Skepticism and doubt are arguably the primary tool of the philosopher. Descartes’ Meditation, one of the most influential texts in the history of philosophy is by intention nothing more than a practice of doubt. The idea being that if we doubt everything we possibly can, then what we are left with will be a certain foundation upon which to build our view of the world.
There are many critiques of Cartesian doubt, both Quine and Peirce both criticize it on the basis that it is fundamentally insincere. While I’m not certain that I think they are the strongest critiques, I have to say that I find them compelling.
I think we should be able to agree that there is a big difference between saying we doubt something, imagining we doubt it, and actually doubting something. I think that we can find some benefits in false doubt… it can act as a way to prime our imagination, allowing us to open our mind to something we are not predisposed to believe, and perhaps consider alternatives we mightn’t of otherwise. I think there is also rhetorical doubt, where are aren’t really engaging our imagination in useful and thoughtful ways, but rather performing doubt as a means to arrive at our preferred position. Do that’s doubt. What’s the deal with Humility?
While people do speak about humility, it isn’t as central an issue as doubt in philosophy, however I think it’s also an important one. Honest humility allows us to engage in honest doubt, or at least an honest attempt at imagined doubt. I think there’s also a difference between performative humility and honest humility. This gets further confused by the fact that socially and culturally we have various views on performative humility. Socially, we frequently understate our beliefs in order to avoid alienating those who hold other beliefs. Philosophically, I believe that Gods are myths, factually untrue. In practice, in life, I often describe myself as “not really religious” if the topic comes up. It’s a sort of performative social humility that serves us in smoothing over some rough edges, but ends up taking us further from the truth of the matter. This social instinct, this false humility, I think is anathema to philosophical discourse, because it obscures truth.
To what degree do you think false doubt and false humility cause problems in philosophy, and why?
Before leaping into this, would you be OK if I called false doubt “methodological doubt”? This is how Descartes thought of it – there was nothing insincere about it, since it was expressed as a question – and I think it better captures the distinction you want to make.
I think if you want to make that distinction, you can go ahead. It isn’t the identical distinction that I’m making, so maybe we can see where that takes us in a discussion. I think that while there was no ill intent by Descartes, no attempt to “pull the wool” over anyone’s eyes, the value of his assessment being an honest reflection of how doubt works with people didn’t seem to occurs to him. He took it on faith that doubt was a the one and only tool for this job, and that it was a scalpel, not a blunt instrument. A little like Maslow’s hammer, IMO.
As admirable as his intellect obviously was, it seems that what he leaves us with is actually a lesson about how a massive intellect can get it wrong and how tempting the lie can be.
Ah well, I’m much more of a Descartes fan than you are! (Though not a fan of “Cartesian dualism.”) I’ll try to cobble together some thoughts about the differences between methodical doubt and our ordinary, “genuine” doubt. The “false humility” question is a different one, not as interesting to me.
Not sure that’s true. Aesthetically, his thinking is amazing. It’s when we judge the efficacy of his conclusions… I think he falls very far from the mark. Maybe it’s more of a difference of which we value more.
They are huge problems, for the reasons you state. They involve affectation: putting on airs in a way that is false and misleading. In many cases they also involve double standards, such as a preference for doubting a particular set of propositions without applying the same standard elsewhere. I actually think these are big problems on TPF itself, alongside the temptation towards intellectual vanity.
Descartes’ methodological doubt has all of the same problems. It is a faux doubt donned for the sake of a faux certainty. That sort of tactic only works on a local level, for example when one tries to strengthen an argument that they themselves believe is sufficiently strong (in order to persuade others who may not have the same presuppositions).
As I read it, it is the practice of overcoming both doubt and the influence of authority through the practice of reason.
I think it is part of his rhetorical defense of free inquiry. He could not explicitly call the absolute authority of the Church and its’ philosopher, Aristotle, into question, so he begins as if by doubting everything.
