Descartes had private means throughout his life. He remained there until he was eighteen years old. The intellectual atmosphere at the school was relatively liberal, and even though he later said that all that he learned there was some mathematics, Descartes remained sympathetic to the Jesuits throughout his life.
He was a Roman Catholic throughout his life and he remained a believer in a personal and benevolent God. His philosophy of knowledge depended on a belief in God and, though it is clear that he secretly rejected certain literal interpretations of the Scriptures — secretly because it would have been dangerous to reject them openly — there is little doubt that he truly believed that intuitive knowledge, given by God, was the most certain knowledgc.
It was his absolute confidence that God was perfect, and therefore no deceiver, which led him to trust those ideas which, he perceived, clearly and distinctly to be true. Unable to display preview. For, in answering a question by judging that p I am thereby resolving the question whether p , whereas in judging that there are no grounds for p I am in a position in which it is perfectly intelligible and rational to wonder whether p is true. The view under evaluation lacks the resources to explain why it is irrational and even impossible for a judger to resolve her question whether p by judging that p while she at the same time judging that there are no good grounds for p and also wondering whether p is true.
Suppose that to judge that p does not commit the judger to judge that she knows that p. If there is no such commitment, then it seems that it must be entirely intelligible for a judger to hold that p and that she does not know that p. If I judge that I do not know that p , then I understand that so far as I know p might be false. But, again, there is something Moore-paradoxical in holding that p and that p might be false.
When I judge that p I am excluding the possibility that p is not the case: for to judge that p is precisely to take it that p is the case. To appreciate this point we should look at the connection between judgment and questioning. To ask whether p is not co-tenable with judging that p.
However, it is entirely possible and indeed perfectly intelligible for a judger to ask whether p while judging that she does not know that p. It is co-tenable to ask whether cats are animals while judging that ice creams are tasty. These two acts are co-tenable because they are completely unrelated. For in asking whether p is true I am desiring to know whether p is true, and there is no point in my desire if I already take it to possess what I want. But this shows that there is a problem for the suggestion that judging that p and judging that I do not know that p are co-tenable.
This provides evidence for thinking that in judging that p I am thereby committed to take it that I know that p. However, and this is the crucial point, whereas judging that p is not co-tenable with questioning, judging that p might be false is co-tenable with questioning.
Indeed, since it is unintelligible to judge that p is certain and to wonder whether p , to judge that p might be false which is tantamount to take it that the truth of p is uncertain is a condition for the very intelligibility of the question whether p.
But this leads to nonsense: the judger cannot at the same time have resolved the question whether p , and yet still have this question unresolved. If the previous claims are correct, then we have the resources to hold that certainty plays a twofold constitutive normative role for cognition:.
Certainty as the aim of questioning : the question whether p can be answered in a definitive fashion only if one takes oneself to possess certainty that p. Certainty as the commitment of judgment : to judge that p is to be committed to take it that p is certain. On this ground we can motivate the view that certainty is the constitutive norm of judgment. Certainty - norm : to judge that p is correct only if it is certain that p. In order to appreciate the motivation for the claim that certainty is the constitutive norm of judgment it is useful to consider an analogous plausible picture of the way in which truth plays a constitutive normative role for cognition.
It seems constitutive of judgment to be governed by the truth-norm, that is, by the norm according to which a judgment is correct only if it is true.
The first motivation appeals to the interplay between questioning and judging. In asking a question we are aiming to possess a true answer.
In this way, a question posits truth as the standard of correctness for its answer. But we answer our questions by forming judgments. Therefore, our judgments are correct only if they are true. It is in the nature of questioning itself to posit truth as the standard of correctness for judgments. The second motivation appeals to the committal nature of judgment itself. In judging that p we are taking a stance as to how things are.
Moreover, in judging that p one is thereby committed to take it that to so judge is correct, and since a judgment is a commitment as to how things are, its correctness is to measured depending on whether it takes things as being as they really are. Therefore, it is part of the nature of judgement to posit truth as its own standard of correctness. A parallel reasoning can be extended in order to provide two motivations for the claim that the certainty-norm is constitutive of judgment: one argument relies on the claim that certainty is the aim of questioning, and the other argument relies on the claim that certainty is the commitment of judgment.
