This week I’m going to continue the discussion of “common sense” from two weeks ago. I think it’s an important discussion because an overreliance on the concept of “common sense” can be (and seems to have been repeatedly) used to challenge the value and viability not merely of “religion” but of philosophy itself. I’m going to assume that readers of this current post have read that previous post – but not that they have read the comments on it, which have been the most numerous of any post on this blog so far (a full hundred!)
In those comments I challenged Thill to define the term “reliable,” which he had previously introduced to the discussion. I structured the post around the term “reliable” because in Thill’s previous comment, it had been at the centre of his only serious response to the point that “common sense” can be wrong (as in the case of sunrise and sunset). He said: “The fact that it is not infallible does not support the conclusion that it is not reliable!” No doubt I should have probed the definition of “reliable” further in the post – examining what Thill could have meant by it; I did not. I tried to make up for that lack in a later comment, where I asked Thill to define “reliable.” Thill responded that the onus was on me to define “reliable” since I had advanced a thesis relating to it; but my supposed thesis was intended as a response to his own thesis about the reliability of common sense, a word which, again, he introduced to the discussion. So I noted that I am happy to drop the term from the discussion as long as he, too, is willing to refrain from using the term “reliable” to refer to the epistemological status of so-called common sense. (That also applies to the others, Jabali108 and Neocarvaka, who have been exalting “common sense” in recent discussions.)
If we drop “reliable,” where are we left? We have established that “common sense” is not infallible. And within this discussion we may no longer describe common sense as “reliable,” unless someone wishes to reopen that can of worms – and anyone who does so had better define “reliable” and be prepared to defend the definition. (I note that Thill did briefly identify “reliable” as meaning “not likely to be justified or true” – but as I noted here, he had earlier claimed that concepts of likeliness or probability do not apply to the kind of philosophical claims most at issue in these discussions, such as the Madhyamaka claim that the visible world is illusory.)
So is there any way that common sense differs from any other kind of belief? When we assert “common sense tells us that X,” do our listeners have any additional reason to believe this claim beyond the bare assertion of X?
It is in the following comment, I think, that Thill updates his position on such questions in a way that does not rely on “reliable”:
As I have made clear a couple of times, it is a mistake to think that all of common sense is infallible or none of it is. Some of it is infallible, e.g., fire burns unprotected human skin. Some of it is plausible belief, e.g., there will be sunrise tomorrow.
Plausibility, is of course, consistent with fallibility. It is plausible to believe that there will be sunrise tomorrow, but it is a fallible belief.
Here, some common sense is infallible, and some of it isn’t; the latter is merely plausible. “Plausible,” as I understand it, means that something appears on the surface to be true. And I have no beef with the latter; I don’t believe I have ever said that common sense (or even any portion of it) is implausible. But even the Mādhyamikas agree that common sense is plausible: the majority of common sense turns out on reflection to be false, but we believe it in the first place just because it is so plausible. So for them, the plausibility of common sense is exactly what’s wrong with it.
Now what of those parts of common sense that are not merely plausible but infallible? Thill does not tell us how we are to distinguish infallible common sense from merely plausible common sense. But clearly, this distinction cannot be made merely on the grounds that it is common sense; the fact that something is common sense does not itself make it infallible, it only makes it plausible. Rather, there must be some criterion according to which some kinds of common sense are determined to be infallible and others are not – and this criterion cannot be the fact that they are common sense, since it has been agreed that there are kinds of common sense which are not infallible. By itself, the fact that something is common sense (by Thill’s definition) tells only that it is plausible; and something which is merely plausible may well be false.
In sum, it does not seem that, even on Thill’s view as developed here, common sense qua common sense carries any epistemological weight beyond mere plausibility. There is some “extra-commonsensical” criterion or criteria according to which common sense may be judged infallible or not. Once we hear what that is, we can debate whether it is correct that this criterion allows us to declare certain beliefs infallible. Regardless: according to this quote here, certain kinds of common sense are proposed to be infallible; but it is not and cannot be the fact of their being common sense that makes them so.
So when Thill or others use a phrase of the form “common sense tells us that X” (as for example here), are we to understand this as meaning only “X is plausible”? Which is to say, “X appears true to the untrained eye, but could easily on further reflection prove to be false (unless established to be infallible by some separate criterion of infallibility)”? I focused before on the concept of reliability because Thill’s use of it seemed to imply something much more significant than this sort of plausibility. But if it is indeed the case that (for Thill and others who refer to common sense) the fact of something being common sense indicates merely that it is plausible in this sense, then I will cease criticizing the concept, for it turns out we have no significant disagreement on that score. We may move on to other matters.
I am very busy with work this week, and don’t expect to be able to respond to comments at the length and frequency I did with the previous post. But I will read them and think about them.
Hey Amod. It’s Matt W, we met in Boston last week. Love your blog! Just read this post and the previous.
I wonder (and forgive me if I’m retreading old ground here) if there is a distinction between moral and factual intuition. The former seems much more, ah, reliable to me than the latter, even though in some way the two are similar. That is, a great scientist or an established scientific fact may cause me to overturn a factual belief I previously held. In a similar way, a great philosopher (or, more importantly, a compelling philosophical argument) may bring me to agree with an action that I find intuitively morally repugnant. But I think the latter is actually harder than the former, simply because of the quirks of human psychology——our moral beliefs hold much more sway over us than our factual ones, because there is more at stake in the moral realm.
By the way, I think it’s also important to note that both factual and moral common sense change with time. Heliocentrism is common sense everywhere with a reasonable literacy rate, right? Even if it was kuh-ray-zee in the time of Copernicus. Witness also the furor over gay marriage——to large swaths of people in the U.S., especially those under, oh, 45 or so years of age, it’s simply obvious that gay people should have equal rights. There’s been an ethical sea change on that issue across the past two generations.
Furthermore, there have been no great or compelling academic, legal, or philosophical arguments advanced for preventing gays from marrying or being in the military (and many strong arguments on the pro-gay-rights side). So Americans who support gay rights generally feel very strongly that their belief is justified, in that it appeals to their “common sense” *and* there is no decent counterweight to that common sense.(1)
Now, gay rights is simply one example of an issue, but what I’m getting at is, maybe we ought to look for truth (or at least truthiness) in the sort of Venn diagram overlap where common sense and philosophical or scientific rigor overlap?
I’m sure there are all sorts of problems with my idea but I think over-relying on specialized training in opposition to common sense has all sorts of difficulties as well. My bias as an educator is also showing, in that I’m very big on experts trying to turn their training into “common sense.”
Matt
(1) A contrasting example might be something like ZPG policies. Forced abortions and sterilizations certainly violate most people’s moral intuitions, but serious arguments could at least plausibly be made for the true moral necessity of ZPG.
Hi Matt – welcome! Thank you for the kind words; I’d love to see more of you around.
The question of whether common sense can change over time is closely tied to the definitional question. If you believe, as I do, that “common sense” is best used to refer to the stock of shared preexisting beliefs with which inquiry begins, then yes, absolutely, it changes over time, and it is now common sense that the earth is round and revolves around the sun. That sounds like the way you’re using the term, and I approve of it.
But this is not how Thill and his colleagues use the term. For Thill, “common sense” is defined as that which we can learn without any specialized (such as scientific or “religious”) training, through sense perception and deduction from this evidence. According to this definition of common sense, it must be common sense that the sun literally rises and sets in the sky, as a baseball goes up and down when it is thrown, since this is evident to the sight of anyone who perceives the sun over the course of a day. It is this sense of common sense that we’ve been using in the debate so far, and according to this definition, common sense does not change over time.
I would also add that moral intuitions change just about as much as factual ones.
Humans continue to be guided by their sense perceptions and reasoning based on these perceptions since the dawn of their evolution. So, the basic ways of knowing constitutive of common sense haven’t changed. How could they? They are grounded in human biology or the structure of the human organism and that hasn’t changed.
If we consider the stock of common sense knowledge of the world, then there are parts of it which remain unchanged, e.g., our knowledge of the basic properties of trees, fire, rocks, snakes, tigers, bears, etc., and there are parts of it which have undergone change, the parts which pertain to artificial objects.
There are unchanging moral intuitions, e.g., punishment requires a reason, help someone who has helped you (reciprocity), it is wrong to kill your parents or offspring, it is wrong to torture children, lying or any form of deception requires a justification, we ought to keep our promises unless we have a good reason to break them, etc.
The fact that these are unchanging moral intuitions does not imply that they cannot be or have not been violated.
The problem of acting contrary to our moral intuitions is a fundamental problem of moral evil.
I think I’m saying something a *little* (but not much) stronger about common sense: that it’s the set of intuitions which properly require some significant convincing in order to be overturned. It is unethical to cling too closely to common sense, because then even good arguments against common-sense-but-actually-wrong knowledge will be ignored or suppressed. But it’s not *unreasonable* to hold common-sense views on topics, provided one does not cling too closely.
In other words, I see it as something more than just a starting point—it’s also a functional moral and practical “operating system.”
Matt
I was taking a break from abstract thought and enjoying the marvelous and reliable workings of common sense and the body’s instinctive knowledge, but this post has activated my mind’s abstract thought module. LOL
I thank Amod again for raising important issues pertaining to common sense.
Amod :” the concept of “common sense” can be (and seems to have been repeatedly) used to challenge the value and viability not merely of “religion” but of philosophy itself.”
