Are You Handy with Cookies?

Samuel Solomon Sanders

Philosophy 10

Mr. Concilio

Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Prompt -> “Suppose Sarah is not a brain in a vat (nor living in a similar skeptical scenario.) Can she know that she has hands?”

Are you Handy with Cookies?

An essay on the existence of the physical hand.

Sarah Ramsey is a typical 17-year-old girl with everything a teenage girl could want. Her family life is calm and healthy, she’s the talk of all the handsome boys, and she lives happily at home with her older brother Todd, her father Jim, and younger sister, Magen. One day, however, Magen wants to bake cookies with Sarah in their father’s industrial kitchen. Sarah begrudgingly agrees, cursing the hours of philosophy homework that surely awaits her afterward. The two girls get to baking, flinging cookie batter everywhere and misshaping the blobs on the tray, but greatly enjoying one another’s company. It turns out, however, that while Sarah was cleaning the bowls in the soapy tub, Todd snuck into the kitchen and raided all of the girls’ cookies. Huffing, Sarah turns back to the industrial mixer to make a new batch for Magen and herself, not noticing that her floral sleeve is caught in the steel gear of the mixer. She flicks the heavy switch and immediately screams in horror as her hands are… pushed out of the way, her brother Todd tackling her to the floor.

That night, Sarah considers what would have happened had she lost her hands in the blades of the industrial mixer. She glances down at them, pulls at the skin, and bites her fingernails. Then, she asks a question that terrifies her: Does she even know if her hands exist?

You may think that Sarah must be in shock even to consider such a question, but she has reasonable cause to question whether or not she has hands. Indeed, Plato’s argument of Justified True Belief stipulates that the following conditions must be fulfilled to know of their existence:

1. Sarah must be justified in believing that she has hands. 

2. Sarah’s Belief must be true - her hands must exist.

3. Sarah must believe that she has hands.

Why, might you ask, do we need all three of these conditions?  Let us consider three situations in which one of the three stipulations is not fulfilled:

1. Sarah is in denial as to whether or not she lost her hands in the mixer and refuses to believe that they exist. It doesn’t matter whether or not she has evidence and if they exist, so long as she doesn’t believe her hands exist.

2. Sarah’s hands don’t exist, and both her belief and justification for that belief are useless.

3. Sarah is not justified in believing her hands exist, and she has no evidence whatsoever. It doesn’t matter whether she believes they exist and if they actually do, so long as she has no evidence to justify her belief.

Now, we’ve determined that all of Plato’s clauses are necessary for knowledge, but are they sufficient? To that point, a modern philosopher named Edmund Lee Gettier published a paper in 1963 with an exception, or rather an addition, to these clauses. He proposed a series of examples in which the belief was both justified and true, but insufficient to amount to knowledge. Monikered “Gettier Problems”, these examples create a situation in which the knowledge is purely coincidental and is not solely a result of Justified True Belief. 

Suppose that Sarah signs up for a medical study in which she inserts both of her arms into a cardboard box that has an angled mirror inside and a small slit through which she may look at that mirror. At the request of the researchers, Sarah presses her eye up against the slit and performs a series of movements with both hands. Each time she moves both of her hands, she sees the corresponding movements of her right hand in the mirror. The researchers go through a checklist, asking her to “Cross both of your fingers” and to “Clench your fists,” each of which actions she performs.

After a few trials, Sarah decides that her right hand exists because she has a Justified, True Belief. After all, she’s justified in her belief because she can see her hand and she felt herself performing the motions, and it really is true that her right hand exists- but not because of JTB. In fact, the mirror that Sarah is looking at actually reflects the image of her left hand in such a way that it appears to her that she is watching her right. Sarah’s right hand does exist, but she’s not seeing it in the mirror. Do you see the problem? While Sarah’s knowledge of her right hand’s existence is correct, it is only correct by coincidence and not as a result of her Belief being Justified and True. 

