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
(I added accessible through Zoom) scientific concepts, conceptual engineering, values in science, and
mechanistic and non-mechanistic explanation. The scientific domains he
Zoom
ID:
another is interested in are evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo),
molecular biology, systems biology, and (most recently) neuropsychiatry.
920 6023 5649
Passcode:
question Friday talk! 470504

last night.)
• Your next assignment has been posted: comparisons & contrasts.
• This Saturday: 3rd Annual Alberta High School Ethics Bowl:
8-team round robin with 4 70-minute matches for each team.
9:30-4:30 in Ed 164, 176, 254, 1-128
 Today
´ Last time we ended talking about how Sextus presents “the
Problem of the Criterion”
´ And considered some comparisons to Zhuangzi.
´ Keep that in mind for today . . .
´ As we turn to Descartes,
´ Who will present a series of skeptical doubts.
´ Some might look similar to what Sextus describes,
´ And some might look different
´ Both the similarities and the differences are philosophically
interesting.

1641 (1596-1650)
 Descartes’s project
´ What’s the subtitle of Meditation 1?
´ “What can be called into doubt”
´ Why does Descartes (the narrator) want to call things into doubt?
“Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I
had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature
of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized
that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish
everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I
wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and
likely to last. . . I am here quite alone, and at last I will devote myself
sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my
opinions.” (p. 17).
´ Is this a project like that of Sextus?
´ Descartes’s narrator does talk about “withholding assent” from
previous opinions
´ But also about “rejecting” them, “demolishing” them, etc.
´ And he says he seeks to “start again right from the foundations if I
wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and
likely to last.”
 Reforming Project for Knowledge
´ He’s announcing a kind of reforming project for knowledge (all
theoretical knowledge).
BTW, I would
argue that ´ Notice the metaphor of knowledge as a kind of “edifice” or building.
Descartes is not ´ Epistemological foundationalism: “Foundationalism is a view
a hard-core about the structure of justification or knowledge. The
foundationalist. foundationalist’s thesis in short is that all knowledge or justified
But he does belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential
think that some knowledge or justified belief.” (Hasan & Fumerton,
beliefs are “Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification,” Stanford
more likely to Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018 version).
cause trouble if ´ Descartes holds that some beliefs are more important than others
they are wrong (other beliefs rest on them or depend on them), and no knowledge
than others. will be possible if they are not secure.
´ In the building metaphor, Meditation 1 is the demolition phase –
making a clean sweep to start anew.
´ And Descartes uses skeptical tools as his dynamite.
 The uses of skepticism
´ Ultimately, the goal is to overcome skepticism:
´ By gaining knowledge that has genuine certainty and is resistant to
skeptical doubts.
“In the First Meditation reasons are provided which give us
possible grounds for doubt about all things . . . so long as we have
no foundations for the sciences other than those which we have had
up till now . . . Its greatest benefit lies in freeing us from all our
preconceived opinions . . . The eventual result of this doubt is to
make it impossible for us to have any further doubts about what we
subsequently discover to be true.” (Synopsis)
´ The method of doubt:
“Reason now leads me to think that I should hold back my assent from
opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable just as
carefully as I do from those which are patently false. So, for the purpose
of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each of them at
least some reason for doubt.”
Ø If he can find ”some reason for doubt,” then he will treat the opinion
as false.
Ø But he does need a reason for doubt.
Ø That is where he uses skeptical considerations as tools.
 Targets of his skepticism
Ø Doubt should be targeted:
“to accomplish [the general demolition of my opinions], it will not be
necessary for me to show that all my opinions are false, . . . .
[all that is needed is to] find in each of them at least some reason for
doubt.
And to do this I will not need to run through them all individually,
which would be an endless task.
Once the foundations of a building are undermined, anything built on
them collapses of its own accord;
so I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former
beliefs rested.”
v What kinds of beliefs would be “basic principles on which all my
former beliefs rested?”
´ “Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired
either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I
have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust
completely those who have deceived us even once.”
Ø Read the target as the belief that “the senses are trustworthy sources of
knowledge.”
 Demolishing the belief
that the senses are trustworthy
sources of knowledge
´ Why target this belief?
. . . That is, why does it count as a “basic principle on which all my former
beliefs rested”?
´ It is either a basic belief
• about how knowledge is acquired, or
• About how we are connected to the world.
´ Now, at first, Descartes gives pretty “ordinary” doubts about sensory
deceptions:
“the senses occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which are very
small or in the distance . . .”
 Moving to “hyperbolic” doubts
´ These kinds of cases don’t give a strong reason to doubt the senses
in general.
´ They can be isolated:
They give a reason not to trust sense-perceptions of far-off
Notice how things, or very small things, or things seen under strange
Descartes’s circumstances . . .
narrator ´ But “there are many other beliefs about which doubt is quite
argues with impossible, even though they are derived from the senses – “
himself. ´ Like what?
“for example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter
dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so
on.”
´ So what does he consider next?
This leads to ´ “As if I were not a man who sleeps at night, and regularly
the first experiences the same things while asleep as madmen do when
“hyperbolic” awake – indeed sometimes even more improbable ones . . .
doubt.
 The “dreaming doubt”
v “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!
v 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)
´ Here Descartes introduces considerations about waking and sleeping
experience . . .
´ How does he use these considerations?
How the “dreaming doubt” is used

