Gangdean wrote:
1. I claim full certainty concerning reason as the laws of thought: a is a; the contradiction of some s is p is no s is p.
2. You doubt that full (100%) certain is possible given the possibility of memory lapse; and there is no way to correct this (all others can have the same memory lapse at the same time).
3. There is no way to know what degree of certainty we do or can have: 99%, 5%, -5%. From this it follows that discussion for correction (in membership vow #4) is pointless.
Consistently held, your view makes discussion pointless. It nullifies the meaning of one’s vow and shows that you were not ready to take vows. A person is free to leave WF at any time and seek association with those who share their basic view (in this case, your view that you cannot know anything with certainty, including the laws of thought). If you want to seek membership at WF you will need to go through the preparation needed to first attend WF as an adherent and then as a member. This preparation must take place before coming to church, not after. Those who bring you in must prepare you before you come. If you want to seek membership at WF, please do so. We will keep in touch with the three persons who brought you in to see what progress is being made.
I want to offer some comments about the above. Firstly, I don't deny the trivial claim that "a is a." This is a metaphysical claim that, simply, a thing is what it is.
I affirm "a is a." In fact, I think that I assume it all of the time in my theorizing and indeed in my raising objections. I assume it. Or presume it (so far as I can tell). But this is not the same as saying that I have absolute certainty regarding "a is a." And this is just what Gangadean wanted me to verbally affirm.
Notice in his point 1 he is not merely saying "a is a" or "necessarily, a is a" which is an identity claim, broadly considered to be a metaphysical one. Instead he is making the higher order claim about the metaphysical claim. He is not merely saying "a is a", but is actually talking about his epistemic position with respect to "a is a," namely, that he has absolute certainty that a is a.
Now while I accept that "a is a" because it is intuitive and because it appears to me that it is assumed in all of my theorizing, I could not get myself to assent to this further claim about my epistemic position regarding it. For one thing, I wasn't sure at the time (nor am I still) all of what that might commit me to (it's not like he could provide me with an exhaustive list of everything entailed by this commitment). I simply don't know what claiming my certainty about "a is a" will imply about other future beliefs---indeed, beliefs that I may one day have that I haven't yet even considered. In such a place, withholding assent seems to be the rational stance---but this was unacceptable to Gangadean. He wanted a definite commitment (he wanted me to affirm that I was certain that a is a, among other things) which I was unwilling to give.
Now I must say I am curious about what it means for someone to be absolutely certain of some claim like "a is a." How does one know when one has achieved absolute certainty? It can't be merely a very strong sense of confidence since this is (on its own) a psychological fact and such confidence fools us from time to time (haven't you ever felt very sure of something only to later learn you were wrong?). So I think it fair for me to ask Gangadean for some satisfying account of what it means for someone to be absolutely certain and also, relatedly, the test that determines this and distinguishes it from merely thinking you are absolutely certain. How can one know that one is certain that a is a?
Secondly, Gangadean states that he is absolutely certain that reason is the laws of thought. Thus I am curious how Gangadean knows what "reason"is to begin with?
Ask yourself the following questions.
1) What is reason?
2) How would I come to learn what reason is (i.e, what is the decision process I would use or the litmus test I would use to figure out what the true or right account of reason is)?
3) What if someone disagrees with what I think reason is? How can I ensure that I have the "right" account of reason?
4) What do I mean when I say that something is the right account of reason?
5) How does Gangadean know what reason is?
Relatedly, I am curious what Gangadean even means when he says "reason is the laws of thought." Does he intend that he looked up the definition of 'reason' in a lexicon somewhere and found it to be "reason is the laws of thought?" Of course, not. No such book, in virtue of being a dictionary, would provide the right kind of account.
Perhaps then he means that he took comprehensive surveys of how people use the concept "reason" in their mental lives and found that every single one of them agreed that this concept was defined as "the laws of thought" or "a is a." But he has done no such surveys (and so I don't think this is his claim).
Maybe he is saying that he just knows a priori what is universally the concept of reason, shared by all humanity. But this is too crazy to be something I could charitably attribute to Gangadean, so this can't be it either. It is an empirical claim about the concepts people use and couldn't be verified a priori.
