Skepticism

by Gregory Alter,

Skepticism is a key tool in philosophy. Socrates used it to uncover untruths, false beliefs, opinion and speculation. It is an attitude of doubt or incredulity towards knowledge or assertions. It is closely connected with understanding the limitations of knowledge.

When Descartes discovered his famous philosophical statement “Cogito ergo sum” (latin: “I think, therefore I am.”) he was himself skeptical about how we could know anything. How can we know what is the truth? How can we know that we do know anything, really, truly? All might be an illusion. Descartes asked himself, “how can I know that I exist?” In answer he discovered that since he was able to question his own existence, then he has to exist to do so.

In a way Descartes discovery was the ultimate in skepticism, and indeed it led directly to the ultimate answer; no longer can we doubt our own existence, but that did not help us in determining the existence of everything else. What if the whole universe is an illusion? Alas, the answer to that one is not so forthcoming.

Still it is important, in this modern world, to question everything we are told. Especially anything that involves common sense. This may seem as a paradox, as many people believe philosophy to be 'common sense' but in reality common sense is ingrained within us by the society in which we live and is connected with culture and belief systems. The danger of common sense is that one can be swept off into believing that common sense answers everything and tells us all we need to know about reality.

How do we know that we 'need' to work for example? Those who do not work, may in fact be happy not working (assuming they have social benefits or some other means to sustain themselves) but they will find themselves being subject to a large amount of pressure from society. Helpful friends and relatives will hint, help, and pester them to work, and try to find them a 'job'.

Our ancestors were hunters, and it is now believed that hunter societies had a large amount of free time for themselves and social activities. Would that not be ideal? Free time to do what you like? To enjoy life? These days however the possibility of returning to a hunter gather society is nonexistent, but nevertheless the realization that there are other ways of structuring society are key to the process of overcoming fixed beliefs. In actuality, growing food requires a large amount of labor and time (in comparison to hunting).

It was the transition to settled farming communities which created the need for laborers. In early communities this was a shared task, but as time proceeded communities became larger and the society more stratified, leaving the lowest and poorest with the burden of the work. This state of affairs was amplified throughout human history culminating with the serf of the middle ages.

The consumerism of modern times, one might think, differs from these earlier and barbaric times, but looking closely at the distribution of wealth, one sees that the system is different but we are still ruled by an elite few. We do not notice because we have choices, and a myriad of Orwellian controls, and a myriad of Bradburyian distractions (video walls almost upon us), but it is the way things are. Capitalism takes raw materials, and labor, and combines them to create a product that can be sold. The greater good in Capitalism is profit, and for the creation of that profit, a poorer lass of people are necessary to provide cheap labor (to keep costs down and profits up). And it needs a healthy mobile workforce for it to work (hence we are better off than the serfs of earlier systems). Our whole society is crafted to create the appearance of choice, it is a 'you can do anything you want to' Walt Disney society, which at the same time ignores the deep social problems that are guaranteed to ensure people can't have that freedom at all. If there was no poor, then who would make the goods?

The educational system ingrains in us sets of beliefs that society wants us to have, and these are convenient for society, but not necessarily for the individual. Those who do not go along with society are classed as deviants, and society tries to help them, and if they cannot be helped it shuns them. Back to the analogy of someone who doesn't work, it is assumed that he or she would be terribly bored and needs direction and structure in their lives. Even if that individual had their own sense of purpose, and plenty with which to fill up his or her day, others would not be able to recognize it, because society has taught them a system of beliefs in which the only purpose an individual should have; is to work.

The danger is that most people believe that their common sense is an innate sense of reality. Common sense represents, common reality; the consensus of the mob, it is a form of mass hallucination.

From this one example we have seen the power of skepticism to unravel commonly held beliefs. We may not necessarily be able to do anything about them, we may even have to unravel our own beliefs, and then unravel our own beliefs about our beliefs. But at least we know that it is an illusion, we can draw comfort from the widom being skeptical grants us. Skepticism, scrapes away at everything like an archaeologist brushing fine layers of soil off of a piece of pottery. It is an important and useful tool in the Philosopher's armory.

Rationalism Vs. Empiricism

by Dustin Purvis

A rundown of epistemology in modern philosophy.