There is a philosophy of common sense, a philosophical explication of the conceptual structure of common sense, and also a common sense philosophy, or a philosophy based on common sense. So, the concept of common sense and the appeal to common sense offer sufficient scope for philosophical reflection.
However, since the essence of religion is supernaturalism (there is no known system of religious belief and practice which does not countenance some supernatural entities, processes, and events) and since common sense undermines supernaturalism, common sense undermines the essence of religion. I don’t think one could reasonably espouse any of the extant systems of religious belief and at the same time consistently appeal to common sense.
The concepts of plausibility, reliability, and infallibility have taken center stage in this post. The word “plausible” also has the meaning “worthy of being accepted as true or reasonable” and this is exactly sense in which I am using that word. Interpreting “plausible” in terms of “apparent truth”, as Amod does, is at odds with this sense.
The word “reliable” means “credible; trustworthy; dependable.” That which is plausible (= worthy of being accepted as true or reasonable) is, therefore, also reliable in this sense.
The word “infallible” means “indubitable; exempt from and incapable of error”. That which is true is also infallible. Truth excludes error and doubt. Hence, knowledge of truth also excludes error and doubt. Therefore, truth and knowledge of truth are infallible.
The crucial question here in light of Amod’s approach is this: What is the relation between infallibility and reliability?
Amod seems to think that only the infallible is reliable. Hence, if something is not infallible, he thinks it is not reliable. It would follow that if common sense is not infallible, it is not reliable either. But, then it would also follow that if science is not infallible, it is also not reliable. But this is false.
So, there must be a flaw in the assumption that only the infallible is reliable. The relation between infallibility and reliability is not reciprocal. That which is infallible is obviously reliable, but that which is reliable is not necessarily infallible. It may be “plausible” in the sense of “reasonable to believe”. And if something is “reasonable to believe”, it is surely reliable. Thus, the relation between “reasonable to believe” and “reliable” is certainly reciprocal.
Let’s go back to the appeal to common sense. It is a two-fold appeal:
1. An appeal to common ways of knowing, e.g., sense perception, elementary reasoning, without benefit of special training
2. An appeal to a common system of knowledge consisting of infallible or plausible beliefs, e.g., fire burns unprotected human skin (infallible), aspirin alleviates normal headaches (plausible or reasonable to believe), there will be sunrise tomorrow (plausible or reasonable to believe), etc., gained by means of consistent and repeated application of the common ways of knowing
Is this appeal to common sense an appeal to what is infallible?
Partly, since our common sense system of knowledge does contain infallible beliefs, e.g., humans cannot survive without breathing, fire burns ordinary paper in normal conditions, living humans have hearts and brains, etc. These, among others, constitute the core of our common sense system of knowledge.
Since, the common sense system of knowledge also contains plausible beliefs or beliefs which are reasonable to hold or have, and since such beliefs are not infallible, an appeal to common sense will not necessarily show that a claim is infallible.
Rather, an appeal to common sense to justify a claim will show either that it is infallible or that it is plausible or reasonable to believe in.
But since the infallible and the plausible are both reliable or trustworthy, an appeal to common sense to justify a claim will show that the claim is reliable, e.g., there will be sunrise tomorrow.
That’s why it is rational to make plans or decisions based on items of common sense knowledge. All of us, including Amod, function like this in our everyday lives. Hence, philosophical arguments against the reliability of common sense continue to strike me as very peculiar.
The weakness of the case against the reliability of common sense should be evident from a simple argument:
1. It is common sense knowledge that a person can know whether he or she is in pain and whether he or she has arms and/or legs.
2. If common sense is not reliable, then it makes sense to think that a person cannot know that he or she is in pain, or that a person cannot know that he or she has arms and/or legs.
3. But this is absurd.
$. Therefore, common sense is reliable.
Thill, common sense is nothing more than a statement that when w, and x, and y come together, then z will occur. It is a statement of relative truth. Even statements that you say are infallible are statements of relative truth. For example, you say that it is an infallible truth that “fire burns unprotected human flesh.” But I can light a candle and pass my finger (quickly) through the flame without being burned. So, what you are really saying is that a fire of sufficient intensity or duration (w) combined with unprotected (x) human flesh (y) results in a burn (z). Changing any of these or other necessary conditions results in the statement being untrue. None of this is terribly interesting.
What would be interesting is if you considered what human flesh is in light of your common sense relative truth. Does human flesh exist independent of the fire that burns it? That, at least it seems to me, is an interesting question.
It is infallible that fire burns unprotected human skin under those conditions. Obviously, causation involves necessary and sufficient conditions. This is all that you are saying when you portentously describe it as “relative truth”.
“Relative truth” is a misnomer in this context if you mean “true relative to our beliefs or theories” or something like that. The capacity of fire to burn human skin and the fact that it does so in certain conditions are infallible truths which are independent of any beliefs or theories we may have about fire and its effects.
“Relative truth” is also misleading since it suggests some other kind of truth. What other kind of truth is there?
Thill, your key qualifier is — under those conditions.
The trouble with “common sense” as a ground for a philosophy is that it assumes existence (whatever is meant by that) without examining the concept. How do you and Jabali reconcile the common sense notion that something exists with the incontrovertible truth that conditioned things (everything that is created or that has characteristics) are impermanent?
“the incontrovertible truth that conditioned things (everything that is created or that has characteristics) are impermanent”
How do you know there is impermanence? In other words, how do you know impermanence “exists”? (I bet all you can say is that it is common sense knowledge!).
You refer to “conditioned things”. In plain English, can you explain what you mean without presupposing the existence of those things? If they don’t exist, how can they undergo any change? Change is identified only in terms of that, an entity, which undergoes change. Try to identify change without referring to that which undergoes change!
The importance of understanding common sense knowledge and its implications is that it dissolves weird and bizarre philosophical questions and notions.
I am not presupposing the existence or the non-existence of things.
I am trying to understand what you mean when you say a thing exists. What is its essence? Is its essence fixed, or does it change over time? If its essence changes over time, is it one thing or two? Even in one instant, can you say what a thing is without in being in context — in a relationship with something else?
I wager that you cannot. That is why you close your eyes and say that the questions are stupid, “it’s common sense.”
Sir, with due respect, you may be engaging in reification of “thing” and existence”. It is better to ask specific questions since there are many kinds of things, e.g., “What does it mean to say that trees exist?”.
I don’t see any difference between this question and the question “How do we know that trees exist?” or the question “Why is it true that trees exist?”. All existence-claims are also knowledge-claims and truth-claims.
I think this is why Thill asked you to explain how you know that he exists in the context of your question on the meaning of existence-claims.
I think there is a difference between the question “What does it mean to say that trees exist?” and the question “How do we know that trees exist?”. The latter question is equivalent to “Why is it true that trees exist?” since evidence for how we know that X exists is also evidence for the truth of the claim that X exists.
So, what does it mean to say that trees exist?
It means, first of all, that trees, like all objects, exist in space-time. This, in its turn, means, among other things, that the existence of a tree has spatial coordinates.
Second, it means that trees are bearers and loci of attributes or properties.
Third, it means that trees have parts or constituents.
Thus to say that an object or process exists or occurs is to say that:
A. It can be located in space-time.
B. It has attributes or properties.
C. It has parts or constituents.
“C. It has parts or constituents.” Given B, this is redundant. So, to exist as a thing or object is to:
A. exist in space-time
and,
B. to be the bearer or locus of properties
Thill, I hope it’s obvious to you that A is circular. If you use the word “exist” in your definition of “exist,” you haven’t answered the question.
“Thill, I hope it’s obvious to you that A is circular. If you use the word “exist” in your definition of “exist,” you haven’t answered the question.”
I’m talking about location in space-time as the hallmark of the existence of physical objects. I don’t think there is any circularity here.
However, one could say that “location in space-time” is just another property, and, that, therefore, there is redundancy in affirming A and B.
This leaves me only with B: to exist is to be the bearer of properties.
And this raises the question: What sort of properties indicate that a physical objects exists?
The answer to that is: having a spatio-temporal location, being solid, liquid, or gaseous, having parts or constituents, and having relations including causal relations.
I think these are the essential hallmarks of existence.
Now, did I tell you anything you already don’t know?
I don’t think so!
Thill, this is well said. The implications of being in space / time means that existence implies impermanence. The implications of having attributes or characteristics implies interdependence. An attribute such as being small, for example, could not have meaning or even be conceived of without without comparison with something larger. The same is true of any attribute or characteristic. I could take the analysis a step further and argue that interdependence is really an inadequate term because it implies the independent existence of things that are then mutually dependent (but the concept will do for now).
Now, in order to understand existence in this way requires something more than bare sensory perception. Specifically, it requires comparison. Space / time requires both a perception and a memory. It is not a pure sensory perception of what “exists”. So both of your key attributes of existence (and therefore really existence itself) are mental comparisons or constructs.
That is OK. It is a useful construct in terms of living in the world. The problem comes when we become attached to the mental construct and we suffer when we experience the impermanence and loss that results from this reification of sensory experience.
I disagree that this type of reflection is impractical or purely metaphysical. It is far from the reflexive, common sense understanding of a solid existence to understand that existence (as you have defined it) implies both impermanence and interdependence. Living your life with this understanding begins to shed a different perspective on many ideas. For example, how does our concept of compassion change if we take to heart the understanding that interdependence is intrinsic to existence?
I am sorry that you don’t have time to continue the conversation on this thread. I appreciate your insights.