Instead, I suspect that he means that there is something "out there" which we call 'reason' and that he somehow has apprehended it's nature or something of the sort (perhaps even through direct apprehension, although I don't think he is a Platonist). And while others might have their own versions of what they take reason to be, he, and those who agree with him, are ultimately right.
Now I'm not relativist about truth, so I'm fine with some being right and others being wrong, but I want justification here. Why should we trust that Gangadean is right about his notion of reason as the laws of thought? Where is the argument?
Point 2: "You doubt that full (100%) certain is possible given the possibility of memory lapse; and there is no way to correct this (all others can have the same memory lapse at the same time)."
He is right, I have doubts that absolute certainty is ever achieved or possible for us. Notice this is not the same as saying I know for certain, that absolute certainty is not possible (that would be self undercutting). As my last two posts are designed to highlight, we do not seem to have full fledged justification to trust our memories on any given occasion (except perhaps when we're thinking through the memory objection). I think that we have to (if we are going to theorize) merely presume that our memories are reliable on any given occasion, but that is just, that, a presumption, a defeasible presumption. This is why absolute certainty seems beyond our reach. When it seems to us that we have been confronted by a conclusion of a sound argument, we should preface our claims with: "So far as my memory (and perhaps, reasoning faculties) is being reliable on this very occasion, I am sure that p." It seems to me that Gangadean wants to skip this qualification, but as my previous two posts noted, this is a dubious position. Still, I am open to hearing a theory about why, despite our memory being not fully reliable, we can in fact trust our memories to be reliable on any given occasion (as in when we work through an inference diachronically).
Point 3: "There is no way to know what degree of certainty we do or can have: 99%, 5%, -5%. From this it follows that discussion for correction (in membership vow #4) is pointless."
But this is far too quick. Just because someone doubts absolute certainty regarding any inferred proposition, it doesn't follow that they are committed to the view that we cannot know even what degree of certainty we do or can have. It doesn't necessarily call into question any of our knowledge claims. Here Gangadean (whether intentionally or inadvertently) has smuggled in his favored notion of "know." That is, his reasoning above only follows if one presupposes infallibilism about knowledge (that is, his preferred theory of knowledge).
But as I've addressed in my previous posts, there are different accounts of knowledge and his is but one option. For instance, one might side with the vast majority of professional philosophers today and take it that we can know things even if we are not maximally justified in believing them. Or one might be an externalist about knowledge such that justification doesn't even require someone have or be aware of certain "reasons" for the beliefs that they know (note, one can be a fallibilist and an externalist or an internalist regarding justification). One might even think that knowledge is a primitive, unanalyzable concept/phenomenon (this is a view that has been gaining a lot of currency lately). My point is, Gangadean has his own theory of what knowledge is and this is but one view among many about the nature of knowledge.
Thus only after he has established/proven that his theory of knowledge is the correct one can he use the reasoning in Point 3 to show me that my position is inconsistent with the act of furthering discussion and correction. He should also give us a theory about how infallible knowledge and discussion/correction are connected to constitute the rule that he presupposes (that there is grounds for discussion and correction only if, one can infallibly know what level/degree of certainty one is currently faced with). In short, it simply doesn't follow that discussion for correction is pointless just because I don't confirm to have absolute certainty about reason as the laws of thought or about my epistemic relation to "a is a."
Furthermore, in the quote presented at the start of this post, Gangadean writes of me, "your view that you cannot know anything with certainty, including the laws of thought."
However, I want to avoid some potential confusion on this point. The fact is, once again, I don't maintain with absolute certainty that we cannot be absolutely certain (that would be self-refuting). I've said this explicitly in my previous post regarding the "memory objection." I doubt that we can have absolute certainty---but doubting that we can have such certainty amounts to something like, being unsure of, or not being convinced that absolute certainty is likely or perhaps even possible. I need to be convinced (and so should anyone else maintaing this position) that we can have absolute certainty. In other words, my official position is that Gangadean has not presented (and owes us) an account of how absolute certainty is possible in light of things like the memory objection. Moreover, since he's an internalist about justification, I think he owes us an explanation of how one can be sure that one is sure of some proposition (that is, the higher order awareness that he claimed to have in point # 1).
No comments:
Post a Comment