The Wave
Epistemology Through a Teenage Mind
Evelyn De Jesus
By
About the Writing
Look down at your hand. How do you know that it exists? Indeed, perhaps you are in a hyperrealistic virtual reality without any true knowledge at all. Of course, you may try to prove its existence with your senses, or possible with simple common sense. Ponder these justifications for existence as you consider a teenager's interpretation of Epistemology and existence.
-Samuel S. Sanders, The Wave
The Writing
Evelyn De Jesus
Philosophy - 11th
Mr. Concilio
Prompt -> Suppose Sarah is not a brain in a vat, (nor living in a similar skeptical scenario.) Can she know that she has hands?
Struggles of Epistemology Through a Teenage Mind
How would someone be able to distinguish whether they existed and were not just a brain in a vat? During this essay, we will dive into the possibility that you could be living in one of these skeptical scenarios. Let us use a hypothetical situation: there is this girl named Sarah taking Philosophy. During class discussions about skepticism, she starts to think about the possibilities that could be true, like being a brain in a vat, being a computer program consciousness that lives within programming within programming, etc. So how can she know that she exists? How can she know she has a body and is not just a consciousness? Unfortunately for Sarah, to answer these questions, we must review the problems of inductive reasoning, the limitations of empiricism, and the arguments G.E. Moore had made against skepticism.
To begin with, Sarah needs to know whether she can claim to know. She must believe she has hands and be justified in her belief.Â
She knows she needs to have a justified true belief (JTB) through Plato's definition of knowledge. He thought that to be able to know anything, you needed justification for it, it needed to be accurate, and you had to believe it. This is because, according to Plato, for something to be justified, there needs to be some evidence backing it up. The truth part is prominent, as the knowledge must be actual regardless of justification or belief. Lastly, belief is necessary because you must believe the knowledge that you have not to contradict yourself.Â
Plato's definition of knowledge makes sense, but an oddity with justification makes the argument for JTB tricky. It stems from the question, what makes evidence valid? Furthermore, at what point do you have enough evidence to be justified to claim that you know something? Justification is subjective and not a yes-or-no, unlike truth or belief. Something is either true or false; someone either believes or does not. Justification is up to someone else's opinion. 20th-century philosopher Edmund Gettier realized this minor flaw in Plato's definition and created counterexamples to prove his point. It is unclear if Gettier's examples ultimately undermine "justified true belief," but what is proven is that there is an apparent oddity with the theory - it is not perfect - due to the gray area of justification.Â
Here is a brief Gettier example: Suppose Sarah sees deer in her yard almost daily. One evening, she hears a twig break and assumes a deer is in her yard. A deer is in her yard, but a clumsy squirrel breaks the twig. Sarah has a justified and genuine belief that a deer is in her yard, but the justification is incorrect. It resulted from a misinterpretation of empirical evidence- what snapped the twig. Even though the three elements of Plato's definition of knowledge were satisfied, Sarah did not "know" that a deer was in her yard. Sarah could not see or hear the deer, she used inductive reasoning based on her previous years of there being deer in her yard during this period, leading her to assume that there was a deer. Sarah's belief that a deer was correct, unbeknownst to her, although her justification for a deer in her yard was false. Although there is this gray area of justification within JTB, in the context of the original problem, Sarah needs to know why she is not just experiencing false moments, that she is alive and has hands, and that she has sufficient justification for that belief. Sarah must now find evidence for why her belief should be justified.Â
Now, we must take into consideration what can be used for justification. Empiricism is one option, defined as direct evidence from your sense data. Empirical evidence is an excellent primary source of observations and documentation of the observations based on different perceptions. The reliability of sense data is incomparable to other forms of evidence. The senses of the human body are necessary to navigate the world, so they need to be reliable and accurate; otherwise, the evolution of mankind would be impossible. Humankind can only obtain sense data of the external world, but having direct experiences of the external world is impossible. This is why empiricism is so vital, as well as the reason that sense data is such good evidence for justification.
Although empiricism is vital to understanding epistemology, it has its limits. One limit is that not all sense data/empirical evidence is accurate. On occasion, typically when it is dark, your brain creates shadow people in the corners of your field of vision so you are on alert. This is in case you are not alone and need to fight, fight, or freeze. The event of mishearing something is also within this category. Whenever you are alone or distracted, you can hear things that are not there or mishear things on the TV, from other people, or on social media. To sum it up, empirical evidence is only sometimes correct.
