Recently I asked, on X:
“Are there no truths that can’t be proven? If there are, should we refuse to believe them? Should we insist that they must be false?”
Philosopher Patrick Flynn asks the same question today, in a post at Substack. He argues that if we have beliefs that are in fact true, but deny that such beliefs constitute knowledge of reality, we are effectively introducing falsehoods. (The epistemic argument hinges on what we should reasonably consider “knowledge” to mean.)
I won’t summarize his argument further; his post is brief enough that you should read it for yourself, and see if you agree.
Here.
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This may not directly bear on Flynn’s argument, but he asks if rigorous skepticism is “safer.” He is of course talking about epistemological safety, a form of safety distinctly secondary in the minds of most folk. I ask whether epistemological safety is itself safe under a wholistic definition of that word. We have been told that the truth will set us free, but another line of thought suggests that truth will set us on the path to suicide. I’m open to the notion that some “forbidden truths” are forbidden for good reasons.
The terminology of Flynn’s argument was new to me, but it seems I’ve always been some sort of “externalist” without knowing it. And as a consistent externalist, I feel no shame in my inability to offer reasons for my externalism. It may be the case that I am saddled with a defective mind, but my experience is that certain propositions seem to contain their own warrants. And such propositions do not always fall under the suspicion of wishful thinking since they may be unwelcome truths. I feel a strong desire to discover defects in their bona fides, but a deeper instinct tells me there is no point.
More important than the question whether something can be proven is the question whether something can be disproven.
Max,
Both matter, but which is more important is a matter of some dispute.
JMS,
I hadn’t heard this terminology before either; the definition of “knowledge” I was most familiar with was “justified true belief”.
That definition means a lot hinges on what “justified” means, which is where, it seems to me, Flynn’s idea of internalism/externalism fits in. (For example, knowledge by “direct acquaintance”, which is intrinsically unreflective, would, I suppose, be considered “externalist”.)
Flynn writes:
He then adds, in a footnote:
This does get to the crux of the matter: a stubborn agnosticism – one that doesn’t even rise to the level of outright denial, but nevertheless rejects the presentations of intuition or direct acquaintance as epistemically persuasive – might do us real harm by blocking the door to important, perhaps vitally important, beliefs that are in fact true.
A problem in my mind, Malcolm, is that the agnosticism or very glass-darkly intuition of God that seems to be the lot of most of us today, is rather different – at least by and large – from the cognizance of the divine that existed, say, before much of the Modern Age. You had someone like Teresa of Avila who saw little demons dancing upon the pages of her Scripture, or Catherine of Sienna who would enter trances where she would literally speak with God and have scribes record her conversations. And this is isn’t even to reference the original apostles in the Gospels, who of course witnessed themselves Christ performing actual miracles right and left. Is it fair to say that over the last few centuries we’ve entered into a new disposition in the way we perceive the Almighty? For me that has always been something difficult to come to terms with.
In other words, in case I’m not being clear, you have to acknowledge an evolution in our consciousness of the divine. From the capricious river deity that so terrified the Sumerians (look at the bug-eyed looks of statues of the period of those humans reacting to the holy) to the sense of a quite hidden God that exists today. Yet is it reasonable to say that God – or at least our perception of God – simply develops over time? Why should that be?
Perhaps we should speak of epistemic risk and epistemic risk tolerance. “Pascal’s wager” and Kierkegaard’s “leap in the dark” both imply epistemic risk, and the phrase “epistemic risk” suggests that knowledge favors the bold. Not the rash, not the foolhardy, but the bold who will risk being wrong.
I have never given this serious thought and may not be capable of giving it serious thought, but I’ve never liked the extreme caution of W. K. Clifford’s “epistemic duty.” “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.” On Clifford’s dictum, I should not have believed my wife meant it when she just wished me a “good morning.” In any case, it seems obvious to me that I cannot live without any number of beliefs for which I have “insufficient evidence,” either because such evidence does not exist or because I lack the time or intelligence to comprehend that evidence.
But returning to my notions of epistemic risk and boldness, there seems to be a law of God or nature that favors the bold. God or nature obviously abhors the rash and foolhardy, but neither God nor nature lavishly rewards the man who always plays it safe. Everything good comes at risk. Why should knowledge be different?
I don’t know if you’re responding to my points Professor Smith, but I think that’s all well-put. It rings true, what you say, that faith requires a prudent courage and boldness to be operative. It seems that one has to stick his neck out in a way that was unnecessary perhaps in the past.
Jason,
You touch on something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Both the Old and New Testaments are chock-full of direct manifestations of God (it’s hard to harbor much doubt, for example, when the Almighty knocks you off your horse, strikes you blind, and thunders at you demanding to know what the hell you think you’re doing!) — and the lives of the saints also record countless examples of direct experiences that are so vivid, so intuitively veridical, that they constitute what philosophers would call “Moorean facts“. (I recommend to you all this recent post by our friend Bill Vallicella, on precisely this subject.)
But for many of us this vouchsafing of reliable truth never comes, however much we may yearn for it, and even pray for it. Is it a matter of the right sort of preparation, an inborn talent for receiving such impressions, or simply of the unknowable conditions of God’s grace? And is there some reason why such things seem so much rarer in the modern world? Have we fallen more deeply, in these times, under some shadow that interferes with the transmission and reception of such visions? (Many people, from Gurdjieff to C.S. Lewis, have said as much.) Are we just deaf? Do we simply lack “ears to hear”? I wish I knew.
JMS,
Quite right: faint heart ne’er won fair lady.
And really — with a nod to Pascal — what’s the risk, anyway?