How to resolve the pyrrhonian problematic: A lesson from descartes

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 85, Issue 2-3, 1997, Pages 229-249

  Sosa, Ernest ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33747278277     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/a:1004254711671     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Paper for "Ancient and Modern" symposium at the 1996 Pacific APA meetings. My thanks to Victor Caston, Matthew McGrath, and, especially, James Van Cleve.
2. The Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, v 725, in the edition of C.G. Kuhn (Leipzig, 1821-33).
3. Translations from the Greek by Jonathan Barnes, in The Toils of Scepticism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
4. Against the Mathematicians, VII259, in the Teubner text, edd. H. Mutschmann (Leipzig, 1914).
5. Discourses I xxviii 2-3.
6. Barnes, Discourses op. cit., p. 136.
7. Barnes, Discourses p. 136. Ibid.
8. Barnes, Discourses Ibid., p. 137.
9. Barnes, Discourses p. 137. Ibid.
10. "A Causal Theory of Knowing," The Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967): 357-72.
11. Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), Part 3.
12. Cf. Wilfrid Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," Minnesota Volumes in the Philosophy of Science, Volume I (1956), section 36 of part VIII ("Does Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?").
13. Against the Mathematicians, VII 52, in the Teubner text, edd. H. Mutschmann (Leipzig, 1914).
14. In harmony with this Pyrrhonian sentiment, Confucius says in his Analects: "When you know, to know that you know. When you do not know, to know that you do not know. That is real knowledge."
15. For now we focus on such reflective knowledge, although a lower grade of "knowledge" will also be admitted in due course.
16. I would also defend the stronger principle that, more than being only justified in believing that one knows, one must also attain knowledge that one knows, or at least must attain knowledge of a sort - a sort that I will point to below when it comes into view.
17. At least so long as one has in mind, in one specious present, all three items: the belief X, the belief that X entails Y, and the question whether Y. Let us suppose this to be implicit whenever TJJE is invoked.
18. This is a first approximation. Since it is close enough for our purposes, we won't stop for a more exact statement, which would not be a trivial attainment. The following will indicate the sorts of problems we would face: 'Sources' here means "total epistemically relevant sources." Perception may be in general a reliable source, but in a particular case the total epistemically relevant source may be not just perception but perception in certain (unpropitious) circumstances (object too far, or too small, or in poor light, etc.).
19. A symbolization in the Appendix may make the argument of this section more easily surveyable. There I also argue that PC is more than just a contingent truth.
20. He confronts that problematic, I say, a problematic that suffused the intellectual atmosphere of his age. Nevertheless, I do not say that he is responding to the modes specifically, as found in Sextus. Hegel, by contrast, was to focus especially on this problematic, and on the modes more specifically, as may be seen in The Relation of Skepticism to Philosophy, in Jenaer Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977).
21. For a discussion of Hegel's view of ancient skepticism see Michael Forster's Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
22. James Van Cleve, "Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle," The Philosophical Review 88 (1979): 55-91.
23. Reprinted in Ernest Sosa, ed., Knowledge and Justification (Dartmouth Publishing Company Limited, 1994). While disagreeing with this account, I long accepted it, and still admire it as among the most enlightening. I have found one account in the vast literature on the Circle that in important respects anticipates ours.
24. mean Keith DeRose's "Descartes, Epistemic Principles, Epistemic Circularity, and Scientia," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1992): 220-38. The main differences involve: (a) my emphasis on the Pyrrhonian background and the related notion of reflective (or enlightened) knowledge; (b) my defense of the Principle of the Criterion (PC) by appeal to that notion of reflective knowledge and its associated principles of Epistemic Ascent (EA) and of Exclusion (PE); and (c) my use of a notion of coherence in understanding Descartes's scientia and my reasons for taking Descartes to endorse such use. DeRose's paper is excellent, in any case, and our accounts and arguments are on the whole complementary.
