1.  Is Skepticism Self-Refuting?

1.  Mike Huemer points out that regardless of what may be the case with regard to radical, universal skepticism, skepticism about the external world is not self-refuting.

2.  He then goes on to argue that radical, universal skepticism is self-refuting, not because it is self-contradictory, but because “its truth would entail our lack of justification for asserting it.”  (28)

3.  The gist of Mike Huemer’s argument is that the universal skeptic will not be able to claim either that his or her premises are justified, or that, given those premises, the conclusion is justified.

4.  A crucial point is that the universal skeptic cannot even advance a reductio ad absurdum argument, since this presupposes that deductive reasoning is a justified method of arriving at beliefs.

Comment

        I think that Mike Huemer is right about radical, universal skepticism.

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5.  One conclusion that Mike Huemer wants to draw is that the first two skeptical arguments considered in the previous chapter are self-refuting, since they are defenses of universal skepticism.

Comments

1.  Those two arguments can be recast, however, so that they are defenses not of radical, universal skepticism, but of skepticism with regard to the external world.

2.  This can be done, in the case of the infinite regress argument, by holding that some propositions expressing necessary truths can be noninferentially justified.

3.  Similarly, in the case of the "problem of the criterion" argument, one can hold, first, that self-contradictory propositions are necessarily false, and, secondly, that the form of a proposition is something that one can directly recognize.

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2.  The G. E. Moore Shift: Michael Huemer’s Argument

1. Mike Huemer's goal in this section is to set out an argument to show that skeptical arguments cannot succeed against common sense beliefs.

2.  Earlier, common sense beliefs were defined as follows:

"i.      They are accepted by almost everyone (except some philosophers and some madmen) regardless of what culture or time period one belongs to.

"ii.     They tend to be taken for granted in ordinary life . . . .

"iii.    If a person believes a contrary to one of these propositions, then it is a sign of insanity."   (18)

3.  The defense against skepticism that Mike offers here involves the following argument:

"1.  Given a conflict between two beliefs, it is rational to reject the less initially plausible one, rather than the more plausible one.

2.  Common sense beliefs have the highest level of initial plausibility.

3.  Philosophical theories do not.

4.  Therefore, given a conflict between a philosophical theory and common sense, it is rational to reject the philosophical theory, rather than common sense."        (36)

4.  In support of the second premise, that is

Common sense beliefs have the highest level of initial plausibility

Mike argues that while massive scientific testimony could convince you that something like the Theorem of Pythagoras was false, it would not convince one, for example, that there were no rocks.

5.  In support of the third premise, that is

Philosophical theories do not have the highest level of initial plausibility

Mike argues that the disagreement over philosophical claims shows that they do not have the highest level of initial plausibility.

A Closer Look at this Argument

        If this argument is sound, then it is always rational, given a conflict between a philosophical theory and common sense, to reject the philosophical theory, rather than common sense.  Is this true?

        To see whether this is right, let’s consider some candidates for common sense beliefs, along with some incompatible philosophical theories.  Here are some possibilities:

(1) The belief that a certain ripe tomato is red, where this is understood as the belief that a young child would have about the color property of the surface of a ripe tomato.

Competing philosophical theory:  Physics is a complete theory of the external world.

(2) The belief that there are mind-independent physical objects.

Competing philosophical theory:  Idealism.

(3) The belief that human behavior is not causally determined.

Competing philosophical theory:  Determinism.

(4) The belief that non-human mammals have experiences.

Competing philosophical theory:  Animals have only physical properties.  (Compare Descartes.)

(5) The belief that decisions to perform an action are not caused by earlier states of affairs.

Competing philosophical theory:  Decisions are caused by earlier, purely physical events.

(6) The belief that experiences can causally make a difference with regard to the way that one's body moves.

Competing philosophical theory:  Epiphenomalism.

(7) The belief that there are objective facts concerning the rightness and wrongness of actions, and that we can have knowledge of such objective values.

Competing philosophical theories:  Moral irrealism and moral skepticism.

        With regard to each of these pairs of a suggested common sense belief, and a competing and incompatible philosophical theory, there are three questions that one needs to ask:

First, are the "competing philosophical theories" that I have mentioned philosophical theories?

Secondly, is the belief in question a common sense belief in Mike's sense?

Thirdly, if it is, is Mike right in holding that it is impossible for there to be a an argument that would give us good reason to reject the common sense belief in favor of the competing philosophical theory?

        As regards the first question, it certainly seems to me that what I have labelled "competing philosophical theories" are indeed such.  Does anyone think that in some of the above cases this is not so?

