The main features of Cartesianism are:
(1) the use of methodical doubt as a tool for testing beliefs and reaching certainty.
– A Companion to Epistemology, p 57
It seems odd to me that keiths, who denies the possibility of certainty, is a champion of Cartesian skepticism.
A Cartesian skeptic will argue that no empirical proposition about anything other than one’s own mind and its contents is sufficiently warranted because there are always legitimate grounds for doubting it.
… A Cartesian requires certainty.
– A Companion to Epistemology, p 457
keiths is not a Cartesian Skeptic.
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
keiths is not a Cartesian Skeptic.
Is it even possible to be Cartesian Skeptic?
Alan,
What consideration?
Alan,
When a commenter blatantly contradicts himself, as KN has done, it is perfectly appropriate for someone to point that out. This is The Skeptical Zone, after all.
You apparently disagree. Why?
KN,
Some mistakes you’ll want to avoid repeating as you reformulate your position:
1. You started out thinking that Cartesian skepticism was impossible, even posting an OP to that effect:
The Impossibility of Skepticism
After some debate, you had to retract that claim.
2. You then claimed that Cartesian skepticism, if not impossible, was at least inconceivable. After some debate, you abandoned that claim as well.
3. You still didn’t understand Cartesian skepticism, mistaking it again and again for the claim that the senses are not veridical. I hope you’re finally past that one — I was getting tired of reminding you of what Cartesian skepticism actually holds.
4. You’ve acknowledged that you cannot refute Cartesian skepticism, yet you’ve claimed that you actually know that you’re not being fooled in a Cartesian manner. Those positions are incompatible. If you can’t refute Cartesian skepticism, then you don’t know that you are not being fooled.
5. Above, you wrote:
That’s a basic error in modal logic. You don’t know that none of the disjuncts hold in the actual world, so you cannot claim that your perceptions are veridical in the actual world.
That has nothing to do with modal logic, Jill. It is simply a repetition of your unsupported claim that you cannot know anything unless you also know that there is no chance that you are mistaken. What you don’t get is that most people disagree with that unsupported claim. And it doesn’t make any difference how often you repeat it.
It is simply the restatement of a stale view that is inconsistent with anybody knowing his or her own name. Most people think they know their own names, except maybe when they’ve been hit over the head or drugged or something. They can make distinctions that you can’t. For you, nobody EVER knows his or her own name. Not at 2, not at 22, not at 98. It’s a whack view that you have posted your support for maybe 1000 times now, without ever giving one shred of evidence for it.
Why do you think, contrary to what nearly every other English speaker in the world means by “know” that the fact that one might be wrong prevents someone from knowing something? Please don’t simply repeat that they might be wrong–everyone understands (indeed, KNOWS that) already. So WHAT? Napoleon’s Ghost might now be reentering Patrick’s body too. Who cares?
KN says nothing hinges on it. That’s true, but I think it’s secondary to the fact that you are simply rewriting English. “Know” already means something. And without changing that meaning, it’s quite clear that people sometimes know that there are cows in front of them and sometimes don’t. They sometimes know their names and sometimes don’t.
You want your own language, Katie?– learn Esperanto or something. Don’t fuck up English.
It’s reasonable for anyone who wishes to point out perceived errors and so on.
Of course I don’t object to someone disagreeing, querying or correcting (especially when that person has professional expertise in a subject under discussion. I thoroughly embrace such exchanges, honestly I do! (Notice the disjunct?)
I dislike the way you casually insult fellow commenters and the supercilious, arrogant commenting style you often adopt.
I’ve asked before why you think it is an effective way of convincing people towards your point of view. My perception is that it achieves the opposite. But as you’ve never said, my assumption could be wrong and you achieve what you intend.
First “veridical” – now “disjunct”! What next? 🙂
The English language isn’t constrained by your personal limitations, Alan:
veridical
2:
not illusory : genuine <it is assumed that … perception is veridical — George Lakoff>
dis·junct
noun
disˈjəNGkt/
1.
LOGIC
each of the terms of a disjunctive proposition.
No indeed! Who could I communicate with if I insisted on my own private language?
KN:
keiths:
walto:
Sure it does, walto. We’re talking about the possibility that KN is being fooled and that his perceptions aren’t veridical. KN concedes that there are possible worlds in which he is being fooled. What he fails to establish, and in fact cannot establish, is that he is not in one of those possible worlds.
No, I don’t require certainty, as I’ve explained many times.