In various letters of Descartes’, he makes it clear that his methodical doubt is a philosophical tool. It isn’t meant to mimic or, worse, recommend anything we do in ordinary life. Now he certainly didn’t think that made it false or insincere, and neither do I. He believed he had discovered a method that would make clear what must be the case if we are to account for our experiences. If it is logically – not psychologically – impossible to doubt X, then X must be the case, or so he believed.
Most people who aren’t happy with this method point out that many of the things Descartes rejects as being uncertain, on the grounds that they are logically doubtable, are ridiculous to “really” doubt. But what does this mean? Isn’t “real” doubt just another word for psychological doubt, which is not what Descartes is interested in? Of course (and Descartes says this explicitly in a letter) I can’t go through life doubting the stability of objects, or 99.9% of the evidence of my senses. But the fact that they are doubtable in Descartes’ way – that is, logically or conceptually doubtable – means that they cannot be certain. And that’s what Descartes’ target is. He’s not trying to say something about doubt; rather, he’s using the tool of methodological doubt to say something about certainty.
Where I start to part company with Descartes is the way he connects certainty with knowledge, but that’s another story. Also, of course, that specific issues of doubt and certainty can be isolated from our overall “web of belief,” in Quine’s words.
It’s the same story. Descartes’ doubt is placed at the service of indubitable certainty, and that is the issue. Real, natural doubt is an important part of inquiry, and therefore when Descartes sequesters it into his neat little “methodological” box he has fallen away from genuine inquiry (and he has fallen into a kind of “sham philosophy”). He tries to inappropriately isolate and expunge doubt. By inflating doubt into something it is not, Descartes inflated certitude into something it is not, thereby losing the organic doubt-certitude dance that is part and parcel of genuine inquiry.
It is important to remember Descartes’ contributions to physics, mathematics, medicine, optics, and meteorology.
In a letter to Mersenne, Descartes reveals:
…there are many other things in them; and I tell you, between ourselves, that these six Meditations contain all the foundations of my physics. But that must not be spread abroad, if you please; for those who follow Aristotle will find it more difficult to approve them. I hope that [my readers] will accustom themselves insensibly to my principles, and will come to recognize their truth, before perceiving that they destroy those of Aristotle.
– René Descartes to Mersenne, January 28, 1641, Œuvres de Descartes,
3:297–98, quoted and translated by Hiram Caton in The Origin of
Subjectivity, 17
I agree with Peirce. For me the pretense of doubt is not fascinating and usually a waste of time.
I also agree with Gadamer. “Doubting everything” is not possible. We are prejudice on two legs. Even the association of philosophy with doubt is a prejudice. Prejudice isn’t the enemy here. Inquiry is prejudice, but I mean living or in-progress prejudice that collides with its object, so that it is continually tranformed. I see this last claim as a fusion of Gadamer and Peirce.
You hint at polite humility in your OP. This is good for dialogue. False humility can be an odious cloak for arrogance. But there is also “false” arrogance as an adaptation to the rhetorical situation.
Philosophers tend to try to inject a thesis. It’s a confident, self-assertive act. The pretense of doubt may be part of this. My thesis is all the more True because I doubted real hard first.
A “strong” or “good” philosopher will account for the context of injection. The thesis to be injected will need to be primarily the synthesis of the work of other philosophers. The philosopher who is too genuinely arrogant is the crank who won’t learn, won’t assimilate, and won’t generate a synthetic thesis of interest to those who understand the space. This “space” of the-aleady-done is the main character. The relatively strong philosopher gets lucky and fits another brick in the wall. Even the greatest philosophers are primarily curated collages of their predecessors.
In short, you need the genuine but mitigated humility to suffer the anxiety of influence and the curiosity and passion to get caught up with the Conversation. And you need the healthy arrogance to assert yourself among judges who are also your rivals.
Interesting. I frequently have to keep my disposition from others. I dislike sport, popular music, am an atheist, hold unusual political views and find most things in contemporary culture overrated or uninteresting. This means when meeting someone new I stick to asking them questions rather than answering any myself. I do this to preserve social mores and maintain smooth relations. I don’t think an honest reveal of my outlook would be useful. And who am I to inflict my joy killing biases on others?
