Q&A: Faith and Radical Skepticism
Faith and Radical Skepticism
Question
With God’s help,
Have a good week, and a kosher and joyous Pesach Sheni.
This Sabbath, in one of the more rationalist Sabbath pamphlets, they raised a very interesting question, and I’d be glad to hear your opinion.
The writer of the column “On the Front of Faith” first distinguished between ordinary skepticism and radical skepticism. For example, the claim that maybe the world was created about five minutes ago together with all our memories—that is radical skepticism.
And he argued that although we are used to dismissing such ideas with a wave of the hand, specifically casting doubt on the exaggerated confidence of the “come on, really” reaction may show that it does not represent common sense, but only mental fixation that prevents us from discovering a greater truth, so it is worthwhile from time to time to examine this possibility.
So I’m interested to know what the rationalist rabbi thinks about this view. To me it sounds really bizarre.
Also, in the course of his remarks he raised the following question: not only can these claims not be disproved, but from experience we know that similar things can happen and in fact happen extremely often—namely dreams. Every night we dream dreams that, while we are inside them, seem completely real to us, and present us with a world that appears old even though in fact it was created only a few seconds earlier. In other words, these theories are not just throwing out ideas no one has ever seen, like “maybe the leaders of the world are lizard people,” but rely on a reality well known from experience, and simply suggest that maybe it is broader than we think.
So I wanted to ask: if the mind really deceives us so many times, as the writer says—suppose even for a quarter of our lives—can we really trust it to distinguish reliably between reality and imagination? It sounds like a very strong question.
Answer
Without knowing and without reading, I’d wager that the writer was Rabbi משה רט.
I do not agree with these claims. We have a clear insight into the difference between dreams and reality, and usually that works. There is no reason to assume that we are living in an illusion.
Discussion on Answer
From experience, with a bit of training it’s possible to distinguish between a dream and reality even during the dream itself.
Even within the dream itself you understand that you’re dreaming. The proof is that you don’t create new laws of nature in light of the “facts” revealed to you in the dream. (Unless I don’t remember my dreams and that does happen there…)
By the way, who told you that you dream at all? Maybe you hallucinated that you dreamt.
I didn’t understand the claim that even in a dream you understand that you’re dreaming because you are (usually) under rigid laws of nature. The point is not the brain’s mode of operation in creating dreams, but the genuine feeling a person feels in the dream. A clear example of this is that there are nightmares that create a strong negative feeling of unpleasantness for the dreamer.
The claim about hallucination is mere skepticism, because it has no basis, as explained at length in the book The Science of Freedom. By contrast, when there are so many events that mislead us, that shows that the mind is not necessarily so correct… and that too was mentioned in that book against the determinist—that since he denies so many sensations, there is skepticism there with some basis.
?
I don’t see any point in these skeptical hair-splittings. I’ve said what I had to say.
What do you think of the brief claim I raised afterward: that just as, in your view in The Science of Freedom, if a person is a determinist he has a real reason to doubt his entire epistemological system because of all the mistaken beliefs he experiences—
so too here, insofar as for a non-negligible part of the time we experience a sense of reality to one degree or another even though we are not actually in reality, then we already have a real reason to doubt the whole system.
There is no connection at all. I explained there that determinism is a positive reason for doubt (because if one’s thoughts are forced upon him, there is no reason to assume they are true). Dreams are at most a negative reason, if that. As I said, these are skeptical musings that I see no point in dealing with.
What is the difference between a positive reason for doubt and a negative one?
After all, here too, if a person cannot distinguish between reality and imagination (except only retroactively—after he wakes up), then there is no reason to assume that the concrete reality before you is real.
I explained it there. Doubt on a negative basis is mere skepticism. It is enough for me to say that my intuition says otherwise, and therefore the burden of proof is on the one who claims that I should doubt. Positive doubt is doubt based on some specific reason.
Even in Jewish law there is no doubt on a negative basis. If someone comes and tells me that I am a mamzer or that I am his son, I do not doubt at all. Only if he brings positive evidence that can arouse doubt. This is Russell’s celestial teapot example.
The claim that there is no reason to assume that the reality before me is real is negative doubt. I do assume and think that it is. If you want to arouse doubt in me—bring evidence.
Isn’t the inability to distinguish between reality and imagination when one is inside the imagination sufficient evidence?
It isn’t evidence of anything. At most it is an analogy (in my opinion a weak one). And in my opinion it’s also not true, so there’s nothing to discuss in the first place.
