Q&A: Certainty in the Senses
Certainty in the Senses
Question
Hello Rabbi!
I have a question about your fourth booklet, Rabbi.
I’m currently reading about Taylor’s proof and the challenge from evolution.
My question is this: can we take the refutation of the challenge one step further back, and say to a person who is certain in his thinking, in the logic underlying his claims—or say, in the entire evolutionary process—that his very feeling of certainty itself is unfounded? In other words, the very fact that he makes arguments at all, regardless of what they are about, stems from his confidence that he is speaking logically, that his claims have meaning; and for that he needs a certain certainty in that process which precedes the evolutionary process. Because if he says that that certainty too comes from the evolutionary process, a psychological explanation for example, then I can now ask again about the claim he just made: where does he get certainty in that? And so on and on… Does the Rabbi think there is something to what I’m saying—that basically every argument a person makes assumes at its root that there is logic in what he says and that it’s even possible to “talk” with him—or should the challenge be limited only to specific claims?
And I’ll explain briefly again in case I wasn’t clear: I’m not referring specifically to the claim about belief in the senses. Maybe I’m talking about the intellect and just not calling it by the right name. But for example, if someone comes to me and says: everything developed by chance, including our mode of thinking, except that it developed in a way optimally suited to reality—I would answer him: listen sir, I have no interest in addressing what you’re saying, because you’re talking nonsense. Your very argument is meaningless, because you yourself don’t think that the things coming out of your mouth have any sense. Because if your very belief in the whole evolutionary process is based on that process itself, then everything you say will be in the category of a delusion and disconnected from reality, since your whole thought process stems from an external cause, and therefore anything you say can be dismissed, along with any justification you give. And the moment you make any claim that you purport to say is true or correct, you’ve already stepped outside the evolutionary process and created a judgment that is not legitimate from the standpoint of evolution. And even if you explain that it does make sense that this developed evolutionarily, again, your very justification stems from some place of confidence that depends on something outside evolution.
Is there logic to what I’m saying?
Thank you very much
Have a peaceful Sabbath
Answer
It seems to me that this is really the proof from epistemology. I think I wrote there that all of our basic assumptions and fundamental insights (including certainty in what we ourselves think) can serve as a basis for a similar proof.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed.
Hello Rabbi,
when you speak about the argument being outside the laws, could I please know exactly which laws we’re talking about? The law of gravity? The laws of logic? The laws of mathematics?
The laws of nature—physics and biology and so on.
There is no such thing as being outside the laws of logic.
I believe this could be a stronger proof than confidence in the senses, because it doesn’t speak about one specific thing but about any argument we might think of. According to your formulation—and correct me if I’m wrong—this is a kind of theological proof that basically says that every person who makes any argument whatsoever about anything in the world necessarily assumes, as a foundational premise, a certain belief (in God?) that he has the ability to make meaningful claims