A 2,500-year old philosophical problem that lies at the root of our culture war.
The Münchhausen trilemma is “a
thought experiment to demonstrate the impossibility of proving any
truth… If it is asked how any given proposition is known to be true, proof may
be provided. Yet that same question can be asked of the proof, and any
subsequent proof. The Münchhausen trilemma is that there are only three options
when providing further proof in response to further questioning:
·
A
circular argument, in which proof of some proposition is supported only by that
proposition;
·
A
regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad
infinitum; or
·
A
dogmatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts which are merely asserted
rather than defended.”
The Münchhausen trilemma
establishes the basis for the three prevailing theories of justification used
in contemporary analytic philosophy - coherentism, infinitism,
and foundationalism. A theory of
justification is, briefly, an explanation of why beliefs can be deemed true.
The first theory,
coherentism, is presently much in vogue: It is the theory of justification
relied upon by much postmodern thought.
Here’s a simple example of coherentist thought: “Donald Trump is a racist.” How
do you know he’s a racist? “Because Donald Trump hates black people.” How do
you know he hates black people? “Because all racists do.” A more thoughtful
coherentist will, of course, weave a much more intricate web, but ultimately
all coherentist thought depends upon presenting an unfounded but
self-consistent and self-reinforcing set of propositions - popularly called
a narrative.
Coherentism lends itself to
the partisan divide we are currently experiencing, because each side can
support its own propositions self-referentially via its own other propositions.
Critics often call America in 2020 a “post-truth”
society, but what that really means is a society based on truths justified by
rivalrous narratives. (The Leftist narrative is self-consciously coherentist,
while the Rightist narrative is actually foundationalist, but is seen by the
Left as a competing coherentist narrative.)
The second theory,
infinitism, has left most philosophers unsatisfied, and it is not widely
supported. Those who call themselves infinitists hold that “the evidential
ancestry of a justified belief must be infinite and non-repeating.” In contemporary
debate, infinitism is more often mocked than argued, with the famous allegory
of William James and the little old lady: “It’s turtles all the way down.” We
will set the turtles aside.
The third theory,
foundationalism, argues that all propositions fundamentally depend on certain
fundamental axioms which are asserted rather than proved. That is,
foundationalism holds that certain beliefs can be, and are, justified without
reference to other beliefs. Historically, foundationalism has been the core theory
of justification used in Western thought for over 2,000 years.
Contemporary right-wing
thinking is largely foundationalist, and it is against foundationalism that the
postmodernists aimed their weapons. Thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Jacques
Derrida, and Donald Davidson assert that “only a belief can be a reason for
another belief,” holding that the a proposition is only justifiable in
reference to other propositions (e.g. coherentism, as described
above). Postmodernists thus deny the validity of foundationalism while
upholding coherentism.
The postmodernists were not,
of course, the first to launch this assault. The so-called Münchhausen Trilemma
is actually Agrippa’s Trilemma, attributed to
Agrippa the Skeptic of the Pyrrhonist school
of 4th Century BC. Agrippa’s Trilemma phrases the attack a bit differently:
·
Circularity: The truth asserted involves a
circularity of proofs.
·
Progress
ad infinitum: The
truth asserted rests on truths themselves in need of proof, and so on to
infinity.
·
Assumption: The truth is based on an unsupported
assumption.
However it is phrased, the
Trilemma presents a choice of “three equally unsatisfying options.” Or so it is
claimed. Is that the case? Perhaps one of the three options is not “equally
unsatisfying” and there are good reasons for adopting one of these three. But
before we delve into that, let’s first explain why it matters. It seems a strange
thing, after all, to dwell on an unsolved 2,500 year old philosophical dilemma.
Why should we care?
Human beings are rational
animals; each of us is endowed with our own sense organs and our own mind. By
our sense organs we receive precepts about the world, from which we form
concepts about what we have perceived. What we perceive and conceive is unique
to each of us; no one else has access to the qualia of our senses or the
thoughts of our mind. Our consciousness is independent of others.
Human beings are also social
animals, who by nature flourish only in society with others of our kind. To
exist in society, human beings must cooperate, which requires establishing and
asserting their needs and wants, and consensually exchanging value for value
with others of their kind. When humans cannot or do not cooperate, they
struggle instead, using force or fraud to extract value from others
nonconsensually. In both cases, our existence is dependent on others, either as
creators, traders, looters, or moochers.
The juxtaposition of our
independent rationality and dependent existence creates the necessity for
agreement on what can be justified as true. Man in solitude doesn’t need to
know or care what others think is true. Man in society must know and care what
others think is true: The very concept of exchanging value without fraud
presupposes the existence of not-fraud, which is to say, truth.
When human society is simple,
the justification necessary to establish truth is equally simple, and typically
based on foundationalism relying on sense perception. “Is it rain out?” “Hand
feel wet. Yes.” As the complexity of human society increases, the justification
necessary to establish truth also becomes more complex. More and more matters
arise over which each independent consciousness might disagree. “Does Theodore
rightfully own Breckenridge manor?” is no simple question.