Taken together they offer a compelling picture of the relationship between questioning, judging, and certainty. First, our questions are definitively answered only when the judgments that we form are taken to be certain. Notice that it is not fit to speak of certainty as being the aim of judgment. If a judgment is taken to be uncertain, then it is hostage to a doubt, and when one raises the doubt the judgment is lost.
It is as though an uncertain judgment were found wanting by cognition itself. Second, judgment is committed to certainty.
When I judge that p I am excluding that p might not be the case, for judging that p is to regard things as being such that p is the case. Thus, since in judging that p I am committing myself to take p as certain, it is a feature of judgment itself to posit certainty as its own norm.
Again, this point is inferred from the fact that a judgment can be lost by raising a question when it is found uncertain. The fact that recognizing that p is uncertain makes it possible to wonder whether p and makes us loose the judgment that p highlights the fact that certainty is the standard that a judgment should respect in order to be found satisfactory by cognition itself.
The claim that the certainty-norm is constitutive of judgment can be seen as absurdly demanding. To remove this impression, it is important to keep in mind the following points.
First, the claim is not the implausible one according to which one ought to possess certainty about every proposition. The reason is that I do not care to know all truths, as I do not genuinely raise all questions.
However, in so far as I do care about some issue — that is, in so far as I have questions about the issue — my judgments are correct only if certain, for only judgments that I take to be certain will remove my questions in a definitive fashion.
The certainty-norm merely highlights the fact that a judgment is in some fundamental sense incorrect if it is uncertain, as it is the mind itself that finds the judgment wanting as soon as it directs its gaze on it and takes it to be uncertain. The norm applies to all judgments, regardless of their aetiology. This might seem implausible. Sometimes we form judgments as a result of doxastic deliberation upon having raised questions, but often we form judgments quasi-automatically, without having first to form an explicit question to which our judgments are answers: perceptual judgments are often a case in point.
It might seem exceedingly demanding to require that these judgments be certain in order to be correct. However, the claim should not look surprising.
First of all, these judgments are lost as soon as the questioning gaze targets them. Moreover, if judging in general is committed to certainty then they do already display their own pretension to certainty and thus they are constitutively subjected to the certainty-norm.
Compare again the certainty-norm with the truth-norm. We do not find surprising at all the claim that judgments that are formed unreflectively and quasi-automatically are incorrect if false.
Their being formed unreflectively is not an obstacle to deem them as incorrect if false. Similarly, their being formed unreflectively should not be taken as an obstacle to their being incorrect if uncertain. Finally, the certainty-norm captures at least part of the constitutive epistemic normative profile of cognition. There is then a dimension of epistemic evaluation that captures the constitutive norms of cognition itself. But epistemic evaluation might be broader, and it might feature standards of correctness that are not constitutive of cognition.
Thus, accepting the existence of a constitutive certainty-norm is compatible with the existence of other epistemic standards according to which a judgment might be epistemically fine even if it falls short of being certain. The same reasoning applies to externalist positive epistemic statuses, and to all epistemic statuses in general. One might endorse the claim that certainty is the aim of questioning and the norm of judgment and yet downplay the normative role that certainty plays in our cognitive life by arguing that some of the doubts that we might have are irrational.
On this ground, one might argue that when the question whether p is irrational then the corresponding aim to possess certainty is irrational as well. One might further argue that judgments that bear on the question whether p paradigmatically, the judgment that p and the judgment that not - p are not governed by the certainty-norm if it is irrational to wonder whether p. And if there are cases in which a judgment is correct in the intended sense even if it is uncertain, then certainty is not the constitutive norm of judgment.
In order to evaluate this line of objection I will distinguish a variety of cases in which a doubt might be deemed as irrational and I will claim that none of these cases can be used in order to downplay the constitutive normative role that certainty plays for cognition.
