Q&A: Certainty
Certainty
Question
Hello,
I have a question regarding your claim that nothing can be known with certainty, and that people who claim this can be done through mystical sources beyond reason are talking nonsense.
The fundamentalist will argue that he has 100 percent certainty, and you argue against him that these are mystical justifications. Are you assuming (using your “eyes of reason”) that a human being is necessarily a limited creature and therefore cannot attain certainty about anything?
But what prevents a person from claiming that something is 100% certain based on his “eyes of reason” and not based on mystical claims? Is he necessarily lying (to you or to himself)? It may be that he sees, through his “eyes of reason,” that a person can attain certainty in certain situations. Can such a person not be a rational person who, in your view, is mistaken in the assumption that certainty about anything is impossible, so that you simply disagree about the definition of the limits of rationality? Or in your view is he either a fundamentalist or a liar?
I hope I was clear,
Thank you
Answer
Nothing prevents him. Just as nothing prevents a person from claiming certainty from mystical sources. I simply disagree and do not accept it. He is not necessarily a liar. He may also be mistaken and attribute certainty to something that is not certain.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t understand what you want. I said what I think.
Right, but—
A. Your book Truth and Unstable starts from the assumption that if you have certain truth then you are a fundamentalist, and here I suggested a possibility that you are not necessarily a fundamentalist, but rather perhaps a rational person with a basic assumption that certain arguments can be established. I wanted to ask what your position is on the matter: does such a person say something self-contradictory (like a round triangle)? Or is this a legitimate rational argument that you simply think is false?
B. I asked (because I haven’t found it elsewhere on the site or in the books) that you try to explain to me the intuition according to which one cannot know something with certainty. I saw that in several places you wrote that God created us that way, but perhaps I’m not managing to fully grasp what certainty is in your view. Does certainty mean that my claim is the only possible option (as Descartes tried, and in your view failed, with the “I think”)? Or can certainty mean that there is a second option but I am 100% sure that one of them is true? Maybe you have some way of explaining your basic assumption to me.
I hope I clarified my questions better
A. The fundamentalist too has a basic assumption that what was revealed to him by Allah is absolute truth. If you have absolute confidence in some basic assumption, you are a fundamentalist. Your argument basically says: the fundamentalist is not one, because he has a basic assumption that one should be a fundamentalist.
B. Certainty is not explained by a situation in which there is no other option, because the determination that there is no other option itself requires certainty. The definition is that you are 100% sure that something is true. Since there is no way to be sure, because there can always be deception, in my view this is unreasonable. I have nothing to add beyond that. Someone who has certainty needs to explain where it comes from, not the person who challenges it.
I understand, and can a fundamentalist claim about himself that he is also rational—not in moving from premises to conclusions, but in determining premises according to reason? Is there any possibility at all of accepting basic assumptions not by means of reason but by means of some other tool?
There is a difference between a fundamentalist who claims—
“There are two separate ways in me to receive basic assumptions: reason and a divine feeling that God granted me. The divine feeling is certain, and this basic assumption also comes from that same divine feeling.”
and a fundamentalist who claims—
All my decisions are made only by means of reason, and God put into my reason the ability to judge certain things with certainty, and that assumption too is according to reason. That is, I never have a conflict between divine feeling and reason.
Can one say that the first is an irrational fundamentalist (since his whole approach is based only on divine knowledge, and it may even conflict for him with reason) and the second is a rational fundamentalist?
Thank you so much for listening and responding.
I hope I phrased the question clearly
These are word games. I too think that God put the intuition into me.
So a person can think that he knows things with absolute certainty and still use the rational method?
I’m asking in the context of Saadia Gaon’s “The Chosen in Beliefs and Opinions,” where he argues that God can be known with complete certainty.
Was Saadia Gaon a mystic, or was he a rationalist who simply believed—or more accurately, knew—that one can reach certainty by means of reason?
By the way, why is your intuition that certainty cannot be reached through the “eyes of reason” in matters about which you have very great clarity—not about everything, of course? Why does the mechanism that allows us to produce a high degree of probability not allow us to produce certainty? Have you ever been mistaken about things you knew with a very high degree of clarity, or do you simply define certainty as something that requires proof? Why does Descartes’ argument, for example in the Fourth Meditation, that God placed in man clear and distinct ideas such that if he judges by them he will never err, sound implausible to you?
Thanks again