Phil 102: Introduction

to Philosophy:
“Knowledge & Reality”
A sampler of questions and issues

Professor Amy M. Schmitter, Department of Philosophy

 Upcoming Events . . .
Philosophy Department Colloquium
Friday, March 3, 3:30-5:30 (MST)
Location: hybrid: Philosophy Department seminar room (Assiniboia
Hall 2-02A) and Zoom
Everyone welcome!

Abstract: This talk points to socio-political values that call for more
integration between molecular and social-environmental approaches to
Ingo Brigandt, human cognition and neuropsychiatry. My case study is the intersection
of epigenetics and neuropsychiatry. Within the diverse methodological
“Gender and landscape of epigenetics, I document several methodological factors that
values at the provide the potential for integration with psychiatric epidemiology,
clinical psychology, and social psychiatry. But there are also
intersection of methodological assumptions that hinder normatively desirable integration
and need to be critically addressed. Based on a discussion of different
molecular methodological perspectives on gender differences in cognition and
neuropsychiatry, I argue that reducing gender and other social inequities
biology and is an additional reason for researchers to work toward social rather than
purely medical means of reducing mental health problems.
psychiatry” Speaker: Ingo Brigandt is Professor of Philosophy and Canada Research
(in person presentation! Also Chair in Philosophy of Biology at the University of Alberta. He works on
accessible through Zoom) scientific concepts, conceptual engineering, values in science, and Zoom
mechanistic and non-mechanistic explanation. The scientific domains he ID:
is interested in are evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), 920 6023 5649
molecular biology, systems biology, and (most recently) neuropsychiatry.
Passcode:
Friday talk! 470504

And your next assignment will be posted in eClass soon.

