Some of you may recall The Mudlark, a 1950 movie starring Alec Guinness and Irene Dunne about a 10-year-old boy who scrounges a living on the banks of the Thames and comes upon a locket with a picture of Queen Victoria. At one point in the movie, he offers the opinion that England is a place somewhere in London.
How do I in fact know that London is actually a city in a
country called England? How do I know that England is separated from the United
States by an ocean? How do I know that
the United States is a country with 50 states, that it has a president named
Joseph Biden, that eggs come from hens, that the earth is an oblate spheroid
with a diameter of roughly 8000 miles? How do I know that a television set is
not a box inside which are large numbers of small people who dress up in
costumes and act out comedies and dramas when I turn a dial on the face of the
set or press buttons on what is called a “remote.”
I know there is a supermarket named Food Lion near my home because
I have been there countless times to buy supplies. I know that it is roughly a
mile from my apartment, not 50 feet or 10 miles, because I walked there once
when I was still taking my morning walks. If I reflect on the enormous amount
of detailed information that I have acquired about the world during my 89
years, I realize that the bits and snatches of information of which I have
direct personal sensory confirmation, like the location of the Food Lion, are
part of and integrated into an elaborate worldview most elements of which I
have acquired indirectly, by reading or by hearing others describe them or in
some other fashion.
A good deal of what I think I know is quite incredible and
counterintuitive. I recall sitting in front of a rather primitive
black-and-white television set and watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
But I also recall watching the Enterprise go into warp speed on the command of
Capt. Kirk, and if I had to decide which of these was more realistic, seemed
more fully actually to be happening, I think I would probably have to choose
the Enterprise.
I voted in 2020 in a nearby polling location and watched as
my ballot was fed into the machine that records the votes. Or at least, I think
I did. I am certain that I made marks on a piece of paper and that the paper
was fed into a machine but I do not actually know how the machine works and I
certainly do not have any direct knowledge that the result of that activity was
the casting of a ballot.
An extraordinarily large number of people in this country
believe that George Soros paid for lasers in space ships to alter the ballot
count in individual polling places in the United States. I think they are
genuinely crazy to hold such beliefs, and I can tell long complicated stories
to explain why I consider those beliefs to be crazy, but none of reasons, in
the end, are grounded in my personal observations.
The people in this country who believe bizarre stories about
lasers and pedophile rings and all the rest function quite satisfactorily in
their daily lives, going to work, buying food, making dinner, celebrating
family birthdays, and all the rest.
17 comments:
The one line from Star Trek that will survive for a very long time in some collective memory is "Warp speed, Mr. Sulu."
"...function quite satisfactorily..."
As long as one sets low expectations.
I don't want to come on like Richard Dawkins, but belief that George Soros controls the world from a space ship is probably very closely correlated with belief that Jesus rose from the dead, that Mary was a virgin and gave birth to a child, that God made the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, that wine is transformed into blood when a guy wearing robes
says some magic words, beliefs that you (RPW) do not hold and never even held as a child.
Of course though there are lots of people who believe in Christian doctrine who don't believe that Soros is running everything from satellites (or whatever).
LFC,
Sure and just to show that I'm an equal opportunity New Atheist, the belief that Moises raised his stick and the Red Sea parted so that the Children of Israel could cross on dry land, a ridiculous belief I was taught in Jewish school, is just as deluded as the belief that Jesus rose from the dead.
From reading a particular book years ago, I'm familiar with the line (I believe, but would have to check, that it's from the Book of Common Prayer) "I know that my Redeemer liveth."
On a post titled "What Do I Know?" and given the comments, I couldn't resist. ;)
P.s. If I'm wrong about the source of the line, pls forgive my ignorance.
LFC: I "know" that line from Handel's Messiah. Otherwise, I wouldn't "know" it.
I know there is a supermarket named Food Lion near my home because I have been there countless times to buy supplies.
The late neurologist Oliver Sacks described many patients who thought they knew things that were not true, at least not true from Sacks' and the rest of the world's perspective. In his book 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,' for example, Sacks told of patients who would fall out of bed when they would try to push out the severed human legs that were in bed with them. There was no convincing the patients that the legs were in fact their own, attached to their bodies. What these patients "knew" was at odds with what everyone around them knew.
Yeah, about Tsuris and those space lasers. I had wondered about their apparently being used just the one time to start the forest fires in California a few years back. Seems kinds of expensive and wasteful to me, even for a man with many brazilians. Of course he'd want to find another use for them when that was over, like changing ballot markings in a few polling places. Isn't that the same thing that Trump was trying for when he phoned Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State, and Arizona Governor Ducey? Tit for tat, no? (Or maybe every accusation is a confession, what do I know?)
Why suppose that our own experiences are an infallible guide to what's true? The canonical examples of deceitful demons or brains in vats should show us that's not the case. So if your belief in the location of Food Lion isn't infallible, how is it all that different from your belief that Columbus sailed in 1492? What's so special, epistemologically speaking, about your having experience of going there yourself rather than having experience of hearing someone tell you where it was?
Fritz Poebel:
I was wrong about the source of the line. It occurs in the Book of Job, but is, acc to Wiki, better known as an English Easter hymn by Samuel Medley, published in the late 18th cent. And apparently is also in Handel"s Messiah, as you say.
P.s. so it's a line that has a non-Christian meaning in the Book of Job and takes on a Christian meaning later.
But my familiarity w the line comes, iirc, bc one of the characters mentions it in Robert Stone's novel _A Flag for Sunrise_.
And then, of course, there is “to know, in the biblical sense,” regarding which the great epistemologist Mandy Rice-Davies could have provided enlightening exegeses.
@TJ RPW said nothing about infallible.
DDA,
Another way of making my point:
Wolff doubts some of his beliefs because they could be mistaken. But he doesn't doubt beliefs which are the result of first-person experience. Is it because they can't be mistaken? Well, no, of course they could be. We can be mistaken about our first person experiences, it happens all the time. So then what's the difference between beliefs which are the result of our first person experiences such that they're not subject to doubt the way our other beliefs are?
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