Topics Knowledge

Question My dog sometimes acts in an aggressive way because he feels he has to protect my family like we're his pack. I find it interesting that although he lives in an environment very different from what would be natural, he still feels the need to do this because of his instinct. He feels that the world is in his control and is oblivious to politics and other issues that affect the whole world. How do we know that we are any different to my dog? We assume that he knows very little about the world, but he probably thinks the same about us and so how can we know that the world isn't actually being run by him? Or if not by him how do we know that everything we think we control and understand isn't actually in the control of ants, or plants, or stars? Millie =]

Accepted:
December 14, 2007

Comments

Or tiny pieces of tinfoil!

One way to think about your question is from the day-to-day point of view of ordinary knowledge. From that point of view, we know -- or take ourselves to believe reasonably -- that your dog doesn't run the world because there isn't the slightest evidence that he does and a good deal of evidence that he doesn't. Unless I'm much mistaken, your dog shows the usual signs of doggly limitations. We seem much better at manipulating him than vice-versa. Most of what we do doesn't have any obvious connection with anything that Poochie shows the slightest signs of caring about. In fact, there's no reason to think that Poochie has much of anything in the way of thoughts about who controls what or about what we think. (Poochie probably doesn't have a "theory of mind," as some people say.)

Another way of taking your question is as a humorous way of asking how we know anything at all. In some weak sense of "possible," it's possible that the whole world is under the control of the Seven Sanctified Sea Lions. Or, to take a more traditional example, maybe everything we see is planted in our immaterial minds by Descarte's Evil Genius.

Many philosophers would say that there's no way we can definitively rule such things out, but most of these same philosophers don't see that as a reason to worry. Substantive knowledge carries with it as a matter of logic the possibility that we might be wrong. But to quote once again my former colleague Dudley Shapere, there mere possibility of doubt isn't a reason for doubt. In other words, even though there's a bare abstract possibility that we might be wrong in all sorts of ways, that doesn't give us any reason to suspect that we are.

One way to approach the philosophical enterprise of making sense of knowledge is to see the project as proving that we actually know things. Another approach -- the more common one these days -- is to take it for granted that we know a good deal and look at the structure of the building from the inside. When we do that, we don't find much in the way of reasons to worry that Poochie rules the world.

I agree that acknowledging that "the mere possibility of doubt doesn't provide a reason for doubting" is one part of a sensible answer to your question: that (1) we aren't sure whether we can prove complete certainty that your dog--or that Allen's scrap of tin-foil--does not control the world, despite all appearances to the contrary, doesn't provide us with (2) a good reason for taking seriously what certainly looks to be an extremely remote possibility. Moreover, and as the reference to tin-foil suggests, (3) there seems something irrational about taking those doubts too seriously.

But why do possibilities like these seem easy to ignore or even to dismiss as "crazy thoughts"? Is this just because we are unwilling to challenge received opinion? Is this dismissive stance yet another example of the human tendency to embrace dogmatism? I believe is what a student of mine had in mind as she stormed out of the classroom when I offered this sort of response to similar doubts that she had raised.

I think the reason why it is not a matter of petty dogmatism to conclude that we have no reason to take these possibilities seriously is that we have ample reason to believe that they do not describe our world. In this case (as in the case of my angry student, who was entranced by the idea that bears might have sophisticated religious practices that have hitherto escaped our notice), we possess a large body of relevant scientific findings that provide us with those reasons. Surely it is not simple dogmatism to note that there are significant findings of science that give us reason not to worry that the universe is controlled by your dog or Allen's scrap of tin foil!

One can certainly debate the strength of these reasons, and of course it is possible that it will turn out that they are not as strong as they appear to be – for example, this could occur if someone brings forth are strong arguments that the results of science are unreliable or are otherwise not worth taking seriously or if we gain unexpected new scientific knowledge about your dog’s powers. Likewise, if a philosopher brought forward powerful reasons to doubt that we actually know anything, those considerations might mean that it would be wrong to appeal to the present state of scientific inquiry to dismiss the possibilities you raise.

In the absence of such arguments or new scientific results, however, there does seem to be no reason to suspect that the world is run by that scrap of tin-foil lying under the stove and thus no need to worry about refuting this bare possibility. Or, put differently, the key is to combine philosophical anti-dogmatism with the insistence that philosophical reflection proceeds by careful argumentation.

If this is correct, this can teach us something about the nature of "philosophical reflection:"reveling in the exuberance of "bare possibilities" can be a useful philosophical attitude, but this attitude by itself is inadequate to lead us to interesting philosophical conclusions.

Finally, just as we ought to remain open to the possibility that there could be strong argumentation that gives us grounds to doubt the findings of science we also ought to remain open to the possibility that there could be strong argumentation that gives us grounds to conclude that we can know with complete certainty that your dog or Allen's scrap of tin foil does not control the world. In particular, transcendental argumentation of the sort discussed in this answer has a chance of showing just this.