v 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)
´ Does Descartes draw the same sort of conclusion that Sextus draws?
Ø For instance, does he think that there is no reason to think waking
experience is more trustworthy than sleeping experience?
Ø And thereby try to suspend beliefs about how the world really is
. . .?
´ Not really -- the point is that there is no way to tell which state I am in.
´ What follows if I cannot decide which state I am in?
• I may not have a reliable connection to the external world (I don’t
know if I do).
• So I cannot trust that my sensory experiences represent the state of
the world accurately.
 As candidates for
knowledge after
the dreaming
What remains . . . ? doubt?

´ I cannot trust that my sensory experiences represent the state of the

world accurately . . .
´ . . . as it is right now (what Descartes calls “these particulars”).
Ø What kinds of beliefs are not undermined by the dreaming
doubt?
´ Whatever does not depend on my having a direct, immediate and
reliable connection with the world through senses.
• “the real colours from which” all experience is built.
• Or beliefs that are true “whether I am awake or asleep”
´ What sorts of beliefs do not depend on having an immediate and
reliable connection with the world?
 Beliefs that do not depend on an
immediate connection with the
“a priori” here
means external world
“independent
of” experience “. . . arithmetic, geometry and other subjects of this kind, which deal only
with the simplest and most general things, regardless of whether they really
exist in nature or not, contain something certain and indubitable.”
´ Why are geometrical beliefs not made dubious by the dreaming doubt?
´ They are not empirical.
´ That is, we do not have to appeal to experience, or do experiments, to
justify them. Which we
can
´ Instead, they are susceptible of a priori proof. imagine
´ If we have a proof (like Euclid’s), then we can be certain that what the could be
proof shows must be true. otherwise.
´ Experience only gives us evidence what happens to be the case, but
could be otherwise.

The proof demonstrates

And if we have a real proof, we Experience can only give us
“necessary” truths.
have certainty. contingent truths.
 Second hyperbolic doubt
´ “Yet firmly rooted in my mind is the long-standing opinion that there is
an omnipotent God who made me the kind of creature that I am. How do I
know that he has not brought it about that there is no earth, no sky, no
extended thing, no shape, no size, no place, while at the same time
ensuring that all these things appear to me to exist just as they do now?
What is more, just as I consider that others sometimes go astray in cases
where they think they have the most perfect knowledge, how do I know
that God has not brought it about that I too go wrong every time I add two
and three or count the sides of a square, or in some even simpler matter, if
that is imaginable?”
Or perhaps we can get rid of the God supposition . . .
´ “ . . . I have arrived at my present state by fate or chance or a continuous
chain of events, or by some other means; yet since deception and error
seem to be imperfections, the less powerful they make my original cause,
the more likely it is that I am so imperfect as to be deceived all the time.”
v What is being put into doubt here?
 Unpacking the 2nd hyperbolic
doubt
´ Here is the worry:
Sometimes I make mistakes in, e.g., mathematical proofs, or
counting, or any of the other activities where I think I can gain
certainty about how things must be.
´ If that’s the case, then maybe I always make mistakes.
´ Perhaps I am so “imperfect” that I can never get hold of any
truths at all.
v This is a doubt about my ability to reason and thereby gain knowledge.
´ This, by the way, is why Descartes puts the doubt in terms of my
“cause:” it’s a matter of what kind of ”nature” I have.
 The “Evil Demon”
´ Similar doubts arise with the last scenario Descartes brings up:
´ “I will suppose that “some malicious demon of the utmost power
and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me.”
´ If for any bit of thinking, or reasoning I engage in I could make a
mistake, suppose that this demon is reaching into my head and making
me make a mistake.
´ So, if I can make a mistake about something, suppose that I have made
a mistake and am in error.
´ “The evil demon” doubt is working as a fixative to make the
demolition of previous beliefs stick.
´ But the real doubt is about whether I am incapable of knowledge of the
truth -- not whether something is always making me go wrong.

Not this But this

 The results?
´ Where does the meditator end up in Meditation One?
´ “I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and
all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has
devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having
hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I
have all these things.”
´ So “even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do
what is in my power, that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any
falsehoods.”
´ This is the end of the demolition of previous beliefs.
´ How does it compare to Sextus’s project?
´ Descartes is worried about knowledge and suspends beliefs insofar as
they are uncertain (and so don’t count as knowledge).
´ Sextus wants us to give up beliefs about everything besides appearances.
´ Descartes does not stop with the results of the First Mediation.
´ Note: we will only look at one, small piece of where Descartes goes after this,
´ But in a few weeks . . .