Europe's 16th century was a time of great religious upheaval and disorder. Ardent opposition to modifying medieval customs resulted in the Thirty Years War, strict limitations for learning, and significant resistance to new ideas. Monumental discoveries, like those of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were swept under the table because they delivered a crushing blow to all geocentric views--the view preferred by the church. The curiosity of such men, however, must have been contagious--for emerging from the flames of the Reformation, was the individual: eager to learn and willing to doubt. The philosophy of the 17th century Frenchman René Descartes, which culminated with his momentous cogito, ergo sum, embodied the pervasive intellectual transformation of the era. For Descartes, everything was open to doubt except conscious experience, meaning the common denominator for all of our knowledge is ourselves. Re-emphasizing the importance of the individual hearkened back to Socrates who claimed we should know ourselves before tackling loftier metaphysical issues--and this is exactly the turn philosophy then took, which is why Descartes is often considered the "father of modern philosophy."

In trying to better understand the self, it seemed natural for Descartes and succeeding philosophers to study the nature of knowledge in attempt to understand how it is we know what we know. This branch of philosophy is called epistemology and it replaced metaphysics and ontology as the most fervently pondered sect of philosophy during this time. The history of epistemology has since seen some of its most prominent characters divided into two categories: the rationalists and empiricists.

In accepting our existence as our founding axiom, Descartes argued that we are able to then syllogistically build more advanced truths by deducing from already established truths--that all possible knowledge of the world is inherently available, regardless of our relationship with the world itself. This is essentially what rationalists believe. Rationalists believe that knowledge is inborn and is simply waiting for us to seek it out. Descartes, along with Spinoza and Leibniz are typically considered the "Continental Rationalists." Plato's universals and particulars are an example of classical rationalism. For Plato we are able to conceive the perfected version of something, a triangle for instance, despite never encountering one in the external world--while our senses may fool us into believing we are experiencing a perfect triangle, there is likely to always be an out of place molecule or interference making it imperfect. The reason we are able to conceptualize a perfect triangle without ever experiencing one with our senses is that we have mentally tapped into the realm of "universals", which holds the perfect form of all things. 'Particulars' are the mere imperfect adaptations of universals which we experience in the material world. Plato explains these ideas beautifully in his "allegory of the cave" in The Republic.

It follows then that empiricism, the seemingly diametric opposite of rationalism, holds that it is sensory data rather than inborn mental faculties that create knowledge. The spirit of the doctrine is expressed in Aristotle's claim: nihil in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu: there's nothing in the intellect that wasn't first in the senses. Where Plato was a romantic, Aristotle was a scientist; he felt that it is imperative that we trust our senses, for what else have we to trust? It was this sort of ideology that penetrates both Aristotle's philosophy and empiricism. It was the English philosopher John Locke in the 17th century, however, that spearheaded the empiricist movement in modern philosophy. There is a significant correlation between both Aristotle and Locke's exposure to science and their empirical views. Aristotle, unlike Plato, was extremely involved with science and studying things of the world; Locke was living in the crest of the Scientific Revolution. Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was a blatant rejection of Descartes rationalist views. It was in this essay that Locke declared that in its natural state, the mind is a tabula rasa, or a blank slate. This is the fundamental empirical view, that all of our knowledge is derived exclusively from experience, or a posteriori; although there it is much debate between empiricists as to how exactly our perception of an object is transformed into knowledge.

Other notable empiricists following Locke were Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume. Berkeley was a subjective idealist, stating we can only know our own mind and ideas. He believed that objects exist only insofar as someone is able to perceive them; and that God was the eternal perceiver--therefore assuring us that objects still exist when humans are not perceiving them, and that trees do in fact make noise when no one is around to hear them fall.

David Hume, often dubbed "the ultimate skeptic" argued that since we can only know things inductively, we are unable to detect the effect in the cause. While we have habits, for Hume, we aren't actually able to know anything. Locke, Berkeley and Hume became known as the "British Empiricists."

Hume's proclamations were so drastic that he disturbed the "dogmatic slumbers" of a frail, gentle man who also later became recognized as having one of the greatest minds of all time. Immanuel Kant's newfound inspiration led to his completion of his Critique of Pure Reason which, among other things, bridged the gap between rationalism and empiricism. Kant believed that knowledge begins with experience, but that the experience awakens our innate mental faculties. Our senses and our mind are both active agents in creating knowledge: "Thoughts without contents are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.”

