Certainty

So the last essay really leads to the question, So then what is certainty.

And what the philosophy student has to remember is that it isn't a simple answer in philosophy, it is more what philosophy is really about. Maybe its called epistemology, but it seems, once you get into it, to be the fundamental problem.

The trend is to deny certainty. What was the empiricist conclusion but the denial of most of the basic certainties. Hume suggests that we cannot actually know reality, cause or identity (including self). From here critical philosophy takes off. Kant of course makes the largest statement and, for his part, he seems to be trying to solve the problem. He seems to be suggesting, contra Hume, that certainty can be attained by reason.

What people have forgotten of course, thanks in part to Kant and Mill, is Scottish commonsense. If you read Reid and even Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) before him, you get the impression that they are doing something very different from what became mainstream skepticism.

Mainstream skepticism comes in a variety of packages but it seems to be represented by individual truths (as opposed to social and integrated) done in private by academics that are caught (sometimes to the dismay of the philosopher, Hume lamenting his integration of the notion of self, which is to say his bundle theory) in an inescapable contradiction. Hume might have been aware of it but many don't seem to be. The contradition is simply that they state absolutely that there is no absolute. Which is silly. But even moreso, if somehow we are all floating in a vacuum of philosophical skepticism and continued deferrment of certainty, it stands to reason that we would, in fact, have nothing to talk about and no way to communicate. Kant of course suggests that it is possible to be caught within a system where the limitations of the human mind come together in a psuedo-reality where time and space are things contributed in identical patterns by individuals in such a way that a mass mind-dependent phenomenal world comes to be.

I know that was a lot. But for the most part, the Kantian idea is a side-note. Mainstream skepticism which, I believe, has resulted in our fragmented world, has trumped Reid.

What the commonsense realists believed is that innate senses imbue us with the ability to believe. This sense of belief is automatic and shared and consistent such that when we perceive an object in reality we know it is true instantly without consideration. We don't need Hume's theories to know that when we believe in a stable self it is beyond speculation and what we think of as certainty. The demand for more, the scientific method applied in reverse to pre-science, has no effect on our true and automatic beliefs in reality, cause, self, and even basic moral premises. The games philosophers play when they place these demands has pull only in tight, esoteric circles where the import is fabricated. When these philosophers leave their offices, they behave as if the belief is important in the ordinary affairs of life. There is no connection, according to Reid, between their skepticism and their behavior in real life. They in fact believe as everyone does automatically and that is why they continue to talk and write and convince and live.

What does this mean for certainty. For philosophy purposes all we can do is include the commonsense ideas back into the mix. I cannot tell you conclusively that all of these things represent a basic formula for fundamental certainty. I mean, I can, but that is not really the proces in which we are interested. We want the full picture. Skepticsm is what it is. It is a voice to represent a pre-conceived notion that self-delusion is one of the basic human states. Skepticism is a system to protect one from too much certainty. But it does not trump certainty. If philosophy is not looked at as a balance between knowing and not-knowing, if it is not an open system where both are maintained, it devolves into contradiction and silliness (as it has).

In fact, nobody really takes it seriously. There is really no place for a professional philosopher and the phrase can actually be seen as an oxymoron today. How did this happen? How did the fundamental method of teaching thought become a joke? This is of course another issue, but I can tell you it is related to certainty and the removal of the voice of reason (the voice of balance) from the canon.

I was in the departments. Even those deeply entrenched find no solace in the subjectivity, the decadence, the contradictions (religious philosophy?), etc. They claim that the entire business is entertainment or mystification. The only outlet is to convert it back into science and make it about "applied" efforts, like environmentalism, or ethics exclusively, which rely on science. It is true that I never met a happy philosopher, but it must be said that some people, living compartmentalized lives, are seemingly happy when they are not in the role of philosopher.

The way people talk about certainty (that it cannot be obtained socially or collectively) shows us that society has lost the foundation, the underpinning that comes from a very basic balance between knowing and not knowing. There can be no conception of not-knowing (ie skepticism) without knowing!

Reid points out: Newton was very clear, he could explain gravity without showing its cause. This statement, though about physics, contains a very important warning for philosophy (philosophy of science?).

Notes:

Reid and Newton

"During the 18th century philosophers reflected upon the question how is it that we are able to attain certain knowledge about the world—that we are able to establish such knowledge about the natural world was demonstrated in the preceding century by the success of the Scientific Revolution. A substantial part of philosophical attention was directed towards this epistemological conundrum. The new science provided a profound source of methodological inspiration for philosophers." (Standford EP)

"It is commonly assumed that Thomas Reid advocated a Newtonian approach to the study of mental phenomena. I argue to the contrary that there are few good philosophical reasons for such a characterization. Reid is highly critical of attempts to model the study of mind on the model of physics. Typical features of physical theory that Reid rejects for the study of mind are measurement of quantities, multi-layered axiomatic structure, and any analogy between mental and material phenomena. The only similarity there is between the study of material phenomena and mental phenomena is that both, according to Reid, are concerned with laws of nature. But quite unlike physics, in which laws serve as the backbone of theory (description, explanation), laws have an almost negligible part to play in Reid’s treatment of mental phenomena. A main reason for this, I suggest, is that most operations of the mind typically involve exercise of active power, that is, we take part in them as agents, we engage in them." (Callergard)

"Almost all the words, by which we express the operations of the mind, are borrowed from material objects. To understand, to conceive, to 14 Inquiry, p. 216. Intellectual Powers, p. 452ff. 37 Robert Callergård imagine, to comprehend, to deliberate, to infer, and many others, are words of this kind; so that the very language of mankind with regard to the operations of our minds, is analogical." (IPM, p. 54)

"Reid, in the course of his critical investigation of the theory of ideas, establishes that there is a law-like connection between certain sensations and the concepts and beliefs they evoke. Whenever we have a specific sensation, say of hardness, this immediately evokes the thought of the existence of a particular property of the body touched. The relation between the sensation of hardness and the concept and belief of hardness is, Reid claims, a law of nature. The sensation is a ‘cause’ and the conception and belief that arises is an ‘effect’. The relation is a ‘constant conjunction’ and the truth of its holding is a contingent fact about the way we happen to be constructed. This is the way we happen to be “hard-wired” and it is conceivable at least that we might have been hard-wired differently, like the sensation of sweetness leading us to think of the property of the hardness of a body. It is not true then that the conception and belief of hardness is necessarily triggered by that particular sensation, since there might have been a different hard-wiring." (Callergard, "Remarks on Thomas Reid´s allegedly Newtonian Science…")