Thill, on second thought, I believe you have a point.
I’ll make you a deal: if you agree to give up viewing the existence of things as true and entirely trustworthy, I’ll give up viewing impermanence as being incontrovertibly true.
Jim, why are you wasting precious time and mental energy on these bizarre metaphysical issues which have no significance in our daily lives and which only serve perversely to confuse the mind?
“I am not presupposing the existence or the non-existence of things.”
This is false and bizarre. It violates the law of excluded middle: either things exist or they don’t exist. And you either believe or assume that things exist or that they don’t exist. Do you mean that you don’t presuppose the existence of your residence as you are driving back from work or that you don’t presuppose the existence of your car as you walk toward the parking lot?
You know very well that you presuppose the existence of a number of things, starting with your wallet and its valuable contents and ending with your own body! LOL
If you say that there is impermanence, you are implying that there is an attribute or characteristic you call “impermanence”. If you imply that there is an attribute “impermanence”, then you are implying that this attribute has a locus, i.e., there is something, or there are things, which has this attribute. Therefore, if you say that there is impermanence, you are implying that there are things which are impermanent. This is all implicit in your claim that there is impermanence.
“I am trying to understand what you mean when you say a thing exists. What is its essence? Is its essence fixed, or does it change over time?”
You are addressing this to me, right? Obviously!
So, you must know that I exist! Obviously!
Now you tell me, since you are feigning ignorance of what existence is, how you know that I exist?
LOL
That would make both of us raving lunatics, Jim! LOL
I have to attend to other matters now and will not be commenting anymore on this thread.
Good luck with your metaphysical ruminations!
Jim: “I’ll make you a deal: if you agree to give up viewing the existence of things as true and entirely trustworthy, I’ll give up viewing impermanence as being incontrovertibly true.”
This is a perplexing and extraordinary deal! It is offered by one entity whose existence is “true and entirely trustworthy” to another entity whose existence is also “true and entirely trustworthy”! If it ain’t so, it make no sense to offer the deal to anyone!
So, your very offer of the deal refutes the contents of the deal inasmuch as any acceptance of the deal would also do the same!
“Does human flesh exist independent of the fire that burns it? That, at least it seems to me, is an interesting question.”
Yes, the weird and the bizarre are no doubt interesting as entertainment material in an extremely entertainment-fed culture.
It should be obvious to you, and it is a puzzle why it doesn’t seem to be so, that your skin exists independently of the fire. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say that fire has burned it or has not burned it. Causal relations imply duality or plurality of entities, objects, or forces.
Do you think that you don’t have a skin right now just because it is not being burned by fire? Good Lord! Save him from metaphysics!
“The weakness of the case against the reliability of common sense should be evident from a simple argument: …”
I think this demonstrated argument serves, rather, as a fine example of the problems with calling common sense “reliable”. Yes, that argument as given is convincing. But the counterargument goes, “Not ALL ‘common sense’ arguments are like that. Some ‘common sense’ things are reliable, some are not. All you’ve done is given an example of a reliable one.”
For example, an unreliable ‘common sense’ argument:
1. It is common sense knowledge that a person can know whether a plainly visible object is falling, rising, or neither.
2. If common sense is not reliable, then it makes sense to think that a person cannot know whether a plainly visible moving object is falling or rising.
3. This may seem absurd to the naive reader, but such a situation happens every day with the sun and moon.
$. Therefore, common sense is not necessarily reliable.
If some parts of common sense are reliable, and others are not, then there’s nothing especially privileged about common sense- not compared to the other standards of reliability we must use to evaluate common sense.
“1. It is common sense knowledge that a person can know whether a plainly visible object is falling, rising, or neither.”
It is also common sense knowledge that appearances can be deceptive, e.g., a stick appears to be when immersed in water, mirages of oasis in the desert, etc. So, it is part of the common sense process of gaining knowledge to ascertain whether an appearance is in fact reality by taking recourse to further perceptions and reasoning.
Even children on a carousel know that shops and people only appear to go around. They can understand that the appearance is due to the motion of the carousel.
Therefore, nothing in common sense knowledge excludes the possibility that the falling and rising of an object is an appearance and that the correct explanation of the appearance may well be the fact that that the observer is subject to motion in some form or other.
“2. If common sense is not reliable (P), then it makes sense to think that a person cannot know whether a plainly visible moving object is falling or rising (Q).
3. This may seem absurd to the naive reader, but such a situation happens every day with the sun and moon. (Q)
$. Therefore, common sense is not necessarily reliable.” (P)
This is an invalid argument. It commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent (Q) “it makes sense to think that a person cannot know whether a plainly visible moving object is falling or rising” in order to draw the antecedent (P) “common sense is not reliable” as the conclusion.
“If some parts of common sense are reliable, and others are not, then there’s nothing especially privileged about common sense- not compared to the other standards of reliability we must use to evaluate common sense.”
It has not been shown that the common sense processes of knowing, e.g., checking a given perception by means of other perceptions and reasoning, are intrinsically “unreliable”. Hence, it has not been shown that the appeal to common sense is not reliable.
The pattern of reasoning from instances in which appearances have been taken for reality to the conclusion that this must necessarily be the case with common sense ways of knowing is invalid. Therefore, the conclusion that common sense ways of knowing are “unreliable” does not follow.
“All that glitters is not gold.”
This proverb embodies not only the general common sense insight that appearance is not necessarily reality, but also the specific insight that the presence of a prominent property of X does not necessarily mean that X is actually present.
Common sense does indeed include some self-correcting capacity, like the awareness of illusions. However, to encompass ALL self-correcting possibilities is to make “common sense” meaningless.
If the knowledge needed to correct initial common-sense perception is more common-sense activity (e.g. taking a stick out of water and looking again), then it’s fair to say common sense is not really misleading you there. But if that correction requires specialized knowledge and tools (e.g. mathematics and telescopes), then you’ve moved beyond the bounds of common sense. If Copernicus’ research counts as “common sense observation”, the term has become meaninglessly broad.
I don’t think anybody is trying to argue that common sense is especially UNreliable. Rather, I (and Amod) argue that it’s lacking in special intrinsic reliability. These are different claims.
Ramachandra: “It should be obvious that there must be fundamental and basic items of knowledge which make inquiry possible. If common sense knowledge does not constitute, or even furnish, such fundamental and basic items of knowledge, what does?”
Ben, you haven’t responded to this question.
Copernicus’s system of astronomy, and indeed all science, starts from and presupposes many items of common sense knowledge. If Copernicus did not treat the common sense knowledge that the Sun exists and that we observe the Sun from the earth as intrinsically reliable, he could not have developed his system of astronomy.
There is no inconsistency or implausibility in holding that common sense knowledge, e.g., that there are eclipses of the Sun and the Moon, is intrinsically reliable, but that a correct understanding or explanation of eclipses requires an extension and development of common sense ways of knowing by means of special training. In fact, this is the most plausible view of the relationship between common sense and science.
“Rather, I (and Amod) argue that it’s lacking in special intrinsic reliability.”
In that case, no science would be possible. Since this is absurd, your thesis must be false.
In any case, common sense knowledge of our having of sensations and possession or lack of possession of bodily limbs is intrinsically reliable and specially so since it is incontrovertible.
When you experience pain, do you look for proof, not to mention scientific proof, to convince yourself that you are in pain? If not, then you are certainly treating your (common sense) knowledge that you are in pain as incorrigible and having “special intrinsic reliability”!
Do you look for proof, not to mention, scientific proof, to convince yourself that you have arms and legs? If not, then you are certainly treating your (common sense) knowledge that you have arms and legs as incorrigible and having “special intrinsic reliability”!
“Ben, you haven’t responded to this question.”
I tried to respond to it in the previous discussion, but I can expand on that here:
You are correct that expertise builds on prior knowledge and assumptions, which ultimately rely on common sense knowledge. But that is the wrong question. The problem is that common sense -as we have defined it- covers a great deal more, much of it erroneous.
Expert knowledge both relies on AND contradicts things from original common sense knowledge. Obviously, some common-sense things are relied upon (e.g. I have a body, reality is consistent), while others are contradicted (e.g. the sun goes around the earth, my personal favorite superstition influences random chance). Figuring out which to assume and which to test is no easy challenge; all forms of inquiry have gone down blind alleys by choosing the wrong things as assumptions.
Since we are defining “common sense” as that which you can perceive and understand without special training, it therefore covers both categories: things that are apparent and true, and things that appear true but aren’t actually so. As long as both categories exist, we need some not-just-common-sense way to figure out which is which. Thus, no more intrinsic primacy for common sense.
Most of the recent arguments I’ve seen in favor of common sense’s reliability use examples of the “obviously” reliable subset of common sense: I have a body, I have experiences, etc. Indeed I treat my body awareness with “special intrinsic reliability”, but that isn’t the problem. How do you accommodate the presence of false things in common sense? So far, I’ve only seen answers that do so by expanding common sense to cover expert methods of evaluating the truth, at which point there is no longer a commonsense/expert distinction to argue about.
Apparently, your notion that common sense is necessarily committed to Ptolemy’s system of astronomy is being held almost as a religious article of faith and remains immune to revision even in light of the criticism that common sense can distinguish appearance and reality and is not necessarily wedded to the explanation that sunrise and sunset are due to the motion of the Sun.
