, you recently described as resting “upon a grave and profound error.”
Could you please make up your mind and stabilize your position?
You’ve said that Cartesian skepticism is wrong. You’ve said that it’s right. You’ve said that it’s right, but with Very Bad Consequences that compel us to deny it. You’ve said that it’s right, but with no practical consequences at all.
Why not fight it out with yourself and let us know when you’ve settled on a stable position that you’re able to defend?
KN,
You need to specify that K includes all possible worlds in which P is true. Merely specifying that P is true in all worlds in K is insufficient.
It isn’t. It’s a reason for acknowledging that we don’t know P (or not-P). If we don’t know whether our world belongs to K, we don’t know whether P is true.
I gave an analogous example earlier:
Likewise, if it’s possible that our world does not belong to K, and we have no way of judging how likely it is that the world does (or doesn’t) belong to K, then we’re in no position to claim that the world does (or doesn’t) belong to K, and thus in no position to claim to know P (or not-P).
.
Who’s “us”?
…and the consequences are…?
Alan,
Definitely not you.
Remember, you were the one who argued that while the real world could surprise you, no simulation ever could.
1) You wouldn’t be talking ‘consilience’ if it weren’t for E.O. Wilson’s 1998 book of that title. Maybe at least include him/it in the framing of the package?
2) Right off the top “theism or ID” = Strike 2. Obviously it’s possible for a Christian to be responsibly and even unemotionally anti-IDism, even the kind of Christian Mung could eventually be. He simply chooses to be an ideologist for the DI’s kooky kinetics, Axe/Behe Olympian heroes of principle in a largely protestant battle against low-tier ‘devils’ of unbelief.
3) Calling what Mung wants to hang as ‘Cartesian Skepticism’ is less than 1/4 true. There are other terms available with stronger & more exact import. But oh, no surprise, at how much self-asse(sse)d ‘skeptics’ like his ‘demon’ argument & keep returning to that trough!
The DI is largely ignorant of Descartes (evidence from personal quizzing of them in Seattle) and instead accuses Darwin (as usual) of ‘mechanistic philosophy’. Mung might try exiting with Sorokin’s underappreciated sensate, ideational & idealistic spectrum. Or try Machamer & McGuire’s “Descartes Changing Mind” (2009). Save poor Descartes in his grave from the slippery intentional trickery of both skeptics (infidels) and superficially ‘evangelical’ IDists!
To get clearer into what Mung’s gripe is about at this miserable ‘zone’ of skeptics, Elizabeth Liddle absent, from Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy,
“I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than theological argument. For although it is quite enough for us faithful ones to accept by means of faith the fact that the human soul does not perish with the body, and that God exists, it certainly does not seem possible ever to persuade infidels of any religion, indeed, we may almost say, of any moral virtue, unless, to begin with, we prove these two facts by means of the natural reason. And inasmuch as often in this life greater rewards are offered for vice than for virtue, few people would prefer the right to the useful, were they restrained neither by the fear of God nor the expectation of another life; and although it is absolutely true that we must believe that there is a God, because we are so taught in the Holy Scriptures, and, on the other hand, that we must believe the Holy Scriptures because they come from God (the reason of this is, that, faith being a gift of God, He who gives the grace to cause us to believe other things can likewise give it to cause us to believe that He exists), we nevertheless could not place this argument before infidels, who might accuse us of reasoning in a circle. And, in truth, I have noticed that you, along with all the theologians, did not only affirm that the existence of God may be proved by the natural reason, but also that it may be inferred from the Holy Scriptures, that knowledge about Him is much clearer than that which we have of many created things, and, as a matter of fact, is so easy to acquire, that those who have it not are culpable in their ignorance. This indeed appears from the Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xiii., where it is said Howbeit they are not to be excused; for if their understanding was so great that they could discern the world and the creatures, why did they not rather find out the Lord thereof? and in Romans, chapter i., it is said that they are without excuse; and again in the same place, by these words that which may be known of God is manifest in them, it seems as through we were shown that all that which can be known of God may be made manifest by means which are not derived from anywhere but from ourselves, and from the simple consideration of the nature of our minds. Hence I thought it not beside my purpose to inquire how this is so, and how God may be more easily and certainly known than the things of the world.” http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jwcwolf/Papers/des-med1.htm
This is the same guy/gal who has insisted to FMM on countless occasions that s/he is a fallibalist who doesn’t think knowledge requires certainty.
Oh, Franci/es, how confused you are. And how awesome*
How about you respond to any of the points I’ve raised instead of caviling about what you perceive to be my inconsistencies?
keiths:
Not quite. Not knowing whether our world belongs to K is equivalent to not knowing whether P is true. The conditional here therefore amounts to “if X, then X”. That’s not a reason for endorsing X.
To paraphrase: if P is possible, but we have no evidence for P or against P, then we ought to be agnostic about P.
That much seems right, taken all by itself.