The other limit of empiricism is that sense data can be biased in that the evidence can be warped into what the observer wants it to be. Sarah learned some examples in Philosophy that give an instance of the second limit. Someone Sarah just met/became friends with is being friendly. She can interpret the evidence in three ways: the person is hitting on her, the person wants to be her friend, or this person wants to do inherently evil things to her (kidnap, etc). The interpretation of this would all depend on her bias towards them. If Sarah thought that friendly people were creepy, she would assume that the stranger had evil intentions. If Sarah thought they were attractive, she would assume they were hitting on her. Finally, if Sarah thought they were fantastic and exciting, she would assume they wanted to be her friend.Â
Sarah can use empirical evidence to justify that she has hands. She can see her hands, feel them, and touch other things. The limits of empiricism, although they do not prevent Sarah from using this evidence, propel her to search for another source of evidence.Â
Sarah's desire for another source of evidence leads her to inductive reasoning, another method of gathering evidence. Induction claims that the future is like the past, allowing us to make inferences about what will and will not happen. The first premise of an inductive argument states that the future is like the past. The conclusion will then be an inference about what will happen in the future based on a statement about the past. Although this seems sound, there are problems with inductive reasoning. David Hume, specifically, was a Scottish philosopher in the 18th century who realized that induction had issues. Hume outlined three significant problems with induction: correlation is not causation, the future is not always like the past (both of which premises the theory requires to be confirmed), and induction follows circulatory reasoning. Let us begin with his first problem: correlation is not causation.Â
The earlier Gettier example can also be used here to illustrate correlation not being causation, with a slight alteration. Suppose Sarah sees deer in her yard almost every day and that these deer often step on and audibly break twigs. One evening, she hears a twig break and assumes, like usual, that a deer is in her yard. Sarah is incredibly and unfathomably wrong because no deer is in her yard. A clumsy little squirrel broke the twig. Inductive reasoning has failed Sarah. She cannot assume that there is a deer in her yard with inductive reasoning, as there are no deer. It resulted from misinterpreting empirical evidence, or sense data - of what snapped the twig. Sarah's belief, unbeknownst to her, was incorrect, for there was just a petit squirrel. She falsely correlated the sound of the twig shattering with there being a deer in her yard. The altered deer example illustrates that correlation is not causation because Sarah correlated the twig snapping with a deer in her yard, although that did not cause the twig snapping.Â
We will discuss Hume's second problem with induction, where he points out that the future is not always like the past. Sarah has always driven her friend to and from school, so it is reasonable for her to assume she would also drive her home today. Today, however, is the day that the pattern breaks, as her friend decides to join the volleyball team and has practice from the end of school till 5 pm. In this instance, the future is not like the past. Sarah only drives her friend home after school once the volleyball season ends. Something can always happen that disrupts the repetition that induction requires.
The last scenario is one in which Sarah experiences circulatory reasoning. Suppose Sarah argued with her parents in which they are the ones being unreasonable:
Sarah's Parents: "You cannot go to that party."
Sarah: "Why?"Â
Sarah's Parents: "Because I said no."
Sarah: "Why? Saying no is not a reason why you said no."
Sarah's Parents: "Because I said no."
Sarah: "Why?"
Sarah's Parents: "Because I said no."
Sarah: "Why?"
Sarah's Parents: "Because I said no."
Sarah: "Why? Saying no is not why I am not allowed to go to the party."
Sarah's Parents: "Because I said no."
Sarah's Parents: "Because I said no, which is final."
These problems of induction lead Sarah to debate whether she can use inductive or empirical evidence to justify the existence of her hands. Indeed, the problems with induction and the limits of empiricism cause her to question whether everything is simply a false perception of reality. This leads us to the theory of skepticism, which is why she is questioning whether she exists.Â
Skepticism is the attitude of doubt, and it typically questions whether you can honestly know a belief to be true. Skeptics argue over many things but usually argue over common knowledge, like the Earth is round, the 4th of July is an American holiday, etc. Two significant philosophers have addressed skepticism, which has heavily influenced the world of philosophy. These are French philosopher Rene Descartes and English philosopher G.E. Moore. Descartes specifically concluded that apriori - before the evidence - concepts of identity, substance, and perfection exist, and sense data exists regardless of where it comes from. Descartes was highly religious and used both religion and the Christian god to justify why he was not just a brain in a vat.
On the other hand, G.E Moore's argument proposed that the skeptic must disprove the argument of the trustful, reassured person. G.E. Moore was best known for this proposition in his 1925 essay "A Defence of Common Sense,"Â in which he talks about the "burden of proof"Â and explains that it is the skeptic's job to prove their point, not the subject's job to defend theirs. Considering that skeptics use circulatory reasoning and biased empirical evidence, this works because, on average, skeptics do not have enough, if any, valid evidence to prove that they are justified in their argument.
Sarah can prove that she has a body and is not just a brain in a vat because there is no evidence saying otherwise. She proved her existence by questioning if she did, so we know she has a consciousness. Sarah can use the empirical evidence she gathered earlier to justify her claim that she has hands. She can see her hands, feel her hands, and touch her hands and other things with her hands. There is not any evidence to prove that Sarah does not have hands. She also does not use induction to prove she has hands; she knows her hands exist. It would be the skeptic's job to disprove that she has hands since there is less evidence to the belief that we are in an artificial or augmentation reality.