Skepticism – the Foundation of Epistemology

How can we know anything for sure? What’s out there? How can we know that what we  know is “knowledge” and not just “belief”? Many mystics and metaphysicians have reported experiencing the world directly – utterly bypassing the senses. But barring such drastic transcendental experiences, the truth of which cannot be objectively ascertained, we are totally bound to experience the world via the medium of our senses and the mind. As a consequence of which, the great epistemological question arises — what is really out there, what is there all around us in reality?

Can we know the objective ‘world around us’ at all? The simple definition of the ‘world around us’ is the world that may exist independent of our senses, perception, mind, and our very existence. If human beings did not exist, and no living creatures with sensory perception existed, would the world be still the same? How can we ever know? From whose perspective would we ‘see’ such a world? The ‘world around us’ is an intractably complex concept.  But the approach to it is simple enough. Not to automatically believe whatever we see around is at the heart of the quintessential epistemological enquiry of “Skepticism.”

”Since at least the time of Descartes (First Meditation) in the seventeenth century there has been a philosophical problem about our knowledge of the world around us. Put most simply, the problem is to show how we can have any knowledge of the world at all. The conclusion that we cannot, that no one knows anything about the world around us, is what I call “scepticism about the external world.” (Stroud 1984 : 1)

In a way it was Francis Bacon who started modern philosophical thinking, in a way it was Rene Descartes, and yet in another way it was Immanuel Kant. The three of them marked the beginning of modern skepticism, modern epistemological thinking and modern philosophy as well. Their thought signified a profound break with the dogmatic religious, theological and metaphysical thinking that dominated Western approach to the understanding of the world for numerous dark centuries before them.

Truth is not a given thing, which should be accepted on the basis of faith, anymore. It has to be searched. Human enquiry is paramount. Nothing can be taken for granted. Bacon, Descartes, Kant, the three of them were into systematic demolition of traditional beliefs, paving the way to a new kind of thinking that would characterize the modern way of understanding the world.

Perhaps Socrates can be regarded as the first skeptical philosopher, since he began from the premise that he knew nothing. Though at one period there was a special school of skeptical philosophers called “skeptikoi” (among whom Pyrrho of Elis, Arcesilaus, Carneades), skepticism influenced in a pervasive way all Greek and Roman philosophies. With the advent of Christianity however, skepticism and openness of enquiry gave way to fundamentalism and dogmatism (Hooker 1996). But during the ages of Renaissance and Enlightenment (16 – 18 centuries), skepticism was once again in full force. It had to be. Without it, there cannot be any true philosophy or even science, not to mention epistemology.

Our beliefs about the external world can possess the certainty of knowledge only when they can be justified by irrefutable evidence. As it is, our knowledge of the external world is purely “inferential,” derived through our senses and mind. All supposed evidence we have about the external world is provided by our perceptual experience: that is to say, by how things look, sounds, smell, taste and feel to us.

Our experiential beliefs, however, can never logically entail anything about the external world, because no intrinsic logical necessity exists for there to be an exact correspondence between our perceptions of the external world and the real world around us. There seems to be no feasible logical inference possible, which can bridge the gap between the world around us and ourselves either. As a result, there is no logical way to justify our core beliefs about the external world. We are not even in a position to assert the existence of an external world, as separate from our own minds. Hence skepticism.

The crux of skepticism, which is in fact not just some school of thought but a fundamental reflection about human existence in the universe, is well presented by Descartes in his First Meditation.  Descartes starts with exploring the various grounds of skepticism, in order to arrive at some point of certainty, if possible. Descartes says what if we were all living in a dream?

We all must have dreamed dreams that we thought were so absolutely real that not even the faintest suspicion of doubt arose in us as to the reality of our dream experiences until we awoke.  This single argument in itself is enough to cast a heavy shadow of doubt on the reality of our existence. Yet Descartes attacks from various angles the seemingly unshakeable certainty we have in our own existence and the existence of the world around us.

Dream, hallucination, illusion, delusion – the very possibility of these things undermines the certainty of our individual existence, and the existence of our world as we perceive it. Descartes goes on even further to refute the certainty of mathematical equations such as two plus two equals four. What if, Descartes asks, the whole world is run by an omnipotent evil Deity who could be having fun deliberately misleading our logic? (Descartes) Thus ultimately even mathematical certainty is ruled out.

Dreams are everyday experience to us, as are simple mathematical facts. To Descartes, one could be as illusory, a mere product of mind, as other. Nothing is left. Is there anything at all we can be indubitably certain about? Is any thing that the human mind can know reliable in the ultimate sense of the word?

A large part of Kant’s work too moves around the question “What can human mind know?” The answer, according to Kant, is that our knowledge is inherently restricted to mathematics and the science of the natural, empirical world. It is not logically possible to extend the scope of our thinking to comprehend supersensible realm, as it used to be done in speculative metaphysics. There are limits to human knowledge, human perception, and the reach of human mind. Yet it is with this mind we have to unrelentingly seek, to know and comprehend about our world.

Kant lived in an age when the scientific spirit of man was freshly abloom. It is impossible to understand modern philosophy without considering the scientific revolution. Kant had to evolve a philosophical framework for newly emerging scientific attitudes. He focused attention on the way scientific theories are shaped by man’s creative investigations into nature. The rational reorientation in Western thinking was introduced by Copernicus (the so-called Copernican revolution), and was developed by Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Kant, and Hume into a systematic and comprehensive framework to the new, scientific, rational and empirical way of thinking.

Though skepticism may be most commonly associated with Cartesian Skepticism, or to the thought of this philosopher or that, just like in the ancient Greece the influence of philosophical and scientific skepticism permeates wide and deep into much of modern thought. The skepticism about the external world is an inevitable consequence of human experience, and perhaps is by its very nature insurmountable. Further, it is not only a question of what is out there – it is also a question of what is in here. We cannot be sure of the outside world, but equally, we cannot be sure of who we are ourselves; the nature of our own existence remains in dark. Rene Descartes asserts “I think therefore I am,” but on second thoughts he may be only thinking he is.

References:

Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from

http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/4.htm

Hooker, R. (1996). Skepticism. Retrieved May 3, 2007

Stewart, D. ; Blocker, H. G. (2005). Fundamentals of Philosophy (6th Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall.

Stroud, B. (1984). The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism. New York : Oxford Univesity Press

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