Pragmatic Certainty and the Dissolution of Skepticism

Classical Skepticism and the Philosophical Predicament

• The Appearance-Reality Gap

  • Empirical science demonstrates that human sensory experience does not directly perceive mind-independent external reality, but rather the interaction between external environmental phenomena and the biological perceptual apparatus.
  • Naive Realism: The intuitive position that sensory perception provides direct, unmediated access to physical objects exactly as they exist in reality. This position fails because it ignores the appearance-reality gap.
  • The Orange Blaze Vest Example: Deer lack visual receptors for perceiving the color orange. The color orange is not an inherent property existing out in the external physical world; rather, it is a psychological sensation generated by the human visual system processing light wavelengths reflected off whatever is out there.

• Locke's Representationalism

  • Acknowledges that perceptual appearances are caused by an external world, but maintains that humans cannot experience that world directly.
  • Primary vs. Secondary Qualities:
    • Primary Qualities: Physical properties (such as atomic structures, subatomic entities, geometry, and mass) that exist independently of any perceiver. Direct experience of primary qualities is impossible, though physical science posits and calculates their properties.
    • Secondary Qualities: Subjective sensations (such as colors, sounds, tastes, and textures) produced when external stimuli (such as photons) interact with human sense organs. Secondary qualities represent external objects without being identical to the objects themselves.
  • Perceptual Variations: Entities possessing different sensory organs interacting with identical primary qualities would experience entirely different perceptual worlds (e.g., visual differences in individuals with color blindness).

• Berkeley's Idealism

  • Questions the necessity of assuming unperceivable physical matter exists at all.
  • Resolves the appearance-reality gap by eliminating mind-independent physical reality, asserting that reality consists exclusively of perceptions and immaterial minds.
  • Esse est percipi: Slogan meaning "To be is to be perceived."
  • Perceptual Continuity: Things maintain continuous existence because God holds all sensations constantly within the divine mind and feeds them to finite human minds.

• Solipsism and Radical Skepticism

  • Solipsism: The epistemological position that an individual can only be certain of the existence of their own mind.
  • Variants of Radical Skepticism:
    • Descartes' Evil Demon: A hypothetical omnipotent deceiver manipulating all thoughts and sensory impressions.
    • Brain in a Vat (BIV): A contemporary scenario where a disembodied brain sits in a laboratory vat hooked up to wires and electrodes, experiencing a complete hallucination of life produced by electrical impulses.
    • The Dream Scenario: The assertion that one cannot definitively prove at any given moment that they are awake rather than dreaming.

• The Philosophical Predicament

  • Option 1: Prove that specific beliefs regarding an external, mind-independent reality are true with absolute certainty.
  • Option 2: Concede that knowledge beyond subjective sensory experience is impossible, accepting the logical possibility that no mind-independent reality exists.

The Mechanics of Real Doubt vs. Philosophical Doubt

• Dissolving vs. Answering Skepticism

  • Rather than attempting to answer the radical skeptic's challenge on Cartesian terms, the pragmatist approach dismisses the problem as stemming from a faulty initial starting point for philosophy.
  • Historical Starting Point: Represented by depictions such as Solomon Koninck's $400$-year-old painting of a scholar sitting isolated in a quiet study, contemplating global doubt.
  • Alternative Starting Point: Real-world human activities where global skepticism cannot arise (e.g., being in a military firefight or experiencing childbirth). If a question cannot arise in actual life practices, it is not a genuine philosophical question.

• Foundational Philosophical Maxims

  • Charles Peirce: Asserted that philosophy must not pretend to doubt in theoretical reflection what is never doubted in one's heart or practical life.
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein: Observed that providing grounds and justifying evidence comes to an end; this end is not an immediate self-evident truth, but human action underlying language games.

• The Language Game of Doubting

  • Language Game: A Wittgensteinian concept denoting a complex interplay of words, rules, norms, and human actions.
  • Rule 1: Plausible Reasons: Real doubt requires a specific, positive, plausible reason. Universal or arbitrary doubt for its own sake violates the grammar of real doubt. The rules of doubting are learned socially through practice, much like learning native grammar without explicit instruction.
  • Rule 2: Resolvability in Principle: Legitimate doubt must possess defined conditions or occurrences under which it would be successfully resolved.
  • Rule 3: Non-Global Scope: Doubting a specific claim presupposes certainty about other background facts. One cannot doubt everything simultaneously.

• Step-by-Step Multiplication Example ($2,600 \times 4$)

  • Calculation: Calculating tax liability requires computing $2,600 \times 4 = 10,400$.
  • Doubt Stage 1: A critic suggests a wrong button was pressed. Resolution: Re-entering $2,600 \times 4$ into the calculator yields $10,400$ again.
  • Doubt Stage 2: The critic suggests the calculator hardware is malfunctioning. Resolution: Repeating the calculation manually using paper and pencil yields $10,400$.
  • Doubt Stage 3: The critic suggests a manual arithmetic error occurred. Resolution: Verbalizing the math step-by-step:
    • $4 \times 0 = 0$
    • $4 \times 0 = 0$
    • $4 \times 6 = 24$
  • Doubt Stage 4: The critic asks how one knows $4 \times 6 = 24$. One could count four groups of $6$ coins to reach $24$ total coins, but the critic would then question visual acuity, short-term memory, or counting ability.
  • Conclusion: The doubter is not playing the language game of real doubt, but is teasing, pulling legs, or playing an artificial academic game, because they refuse to accept any empirical resolution.

