Introduction to Philosophy

Lecture XIV
Skepticism and the Appearance/Reality
Gap — Part II
Dr. Daniel Kaufman
College of Continuing Education & The Extended University
Missouri State University
Lecture XIV Skepticism and the Appearance/Reality Gap — Part II

Meditation Two
It is unclear to him that human knowledge has any
grounds, a devastating conclusion given his deep
commitment to the idea that human beings are
intellectually autonomous and fundamentally rational.
• At stake is not only the human self-image, as Descartes
conceives it, but the standing of science and of the larger idea
of Enlightenment.
Lecture XIV Skepticism and the Appearance/Reality Gap — Part II

Meditation Two
• Descartes quickly comes to realize that there are two beliefs that he holds, for which there are no
possible grounds for doubt:
• "I think"
• "I exist
• One cannot doubt that one exists, because one must exist in order to think, doubt, or be deceived.
• Thinking comes in many varieties — there are many potential thoughts as there are potential ideas —
and we have indubitable , infallible knowledge of all of it.
• For example, considering the following beliefs:
• I see a podium. (Implies the existence of both a thought-content (an idea of sensation) and an external object.
• I seem to see a podium. (However, this only implies the existence of a thought and does not imply — or even suggest —
that a real, external object exists.)

Statements like "I seem to see a podium" are variations on the statement "I am thinking" and are
equally indubitable.
Lecture XIV Skepticism and the Appearance/Reality Gap — Part II

Meditation Two
Descartes' conception of the basic epistemological
situation:
• We can be absolutely certain of the contents in our own thoughts. It is our
beliefs concerning our own thoughts that constitute the foundations of
our knowledge. Specifically, our beliefs about how the world appears in
our thoughts provides the grounds for our beliefs concerning its actual
nature.
• The trick is to identify some rational procedure, which will take us,
reliably, from our beliefs about our own thoughts — about how the world
appears to us — to beliefs about the actual nature of the external world.
Lecture XIV Skepticism and the Appearance/Reality Gap — Part II

Meditation Two
Characteristics of these foundational beliefs:
• They are known by acquaintance: i.e. by direct, unmediated
intuition. The difficulty inherent in empirical and a priori
knowledge is that it is mediated, whether by sense perception
or by deductive reasoning. And because there is something —
a procedures of some kind — between our minds and the
truth, there is something that can go wrong: a built-in source
of doubt.
Lecture XIV Skepticism and the Appearance/Reality Gap — Part II

Meditation Two
Characteristics of these foundational beliefs:
• The task at hand: With nothing to start with but our
knowledge of our own thoughts, how can we reliably arrive at
true beliefs about the external world and objective truth?
• Two challenges arise:
• To overcome the mismatch problem: to figure out how to
square our mental picture of the external world with true
nature.
• To justify the belief that there is any external world at all.
Lecture XIV Skepticism and the Appearance/Reality Gap — Part II

Next time: The Ball of Wax experiment and

Descartes "proof" for the existence of the
external world.
Things to think about while you read:
• What does the Ball of Wax experiment prove, with
respect to the two challenges?
• What does it leave unexplained?