Why is it an analogy? It shows explicitly that our capacity to identify reality is faulty.
It’s hard for me to find anything to add. Let the chooser choose.
Please, one last time, let’s open this up, because this sounds to me like a very unclear claim.
If in dreams we experience a sense of reality, and indeed during the dream we believe that we are inside reality (and I agree that this itself is very much open to doubt),
then the reasonable claim that follows is that our system of distinguishing between reality and imagination is defective.
But if that is so, then when we now claim that we are in reality because we experience such an intuition, we really have no reason to trust our ability to distinguish between reality and imagination.
If so, the conclusion is that this is not a grounded position at all, and this is positive doubt in the highest degree, when the system of distinction is defective.
Please, one last time, let’s open this up, because this sounds to me like a very unclear claim.
If in dreams we experience a sense of reality, and indeed during the dream we believe that we are inside reality (and I agree that this itself is very much open to doubt),
then the reasonable claim that follows is that our system of distinguishing between reality and imagination is defective.
But if that is so, then when we now claim that we are in reality because we experience such an intuition, we really have no reason to trust our ability to distinguish between reality and imagination.
If so, the conclusion is that this is not a grounded position at all.
We’re grinding water. All the more so since this whole inquiry is based on an assumption that you yourself doubt greatly (that in a dream there is no distinction). So is this inquiry just for the sake of hair-splitting?
I’ll say it briefly. If you know that in a dream reality and dream get mixed up for us, then you understand what a dream is and when you are in it. It therefore follows that you do accept the distinction between dream and reality. Beyond that, even if there is a mirage here and our eyes deceive us, that does not cause us to lose trust in our eyes. We understand that it was an unusual phenomenon and not ordinary life. So too with a dream.
I am very doubtful about the assumption, because on the one hand I do accept that there are realistic sensations in dreams, just as someone watching a frightening movie experiences feelings of fear even though he knows it isn’t real.
But on the other hand, unlike a movie, where it is known that it is fiction, in a dream we are deprived of reflective thinking and judgment to distinguish between dream and reality.
In any case, I am mainly investigating this now for the sake of understanding, because I think the rabbi’s words are puzzling.
If there is a reality that repeats itself frequently and consistently, how can one say that it is a mirage? This is a claim that has come up several times in the discussion here and does not seem at all reasonable. One can interpret it that way only in a single and rare event, but not in a sequence of events that takes place in 30% or more of our lives.
Second, the claim that skepticism of this kind is an analogy and therefore cannot be positive skepticism, as opposed to skepticism that comes from an a priori source (a claim about determinism), is also not at all clear.
As for the new claim you raised only here and not earlier—that supposedly one cannot hold both horns of it: on the one hand to claim that we do have a distinction between reality and imagination, and to know that previously we were in imagination and a sense of reality was mixed into it, but on the other hand now to claim that we do not know how to distinguish between reality and imagination—
I think it is not precise at all. Because when we were under consciousness A, and after an event of a feeling of awakening we are under consciousness B, then the reasonable interpretation would be that these are two different sources of information that created the consciousness, and accordingly, since the sensations are identical, the interpretation is what made the distinction that once it was imagination and now reality, and yet that is arbitrary.
With all due respect, I’m exhausted. I’ve said everything I had to say.
After a number of days in which I checked, immediately after waking up, the sensations I still managed to remember from the dream,
I think one can say that it really does feel experiential to the point that there is lack of awareness that it is a dream. Also, in some dreams there is a feeling of free choice, but on the other hand one cannot direct their contents voluntarily.
On the other hand, I do not recall doubting in the dream whether it was a dream or reality, and in general there is an enormous lack of self-criticism and capacity for judgment and deliberation.
Does the rabbi think that if in a dream there is a realistic, reality-like feeling, but there is no capacity for judgment and reflective thought, can that indeed serve as a difficulty for our power of distinction?
By the way, I just saw that Wikipedia also mentions it exactly this way:
“A dream is a subjective experience of imaginary sights and sensations during sleep. An ordinary dream has several characteristics, including lack of awareness that it is a dream…”
It’s true that even in an extreme case of a fata morgana we still don’t have sufficient grounds to become skeptical about the faculty of sight, but the main sting of the question lies in the frequency of dreams and the feeling of reality experienced while one is in them—not after waking up and realizing it was a mistake, as your words seemed to imply.