Jonah Bossewitch	PHI 334

February 27, 1997	Prof. Soames

Midterm Quiz

Question 1:

In his "Proof of the External World" G. E. Moore seems to trivialize the skeptical position that we have no knowledge of anything outside of us. It is easy to criticize Moore's alleged proof, whose crucial step relies upon Moore's common sense, for missing the point of the skeptical challenge entirely. Moore actually stood in front of a room of philosophers and tried to convince them that his knowledge of the statement "There is one hand and here is another" combined with certain bodily gestures provided a solution to an age old philosophical quandary. It is easy to imagine the frustration of many members of his audience, who had come to hear a proof of the external world, and not a mockery of their stubborn skepticism. Surely, anybody who accepted the premises of Moore's "proof" would not be the type of person who would have demanded a proof in the first place, and conversely, anybody who felt the need for a proof would never have accepted the fact the Moore actually had the knowledge that he claimed. However, if we give Moore the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was no fool, we are left wondering what in the world was he thinking when he presented this proof to a room full of skeptics?

Moore's response to skepticism about the external world has far reaching implications that extend far beyond the esoteric issue regarding our knowledge of things outside of us. Moore uses this issue as an example of what he considers to be a fundamental flaw in the methodology of the analytical philosophy of his day. He presents us with an argument which calls into question the basis of sound rational thinking: proof itself. Moore's criticism of philosophers use and abuse of the proof is powerful and compelling, forcing us to reevaluate the ways in which it is employed in standard philosophical arguments.

Moore asserts that a proof is not rigorous unless it satisfies three conditions. "Namely, (1) unless the premiss which I adduced as proof of the conclusion was different from the conclusion I adduced it to prove; (2) unless the premiss which I adduced was something I knew to be the case, and not merely something which I believed but which was by no means certain, or something which, though in fact true, I did not know to be so; and (3) unless the conclusion really did follow from the premiss." ("Prof of an External World" p. 295) Moore's proof most certainly satisfies conditions (1) and (3), and it is condition (2) that Moore hopes to draw attention to, since this is where he would be accused of hand waving. Moore was not attempting to argue that the solution to the skeptic's problem had been in front of their faces all along. His point is more subtle, as he attacks the validity of the very question the skeptics have been asking, on the grounds that the question has been posed within a framework that logically precludes any possible answer.

Moore thinks that the demands philosophers have placed on the premisses of an argument are arbitrary and unintuitive. Their rigorous demands have the power to strip away the justification for any argument, repeatedly pulling the carpet out from under any proposal, until we are at point where we are left with absolutely no justification for believing virtually anything. While this is precisely the fear of the devout skeptic, Moore's argument reveals the arbitrary nature of any premiss, since it can always be meaningfully asked "But, how do we know that?" The possibility of this infinite regress is more frightful to Moore than any particular brand of skepticism, since it applies equally to all epistemological domains (with few exceptions) and runs completely counter to our intuitive conception of knowledge (namely that knowledge is logically possible, and that we do know some things).

Moore's proof of the external world advances his simple, and surprisingly unpopular, belief that the job of philosophy is to analyze and evaluate common sensical intuitions. He felt that any philosophical conclusion that strays too far from this ideal was essentially bunk. This position is alluring since the world might be an easier place to cope with if Moore's faith in human intuition were well founded, but the skeptic would retort that there are many areas in which human intuition leads us horribly astray. However, we need not subscribe to Moore's extreme views to sympathize with his response to the skeptic. Moore's work anticipated much of epistemology of the twentieth century which has focused on probabilistic models of our certainty of knowledge, and an explicit enumeration of the premises which would, if they were true, entail certain conclusions. Furthermore, Moore's ideas are still alive, as many philosophers are concerned with how people use certain concepts, as opposed to the study of concepts independent of their usage. Some have even argued that concepts are nothing more than their usage. These philosophers were undoubtedly influenced by Moore's epistemology which emphasized that, according to how the word 'know' is used, there are few things I can be more certain of than my knowledge of the existence of my body and its extension in space.

Moore's proof of the external world is not a trite rebuttal of the skepticism to which he responds. Moore is a thoughtful philosopher who is genuinely troubled by these issues, and at the same time troubled by the direction that he felt these issues were steering philosophy. On one level, his proof does technically satisfy the criteria for proof as stipulated by logicians. However, his point is not to offer an alternative standard proof of the existence of the external world, as his premisses seem to presuppose the solution to the problem. His intention is to dispel the illusion of rigor that a formal proof suggests, by exposing the arbitrary nature of the justification that is regularly demanded from the premises. This results in the formulation of questions which seem to have no logically possible answer, and have left philosophers tirelessly chasing their own tails. For Moore it is obvious that if you keep disallowing the usage of more and more premises, you will obviously not be able to definitively conclude very much. In a sense, if we are not "allowed" to know that we have two hands, then it should come as no surprise that we will not be able to prove that anything exists outside of us. Moore concedes this victory to the skeptics, but turns the tables by producing a body of work that is skeptical of many forms of skepticism. Moore does not deny that skepticism is a powerful weapon in any philosopher's arsenal, but warns his colleagues of the paralyses that it can engender. It is difficult to pinpoint pivotal moments in the history of philosophy, however, the fact that few modern philosophers are obsessively preoccupied with extreme skepticism indicates that Moore, and the seeds that he sowed, have taken root, freeing philosophy from the deadlock and detachment that Moore feared.