If it were true that common sense must necessarily commit to the Ptolemaic explanation of sunrise and sunset in terms of the Sun’s motion around the earth, the Copernican explanation would remain unintelligible to people untrained in astronomy even today. But this is certainly false since even people untrained in astronomy can understand that sunrise and sunset could be due to the rotation of the earth. Hence, it is not true that common sense must necessarily commit to the Ptolemaic explanation of sunrise and sunset.
All that you have been saying about common sense applies mutatis mutandis to science. In fact, the number of erroneous claims in the history of science probably exceeds any errors of common sense. So, you ought to be also arguing that science is unreliable, and, in fact, more unreliable than common sense. Since that would be absurd, the premises you hold to arrive at the conclusion that common sense is unreliable must be seriously flawed.
Further, you and Amod have been arguing as though you can step outside the conceptual structure of common sense knowledge and evaluate it as a whole. I don’t think you or anyone can have access to a vantage point outside the conceptual structure of common sense knowledge. You can evaluate particular items of common sense knowledge, but only by accepting other items of that self-same common sense knowledge.
Thill, we keep returning to this case because it is a particularly vivid example of a point you have (as far as I know) already conceded: that common sense is not infallible, i.e. that it can be wrong. To prove it wrong at first required specialized training in astronomy. One could argue that explaining it now is itself a form of specialized training in astronomy, though that would depend on one’s definition of “specialized training.” But even if we assume that that explanation is not a matter of specialized training, it still required that training to observe the matter and adequately demonstrate it in the first place.
And beyond the particular example, again, I think you have already conceded that there are matters on which common sense can be wrong and trained science right. (Else why not just insist that common sense is infallible?) If you’re getting tired of this example or you don’t think it’s a good example, you’re welcome to supply your own example of a phenomenon where common sense is wrong and science right, and we can work with that one.
And on the definition of specialized training: if that becomes contentious, the onus is again on you to define special or specialized training, since you were the one who introduced the idea of the training to the discussion. You did so in order to explain why common sense is not merely a vacuous or tautologous concept, a shorthand for “that which Thill happens to hold to be true.” And I think Ben is concerned that you may be starting to move so many ideas out of the category of trained knowledge and into the category of common sense that you are led right back into vacuity.
“How do you accommodate the presence of false things in common sense?”
Are we talking again about the dogma that common sense must necessarily fail to distinguish between appearance and reality?
How do you accommodate the presence of “false things” in the history of science?
“How do you accommodate the presence of false things in common sense?”
If some or most people believed that a stick is really bent when immersed in water, or that sunrise and sunset are due to the motion of the sun around the earth, we could explain this not in terms of the unreliability of common ways of knowing such as perception and reasoning, but in terms of a failure to properly follow those ways of knowing.
This would be analogous to explaining the errors of a scientist, or a group of scientists, including those in an entire era or epoch of science, not in terms of a failure of science or the scientific method itself, but in terms of the failure to follow the scientific method properly or rigorously.
“How do you accommodate the presence of “false things” in the history of science?”
Because in expert fields such as science, one detects (and tries to eliminate) the errors by more expert knowledge. Expertise can only be self-corrected by more of the same kind of expertise. Common sense, however, can only sometimes be self-corrected by more common sense observations; sometimes, you need expertise to detect its errors.
Interestingly (though aside from this specific point), science’s copious errors often arise from poor recognition of which common sense beliefs are actually true (worthy of being treated as assumptions) and which may be untrue (and worthy of testing).
“Because in expert fields such as science, one detects (and tries to eliminate) the errors by more expert knowledge.”
This is false. Experimental testing in science depends on common sense knowledge. Common sense knowledge is a necessary condition of the process of experimental verification.
So, errors in science are detected necessarily with the help of items of common sense knowledge.
This implies the primacy of common sense knowledge.
“Experimental testing in science depends on common sense knowledge. Common sense knowledge is a necessary condition of the process of experimental verification.”
I have never disputed this. As I posted in other comment threads: Just because expert knowledge requires SOME common sense knowledge, does not mean that ALL common sense knowledge (as an overall category) must be especially reliable. Expert knowledge depends on some parts of common sense, but refutes other parts of common sense.
“there’s nothing especially privileged about common sense- not compared to the other standards of reliability we must use to evaluate common sense.”
What are these other standards of reliability? How are they different from common sense standards of reliability? If they presuppose common sense ways of knowing and/or knowledge, then this certainly makes common sense privileged.
It should be obvious that there must be fundamental and basic items of knowledge which make inquiry possible. If common sense knowledge does not constitute, or even furnish, such fundamental and basic items of knowledge, what does?
However, since the essence of religion is supernaturalism (there is no known system of religious belief and practice which does not countenance some supernatural entities, processes, and events) and since common sense undermines supernaturalism, common sense undermines the essence of religion. I don’t think one could reasonably espouse any of the extant systems of religious belief and at the same time consistently appeal to common sense.”
This raises interesting issues such as the explanation of the prevalence of religion given that it contradicts common sense. Cognitive psychology of religion, e.g., the work of Pascal Boyer, has proposed that the departures from common sense explain the appeal of religion (an eloquent testimony to our enduring weakness for sensationalist accounts at the expense of common sense). However, the departures cannot be absolute for religion to retain its appeal and hold. It must appeal to common sense and at the same time flout it.
Thus we have a supernatural being such as an Asura or “demon”, e.g., Mahisasura in the Hindu lore on Goddess Durga , with properties consistent with common sense, e.g., bleeding when pierced with weapons, and at the same time possessing properties wildly at variance with common sense, e.g., out of every drop of his blood a replica of him comes alive. This is what gives him and other supernatural concoctions of religion their appeal.
Compare the Christian account of Jesus: he dies on the cross like any other human being (appeal to common sense), but then he is resurrected later (violation of common sense).
Could all this apply mutatis mutandis to the appeal of metaphysical theories?
If anyone is sill interested in trying to get to the bottom of common sense, I would like to know if you think common sense knowledge requires language or not.
Because it seems that the phrase has been used both ways, interchangeably and at will for the past few weeks.
Thanks in advance
Charlie
Johnson kicked a stone declaring ‘thus I refute thee’ of Berkeley’s Immaterialism. Moore extended one arm and said ‘that’s an arm, there is at least one thing in the universe’. Extending the other arm, he said, ‘ that’s another arm, there’s at least two things in the universe’.
Both of them imagined they had thereby refuted the idealist position, but had they? The general opinion of philosophers would be that they had not so done but merely underlined their lack of understanding of what that position entails. Timothy Sprigge in his Vindication of Absolute Idealism allows that what he calls ‘Naive Realism’ and what is being presented here as ‘Common Sense’ is a convenient fiction for the everyday purposes of empirical life. However when one goes deeper into the rational basis for such beliefs they may turn out to be figments.
Even though I personally, on rational grounds, do not espouse the idealist view yet I can still see how it is ostensibly arguable particularly in relation to panpsychism. Sprigge:
What he is saying is that we cannot cash out the statement ‘ some unknown x exists’ without knowing that some x exists which by virtue of that observation is no longer the unknown x.
‘Put down your hand Moore!
“Timothy Sprigge in his Vindication of Absolute Idealism allows that what he calls ‘Naive Realism’ and what is being presented here as ‘Common Sense’ is a convenient fiction for the everyday purposes of empirical life.”
I am aware of some of his work.
As though “everyday purposes of empirical life” were such flimsy, easy, and casual matters to allow for the possibility that mere “convenient fictions” can help achieve them!!!
Try using “convenient fictions”, especially about Grizzlies, e.g., that the self-same Atman or Brahman in your bosom also beats in their tender bosoms and that, therefore, they will not harm you, to achieve “everyday purposes of empirical life”, e.g., survival, when you get lost in the Yellowstone National Park area!
I think this could help resolve the debate on the “reliability” of common sense:
We can judge something to unreliable only in light of, and in contrast to, that which we consider reliable.
If common sense is “unreliable”, then what is it that Amod and Ben would consider reliable?
Could it be science? Well, the history of science has its great triumphs, but also its glaring errors which, in terms of the stringent standards Amod and Ben are applying to common sense, should make it “unreliable”. But then this presupposes that something other than science is reliable. What is it?
Recourse to the term “merely plausible” in the sense of “apparently true” raises the same problem. What, then, is really true?
So, my final challenge to Amod and Ben is this: please tell us what you consider reliable or really true. Otherwise, your judgment that common sense is “unreliable” or “merely plausible” becomes meaningless.
Thill, your “final challenge” is a demand for easy answers, which is exactly what I refuse to provide. If one could make a simple claim of the form “everything which is true and/or reliable has the property X,” one could dismiss the vast majority of philosophical reflection as stuff and nonsense because it’s all a waste of time; one simply looks for X and isdone with it. This is of course what you have repeatedly done, and it is exactly what I refuse to accept. To answer your question in the way that you demand would require that I agree with your premises, which I hold to be faulty. I could answer it with a long and detailed list of many different things I hold to be true, but you already have one; it’s called Love of All Wisdom. There are hundreds of pages’ worth of posts on this blog articulating what I believe; some of it discusses only what I believe other people believe, but some of it articulates my own views, and I think that in most (though not all) cases the distinction between the two is clearly marked as such – enough, at least, for you to know something about what I do and do not hold to be true.
“Thill, your “final challenge” is a demand for easy answers, which is exactly what I refuse to provide. If one could make a simple claim of the form “everything which is true and/or reliable has the property X,” one could dismiss the vast majority of philosophical reflection as stuff and nonsense because it’s all a waste of time; one simply looks for X and is done with it.”