• Three Case Examples of Resolved Doubt

  • Case 1 (Visual Identification): Randy, who has poor eyesight, asks if an object is a tree. The response "I know it is a tree because I see it clearly and am familiar with it" resolves the doubt.
  • Case 2 (Person's Location): Terry asks if Jerry was home yesterday. The response "I know she was because I spoke to her" resolves the doubt.
  • Case 3 (Architectural History): Kelly asks if a portion of a house was a later addition. The response "I know it was because I asked the owner" resolves the doubt.

Fallibility, Knowledge Systems, and Neurath's Ship

• Reconceptualizing Knowledge

  • Practical knowledge in the real world does not require Cartesian indubitability.
  • Fallibility: A belief can be legitimately categorized as knowledge if justified under societal standards, even if it later turns out to be wrong (e.g., if the house owner lied about the addition, the prior claim to knowledge was still justified when made).

• The Web of Belief

  • Empirical knowledge is a coherent, mutually supportive network of revisable parts rather than a foundational deductive system built upon indubitable premises.

• Otto Neurath's Metaphor of the Ship of Knowledge

  • Knowers are analogous to sailors on the open sea who must rebuild their ship plank by plank, never able to dismantle it in dry dock to reconstruct it from scratch with optimal materials.
  • Origins of Beliefs: Belief networks are acquired from families, religious institutions, schools, neighborhoods, books, media, and direct personal experiences.
  • Process of Revision: To examine, repair, or replace worn-out or obsolete planks (beliefs), sailors must stand firmly on other fallible parts of the existing vessel. One cannot question or reconstruct all beliefs simultaneously on the open sea.
  • Descartes' Inconsistency: When Descartes attempted global doubt, he presupposed and relied upon the stability of language, communication, and sanity; without assuming these background frameworks, he could not have formulated or written his arguments.

Pragmatic Certainty and Embodied Social Agency

• Pragmatic Certainty Defined

  • An unstated, practical, non-propositional stance that makes all explicit thinking and linguistic activity possible.
  • Unlike propositional knowledge (which can be stated in declarative sentences and requires empirical justification), pragmatic certainties are implicit in human behavior.
  • The Chair Example: When rising from a chair, an individual does not verify or formulate the proposition "I have $2$ feet"; they simply stand up.
  • Examples of Pragmatic Certainties:
    • Possessing a physical body.
    • The continuous existence of an external physical world.
    • Object permanence (e.g., hands do not vanish when placed beneath a table).
    • The existence of other human minds with similar experiences.
    • The continuous operation of physical laws (e.g., gravity).

• The Extreme World-Shift Scenario

  • Hypothetical Scenario: Houses turn into steam without cause, cattle stand on their heads and speak comprehensible words, and trees transform into human beings and vice versa.
  • Analysis: If verified (ruling out insanity or substance ingestion), background certainties would disintegrate, throwing humans into disarray.
  • Key Epistemic Distinction: Although previous pragmatic certainties would now be proven wrong, individuals were not mistaken in holding them previously. There were no cognitive errors, flaws in reasoning, or valid reasons for doubt prior to the event.

• The Tripartite Human Subject

  • 1. Embodied: Humans develop a physical body prior to birth and master sensory-motor navigation long before acquiring language or abstract concepts. Intellectual activity takes place against this somatic backdrop.
  • 2. Social: Human beings are raised within communities. Language, concepts, and societal practices are communally transmitted, rendering solipsism practically impossible.
  • 3. Agent: Humans demonstrate agency through physical action in the world prior to and during any process of formal reasoning.

Synthesis and Philosophical Conclusions

• Rejection of Cartesian Skepticism

  • Global skepticism assumes the subject could be a lone, disembodied spectator.
  • Because language and reasoning require embodied social agency, a lone disembodied spectator could neither formulate nor understand skeptical questions.
  • Propositional knowledge rests entirely upon non-propositional pragmatic certainties.

• The Goal of Philosophy (Wittgenstein)

  • Philosophy unties conceptual knots in human thinking.
  • Because the knots are complex, the untying process requires detailed argument, but the result is a simple return to common-sense reality.
  • The untied knot brings philosophy back to its starting point: a mind-independent physical world exists prior to and independently of human ideas.

Group Discussion and Study Prompts

• Prompt Set 1: Plausibility of Radical Skepticism

  • Evaluate how plausible it is that reality is an electrical simulation or that one is a Brain in a Vat.
  • Discuss whether the classical philosophical problem of radical skepticism feels genuine or strikes one as bizarre and nonsensical.

• Prompt Set 2: Identifying Pragmatic Certainties

  • Formulate two original examples of pragmatic certainties (unquestioned, non-propositional assumptions necessary for navigating reality) that were not explicitly cited in the material.

• Prompt Set 3: Evaluating Epistemic Shifts

  • Determine whether examining the pragmatic alternative changed your assessment of Cartesian skepticism, or if global doubt remains a logical possibility that must be formally disproved.