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[NOTE: In the following essay, I attribute views to philosophers without caveats or qualifications. This is mostly for ease of exposition. While I believe philosophers, both professional and amateur, have a tendency toward the views I attribute to them, there are many exceptions.]

Philosophers have a twisted relationship to certainty: they crave it for themselves while deploring it in others. Unfortunately, they’re more proficient at eroding others’ certainties than fortifying their own, and the ensuing dynamic has instigated a downward spiral of doubt.



More than ever, philosophy is open-minded, nonjudgemental, and self-effacing. The old assurances of religion and 19th Century science have been exposed as empty rhetoric. The supposedly unassailable Newton was surpassed by Einstein, while the optimistic epistemologists of the era were savaged by a new generation of critics. Science, which once revealed truths about the universe, now delivered only probable truths or, even worse, was relegated to a mere tool or instrument. Even the bedrock of pure logic began to show cracks in the light of Gödel’s theorems, intractable paradoxes, and the proliferation of deviant logics and alternate theories of truth. Meanwhile, attempts to establish a solid foundation for ethics appeared more futile than ever. Various species of relativism and irrationalism surged in popularity, especially in the humanities. Today, it’s difficult to find a serious philosopher who is certain about much at all, and what certainty is professed is normally quantified and qualified, e.g. ‘I’m 99 percent sure, but one cannot be absolutely certain.’

The apparent triumph of doubt over certainty has been the unintended consequence of each philosopher acting within a tradition of mutual criticism. Each desiring certainty for himself unintentionally depletes the common stock, and too little certainty remains to satiate the common demand–an intellectual tragedy of the commons. It was as though philosophy itself, rather than any particular philosopher, had decided to pursue Descartes’s method of doubt. However, contrary to Descartes, philosophy discovered there was little or nothing to be certain of at all. The foundation of philosophy, such that it was solid, didn’t seem to have room for much besides trivialities.

But philosophers remain ambivalent toward certainty. Certainty is derided as dogmatism, fundamentalism, or irrationality, and now a sin in oneself as well as others. At the same time, however, the growth of knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, is identified with increasing certainty in our beliefs. In short, certainty has become the regulative ideal–it’s the goal toward which we strive but acknowledge is unattainable in practice. The corollary, meanwhile, is that doubt remains the problem that must be solved–the enemy of knowledge. Perhaps, it’s admitted, we must concede some territory to doubt, because absolute certainty is no virtue, but within those limits we must justify, verify, confirm, probabilify, validate, support, or otherwise certify our knowledge. The quest for certainty was never relinquished, only tempered.

Faux Fallibilism

Among the few beliefs that anyone is likely to profess absolute certainty of is their own existence. Perhaps, if they’re feeling especially humble, they’ll concede that while they mightn’t exist per se, there must exist at least something. Why? Because it’s self-evident: when you deny your own existence, there must be something that is denying and something that is being denied. There must exist something for there to be such a thing as denial in the first place. This argument strikes us as impregnable: there appears no chink in its armour; any attack is doomed to fail. When there is no room for doubt, so the argument goes, then we shouldn’t. Therefore, we can be certain that something exists, and perhaps that’s all we can ever really be certain of at all.

But why can we be certain of one thing and not another? For example, in the sentence, ‘we cannot be certain that any scientific hypothesis is true’, what is the word ‘cannot’ doing? Obviously, it’s not meant to describe a psychological law. People can and have been certain about great many things, from their own existence to climate change, from the colour of swans to the nature of God. There is no shortage of certainty outside of philosophy. Indeed, it’s only when confronted with someone who is certain of a scientific hypothesis that a philosopher is likely to object that they cannot be certain. It’s normal for criticism to proceed not by addressing the truth of a claim, but instead addressing whether one can or cannot make the claim at all. This odd behaviour usually goes unnoticed.

The words ‘can’ and ‘cannot’ are being used as they might during a game of chess in which one participant makes an illegal move and the other objects, ‘You can’t do that!’ What they cannot do, specifically, is make that move and follow the rules of the game. Unlike chess, however, philosophy doesn’t have a rulebook stashed in the box.