This makes a peculiar assumption: the vast majority of philosophical reflection must be made immune to the charge of “stuff and nonsense”. Specification of standards of reliability, of examples of reliability, could weaken this immunity. Hence, the specification of what is reliable (a logical requirement of any judgment of unreliability) must be evaded or avoided.
If you have easy answers to determine what is unreliable, indeed, if you can go to the absurd length of deeming common sense (on which you rely for your very survival) unreliable, you can surely specify what you consider reliable and what you depend on to function in the world.
If ascertaining what is reliable is not easy, it logically follows that judgments on what is unreliable cannot be easy. If I cannot easily ascertain what is good, how can I easily judge something bad?
So, your claim that it is not easy to ascertain what is reliable implies that it is not easy to ascertain what is unreliable. This is at odds with your easy dismissal of the appeal to common sense on the grounds that it is unreliable.
Metaphysical speculations and fantasies do not exhaust the scope of philosophy. Metaphysical philosophers have criticized each other (often on grounds of logic and common sense), often raising charges of “stuff and nonsense”, and an observer can learn a great deal about the mistakes of these metaphysicians from their own mutual criticisms.
Thill, you are trying to reverse the burden of proof here. In the course of this argument, I do not need to claim that science has some special intrinsic reliability that common sense lacks. (There have been some good discussions on that possibility in the past on this blog, but they aren’t the point here.) You and others have made the positive claim that common sense has a fundamental reliability that gives it epistemological primacy. I reply by arguing merely that it does not- the null hypothesis, as it were.
In short, if “reliability” merely fails to differentiate common sense vs. expertise, then common sense gets no pedestal, and your position has been refuted. Nothing “more reliable” is needed in the equation.
“Thill, you are trying to reverse the burden of proof here.”
Ben, advocates of weird or extraordinary claims, advocates of claims which deny what everyone takes for granted, have the total burden of proof.
Thus, since you make the weird and extraordinary claim that common sense is not reliable, the burden of proof is squarely on you and not on advocates of common sense.
Ramachandra, far more people take the claim of God’s existence for granted than do those who take for granted all the things you and Thill have attributed to “common sense” – including God’s nonexistence. Add the numbers of those who accept Buddhist positions without a god, and their numbers rise further. Therefore, your atheistic position is more extraordinary than that of the theists, certainly more so than that of the “religious” in general – and similarly more weird. Therefore, by your own logic, at least to the extent that common sense includes the denial of religious claims, the burden of proof falls squarely on advocates of common sense. QED.
What is taken for granted can be an item of common knowledge, e.g., the existence of trees, or merely an item of belief, e.g., the existence of ghosts, God, reincarnation, enlightened beings, etc. This distinction is crucial in determining which claim has the burden of proof. Obviously, the burden of proof is on those who deny items of common knowledge and those who believe in things which are not items of common knowledge.
Many people believe in God, or have “faith” that he exists, but the existence of God is obviously not an item of common knowledge. So, the claim that God exists is an extraordinary claim. Hence, the burden of proof is on the person who claims that God exists.
The existence of trees is an item of common knowledge. Hence, the burden of proof is on those who deny the existence of trees or imply such a denial by their rejection of common sense knowledge.
The way Thill has been using the term, “knowledge” implies belief that is true, and probably justified. Is that how you’re using it? If not, please define it. If so, “common knowledge” appears to mean “common belief that happens to be true.” Which means you’re saying “the burden of proof is on those who deny the truth.” Well, good thing you cleared THAT up. It’s a good thing everyone already knows what the truth is before they discuss anything, so that the burden of proof is on the side which knows it’s denying the truth.
Alternately, if “common knowledge” means “that which everybody holds to be true,” then the bare fact that some people dispute a claim (eg by saying that trees are only conventionally but not ultimately existent) is enough to imply definitively that the claim in question is not common knowledge.
Amod, in fairness, I think that consensus is only one basis for common sense — and it is one that Thill, at least, has not relied upon.
Although he articulated it in the contect of a discussion of what existence means — Thill’s position may be that common sense is rooted in finding truth based on continuity of experience of things or events over time, and functionality of things (that fire burns, steel conducts electricity, etc.) — that things have atrributes and characteristics.
I am probably reading into Thill’s posts some my wn views of common sense. Thill and I also disagree probably not on whether these foundations of common sense are relative (dependent on context) but on the implications of that.
It’s true that Thill has explained common sense as something quite distinct from consensus, but above Ramachandra said something stronger (“what everyone takes for granted”).
“The way Thill has been using the term, “knowledge” implies belief that is true, and probably justified. Is that how you’re using it?”
Yes, and this has nothing to do with anyone’s idiosyncratic use of “knowledge”. It would be odd to say that you know that cars have wheels, but that it is false that car have wheels.
“It’s a good thing everyone already knows what the truth is before they discuss anything, so that the burden of proof is on the side which knows it’s denying the truth.”
What do you mean “the truth”? There is no such thing. There are many particular truths, and, obviously, everyone knows a great many of these particular truths and this knowledge is a condition of any discussion! Obviously, you have to know a language in order to discuss. That means knowledge of the meanings of words, rules of grammar, and so on.
It is actually a form of lunacy to pretend that one doesn’t know anything at all at the beginning of a discussion!
“Alternately, if “common knowledge” means “that which everybody holds to be true,” then the bare fact that some people dispute a claim (eg by saying that trees are only conventionally but not ultimately existent) is enough to imply definitively that the claim in question is not common knowledge.”
“Common knowledge” means “what every normal,sane, rational person knows to be true”. When one says “Anyone can see that the vase is blue.”, one does not need to tediously specify that “Anyone with normal vision can see that the vase is blue.”
If a lunatic claims that dogs can sing arias, this doesn’t imply that it is not common knowledge that dogs cannot sing. If a metaphysical lunatic claims that there is no causation, this doesn’t imply that causation is not common knowledge.
Your position involves the absurdity that a mere denial that something exists is tantamount to evidence that it does not exist.
If you define “knowledge” as necessarily true, then “common knowledge,” as a species of the genus “knowledge,” is also necessarily true. The salient difference between “common knowledge” and “mere belief” is nothing more than that the former is true and the latter false. So if the burden of proof is on those who wish to prove mere beliefs against common knowledge, that must mean that the burden of proof is on those who wish to prove falsehoods against truths. Do I really need to explain to you why that is not a helpful way to establish the burden of proof?
One must first ascertain whether a claim makes sense. What does it mean to claim that “trees are only conventionally but not ultimately existent”? What’s the difference? Give us an example of “conventionally existent” and “ultimately existent”.
To phrase it more precisely, I think Amod should have said that trees conventionally (or relatively) exist and that ultimately trees neither exist nor don’t exist. This is because, as Thill acknowledged, the definition of existence is that existence is relative and implies interdependence (existence in time / space and having attributes or characteristics).
No doubt, the fact that someone denies that we can ever deny anything shows that denial is not common knowledge.
“So, my final challenge to Amod and Ben is this: please tell us what you consider reliable or really true. Otherwise, your judgment that common sense is “unreliable” or “merely plausible” becomes meaningless.”
Well, we can ascertain their assumptions on what is reliable even if they don’t want to acknowledge it explicitly. Their argument has been that since common sense is fallible, it is not reliable. This clearly assumes that only the infallible is reliable.
This raises the inevitable question: Is their assumption that only what is infallible is reliable itself infallible?
And what is the province of this assumption? Is it a scientific assumption or an assumption of common sense or neither?
The assumption is false anyway. The science of probability and the common sense concept of what is reasonable to believe in (plausibility) undermine the assumption that only what is infallible is reliable.
Hence, their position that common sense is unreliable collapses under the excessive burden of its own central assumption.
The premise that common sense is fallible needs further clarification and examination.
I have said that common sense knowledge consists of (a) infallible beliefs, e.g., living humans have blood in their bodies, and (b) plausible (reasonable to hold) beliefs, e.g., grizzlies are dangerous.
This system of knowledge is arrived at by means of ordinary, basic, and fundamental ways of knowing: sense perception and the operations of “Buddhi” or intelligence. Reasoning would be an example of the latter.
The claim that common sense is reliable hinges on the claim that sense perception and the basic operations of Buddhi are reliable. This implies that there is no inherent error in these ways of knowing.
These ways of knowing would be unreliable only if they were inherently flawed or defective. Nothing that Amod or Ben have said shows that these ways of knowing are inherently flawed or defective.
Thus, if a subject observes or jumps to a conclusion carelessly or hastily, this does not show that sense perception and reasoning are inherently flawed or fallible.
If a subject cannot observe or judge something clearly or accurately because of some impairment in his or her senses and/or faculty of Buddhi or intelligence, this does not show that sense perception and reasoning are inherently flawed. It is not due to an “error of perception” that an acid-head sees pink elephants in his or her room.
If a subject cannot observe or judge something clearly or accurately because of certain environmental conditions, e.g., foggy weather, raging fire, etc., this obviously doesn’t show that sense perception and reasoning are inherently flawed or defective.
Optical illusions such as a bent stick in water, mirages in the desert, and the motion of the sun around the earth (Yes, the motion of the sun around the earth is an optical illusion imposed on us by the rotation of the earth!) do not show that sense perception and the Buddhi are inherently flawed or defective.
