Skepticism: The Universe is in a Potato

Skepticism: The Universe is in a Potato 

Samuel Bird

I have a close friend whom I love. He looks up to me, and it scares me. I worry that his idea of me is far off from who I am, or at least from who I think I am. He would read a book and be very proud and excited to tell me about it. He would then be an undeserved audience for me to blather on about my thoughts on the matter. He would then listen to what I said, and since he thought I was so smart, he would assume it was true. I didn’t like this either because I felt like I was just pushing him into believing in things, and I love surrounding myself with people who think differently. My goal was to support him in developing himself enough that he didn’t need to rely on me. I still would like him to think well of me, but I desired more that he thought well. Along with his deep unearned trust in me, like all of us, he had a lot of strong, inconsistent, and naive ideas. He was so sure of them that every other fact learned was not something to change what he knew, but something that was crammed into the framework he already had. He did not have access to the same people and resources I did to learn skepticism. Looking around and finding no one to fill that role, I chose to. 

I was fortunate enough to see him multiple times a day nearly every day. He would share things, hoping I would agree with him, but I would gently pull apart the idea. I tried to make it clear that it was still possible, but I wanted to remove unearned certainty from his conceptual lexicon. He just found me to be overly critical and playing the devil’s advocate. I could see why. I also recalled my own critique of critiques and realized that I couldn’t simply negate, I needed to posit a case. At every chance I could, I would tell him the universe was in a potato. He didn’t like this idea that stemmed from the root vegetable of my homeland. He would argue why he knew synthetically that the universe was not in a potato. He astutely noted that the galaxies and nebulas were not smaller clumps of potato. I reminded him that he had never seen them. I added that even if they were the case as he thought them to be, it would be a fallacy of composition to assume that the more atomic parts of not potato equaled not potato. Perhaps there was an emergent property that espoused essentialist potato properties from that macro scale. He would then back up and point out the burden of proof. I simply told him that this was an arbitrary social rule and that I had taken this potato universe as an article of faith. 

Nearly every time we would get together, we would argue about whether all of being rested in a starchy food staple. As we went on, he began to realize more than my silly sophistry, there was a real limitation to what he could say. Synthetic facts from the world seemed to fail to make it to him from the world. Analyzed facts from the mind seemed to fail to reach out into the world to grasp facts in it. He found himself limited in his reasoning for why the universe was not in a potato. After every argument, I would say goodbye with one last blow to his surety. “And remember, you might not exist.” The last strike to his surety struck at his own existence. He finally asked what I meant by that, and I made another long case on why he might not exist. After months of this, he came to me after a read through Descartes. He pointed out that he could know that he existed from that fact he was wondering about it. He then looked at me triumphantly. I reminded him that I was not thinking in his mind and from my mind all I could prove was that I existed. I had no reason to prove he did, and I was the one making the case. He smiled and nodded as he seemed to implicitly understand what I had failed to explain explicitly months prior. In his desire to be a philosopher, he had gained what every philosopher needs: a void of skepticism to do our work in. 

From Descartes, we get a defense of the self and its existent nature. This does not equate to proving us as we think we are but proving something that results in the perception of thinking. We still have to be skeptical outside of everything other than that this entity is the case, but we now have it. From my argument, we can get proof of the world. If I am going to be lied to, this predicate will necessitate a noun. From this, we can prove something other than the self. We can now prove self and non-self, but we don’t have any other information other than their demarcation and existent property (sorry Kant). Now that we have built a framework to have a world to know and consciousness to know it, we can begin to look at knowledge. Knowledge as used in philosophy has three parts I see no reason to seek to alter at this time. It is defined as justified true belief. There are then three separate phenomena occurring. Firstly, there is truth. By this, is meant a state of affairs in the world that is the case outside being perceived. Biocentrists and Berkeley would not like this, but we have to start somewhere. Then we have belief. This is a concept being held in the mind. If you have been human for a while, you will note that a fact existing in the world doesn’t necessitate belief to be anything in particular. This is where the vitality of justification comes in. There are many facts that exist outside of us, and we can believe whatever we like. The issue comes in justifying why belief in something is a fact in the world. A naive materialist may suggest that their sensory experience can prove a fact in the world to their mind. Better thinkers than I have shown that mirages, constructivism, and illusions demonstrate a non-necessary relationship between perception from the world and entities in it. What then can be known? As far as what can be known without doubt, nothing more than the facts we started with and a few a priori concepts such as logical necessity and basic deduction. This may seem threatening to beings that seek to know their world and derive from it certain needed values. While other epistemological theories have something to say here, the point of this article is not to answer it. Rather, I want to show the limitless expanse that Esse Maxim lives in. 