25. Van Cleve, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly op. cit., p. 67. Compare Barnes's contrast between α* and α*, noted above.
26. Van Cleve, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Ibid., p. 72.
27. Van Cleve is well aware of this problem, and indeed forthrightly brings it up himself: "It must be said, however, that the final sentence of this paragraph - 'Without a knowledge of these two truths [God exists and is not a deceiver] I do not see that I can ever be certain of anything' - is an embarrassment for almost any interpretation of Descartes." Van Cleve, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly Ibid., p. 67.
28. This is hence a problem for any interpretation according to which Descartes is a rationalist foundationalist for whom intuition lays the foundation and deduction builds the superstructure.
29. This passage is from the Second Set of Replies as it appears in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, eds. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 101. Where this translation says that an atheist can be "clearly aware," Descartes's Latin is "clare cognoscere."
30. Other passages may seem to cast doubt on this point. (See, for example, the reply to the third of the Objections II.) But they can be deflected through attention to the fact that both cognitio and scientia come in degrees of epistemic quality. One can attain the highest level of cognitio without the aid of scientia. But no matter how epistemically worthy may be a state of cognitio that p, the corresponding reflective scientia that p will be of higher quality. (By a state S of reflective scientia that p which "corresponds" to a state C of cognitio that p, I mean scientia that p which incorporates constitutively a state of cognitio of the same level of epistemic quality as C, and builds from there through a further reflective meta-state about that object state.) It is crucial, however, that merely by requiring ascent from the object level to the first metalevel, Descartes is not automatically committed to requiring ascent at every level up to the next higher level. Can't one improve one's epistemic state by ascent that keeps pace with understanding, even if our ascent cannot be limitless? Surely our epistemic state can improve through enhanced comprehensive coherence, and this can justify our preference for enlightened, reflective scientia, even if such improvement cannot be continued without limit up an infinite ladder of epistemic ascent.
31. This passage is important enough that I would like to have before us an alternative translation: "That an atheist can clearly know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, I do not deny; I merely say that this knowledge of his (cognitionem) is not true science (scientia), because no knowledge which can be rendered doubtful should, it seems, be called science. Since he is supposed to be an atheist, he cannot be certain that he is not deceived even in those things that seem most evident to him, as has been sufficiently shown; and although this doubt may never occur to him, nevertheless it can occur to him, if he examines the question, or it may be suggested by someone else, and he will never be safe from it, unless he first acknowledges God." The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Haldane & Ross (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1911), vol. 2. p. 39.
32. Cf. Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1964), vol. IX, p. 111.
33. There is a telling analogy, not explicitly recognized by Descartes, between the role of dreams in his skepticism vis-à-vis perception, and a role assignable to paradoxes and aporias in a parallel skepticism vis-à-vis rational intuition.
34. Cf. Van Cleve, op. cit., pp. 55-6.
35. But it is also important here to note that both cognitio and scientia might come in degrees of epistemic quality, up to the heights of the respectively appropriate "certainty."
36. We can thus offer a plausible account that bids fair to satisfy both (a) and (b), by interpreting 1 and 2 as 1′ and 2′, respectively. And Descartes does explicitly make the claims of (epistemic and/or temporal) priority contained therein. (Thus on p. 100 of Vol. II of the CSM translation a passage is translated as follows: "Thirdly, when I said that we can know nothing for certain until we are aware that God exists, . . . ." But here is the Latin: "ubi dixi nihil certo posse scire, nisi prius Deum existere cognoscamus . . . ." The CSM translation is hence importantly (and uncharacteristically) at variance with the original, since Descartes is saying not just that we can know (scientia) nothing until we are aware (cognitio) that God exists, but rather that we must be aware (cognitio) that God exists before we can know (scientia) anything.) Nevertheless, it seems to me uncertain that Descartes really needed to make such claims of priority, as 1′ and 2′ would seem more defensible once they shed the word 'first'. Moreover, among the pieces that need to come together in order to raise the belief-that-p above the level of cognitio, to the level of scientia, may well be found appropriate cognitio that one enjoys cognitio that p. And once the claims of priority are dropped, as I am proposing, then it might well be held not only that cognitio that p and cognitio that one enjoys cognitio that p, are both required for scientia that p. It might even be held that scientia that one has scientia that p is also required for scientia that p - so long as one grasps the proposition that one has scientia that p. So a form of the KK Principle seems accessible along this avenue.
