Sensation and Intuition
This is a part two to this post, in which I argue that moral intuitions are valuable. Here I will address sensation more generally.
My favorite analytic philosophy paper (not to say it is the best, just the one I personally enjoy the most) is “Proof of an External World” by G. E. Moore. It is three pages long and was written, according to legend, in only a few hours, because Moore was behind on his publishing commitments. It contains the most rigorous and tight proof for the existence of the external world ever written, without appealing to a grand, enlightenment-style philosophical system of his own design. You should read it yourself since it is so short, but the basic idea is that sense experience provides at least as much certainty for the truth of a premise as is actually required for an acceptable proof. “How absurd would it be,” he says regarding the existence of his hands, “to suggest that I only believed it, and that perhaps it was not the case!”
Some in the academic philosophical community think of this paper as largely a troll, and it makes sense for them to believe that, because there is something profoundly anti-philosophical about the idea that you can just wiggle your hand and use that as the “proof” of a premise. It has the feel of the explosion of memes in recent months ascribing the tendency to question the truth of a statement by asking for “a study” or “an argument” to Reddit-brain. It is a philosophy paper that advocates for folk wisdom: “of course I know that my car exists. I see it.”
So, I think of Moore’s paper not as a joke but as a challenge. It says to the idealists, “okay, you may have this or that argument to show that the existence of the external world is in doubt, but can you put your money where your mouth is? Can you really, honestly say that you do not ‘know’ the chair you are sitting in exists? Because you certainly behave as if you do.” Perhaps this is a kind of troll after all. People reflexively believe their sense impressions, and it is difficult to imagine what it would mean to not. Writing a paper on why you should not believe your sense impressions implies the existence of your writing implement or computer.
Of course, many who advance an idealist position at the start of their argument, like Decartes and Kant, end up arguing that they actually can trust their sense experience. Kant, in particular, claims that his argument is the only basis on which sensation can be trusted, and Decartes’ argument does not proceed until he has sufficiently “proved” this step to his satisfaction, suggesting that he finds it necessary to establish this as a basis. So, imagine comparing Kant, who has now established the external world exists, with my grandpa, who has never doubted this. If they were to sit across a table from each other and say “this table exists,” would Kant be more right than my grandpa? Or is the truth value of their identical claim also identical?
This also has tie-ins to the value of empirical evidence more generally. How people feel about anecdotal evidence is highly variable. Some value it very highly if it comes from some groups but not others, some treat it as a rebuttable presumption, some think it has no value at all. Interestingly, the last group frequently loves studies, which are just collections of anecdotal evidence, plus some attempts to clean up its gathering or presentation, such as lab conditions, control groups, and statistical analysis. And while people tend to agree that rational arguments are better suited to necessary truths (in most cases) and empirics generally suited to contingent truths, the rational vs. empirical distinction also describes personality dispositions. How “of the world” are you? Are you a pragmatic, engineer-type or a “head in the clouds” intellectual-type? We all need a little of both of these attitudes, but there is a clear difference in talking to someone who values “common sense” and in someone who values “theory.” There is a reason I went to law school instead of trying to get into a philosophy PhD program.
I found myself defending the general reliability of sensation to a friend of mine, who is less of a philistine than me, which I say not to flatter him or to be self-deprecating, I am using the term in a value-neutral way. He had the better of the argument. Although, as a Catholic, he did concede that there is value in folk wisdom and folk religion. I think this framing is a potentially useful intuition-pump for the religious. There are people who believe that Jesus was resurrected because they read Aquinas and Augustine, study the Bible in its original languages, and can recite arguments for why it happened, and there are people who believe in the Resurrection because their parents or priest told them about them and have never read a word of theology in their lives. But both of these types are members of the community of believers, and we hope that neither feels superior or inferior at church.
Defending my perspective to my friend is an odd thing for me to do, because my point is essentially that I do not have to. How can I argue that my belief that sense experience is in-general accurate is properly basic? It would seem self-undermining. I think it is for the same reason that idealists argue that they do not know the outside world exists – of course they do. We argue because it is fun.