 Plan for this week
Where we were before Reading Week:
´ Looked at Sextus’s techniques for setting judgments in
equipollence
´ By setting appearances against appearances.
´ In the first three modes.
´ Also looked at some elements of Zhuangzi, Nāgārjuna, and
Sextus that might bear comparisons with each other . . .
´ This week:
´ We continue with Sextus’s Fourth mode –and a possible problem
for setting opposing appearances in suspense.
´ Which leads to “the Problem of the Criterion”
BTW, your ´ Then on Wednesday, we will turn to Descartes:
next ´ Who presents us with a series of skeptical doubts – grounds
to doubt that we have knowledge.
assignment
will ask you to ´ We will look particularly at his two “hyperbolic”
doubts:
do some
comparative ´ I’d like us to think about how Sextus and Descartes compare –
work . . . and what kind of different projects they might have.
 Sextus on what Skepticism is
´ “Scepticism is an ability, or mental attitude, which opposes appearances
to judgements in any way whatsoever, with the result that, owing to the
equipollence of the objects and reasons thus opposed, we are brought
firstly to a state of mental suspense and next to a state of
“unperturbedness” or quietude.” (Chap. IV)
´ Aim: achieving “unperturbedness” [ataraxia] as a way of life.
´ Method: by opposing judgments to appearances, put all judgments
(beliefs) in “equipollence”:
´ Equally (and oppositely) weighted (with respect to probability),
´ so that the beliefs are suspended.
´ “’Suspense’ is a state of mental rest owing to which we
neither deny nor affirm anything.” (p. 9)
´ Say neither “this is so.”
´ Nor “this is not so.”
´ That suspense (lack of commitment to one judgment or another)
produces ataraxia, and thus a kind of peace-of-mind, tranquility, lack of
commitments à happiness.
´ But it’s an ongoing practice.
´ For which Sextus gives us a number of techniques, described as modes,
or tropes, or arguments.
 The Fourth Mode
´ The First three Modes:
´ The mode depending on the variations among animals (I 40–78);
´ The mode depending on the differences among humans (I 79–90);
´ The mode depending on the differing constitutions of the sense-organs (I 91–
99).
´ The 4th Mode: the mode depending on “circumstances,” conditions or dispositions
(I 100–117).
´ Sextus cites differences between waking experience and sleeping experience,
´ And experiences when we are healthy and experiences when we are ill.
´ The technique is to set the judgments relative to each state in opposition:
Ø What we “imagine” (that is, see or hear) when awake à “normal,” waking
sense experience,
versus
Ø What we “imagine” (that is. see or hear) when asleep à dreaming.
Ø How things appear to us when we are healthy,
versus
Ø How things appear to us when we are sick.
´ Analogously to the other modes, we can use these differences to set judgments in
equipollence.
 A problem with the 4th mode?
´ This mode contrasts how things appear to us when sleeping or waking,
when ill or healthy . . .
´ But don’t we usually think that waking experience is more reliable than
sleeping experience?
´ But don’t we usually think that healthy experience) is more reliable than
experience while sick?
´ If waking, healthy experience is more reliable, or authoritative, or
less distorted, or more likely to be true than the contrasting
experiences while asleep or ill,
´ . . . then it could serve as a standard (or “criterion”) for preferring one
kind of experience to another.
This is a different ´ To continue with setting judgments in equipollence, Sextus needs to
sense of “criterion” undermine the thought that one kind of experience is more reliable, or
from what Sextus trustworthy (which he calls “natural”) than the other kind.
used before (when ´ For every mode.
he talked about the
v This is what leads to “the problem of the criterion.”
Skeptic using
appearances as a
criterion).
 The role of the “criterion”
´ Could there be some reason to put more trust in one animal, or person, or
sense, or condition to another?
´ For instance, we usually think that our waking experience shows us how
the world really is, while our dreams do not,
´ . . . because (we think that) when we are awake, we are in touch
with the world directly, but not when we are asleep.
´ If that’s the case, we could (and should) epistemically prefer our
waking experience over our sleeping experience.
´ It would be a criterion, or standard, for experience.
´ But if we were going to treat some kinds of experiences (of a particular
animal, person, sense, condition, etc.) as a standard, then we need some
way to determine which experiences are true and which ones are not.
v That is the problem of the criterion:
Ø On what basis can we distinguish between truthful experiences and
unreliable ones, so that the former serve as a standard for
knowledge (of how the world is) . . .
Ø .. . without assuming that we know how the world really is?
 Suspending the search for a criterion?
´ To keep beliefs in suspense, Sextus argues that we need to keep
attempts to find a criterion in suspense too.
v That is, when we have ”disagreement” in experiences (between
different animals, or people, or sense, or conditions), there is no
way to settle the disagreement in a satisfactory way.
´ To show that “the disagreement admits in itself of no settlement” (p.
67):
´ First Argument:
´ “For the person who tries to settle it is either in one of the afore-
mentioned dispositions or in no disposition whatsoever.”
´ “But to declare that he is in no disposition at all—as, for
instance, neither in health nor sickness, neither in motion nor at
Does this rest, of no definite age, and devoid of all the other dispositions
sound like as well—is the height of absurdity.”
Zhuangzi? ´ “And if he is to judge the sense-impressions while he is in some
one disposition, he will be a party to the disagreement, and,
moreover, he will not be an impartial judge of the external
underlying objects owing to his being confused by the
dispositions in which he is placed.” (lines 112-113, p. 67)
 Second argument
to show that “the disagreement admits in
itself of no settlement”