As someone who doesn’t do philosophy professionally but has a gentle interest in it, I can’t really say. However I did observe to someone else on a different thread that we must also be aware that many people use doubt and questioning as a convenient tool to avoid commitment and responsibility, on the grounds that if an issue can be said not to be resolved, they do not need to commit to anything. There’s a difference between scepticism and evasion.
I think this is an important point, and I have sometimes kept two sets of books. What has seemed to me to work in one domain doesn’t always seem to apply in another. Sometimes this is wrong, and I do appreciate it being identified. It’s helpful. Philosophy that allows you to modify your views is better than simply bunkering down in a position and remaining impervious to criticism through concerted acts of motivated reasoning or rhetoric.
It’s good to a large degree (but not uniformly in all situations) in general social situations. While it might not hold no value, I’m not convinced that it holds the same value in philosophical discourse.
I have a hypothesis that philosophy, to a large degree, has a culture of sophism. I suspect that many might disagree about the degree to which sophism is a problem in philosophy. It seems sensible to me that because of the very nature of the subject, it always was, and probably always will be a significant problem. If I am correct, then I’m not convinced that polite humility is the optimal approach to address that. I think polite humility allows sophism to keep its patina of legitimacy.
To be a little meta, I’m not convinced that going onto a philosophy forum and telling people that tons of philosophy is sophism is a way of engaging in polite humility. There are many who could take that as a personal attack, or an attack on people they admire. Aside from the truth of the question though, which I agree is an open question, I can’t help but hold that the question is worth asking in a plain and pointed way (not totally abstracted from the actual practices and practitioners who might engage with the question). The purpose of the polite version of false humility is to keep the possibility of negative emotional reactions to a minimum. I think that some learning requires, or at the least, is aided by a little negative reaction.
I should be honest with you that I don’t accept Plato’s purity discourse. I’m OK with using “sophism” pejoratively for reasoning that I find shoddy. But I don’t believe in “pure” reason — don’t believe in a god’s ear that validates this or that ape’s sense of what is appropriate and valid. Yet I care how some of my fellow apes react to my marks and noises. Normatively is “real” but each ape has its own take on these fuzzy norms.
Let me comment more on polite humility. This is a good strategy — in my experience anyway — in dialogues where the participants understand one another as peers. If I believe that I can learn something from the other, I should —for “selfish” reasons at least — suspend disbelief, be patient, push through suspicion of the other that may just be my own prejudice reflected back at me from the object. The object is always ( to some degree) a mirror of my prejudice. Such is my current prejudice.
The risk with a ruder strategy is that dialogue will degenerate into the pettiness of a personal politics. The other becomes an enemy. The goal is to humiliate before I am humiliated. Even if I think I’m good at this kind of war, I may decide that it’s an ugly way to spend my time, lost in idiotic sophistry, betraying my muse, neglecting the joyful art of playfully serious foolosophy.
I’m not sure a binary presentation really captures the matter well. I don’t, or try not to, see people as only peers or pedants. I think in many ways we all have some of both in us, and we probably can all benefit from both a gentle treatment, and a little roughness too. I also think that all strategies are a form of mixed strategy that lie along a spectrum of false politeness and rude honesty.
For at least a year in the 90s I was harassed by an irascible philosophy professor (I wasn’t his student, it was online) who was curt, plain and dismissive of many of the things I had to say. In hindsight, many of the things I said were naive and ill-considered. I seriously doubt I would have been as thoughtful about modifying my views had I not been basically bullied into it.
I agree that a strategy that isn’t as strongly concerned with politeness has risks, but I think there is a risk/reward calculation that needs to be weighed. I also think that, like in general society, in a philosophical community, a diversity of type and approach is of value. I think everyone being “rude” at all times would be unmanageable, and would lead to the demise of the community. I do think that a measure of tactical rudeness is incredibly healthy for a community like this one though.