These optical illusions are unlike delusions in that they are not created by the observer, but rather imposed on him due to conditions beyond his control. Now, unless it can be shown that the Buddhi must necessarily be taken in by these optical illusions and take them for reality, it has not been shown that the Buddhi is inherently flawed or defective. And the fact that the Buddhi has succeeded in understanding that these are indeed optical illusions is an eloquent testimony to the fact that it is not inherently flawed or defective.
So, in essence, Amod and Ben have not shown that sense perception and the Buddhi are inherently defective or flawed in their operations by merely pointing out optical illusions such as the motion of the sun around the earth.
Hence, their conclusion that common sense ways of knowing are not reliable has not been established.
“Well, we can ascertain their assumptions on what is reliable even if they don’t want to acknowledge it explicitly. Their argument has been that since common sense is fallible, it is not reliable. This clearly assumes that only the infallible is reliable.”
Perhaps, they also assume that only omniscience is reliable? Could they also be thinking that since common sense ways of knowing have not made us omniscient, i.e., we don’t instantly have the correct explanations of everything we know through sense perception, that these ways of knowing are not reliable?
“Well, we can ascertain their assumptions on what is reliable even if they don’t want to acknowledge it explicitly. Their argument has been that since common sense is fallible, it is not reliable. This clearly assumes that only the infallible is reliable.
This raises the inevitable question: Is their assumption that only what is infallible is reliable itself infallible?”
Thill, that asks everything but the question at hand. If I were to take your change of definitions so that “fallible things can be reliable”, where would that leave us? Now your case becomes ‘common sense is less fallible than expert knowledge’, which remains as un-demonstrated as ever.
As for your followup point, that one is much more easily addressed than you suspect. Human thinking is systematically, inherently, and demonstrably flawed- and there is tons of evidence for this. If you want a list, I could go on all day; my career is related to this stuff, so I have real expertise here. A good primer was just on the radio yesterday: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137552517/brain-bugs-cognitive-flaws-that-shape-our-lives
You are confusing a grocery list of errors we can commit with evidence that “Human thinking is systematically, inherently, and demonstrably flawed-“.
What are you really saying? Have you given thought to it? Oh, I forgot, any thought you give to it would be “systematically, inherently, and demonstrably flawed”. So, never mind, don’t bother!
How can you or anyone claim “expertise” if “Human thinking is systematically, inherently, and demonstrably flawed-“? That would make expertise impossible to achieve.
“and there is tons of evidence for this.”
No doubt garnered by the very human thought which is
“systematically, inherently, and demonstrably flawed-“. No thanks, I decline to look at such evidence!
“If you want a list, I could go on all day”
Why spend all day looking at the product of something which is “systematically, inherently, and demonstrably flawed”?
“my career is related to this stuff”
How could you have a career at all if your thinking is “systematically, inherently, and demonstrably flawed”? LOL
and there is tons of evidence for this. If you want a list, I could go on all day; my career is related to this stuff, so I have real expertise here
and there is tons of evidence for this. If you want a list, I could go on all day; my career is related to this stuff, so I have real expertise here
If you believe that “human thinking is flawed” means you can no longer hold any conclusions or beliefs or expertise, then there’s not much point in any discussion, is there? This world is full (100%, I would argue) of people who muddle through with the not-quite-adequate thinking and information they have. Self-doubt is indeed a virtue, chastened intellectualism style, but you need not abandon the very ideas of knowledge and expertise and thinking just because our brains are flawed.
Your prior comment directly invited counter-evidence (or -argument) that human perception or thinking is flawed. When I provide evidence that it is, you reject that evidence. I am not “confusing a grocery list of errors… with evidence that human thinking is flawed.” For one thing, a long grocery list of ubiquitous errors is indeed evidence of flawed thinking- these are not merely occasional mistakes, but errors that arise because of inherent characteristics of the way our minds work.
More importantly, the discussion I linked was merely a convenient primer. Basic things that we take for granted as part of reality -including the idea that we have a continuous sensory experience- turn out to be deceptions! I will be happy to explain the evidence for that, if you want to hear it; but if you think evidence is irrelevant because it disagrees with your assumptions about the reliability of human perception and thought, I needn’t take the time.
If thinking is “inherently flawed”, then, obviously, the thought process which has led to this conclusion is also “inherently flawed”. So, you would have no basis on which to claim that “thinking is inherently flawed” is plausible!
Don’t you see the absurdity of claiming that “thinking is inherently flawed” and at the same time assuming that the thought process you have used to come to this conclusion is “reliable”, and, that, therefore, your claim is true or plausible?
Your thinking on this issue is seriously flawed indeed, but that doesn’t mean you cannot think in any other way. I would hope so.
Errors don’t show that thinking is “inherently flawed”. That’s Non sequitur. That would be like arguing that walking is “inherently flawed” on the basis of the fact that we sometimes stumble or wobble!
There are a lot of details I can argue here, but the important part is: you are circularly defining thought as something unflawed. You say “if thinking has flaws, no conclusions are possible.” What do you say then in face of evidence that thought and perception are flawed? So far, you have only declared that evidence absurd. Unfortunately, such a declaration, however appealing, does not make the evidence disappear. Either find some grounds on which to dispute the empirical evidence, or accept that any assumptions which forbid the evidence must be mistaken.
“That would be like arguing that walking is “inherently flawed” on the basis of the fact that we sometimes stumble or wobble!”
But if we *always* stumble and wobble, that would be evidence of an inherent flaw in walking, no? That is precisely the ubiquity of errors in our thought and perception. The article I linked above discusses this, though only in the audio (and briefly summarized in the “interview highlights” section on memory errors).
It’s astonishing that you seem unable to understand, or remain recalcitrant to, the logical implications of your claim.
If human thinking is “inherently flawed”, then it is always flawed. An inherent property is always present! So, if human thinking is always flawed, then it makes no sense to speak of any reliable “empirical evidence” such processes of thinking could have arrived at. Indeed, it also follows that all of your comments are worthless because the thinking which has gone into them is flawed. It also follows that thinking can never correctly distinguish between truth and falsity. So, you are wasting your time, on your own terms, in trying to establish some truth about the nature of thinking, common sense, and so on.
As to how you can practice science on the premise that thinking is always flawed and laden with error, that we can never correctly distinguish between truth and falsity, etc.,honor the incomprehensible!
It’s skeptical gobbledygook which is producing all this confusion in you and Amod! LOL
Although I am inclined to view skepticism as a form of “intellectual pathology” and consistently serious expressions of skepticism as an alarming indication of impending lunacy, I think that skepticism is best treated charitably as a philosophical joke. The skeptic is a philosophical comedian. So, the best response to a skeptic may well be one which uses the same currency, e.g., jokes, ridicule, satire, etc.
However, skepticism is logically flawed, insincere (the skeptic shows by his actions and judgments that he doesn’t really believe in skepticism) and intellectually irresponsible.
For instance, this excellent blog is called “Love of All Wisdom”. But in terms of skepticism (there are no reliable ways of knowing, there can be no knowledge of anything, etc) there is no such thing as wisdom, not mention varieties or kinds of wisdom!
Wisdom involves knowledge and if there is no possibility of knowledge, there is no possibility of wisdom either. And “love of all wisdom” becomes meaningless. How can you love that which is not possible?
Amod has addressed issues of Buddhist scholarship and assumed that this text or that author has said this or that. None of this makes any sense from the standpoint of skepticism. There is no possibility of scholarship, i.e., accumulation of textual knowledge, etc., of any kind according to skepticism.
The good life has been another topic in Amod’s posts. From a skeptical standpoint, we cannot know anything about a good life or whether there is even such a thing. If no knowledge is possible, then moral knowledge, a condition of the good life, is also not possible. So, there can’t be any good life according to skepticism.
So, either all these skeptical refrains are a joke, or there is a serious and alarming incoherence in espousing skepticism and in the same breath talking about love of all wisdom, scholarship, the good life, and so on.
Yeah, I too am surprised that Ben does not see that if thinking is really “inherently flawed” then it would follow that “thinking is inherently flawed” would itself be an erroneous claim since it is a product of thought!
What he claims to be “empirical evidence” would also be flawed and not worth considering since it is the product of the selfsame “inherently flawed” thinking.
So, unless he concedes some thinking is not flawed, he is awkwardly hoisted on his own petard.
“if human thinking is always flawed, then it makes no sense to speak of any reliable ’empirical evidence’ such processes of thinking could have arrived at. Indeed, it also follows that all of your comments are worthless because the thinking which has gone into them is flawed.”
The problem with your reasoning here is that it equates “flawed” with “worthless.” I hope you do not apply this equation to romantic partners, or you will be a very lonely man.
“The problem with your reasoning here is that it equates “flawed” with “worthless.” I hope you do not apply this equation to romantic partners, or you will be a very lonely man.”
The context is the claim that “thinking is inherently flawed”, i.e., erroneous or incorrect, with the implication that it never gets things right. If that is the case, then, from the standpoint of cognitive value, thinking and its products, e.g., comments or remarks, theories, hypotheses, explanations, etc., are surely worthless.
If all you have are errors, then there is no question of learning anything from errors since such learning will also be vitiated by errors. This surely makes these errors worthless and the “inherently flawed” process of thought which irrevocably generates them also worthless.
Now, if you want to claim that thinking which is inherently flawed still has worth, one would like to know what it is which endows such thinking and its products with any worth or value.
