Todd Suomela's List: Philosophy Notes

• Even before examining the various general forms of skepticism, it is crucial that we distinguish between philosophical skepticism and ordinary incredulity because doing so will help to explain why philosophical skepticism is so intriguing.

• The point here is that in this case, and in all ordinary cases of incredulity, the grounds for the doubt can, in principle, be removed. As Wittgenstein would say, doubt occurs within the context of things undoubted. If something is doubted, something else must be held fast because doubt presupposes that there are means of removing the  doubt.^[2]  We doubt that the bird is a robin because, at least in part, we think we know how robins typically fly and what their typical coloration is. That is, we think our general picture of the world is right — or right enough — so that it does provide us with both the grounds for doubt and the means for potentially removing the doubt. Thus, ordinary incredulity, say about some feature of the world, occurs against a background of sequestered beliefs about the world. We are not doubting that we have any knowledge of the world. Far from it, we are presupposing that we do know some things about the world. To quote Wittgenstein, “A doubt without an end is not even a doubt” (Wittgenstein 1969, ¶ 625).

    
• In contrast, philosophical skepticism attempts to render doubtful every member of a class of propositions that we think falls within our ken. One member of the class is not pitted against another. The grounds for either withholding assent to the claim that we can have such knowledge or denying that we can have such knowledge are such that there is no possible way to either answer them or neutralize them by appealing to another member of the class. Thus, philosophic doubt or philosophical skepticism, as opposed to ordinary incredulity, does not, in principle, come to an end. Or so the philosophic skeptic will claim!
• Let us use “EI-type” propositions to refer to epistemically interesting types of propositions. Such types of propositions contain tokens some of which are generally thought to be known given what we ordinarily take knowledge to be. Thus, it would not be epistemically interesting if we did not know exactly what the rainfall will be on March 3 ten years from now. That kind of thing (a fine grained distant future state) is not generally thought to be known given what we ordinarily take knowledge to be. But it would be epistemically interesting if we cannot know anything about the future, or anything about the contents of someone else's mind, or anything about the past, or anything at all about the “external world.” We think we know many propositions about those types of things.

• consider the (meta) proposition concerning the scope of our knowledge, namely: We can have knowledge of EI-type propositions. Given that there are just three stances we can have toward any proposition when considering whether to assent to it, we can:

    
   
  1. Assent that we can have knowledge of EI-type propositions.
    
  2. Assent that we cannot have knowledge of EI-type propositions.
    
  3. Withhold assent to both that we can and that we cannot have knowledge of EI-type propositions.
   
    

    Let us call someone with the attitude depicted in (i) an  “Epistemist.”^[4]  Such a person assents to the claim that we can have knowledge of EI-type propositions.

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• Philosophical views are typically classed as skeptical when they involve advancing some degree of doubt regarding claims that are elsewhere taken for granted. Varieties of skepticism can be distinguished in two main ways, depending upon the focus and the extent of the doubt.

• As regards the former, skeptical views typically have an epistemological form, in that they are focused on the epistemic status of certain beliefs. For example, one common variety of skepticism concerns our beliefs about the past and argues that such beliefs lack positive epistemic status – that they are not justified, or are not rational, or cannot constitute knowledge (and perhaps even all three). Where skepticism does not have this epistemological focus, then it tends to be of an ontological form in that it is directed at beliefs about the existence of some supposedly problematic entity, such as the self or God. Here the target of the skepticism is not so much one’s putative knowledge of these entities (though it may be that as well), but rather the claim that they exist at all.

   

  As regards the latter, one can differentiate between skeptical views that are either local or radical. Local varieties of skepticism will only concern beliefs about a certain specific subject matter, such as beliefs in abstract objects or the conclusions of inductive arguments. Since ontological varieties of skepticism tend to be concerned with the existence of particular sorts of entities, they are usually (though not always) of this local form. In contrast, radical forms of skepticism afflict most of our beliefs and thus pose, at least potentially, the most pressing philosophical challenge.
• What is common to both of these historical approaches, and which lives on in the contemporary discussion of skepticism, is the primary conception of skepticism as resting on an entirely intuitive and pre-theoretical understanding of our epistemic concepts. In this sense it has the form of a paradox – a series of wholly plausible and intuitive claims that, collectively, lead to an intellectually devastating conclusion. Recent discussion of skepticism also treats the problem as having this paradoxical form, though the epistemic focus of the discussion is now not so much the lack of grounds for belief which counter the skeptic’s grounds against belief, or the lack of certainty, but rather the lack of knowledge. Contemporary discussions of skepticism have thus tended to make the radical epistemological claim that we fail to know (hardly) anything.