        The second and third questions call for more discussion, so let's consider each candidate in turn.

Candidate 1:  Colors, as a child would understand them, are real, and are properties of the surfaces of objects.

Competing philosophical theory:  Physics is a complete theory of the external world.

1.  What are young children saying when they say that a tomato is red? One thing that they are clearly not saying is this:

(1) “Ripe tomatoes have the power to absorb that following wavelengths of light . . . and reflect the following wavelengths . . . .”

But it also seems clear that they are also not saying this:

(2) “Ripe tomatoes have the power to produce experiences in normal observers under normal conditions that have the quality of redness.”

For while it may be argued that arriving at the belief that is expressed by this sentence does not, unlike the case of (1), require specialized scientific knowledge, this is not the belief that people naturally acquire.  The belief that people do naturally acquire involves the concept of a sensible property of redness - where by this I mean the property that Mary is aware of when she learns what redness is.  When a child says that a tomato is red, it is this sensible, non-dispositional property that is being attributed to the surface of the tomato.  Redness is a property with which a child is directly acquainted, and in such a way that the child, like Mary, knows what redness is.  It is not, as Armstrong contends, some property about whose intrinsic property one knows nothing.

        In short, there is a certain property with which a child is directly acquainted – the property of redness – and a child, in believing that a ripe tomato is red, believes that that the surface of the tomato has that property.

        Is this a common sense belief?  One might object that it is not, on the grounds that one does not now have to be a philosopher or a madman to reject it.  But this defense is not legitimate.  For suppose that one goes back a few hundred years, and ignores certain parts of Asia.  It would surely have been reasonable then to have viewed the belief as a common sense belief.  But then, if Mike Huemer’s argument were sound, it would have been reasonable at that time to back that common sense belief when it came into conflict with a philosophical argument, as it did.  But, in fact, those who are familiar with the relevant scientific information have almost universally come to hold that ripe tomatoes do not have the sensible, non-dispositional property of redness.

        The upshot is that the belief that things are colored in the relevant sense was once a common sense belief, but it has been abandoned by almost everyone who is familiar with the relevant scientific facts.  So some common sense beliefs have succumbed to philosophical argument based on well-established scientific premises.

Candidate 2:  There are mind-independent physical objects.

Competing philosophical theory:  Idealism.

        Is this a common sense belief, in Mike's sense?  My argument for the claim that, contrary to Mike's view, it is not, is as follows:

(1) Hinduism, which is the religion of over 600 million people, involves the idea of maya, where this is the view that there is no physical world, that what one has is, instead, an illusion.

(2) An enormous number of Hindus affirm this belief, and there is nothing in their behavior that provides a reason for thinking that they are wrong in this self-attribution.

(3) These people are not all either philosophers or mad.

(4) Accordingly, the belief that there are mind-independent physical objects is not a common sense belief in Mike's sense.

        Mike's response to this argument was that he found it hard to believe that people really believed the doctrine of maya.  It seems to me immensely more likely that many, many Hindus are right in this self-attribution than that Mike is right in his denial that they have this belief.

        In addition, however, compare the following beliefs:

(a) There is a perfectly loving, all powerful, and all knowing being who created and who rules over our world.

(b) There is some being who has produced a grand illusion that people experience.

The first of these propositions seems to me much more unlikely to be true – given the immense suffering that innocent persons, including children, undergo – than the second.  But the first proposition is nevertheless affirmed by an extremely large number of people.

        More generally, religious beliefs often come as a package deal, with the result that people accept beliefs that are immensely implausible ¬ – such as the belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old – because they view them as an essential part of a total view of the world that they find appealing.

        Finally, there is a type of experience that, arguably, is found in virtually all cultures – namely, introvertive mystical experiences.  In what is arguably the description of such experiences that is most free of the importation of prior beliefs – namely, the monistic account offered in Eastern religions, as contrasted with the monotheistic account offered by Christian mystics – a central aspect of the experience is the sense that the world of space and time is not real.  The Hindu doctrine of maya is mainly based, I believe, on such introvertive mystical experiences.

        Secondly, if this were, contrary to what I have just argued, a common sense belief in Mike's sense, could it be defended against skeptical challenges by Mike's argument?

        Mike's argument appeals to the idea that common sense beliefs are characterized by the "highest level of initial plausibility".   But judgments of plausibility are judgments of probability.  How reliable are ordinary judgments of probability?