Let us, however, get back to the main point. We know that JTB is, at the very least, necessary for a belief to be considered knowledge, and Sarah’s belief must still fit all three clauses. Indeed, she’s already satisfied two of the clauses- she believes that her hands exist, and they very much do! If you look closely, however, you will see that Sarah does not yet have any justification for her belief. To remedy this, we’ll prove that Sarah is justified in knowing that her hands exist. Specifically, Sarah can know that her hands exist, as supported by the propositions of Induction, Empiricism, and the bolstering arguments of G.E. Moore.

Remember, we need to prove that Sarah has sufficient justification for believing that her hands exist. One mode of reasoning we can use is Induction. 

The application of Induction is essentially a form of extrapolation. By observing a certain action in the past, we are inferring that the next time a similar event occurs, its corresponding reaction will too.

An example of Induction applied daily is in the calculation and prediction of inflation rates by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau’s analysts take into account an extensive array of data containing the inflation rates of past years and their associated trends, which they use to induce the extent of future rates. Here is an example model of how statisticians use Induction to forecast inflation:

Perhaps we are currently in July, and the Bureau wants to forecast rates for August of that year. Analysts attempt to predict what will happen based on past inflationary results by examining years with similar unemployment rates and economic conditions.

Let us examine a more straightforward example of Induction next. Perhaps you are at an ophthalmologist and are being tested for vision acuity; one of those charts where the doctor makes you feel bad about your eyesight. As you start speaking the letters out loud, however, you notice a color pattern: 

PPQPQQPQQPQPQPPQPQPQ

QPQPPPQPQPQPPQQPQPQPPQQ

PQQPQPPQPQPQPQQPQPPQPQPQQ

PQPQPQPQPQQPQPQPQPQPQP

… ad infinitum. 

You infer by the third row that every red character you see must be a ‘P’, and every blue character is a ‘Q’. This is another form of Induction, as you are using your previous observations to infer the next letter on the chart.

In the context of Sarah’s hand problem, Induction is a useful tool. For example, say that this was not the first time that Sarah stuck her hand in an industrial machine. In fact, two years ago, she fell asleep while cooking and almost lost her right hand. Since Sarah did not lose her hands and they continued to exist after that scenario, we might infer that Sarah will always have her hands after any accident in which she does not lose them. While Induction may be appealing to Sarah for justification, however, there is another theory that allows Sarah to experience justification more personally.

Empiricism, specifically, is that process by which we might justify the existence of Sarah’s hands. 

In its simplest form, Empiricism is the process where we obtain evidence through the use of our senses. This includes our sight, hearing, smell, taste, and other organic tools to experience the evidence around us for ourselves. Two important defining factors set Empiricism apart from Induction:

1. Our senses are very rarely wrong.

2. Empiricism provides a primary source for the person in question.

Now, what exactly do we mean by this first clause? Take, for instance, a slight stroll around the house. Did you bump into anything? Possibly, but magnitudes of order less than if your eyes were seriously damaged or if you didn’t have eyes at all. Your senses managed to guide you through doorways and around objects that blocked your path simply by their exactitude. Sure, sense data may be wrong sometimes, but very rarely, making empiricism a reliable source of justification.

Our second clause is more of a benefit to those who use Empiricism rather than a justification for justification. In many history classes, professors will refer to specific documents as “primary” or “secondary” sources. While a secondary source may be something like a book about a guy who saw something, a primary source in most cases offers the most reliable retelling of events. There is always some loss of communication in transit, but Empiricism mitigates this by only allowing the acquisition of evidence through a primary source: you. As a primary source, you experience your evidence firsthand, without any relay of information. There is no one else feeling your skin for you, no one else seeing the world through your eyes, and no one else tasting through your tongue. There is no one else tasting through your tongue. 

Now, two lesser siblings of knowledge exist and are essentially two sides of different coins. Indeed, while one of them relies directly upon Empiricism to be true knowledge, the other can be deemed knowledge before evidence for that knowledge is given. These antitheses are named A Priori and A Posteriori. 

A priori knowledge is independent of any acquired evidence. That is to say, this type of knowledge can be known without any proof of its truthfulness. Take, for instance, a ball that is stated to be red. You do not need any evidence to say that red is a color and consequently that the ball is too, because you knew that red was a color beforehand. Anything that can be known before acquiring evidence is considered a priori knowledge, such as mathematics and knowledge requiring reasoning.

