The Chicken -- Or the Egg?
Philosophers have long wondered about how to justify beliefs and hence establish knowledge. Do you start with a method or principle that you use to determine which beliefs are justified OR do you start with examples of justified belief to determine which method or principle confers justification? Descartes chooses the latter option. From his two example of knowledge (i.e. I know I exist and I know I am a thing that thinks) he establishes his rule about clear and distinct perceptions. Is this the right strategy or should he start with a rule or procedure? Is that the right strategy but a problematic implementation? Does he have enough examples of justified belief to establish the rule? Or is either strategy a dead end?
Looking at what came first is a problematic argument, because there are already people who have implicit biases going into the problem. However, when changing some of the parameters of the problem, there is a right way to approach this problem. You must start with formulating their principle and then carry out their thoughts to fit this idea. If you start with making some ideas and then form a theory, then as you make more points, you will have to constantly change the theory to fit the ideas that you have. Also, if there are not enough ideas already established, then people are able to make their theory evolve around those points, not actually establishing a steady and concrete belief. This will prove to be problematic, because if many people hear the points at first and then think of their own theory, someone is bound to have conflicting ideas. A lack of unity amongst philosophers then shows that neither of them actually have the correct interpretation of the points, because they did not think of the different possibilities on how to use the arguments given to them. However, if we start with the belief first, then we are able to gather many philosophers to then think of a path to follow. This singular path will create unity in the ideas that philosophers say when establishing the principle. Also, if one manages to find a fault in this belief, then they are able to establish a new belief and start the process over again, or correct this statement and continue with their belief. While this process of establishing knowledge will take much longer, it will be a lot more effective at establishing knowledge. This is because we will not have philosophers trying to argue over who’s theory is correct, but instead be unified, trying to find the truth faster.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI think that the methodology that Descartes choses to follow is very sound. I think that is extremely important if not necessary to start with already justified beliefs before creating an overarching guiding rule. If that rule were to be written without any previous experiences, then the rule has no justification. The only way to know whether or not the rule is successful is to challenge it using experiences from daily life. If the creator of the rule never had any experience with knowledge in the past then how could they even conceive the idea of knowledge in the first place? Even if the creator made a rule and challenged it, he would have to make revisions to his rule, and those revisions would be based of justified counter claims to his original rule. Thus the rule would be impossible to be successful he had just came up with the rule before finding any justified belief. Descartes says that he knows that he is a being that thinks and therefore exists. Based off of this already justified knowledge from the Cogito, Descartes is able to come up with the General Rule. The General Rule states that everything that is clearly and distinctively perceived to be true is true. I think that while coming up with this General Rule Descartes followed the proper procedure however his rule is very difficult to justify. Descartes is arguing against anyone who already has frim beliefs in Skepticism or Atheism. Both of these philosophies are adopted by many in our society and obviously these people don’t believe in the General Rule. His explanation for the existence of god (which I personally agree with) is very weak and unsuccessful. Descartes tries to justify the existence of god by saying that he is necessary for retaining clear memories. I feel like this argument is weak and invalid. Overall I think that Descartes is very intelligent and follows the proper guidelines to come up with rule but fails at fully justifying every portion of the rule.
Examples must come first, and from those examples we will be able to formulate rules. Examples must come first because we as humans (the makers of the "rules") have absolutely no control over how things on earth work - we can only observe what appears to be happening/is happening and go from there. For example, even if you were to engineer your own invention/mechanism as much as you may think you can decide the rules for how it works, you can't. You can simply observe and take note of common effects of performing the same/different actions and build off of those observed examples to build you mechanism. Thus, in order for humans to be capable of formulating any sort of rule, they must first be able to build such a rule off of discovered examples as we, again, have no control over the examples of which we must build a rule around. (like when you're playing cards, you get dealt a hand and based on that hand you must for yourself come up with a rule, or a strategy).
ReplyDeleteOne can quickly dismiss the idea that starting with ‘justified beliefs’ is the best way of establishing knowledge. First of all, the phrase ‘justified beliefs’ is flawed in itself. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof,” it is quite clear that there is nothing factual in the conception of a belief. A belief may be true, but it is not so by virtue of being a belief. In fact, as beliefs are mostly those opinions held without proof, they would be a poor starting point upon which to base one’s entire philosophy. Essentially, the concept of using ‘justified beliefs’ as a starting point for understanding knowledge seems to me nonsensical, as they are primarily unjustified by name, and are characterized by one’s belief in them rather that by their actual truthfulness. This leads us into a large problem of justification. In general, when attempting to refute theories of epistemic doubt, it is easy for the refuter to fall into trouble when they are unable to admit that their own theories may be incorrect. While there are many philosophers that have no trouble proclaiming that many normative conceptions of knowledge are flawed and untrue, they are held back from making a valid critique by their own preconceived notions. The same principle works for any other types of justification- when the person analyzing some perspective or manner of thinking has a belief that they have a vested interest in maintaining, it is very unlikely that whatever method they devise of finding the truth will determine their most importantly held beliefs to be true. Or alternately, in the quest to ensure that their most treasured beliefs are affirmed, the philosopher will allow their logic to become a bit shoddy in order to accomplish this goal, which diminishes the philosophical rigor of the argument. One example of this phenomenon is Descartes’ falling into circular reasoning due to his commitment to proving that a good god must exist. Descartes admits that he has a firm belief in god’s existence: “there is fixed in my mind… that there exists a god who is able to do anything and by whom I… have been created” (15.21). This could potentially describe why he so easily falls into the trap of the Cartesian Circle, where he declares that all that he distinctly and clearly perceives is good, because god is benevolent and not a deceiver, because god is clearly and distinctly perceived to be so. The flawed reasoning that arises when Descartes wants to ensure that a belief he could not bear to disprove is considered true demonstrates that there is a great deal of potential for confirmation bias when philosophers start with beliefs and attempt to work their way backwards to the truth.
ReplyDeleteLAST PART Furthermore, Descartes does not actually have any beliefs that he can completely declare to be true, especially without a standard. For example, one could say ‘I have a justified belief that there is a dog beside me.’ However, there is not a way to declare that that belief is justified without having some standard defining it in the first place. If there are no standards set for knowing how the existence and placement of a dog can be proved, you can never objectively state that you know that a dog is beside you. Thus, all of Descartes arguments would be unable to completely demonstrate this process of ‘working backwards’, as one cannot attempt to justify anything if there is no normative manner through which to justify.
DeleteHowever, this introduces the problem with the alternative, which is that the standards through which someone can justify a belief are quite subjective themselves. One person may argue that proving whether color really exists can be found through the study of electromagnetic waves, another may say that color does not objectively exist since perceptions can differ so much from person to person. In other words, in many contexts of proof, there are not independently existing tenets of what is truthful versus what is not. So, one cannot start from this side either, since it would always fall into some sort of presupposition of which sort of justification is valid and which is not. Furthermore, this problem would exist ad infinitum, as any process through which we try to justify that a standard for justifying belief is valid would depend on that standard having a justification itself for its validity. Extending the example of color, the person believing in electromagnetic waves might think that scientific proof is the utmost justification of a belief. However, the person believing in perception would believe in the sensory input experienced by each person relevant to the justification of the belief. As there is no way that one can objectively prove a method of justification to be superior to another, at some point, even the most logical of thinkers would eventually embrace subjective opinion as the root justification from which all of their beliefs follow.
Overall, one can trust neither justified beliefs nor principles in determining what is true, so each strategy is a dead end.