Can Fallibilism itself be fallible?

Question

It says: from IEP

Fallibilism tells us that there is no conclusive justification and no rational certainty for any of our beliefs or theses.

So, I am just applying fallibilist theses to fallibilism itself, when I do, then fallibilism becomes fallible, which means there is no such thing as fallibilism that we should believe (?)

Answer 1

I think that fallibilism is not a self-refuting idea, because:

Person A (the fallibilist): "We can never know any statement with 100% certainty."

Person B (trying to disprove fallibilism): "Well, what about this your statement you just said? Can it be also prone to uncertainty?"

Person A: "Yes, of course, that is fallibilism, to put it more clearly, I will state it this way; We can never know any statement with 100% certainty, including this one.".

So if we try to let it play out one more time:

Person A: "We can never know any statement with 100% certainty, including this one."

Person B: "I doubt that."

Person A: "Me too, but it still holds."

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Conclusion

Fallibilsm: "We can never know any statement with 100% certainty, including this one."

This statement always holds.

Try to question it, I dare you. ;)

Answer 2

Fallibilism is a pragmatic position, and is based on pragmatic truth, where "true" == "useful in characterizing our world experiences"

You are applying a different truth standard to it, absolute logical truth. And no, fallibilism cannot meet that standard. Logic can't either -- see Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (truth can often not be established even within a logic system), the Munchausen Trilemma (no justifications close logically), and the last section of Two dogmas of Empiricism (where all language is shown to be intrinsically insufficiently precise to support analyticity).

Living in the world, we use empiricism for almost everything, and empiricism only gives us pragmatic truth. We humans seem to be built to delude ourselves about the solidity of our views, and most philosophy today seems to presume absolute truth is a valid goal to pursue, despite these logic problems at its foundation. But apply the philosophic principle thoroughly of questioning one's assumptions, and what that questioning reveals is that we use absolute truth PRAGMATICALLY, as a useful heuristic, even though it is never achievable.

So -- one can, as a pragmatist, USE logical truth. But one should be aware that applying it thoroughly to all one's assumptions will reveal that our assumptions and worldviews do not logically close, and none of our views are ultimately supported by anything more than pragmatism.

Pragmatically, fallibilism is -- both itself fallible, AND an extremely useful framing to view the world from.

Answer 3

That depends on whether you postulate it dogmatically (that's what Popper did), then it's like a religion and not a serious philosophy. If you consider it to be refutable (which you have to do), then it has no impact. It's like a handkerchief against Hegel, Kant and Schopenhauer. You can consider it a healthy psychological attitude, there's nothing more to it.

Answer 4

Fallibilism must admit itself as fallible, but it is important to explain how and why. Fallibilism (IEP) is a thesis that no knowledge is absolutely certain or beyond doubt. It's a general recognition that human reasoning is defeasible and that empirical evidence is never absolutely definitive. In this way, it is a recognition that the certainty of deduction is a very limited scope, and itself open to psychological misapplication. One way to think about fallibilism is to think about as we go through life, we constantly discover mistakes in our thinking or gaps in our knowledge. In this way, all knowledge and judgement is tentative and contingent upon future facts, events, arguments, etc.

As such, the doctrine of fallibilism in some regards seem inapplicable and wrong. If we are a homicide detective, and we personally witness a homicide committed, and we personally investigate and help prosecute the case, to doubt the belief I'm certain about who committed the crime seems to be an instance where knowledge is so overwhelming, it's not fallible. Besides witnessing the event, we might have a signed confession, we might have genetic evidence, we might have a manifesto that provides the motive, we might have video footage. To claim, "maybe I'm mistaken about who committed the homicide" seems to be beyond fallible and enters into some sort of radical skepticism.

So, fallibilism if taken to an extreme as a doctrine becomes dubious. There is a general gradient of absolutist and unrepentant certainty (I'm infallible and don't make mistakes!) that runs through fallibility (I almost inevitably will discover new facts or arguments that could change my mind) into radical skepticism (There's no knowledge at all, certainty is delusion, and my mind might be controlled by an evil demon so nothing is for sure). If everything were entirely fallible consistently and without mercy, we could never possess any knowledge as the radical skeptic holds, and that seems to go against our practical experience, good reason, and common sense.