Here’s something to think about, lifted directly out of my life. A long time friend of mine, someone whom I think is very smart, said something to me a few years ago. We’re Canadian, and they said “If Trudeau is elected, we’re almost certainly going to descend into a Venezuela style dictatorship.” It’s hard to identify one’s own biases, but I’m pretty confident that it isn’t my bias speaking when I say that taken literally, that is a ludicrous statement. I probed as to if this was presented as an exaggeration in order to make a point, and was assured that my friend really believed this statement. Am I not doing her a disservice trading politeness for plain spoken truth here? If I say “Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s a believable prediction”, aren’t I expressing that she’s still within the bounds of reasonable analysis? Isn’t it of value to say “While I don’t think you’re insane, that’s a fully insane take on politics”. Isn’t there, at minimum, some normative effect to that?
Just for clarity, I understood myself to address only the peer-to-peer situation.
I’m glad to hear it !
This makes sense. You might say he was mentoring you. Doesn’t mean that he was always right. But it sounds like he was ahead of you, as an older person.
I’m middle aged now, and I would still bet on arrogant youths who were conspicuously evolving their beliefs. It takes a stupid courage and visceral faith in yourself to try to achieve something in philosophy after thousands of years of this stuff. I get that some people just want to learn some of it and don’t aspire to make a mark, but to me it makes sense that aspiring philosophers will understand something about achieved philosophers that humble self-professed spectators will miss. It’s a poet’s understanding of the poetry of others. You consider why they made this move rather than that one. You consider the persona they offer as a scultpure.
I agree. I mean I gesture at phronesis here. I don’t pretend to have a formula. It’s more like jazz. Maybe I blow a brown note now and then, so I adjust the reed. Sometimes a little tension is good for the dialogue. And sometimes you have to show your teeth. But I value long stretches of genial co-creativity.
Well that’s tricky ! I only make things worse if I am blunt about my wife being “crazy.” She hates that word. To save her reputation here, she is usually superbly sane in my book.
I agree. We do find ourselves in a moment in the world where social norms are a little messed up, thanks largely, I think, to the nature of online communication. The world has always had cranks and peddlers of evil, but at least in my life up until recently, they were mostly marginalized. Now they are just another voice in the cacophony. I feel like as a society, we’d benefit from a little less politeness and a little more (like 5% more) ridicule, shaming and other rudeness to marginalize some of the craziness that is best marginalized.
I agree. This seems pretty common to me, even though I suspect that the people engaging in the skepticism aren’t intentionally using it this way. I have little patience for interjections like “we can’t know that for certain” or “That’s what you believe”. I take it as a matter of common sense that these two statements accompany every expression of every belief, and making them explicit is at the very least a distraction from whatever the discussion at hand is.
I actually think it’s just a different chapter in the same story.
Descartes treated certainty as something metaphysical. Something that could be objectively attained, and the means to attaining it was (as) global (as possible) methodological skepticism. In other words, the formalized application of doubt. As far as I can see, certainty is actually an expression of confidence, not anything metaphysical. I mean, as I understand it (and I’m not a Quine scholar), that is ultimately Quine’s point. There isn’t a metaphysically certain foundation, there are ideas that pragmatically cohere and serve us. That’s what the web’s made of, right?
I don’t think you can get from honest doubt to metaphysical certainty, or vice versa, and if there is no metaphysical certainty, then what does methodological/sham/paper doubt help us attain?
As to humility. Descartes had to be deferential to the Church authorities. This was for his own protection and the protection of his writings. He did not want to share the fate of Galileo. He took his motto from Ovid: “He who lived well hid himself well. (Bene qui latuit bene vixit)”
Descartes methodological doubt was not intended to be a method for doing philosophy. It is preparatory. Just as he attempted to free his mind of all his former opinions, he hoped that the reader would not let his current opinions prevent him from judging the work prior to reading and considering it. It serves as an allegory.
The doubts raised in the Meditations did not occur:
… until I had reached the age when one is as fit as one
will ever be to master the various disciplines.
He had already published his “Discourse on the Method for Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences.”
In the section on his discourse on optics:
All the conduct of our lives depends on our senses, among which the sense of sight being the most universal and most noble, there is no doubt that the inventions which serve to augment its power are the most useful that could be made.
What is at issue here is not the fact that the senses can deceive, which was well known since the ancients, but that they can be augmented and improved upon.