“The context is the claim that ‘thinking is inherently flawed’, i.e., erroneous or incorrect, with the implication that it never gets things right.”
No, it isn’t. Show me where Ben or I have said that thinking is “inherently incorrect,” or that it “never gets things right.” That’s not what it means for something to be inherently flawed. It means only that the flawed thinking regularly and frequently gets things wrong, and that this wrongness can never be completely eliminated, though we strive to reduce it. These are different things.
Re reliability (as per “Moore’s Hand”), I’ll take this concept up more in tomorrow’s post (and intend to discuss the underlying ideas further soon afterwards).
“flawed thinking regularly and frequently gets things wrong, and that this wrongness can never be completely eliminated, though we strive to reduce it.”
“this wrongness can never be completely eliminated”
Obviously, this implies that when we think about things, anything, there will always be errors or mistakes about the object of thought including thought itself if we are thinking about it.
In denying that this implies that we are always wrong about everything, Amod seems to think that although most of what we think about anything would be infected with errors, a logical consequence of “inherently flawed thinking”, we could still get some things right.
What are these things which we still manage to get right despite our “inherently flawed thinking”? And how do we manage to do so?
The problem here is analogous to the one faced by the claim that human beings are inherently morally good or the claim that they are inherently morally bad. If we are inherently good, how are completely bad actions possible? If we are inherently bad, how are completely good actions possible?
Wouldn’t any standards we formulate to make the distinction between accuracy and error, truth and falsity itself be vitiated by errors if we regularly and frequently get things wrong?
Thus, if our thinking is “inherently flawed” and we regularly and frequently get things wrong, then how can we get anything right at all? I am asking for an explanation of how this is possible.
And, further, if indeed we can get something right sometimes, we can also get the implications of these truths right sometimes. And by a process analogous to recursion, we can enlarge the body of things we get right to the point where we no longer regularly and frequently get things wrong.
So, the silver lining in Amod’s dark cloud of skepticism or pessimism about thinking threatens the cloud itself.
“though we strive to reduce it”
This doesn’t tell us whether our “striving” is successful or not, and, if so, to what extent, i.e., rarely or regularly.
If it is acknowledged that this striving is successful, we are back to the problem of explaining how this is possible and how this is achieved.
If you apply the principle that what is not infallible is not reliable to your romantic partners, you will also be a lonely man. LOL
How weird! Thinking is “inherently flawed”, but we can rely on it to correctly identify errors!
“It should be obvious that there must be fundamental and basic items of knowledge which make inquiry possible. If common sense knowledge does not constitute, or even furnish, such fundamental and basic items of knowledge, what does?”
I am still waiting for a response to this question from Amod & Ben.
“It should be obvious that there must be fundamental and basic items of knowledge which make inquiry possible. If common sense knowledge does not constitute, or even furnish, such fundamental and basic items of knowledge, what does?”
I am still waiting for a response to this question from Amod & Ben.”
I have responded to this many times, but I will do so once more, in case I have been unclear.
There is a big difference between ‘constitute’ and ‘furnish’. Common sense does furnish those things, but it also furnishes a whole lot more, a substantial amount of which is wrong. Discerning the difference between those two categories (the true stuff and the false stuff) often takes expert knowledge.
“Discerning the difference between those two categories (the true stuff and the false stuff) often takes expert knowledge.”
Yes, but such expert knowledge presupposes and takes for granted some items of common sense knowledge, including the distinction between truth and falsity. So, there is no such thing as expert knowledge which is completely independent of common sense knowledge.
“So, there is no such thing as expert knowledge which is completely independent of common sense knowledge.”
Yes, but how does that impact this argument? If your claim is that expertise is a subset of common sense, then everything is common sense, and the discussion is meaningless. If expertise is something else, then you have a something-else that is needed to distinguish the wheat (the stuff to presuppose and take for granted) from the chaff (the misleading stuff), because the distinction is frequently unclear.
See my current thread with Thill for references about how stuff that seems like fundamental common sense about our own consciousness, body and identity (reliable memory, continuous sense perception experience) can be incorrect.
“If your claim is that expertise is a subset of common sense, then everything is common sense, and the discussion is meaningless.”
Here you are clearly confused about what I have said. I said that expert knowledge always presupposes common sense knowledge. That implies that common sense knowledge is a necessary subset of expert knowledge, not the other way around.
Further, it does not follow from the fact that common sense knowledge is presupposed by expert knowledge that the distinction between them is undermined. That’s a “quantum leap” of logic. If advanced math presupposes basic math, how does this imply that there is no distinction between them? In fact, the notion that Y presupposes X implies that they are distinct!
Let us get some facts straight:
1. Common sense knowledge is distinct from expert knowledge in that the latter involves special training, e.g., most people can recognize a melody or tune, but it takes training in music and musical knowledge born of this training to identify the notes which constitute the melody or tune.
2. The distinction between expert knowledge and common sense knowledge does not imply a necessary dichotomy or opposition between them. This follows not only from (1), but also from the fact that the distinction between appearance and reality, the concept of verification by repeated observation and application of reasoning, etc., are common to both levels of knowledge.
3. Whereas correction of error at the expert level of knowledge always presupposes common sense knowledge, the correction of error at the common sense level of knowledge does not always require expert knowledge. No expert knowledge is required to ascertain whether it’s really a snake hiding beneath a rock. All you need is to look carefully and ensure that there is adequate lighting to ascertain the fact.
Further, as I’ve already pointed out, in some cases it makes no sense even to think that common sense could be mistaken, e.g., knowing that one is in pain, knowing that one has arms, knowing that one can walk or talk, knowing that other people in normal conditions have thoughts and feelings, knowing that living people have blood in their bodies, etc.
The list can go on. In all these cases, common sense is incorrigible and infallible. Hence, even the possibility of correction by expert knowledge does not arise.
I appreciate the clarification; there were indeed some points I had not properly understood. I think some of what we disagree on is a question of interpretation. “Expertise = common sense + training. Sometimes (though of course not always) you need expertise to evaluate common sense.” I think we both agree on those, we just disagree on whether or not that’s sufficient evidence that common sense is not-superior.
However, I dispute the claim that “in some cases it makes no sense even to think that common sense could be mistaken”. This category of “apparently infallible and incorrigible” also contains some things that, upon expert analysis, prove to be false. The untrained observer would surely claim that “my memories are accurate” and “I have continuous sensory experience”, and expect to find those in the infallible category- yet they are both false.
“Sometimes (though of course not always) you need expertise to evaluate common sense.” I think we both agree on those, we just disagree on whether or not that’s sufficient evidence that common sense is not-superior.”
If Y (expert knowledge) always requires X (common sense knowledge), but X does not always require Y, (and you have agreed with both of these true premises)this obviously establishes the primacy of X (common sense knowledge). I think this is beyond dispute.
“However, I dispute the claim that “in some cases it makes no sense even to think that common sense could be mistaken”.”
Explain how it makes any sense to dispute that living human bodies have blood, hearts, and brains, that people normally have thoughts and feelings, that we can know whether we have arms and legs, that we can know whether we are in pain. You ignore these examples and talk about those I have not included in the category of incorrigible common sense knowledge.
“The untrained observer would surely claim that “my memories are accurate” and “I have continuous sensory experience”, and expect to find those in the infallible category- yet they are both false.”
It is common sense knowledge that memory is not infallible, but it also common sense knowledge that a person’s memory is reliable unless there are grounds to think otherwise, e.g., frequent memory errors, onset of Alzheimer’s, senility, trauma, etc.
That you don’t believe what you are claiming, e.g., memory is unreliable, should be evident from the fact that when you talk about your childhood or your past, you don’t constantly verify whether your memory is reliable. I am sure the people you talk to don’t ask you to furnish proof of every event you claim to remember. But, if memory is unreliable, that’s what we should expect you and others to do. Since you don’t, memory is not unreliable. QED
It seems to me that there is a gross misuse of the word “unreliable” going on in these skeptical refrains. We certainly do not use it interchangeably with “fallible” in ordinary discourse or in scientific and technological discourse. If we judge something to be unreliable, then we do not rely on it or “make do with it”. That would be irrational. So, we avoid depending on what is unreliable and seek an alternative which is reliable.
Now, I ask: Is this what you and Amod do? I am sure I can gather numerous witnesses to testify that you do not display behaviors invariably associated with thinking that ordinary ways of knowing are unreliable, e.g., asking for proof interminably, refusing to accept what you perceive, total inaction (action requires and shows certainty), etc. I am absolutely certain of this since if it were false, both of you would be in an asylum.
So, like any skeptic, you are simply feigning or pretending that you espouse the view that ordinary ways of knowing are unreliable.
As I said before, all this is just philosophical comedy.
“total inaction (action requires and shows certainty), etc.”
$ 100 Million Reward (courtesy of Moore’sHand Estate)!!!
Pl. contact me if you have seen Amod and/or Ben trying to repeatedly walk through a wall since they claim that memory and sense perception are unreliable.
“The untrained observer would surely claim that “my memories are accurate” and “I have continuous sensory experience”, and expect to find those in the infallible category- yet they are both false.”
Scientists, including those investigating the basis of memory in the brain, accept that memory is generally reliable. Otherwise, they would not write reminiscences, or memoirs, or continue with the research they may have started recently. Which scientist, except the one ready for the asylum, runs around asking his colleagues to confirm with proofs that they did indeed embark on a research project last week?
