Certainty
As a topic in the philosophy of mind, as opposed to epistemology, certainty has not received much attention. I intend to put that right. What kind of mental state is certainty? What is its analysis? I will be asking a series of questions, this being a new field—certainty studies. First, what is the relation between certainty and consciousness? There has always been a vague feeling that the two belong together (see Descartes), but how exactly? The following is an appealing thesis: consciousness is a necessary condition for certainty, but not sufficient. You can’t be certain unless your certainty is conscious, but you can be conscious without being certain. There is no such thing as unconscious certainty, but there is such a thing as conscious uncertainty. Here we must bring in the concept of belief: there can be unconscious beliefs (most beliefs are unconscious most of the time), and conscious beliefs can be uncertain. So, certainty is not the same as belief, even strong belief. This implies that certainty is not analyzable in terms of belief: it is a different kind of mental state. I will come back to this; I am still asking questions not providing answers. Is certainty perhaps the highest degree of belief, or something quite different and sui generis?
Is certainty voluntary? Can we decide to be certain? It is generally agreed that we can’t decide to believe, but can we decide to be certain of what we believe? Can the true believer decide to be certain that God exists? Is this subject to the will? That sounds both possible and impossible. I can apparently decide to be certain of my wife’s fidelity for reasons of marital harmony, not letting any doubts creep into my mind, but I surely don’t believe that her infidelity is impossible. We speak of moral certainty, but we acknowledge that we might be wrong. Didn’t Hume decide to adopt an attitude of certainty when he left his skeptical study? I can decide to be strong in the face of the world’s hostilities, so can’t I decide to be certain in the face of its uncertainties? Can’t I adopt an attitude of confident conviction, firm resolve, calm assurance? Didn’t Descartes decide to doubt—so why can’t he decide to not doubt? What is going on here?[1]
Can there be Kripke puzzles about certainty?[2] Pierre believes that London is pretty and he also believes that London is not pretty, but can he be certain that London is pretty and also certain that London is not pretty? He isn’t certain that London is pretty in Kripke cases, because it might only be pretty in places, and Pierre knows this. It seems a lot harder to have contradictory certainties than contradictory beliefs, because there is no room for ignorance when certainty is present. Could someone be certain that 2 is even and also certain that 2 is not even? It is hard to imagine a case in which this situation is possible. No such case has ever been presented. Could I be certain I am in pain and also certain that I am not in pain?
Could a person be certain of everything he believes? Or does certainty require the presence of uncertainty elsewhere? Does it need the contrast? What would it be like to be certain of even the most doubtful things, never letting doubt creep in? Surely, there has never been such a person. Total uncertainty sounds far more possible, as with the confirmed skeptic. Certainty is arguably inherently exceptional not routine and automatic. Must a person be uncertain of most things? Isn’t the Cogito the exception not the rule? Could someone be certain of all inductive inferences, knowing what they involve?
Does certainty have a distinctive neural correlate, a neural signature? How does it differ from a belief correlate? Does this correlate overlap with the neural correlate of consciousness? What would a neuroscience of certainty look like? Is it something like a high level of neural excitation? Is there a certainty neuron or brain center?
Could a person discover he was certain of something? Could he be ignorant of his certainty and then come to know that he is certain? That sounds impossible; if so, why? What does it tell us about the intrinsic nature of certainty? A person could discover what he believes—truly believes, as we say—but the same does not seem true of certainty. Is it because certainty cannot be unconscious whereas belief can be?
Is certainty free-floating or must it be tied to particular examples? I am certain of my own mental states but not of the external world, but could another being invert this pattern? Could you be brought up to be certain of external things but uncertain of internal things? If you were indoctrinated in such a certainty system, wouldn’t you eventually rebel? Doesn’t a proposition have to be certain in order for you to be certain of it? And yet certainty seems to some extent subject to the will. It is a slippery thing, apparently, modally ambiguous.
Does certainty come in degrees, like belief? Can I be more certain of this than that? Could I have a low degree of certainty about something? That sounds distinctly off, conceptually. Certainty seems all or nothing—you either have it or you don’t. There are no borderline cases.
Is certainty identifiable with the highest degree of belief—is such a conceptual reduction possible? It sounds reasonable enough, but is it really an analytic truth? Couldn’t there be an unconscious belief of maximum degree? And couldn’t a person consciously believe something to the max and yet not feel certain about it? He has the belief but he doesn’t have the accompanying attitude of certainty—perhaps he is certainty-phobic because he has been let down in the past, or the part of his brain responsible for certainty has been damaged but not the part responsible for degrees of belief. There seems to be daylight between these two concepts.
Is there such a thing as certainty-how as well as certainty-that? There can be knowledge-how as well as knowledge-that, but is the same true of certainty? The two concepts have been closely associated, but does certainty admit of the “how” construction? Can I say “I am certain how” as I can say “I know how”? That sounds a bit iffy, not quite grammatical, and yet not beyond the semantic pale—we do say “I’m not sure how to fix this”. But can we say “You clearly are not certain how to do that” as we can say “You clearly don’t know how to do that”? We definitely cannot say “I believe how to do this” and the like. Certainty seems to hover between knowledge and belief in this respect; it is certainly happier with the “that” construction.