A posteriori knowledge, on the other hand, is heavily dependent upon Empiricism and other forms of proof, as it requires evidence. For example, how do we know that Hitler lived from 1889 to 1945? We have evidence from images, history books, and firsthand accounts that those were the years during which Hitler was alive. Without any evidence, we could not know the date of Hitler’s birth, the date of his death, and, indeed, not much about him at all.

In the context of Sarah’s midnight crisis, it seems rather silly to use a priori knowledge as justification for the existence of her hands, as, in that case, we wouldn’t be looking for any actual evidence. Indeed, a posteriori knowledge is what Sarah requires to know that her hands exist, as it is built upon supporting evidence that may justify her belief.

While both Induction and Empiricism provide pieces of justification for the existence of Sarah’s hands, there exist multiple issues that prevent us from utilizing each of these theories. The limits of empiricism and David Hume’s problem of Induction are key issues that prevent us from exercising the above theories and lead us to Skepticism. Before we discuss the problems and limitations, however, what exactly is Skepticism?

In philosophy, Skepticism is the view that some or all knowledge is impossible due to some key limitation in a theory. Particularly concerning justification, a skeptical theory can dismantle all justified beliefs supported by an argument. In the context of the problems of Induction and the limits of Empiricism, skepticism is even more concerning.

Induction, specifically, is problematic in three key ways:

1. The future is only sometimes like the past.

2. Correlation does not imply causation.

3. To perform Induction, you need Induction.

Let’s take it one at a time, and start with the first clause. First, review our eye chart example, where you inferred that, after careful observation, every ‘P’ would be red and every ‘Q’ would be blue. While it may have been true that up to that point, every ‘P’ and ‘Q’ had the same color, perhaps you reach the fourth line of the eye chart to find a blue ‘P’. By assuming that the future would mirror the past, you’ve guessed the wrong character on the chart. Here lies the first problem of Induction: The future is not always like the past, which Induction requires.

Concerning the second clause, hark back to our second example of Induction. It is an economic rule of thumb that in a presidential election year, the stock market is predicted to rise if a Republican candidate is expected to win and is predicted to fall in expectation of a Democrat. Many investors, by Induction, then assume that presidential election years will result in a higher stock market because the president is expected to be Republican. Do you see what they did there? They utilized Induction to infer both the future and a causal relationship. These investors, however, were proven blatantly wrong during the 1990s recession, when the stock market fell under the prediction of Republican president George W. Bush. Indeed, causality cannot be assumed from correlation, but Induction requires this to be true.

Our last clause reveals inductive reasoning as a circular process. It works like this: To infer a future based on a past event, you need a past from which you may infer. However, Induction was required to know that Induction was even a valid theory. You have to infer that Induction works to use it as a justifying theory. Indeed, David Hume, the great 18th-century philosopher wrote profusely about this problem in his writings, presenting it as an illogicality of Induction. Remember our argument for the use of Induction as justification, where we revealed that Sarah had almost lost her hand a previous time, but didn’t? Sarah cannot induce what will happen from this event, because she doesn’t know for sure that Induction works.

Let’s recap. Induction fails because it requires that the future is like the past, however, this is not always the case. Additionally, Induction draws causation from correlation which is philosophically and statistically unacceptable. Lastly, Induction is a circular argument and could not exist without the existence of itself. Read that last paragraph if you’re confused. 

Empiricism, on the other hand, has two main limits to pair up with Induction’s fatal problems.