I’ve provided an argument for it that neither you nor KN (and certainly not Alan!) can refute. You have nothing but a faulty intuition to offer. Logic trumps intuition in philosophy and science.
I don’t. Remember, I don’t demand absolute certainty. I think it’s unattainable.
I don’t change the meaning of “know” or “knowledge”. I honor the existing meanings, and it’s precisely because I honor them that I conclude that knowledge of the external world is impossible. Including the fact that there is a cow in front of you.
I get that you don’t like that, and that it clashes with your intuition, but again, logic trumps intuition. Your intuition is faulty.
Consider the Sentinel Islander scenario. Do you understand that the islander is being fooled, and do you see where his (and KN’s) logic fails?
Alan,
I see you’re still having trouble with the notion of a thought experiment.
Alan,
You have a rather extreme “mote and beam” problem.
I’ll address it later today in Noyau and provide a link to it from this thread.
But all I have done is to say that I see no consequences to your stance. “Not even wrong” is my view.
keiths,
I have no idea how you are defining “certainty” (you haven’t “explained” even once, let alone “many times”–you simply assert you’re not requiring it). But you DO insist that for any statement S, if there’s any imaginable cuckoo “disjunct” that can’t be ruled out that is inconsistent with S, then no one can know S. If you don’t want to call that insisting on certainty, fine, but I note that you’re changing the meaning of that word too. It’s a fun game, Lonnie, changing English words to suit your weird pleasures, but it’s not an “argument.” It’s just translation into Knownothingese.
Absolutely! I keep being distracted by imagining what the reality for humans living on North Sentinel Island must be like. We have no idea what their language, social structure, beliefs are like. But luckily the Indian Government have instituted a protectorate to prevent incursion by the curious.
He’s provided no arguments whatever. He just likes to repeat himself.
Well, there was the point that it provided sources for film plots.
Alan Fox,
The thing is, there actually ARE arguments for skeptical positions along the lines Lisa likes. He/she just hasn’t made one yet. Could even look them up if s/he’s curious, but I guess, it’s really satisfying to just repeat assertions, link to them, etc. Maybe makes one feel that one is doing more than just hollering.
I mean, I don’t agree with those arguments; as I’ve said, I think the position is simply too far afield from what everybody means by “know.” But such arguments do exist–even if in a zillion posts on a half-zillion threads on this board, nobody has provided one to date. Just repetitious drivel.
walto,
Remember our discussion of likelihood, in which you kept getting confused and insisting that a likelihood had to be a numerical probability estimate? You might want to revisit that discussion, because that is one of the many places in which I’ve explained why I don’t regard absolute certainty as necessary for knowledge.
The confusion there is and was on your end, Darla. Quantifying is irrelevant. There is no probability that works for you. You want to RULE OUT an infinite number of whacky disjuncts. So imagine each one has a probability of no more than .1– still no knowledge. What is an example of a piece of knowledge you think that human beings can have, which is consistent with anything but absolute certainty, given your whack view? You’ll find there’s nothing in between on your view–(Again, you can’t make distinctions every other English speaker can.)
Sorry, Madge, but your entire conception does require certainty–just like FMMs. It’s equally needy.
Alan,
Yes, and you’re wrong about that, as I’ve explained.
Those repetitions aren’t actually “explanations,” Brenda. That the world may be different from how it looks to us is consistent with common-sense views too. One doesn’t actually need to be nutty.
You’re flailing, walto.
walto,
No. If the disjunction as a whole were unlikely enough, a knowledge claim would be justified.
The problem is that no one can gauge the likelihood.
keiths,
We’d have knowledge, Um….wait….except that we wouldn’t. A knowledge claim both would and wouldn’t be justified.
Hahaha. Beautiful!
As I’ve said before, Sherlock. That’s a fine mess you’ve made!
Fixed.
walto,
Do you have an argument to go with that assertion?
Sure, Bartholomew. One of my fave posts of yours EVER!
keiths:
Alan:
Yes, you have a hard time separating the relevant from the irrelevant in a thought experiment. That was the problem here:
Alan:
keiths:
walto,
I asked if you had an argument. Do you?
Here it is again more slowly, Bumpky:
It’s both a justified knowledge claim, except that, since the likelhood can’t be gauged, it’s not.
I really love that. I think I’ll put it again.
It’s where you’ve ended up, Norm. One big contradiction.
walto,
Where did you get the idea that it’s a justified knowledge claim?
