What kinds of things are we certain about?

Mathematical and logical truths.

What kinds of things are we certain about? Mathematical and logical truths. The evidence of our senses?

Certainty about our senses? The possibility of manufactured sense experience not caused by objects we think we’re experiencing makes it possible that any given sense experience is illusory, and therefore open to doubt--the Matrix

Arguments against the certainty of the senses fuel rationalism.

Rationalism is the view that knowledge can be had independent of experience--a priori knowledge.

Challenges to rationalism:

The world we experience seems fundamentally unknowable because it’s uncertain.

Challenges to rationalism: The world we experience seems fundamentally unknowable because it’s uncertain. The things that we can know according to rationalism might not be that interesting. A priori statements seem to be vacuous, only true in virtue of how we define the terms.

Challenges to rationalism: The scientific revolution Scientific advances, especially in physics, yielded major technological advances.

Challenges to rationalism: The scientific revolution Scientific advances, especially in physics, yielded major technological advances. Because the natural sciences were observational, their success made empiricism seem obvious, whatever the philosophers’ discomforts.

The dominance of empiricism--only claims rooted in experience and tested by experience are knowledge.

The dominance of empiricism requires rethinking the relationship between knowledge and certainty.

Knowledge comes to be understood as tentative or provisional—the best conclusion given the evidence we have so far and given the possibility of observer error.

Consequences of the ascendancy of empiricism:

Some areas we might care deeply about don’t seem rooted in or testable by experience, and so can’t be known:

Consequences of the ascendancy of empiricism: Some areas we might care deeply about don’t seem rooted in or testable by experience, and so can’t be known: Claims about beauty—aesthetic claims

Consequences of the ascendancy of empiricism: Some areas we might care deeply about don’t seem rooted in or testable by experience, and so can’t be known: Claims about beauty—aesthetic claims Claims about goodness—ethical claims

Consequences of the ascendancy of empiricism: Some areas we might care deeply about don’t seem rooted in or testable by experience, and so can’t be known: Claims about beauty—aesthetic claims Claims about goodness—ethical claims Claims about any reality not accessible to the senses—metaphysical and religious claims

Consequences of the ascendancy of empiricism: Beauty, goodness, and religion come to be thought of as subjective.

Questions about empiricism:

Can we test even claims about the material universe against experience?

Questions about empiricism: Can we test even claims about the material universe against experience? The failure of an experimental test might not be due to the falsehood of the hypothesis being tested. Several hypotheses are always assumed in any experiment. The failure might be due to the falsehood of one of those assumed hypotheses.

Questions about empiricism: Can we test even claims about the material universe against experience? The failure of an experimental test might not be due to the falsehood of the hypothesis being tested. Several hypotheses are always assumed in any experiment. The failure might be due to the falsehood of one of those assumed hypotheses. Are our observations shaped by our background assumptions, or expectations or theories that we bring to them?

Questions about empiricism: Can we test even claims about the material universe against experience? The failure of an experimental test might not be due to the falsehood of the hypothesis being tested. Several hypotheses are always assumed in any experiment. The failure might be due to the falsehood of one of those assumed hypotheses. Are our observations shaped by our background assumptions, or expectations or theories that we bring to them? If so, then our observations may be “confirming” only what we already believed, and not how the world actually is.

Questions about empiricism: Questions like these, sometimes thought of as a “postmodern” criticism of empiricism, reopen the possibility that scientific beliefs may have more in common with religious belief than has been thought for the last hundred years or so.

What about religious belief?