Dept. of Philosophy

Descartes, on a trip to Germany to see the wars, was caught (he tells us) by the onset of winter; having nothing better to do, and without friendly conversation and "untroubled by cares and passions" our philosopher ensconced himself in a warm room by the fire, using this leisure time to analyse everything he thought to be true and certain (Discourse, Part 2, 1637). Examining his knowledge, Descartes' Pyrrhonistic bent of mind after reading Sextus Empiricus led him to resolve to never accept anything as true unless it was evidently certain.
We are not concerned here with his conclusions after doubting all that could be doubted (a few years later, Locke followed a similar procedure but in a more sustained way and with different conclusions), but with his following a long line of philosophical linking of truth with absolute certainty, and with the circumstances in which he could philosophise in this manner. This "fireside thinking" often leads to epistemological conclusions that can, when pressed far enough, lead to a destructive brand of nihilism, and are not warranted.

There is an oft repeated story about a famous Greek philosopher attending what later one would in Paris call a salon, and like the rest of the people there was listening to Zeno ,who was eloquently and cogently presenting his arguments about the non-existence of motion (the arrow,as you will remember, that does not move). When Zeno had finally stopped his monologue, the audience was quiet; some were simply in awe, while younger and fresher minds busied themselves in futilely thinking of refutations. Whereupon our philosopher stood up, the audience expecting him to now discourse at length, and, holding his wine cup upside down to show it was empty, proceeded to walk to the table to fill it with more of the excellent wine provided by the host.

The point of this parable is that "fireside thinking" is often refuted, or at the very least suspended, by life and the necessity of action. Even the man who doubts the existence of others, or that the sun will not rise in the morning, will nevertheless continue writing his essay, stopping for a ham sandwich when he gets hungry, and undertaking negotiations with his publisher. He understands that the writing project includes future revisions of his text, his mailing it to a publisher, receiving proofs, and attending book signings after the work is piled up on bookstore dump tables, even though it is indeed possible, under special circumstances, to think that none of it exists. If we can, under certain special and theoretical circumstances,then, doubt the truth of existents (that they in truth exist), we can also doubt the truth of any proposition, even the truth of truth, as it were. Yet in ordinary life, we move and act as if there were true propositions and expect that we and the IRS can agree that 2=2 truly equals 4.

But is this not because we arbitrarily conceive truth to be one kind of thing (only), and always absolutely certain at that? Is this picture correct, or even of any use? There is truth "out there" to which every true occasion must correspond, we seem to want to think, and when nothing corresponds to it we assume nothing is true. We are not even sure how to judge (or prove) if something truly corresponds to the truth in the first place, and any methodology for arriving at true judgments is subject to the same criteria of certainty as is truth itself. So what we have is a word, or concept, that we have defined in such a way that nothing quites matches it, and we cannot even be sure we COULD subsume something or match it. We end up holding a word, or concept, the very possibility of which is certainly suspicious, and we can only use it meaningfully in very special cases arising from an artificial perspective.

Consider the case of a plumber asking his assistant for a two-foot piece of pipe. His assistant dutifully picks up each piece and carefully measures it against a yardstick he holds against it. He finds a match and then hands over a two foot section. But the plumber says, "No, I wanted a black pipe." What good is the yardstick then?
Now consider the proposition, "No scientific law is true." Are we not in the position of the apprentice using a yardstick to find a black pipe?