We are going to explore cases that can be usefully classified according to the quality of the grounds for taking some doubt as irrational — that is, whether the grounds are certainty-conferring or not — and to senses in which the doubt is deemed as irrational — whether it is irrational for epistemic reasons or for non-epistemic ones. We can therefore envisage four kinds of cases: 1a certain ground for taking a doubt as epistemically irrational. One obvious way in which the doubt whether p might be judged as epistemically irrational is when one judges that it is certain that p.
But the existence of such cases is hardly an objection to the claim that certainty is the norm of judgment — rather, these cases highlight the grounds for taking certainty to be the constitutive aim of questioning and the constitutive norm of judgment. Another way in which the doubt whether p might be taken as epistemically irrational is when one ends up judging that p and then argues that since p is true it is irrational to raise the question whether p. If the judger takes the truth of p to be certain, then this case is an instance of the previous kind of cases.
One such way is to suspend judgment about p. I distinguished between definitive and provisional suspension of judgment. When I suspend judgment provisionally, I am not deeming my question as irrational, for I am open to the possibility that there be grounds for answering my question. The case of definitive suspension is trickier. First, to reach a point where one suspends judgment in a definitive fashion is a way of honouring the aim of certainty.
To suspend judgment in a definitive fashion is thus a way to reach a point where one takes it that no satisfaction is possible, but it is also in another way to reach a point in which one is satisfied because she did all she could in order to honour the aim of questioning.
So, in so far as one definitively suspends judgment about p , one is not judging that p , and thus, even if it is irrational to doubt whether p , in this case there is no judgment that p that fails to be constitutively governed by the certainty-norm.
Moreover, if, ex hypothesis , the definitive agnostic were to judge that p , then she would no longer be a definitive agnostic, and thus the question whether p would no longer count as irrational on the ground that it is in principle impossible to have grounds that favour p over not - p. Therefore, the possibility of irrational doubts in the case of definitive suspensions of judgment does not threaten the claim that certainty is the constitutive norm of judgment, for in the case of irrational doubts there are no possible judgments that can count as correct and yet uncertain.
The most interesting and philosophically influential cases are those in which we judge that some doubt about p is epistemically irrational because we take it that even if we are not certain that p , still we do possess good, albeit fallible, grounds for judging that p. A natural corollary of such views is that it is somehow epistemically misplaced to raise a doubt about a proposition if the judger has a fallible justification for it.
To evaluate this line of objection we must consider two versions of it. The first version is externalist in spirit and holds that even if from the first-personal point of view of the judger it is an open question whether p , still judging that p is justified for the judger, and thus the judger is wrong in doubting it, regardless of whether the judger takes judging that p as warranted.
This externalist objection is beside the point: the inquiry conducted here concerns the constitutive norms of cognition as they are manifest in the phenomenology of cognition. The second version takes seriously the first-personal perspective of the judger and insists that the judger herself might coherently deem her own doubt as irrational when she takes her judgment that p as fallibly warranted.
However, this cognitive standpoint is unstable and defective. First of all, as the judger is doubting whether p is true, she is not judging that p , and hence judging that judging that p is warranted is pointless, as it is an open question for the judger whether p is true.
If this judgment about warrant is put into question, then the judger loses the ground to judge that her initial doubt is irrational. And even if, ex hypothesis , the judger takes this judgment about warrant as certain, still the judger can coherently regard her judgment about warrant as certain while doubting whether p itself is true. This is because the possession of fallible grounds for p or even the certainty to possess fallible grounds for p is compatible with p actually being false.
Thus, from the first personal perspective of the judger, there is no way in which a doubt about p can be taken as irrational on the mere ground that judging p is fallibly warranted. There are then all sorts of cases in which we might judge that our doubts are irrational not so much for their epistemic properties, but for their non-epistemic ones.
Some doubts might be irrational because they are useless or because they lead to suffering. It might be prudentially irrational to raise some scientific and technological questions about atomic energy, say, if we know that answering them is likely to end up causing suffering to many people.
Other arguably frequent cases are those in which one judges that it is non-epistemically irrational to keep inquiring about some topic because it is enough to possess uncertain judgments about it.
