An Argument in Favor of Empirical Skepticism, Essay Example

Theories of skepticism in general propose doubt about whether we can have knowledge of the world around us. The form of skepticism known as empirical skepticism proposes doubts about whether we can have empirically derived knowledge of the world based on our senses. In one sense, the entire argument either for or against empirical skepticism are based on the merits of empiricism as a position. In the following paper, I will defend the empirical skeptic’s position based on an argument against empiricism itself. In other words, empiricism, to the extent that it is knowledge based on our empirically derived senses, presupposes that there is some type of special role our senses have in the access to reality that produces knowledge. Such an argument namely overlooks the sense in which, on the one hand, the nature of the particular senses we have as human beings is entirely contingent, and, on the other hand, that there is some type of direct access we have to the surrounding world that human beings have, which presupposes a certain anthropocentric view of reality.

The first claim I would like to defend is the notion that the empirical senses we have are entirely contingent, therefore validating empirical skepticism. The empiricist states that our senses provide us with knowledge of the world. Therefore, for example, the individual observes with his sight that there is a kebab fast food stand on the corner of 4^th Avenue and Main Street. He can then say to someone, “yes,  there is a kebab fast food stand on the corner of 4^th Avenue and Main Street, I saw it yesterday when I went for a walk with my dog.” Now, at first glance, this seems to be an entirely robust claim: it is simply describing a phenomenon that one has seen. But what, if for example, the person who had claimed to see the kebab fast food stand was in fact hallucinating? What if, for example, the kebab fast food stand was then closed down by city authorities since the time the individual had claimed to see it and had since been demolished? There are many more common place arguments against empiricism then this one which puts it into question as a system. For example, for centuries individuals thought that the world was flat according to their senses, but this was overturned. Certainly, one can argue that this was then proven to be correct by another use of human senses, namely, the construction of a boat that could sail around the world thus providing justification for this shape.

However, this misses the point that our senses are entirely contingent and therefore we must be careful when we state that we can have knowledge of reality about them. This contingency can take different forms: for example, our contingency of senses may be dependent upon historical circumstances. We can only detect certain phenomena if we have the right technology to see, for example, sub atomic matter. However, our contingency is also broader. For example, if we take the theory of evolution seriously, we know that our particular senses have formed as the result of a process which is also largely informed by contingency. The reason we have the particular senses we have in other words is that they are not the result of trying to gain knowledge about the world, but rather because we have to survive in a particular world. Consider the following example. Our senses are built to understand Euclidean geometry, so that we see depth, space, width, etc. However, on the other hand we cannot see non-Euclidean geometry, which is much more complex, but also fundamental to many sciences, such as mathematics and theoretical physics. Our world-view from the senses is inadequate to make precisely such conclusions.

In other words, the contingency of our senses contradicts the strong claims of knowledge. When we claim to know something we are saying that something is objective, it must be true: this is a strong claim of knowledge. Certainly, there are weaker knowledge claims, such as “I believe that”, but it is hard to equate this with a statement of knowledge, but rather it is a statement of belief. However, if our claims to knowledge are based on empiricism, we are saying that we know something of the world, even though our senses that we have are entirely contingent. The senses we have are not caused by knowledge, but by the world around us, the way we have evolved. We could have had one thousand different senses, we could have viewed the world from the position of a spider. This would clearly have produced an entire different system of “knowledge”, therefore it is difficult to understand the robustness of the empiricist’s claim on this point.

This ties in with the second point I would like to make in the argument against empiricism. Such an argument contains the presupposition that our senses are somehow designed to access the world around us. If our senses can produce knowledge of the world, then there is a certain point here that the senses and knowledge of the world fit together, like hand in glove. But if we imagine the diverse number of senses we have, if we acknowledge the contingency of how these senses develop, it will be difficult to assess that there is some special relationship which privileges the contingent. In other words, the one who opposes the empirical skeptic must state that there is something necessary about our senses, to the extent that we are talking about how they produce knowledge claims. It is difficult to understand how this special relationship between a particular set of senses, in this case the common senses of the human being, and the entire world around us could be justified.

Now certainly it can be argued that our senses give us knowledge of the world also in this contingent sense. Our evolutionary senses have developed as they have developed because of direct interaction with the world. In this sense, our senses have in a sense been fine-tuned by the world around us. If they have been fine-tuned by the world around us, it does appear that there is some correlation between the world and our senses that gives us knowledge claims. However, from another perspective, this merely suggests the notion of human knowledge. The human perceives the world around him or her in a certain way because of the senses. Is this a rigorous enough claim to say that our senses give us knowledge? I do not think this matches the standards of knowledge. Perhaps it can be said that human beings see the world in this and this manner, but even common day experience tells us that human beings approach the world in a diverse number of ways. In other words, what we should really count as knowledge cannot be justified by empiricism, since empiricism is simply too contingent to produce this link.

Although empiricism does make a compelling claim about the importance of how we interact with the world around us as a defining aspect of knowledge, even though it does argue for our being embedded in the world, it is difficult to grasp this as a form of knowledge in itself. The empiricist has numerous problems which must be addressed, such as the contingency of the particular senses which we possess, as well as the question of the relation between the human being and the world around him or her. To the extent that these points cannot be satisfactorily addressed, the skepticism surrounding empiricism appears justified.