Question 2:

Like Moore, Bertrand Russell was a man who recognized the importance of a healthy relationship between common sense and philosophy. He thought that "philosophy cannot boast of having achieved such a degree of certainty that it can have the authority to condemn the facts of experience and the laws of science." Russell understood that common knowledge need not be true, but he argued that "we possess no radically different kind of knowledge derived from some other source." (p. 74) Russell does not deny the logical force of the skeptical position, but nonetheless attempts to construct an alternative hypothesis which might justify our beliefs regarding the relationship between our own sense data and the external world (namely that there exist objects external to us which are causally connected to our perception of them). Russell's strategy can be viewed as an extension of Moore's critique, as Russell's argument relies upon certain premisses which most would consider to be common sensical. However, there are important differences that significantly distinguish Russell's approach from Moore's.

Most importantly, Russell does not claim to have a proof of the external world in the sense that Moore defined. In fact, he reverses the challenge that the skeptics have posed and effectively demands from them a proof that the external world does not exist. Russell does not explicitly make this point, but it is implied in his assertion that the skeptical hypothesis is nothing more than a logical possibility and not a necessity. He points out that although there are no good reasons to reject the skeptical hypothesis, there are no good reasons to accept it either. His main tactic for defeating the barrenness of skepticism is the proposal of an alternative hypothesis which competes with the skeptical hypothesis for the honor of being the most attractive version of the way that things are. This move prefigures a popular modern technique of justification, championed by Gilbert Harman, known as "inference to the best explanation." This method of justification involves the evaluation (according to some criteria) of the various hypothesis which serve to explain a phenomena. According to many philosophers, a rational thinker is then justified in believing the hypothesis which provides the best explanation. Harman has argued that this is actually the inferential process involved in venerable rational endeavors such as physics and biology.

Russell was certain that one class of things which we can all know without a doubt is our own private sense data. "The first thing to realize is that there are no such things as 'illusions of sense.' Objects of sense are, even when they occur in dreams are the most indubitably real objects know for us." (p. 93) Russell then recasts the question of the existence of the external world in the following form: Can the existence of anything outside of our own experience be inferred from that experience? Russell sharpens the question by rigorously analyzing the nature of our private experience to an unprecedented extent. For example, consider the statement "There is a table in the room." Russell would analyze this statement in terms of the sensible data that are available to the subject. "What is really known is a correlation of the muscular and other bodily sensations with changes in the visual sensations." We know that when we experience the muscular sensations that we call walking, the patch of color associated with the table is "replaced by an insensible gradation of slightly different colours with slightly different shapes." Similarly, we can know of other sensory experiences, such as tactile or olfactory, which vary as a function of our perceived interaction with the table. According to Russell, "this is what we really know by experience, when we have freed our minds of the assumption of permanent "things" with changing appearances." (p. 85)

For Russell, the aspects of an object from a single perspective do not provide enough evidence to infer the existence of a "thing." It is only the totality of all the points of view that different subjects might experience which allows us to postulate the existence of a thing. It is crucial to note, that when Russell speaks of the existence of a thing he is not making a metaphysical claim regarding the ontological status of that thing. Rather, "all the aspects of a thing are real, whereas the thing is a merely logical construction." This qualification is Russell's way of emphasizing that he has not provided us with a proof for the existence of any external things. As logical constructions all that can be said of "things" is that they are hypothetical entities whose existence would explain the data in question, but this might not be the data's only explanation. Russell's analysis of the statement "there is a table in the room" provides us with no guarantees that we are actually saying what most of us think we mean. According to Russell, the common sense intention that accompanies this statement, namely that there exists an object named "table" external to me, is actually a hypothesis that we are entitled to believe based on our own past experiences, present experimentation, and other peoples reported experiences. Whether hypothetical tables are an improvement over the denial of real tables is a matter left up to the reader, who must decide if a belief in a world of logical constructions is as pathological as "real doubt."

A glaring problem posed by Russell's analysis is the fact that he essentially "solves" the problem by exchanging it for an equally controversial one; the problem of other minds. Russell treats the testimony of other people as "hard data," as reliable and justifiable as private sense data. Of course, believing this testimony presupposes that there actually is another mind having experiences analogous to one's own, and this is a point which someone "infected with philosophy" would hotly debate. The fact that Russell brackets these solipsistic concerns undermines the power of his argument, as it appears the he has unjustifiably assumed a solution to a problem as notorious as the one he was trying to solve.

A careful reading of Russell shows that although the specific formulation that Russell endorsed may suffer from this unwarranted assumption, all is not lost. His basic strategy of generating alternative hypotheses to compete with the skeptical hypothesis has not been defeated. We might even be able to salvage the gist of his argument and use it to analyze both the problems of the external world and other minds. Even if we eliminate the testimony of other perspectives, the hypothesis that postulates the logical existence of "things" might still be far superior to the hypothesis that we are alone in the universe, trapped in our subjective prisons. Similarly, postulating logically constructed minds outside of our own might be the best explanation for the behavior which is perceived as other bodies in our sensory fields.

In the final analysis, Russell did admit that his hypothesis was only a possibility and not a proof, so we should not criticize him too harshly for the fact that he seems to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. Firstly, Russell may have thought that a proof of other minds was right around the corner. Second of all, even if we could prove conclusively that other minds do exist, we can be sure that some skeptics would still find a way to doubt the existence of the external world in spite of Russell's argument. Furthermore, Russell did not seem to be after a conclusive proof as much as he wanted to impress upon people an alternative way of thinking about epistemology—after careful investigation we have the right to believe the most likely state of affairs, until proven otherwise. After all, regardless of how we treat Moore and Russell, don't we sometimes deserve to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt?

I pledge my honor that I did not violate the honor code, or a logical construction of it, in writing this paper.

Jonah Bossewitch