37. Victor Caston poses an intriguing question: Did the Old Stoa already have the bi-level epistemology attributed here to Descartes? He reasons: "While they are usually arguing about "secure impressions" (kataleptike phantasia), which provide some kind of foundational basis, true knowledge (episteme) is the province of the wise man alone, who grasps truths in a systematic and integrated way that is "unshakable by reason," corresponding roughly to the distinction proposed between cognitio and scientia. See esp. Stobaeus, Ecl. 2.73.16-74.3
38. (=41H in Long & Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers)"
39. It must be granted, however, that Descartes's cognitio-level attainments are importantly different from the lucky grasp of gold by those in the dark room. The latter is more like a gambler's lucky guess. Undeniably, that distinction can and should be made. But it brings to the fore the fact that epistemic luck can be found at different levels and in different ways. Take a case where the gold-searcher enters a dark room that in fact happens to contain only gold objects, though he has no idea of this. Or take a case where there are several rooms before him, any of which he might enter, all dark and only one containing all gold objects. If he happens to choose that one while ignorant of the relevant facts, again it is no accident in one respect that he lays hold of some gold, while still that remains an accident in another respect. The Pyrrhonian gold-in-the-dark example can, I believe, be supplemented interestingly in the ways indicated, so as to support the intuition that one needs a reflective perspective rich and powerful enough to rule out more than just the weak possibility that one's belief be just as much a matter of blind luck as is a gambler's lucky guess.
40. This appeal is also found at the heart of Descartes's epistemology, when in the second paragraph of the third Meditation he writes: "Certainly in this first knowledge there is nothing that assures me of its truth, excepting the clear and distinct perception of that which I state, which would not indeed suffice to assure me that what I say is true, if it could ever happen that a thing which I conceived so clearly and distinctly could be false." Reliability is hence assumed to be at least necessary in an acceptable source of epistemic status. A belief is supposed to be certain if one is assured of it by its clearness and distinctness, which requires that clearness and distinctness be a (perfectly) reliable guarantor of truth. Note well: it is the clearness and distinctness of the perception that itself yields the certainty, at least in the first instance. What yields the certainty is not just an argument that attributes in a premise clearness and distinctness to one's perception of what one is led to accept as a conclusion of that argument. (As we have seen, such an argument may boost the epistemic status of one's belief in its conclusion, by making it a case of reflective scientia. But that belief already enjoys the highest level of certainty attainable as a state of cognitio simply through the perception of what it accepts with sufficient clearness and distinctness.)
41. A 3.
42. My Knowledge in Perspective (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991) gives a central role to a distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge analogous to Descartes's cognitio/scientia distinction, although my rationale is somewhat different and predates my awareness of Descartes's. See, e.g., pp. 240 and 282. I would now supplement that earlier rationale with our considerations here involving reflective knowledge, the Principle of the Criterion and its demonstration, and the Pyrrhonian Problematic. These considerations support use of the animal/reflective distinction in epistemology, no less than they support Descartes's use of the cognitio/scientia distinction. Of course, many since Descartes have groped for a similarly coherent way beyond the Pyrrhonian Problematic, and many have repudiated any such project.
43. discuss some of the most important recent work in "Philosophical Scepticism and Epistemic Circularity,: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 68 (1994): 268-90.
44. In "Mythology of the Given," forthcoming in the History of Philosophy Quarterly, I argue for the relevance of the Cartesian strategy to epistemological controversies concerning empirical foundations and apprehensions of the given.