Oh for Christ’s sake, Milt. Just substitute any disjunction that meets your “unlikely enough” criteria into a knowledge claim (maybe along with “I see a cow”)
(If there can’t be any such disjunction, then you ARE requiring certainty.)
Taking you at your word that you’re not requiring certainty, we now have something which is both a “justified knowledge claim” and something that is not knowledge since ‘the likelihood can’t be gauged.”
Where did I get it? Haha From you, Jessie. To wit:
That, Josh, is a contradiction.
walto,
There is none. We can’t gauge the likelihood, remember? That means that a knowledge claim isn’t justified, which is rather the point.
You imagined a contradiction where there was none.
If there can’t be any such disjunction, then you’re requiring certainty.
You pick, Josephine. Contradiction here, or contradiction with about 1000 posts in which you’ve said that you don’t require certainty for knowledge.
ETA: And, as you well KNOW, I pointed that out above. Mining my posts like that is pukish behavior, Lori.
Both wrong and an asshole to boot! That’s our Keithera.
walto,
No. If we could say that the disjunction were almost certainly false, for example, that would be enough to justify knowledge claims.
The problem is that we can’t gauge the likelihood that the disjunction is false, so we can’t justify knowledge claims based on the assumption that it is.
ETA: What’s with the bogus quotemining charge? Try to get a grip, walto.
keiths,
Oh Lem, you must know you’re climbing all over yourself at this point. It wouldn’t need to be certain if we could gauge, but we can’t gauge. We’d be justified except that we aren’t. We could know without certainty if only hell would freeze over. Is this a ‘position’ or just a bad joke?
And btw, you KNOW that was an illegitimate quote mine. You don’t need to PLAY dumb.
walto,
I don’t doubt you and it illustrates what I was saying about Keiths and his ability to turn every exchange of view into an argument. Maybe in amongst all that invective there is something worth considering. I liken my knowledge of the world to an oil slick; wide but shallow. It could certainly do with deepening in many areas. But I’ve ceased to take his comments seriously and I think that is rather a shame.
walto,
I’ve shown you that my position is not contradictory and that I don’t regard certainty as a requirement for knowledge. Do you have a counterargument?
Make your case.
Alan,
That is a shame. A wiser person would consider what his opponents had to say.
I do that with your comments, though you probably wish I wouldn’t, since I end up finding so many errors in them.
If you mean by ‘shown you’ asserted falsely, then yes, you have indeed, Bilbo.
I’m still awaiting your counterargument, walto.
That’s true. It just doesn’t mean what you think it does.
It doesn’t mean that we should adopt agnosticism about the external world (external to what?). That would be the case if knowledge required certainty. But we all agree that it doesn’t.
The fact that I cannot know whether or not I’m a brain in a vat, plugged into the Matrix, or being tricked by a malign genie doesn’t tell me anything interesting or important with how I — or anyone — should improve our epistemic practices, or how we should inquire better (or worse).
It doesn’t tell us what might be of interest — say, how we can distinguish between science and ideology, how to explain what is wrong with confirmation bias, or the harms involved in epistemic injustice or epistemologies of ignorance.
I finished reading Solitary Confinement. At one point she compares the mental illness produced by solitary confinement — where people lose the ability to keep track of the difference between objective reality and subjective perception — to the feigned ignorance of the First and Second Meditations.
I don’t see how keiths’s Cartesian skepticism can accommodate the distinction between ‘normal’ persons who experience a shared world along with other cognitive agents and cognitive agents who have become unmoored from objective reality due to sensory deprivation and social deprivation.
If we want to have a theory of real knowledge that allows us to understand epistemic injustice and epistemic violence, then we had better have a good epistemology. If epistemology is upended by skepticism, then so much the worse for that kind of epistemology. Epistemology is still necessary for critically engaging the world in which we live, move, and have our being.
Yet another reason to doubt that keiths is in fact a Cartesian Skeptic.
When you see TSZ surrounded by armies, know that she is near, right at the door!
This from someone who has as their position a claim that is a question-begging non-sequitur and who refuses to admit it.
Here he is, repeating it again in this thread:
Any knowledge claim based on the veridicality of our senses is illegitimate, because we can’t know that our senses are veridical.
Is that supposed to be an argument, or is it just a declaration of faith?
I haven’t seen an actual argument yet. If you’re aware of one please post a link.
The respectful and obedient subjects of your kingdom, my lord. Their ears are dutifully inclined to your every utterance.
But his flailing is a thing of beauty. Yours is an offense. It offends the senses.
LoL. Almost certain is a myth. Figure it out, genius.