My love for philosophy and my humanity intersects with a desire to teach it to humanity. If I were to do a sort of short and aggressive introduction to philosophy, with limited resources, the first thing I would talk about is skepticism. I would help them pull out each idea they had, and make them realize it is a contingent fact that that could be otherwise. I would remind them that the core ideals that matter most to them, are ones that others have arguments at least comparable and a belief in something contrary. I would help them realize the crutches of relying on great thinkers won’t save them as minds that can compute well, can end up at wonderfully complex wrong answers faster. The limitation of language doesn’t allow me to take from my mind to yours, just how vital skepticism is, so perhaps a few adages will help paint a picture language can not. I have three such sayings that I like that demonstrate what I don’t think anything else can. 

The first is, “Don’t believe everything you know.” Of course, from how I defined these earlier, you would rather say “Don’t know everything you believe,” but it sounded better this way. By this, I am asking us to not just be skeptical of facts from the world, but concepts that I hold. It is often I am wrong. Knowing this and being ready for it is what I can do about it. This is what made Socrates so special. Out of all the people who knew all kinds of things, he knew how little he knew. From this, he had great power to doubt what he had access to. The next adage is, “I don’t know, is the most honest answer.” I love it when people ask questions so I can share everything that I have learned and thought on the matter, but this does not mean that I think everything I say is the case. Rather, I am thinking around the idea at hand. If I were more honest, the best thing I could say would be that I don’t know. To almost all questions I can think of, this would be the most consistent. Perhaps then I could say what I think about the issue, but with the preface of it being inaccessible to me. Finally, I have one last little maxim that has started a few arguments. This is also the one I use the most. I say, “That which you do not doubt you cannot know.” For some reason, this has awoken much ire in people. I think it has to do with them having some idea that everything is built on, some idea that they are worried will fall apart, or some ideas that they are worried they will find at odds. Someone that knew my faith in God and shared it, reprimanded me for studying philosophy. They told me that if I read Camus, Sartre, and Nietchze, then I would abandon my faith. I pointed out that if they thought my thinking about God would lead me to leave Him, they then didn’t really believe in him. I have found that a deeper look and taking nothing as a given allows one to more closely identify what is knowable, to what inductive extent, and how to treat it once you have it. I may find how precious, delicate, and small what I can know is. I have found this leads to a cherishing of those things that one believes in a world that gives no answers. 

For the sake of continuity and with much pride, I inform you that my friend has grown much. He has passed through the subjective threshold I see to become a philosopher. He was no longer just a smart person who did philosophy. He became someone who deeply sought to understand his life and who he was. He looked at all the facts he thought he knew and was willing to see something other than his perception as being the case. The things he thought about were not just used to uphold whatever nonlogical beliefs he had, but his beliefs were weighed by reason. Like all of us, he needed a small piece of conceptual real estate that was sacralized outside of doubt. I would say that this is his Esse Maxim, or at least what he has in its stead. This development of his intellectual virtues and deep engagement with his existence is something I am ecstatic to be a part of. This same deep drive motivates me to write this too. It can be difficult to labor with ideas because I am aware that every thought I have can be wrong. However, it is the labor that I love. Under a deeper look at facts and our perception of them, skepticism can even do well for value-centric beings. Perhaps our need to think well enough of ourselves and its being interceded by thoughts of hate can be aided here. Perhaps an honest double-edged strike from skepticism will bring about some new questions. Perhaps it is not that I am bad. After all, can we really say we know what good and evil are well enough or even to know who we are? I invite you to take a few weeks and be skeptical. Every assertion you hear, every fact you sense, every thought you think, be open and aware that each could be contrary. This will no doubt lead you to some surprising places, but best of all you will find what the void is that Esse Maxim’s framework occupies. This honesty will then lead to an aware and earnest effort to choose a concept to be placed at the heart of Esse Maxim. While there are many options and many arguments for them, I should make it clear that I don’t actually believe the universe is in a potato. However, I can say that I will never know.