        Some judgments of probability are based upon observations of relative frequencies, and such judgments may be relatively sound.  But in the present case, there is no information about relative frequencies that bears upon the issue.  So what we are being asked by Mike to do is to view as very reliable judgments of probability that are not based upon relative frequencies, that are being made without serious consideration of competing hypotheses – such as the mystically-based doctrine of maya – and that are judgments that Mike is unable to support by appealing to principles of probability or inductive logic.   

Candidate 3:  The belief that human behavior is not causally determined.

Competing philosophical theory:  Determinism.

        Is this a common sense belief?  I think that it is, since I think that it is natural to think that, at any given time, one could, for example, either move one's hand to the right, or move it to the left.  Moreover, one does not, initially, seem to have any reason at all for thinking that, on the contrary, what one does is in fact causally determined.

        Is it then true that science could no more convince one that this belief was false than it could convince one that there were no rocks?

        This does not seem right.  For couldn't it have been the case that the correct theory of physics was Newtonian, and so deterministic?  Or mightn't it be that indeterministic theories in quantum mechanics will be replaced by a deterministic theory?

        It might be objected that what physicists would have shown, in such cases, would be only that determinism held with regard to inanimate objects.  But couldn't the work of physicists be supplemented by neurophysiological experiments that established that events taking in place in the brain conformed to the deterministic laws discovered by physicists?  If so, then this third belief would be shown to be false.

Candidate 4: The belief that non-human mammals have experiences.

Competing philosophical theory:  Animals have only physical properties.  

        Is it a common sense belief that cats and dogs have experiences?  It would certainly seem that it is.

        Is it true, then, that a philosophical argument based on scientific findings could not give one good reason for abandoning this belief in favor of the Cartesian belief that non-human animals are physical automata without experiences?  It seems to me that it is not.  For imagine that, in the case of human beings, neurophysiological investigations locate a "visual experience module" such that, when this is damaged, the human in question, while having a dramatic type of blindsight, reports having no visual experiences at all.  Suppose that comparable modules are found for all of the other senses.  Suppose, finally, that nothing in the brains of non-human mammals corresponds to this part of the human brain, and that the structures in all parts of the brains of non-human animals correspond to structures in human brains that are not sufficient for the having of experiences.  Would not information along these lines make it reasonable to conclude that while non-human animals behave as if they had conscious experiences, in fact consciousness only emerges with the development of certain neuronal structures that are only present in the human brain, so that Descartes was right, and non-human mammals do not have experiences of any kind?  

Candidate 5:  The belief that decisions to perform an action are not caused by earlier states of affairs.

Competing philosophical theory:  Decisions are caused by earlier, purely physical events.

        Is this a common sense belief?  Again, I think that it is.  One is aware of a conscious process of considering alternative actions, and the pros and cons of each.  Then, at a certain point, there is a conscious experience of making a decision, and it seems very natural to think of that occurrence as one that is not caused by some earlier, purely physical event.

        Some scientists have reported, however, that there are brain events that take place a very short time before the conscious experience of making a decision – events which they think it reasonable to view as causally giving rise to the conscious experience.  These experiments would certainly needed to be looked at very closely, to determine whether the experimental results do justify the conclusion that is being drawn from them.  But suppose that they do not.  Surely one can imagine experiments that would show, for example, that there were purely physical events that always preceded conscious processes of coming to a decision, and where the precise nature of the preceding physical state enabled someone who did not know what decision the person had made to calculate, correctly, what the person's decision had in fact been.  Would it not be reasonable, at that point, to abandon the common sense belief in favor of the competing philosophical theory that events that involve the consciousness of coming to a decision are caused by earlier, purely physical events?    

Candidate 6:  The belief that experiences can causally make a difference with regard to the way that one's body moves.

Competing philosophical theory:  Epiphenomalism.

        Is this a common sense belief?  It certainly seems to me that it is.  When one, for example, tastes something, and one is asked how it tastes, surely it is extremely natural to think that the quality of the experience that one is having plays an essential causal role in determining the words that one utters in answering the question.

        Is it true, then, that an argument for the competing philosophical theory of epiphenomenalism could not prevail against this common sense belief?  Again, this does not seem right.  As with the case of candidate 3 above, it would seem that, on the one hand, physicists could show that determinism held with regard to inanimate objects, and then cognitive scientists could establish, via extensive neurophysiological experiments, that events taking in place in the brain were not exceptions to the deterministic laws discovered by physicists.  If this is so, then the common sense belief that experiences can make a difference with respect to how humans behave could be shown to be false.

