The Problem of the Criterion

The Problem of the Criterion

1. What is the POC?

   • Issue regarding the starting point of knowledge
   • 2 Questions:
     • 1. What do we know? What is the extent of our knowledge?
       • Particularism
         • Have an Answer to 1 so can have an answer to 2
     • 2. How do we know? What is the criterion for knowing?
       • Methodism
         • Have an answer to 1
     • 3rd Option = Skepticism: no answers
       • No prospect for agreement
       • Can't have an Answer to 1, without an Answer to 2, and vice versa

2. Sextus Empiricus

   • Pyrrhonist
     • suspend judgment (practice epochē) and take no part in the controversy regarding the possibility of certain knowledge.
     • reserves judgement about certain knowledge and practise epoche
     • Academic skeptic says there is no such thing as truth which is paradoxical
       • Sextus knows he cannot advance towards tranquility if he goes down this line
   • no knowledge as to many different possibilities
     • Difference in perceptions and sensations
       • Honey: Sweet if healthy, bitter if jaundiced
   • we should suspend our judgement
     • Not discuss external objects
       • End result = tranquility
         • You do not know you will come upon tranquility, but you may come upon it by chance if you lead your life in this way
     • Gives us a training manual/new training in skepticism to give us an ability to oppose the dogmatist: dialectical ability

3. Cicero

   • "Any sense experience that we think represents the world correctly, exactly resembles one that does not"
   • No certainty, but probability is a way forward
   • Arguments of 4 parts
     • 1. There is such a thing as a false presentation
     • 2. A false presentation cannot be percieved
     • 3. Where there is no difference between some presentation it is impossible for one to be percieved and the other not
     • 4. There is no true presentation orginating from sensation which there is not another presentation that is the same as it (corresponds to it) but cannot be percieved.
       • This is what Cicero is concerned with

4. Chisholm

   • Need to distinguish between truth and falsehood
   • Criterion of truth should be "internal, objective and immediate"
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