First, I will start by summarizing how an individual can know that he or she exists. You will soon see why I began here.
If everything around you in the external world is an illusion, say, created by an evil demon to deceive you and distort reality to you, you exist by necessity. How? Because it is impossible for you to experience illusion unless your consciousness and mind exist in order to perceive the illusion. The mind must exist in order to perceive illusion; thus consciousness itself cannot be an illusion, even if everything perceived in the material world is.
Thought can only exist if a thinker does. It is impossible for you to not exist if you are thinking, for that necessitates the existence of at least your mind. Descartes wrote about this in his Meditations on First Philosophy, but no one needs to read the writing of another philosopher to prove this to himself or herself. Anyone can realize this just by thinking about it. This proves to you only that you are an immaterial mind with self-awareness and the ability to generate thoughts, doubt propositions, and recognize that it follows that if you think you exist, not that your body exists or that your sensory perceptions are accurate perceptions of the external world.
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| The very act of questioning your own existence proves to you that you exist, for you would not be capable of doubting your existence unless you already existed in order to do so. I had someone tell me last week that it only "seems" to him that he exists and so he can't know with 100% certainty if he is real, yet nothing could "seem" like anything to him at all unless he existed in order to perceive what seems to be from his perspective. Even if your body is ultimately just an illusory thing, your mind has to exist in order to perceive its illusion. |
It is easy to prove to yourself that you exist, as you have seen. But now I will address a dilemma referred to as the problem of criterion because I have shared recent conversations with individuals who doubt the truth of what I have stated in this post so far. The problem of criterion is an alleged difficulty that arises when we seek to identify the starting point of knowledge. After all, if there is no absolute beginning point for knowledge and certainty, then we cannot truly know anything, so this problem, if genuine, could not be more urgent or impactful.
There are multiple Christians at my college (HBU of all places!) who deny that we can know anything at all. Their argument is simple, and upon it everything about their skepticism rests: 1) the only way to know that you exist or that anything is intelligible involves using logic; 2) using logic to defend logic is circular reasoning; 3) therefore, we cannot trust logic and thus we have no basis for any actual human knowledge. If true, you can see that it follows that humans are incapable of knowing anything at all with absolute certainty, meaning we cannot even know for sure if we ourselves exist.
Do you see the flaws in this? Below I have summarized some of my responses.
1). Some things are self-evident. Things like the existence of God, the veracity of specific moral claims, and the reliability of our senses are not self-evident no matter what some people insist, but some facts are. "Something is what it is and is not what it is not" is self-evident and self-verifying; all one needs to do to know for sure that this is the case is to reflect on it. This small category of knowledge is sometimes called a priori knowledge. Self-evident truths are necessary for knowledge because something can only be proved in one of two ways: either it is proved by preceding premises and principles or it verifies itself, and unless at least one thing is self-evident and it is impossible for it to be false there would be an infinite regress and no beginning point for human knowledge (by the way, infinite regresses are logically impossible; this is another hint that total epistemological skepticism is nonsense).
2). Anyone who claims we cannot know anything ironically claims that he or she knows that fact; anyone who denies our ability to know any truths states that he or she has found the truth--that truth is unknowable; anyone who thinks that logic is unreliable would be incapable of reaching that conclusion unless he or she used logic and unless logic is reliable. One who denies truth and knowledge could not even concoct a case against them if they weren't already existing and knowable to at least some small degree and he or she will rely on the very things being denied.
3). People who deny knowledge and logic are at least implicitly admitting that they do not see a problem with contradiction and that no amount of reason or experience will ever force them to acknowledge even the inescapable, foundational truths of reality. Depending on the identity and background of the person, at this point I would just simply constantly remind him or her that there is no such thing as discrediting the existence of truth or the reliability of logic, that anything he or she says on the matter contradicts itself, and that any further discussion is useless until the other party acknowledges at least the sliver of inescapable self-evident and self-verifying truths about reality. The circular reasoning objection simply borrows from logic in an effort to discredit logic. About this, I have written elsewhere "Any argument against reason must inevitably utilize the principles of reason in order to attack it; any assault on the veracity or reliability of logic must inescapably use logic in order to conclude that logic is faulty. No one can question or criticize the use of premises to form conclusions (deductive reasoning) without asserting premises which allegedly lead to the conclusion that concepts such as deductive reasoning are invalid or untrustworthy. If someone tries to dethrone the self-evident nature of reason, he or she believes there is reason to disregard it, thus contradicting himself or herself at the most foundational level. [1]"
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| Someone who denies self-evident truths is metaphorically trying to cut down a tree while leaning his or her back against it. The task is impossible because it is impossible for such truths to be incorrect. |
Does any of this make sense? Apparently it is not enough to remind some of what they already know. Last week a Christian at my college told me that I cannot have 100% certainty about anything--not even my own existence. Within around 24 hours later the very same Christian agreed with me that denying consciousness (as some adherents of scientism do these days) is factually and objectively incorrect because even if everything we perceive is a grand illusion our consciousness must be real in order to even perceive illusion. She, in the same 24 hours, denied that any absolute certainty is possible even when investigating if I myself exist and then concurred that it is impossible for a conscious being to have grounds to doubt his or her consciousness--and therefore existence. Do you notice the contradiction?
