VRG: Maddy on Descartes & Stroud
Maddy begins the book with what she calls a 'character study' of someone referred to as 'the Second Philosopher' (SP). It's tempting to cut out the middle-woman and just call SP 'Maddy', but I shan't - on the off-chance that there is some distinction to be made between their views. In any case, the proposed plan of Part One of the book is to offer an account of what second philosophy (read 'austere naturalism') is by way of seeing how SP responds to the views of various philosophical figures. These are, primarily, Descartes, Stroud, Hume, Kant, Carnap, Quine and Putnam, each of whom is devoted a section to themselves. In this first post, I'll discuss sections 1.1 and 1.2, on Descartes and Stroud respectively.
1.1 Descartes's first philosophy
The focus of this short section is the nature and purpose of Descartes' method of doubt. Maddy makes two key claims about Descartes and gives two important clues as to how she pictures SP's response.
The first claim (p.12) is that Descartes does not think that the method of doubt shows that our ordinary beliefs are unjustified or unreasonable. Rather, what the method shows is that they are not certain (more accurately, not certain at this point in the dialectic of the Meditations). I forgo the question of whether this is an accurate portrayal of Descartes. The important point is that the SP accepts it. She agrees that she is not absolutely certain that, for example, she is not dreaming but continues to think it reasonable to believe that she isn't and also that she knows that she isn't (p.16). The first point to note is that, we are talking here about ordinary dreaming as we all know it. Second, SP is endorsing the view that a belief's being reasonable (which I take to be something like justification) does not require certainty. Indeed, a belief's counting as knowledge does not require certainty. How is it that SP thinks she knows that she isn't dreaming, and so has hands? Well, she notes phenomenological differences between waking and dreaming consciousness, and notes that her current experience is of the waking sort. She then cites various facts about human perceptual and cognitive systems that she thinks allow her to come to beliefs about middle-sized objects hands. End of story.
But Descartes wants to push SP further and get her to suspend all her reasonable beliefs, or rather all those that are merely reasonable, i.e. not certain. The way to do this is to suppose the she is being deceived by an evil demon. But why? Here is the second key claim about Descartes. The purpose of the method of doubt is to place scientific enquiry upon foundations that can be known with certainty. A subsidiary reason, highly specific to Descartes' own project, is that the method will wipe the slate clean in order that Aristotelian metaphysics can be replaced by his own mechanistic corpuscularism. This is the purpose of the evil demon hypothesis. And SP's response to this latter reason is predictable. SP already believes the most up-to-date scientific theories, so lacks this motivation to go in for the method of doubt. To the first reason, SP agrees that it would be a good thing if her (reasonable but not certain) scientific theories could be based upon absolutely certain principles, and so she sees what Descartes has to offer. Noting that his project fails to deliver the result it promises, she leaves the method of doubt to one side and continues as she was before.
What are the clues here concerning SP's methods? They are related. First, when asked how she knows that she has hands (or that water=H20) she does not say that science says so and that she trusts science. Rather, she cites various facts. Facts that we would call scientific. Second, when confronted by Descartes' method of doubt she does not reject it as 'unscientific'. Rather, she judges it according to both its own and her own criteria of success. It fails, and so she moves on. Both of these are important. For SP does not have a general account of what counts as a scientific approach, by means of which she sorts the acceptable from the unacceptable theories and methods. Rather, her pragmatic attitude is that she will be happy to accept what works. This is a line that reoccurs throughout Part One of the book, and it marks a distinction between SP and a number of other naturalistic philosophers. Naturalists sometimes distinguish between the scientific and the non-scientific (or the empirical and the non-empirical) in order to draw the boundaries of legitimate enquiry and methodology. SP doesn't do this, and in this way avoids some of the sorts of objects that such proposals tend to receive.
1.2 Neo-Cartesian Skepticism
The section on Stroud (dubbed a neo-Cartesian) contains a great deal more than that on Descartes. It also expands upon some more controversial claims implicit in 1.1.
Stroud interprets Descartes differently. Or, at least, his assessment of the result of the dreaming argument is different. The possibility that we are dreaming robs our beliefs, thinks Stroud, not only of certainty but also of reasonableness. Stroud argues that we cannot rule out that we are dreaming, for any test a positive answer to which would rule it out, could itself be dreamed to have a positive answer. Now, to block SP's reply that she can very well tell the difference between finding a test to be positive and dreaming a test to be positive (because of the phenomenological differences between dreaming and waking consciousness) Stroud must reply that what needs to be ruled out is that what SP takes to be waking consciousness might itself be a dream. We are thus introduced to the 'extraordinary dreaming hypothesis' and the necessity of ruling out of a dream that is like no other of which we are aware.
