Tom Morris - Philosophy For Dummies

The futuristic nihilist points out that the future does not exist. Yet. But there is a problem. In order for a belief to be true, the object about which it is true must be among the furniture of reality, the sum total of things that exist, and that object must have the property attributed to it in that belief. For it to be true that grass is green, there must be such a thing as grass, and it must have the property of being green. But the future is right now just one huge void. You may pour into that void lots of beliefs about what will happen later today, what will transpire tomorrow, and what will occur later this year. You likely hold beliefs about the next decade. You may be deep into many beliefs about the future, however tentative and cautious you might try to be with this territory. But the future does not yet exist to have any qualities or ground any truths. And that applies to the very near future, including beliefs you have about stuff an hour from now, or tomorrow. Those times don’t yet exist.

The future-oriented radical skeptic could buttress his argument even further by plugging in to some of the other forms of radical skepticism. Think about the radical hypotheses of the previous section. At any second, you could wake up from Descartes’ Dream and find things in the immediate future to be very different from what you might have inductively inferred, based on a delusory past. Or Descartes’ Demon could snap his fingers and wake you up to an extremely divergent present and future from anything you expect. The deception could change radically. How do you know any of this won’t happen any minute now and pull the rug out from under your future-oriented beliefs? To this question there is no good answer. And that’s really very odd. You may get to this point in our journey and understand in a new way the poet Coleridge’s words when he wrote: “My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt.” And, yeah: Ouch.

The questions of source skepticism showed that you can’t come up with any good evidence that your most basic belief-forming mechanisms are ever reliable. The questions of radical skepticism then poured salt on the wound, pointing out that you can’t find any single shred of evidence at all to refute or even dislodge an array of crazy-sounding radical hypotheses that are logically incompatible with your current beliefs about vitally important things.

The skeptic’s challenges show that you can’t prove some of the most basic and important, and otherwise uncontroversial, things you believe. You can’t even marshal any good evidence that they are true. You just believe them. And the skeptic keeps asking why. One thing that skepticism shows is that there is very little room in life for cocky, arrogant dogmatism. You need to be a little humble in your certainties. But the skeptics can help you see even more than that.

A British author, George Iles, once had the important insight that “Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.” Skeptical inquiry can lead to a state of doubt. But perhaps that will bring considerable wisdom, for anyone who can handle the doubt properly. The skeptic has been relentless in asking: How do you know all that you think you know, or even any of it? How can you be rational in believing anything? Should you suspend belief about everything, or at least nearly everything? Sextus Empiricus suggested in his time that everyone should simply live in accordance with appearances, without ever concluding that appearances reliably indicate realities. You might wonder whether this is the reaction you should have to the skeptic’s questions and your amazing inability to answer them. But perhaps there is an alternative to take.

There is an interesting and powerfully rational option. Skepticism can teach you an important lesson, but it need not shut you down as a believer. Without believing that their own words have certain meanings rather than others, the ancient skeptics could not even formulate their own questions and challenges. And neither can you. Belief is necessary for everyone, and it’s also inevitable in human life. Perhaps, after all, it’s even supremely rational.

Suspending all beliefs as the classic skeptic suggests is literally impossible. And even if it weren’t impossible, it would be hugely impractical, and clearly dangerous. If there seems to be a truck bearing down on you as you cross the street, you’d better believe it and act accordingly. If skeptics suggest that you should just act on appearances while withholding actual assent, they are requiring a feat of mental gymnastics for which they have given you no compelling reason. But, you might worry, isn’t our inability to answer these skeptical questions itself compelling enough? No, the skeptic’s questions show only that the rationality of the most basic reasonable assumptions, and so the fundamental rationality of most ordinary beliefs, cannot consist, ultimately, in having good solid evidence independently available to show their truth. This is the main lesson of skepticism. Within the realm of rational belief, good evidence is normally crucial to demand and have, but it isn’t available for the deepest foundations of your beliefs, and so can’t be demanded or had there, and that’s both an important and fascinating truth to have discovered, thanks to the skeptic’s fascinating and monumentally irritating questions.

So how do you in fact know that your basic belief-forming mechanisms like sense experience, memory, and testimony are ever reliable? How can it be rational to believe that the world has been around for more than five minutes, or that life is not all one big dream or computer simulation, or that there is no supernaturally powerful evil demon hypnotizing you right now with misleading experiences? How can you reasonably believe there will be a future? These are typically among everyone’s most basic beliefs or assumptions. Where do these convictions then come from, and what certifies them? If you can come to understand this, it may also give you a crucially important perspective on all the other Big Questions you’ll be considering in this book. For these perhaps unexpected answers, turn as soon as possible to Chapter 6and read. You won’t be dreaming.

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