You don't know for sure if you exist, declares the modern philosophical
skeptic. Existence could just be a dream. Are we sure that what we see and
define as reality is actually there and apart from us? Or is it something
that is created in our minds?
This is one of the nasty philosophic fallacies that has plagued the world
for the past two centuries and a prime contributor to the tyrannical drift of
modern day societies. Skepticism is not new. It has been around since ancient
times expressing doubt about man and his thought, but its modern, extreme
form depicted above evolved from two Enlightenment thinkers -- the radical
idealist, George Berkeley (1685-1753), and the radical empiricist, David Hume
(1711-1776).
Skeptics have, throughout history, concluded that we can never be sure
about what it is that exists, and even that reality itself does not exist
except in the mind. With their gospel of "eternal doubt," advocates
of skepticism have thus played the role of ideological termites eating away
at the timbers of truth undergirding humanity's achievement of morality,
justice and freedom.
It should be pointed out that some skeptics throughout history, such as
Montaigne (1533-1592), were merely harboring a healthy anti-dogmatism, rather
than eternal doubt about knowing anything for certain. But they were a
distinct minority, and not really true skeptics. True skepticism says that
man can never know with certainty that which he professes to know.
For most of history, skepticism remained on the fringe of man's
philosophical endeavors. It was of no major consequence. But with the ideas
of Berkeley and Hume, skepticism has become a nefarious force in modernity.
Both of these thinkers made powerful impacts on the world from which we have
yet to recover.
George Berkeley maintained that matter per se did not exist. Only ideas
were actual realities. Matter did not exist until a mind perceived it. Absent
perception, reality was meaningless. David Hume concluded that only
"immediate experience" was meaningful, that causality itself (the
foundation of science) was suspect, and that man can never know anything with
certainty outside of himself.
As a result of Berkeley's extreme idealism and Hume's extreme empiricism,
there was spawned a train of radically empiricist / humanist philosophers
(starting with the thought of French philosopher, Auguste Comte, 1798-1857)
that has, with the breakdown of belief in God, brought about a nihilistic slant
to the modern intellectual world. This is the reason why there are
intellectuals today who question the existence of matter and reality itself
and seriously ask: "Do we exist, or are we something that our minds
create?"
Actually Berkeley did not deny the existence of matter and reality. He
just maintained that matter and reality don't exist until they are perceived
by a mind. If there are no humans around to perceive the candle burning in
the room, it is still there and still burning because the ultimate mind, God,
perceives it. The "source of all being," as Aquinas defined God,
was the power that validated the existence of reality. But what plunged
skepticism into modern nihilism was the loss of man's belief in a God
centered universe. By the end of the 19th century, belief in God was no
longer the pervasive certainty it had been for the previous 2,000 years. Once
this took place, Berkeley's anchoring of reality in the mind of God was lost,
and numerous intellectuals took his and Hume's ideas to their ultimate
conclusion: If matter doesn't exist in itself, but only as the result of
being perceived by a mind, then reality doesn't exist "apart from
us." Reality is not "objectively out there." It is in our
minds and tied to our thoughts. We don't have thoughts about a reality that
our senses perceive; our thoughts are reality. Truth is then formed, not
found, by man. And if truth is formed, each culture and every era has its own
truth. Man can even refashion truth to suit his needs whenever it presents
him with what he prefers not to face.
This is the final nihilistic stage in the intellectual corruption process
that has been stealing over the world since Berkeley and Hume and the 18th
century. Hume was an atheist, and his radical empiricism extended beyond Berkeley
to maintain that all we can know are impressions in our mind of what we see,
feel, hear and absorb. These impressions are not clear proof of
"external reality." Our belief that there is a reality "out
there" is a product of our imagination. Our senses do not give us the
"self-evident" demonstration of existence that philosophy had
always built upon.
Today's intellectual confusion and nihilism resulting from this combine of
extreme idealism / empiricism was, of course, not the intention of Berkeley
and Hume, but they could not foresee the long range ramifications of their
ideas. The Law of Unintended Consequences rules over imperfect humans and
always takes their "big ideas" down unforeseen paths in the ensuing
centuries.
To believe that man cannot know with certainty what reality is began as a
cocklebur under the saddle of civilization's cerebral horse and has now
evolved into gangrene that threatens the life of the horse. It is a terrible
disease; it leads to the destruction of the values that sustain freedom, and
ultimately to nihilism and the breakdown of free society. In the following I
will try to point out the weakness of skepticism, and why it is a fallacy
that no one should ever take seriously.
Skeptical Flimflam
To believe that existence is possibly something that our minds create, one
must believe that consciousness is primary to reality. In other words,
consciousness precedes existence. For if reality is a creation of our minds,
then our minds obviously came first in the overall scheme of things.