Again, the existence of such cases represents no objection, as it leaves completely untouched the epistemic constitutive normative role that certainty plays for cognition. I have attempted to vindicate the traditional quest for certainty by arguing that the aspiration to possess absolute certainty is a constitutive feature of our inquiring mind. To sum up, I have argued that certainty is the constitutive aim of cognition.
If the quest for certainty is indeed inescapable for us, then certainty should be put back at the centre of our contemporary epistemological concerns. I am grateful to all people in attendance for helpful comments and suggestions. I am especially grateful to Franco Bertossa, whose work and teaching have inspired the ideas contained in this paper. Finally, I wish to thank the referees of this journal, whose comments and suggestions helped me to improve this paper significantly.
Albert, H. Treatise on Critical Reason. Search in Google Scholar. Alston, W. Beyond Justification: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Audi, R. Beddor, B. BonJour, L. To see this, notice that, if Descartes does not allow the atheist to be able to acquire knowledge through clear and distinct perception, he will fall into the so-called Cartesian Circle. This problem, first identified by Arnauld in the Fourth Set of Objections, arises if Descartes holds both of the following claims: i I can know that my clear and distinct perceptions are true only if I first know that a non-deceiving God exists, and ii I can know that a non-deceiving God exists only if I first know that my clear and distinct perceptions are true.
Because knowing one thing is a precondition for knowing the other, and vice versa , I cannot know either of them. In fact, however, it does not look as though Descartes does fall into the circle. Descartes is willing to permit the meditator to use clear and distinct perceptions before knowing that they are generally true.
The clearest example, of course, is the cogito ; the meditator first comes to know that he exists as a thinking thing and only later comes to know that his knowledge of the cogito is grounded in its clarity and distinctness. In using those principles, the meditator does not first need to have the general knowledge that clear and distinct perceptions are true see Van Cleve Still, some philosophers might object that the meditator has no business using principles that he does not know to be true.
Descartes would not be sympathetic to this objection. So, the doubt that Descartes raises with respect to clear and distinct perceptions does not extend to the moments at which one is actually enjoying them.
Rather, it is a doubt that, in general , clear and distinct perception may not be a reliable source of beliefs Kenny , p. When Descartes introduces the evil demon hypothesis in the First Meditation, it is meant to encapsulate his ignorance of his own origin—and, in particular, ignorance of the construction of his own mind. Without knowing that a non-deceiving God exists, it is possible for the meditator that his mind works in such a way that it falls into error even when it is contemplating the simplest questions.
This doubt is chased away when he actually does contemplate such a question, but it can easily return at a later time when his thoughts are turned elsewhere. Although it is certain at the time the atheist has the perception, it can always be rendered doubtful at another time. The theist has no advantage over the atheist at the time each enjoys a clear and distinct perception. Consequently, she will be able to construct her scientific theories without ever falling prey to worries about whether her work has value, and—perhaps even more importantly—she will be in a position to definitively put an end to theoretical disagreements with others.
This is an important point to note, for it means that certainty cannot be straightforwardly characterized in terms of indubitability. Scientia , or systematic certainty, represents an admirable, but probably unattainable, goal. If humans are capable of certainty at all, it is surely of the sort that is capable of mixing with doubts.
Certainty First published Sat Feb 2, Kinds of certainty 2. Conceptions of certainty 3. Kinds of certainty There are various kinds of certainty. Conceptions of certainty There have been many different conceptions of certainty.
Two dimensions of certainty Typically, epistemologists are concerned with the conditions under which a subject may know or be certain that p at a particular moment. Bibliography Alston, William. Audi, Robert. London: Routledge. Ayer, A. The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. New York: Macmillan. The Problem of Knowledge. London: Penguin. BonJour, Laurence. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge.
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Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fumerton, Richard. Metaepistemology and Skepticism. Jeshion, Robin. Kenny, Anthony. Descartes: A Study of his Philosophy. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Klein, Peter. Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dancy and E. Sosa eds. Oxford: Blackwell, 61—4. Lehrer, Keith. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lewis, C. Mind and the World Order.
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