But in the case of the reliability of the senses — to go back to my earlier statement in this iteration of our debate:
This perceptuo-pragmatic certitude is a transcendental condition for the possibility of asserting or denying any claim about the actual world. It’s not something that really makes sense to deny, in the way that we might deny that the Loch Ness Monster exists.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant remarks that “It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence things outside us (from which we after all get the whole matter for our cognitions, even for our inner sense) should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that
if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof”
In other words, Kant thinks that it is a problem for philosophy that no one has been able to come up with a strict proof of the existence of the external world (even though all of our awareness of ‘the internal world’ depends on it).
In response, Heidegger remarks, “The ‘scandal of philosophy’ is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again” (Being and Time).
In case it is not yet completely obvious: in this case I side with Heidegger. The ‘existence of the external world’ is not something to be proven, but rather it is a primordial givenness of experience, and the problem with philosophy is that it rationalizes this primordial givenness, makes it seems like an assertion to be evaluated (but from what perspective could such an evaluation make any sense?), and in doing so, ultimately contributes to the alienation of ourselves from our embodied existence.
Kantian Naturalist,
As many many philosophers have noted (Descartes notwithstanding) we know the “Moorean facts” much better than we can ever know any philosophical arguments that conclude that we we don’t or can’t know them. If we think we have an argument to the effect that we don’t actually know that there are cows, we can infer straightaway that the argument is no good. If we don’t know stuff like that there are cows, we really don’t have any idea what we or anybody else means when we or they say they know this or that. It’s just gobbledygook at that point.
That’s what Gibby is apparently too awesome* to understand.
Right. My only reservation would be to endorse Wittgenstein’s point against Moore about the ‘grammar’ of the terms ‘knowledge,’ ‘doubt’, and ‘certainty’. The ‘Moorean facts’ are not ‘known’ precisely because it makes no sense to doubt them.
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t think it matters so much whether we concentrate on “hinge propositions” like “I have two hands” or anything else we’re commonly said to know–e.g., the US women’s field hockey team lost to Germany yesterday; I once went to elementary school; it’s cloudy out. Whatever. If we want to go along with Witt and say we DON’T actually know such hinge propositions as that, e.g., we have two hands, (because, e.g., it doesn’t make sense to try to adduce evidence for them), that’s fine. It doesn’t matter.
Definitely not. So who is “us”?
Did I? I certainly find the world that I perceive as real surprises me all the time. That’s my strongest personal argument against solipsism. Well that and kicking rocks. I don’t recall claiming that a simulation could not in theory be good enough to fool a brain in a vat, I just find the whole concept pointlessly trivial. You on the other hand thinks it produces good movie plots. Each to his own.
Cavilling is Lorelei’s stock-in-trade. Also insulting. And providing links to past caviling and/or insulting remarks she’s made as evidence that her current (identical caviling and/or insulting) remarks are true.
And she still manages to have the time and inclination to offer free psychological advice from a uniquely pathological perspective.
She’s awesome* in all those ways!
KN, walto,
It isn’t “caviling” to point out the contradiction between saying that Cartesian skepticism is “trivially true” versus saying that it “rests upon a grave and profound error”. That’s about as fundamental as it gets.
Nor is it “caviling” to point out that when you claim that the acceptance of Cartesian skepticism would have grave consequences, and later you claim that it would have no practical consequences at all, you are contradicting yourself.
When you contradict yourself — particularly on the central topic of a thread — don’t be surprised when someone points it out. You would do the same if your opponent’s position were contradictory.
This is The Skeptical Zone, not The Double Standard Zone.
In your case, Jenny, it’s the Confused Zone. Awesome* too though.
keiths:
Alan:
Yes. See here and onward.
That’s a poor argument. Even relatively simple simulations are capable of surprising their creators, as anyone in my line of work can tell you. Have you done any work with simulations?
That’s another poor argument. See
Thus I refute Johnson
KN,
Nothing about our awareness of the external world — “primordial” or otherwise — requires that our perceptions be veridical.
The brain-in-vat scenario, for example, is perfectly coherent, and there is nothing about the BIV’s “primordial awareness” of seeing a cow in front of him that makes it true that there is a cow in front of him. The cow is virtual, not real.
You’ve already granted that such Cartesian scenarios are logically possible and that the argument for Cartesian skepticism cannot be refuted. We’ve also seen that your logic leads to a false conclusion in the case of the Sentinel Islander.
So the choice is between
a) rejecting Cartesian skepticism based on bad logic that is known to lead to a false conclusion; or
b) embracing Cartesian skepticism based on a good argument that you cannot refute.
Why would any rational person choose (a) over (b), and how does “primordial awareness” make any difference to that choice?
That is one big mass of confusions, Lancelot. I keep explaining them to you, and you keep not trying to understand anything!
Incidentally, I’m guessing you have never actually seen a virtual cow. Only cows.
Sorry. 🙁
This, Buffy somehow seems to know (without an asterisk). And you know what? I think it’s false!!
As a follow on to my earlier response to keiths, since when did hunger become one of the senses?
And once again keiths, you’ve conflated sense and perception.
Fixed that fer ya walto!
I think I shall begin using liar* and hypocrite*.