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• Analytical, neo- and other pragmatists (1950-)

   

  (Often labelled neopragmatism as well.)

   
   
  • Willard van Orman Quine (1908-2000): pragmatist philosopher, concerned with language, logic, and philosophy of mathematics.
   
  • Clarence Irving Lewis (1883-1964).
   
  • Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007): famous author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
   
  • Hilary Putnam: in many ways the opposite of Rorty and thinks classical pragmatism was too permissive a theory.
   
  • Stanley Fish: Literary and Legal Studies pragmatist. Criticizes Rorty's and Posner's legal theories as "almost pragmstism"^[3] and authored the afterword in the collection The Revival of Pragmatism^[4].
   
  • Richard Shusterman: philosopher of art.
   
  • Mike Sandbothe: Applied Rorty's neopragmatism to media studies and developed a new branch that he called Media Philosophy. Together with authors like Juergen Habermas, Hans Joas, Sami Pihlstroem, Mats Bergmann, Michael Esfeld and Helmut Pape he belongs to a group of European Pragmatists who make use of Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, Brandom, Putnam and other representatives of American pragmatism in continental philosophy.
   
  • Stephen Toulmin: student of Wittgenstein, known especially for his The Uses of Argument.
   
  • John Hawthorne: Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism to deal with the lottery paradox in his Knowledge and Lotteries.
   
  • Jason Stanley: Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism against semantic varieties of contextualism in his Knowledge and Practical Interest.
   
  • Arthur Fine: Philosopher of Science who proposed the Natural Ontological Attitude to the debate of scientific realism.
   
  • Joseph Margolis still proudly defends the original Pragmatists and sees his recent work on Cultural Realism as extending and deepening their insights, especially the contribution of Peirce and Dewey, in the context of a rapprochement with Continental philosophy.

• Neoclassical pragmatists (1950-)

   

  Neoclassical pragmatists stay closer to the project of the classical pragmatists than neopragmatists do.

   
   
  • Sidney Hook (1902-1989): a prominent New York intellectual and philosopher, a student of Dewey at Columbia.
   
  • Isaac Levi (1930): seeks to apply pragmatist thinking in a decision-theoretic perspective.
   
  • Susan Haack (1945): teaches at the University of Miami, sometimes called the intellectual granddaughter of C.S. Peirce, known chiefly for foundherentism.
   
  • Larry Hickman: philosopher of technology and important Dewey scholar as head of the Center for Dewey Studies.
   
  • David Hildebrand: like other scholars of the classical pragmatists, Hildebrandt is dissatisfied with neopragmatism and argues for the continued importance of the writings of John Dewey.
   
  • Nicholas Rescher

• The distinction between telling someone a falsehood with the intention of promoting false beliefs and telling them a truth with the intention of promoting false beliefs seems razor-thin. In general, you're probably not justified in deceiving someone, but if you are justified, I hardly see how one form of deception is totally OK and the other is totally wrong. If, and I stress if, your purpose is justified, it seems you should choose whichever will fulfill it more effectively. I'd imagine the balance generally favors NTL, because there are often negative consequences associated with lies, but I doubt that the balance strictly favors lying; the above doctor hypothetical is an example where the lie seems better than the truth (absent malpractice concerns).