The rules of philosophy are seldom made explicit, and students appear to absorb them through cultural osmosis. When describing a philosophical problem, its potential solutions and their criticisms, implicit rules concerning purpose and value are transmitted. For example, a position may be correctly described as metaphysical without any further judgement, but place it under the section titled ‘Criticisms’, and students learn the rules without explicit instruction. And so it is with doubt.

Whether a student entered philosophy 101 thinking that doubt was a problem, he’s likely to leave it thinking that way. An instructor may present a list of popular issues, such as whether there is a free will, an absolute moral law, or a god, etc. Students then select a topic, adopt a position, and are charged to defend it. What are they defending it from? Doubt. Specific criticisms may arise, but the mere fact that one could, and some have, adopted the opposite position is usually enough. The student must provide a rational justification to show why their position ought to be believed, regardless of whether there is any problem with it besides that someone doubts it.

Explicit instruction is unnecessary, and the rules are adopted naturally. Among the rules are that we ought believe only that which is rationally justified, and doubts are what remains when such justification falls short. Therefore, one’s certainty in a belief ought to correspond to one’s degree of justification for it. An undoubtable position, then, is one with unassailable rational justification. What counts as rational justification, weak or strong, is disputed among different schools of philosophy, but near enough all are in accord concerning these underlying normative presuppositions of belief. These are the rules of the game, and they’re unabashedly prescriptive about which moves are illegal, what one can and cannot say or believe. Failure to heed these rules is grounds for expulsion from the philosophical community.

Why can’t we doubt that something exists? Because such a position supposedly enjoys unassailable rational justification–the rules of the game dictate certitude. However, what of the normative presupposition that one ought to regulate certainty according to how strongly our beliefs are justified? Is this also undoubtable? Denying it isn’t self-evidently absurd, as in the case of denying that something exists. If it’s not certain that we should regulate our certainty according to how strongly our beliefs are justified, then it’s not certain we should be certain that something exists, after all.

What of one’s method of rational justification itself, our putative measure of fallibility? Are such rational authorities, or at least our reckoning of them, not also fallible? If so, then any measure of rational justification is itself doubtable. According to the rules, then, we should doubt that we have correctly measured our fallibility. However, are we supposed to quantify and qualify how certain we are of our rational justification? And how certain are we of that certainty of our rational justification? And how certain we are of how certain we are of certain we are of our rational justification? Nothing but an infinite regress awaits beyond this point.

At the core of this faux fallibilism is the presumption that our fallibility can be mitigated and quantified by some incorrigible authority. This foothold of certainty–perhaps thought to come from immediate experience or mathematical probability–is then to serve as a bullwark from which to fight the forces of doubt and ignorance. However, just like the dogmatic and irrational philosophies that preceded it, faux fallibilism falls to the same sceptical challenges. Ultimately, It plays a game designed to serve the purposes of Medieval revelatory theology; shoehorning fallibilism into that framework just perverts fallisbilism. Fallibilism can and should be at ease (rather than at odds) with doubt, and it should be suspicious (rather than covetous) of certainty.

Method of Doubt

Our fallibility is ubiquitous and unquantifiable. If we take it seriously, then it permeates everything. Fallibilism is a general principle; it goes all the way down.

Fallibilists deny that we should be certain that something exists, but that doesn’t mean they affirm that we shouldn’t be certain that something exists. This is counterintuitive and may even seem incoherent, because it’s normally taken for granted that we should regulate our certainty according to how strongly our beliefs are justified. However, if this normative presupposition is false, then it’s no longer against the rules of the game to be either certain or doubtful whether something exists. Fallibilists unfuse their judgements concerning what is true or justified from their norms concerning how certain we should believe.

Doubt, for the fallibilist, isn’t so much a feeling or disposition, but a principled stance. There’s nothing especially wrong with feeling certain, or even just taking something for granted, but, if we take our fallibility serious, we should be suspicious of certainty, and we should be ready to question, probe, and doubt once again. Doubt is no longer what remains when rational justification falls short, but becomes an ever present levy to hold back the tides of our hubris. Rather than seeing doubt as an obstacle, it’s seen as a psychological catalyst to the growth of knowledge.

Fallibilism is a game changer.