Here is a suggestion: certainty is to belief what intention is to desire. Intention is clearly close to desire, and it is tempting to analyze intention in terms of desire; but careful reflection recommends distinguishing the two concepts—no reduction of the former to the latter is plausible. Similarly, certainty and belief are close cousins, even mutually dependent, but certainty is a condition unto itself, not reducible to belief. It is exalted belief, as intention is exalted desire—transformed, elevated, metamorphosed. It is really a thing apart, though indebted to its conceptual relative. We might say that certainty is belief crystallized, as intention is desire crystallized—a new level of mental being. This is revealed in behavior: intention triggers action and certainty triggers decision. Both are motivational attributes, closely bound up with the will.
What is the phenomenology of certainty (we dealt with its physiology—obscure)? Here we reach the nub. Is it the same as the phenomenology of belief? For it seems right to say that certainty is, or involves, a feeling—the feeling of being certain. But there is no such feeling of belief. We feel a rush of certainty, but not a rush of belief—a wave, a throb. We crave certainty; we are unhappy with uncertainty. Certainty is pleasurable (though not always), but uncertainty is not—it can be painful. There could be a certainty drug that produced the feeling in question, and people might pay good money for it. It is tempting to say that there is a sensation of certainty, located in the gut as well as the head. Thus, the thrill of certainty—the headiness, the excitement. Not for nothing do people seek certainty and are reluctant to relinquish it. Russell longed for the certainty of mathematics in other areas of his life—certainty made him happy. He kept searching for it, needing a shot of certainty. Let’s admit it: certainty is an emotion—a peculiar one, to be sure, but an emotion nonetheless. It is akin to love, or at least lust. We lust after certainty. Certainty is a certain kind of ecstasy. Uncertainty is a kind of torment. Certainty removes anxiety, creates confidence, tranquility. Certainty is at the emotional center of human life. We love certainty. An age without certainty is an age of anxiety.
What is the explanation of this positive valence? I have a speculative idea: certainty is what precedes satiation. The animal doesn’t know where its next meal is coming from; its belly lets it know the problem. It is full of existential doubt. It searches desperately for food. When food is finally within its grasp it feels a wave of certainty: now I am going to eat! This feeling of certainty means survival for another day. The animal knows it is about to be fed—it is certain of it. It isn’t yet satiated, but the moment is nigh, and the animal knows it. Certainty is what you feel when you are about to be fed, and hence saved from starvation. We want the feeling because we want what it leads to; the two are associated in our minds (brains). Certainty is yet another strategy of the selfish gene: these are the biological roots of our craving for certainty. That is my speculative idea anyway. It must have some function.
Does certainty have a bodily expression? Does it reveal itself in the face? I believe it does: shining eyes, a slight smile, a smug look. This is the characteristic expression of the convinced religious believer—a lack of natural human anxiety. I think I have that look when I reach a philosophical conclusion that strikes me as unassailable. Oh, how often—every few years, or every day? I will have to investigate. Mere belief doesn’t configure the face so markedly. Certainty is an emotion, so it has a bodily expression—a somewhat rarified emotion sometimes, but a real one.
When does the child develop the feeling of certainty? A good question for the child psychologist. I doubt it is present in the early months, what with all the crying and grimacing; but I suspect it doesn’t take long to evolve. Perhaps it first manifests itself when the breast heaves into view and the baby knows it is in a for a hearty meal. Before that it was full of Cartesian doubt (“Was I just dreaming of that creamy nipple?”), but then the joy of tactile immediacy—all doubt is banished. Later in life there is all manner of uncertainty to contend with, occasionally relieved by episodes of pleasurable certainty, recalling those blissful days at the mother’s breast. A philosopher eventually sprouts, eager to explore the topic of certainty.
The topic of certainty thus has its logic, semantics, metaphysics, phenomenology, folk psychology, and child psychology—like any topic in the philosophy of mind. It also plays a role in epistemology in relation to knowledge and justification. Ideally, one would like to integrate these two perspectives. In epistemology we are concerned with whether certainty is ever justified and whether knowledge requires certainty, among other topics; now we know more about what certainty actually is—what kind of mental state it is. It is a type of passion, in the old terminology, as well as a cognitive phenomenon. It is not reducible to brain states or behavior or belief, but is a sui generis denizen of mind. It belongs as much to emotion and the will as to thought and knowledge. It merits careful scrutiny.[3]
[1] The OED gives us “completely convinced of something” for “certain”. This doesn’t give us much to go on, though it does offer the nice example of a convinced pacifist under “convince”. The word “convince” carries connotations of persuasion, as in interpersonal dialogue. We don’t normally speak of the physical world as convincing or persuading us of anything. Perhaps the paradigms of certainty involve persuasive arguments. The concept of certainty is not very revealing from an analytic point of view.
[2] See “A Puzzle About Belief”.
[3] I have not discussed certainty and the a priori, certainty and self-knowledge, certainty and necessity, certainty and skepticism, animal certainty, certainty and faith, certainty and assertion, and no doubt other things. These are all worthwhile topics to investigate.