Extraordinary dreaming is just like the evil demon, and SP admits that it can't be ruled out. It has been designed so that it can't be. Her reaction, however, is to deny that her being unable to rule it out undercuts the reasonableness of her beliefs. Indeed, that it undercuts her claim to knowledge. Here again we see SP's fallibilism. She maintains that we can be said to know things, despite our being unable to rule out certain alternatives. But failing that, she maintains that we can be said to have reasonable beliefs, despite our being so unable. After all, in ordinary life we don't require that people rule out the evil demon hypothesis before they can legitimately claim to know something.
Here Stroud distinguishes between practical and theoretical contexts, suggesting that although the concept of knowledge requires the ruling out of all alternatives, we do not make this requirement for practical purposes. Suppose that we give Stroud this. The question becomes what we should make of 'reasonable belief'. Should we think of reasonable belief as requiring certainty or not? Or might reasonable belief exist at a level below that of absolute certainty? On which side is common sense? Maddy suggests the latter, and I am inclined to agree.
But the question can be put acutely: is it legitimate for SP to employ her empirical methods of belief justification in order to justify those beliefs that she, in turn, uses to justify the adequacy of her empirical methods? Stroud's negative answer to this question seems unreasonable to SP, since it effectively ask us to justify our methods of belief formation without relying on any methods (or, at least, those methods that we take ourselves to have discovered are the best). The question that SP asks of Stroud is why we should suppose that in order for a belief to qualify as reasonable, it must have been generated by a method that can itself be justified without relying on the best available methods.
Questions: How much work is fallibilism (the thought that we can know that P even though we have not ruled out not-P) doing here? And is fallibilism really consonant with our everyday notion of knowledge? If not, then it is Maddy, not Stroud, who is departing from common sense in her defence of it.
But, in any case, can/should we make do with reasonable belief? Fallibilism about reasonable belief might seem more palatable than fallibilism about knowledge. Stroud appears to deny this also but, once more, where does common sense side here?
Finally, is it legitimate to demand that we justify our empirical belief forming methods 'from the outside', i.e. without employing any of them? Supposing that this can't be done, as the sceptic insists, what would it show? That we lack knowledge? That we lack reasonable belief? Or that it is a wrongheaded demand?
1.1 Descartes's first philosophy
The focus of this short section is the nature and purpose of Descartes' method of doubt. Maddy makes two key claims about Descartes and gives two important clues as to how she pictures SP's response.
The first claim (p.12) is that Descartes does not think that the method of doubt shows that our ordinary beliefs are unjustified or unreasonable. Rather, what the method shows is that they are not certain (more accurately, not certain at this point in the dialectic of the Meditations). I forgo the question of whether this is an accurate portrayal of Descartes. The important point is that the SP accepts it. She agrees that she is not absolutely certain that, for example, she is not dreaming but continues to think it reasonable to believe that she isn't and also that she knows that she isn't (p.16). The first point to note is that, we are talking here about ordinary dreaming as we all know it. Second, SP is endorsing the view that a belief's being reasonable (which I take to be something like justification) does not require certainty. Indeed, a belief's counting as knowledge does not require certainty. How is it that SP thinks she knows that she isn't dreaming, and so has hands? Well, she notes phenomenological differences between waking and dreaming consciousness, and notes that her current experience is of the waking sort. She then cites various facts about human perceptual and cognitive systems that she thinks allow her to come to beliefs about middle-sized objects hands. End of story.
But Descartes wants to push SP further and get her to suspend all her reasonable beliefs, or rather all those that are merely reasonable, i.e. not certain. The way to do this is to suppose the she is being deceived by an evil demon. But why? Here is the second key claim about Descartes. The purpose of the method of doubt is to place scientific enquiry upon foundations that can be known with certainty. A subsidiary reason, highly specific to Descartes' own project, is that the method will wipe the slate clean in order that Aristotelian metaphysics can be replaced by his own mechanistic corpuscularism. This is the purpose of the evil demon hypothesis. And SP's response to this latter reason is predictable. SP already believes the most up-to-date scientific theories, so lacks this motivation to go in for the method of doubt. To the first reason, SP agrees that it would be a good thing if her (reasonable but not certain) scientific theories could be based upon absolutely certain principles, and so she sees what Descartes has to offer. Noting that his project fails to deliver the result it promises, she leaves the method of doubt to one side and continues as she was before.
