The Observer Effect and the Skeptical Challenge
Why Skepticism About Knowledge of the External World Doesn’t Matter Much
There’s an insurmountable mountain of literature on philosophical skepticism, and I’m short on time and energy. So, to quote Wittgenstein’s preface to the Philosophical Investigations, “If my remarks do not bear a stamp which marks them as mine, — I do not wish to lay any further claim to them as my property”. However, I did see a connection between an article I wrote earlier (on the observer effect) and skepticism about knowledge of the external world (SKEW). I’d like to briefly explain that connection here, and if anyone knows of literature that problematizes my argument, I’m happy to hear about it. In other words, I’ll shoot my mouth off first, and ask (or be asked) questions later.
SKEW has been formulated in various ways, but the general argument goes something like this:
a) You claim to know an empirical proposition ‘X’ is true (e.g. that ‘I have hands’).
b) But it’s possible that X is an illusion of some kind (e.g. because you’re just a disembodied brain running a computer simulation, so you don’t have hands).
c) Therefore, your claims to know X, Y, Z (a series of mundane facts) are false (e.g. you don’t know you have hands).
At this point, you’re expected to undergo acute epistemic angst and sign up for a philosophy course.
Now, let me explain the observer effect, since it’s central to my critique of SKEW. A distinction can be made between the practical value of a knowledge claim and the veracity of that claim. Most empirical knowledge claims are considered ‘true’ based on their usefulness, the fact that they make accurate predictions and help us get things done (forecast the weather, cure diseases, launch rockets, etc). Skepticism about the general reliability of our cognitive apparatus, à la SKEW, is irrelevant to judgments of usefulness.
For instance, even if we’re all disembodied brains running computer simulations, empirical knowledge claims could still be useful within the realm of human experience. Newton’s Laws can still apply in the experience of a brain in a vat, even if they don’t apply outside the vat. Inside the vat, it could still matter if a scientist knew Newton’s Laws, as opposed to just having an inkling of Newton’s Laws, for example. In the vat, the judgement that someone knows Newton’s Laws is based on what observers can reasonably expect to experience if that someone indeed knows Newton’s Laws (e.g. if that someone correctly predicted a meteor’s path).
It’s a different ball-game when you’re judging a knowledge claim on its veracity. Imagine if we’re all born wearing goggles that we can’t take off. We can’t explain how the goggles really work if we don’t know whether (and if so, how) they affect our observations of how the goggles work. By analogy, empirical theories can’t account for the way consciousness structures our observations (e.g. via a computer simulation plugged into our brains). So on the question of veracity, all bets are off as far as empirical knowledge claims go.
Now, some SKEW proponents would argue that the observer effect is no threat to SKEW, because SKEW attacks the veracity, not the usefulness, of empirical knowledge claims. But if you limit SKEW to veracity, then you’re also limiting the scope and therefore, impact of SKEW. Because when folks make empirical knowledge claims outside philosophy, they’re usually not tagging veracity to those claims. They, and their interlocutors, are much more likely to evaluate a knowledge claim on practical grounds.
For instance, if I said “I know I’m in a hospital,” It’s probably related to a test of my mental capacity, such as in reply to a doctor asking “Do you know where you are?” Neither the doctor nor I are interested in whether the hospital ‘really’ exists in the absence of observers. We’re just trying to figure out if I’m of sufficiently sound mind to consent to treatment. We could both be brains in a vat, neither of us gives a hoot. I’d still need to sign those consent forms.
One good thing about this response to SKEW is it gets around the ‘tree in the woods’ problem. We normally assume Newton’s Laws operate even when we’re not observing them in action, even though it’s possible that things only obey Newton’s Laws when observed (à la “If a tree falls in the woods with no one around, does it still make a sound?”). If we’re only concerned with the practical application of Newton’s Laws, we don’t care what things do when we’re not observing them, as long as it doesn’t affect our predictions of where things ought to be if they obeyed Newton’s Laws along the way.
A movie came out recently about a man who wasn’t sure if his life, and hence his daughter, was a simulation. He was given a choice between living in the blissful ‘real’ world without his daughter, or the dreary ‘fake’ world with her. He chose the ‘fake’ world, because his relationship with his daughter, and indeed with the ‘fake’ world in many other respects, was real (i.e. authentic and valuable) to him; presumably because they were interwoven with the narrative of his life and self-identity (and I would argue that one could leave out the ‘to him’. After all, in what possible world would true love be ‘fake’?).
Which raises the question: in what sense, then, could the world containing his love for his daughter and other bearers of authentic value, be ‘illusory’? If one can leave out the ‘to him’, aren’t those sentiments as ‘real’ as real could possibly be? The movie illustrates that the distinction between ‘fake’ and ‘real’ doesn’t correlate neatly with the possibility or otherwise of illusion, at least not of any one kind of illusion. The man’s daughter may have been illusory in the sense of existing only in a computer simulation, but his love for her was not illusory, unless, for example, it was attached to character attributes that he later found she never possessed.
So, where does this leave SKEW? It seems to lose its point, since nothing of any real value is at stake. SKEW isn’t even a threat to religious beliefs, because someone who believes in a god is unlikely to also believe that god is deceiving them about empirical claims central to their religious beliefs. If anything, SKEW is a threat to someone who’s an atheist or agnostic, but who attaches a god-like absolute infallibility to certain empirical knowledge claims, as a substitute for belief in an infallible god. That could possibly account for the epistemic angst, since it would also be an existential one.