That is,
´ “In another way, too, the disagreement of such impressions is uncritically
incapable of settlement . . .” (without
´ “. . . For he who prefers one impression to another, or one proof or
“circumstance” to another, does so either uncritically and reasons –
without proof or critically and with proof; some kind
´ but he can do this neither without these means (for then he of criterion)
would be discredited) nor with them.
´ For if he is to pass judgement on the impressions he must That is,
certainly judge them by a criterion; critically
(by offering
´ this criterion, then, he will declare to be true, or else false. “proof” or
´ But if false, he will be discredited; reasons)
´ whereas, if he shall declare it to be true, he will be stating that
the criterion is true either without proof or with proof.” (lines
114-116; pp. 67-9)
´ ...
Re-running the argument ad infinitum (or nauseum)
“For he who prefers one impression to another, or one “circumstance” to another, does so either
uncritically and without proof or critically and with proof;
but he can do this neither without these means (uncritically) nor with them (critically).
1. For if he is to pass judgement on the impressions he must certainly judge them by a
criterion;
2. this criterion, then he will declare to be true, or else false.
1. But if false, he will be discredited;
2. whereas, if he shall declare it to be true, he will be stating that the criterion is true
either without proof or with proof.
1. But if without proof, he will be discredited;
2. and if with proof, it will certainly be necessary for the proof also to be true, to
avoid being discredited.
3. Shall he, then, affirm the truth of the proof adopted to establish the criterion after
having judged it or without judging it?
1. If without judging, he will be discredited;
2. but if after judging, plainly he will say that he has judged it by a criterion;
3. and of that criterion we shall ask for a proof, and of that proof again a
criterion.
4. For the proof always requires a criterion to confirm it, and the criterion
also a proof to demonstrate its truth; and neither can a proof be sound
without the previous existence of a true criterion nor can the criterion be
true without the previous confirmation of the proof. So in this way both the
criterion and the proof are involved in the circular process of reasoning.”
 The Lynchpin of the
Argument
“For the proof always requires a criterion to confirm it, and the
criterion also a proof to demonstrate its truth; and neither can a proof
be sound without the previous existence of a true criterion nor can the
criterion be true without the previous confirmation of the proof. So in
this way both the criterion and the proof are involved in the circular
process of reasoning . . . ”
´ “and thereby both are found to be untrustworthy; for since each of
them is dependent on the credibility of the other, the one is
lacking in credibility just as much as the other. Consequently, if a
man can prefer one impression to another neither without a proof
and a criterion nor with them, then the different impressions due
to the differing conditions will admit of no settlement;” (lines
116-117, p. 69)
´ The argument about the criterion (for truth) is developed more
fully in Book II, chapters 3-7 of Outlines of Pyrrhonism.
 The Upshot?
´ We can always ask for a justification for any criterion that is
offered.
´ And Sextus’s argument is supposed to show that the any attempt
to offer a justification will be caught in a problematic bind:
´ Either a mere assertion of criterion without reason;
´ Or a regress to a further criterion, which will then need to be
justified,
´ (and so on ad infinitum);
´ Or a circular argument which tries to justify the criterion by
bringing in the appearances that it is supposed to justify.
 Comparisons?
´ Did any of the previous people we’ve looked at raise something like
the problem of the criterion?
Ø Remember Zhuangzi’s passage:
“Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead
of my beating you, then are you necessarily right and am I necessarily
wrong? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I
necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the
other wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I
don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the
dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone
who agrees with you to decide? But if he already agrees with you, how can
he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he
already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who
disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how
can he decide? Shall we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he
already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither
you nor I nor anyone else can know the answer. Shall we wait for still
another person?” (p. 43)
 A comparison for next time
´ In the First Meditation (from Meditations on First Philosophy), we get this
challenge:
“As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly experiences the
same things while asleep as madmen do when awake – indeed sometimes
even more improbable ones. How often, asleep at night, am I convinced of
just such familiar events – that I am here in my dressing-gown, sitting by
the fire – when in fact I am lying undressed in bed! Yet at the moment my
eyes are certainly wide awake when I look at this piece of paper; I shake my
head and it is not asleep; as I stretch out and feel my hand I do so
deliberately, and I know what I am doing. All this would not happen with
such distinctness to someone asleep. Indeed! As if I did not remember other
occasions when I have been tricked by exactly similar thoughts while
asleep! As I think about this more carefully, I see plainly that there are
never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be
distinguished from being asleep.” (p. 25)
´ The First Meditation offers a number of different challenges to what we
might think we know.
´ Think about whether they work the same way as Sextus’s modes . . .
´ And are they turned to the same ends?