Candidate 7:  The belief that there are objective facts concerning the rightness and wrongness of actions, and that we can have knowledge of such objective values.

Competing philosophical theories:  Moral irrealism and moral skepticism.     

        Is this a common sense belief?  Again, it seems to me very plausible that it is.  For one thing, have anthropologists ever found a society where people did not have beliefs about some actions being morally wrong?  For another, though many people question the existence of objective values, it is generally the case that when certain issues arise, they do not treat those who disagree with them as simply having different preferences that are no more problematic than their own.

        Is it true that this common sense belief is secure, and should prevail in any challenge from moral irrealism or moral skepticism?  Again, this does not seem to me true.  Consider, for example, the argument from the cultural relativity of values against the view that there are objective values.  The normal response to this argument is to draw a distinction between basic moral principles and derived ones, and to argue that the moral disagreements that one finds between different societies are, on the whole, disagreements about derived moral principles.  This response, however, is by no means unproblematic, since there seem to be a number of cases where there is disagreement concerning basic moral principles, sometimes involving very firm intuitions on both sides.  Here are a few examples:

(1) The enjoyment of sexual pleasure is only morally permissible within marriage, and when the sexual activity in question is one that is open to the possibility of conception.

(2) The direct killing of any innocent human being, regardless of his or her condition, is always seriously wrong.

(3) There are some actions that should never be performed, regardless of the consequences.

(4) The killing of potential persons is morally on a par with the killing of persons.

(5) Killing and letting die are morally on a par.

(6) Suicide is morally wrong, even in cases where one is terminally ill and suffering terribly.

(7) The use of mind-altering drugs is morally wrong.

(8) People who have intentionally killed others when it was wrong to do so should be executed.

(9) We have no obligations with regard to future generations.

(10) Affluent countries have no obligations with regard to people starving to death in other countries.

(11) To each according to his needs.

(12) Goods should be distributed in accordance with desert.

        These disagreements, all of which I think are most likely to be disagreements about basic moral principles – that is, disagreements about rightmaking and wrongmaking, or goodmaking and badmaking properties – are disagreements about extremely important issues.  Would one expect such disagreements if there were objective values to which people have cognitive assess?  Wouldn't one rather expect that the level of disagreement would be more on a par with what there is, say, in the case of the colors of objects?

        It seems to me, then, that the argument from relativity poses a strong prima facie challenge to the claim that there are objective moral values to which humans have cognitive access.

        There are, in addition, other challenges.  One is that it seems clear that the inculcation of moral values by parents in their children can produce extremely firm moral opinions that seem unrelated to the truth or falsity of the belief in question.  Consider, for example, the Biblical views that women who are not virgins when they are married should be stoned to death, or that homosexuals should be put to death, or that people who have sex with animals should be executed.  If there are objective values, these particular moral beliefs are, I would hope, false.  But when people introspect, carefully and conscientiously, are they able to detect any difference between those moral beliefs and others that, if there are moral values, one would hope are true – such as that killing innocent people is prima facie seriously wrong?

        One might compare, here, the case of arithmetic.  Imagine parents who inculcate in their children the belief that Fermat's Last Theorem is false.  Would such children claim to be able to 'see' that Fermat's Last Theorem is false in just the way that they can see, for example, that 2 + 2 = 4?  Isn't there something phenomenologically special about one's recognition of simple mathematical truths?

        In short, it seems to me that it is not at all clear that the common sense belief that there are objective values to which one has cognitive access will not, in the end, turn out to be such as should be abandoned in the face of relevant philosophical arguments.

Concluding Comments

(1) It is not true, as Mike claims, that in a conflict between common sense views and philosophical theories, common sense views should prevail on the grounds that common sense views "have the highest level of initial plausibility", while competing philosophical theories do not.

(2) One reason is related to Bertrand Russell's remark, which he made with regard to color and the manifest image version of naïve realism, to the effect that the manifest image version of naïve realism leads to the belief that physics is true, which in turn leads to the conclusion that the manifest image version of naïve realism is false.  The point, then, is simply that some common sense beliefs involve observations that serve to support scientific theories that, in the end, are ultimately very firmly established indeed, where some of those scientific theories then can be used by philosophers to argue that other common sense views are false.  

(3) The picture that emerges is that common sense views are often both natural and reasonable initially, but they are typically based upon a very limited range of considerations.  Much broader considerations, often involving much deeper observations, are often evidentially relevant to common sense beliefs, and, because of this, philosophical theories that appeal to such considerations can perfectly well turn out to be more reasonable than the relevant common sense beliefs with which they conflict.