The first weakness in this way of thinking is that the skeptic is using
his mind to say that what the mind perceives as "existing" does not
actually exist. This means he is rejecting man's mind and the power of reason
as valid instruments to perceive reality. In order to assert this, however,
the skeptic has to use his mind and the power of reason. But if the mind
cannot truly perceive reality, and if reason is invalid as a tool to discern
objective truth, then is not the skeptic's rejection of the mind's efficacy
and reason's prowess also invalid? It is hardly proper to use the mind and
reason to claim the impotency of the mind and reason. In fact, it is
nonsensical. But this is the contradictory morass into which skepticism drags
us.
This is an example of what psychologist, Nathaniel Branden, calls
"The Fallacy of the Stolen Concept." Branden tells us:
To understand this fallacy, consider an example of it in the realm of
politics: Proudhon's famous declaration that "All property is
theft."
"Theft" is a concept that logically and genetically depends on
the antecedent concept of "rightfully owned property" -- and refers
to the act of taking that property without the owner's consent. If no
property is rightfully owned [however], that is, if nothing is property,
there can be no such concept as "theft." Thus, the statement
"All property is theft" has an internal contradiction: to use the
concept "theft" while denying the validity of the concept
"property," is to use "theft" as a concept to which one
has no logical right -- that is, as a stolen concept.
All of man's knowledge and all his concepts have a hierarchical structure.
The foundation or ultimate base of this structure is man's sensory
perceptions; these are the starting points of his thinking. From these, man
forms his first concepts and (ostensive) definitions -- then goes on building
the edifice of his knowledge by identifying and integrating new concepts on a
wider and wider scale. It is a process of building one identification upon
another -- of deriving wider abstractions from previously known abstractions,
or of breaking down wider abstractions into narrower classifications. Man's
concepts are derived from and depend on earlier, more basic concepts which
serve as their genetic roots. For example, the concept "parent" is
presupposed by the concept "orphan"; if one had not grasped the
former, one could not arrive at the latter, nor could the latter be
meaningful.
The hierarchical nature of man's knowledge implies an important principle
that must guide man's reasoning: When one uses concepts, one must recognize
their genetic roots, one must recognize that which they logically depend on
and presuppose....
When [skeptics] assert that man perceives, not objective reality, but only
an illusion or mere appearance -- they evade the question of how one acquires
such a concept as "illusion" or "appearance" without the
existence of that which is not an illusion or mere appearance. If there were
no objective perceptions of reality, from which "illusions" and
"appearances" are intended to be distinguished, the latter concepts
would be unintelligible....
" 'You cannot prove that you exist or that you're conscious,' they
chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence,
consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge; the existence of something to
know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a knowledge that has learned
to distinguish between such concepts as the proved and the unproved."
(Atlas Shrugged)....
It is rational to ask: "What exists?" It is not rational to ask:
"Does anything exist?" -- because the first thing one would have to
evade is the existence of the question and of a being who is there to ask it.
It is rational to ask: "How do the senses enable man to perceive
reality?" It is not rational to ask: "Do the senses enable man to
perceive reality?" -- because if they do not, by what means did the
speaker acquire his knowledge of the senses, of perception, of man and of
reality? (The Objectivist Newsletter, January 1963, pp. 2 & 4).
One Cannot Have It Both Ways
What the skeptic fails to perceive is that if his views are correct, he
has negated his tool of cerebration (his mind) and the validity of all
conclusions it may draw. And without the validity of conclusions, all
thought, intellectual inquiry, and science become pointless. In other words,
one cannot have it both ways. One cannot say that one's mind is not valid,
but also say that one's mind verifies that we cannot know reality and that
reality does not exist apart from our minds. At least one cannot say such
things with credibility. And that's what scientific, philosophic and
religious thought are all about. They are attempts to fathom with credibility
what's what about existence.
Thus we have two fundamental views about the structure of existence: the
traditional view and the skeptical view. The intellectual traditionalist says
existence exists apart from man the observer, i.e., that it is objective.
Existence is here whether we as observers are here or not. The intellectual
skeptic says that existence is not apart from us. What we think we perceive
as "objectively out there" is really brought about by our minds. In
other words, it is subjective; and thus it is here because we are here.
Reason, science, religion, and plain common sense tell us that the skeptic
is not just wrong, but very dangerously wrong. We have just seen how reason
sides with the traditional view of an "objective reality" because
by declaring otherwise, one must utilize the fallacy of the "stolen
concept." Let's now take a look at how science and religion weigh in on
this issue.
Almost all scientists accept the fact that the Big Bang and the creation
of existence came about some 15 billion years ago. Several billion years
later, the planets formed, followed by vegetation, and then animals after a
few more billion years. Then came man and human consciousness. Thus our
conscious minds come AFTER existence. They do not create existence. Also all
Western religions agree with this: God created the universe, and THEN created
man, i.e., the human consciousness, afterwards.
