B. This view, which is usually considered a much more modest view than A, has, I think, the defect that, unlike A, it really is self-contradictory, i.e., entails both of two mutually incompatible propositions. Most philosophers who have held this view, have held, I think, that though each of us knows propositions corresponding to some of the propositions in (1), namely to those which merely assert that I myself have had in the past experiences of certain kinds at many different times, yet none of us knows for certain any propositions either of the type which assert the existence of material things or of the type which assert the existence of other selves, beside myself, and that they also have had experiences. They admit that we do in fact believe propositions of both these types, and that they may be true: some would even say that we know them to be highly probable; but they deny that we ever know them, for certain, to be true. Some of them have spoken of such beliefs as ‘beliefs of Common Sense’, expressing thereby their conviction that beliefs of this kind are very commonly entertained by mankind: but they are convinced that these things are, in all cases, only believed, not known for certain; and some have expressed this by saying that they are matters of Faith, not of Knowledge.
Now the remarkable thing which those who take this view have not, I think, in general duly appreciated, is that, in each case, the philosopher who takes it is making an assertion about ‘us’ – that is to say, not merely about himself, but about many other human beings as well. When he says ‘No human being has ever known of the existence of other human beings’, he is saying: ‘There have been many other human beings beside myself, and none of them (including myself) has ever known the existence of other human beings’. If he says: ‘These beliefs are beliefs of Common Sense, but they are not matters of knowledge’, he is saying: ‘There have been many other human beings, beside myself, who have shared these beliefs, but neither I nor any of the rest have ever known them to be true’. In other words, he asserts with confidence that these beliefs are beliefs of Common Sense, and seems often to fail to notice that, if they are, they must be true; since the proposition that they are beliefs of Common Sense … logically entails the proposition that many human beings, beside the philosopher himself, have had human bodies, which lived upon the earth, and have had various experiences, including beliefs of this kind. This is why this position, as contrasted with positions of group A, seems to me to be self-contradictory. Its difference from A consists in the fact that it is making a proposition about human knowledge in general, and therefore is actually asserting the existence of many human beings, whereas philosophers of group A in stating their position are not doing this: they are only contradicting other things which they hold. It is true that a philosopher who says ‘There have existed many human beings beside myself, and none of us has ever known the existence of any human beings beside himself’, is only contradicting himself if what he holds is ‘There have certainly existed many human beings beside myself’ or, in other words, ‘I know that there have existed other human beings beside myself’. But this, it seems to me, is what such philosophers have in fact been generally doing. They seem to me constantly to betray the fact that they regard the proposition that those beliefs are beliefs of Common Sense, or the proposition that they themselves are not the only members of the human race, as not merely true, but certainly true; and certainly true it cannot be, unless one member, at least, of the human race, namely themselves, has known the very things which that member is declaring that no human being has ever known.
Nevertheless, my position that I know, with certainty, to be true all of the propositions in (1), is certainly not a position, the denial of which entails both of two incompatible propositions. If I do know all these propositions to be true, then, I think, it is quite certain that other human beings also have known corresponding propositions: that is to say (2) also is true, and I know it to be true. But do I really know all the propositions in (1) to be true? Isn’t it possible that I merely believe them? Or know them to be highly probable? In answer to this question, I think I have nothing better to say than that it seems to me that I do know them, with certainty. It is, indeed, obvious that, in the case of most of them, I do not know them directly: that is to say, I only know them because, in the past, I have known to be true other propositions which were evidence for them. If, for instance, I do know that the earth had existed for many years before I was born, I certainly only know this because I have known other things in the past which were evidence for it. And I certainly do not know exactly what the evidence was. Yet all this seems to me to be no good reason for doubting that I do know it. We are all, I think, in this strange position that we do know many things, with regard to which we know further that we must have had evidence for them, and yet we do not know how we know them, i.e., we do not know what the evidence was. If there is any ‘we’, and if we know that there is, this must be so: for that there is a ‘we’, is one of the things in question. And that I do know that there is a ‘we’, that is to say, that many other human beings, with human bodies, have lived upon the earth, it seems to me that I do know, for certain.
If this first point in my philosophical position, namely my belief in (2), is to be given any name, which has actually been used by philosophers in classifying the positions of other philosophers, it would have, I think, to be expressed by saying that I am one of those philosophers who have held that the ‘Common Sense view of the world’ is, in certain fundamental features, wholly true. But it must be remembered that, according to me, all philosophers, without exception, have agreed with me in holding this: and that the real difference, which is commonly expressed in this way, is only a difference between those philosophers, who have also held views inconsistent with these features in ‘the Common Sense view of the world’, and those who have not.
The features in question (namely, propositions of any of the classes defined in defining (2)) are all of them features, which have this peculiar property – namely, that if we know that they are features in the ‘Common Sense view of the world’, it follows that they are true: it is self-contradictory to maintain that we know them to be features in the Common Sense view, and that yet they are not true; since to say that we know this, is to say that they are true. And many of them also have the further peculiar property that, if they are features in the Common Sense view of the world (whether we know this or not), it follows that they are true, since to say that there is a ‘Common Sense view of the world’ is to say that they are true. The phrases ‘Common Sense view of the world’ or ‘Common Sense beliefs’ (as used by philosophers) are, of course, extraordinarily vague; and, for all I know, there may be many propositions which may be properly called features in ‘the Common Sense view of the world’ or ‘Common Sense beliefs’, which are not true, and which deserve to be mentioned with the contempt with which some philosophers speak of ‘Common Sense beliefs’. But to speak with contempt of those ‘Common Sense beliefs’ which I have mentioned is quite certainly the height of absurdity. And there are, of course, enormous numbers of other features in the Common Sense view of the world which, if these are true, are quite certainly true too: e.g., that there have lived upon the surface of the earth not only human beings, but also many different species of plants and animals, etc., etc.
Specimen Questions