What are the clues here concerning SP's methods? They are related. First, when asked how she knows that she has hands (or that water=H20) she does not say that science says so and that she trusts science. Rather, she cites various facts. Facts that we would call scientific. Second, when confronted by Descartes' method of doubt she does not reject it as 'unscientific'. Rather, she judges it according to both its own and her own criteria of success. It fails, and so she moves on. Both of these are important. For SP does not have a general account of what counts as a scientific approach, by means of which she sorts the acceptable from the unacceptable theories and methods. Rather, her pragmatic attitude is that she will be happy to accept what works. This is a line that reoccurs throughout Part One of the book, and it marks a distinction between SP and a number of other naturalistic philosophers. Naturalists sometimes distinguish between the scientific and the non-scientific (or the empirical and the non-empirical) in order to draw the boundaries of legitimate enquiry and methodology. SP doesn't do this, and in this way avoids some of the sorts of objects that such proposals tend to receive.
1.2 Neo-Cartesian Skepticism
The section on Stroud (dubbed a neo-Cartesian) contains a great deal more than that on Descartes. It also expands upon some more controversial claims implicit in 1.1.
Stroud interprets Descartes differently. Or, at least, his assessment of the result of the dreaming argument is different. The possibility that we are dreaming robs our beliefs, thinks Stroud, not only of certainty but also of reasonableness. Stroud argues that we cannot rule out that we are dreaming, for any test a positive answer to which would rule it out, could itself be dreamed to have a positive answer. Now, to block SP's reply that she can very well tell the difference between finding a test to be positive and dreaming a test to be positive (because of the phenomenological differences between dreaming and waking consciousness) Stroud must reply that what needs to be ruled out is that what SP takes to be waking consciousness might itself be a dream. We are thus introduced to the 'extraordinary dreaming hypothesis' and the necessity of ruling out of a dream that is like no other of which we are aware.
Extraordinary dreaming is just like the evil demon, and SP admits that it can't be ruled out. It has been designed so that it can't be. Her reaction, however, is to deny that her being unable to rule it out undercuts the reasonableness of her beliefs. Indeed, that it undercuts her claim to knowledge. Here again we see SP's fallibilism. She maintains that we can be said to know things, despite our being unable to rule out certain alternatives. But failing that, she maintains that we can be said to have reasonable beliefs, despite our being so unable. After all, in ordinary life we don't require that people rule out the evil demon hypothesis before they can legitimately claim to know something.
Here Stroud distinguishes between practical and theoretical contexts, suggesting that although the concept of knowledge requires the ruling out of all alternatives, we do not make this requirement for practical purposes. Suppose that we give Stroud this. The question becomes what we should make of 'reasonable belief'. Should we think of reasonable belief as requiring certainty or not? Or might reasonable belief exist at a level below that of absolute certainty? On which side is common sense? Maddy suggests the latter, and I am inclined to agree.
But the question can be put acutely: is it legitimate for SP to employ her empirical methods of belief justification in order to justify those beliefs that she, in turn, uses to justify the adequacy of her empirical methods? Stroud's negative answer to this question seems unreasonable to SP, since it effectively ask us to justify our methods of belief formation without relying on any methods (or, at least, those methods that we take ourselves to have discovered are the best). The question that SP asks of Stroud is why we should suppose that in order for a belief to qualify as reasonable, it must have been generated by a method that can itself be justified without relying on the best available methods.
Questions: How much work is fallibilism (the thought that we can know that P even though we have not ruled out not-P) doing here? And is fallibilism really consonant with our everyday notion of knowledge? If not, then it is Maddy, not Stroud, who is departing from common sense in her defence of it.
But, in any case, can/should we make do with reasonable belief? Fallibilism about reasonable belief might seem more palatable than fallibilism about knowledge. Stroud appears to deny this also but, once more, where does common sense side here?
Finally, is it legitimate to demand that we justify our empirical belief forming methods 'from the outside', i.e. without employing any of them? Supposing that this can't be done, as the sceptic insists, what would it show? That we lack knowledge? That we lack reasonable belief? Or that it is a wrongheaded demand?
Labels: Descartes, Naturalism, Scepticism, Stroud
posted by Joel at 10:59 am
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