Even if "first principles" [2] are known immediately by intuition (as Pascal implied in Pensees), this does not discredit their inherent veracity or weaken our certainty of them at all. The fact that no one can escape them or deny them without using them does prove, regardless of what objectors say, that they form the foundation of reality. I can honestly say about such things that "I just know" they are true. Now, while I can legitimately say "I just know" that the logical law of identity (something is what it is) is true, I cannot "just know" that Jesus Christ is God, that the Nazi Holocaust occurred, that a close friend is not lying to me about something, or that I am not in a sophisticated sensory simulation. I reserve use of the phrase exclusively for a limited set of self-evident axioms or foundational truths.
Something I must note is that you cannot recognize one axiom as true without realizing that others are also. I have defined and elaborated on axioms elsewhere, but I will describe them again here. Statements like the following are axioms--they are self-evident, self-verifying, and anyone who denies them must use and therefore subtly acknowledge and prove them in the very process of doing so:
"1). Truth exists.
2). Some knowledge is possible.
3). Words can convey truth.
4). Everyone has a worldview.
5). Deductive reasoning is reliable (Example: If X is true, Y is true. X is true. Therefore Y is true.)
6). Something is what it is (Law of Identity).
7). Something cannot be true and false at the same time in the same way (Law of Non-contradiction).
8). Something is either true or false (Law of Excluded Middle). [3]"
It is impossible to know one of these axioms without simultaneously knowing at least some of the others. There is no single, isolated starting point for knowledge in this sense, because the beginning of knowledge involves simple recognition of an interlocked and interconnected set of necessary truths. This is not difficult to accept or acknowledge, yet in recent weeks I have found that a stupefying amount of people at my Christian college have not admitted the inherent veracity of axioms. Instead of trying to pinpoint a single specific inescapable and self-evident truth, the rational mind will recognize multiple truths as the bedrock of all knowledge.
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| Just as the rings of the Olympic Games are shown linked, so axioms are linked together so that to acknowledge one is to acknowledge at least one other. If you realize you exist, you simultaneously acknowledge that logic is reliable or you could never be aware of your own existence; if you recognize that logic is reliable, you admit that truth exists; if you know truth exists, you must also know that some knowledge is possible or you could never have known this, and so on. |
Conclusion
These issues are so central and significant because most, if not all, human problems are problems of epistemology at their foundations. I will freely admit here that did I not have absolute certainty that axioms and logic are true I would not delay the act of taking my own life very long. If I were not correct about what I have said in this post I would not have any desire to live.
If someone were to read this post and not grasp the veracity of all its content, there is nothing I can do for that person except to emphasize the points again, exploit the inconsistency of that person, and pray and hope that he or she acknowledges the obvious. I could tell him or her that if we cannot know anything because all thinking would involve logic and logic is "unreliable", then his or her conclusion was reached using logic and thus I have no reason to accept it.
Ironically, I have a brother who is an agnostic concerning many matters--his epistemology and worldview greatly resembles mine apart from the fact that I am a Christian and he is not (yet, at least). I find it very odd that my skeptical brother admits self-evident truths, as I do, merely because they are inescapable and self-verifying, while other Christians I know refuse to concede that any true knowledge is possible. Even more odd is the way some of these Christians I have referenced have opposed my (verifiable) skepticism of things like natural law as a basis for moral epistemology, belief in God on grounds of personal emotive experience, or the immediate reliability of my sensory perceptions, yet they will turn around and tell me that no knowledge is possible, often while simultaneously insisting or implying that I am too skeptical of certain claims. As they deny the self-evident they attack the only things capable of supporting their own conclusion.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-self-evidence-of-logic.html
[2]. First principles in philosophy encompasses what is sometimes called a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge that one can simply know or recognize simply by thinking or reflection (such as "something is what it is"). Axioms, the three laws of logic, and a priori knowledge are included in the group called first principles.
[3]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-error-of-presuppositions.html
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