As a result, every society of
sufficient complexity has created institutions such as courts of laws, trials
by jury, assemblies of law, boards of peer review, and other tools to decide
what is true. Each such institution fundamentally works the same way: The
individual consciousness, with its ability to reason, is embedded within a
group of other individuals, and a method used to force the group to come to an
agreement (often by deliberation and voting, as in a jury or parliament, but
sometimes randomly, esoterically, or even violently).
Over time these institutions,
in the process of defining what is true, build a great scaffolding - law,
custom, tradition, craft, and practice - that collectively form its culture.
But always it remains that what is true about complex matters is reliant on a
core set of propositions which are deemed foundational and outside the scope of
deliberation. (In the words of America’s founders: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident.”)
That is, the culture of every
society has historically arisen from a series of agreements made out of
necessity to permit cooperation to accept certain propositions as justified,
with these agreements developing over time in a hierarchy as society becomes
more complex, with all ultimately justified by reference to propositions held
by that society as foundational.
But Münchhausen’s Trilemma
holds that foundationalism is merely one of three “equally unsatisfying”
resolutions to the impossibility of proving any truth. And if there is no
possibility of proving any truth, it would seem there is no possibility of
justifying the culture of any society as good, beautiful, or right. Worse,
those who would argue against our society’s way of life do not even have to
grapple with its truth-claims at all: They can simply develop another culture,
based on another set of propositions that are self-consistent with themselves,
and dismiss our own as irrelevant, unfounded, and wrong.
Historically, most societies
have found ways to protect their ways of life from attack. In Antiquity, skepticism
was a powerful force; but the philosophers like Pyrrho who
explored such matters wrote esoterically for small circles of elites; others,
like Plato, explicitly argued for “noble lies” to help preserve the foundations
of their society. During the Middle Ages, the new wave of Scholastic
philosophers writing in the Classically-inspired Christian tradition were able
to rely on Church teaching to provide a foundation that was deemed outside the
bounds of philosophical attack. Those who were overly skeptical of the Church could
be damned as heretics and burned at the stake.
These salutary circumstances
changed with the rise of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was the first
effort in history to establish a society whose foundational assertions were
openly admitted and rationally defended as such. It was a noble effort and much
that was good and beautiful came of it. Unfortunately - as Stephen Hicks has shown at book length -
the Enlightenment failed in its core effort. The Counter-Enlightenment, which
today manifests itself as postmodernism, triumphed; and with the triumph of
postmodernism, 21st century Western society became the first civilization in
the history of the world to be consciously coherentist in
its theory of truth.
Coherentism, being unfounded
and circular, inevitably leads to competing justifications of truth which are
incomparable and hence irresolvable. Since some method of forming consensus
over truth is necessary for a society to allow cooperation without fraud, a
society based on rivalrous coherentist theories is not sustainable. And such is
the state of affairs we find ourselves in today: Culture
war. Partisan mobs shrieking rhetoric to each other,
deaf to any reason or argument the other side may offer. Culture war always
begins with words. It always ends with swords.
Western society has actually
faced a similar situation once before. At the start of the Early Modern period,
society’s truths were justified on the foundation of the teachings of the
Catholic Church. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to his Church door
and launched the Protestant Reformation. As documented in The Unintended Reformation, the first
or “Magisterial” stage of the Protestant Reformation shook Europe to its very
foundations (in the philosophical sense), replacing Church doctrine with the
literal Word of God as found in Scripture. Unfortunately, Scripture proved
susceptible to multiple interpretations, and soon a second wave (the “Radical
Reformation”) arose, replacing the Lutheran and Calvinist interpretations of
Scripture with others, more profound in their differences with the Catholic
Church.
What happened to Europe as a
result? Unmitigated disaster! The
Wars of Religion started in 1517 and didn’t end until
130 years later with the cataclysmic Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). It is
common in war for each side to feel justified in fighting, but in the Wars of
Religion, each side went to war certain that God was its patron and Satan its
enemy. There could be no compromise, no treaty, no rational settlement of the
differences of opinion. The Thirty Years War killed one-third of the population
of Germany and Sweden - a casualty rate considerably higher than what the
Soviet Union endured in World War II!
In the aftermath, Europeans
stopped killing each not because they had come to an agreement, but because
they agreed to disagree. They had to: They could fight no more. Everyone wanted
victory; but victory was impossible, so tolerance would have to do. The virtue
of tolerance was that it stopped the bloodshed. The Peace of Westphalia was a
treaty of exhaustion.
That the Enlightenment began
immediately after the Thirty Years’ War is no coincidence. The early thinkers
of the Enlightenment lived through the conflict; they saw what it had done to
their society. Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan, the first
modern work of political philosophy, in 1651, a mere 3 years after the war. The
thinkers of the Enlightenment sought to replace the ruptured Christian culture
of Europe with culture founded on secular reason.
The fact that this project
has failed, and that we are careening again, towards a state of intellectual
war between competing and irreconcilable cultures, should make us quite uneasy.
But what is to be done? Is
the Trilemma unanswerable? Is it ultimately impossible to prove anything true?
The Trilemma is one of the Vultures that circles us, pinned as we are to the
Tree of Woe.
https://macris.substack.com/p/the-horror-of-mnchhausens-trilemma