1. Empirical evidence is not always correct.

2. Empirical evidence is susceptible to what the person wants to believe.

Our first clause acknowledges that Empiricism allows you to obtain exceedingly accurate data, but not infallibly. Consider the narration of the experiment below, performed by Diane Rogers-Ramachandran and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego:

In one very striking illusion, you can become convinced that you can feel a rubber hand being touched just as if it were your own. To find out for yourself, ask a friend to sit across from you at a small table. Use blocks or coffee cups to prop up a vertical partition on the table, as shown in the illustration on the opposite page. A flat piece of cardboard will do. Rest your right hand behind the partition so you cannot see it. Then, in view beside the partition, place a plastic right hand—the kind you can buy from a novelty shop or a party store around Halloween. Ask your assistant to repeatedly tap and stroke your concealed right hand in a random sequence. Tap, tap, tap, stroke, tap, stroke, stroke. At the same time, while you watch, he must also tap and stroke the visible dummy in perfect synchrony. If he continues the procedure for about 20 or 30 seconds, something quite spooky will happen: you will have an uncanny feeling that you are actually being stroked on the fake hand. The sensations will seem to emerge directly from the plastic rather than from your actual hidden flesh. (The Phantom Hand, Scientific American, May 01, 2008)

Empiricism is limited yet again by what the applying person wants to believe (consider the image below and its various visual interpretations. An old woman, or a young one?). Indeed, you can obtain evidence in such a way that the questions you ask and the evidence you look for change which side of the argument your evidence supports. 

Let’s recap. Empiricism has fatal limits that prevent it from justifying the existence of Sarah’s hands. Evidence obtained empirically is, while exceedingly accurate, not always correct, and therefore not entirely reliable. Additionally, empirical evidence is susceptible to the bias of the person in question, which allows for an unfair representation of the surrounding world. 

As aforementioned, the problems with inductive reasoning and limits of Empiricism lead to skeptical scenarios, which are not conducive to definitive knowledge and… well, categorically skeptical. Luckily for Sarah, G.E. Moore’s refutation to Skepticism might save her hands- or at the very least her peace of mind.

Moore’s argument against Skepticism is not much of an argument but rather an entirely alternate mode of reasoning. Moore relies solely upon common sense to refute the skeptic’s claim that P is not true, utilizing a theory called the Moorean Shift to force the duty of disproving P onto the skeptic. That is to say, it’s not the subject’s job to prove, but the skeptic’s job to disprove. Why is this the case? Because so long as the subject has more evidence than the skeptic, his theory is justified.

For example, suppose that Sarah raises one hand and states “Here is one hand”. She then raises the other, proclaiming “Here is another”. Because there is, sensibly, some object that she is holding up and proclaiming to be her hand, the skeptical argument that her hand does not exist fails- after all, there is something that she calls her hand in existence. This is indeed the refutation Moore employs when approached with skepticism. 

But how exactly does this resolve the limitations of Empiricism and the problems with Induction? Let us take a closer look at the Moorean Shift argument. Remember that the reason the duty of proving a skeptical argument falls on the skeptic is because there is more evidence for a theory’s justification than against it. That is to say, the proponent of a theory does not need all the evidence available for justification. They simply need better evidence than the other guy. Through this lens, Induction and Empirically-obtained can still be used as justification, even though they are flawed- so long as that justification is better than the skeptic’s.

In the context of Sarah’s hand dilemma, this shows that she can use her eyes and ears to justify that her hands exist because there is no better evidence to think otherwise.

Let’s recap:

1. Sarah doesn’t know if her hands exist, and she wants to be sure. 

2. Based on Plato’s stipulations for a belief to be knowledge, Sarah must believe that she has hands, it must be true that she has hands, and she must be justified in believing that she has hands. 

3. We took issue with that final clause, as we weren’t certain as to whether her belief was justified, which doubted her hands’ existence. 

4. To remedy this, we proposed that Sarah may be justified through the reasoning of Empiricism and Induction, only to find that Empirical evidence has limits and Induction has problems. 

5. These issues allowed for Skepticism, which led us to further doubt her hands’ existence.

6. In one last attempt at justification, we employed the Moorean Shift to defend our use of inductive reasoning and Empiricism. This Shift placed the duty of disproving the existence of Sarah’s hands on the skeptic and allowed us to use our valid inductive and empirical evidence to justify Sarah’s belief.

Having fulfilled all three stipulations of a Justified True Belief, we can now definitely state that Sarah knows that her hands exist. Indeed, she can remain careless in her use of the industrial mixer and still know that she has hands, right up until the moment that she doesn’t. Happy cooking, Sarah.