Russell and Price Discuss Universals and Resemblances

Bertrand Russell objects to Resemblance Nominalism in the following way: The notion of resemblance is a relation between two or more things; a relation is a universal; therefore resemblance is a universal. He contends that Nominalists who admit there are resemblances are admitting to a relation between things, and once we’ve got resemblance as a universal, it is reasonable to suppose that there are other universals as well. H. H. Price argues against both premises in his article, but the more convincing one is that where he argues that resemblance is not a relation. He says that it is much more “fundamental” than relations, and indeed, relations are built upon resemblances. For example, take a room-house complex and a match-matchbox complex. Both pairs resemble each other, and therefore the relation “being inside of” comes out of that resemblance. He also says that the Philosophy of Universals doesn’t even hold that resemblances are relations; they are actually used to describe the way something instantiates a universal. If A resembles B and C, this is because they are all instances of the same universal; there is no relation there.
Denying that resemblance is a relation seems like a plausible way for the Nominalist to go, however it is not without its problems. We might use the word resemble to mean the whole relationship of two or more objects that are instances of a single universal. It seems like resemblance would be stronger if the objects had more universals in common and weaker if they had only one or two universals in common. Resemblance still seems to be some sort of relation between objects and universals. It still seems to me that this is a better choice than saying resemblance is just a brute fact because it doesn’t fully answer the question of why things resemble each other.

Descartes’ Argument for the Existence of God

In Meditation Three, Descartes attempts to show that God must exist. He already knows that he himself must exist. How do we get from him to God? He does this by asking and answering two questions: “Where did I come from?” and “Where did my ideas come from?” Something doesn’t come from nothing, and, since Descartes cannot create himself, his origination must have come from something outside himself. He also believes in innate ideas, so he applies the same reasoning to them; they must have originated outside him. His innate idea of God must have come from God himself. This shows that God must exist because I exist.
I think Descartes does something very cool in this meditation. At one point it seems like he is giving an early version of the cosmological argument for God’s existence. One, which I think ultimately succeeds. This way of arguing is much stronger than the way he goes though, which is arguing from innate ideas to God’s existence. Locke later denies that we have any innate ideas. So if we don’t, then his argument doesn’t succeed. One could argue that they are indeed like all the other ideas that Descartes considers in that they could be manufactured by him, or they could just have come from his parents and ultimately from someone back in time who thought up the idea of God. All in all I like the way Descartes goes here even though his argument has some problems.

Justifying Testimonies

Though Zach mentioned that he has never taken an epistemology class, I am working through my second. Currently we are focusing on epistemic justification of testimony (which we should focus on most of the quarter).

Can a person’s testimony be a reliable source of knowledge? This is a very critical question to our everyday life. Much of what we learn is through the testimony of teachers. The past is learned through the testimony of historians, and much of the knowledge gained about current events is from the testimony of journalists and news anchors. Think about how you learned the earth revolves around the sun (heliocentric) as opposed to everything revolving around the earth (geocentric) and that the earth makes revolutions upon its axis. These aren’t things we observe as children. When children, we see the sun rise in the east and set in the west. Teachers explain to us this phenomenon by telling us how the earth revolves around the sun and rotates upon its axis. What leads us to accept this testimony?

Reductionists explain that testimonies are only to be accepted on the grounds that it can be proven empirically. Suppose I were to tell you there existed a pink pigmy elephant around the corner. Believing my testimony would then require of you to walk around the corner and confirm the existence of the pink pigmy elephant. This puts great stress upon the reductionist, because no one has the time nor energy to examine every testimony given them. You must put an amount of trust into somebody or group to help in sorting through which testimonies should be accepted and which should be rejected. Though you don’t want to take every report at face value, trusting everything that is told you.

So where are we left at? The reduction approach is a good tool for justifying a testimony, but to overbearing to make it a law in justification. How might we go about justifying a person’s testimony without needing to experience it ourselves? This will have to be something I will later expand on.

One quick note why epistemology intrigues me: Proverbs 1:7 states “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” I find it interesting that, as discussed above, reduction is a near impossibility to determine all knowledge, and that faith needs to be taken at some point. The Bible states that faith should begin with God and that you should not “lean upon your own understanding” (Pr. 3:5). This will lead to true knowledge and understanding. This too is something I hope to expound upon someday as it will probably correlate with justifying testimonies (since the Bible is compiled of testimonies a.k.a The Old Testament and the New Testament).

Descartes Certainty

In the Meditations, Rene Descartes uses what is called hyperbolic doubt to tear away all the things he thinks he knows so that he can build his epistemology from the ground up. He arrives at this point, namely that he exists. He cannot doubt that he exists because in order to doubt, he must exist. Descartes seems to say that if we can doubt something, we must not have knowledge of it. For instance, we can doubt our senses because they have been wrong before, and they might be wrong again. In other words, we can’t be certain that our senses give us correct data from the material world. Descartes here must be saying that in order to have knowledge, we must have certainty, which is the absence of doubt. He cannot doubt that he exists, therefore he has certainty that he exists, therefore he has knowledge that he exists. What kind of certainty is he using here? It could either be psychological certainty, or evidential certainty. Furthermore, is either of these a necessary condition for knowledge of something? I haven’t taken an epistemology class yet, but it doesn’t seem to me that either are required. What is required to have knowledge is true belief based on good reasons. This doesn’t entail that we be certain about our belief, as in thinking we couldn’t possibly be wrong. For we might be humble and admit that we might be wrong about a belief we hold. Also, this doesn’t require that our evidence be 100% conclusive. Having good reasons seems like we can make out a reasonable case, not a drop down drag out conclusive certainty. I think Descartes standard of knowledge is too high, certainty is not required for knowledge.

Battleground God

This is an interesting game..