I adhere, as I assume most post-Kant thinkers do, to Kant's merging of the two views. I know it is possible for my senses to be tricked, by optical illusions or what have you, but I still believe that can be accounted for and that we should trust them, we just shouldn't deem them to be the sole basis of all knowledge. With no raw data, I do not think we should participate in speculative metaphysics--we cannot rationally prove something like the existence of God without empirical evidence--a belief in God requires a leap of faith and has no business involving itself with science or logic (not to say that science and logic don't require a leap of faith themselves.) Today there is a general respect for science that would make an empirical view easier to hold with confidence; but the mind is far too mysterious and its power too riveting. When I look at a painting, I'm looking at millions of tiny droplets of color, yet my mind is able to decipher these into discernible figures and shapes. Mathematics is a good way of showing how both rationalism and empiricism are both important components of knowledge. Some rationalists believe that we are able to understand something like the number three as being prime and greater than two a priori. This is something I disagree with; numbers are not things in themselves. I believe they are man-made constructs that we use to more conveniently operate and organize our empirical perceptions. Once we are able to fathom this established concept of numbers, however, our minds are then able to rationally create and understand numerical patterns--using these abstractions which we know to already be accepted as true, we are able to use deduction the way Descartes proposed to create new, unique truths. It is in this manner that Sir Isaac Newton had the ability to sit down and invent calculus: he didn't find it buried under a rock; he created calculus by combining his previous knowledge with his innate mental faculties.

It is too far fetched to believe the mind is an inactive participant in the production of knowledge, and to be honest, I probably would have had to live in the 17th century to understand why this conclusion took so long to manifest itself through Kant. In football, say, when a quarterback throws a touchdown to his wide receiver, there is no debate as to which player was the active participant it is simply accepted that both players are responsible for the successful maneuver. While my example may be a bit lousy, if you ask me, the rationalist/empiricist dichotomy is no dichotomy at all the senses and the mind are both undoubtedly necessary.

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Rationalists Vs. Empiricists: The Question of Innate Ideas

By; Matthew Ryan

Two major schools of thought in philosophy are empiricism and rationalism. Adherents of empiricism include the famous philosopher David Hume and to a lesser extent George Berkeley. Rationalism, on the other hand, was supported by such men as Rene Descartes and John Locke.
The central tenet of empiricism is that what an individual knows must be grounded in sensory experience. Color, shape, sound, and number are all derived from sensory perceptions. And, according to empiricists, that is all we can ever hope to have knowledge of or study. The intent of empiricists is quite benign: it arose as a reaction to Cartesian dualism, a theory that supported a separate external world about which we could have no knowledge. Empiricists cut off this mysterious external world from study. Similarly, they did away with Plato's Theory of Forms and other such extraneous concepts. For an empiricist, the famous question "How many angels can fit on the head of a pin" is a useless inquiry without an answer. So too, are inquiries which are not based strictly on sensory experience.

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

Theories of knowledge divide naturally, theoretically and historically into the two rival schools of rationalism and empiricism. Neither rationalism nor empiricism disregards the primary tool of the other school entirely. The issue revolves on beliefs about necessary knowledge and empirical knowledge.

1. Rationalism

Rationalism believes that some ideas or concepts are independent of experience and that some truth is known by reason alone.

a. a priori

This is necessary knowledge not given in nor dependent upon experience; it is necessarily true by definition. For instance "black cats are black." This is an analytic statement, and broadly, it is a tautology; its denial would be self-contradictory.

2. Empiricism

Empiricism believes that some ideas or concepts are independent of experience and that truth must be established by reference to experience alone.

b. a posteriori

This is knowledge that comes after or is dependent upon experience. for instance "Desks are brown" is a synthetic statement. Unlike the analytic statement "Black cats are black", the synthetic statement "Desks are brown" is not necessarily true unless all desks are by definition brown, and to deny it would not be self-contradictory. We would probably refer the matter to experience.

