"The problem of the criterion." Ever heard of it? Me neither. At least not until I heard Dr. J.P. Moreland reference it in a presentation on knowledge (epistemology). Moreland claimed that this is useful to know when engaging skeptics.
At that point, Moreland had my interest. I engage with skeptics all the time about worldviews and knowledge. I decided to investigate this mysterious "problem of the criterion".
It was most recently formulated by a philosopher named Roderick Chisolm, although he developed it from the work of earlier philosophers.
It begins this way. What can we really know about the world? We have all met people who claim to know more than they really do (fanatics, bigots, mystics, and various types of dogmatists). We have also met plenty of people who claim to know less than they really know (radical skeptics). If you have a healthy common sense, then you realize that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Exactly how are we to decide what is genuine knowledge?
The French mathematician-philosopher, Rene Descartes, put it this way. Imagine you were looking at a basket of apples. You would want to sort out the good ones from the bad ones. Ideally you want to keep the good ones and throw the rotten ones away (to keep them from infecting the good ones). Descartes surmised that beliefs were just like apples. We want to keep the good ones, and throw the bad ones out.
This common sense approach is appealing.
After all, if the goal was simply to get as many good (i.e. true) beliefs as possible, we would simply believe everything we heard. We would throw nothing out. This strategy would yield the highest number of true beliefs … but we all know the problem. We end up believing many false beliefs. In fact, if we believe everything is true, then we end up with contradictions at some point. This approach stinks.
The idea of getting duped is bothersome. Maybe our goal should be to avoid errors. In that case, the best strategy is to reject everything. We would never be duped that way. This is the approach of the radical skeptic. This approach stinks too. You end up knowing nothing at all. Well, you would know one fact. You would know that you do NOT know anything except your own knowledge of that fact. Not very satisfying.
We want a better approach. We want an approach that lets in as many true beliefs as possible while eliminating as many false beliefs as possible. Some false beliefs are going to sneak in. This is unavoidable. Still, this is better than either of the two extremes.
So far, so good. Except … how do we distinguish good apples from bad apples?
Now it gets interesting. Chisolm asserts that we must be able to answer two questions.
One, what do we know?
Two, how are we to decide whether we know?
Question two addresses the notion of criteria. I will take us a little deeper in my next post on the problem of the criteria.