Thus reason, science, religion (and by implication, common sense) all tell
us that reality does indeed exist apart from man the observer, i.e., that it
is "objective." And these four methodologies all tell us that the
skeptic's view of "subjective reality" or "illusory
reality" is a fallacy. In other words, existence precedes consciousness.
It is not a creation of our minds. This, the intellectual traditionalist
accepts as self-evident. He realizes our perceptions of reality might not be
clearly grasped (for example, the oar in the water appears to be bent when it
is really straight), but there is a reality being perceived apart from our
minds.
A Pernicious Chain of Thought
Skepticism's danger lies in its doubt and the uncertainty it spreads
regarding the validity of man's senses and his values. Once the plausibility
of radical skepticism spreads among the intellectuals that guide a society,
there is set in motion a pernicious chain of thought. The skeptic view
launches the following ideas and social forms: subjective reality, which
spawns moral relativism, which spawns arbitrary law, which spawns tyrannical
government.
This is why conservatives get so upset when we hear the purveyors of
skepticism rising up. They are out to destroy the concept of an
"objective reality," i.e., a reality that is apart from man and the
same for all men. If reality is a creation of our minds rather than something
that precedes us and is apart from us, then it is a subjective creation of
us, and certainly not something that is the same for everyone -- for all men
will have their own vision of what reality is.
Once we begin to doubt the concept of objective "reality," there
is no longer any basis for an objective "morality," i.e., a
universal concept of right and wrong. If reality is not the same for
everyone, then our concepts of good and evil will not be the same for
everyone.
Once we cease to believe in objective morality, we then undercut the
foundation for a free society and usher in tyranny. The precursor to all
tyranny is moral relativism, i.e., non-objective morality. This is because if
there is no objective concept of right and wrong, then dictators can abolish
"objective law" (equal rights) in favor of "arbitrary
law" (special privileges). They can take away our rights under the guise
of seeking national security. They can confiscate our earnings under the
guise of promoting social justice. They can enact martial law under the guise
of confronting an economic crisis which their socialist policies have
created. They can basically do what they wish as long as they can bamboozle
50% of the voters to go along with it, or accrue enough police control.
Benito Mussolini was a powerful example of this process: "Everything
I have said and done in these last years is relativism.... If relativism
signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers
of an objective, immortal truth... then there is nothing more relativistic
than Fascist attitudes and activity.... [T]he modern relativist infers that
everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt
to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable." (Diuturna,
pp. 374-377. Cited in Henry B. Veatch, Rational Man, 1962, p. 41. Emphasis
added.)
It is only with an objective code of morality that citizens can challenge
such usurpation because only an objective morality can intellectually define
evil. If we continue to relativize evil (i.e., refuse to define what it is),
then evil will continue to grow because men cannot contest something that
they cannot objectively define. Once they are made to see right and wrong as
relative, as ever-shifting to accommodate the social needs of the moment,
then dictatorship is inevitable. Government tyranny and its base of arbitrary
law can be sold to them as a "modern necessity," as a "new
kind of freedom."
The whole structure of free civilization is dependent upon belief in an
objective concept of morality. But such a belief is impossible without first
a belief in an objective concept of reality. And an objective reality is
impossible if existence is tied into the subjective creation of our minds.
This is why the skeptic's belief about reality is such a terrible danger. The
Law of Unintended Consequences will drive any society that subscribes to it
straight into despotism.
Seeing the Inherent Fallacies
What then are we to conclude from all this? No traditional, rational
intellectual would ever ask: "Is existence a creation of our
minds?" He readily sees the inherent fallacies. He also sees the big
picture and thus the dangerous chain of consequences that results from trying
to enshrine such skepticism. He knows that reason, science, religion, and
common sense all dictate to us that existence is primary to consciousness.
The traditional intellectual sees skepticism as pseudo-philosophy. He sees
the skeptic's view as not just sophistry, but dangerous sophistry. The
traditional intellectual sees the philosophical skeptic as a cerebral version
of the clever IT geek who builds viruses and sends them out into the
Internet.
There are a slew of irrationalities that go into laying the groundwork for
dictatorship. One of the most lethal of those irrationalities is
"philosophical skepticism" and the invidious doubt, moral
relativism, and arbitrary law that result from it. Unfortunately skepticism
is a way of thinking that will probably always be popping up every century or
so because there are always going to be clever sophists among the human race
wishing to dispense cerebral viruses.
Thankfully the traditional view of reality prevailed for 1600 years after
Aristotle, and was continued via Aquinas for another 400 years. This is what
built Western civilization. Since the 18th century, however, this
traditional, rational view of existence has been under attack from skeptical,
empiricist, relativist, nihilistic minds. The modern world's philosophical
chaos and plunge into despotism are the consequences. If such destruction is
to be stopped and reversed, it will require a restoration of the concept of
an "objective reality" as self-evident, from which we then build
the ideological constructs conducive to freedom as a way of life.