Here’s a good review of the historical background to the discussion of Common Sense philosophy:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qhbn
From the In Our Time series, Grayling, Lane and Brodie discuss in an interesting 45 mins. the background, British Empiricism, Thomas Reid, Descartes.
Common Sense Party:
This level of certainty about common sense as a foundation seems misplaced. The general locus of the search for incorrigibility has been in the drawer marked R for Rationalism. Even if we accept that universal scepticism is not supportable that still may leave us with the doubt that our present content of consciousness or suite of perceptions may not be accurate. We go into the woods after grizzlies but end up shooting our father-in-law. Does that mean our father-in-law resembles a grizzly? Well no but maybe we would be better off looking at the nature of consciousness itself, the nature of awareness as such, the first principles of human nature and so forth for the ultimate foundation that can support our inquiries. That does not seem a fatuous project so instead of attempting to induce conviction by repetition show us how productive lines of inquiry began with a common sense principle or some particular instance of common sense. Hand waving not allowed.
Michael, Amod, et al.,
I’m curious whether the appeal to common sense would suddenly become worthy of your consideration if it is presented in a “metaphysical package” to you, e.g., in terms of the view that common sense knowledge is reflection of the self-luminous nature of the all-pervasive Atman or Brahman, the primacy of Purusha over Prakriti, the reflection of the innate Buddha Mind, the benevolence of God (after Descartes), etc.
“This level of certainty about common sense as a foundation seems misplaced.”
Not any more than your level of certainty that when you step outside your home the ground is not going way is “misplaced”.
It should read: “Not any more than your level of certainty that when you step outside your home the ground is not going to give way is “misplaced”.”
A. “the doubt that our present content of consciousness or suite of perceptions may not be accurate.”
B. “maybe we would be better off looking at the nature of consciousness itself, the nature of awareness as such, the first principles of human nature and so forth for the ultimate foundation that can support our inquiries.”
A and B are inconsistent if “our present content of consciousness” pertains to consciousness as some of it surely does.
It seems that old comment thread got too deep?
“The context is the claim that “thinking is inherently flawed”, i.e., erroneous or incorrect, with the implication that it never gets things right.”
No, that’s not precisely what I’m claiming. Perhaps I have been unclear, but Amod has understood my idea more accurately: “flawed” does not mean “always wrong.” A flawed process produces both bad outcomes and good outcomes. Flawed does mean “unreliable”, but we make do with unreliable things all the time. All of our knowledge and wisdom arises from the best arguments and observations we can muster, flawed though they may be.
In short, an error-prone system does not mean we can’t make any conclusions. It does mean we should embrace chastened intellectualism, because at any time, we might be making mistakes. But that awareness does not prevent us from forging ahead with whatever knowledge we have, however imperfect.
“It’s astonishing that you seem unable to understand, or remain recalcitrant to, the logical implications of your claim.”
I dispute, as I note above, that those are the logical consequences. But more importantly, you are back to making the argument that an argument is true if its conclusions are useful. The world would certainly be simpler if human thought was reliable. That still fails to make the counter-evidence disappear.
You now respond to the evidence by pronouncing that it is the result of flawed skeptical thinking. Then, to maintain the idea of flawless human thought, do you then reject all scientific findings? I assume not: but then on what grounds do you choose these data for rejection? You seems to reject it only because you find the conclusions unpalatable.
Jabali & common sense party:
There may be various points of view about the business of philosophy that are in a covert war to coin a phrase. A short list of what that business is might include: (a) making the world safe for science or establishing an incontrovertible axiomatic base for science. (b) general ruminations about the nature of reality that approach the condition of science, that will be science when they grow up, (c) an aporetically driven inquiry which boldly goes where science could not go or be bothered to go.
It is (c) which gives the most trouble to the average person who views the sort of puzzles that aporiai are, as daft. Subjective Idealism with its talk of an external world be a prime example. The question posed by Descartes: What do we know even if we are in error about what we think we know seem senseless to such as Jabali108 who would perhaps hold that if you don’t know something true that issues from the content of consciousness in a direct way e.g.. that’s a tree, this is my hand; then you are not capable of saying anything of value. I understand how this might be held by those whose ideas of truth and usefulness are formed by what they take the scientific method to be. They may be wrong about that also.
Thank you, Michael. You have identified much of what bothers me in this discussion. Some of the discussion in this and the related post two weeks ago seems to me to be a little timid. Contrasting science and “common sense”, for example, seems to me to be a trivial discussion; both are based on the same view.
Neither “common sense” nor science is introspective. Both are based on assumptions concerning the independence and integrity of the observer. Both focus on manipulating an external world. Even when focused on the observer, science views the observer at arms length — progress in science is seen as a process of gaining territory, of the intellect expanding and mastering the unknown. There is no examination of what it means to make oneself an observer. There is no interest in the nature and implications of life, other than in a limited sense. To study pain and emotion and compassion (except maybe as you would study are by examining brush strokes and the molecular structure of pigments). To have an understanding of virtue.
None of this is a particular problem within the sphere of what “common sense” and science are used for — understanding the relative world — relationships between parts of our experience that our intellect has broken into concepts. But both are limited. The biggest revolution that science can conceive of is a paradigm shift — essentially a view of the world that substitutes one set of concepts for another.
The other unfortunate aspect of both common sense and science is that the focus on interrelationships of static concepts leads to yes and no answers and that leads to a failure of communication. So, for example, common sense takes the concept of a tree and says that a tree must exist or not exist. There are only two possibilities for the scientist. As the Great Mipham said, concepts are like the elephant that bathes in the river to wash off the dust and then rolls in the dust to dry off the water. Yes and no makes it hard to have a conversation.
Jim, these are important points and well taken. I focus on science in contrast to common sense because it is something which the Common Sense Party (to use Michael’s apt phrase) has accepted as a “reliable” source of knowledge, and which so clearly requires the kind of specialized training that common sense is defined in contrast to. Were I to explore these kinds of deeper metaphysical issues, the problems with “common sense” could not be clarified because the discussion would get bogged down with other separate objections. The problems with science – whether or not they are shared with “common sense” – are a topic for another time.
“It means only that the flawed thinking regularly and frequently gets things wrong”
Of course, what else can you expect of “flawed thinking”? This is your definition of “flawed thinking”, but this does not imply that our thinking fits your definition of “flawed thinking”.
The definition is vague. What “things” are you talking about? “Things” like where we live, whether we are single, married, or divorced, whether we have children and how many, the way to work and back home, our bank balance, the name of our spouse, etc? If so, the claim is utter falsehood. If you are not talking about these “things”, you need to make clear what you are talking about with examples. And these should be examples of things EVERYONE “regularly and frequently gets wrong”.
And how do you know that our thinking is “flawed”, i.e., that it “regularly and frequently gets things wrong”?
Lacking access to divine revelation, enlightened beings and so forth, I suppose you and Ben are using thinking to come to this conclusion. But if our thinking (whose thinking? the thinking of intelligent and stupid people alike? the thinking of both those who have expertise and those who do not have expertise?) “regularly and frequently gets things wrong”, then this very claim is unreliable on your own terms since it is highly likely that this claim is one of those very “things” our “flawed thinking” regularly and frequently gets wrong.
“Flawed thinking” cannot become miraculously “reliable” when it is directed on its own nature!
Moore’s Hand:
” “Flawed thinking” cannot become miraculously “reliable” when it is directed on its own nature!”
||||||||||||||||
The rationalist cadre would demur saying that when the speculative intellect is turned away from the area where it is most likely to go astray, viz. the sensory, then it has a good chance of arriving at truth. The paradigm case would be mathematics. Now you may disagree with that but it is a coherent position that has been held by some very great intellects.
Is this position inimical to that of the common sense school? Not necessarily. In some cases it arises as a reflection on the deliveries of common sense e.g. what is the nature of man such that there is common sense?; what is implied by the taking of common sense as the default position etc.
The operative phrase is “inherently flawed thinking”. An inherent property is always present in an entity or process.
So, if “flawed” means “regularly and frequently gets things wrong”, then “inherently flawed thinking” would be thinking which is ALWAYS flawed in this sense regardless of the object of thought.
Hence, if any thinking about the nature of thinking would also be “inherently flawed”, i.e., will regularly and frequently get the nature of thinking wrong. QED
Moore’s Hand:
No I don’t think so. Descartes’ reasoning that even if he were totally deluded about the state he was in, in bed asleep and not sitting at the fire as he thought, he at least could be sure that : cogito ergo sum. He wasn’t claiming that inherent fallibility means being wrong all the time just that there is uncertainty and he was after all looking for a position that had the axiomatic certainty that he enjoyed in mathematics.
But, moving on, I see that Amod has put up a new post in this interesting series.
Michael:
The “nature of thinking” encompasses a great deal more than the fact that thinking occurs!
Obviously, there is infallibility in knowing that you are thinking! Any doubt or denial here only shows the fact that one is thinking.
So, I agree that even “inherently flawed thinking” is infallible in thinking that thinking occurs!
But this should actually pose a problem for you, Amod, and Ben, since it would be an additional infallible item of common sense knowledge!
However, the thesis that thinking is “inherently flawed” still implies that we regularly and frequently get things wrong about thinking itself, the fact that we are thinking obviously excepted.
I ask, therefore, why isn’t the claim that “thinking is inherently flawed” also afflicted by the likelihood that we regularly and frequently get things wrong? How does this claim acquire immunity to that affliction?
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