• It is my contention that scepticism should be more of a factor in public life. Unquestioning belief is currently pervading global culture, and unless we set about countering its advance there’s a very real danger of drifting into an age of dogma where belief-systems dictate what we should think and how we should live. Doubt is a positive phenomenon, because applying a criterion such as reasonable doubt to our beliefs, particularly our religious beliefs, rarely generates absolute certainty.
• The theory of agonistic pluralism put forward by the post-Marxist theorist Chantal Mouffe, building on the work of the American political scientist William E. Connnolly, provides some interesting ideas in this context. The major objection that Mouffe has to democratic politics as usually practised in the West is that it lacks real oppositional content, being based instead on a system of collusion between the main parties involved in any given country (usually two, with the UK and the US as prime examples of that model). These parties are seen to have more in common than not, and the result is a politics based on compromise and consensus.
• Mouffe’s answer to the politics of compromise is the politics of agonistic pluralism, which she claims would guarantee us an adversarial politics more suited to democracy’s ideals. Agonistic pluralism involves “confrontation between democratic political positions” and “real debate about possible alternatives”, rather than the easier option of compromise, where power circulates amongst an elite. For Mouffe, agonistic pluralism provides a solid basis for breaking the elite’s monopoly on formal political life. Her emphasis is on confrontation rather than the glossing over of difference, with the objective of disrupting any move towards consensus. The political system is to be kept in a permanent state of tension to undermine its inbuilt tendency towards elitism.
• The practicality of what Mouffe is advocating is, it has to be conceded, very open to question. How governments could ever be formed in such a system is not at all clear, never mind how they could operate for any length of time if they ever were formed. But unless we have this kind of “contestation” then there will always be what Mouffe calls a “democratic deficit”, in which large sections of the population feel excluded from the formal political process.
• Mouffe’s discrimination between “politics” and the “political” - that is, politics in its formal and informal guise - is worth bearing in mind when considering how to develop sceptical attitudes in public life. The political is everything that lies outside the realm of formal politics, and it is where the majority of us spend our lives, professional politicians being very much a minority in any society. But professional politicians have to pay attention to what happens in the political, that being where their votes come from. Keeping sceptical attitudes in high profile in the political can pay dividends, in that those in politics have to be very sensitive to prevailing climates of opinion. The political is also the home of the many protest movements that Mouffe and her erstwhile writing partner Ernest Laclau looked to as agents of social change in their seminal work of post-Marxism, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. They regarded the emergence of such groups as a healthy sign, representing a challenge to the tired orthodoxies of formal politics.
• We can also draw on postmodern theory to build up a campaign for scepticism. Postmodernism has been an excellent source of sceptical attitudes in the adversarial stance it adopts towards authority in general. It can be defined as a particularly radical form of scepticism which demands that we worry away at authority, constantly questioning its credentials and the metanarrative underpinning these. That metanarrative is to be kept under constant surveillance to prevent it from suppressing dissent, which it is in the nature of metanarratives to do. It is only a pity that this radicalism has led many postmodernist theorists to overstate the case against the “Enlightenment project”, since the Enlightenment still has something to teach us about developing scepticism within a repressive culture. The postmodernist line has generally been that the Enlightenment has turned into an empire in its own right and must be dismantled. Yet it would make more sense to call for a reinterpretation of the Enlightenment’s legacy rather than a wholesale rejection of it. We need to combine the best of Enlightenment and postmodern thought, what I have elsewhere referred to as “Enlightenment plus”.
• Scepticism is not just a rarefied form of philosophical discourse, therefore, primarily concerned to undermine philosophical pretension, but a method for combating authoritarianism in daily life. There’s far too much unquestioning belief and just sheer certainty around, and far too little scepticism and just plain honest doubt. Without scepticism and doubt it is difficult to keep a sense of proportion, and that’s precisely what religious dogmatists in the main lack. They know what is best for us - but of course they don’t, and couldn’t, really know, and that is reason enough to campaign for scepticism. Certainty is the enemy of everything positive that modern society stands for. There’s always far more reason to doubt your beliefs than to be certain about them, and the more you doubt them the less likely you are to feel compelled to force them onto others. Simultaneously, however, you should be doing your best to inculcate doubt in others. Suspension of certainty when it comes to belief should be the minimum we require of both ourselves and our peers. Unfortunately, politics increasingly is becoming colonised by the dogmatists, for whom “there is no alternative”. But there’s always an alternative - that is the creed of an engaged scepticism.

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