Answer 5

Generally, yes, by its own standard, the premise of fallibilism is fallible. It seems to me that whether or not you arrive at a contradiction depends on how you formulate it.

Let me demonstrate it with a couple modal definitions:

If we define "fallibilism is true" as equivalent to the proposition "all propositions are possibly false" ($P_1$), we get (S5):

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$$P_1 \coloneqq \forall P , (\Diamond \neg P)$$

$$P_1 \implies \Diamond \neg P_1$$

$$\Diamond \neg P_1 \equiv \Diamond \exists P : \Box P$$

So

$$P_1 \implies \Diamond \exists P : \Box P$$

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So we see that "all propositions are possibly false" implies "possibly, some proposition is not possibly false". Here the implication seems somewhat counterintuitive, but there isn't exactly a blatant contradiction. This isn't the case, however, if you equate "fallibilism is true" with "it is not possible that there exists a necessarily true proposition" ($P_2$):

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$$P_2 \coloneqq \neg \Diamond \exists P : \Box P$$

$$P_2 \implies \Diamond \neg P_2$$

$$\Diamond \neg P_2 \equiv \Diamond \exists P : \Box P$$

$$\Diamond \exists P : \Box P \equiv \neg P_2$$

So

$$P_2 \implies \neg P_2$$

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So with $P_1$ we just get $P_1 \implies \Diamond \neg P_1$ but with $P_2$ we also get $P_2 \implies \neg P_2$.

Answer 6

Just to expand on the hypothetical provided by User198. Fallibilism is less of an explanation of the world around us and more an explanation of the limit of human knowledge. Fallibilism subjects itself to it's own criterion in that it is not a universal law but a description of human understanding. I'll use an example from "https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/03/16/fallibilism/":

*Suppose I say, as one born in the US and a current resident of Seattle WA, one of the following:

1. I have been to Jupiter.
2. I have been to the South Pole multiple times.
3. I have been to the South Pole once.
4. I have been to Russia.
5. I have been to Europe.
6. I have been to Portland.
7. I have been to Seattle.

It should be easy to see that as we proceed down the list the probability that I have been to any of these places increases. In the beginning, the chance was practically zero—although as a fallibilist you must concede that I may be an alien who has taken human form and in fact, has been to Jupiter. At the bottom of the list, the chance is 100% that I’ve been there unless I’m lying to you or am being deceived by gods, aliens, or simulations about my whereabouts. If I tell you #1, then you know (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the claim is false. If I tell you #7, while standing next to you at the Space Needle, then you know (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the claim is true. Finally, if I tell you #4, you just don’t know and have to examine the evidence to determine the probability my claim is true.*

i.e. - anything and everything could exist but we don't know, and since we don't know really whether anything exists it only makes sense that anything we declare could be false. but even that statement could be false. Fallibilism is not contradictory but rather all inclusive (it includes itself in "Fallibilism tells us that there is no conclusive justification and no rational certainty for any of our beliefs or theses.") This means there might be a universal truth (one where there is conclusive justification and rational certainty of its existence) that we discover in later years, but again fallibility is a limitation of human knowledge not the world we live in.

Note - keep in mind fallible knowledge is better than no knowledge because it is likely that some things are true (though we don't know for sure) - see the example of the author saying he went to Venus in the quote

Hope this helps clarify further!

Answer 7

I belong to the "Earth is 100% definitely a slightly oblate sphere" camp.

Some people want to be in an "I cannot know anything with certainty" camp.

If one claims

• "Fallibilism tells us that there is no conclusive justification and no rational certainty for any of our beliefs or theses"

... then one is also claiming

• "Fallibilism tells us that there is no conclusive justification and no rational certainty for our concluding the Earth is a slightly oblate sphere".

I think the "I cannot know anything" camp is a nice place. Quaint. Peaceful. Easy.

I won't be visiting.