Since knowledge depends primarily on synthetic statements -- statements that may be true or may be false -- their nature and status are crucial to theories of knowledge. The controvercial issue is the possibility of synthetic necessary knowledge -- that is, the possibility of having genuine knowledge of the world without the need to rely on experience. Consider these statements:

1) The sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees.

2) Parallel lines never meet.

3) A whole is the sum of all its parts.

Rationalism may believe these to be synthetic necessary statements, universally treu, and genunie knowledge; i.e., they are not merely empty as the analytic or tautologous statemenst (Black cats are black) and are not dependent on experience for their truth value.

Empiricism denies that these statements are synthetic and necessary. Strict empriicism asserts that all such statements only appear to be necessary or a priori. Actually, they derive from experience.

Logical empiricism admits that these statements are ncessary but only because they are not really synthetic statements but analytic statements, which are true by definition alone and do not give us genuine knowledge of the world.

GENUINE KNOWLEDGE

Rationalism includes in genuine knowledge synthetic necessary statements (or, if this term is rejected, then those analytic necessary statements that "reveal reality" in terms of universally necessary truth; e.g., "An entity is what it is and not something else.")

Empiricism limits genuine knowledge to empirical statements. Necessary statements are empty (that is, they tell us nothing of the world).

Logical empiricism admits as genuine knowledge only analytic necessary (Black cats are black) or synthetic empirical statements (desks are brown). But the anyalytic necessary statements or laws of logic and mathematics derive from arbitrary rules of usage, definitions, and the like, and therefore reveal nothing about reality. (This is the antimetaphysical point of view).

Nominalism / Realism

Nominalism and realism are theories related to epistemology (the study of knowledge). Both positions are anchored in their approaches to the concept of universals.

Realism is the view that there are universals that are related to but exist apart from thoughts and individual objects in our world. Consider two white horses for example. Realism asserts that there is a universal concept of “whiteness” which the two white horses share. Plato’s ‘theory of forms’ is the classic representation of realism. Plato argued that for every object in the physical world, there is a more perfect ‘form’ or ‘idea’ that exists in another realm. Plato never did identify where these forms or ideas existed. The fifth century theologian, Augustine, however, modified Plato’s realism by stating that universals exist in the mind of God.

Nominalism, on the other hand, asserts that reality only exists in particular objects. Universals, therefore, have no reality apart from objects. Thus, there are no concepts like “whiteness” that exist in another dimension. Two objects like horses or rocks may share “whiteness” but this whiteness is located in particular objects and not in some independent concept of “whiteness” that exists somewhere else. Forms of nominalism can be found in the views of William of Ockham, George Berkeley, and David Hume.

The concepts of nominalism and realism were an important part of medieval philosophy and theology. In general, the time period of 1200–1350 was a period in which realism was held. The time period of 1350–1500 was dominated by nominalism.

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Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions (such as mysticism or mythology) by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument.^[3] The word philosophy is of Ancient Greek origin: φιλοσοφία (philosophía), meaning "love of wisdom."

• 1 Branches of philosophy
• 2 Western philosophy
• 2.1 History
  • 2.1.1 Ancient philosophy (c. VI B.C.–c. IV A.D.)
  • 2.1.2 Medieval philosophy (c. V A.D.–c. 1400)
  • 2.1.3 Renaissance (c. 1400–c. 1600)
  • 2.1.4 Early modern philosophy (c. 1600 – c. 1800)
  • 2.1.5 Nineteenth century philosophy
  • 2.1.6 Contemporary philosophy (c. 1900 – present)
• 2.2 Main Theories
• 2.2.1 Realism and nominalism
• 2.2.2 Rationalism and empiricism
• 2.2.3 Skepticism
• 2.2.4 Idealism
• 2.2.5 Pragmatism
• 2.2.6 Phenomenology
• 2.2.7 Existentialism
• 2.2.8 Structuralism and post-structuralism
• 2.2.9 The analytic tradition
• 2.2.10 Moral and political philosophy
• 2.2.10.1 Human nature and political legitimacy
• 2.2.10.2 Consequentialism, deontology, and the aretaic turn

 

• 2.3 Applied philosophy
• 3 Eastern philosophy
• 3.1 Babylonian philosophy
• 3.2 Chinese philosophy
• 3.3 Indian philosophy
• 3.4 Persian philosophy

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